Lame Reviews of Great Books That Taught Me Things I Never Knew
Of all the many, many changes in my life that came with the arrival of my kids, the one that surprised me most was that I lost the impulse to read. For me, in the foggy exhaustion that comes with a baby in the house, sleep won out over almost everything. However, when Aislinn was almost two and we moved to Kentucky and I stopped working, I could actually hear my brain beginning to shrivel up from lack of use. I knew that if I ever wanted to be able to relate to my friends and family back in the east coast hotbed of breaking news, political intrigue, and social commentary, I was going to have to make some effort to keep from becoming a hillbilly (I let my kids become hillbillies because young hillbillies are cute, it’s the old late blooming hillbillies that creep people out). Since my reading time is limited and since for a long time I have not lived anywhere that had a paper with a reliable book review, I decided on a foolproof strategy for reading the right books: I only read books that have won awards or have at least been nominated for awards.
This strategy has led me to read a number of books that never would have found their way into my basket if I had been given all of the time in the world in a bookstore with every book in the world. It also started me on nonfiction, which I never read much of in the past. Sure, I read The Perfect Storm and Into Thin Air like everyone else, but in the past six years I have read and loved a number of biographies and histories (books about things that happened in the past, I don’t know if there is a technical word for them but if there is I didn’t learn it while studying chemistry in college). Every book has included things that came as an absolute shock to me. Considering I went to college and graduate school, I wish I was better informed about people and incidents in our country’s past, but I guess no one knows everything. I took some English classes in college, but I guess I should have taken more history. Here are some examples of things I didn’t know.
Arc of Justice by Kevin Boyle (winner of the National Book Award) is an account of a black family that moved into a white neighborhood in Detroit in the 1920s, and the horrible situations that arose from the seemingly innocuous fact that a successful black doctor wanted to raise his family in a nice house in a good neighborhood. I can’t possibly describe the whole plot in 1500 words, but take it from me, if you read this book you will be fascinated and unable to put it down. As if the story of Doctor Ossian Sweet and his family is not enough, this book is full of facts from the time that I didn’t know and I imagine many other people don’t either. From this book I learned that the Ku Klux Klan almost took over Detroit in the 1920s. I had always thought that the KKK was a southern institution that stayed in the south, but in Detroit in 1924, it had 35,000 members. In 1925, KKK candidates almost claimed the entire Detroit city government. I also never realized that people could put covenants in their deeds that stated that their homes could never be sold to black people (or other immigrants or religions depending on how prejudiced they were). I remember taking sociology in college and learning about the segregated neighborhoods in Chicago, but I thought they were formed by intimidation and economic pressures. I don’t remember learning that it was encoded in language in the deeds.
Devil's Highway by Luis Alberto Urrea (finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction) is the story of twenty-six men from Mexico who attempted to enter the US through the desert in Arizona. Since their guides were inexperienced and lost, fourteen of the illegal immigrants ended up dead before their trip was over. In addition to not remembering this incident, if it got any nationwide press, I did not know much about what goes on at the border in Mexico, on either side of the line. A lot of what this book taught me I would rather not know, such as the details of how your body eventually cooks itself when you are out in the sun and heat for days on end. It also provides a humanizing description of the immigrants and the border patrol which are two groups that are easy to caricature or at least stereotype. I had no idea what happens to illegal immigrants when they are caught, or what type of people the “coyotes” are. Considering the current hullabaloo about immigration, I’m glad I read it.
Master of the Senate by Robert Caro (2003 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction) is part three of a four part biography on Lyndon Johnson. Never, under any circumstances, would I have sought out information about Lyndon Johnson. Before I read this book, the only things I knew about him were that he was the godfather of a boy I went to grade school with, and that the tapes of his conversations with Jackie Kennedy after the assassination gave me the creeps. But this book provides so much more information besides the life and times of Lyndon Johnson (who was a little on the crazy side if you ask me – I’d like to think he could never be elected these days using his tactics, but he was very adaptable and probably would have found a way to win). Caro could have written a book just based on his descriptions of the lives of women in rural Texas before electricity. The backbreaking labor and unrelenting hardness of their lives makes me wonder how long I would have lasted if I had been born in those times (and also makes me cringe regarding a future biography of George W. Bush that will be written in the future detailing the hardships of the poor that were ignored by the country during his presidency). This book is also a primer on the US Senate and how it operates, and as such should be read by every red-blooded American (in the words of Sister Michaela who used that logic to force us to read Moby Dick and to memorize the Gettysburg Address and Patrick Henry’s “Give me Liberty or give me death…” speech).” This book is so well written and fascinating, it prompted me to read the other two volumes of the biography, and I eagerly await the fourth – in fact I want to e-mail Robert Caro to make sure he is taking care of himself so that nothing happens to him before the book is finished.
I read Personal History by Katharine Graham (1998 Pulitzer Prize for Biography) while I was pregnant with, and for a while, in labor with my second daughter. I probably would have read it eventually anyway, since All the President’s Men is one of my favorite books of all time, but even with my pledge to read award winners, it took me three years to get to it. Although it probably appeals to Washingtonians and readers of the Washington Post more than it appeals to the average person, it is still a great read. Katharine Graham is easy to dismiss as a person with money and advantages who fell into a family job at the right time. However, when you read how things happened in her own words, she comes across like any other person, unsure of exactly what she should do but determined to do the best job she can. Her husband was a bit crazy and abusive, and still she stood by him, driving me to distraction with her explanations and excuses of his behavior. When he came to his tragic end, as awful as it is to say, I was relieved for her, because she could never have achieved what she did if he had stayed around. Shortly after I read Personal History, I read Ben Bradlee’s autobiography (which understandably did not win any awards – it is a piece of crap- but my brother had a copy so I read it). His self congratulatory drivel makes Personal History stand out even more as a great autobiography.
So there you have it folks, my first attempt at book reviewing, and I must admit, a pretty crappy one at that. I have lent some of these books to other people, so I don’t have them at my fingertips to reread and revisit. I suppose reviewing books that have already received the highest awards in the country is a bit ridiculous, but my main motivation is to encourage you to take a look at them especially if, like me, you never would have thought to. These books are full of information and entertaining too. If you don’t have time to read 3000 pages of biography on Lyndon Johnson, at least read Arc of Justice or Personal History. You won’t be sorry.
This strategy has led me to read a number of books that never would have found their way into my basket if I had been given all of the time in the world in a bookstore with every book in the world. It also started me on nonfiction, which I never read much of in the past. Sure, I read The Perfect Storm and Into Thin Air like everyone else, but in the past six years I have read and loved a number of biographies and histories (books about things that happened in the past, I don’t know if there is a technical word for them but if there is I didn’t learn it while studying chemistry in college). Every book has included things that came as an absolute shock to me. Considering I went to college and graduate school, I wish I was better informed about people and incidents in our country’s past, but I guess no one knows everything. I took some English classes in college, but I guess I should have taken more history. Here are some examples of things I didn’t know.
Arc of Justice by Kevin Boyle (winner of the National Book Award) is an account of a black family that moved into a white neighborhood in Detroit in the 1920s, and the horrible situations that arose from the seemingly innocuous fact that a successful black doctor wanted to raise his family in a nice house in a good neighborhood. I can’t possibly describe the whole plot in 1500 words, but take it from me, if you read this book you will be fascinated and unable to put it down. As if the story of Doctor Ossian Sweet and his family is not enough, this book is full of facts from the time that I didn’t know and I imagine many other people don’t either. From this book I learned that the Ku Klux Klan almost took over Detroit in the 1920s. I had always thought that the KKK was a southern institution that stayed in the south, but in Detroit in 1924, it had 35,000 members. In 1925, KKK candidates almost claimed the entire Detroit city government. I also never realized that people could put covenants in their deeds that stated that their homes could never be sold to black people (or other immigrants or religions depending on how prejudiced they were). I remember taking sociology in college and learning about the segregated neighborhoods in Chicago, but I thought they were formed by intimidation and economic pressures. I don’t remember learning that it was encoded in language in the deeds.
Devil's Highway by Luis Alberto Urrea (finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction) is the story of twenty-six men from Mexico who attempted to enter the US through the desert in Arizona. Since their guides were inexperienced and lost, fourteen of the illegal immigrants ended up dead before their trip was over. In addition to not remembering this incident, if it got any nationwide press, I did not know much about what goes on at the border in Mexico, on either side of the line. A lot of what this book taught me I would rather not know, such as the details of how your body eventually cooks itself when you are out in the sun and heat for days on end. It also provides a humanizing description of the immigrants and the border patrol which are two groups that are easy to caricature or at least stereotype. I had no idea what happens to illegal immigrants when they are caught, or what type of people the “coyotes” are. Considering the current hullabaloo about immigration, I’m glad I read it.
Master of the Senate by Robert Caro (2003 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction) is part three of a four part biography on Lyndon Johnson. Never, under any circumstances, would I have sought out information about Lyndon Johnson. Before I read this book, the only things I knew about him were that he was the godfather of a boy I went to grade school with, and that the tapes of his conversations with Jackie Kennedy after the assassination gave me the creeps. But this book provides so much more information besides the life and times of Lyndon Johnson (who was a little on the crazy side if you ask me – I’d like to think he could never be elected these days using his tactics, but he was very adaptable and probably would have found a way to win). Caro could have written a book just based on his descriptions of the lives of women in rural Texas before electricity. The backbreaking labor and unrelenting hardness of their lives makes me wonder how long I would have lasted if I had been born in those times (and also makes me cringe regarding a future biography of George W. Bush that will be written in the future detailing the hardships of the poor that were ignored by the country during his presidency). This book is also a primer on the US Senate and how it operates, and as such should be read by every red-blooded American (in the words of Sister Michaela who used that logic to force us to read Moby Dick and to memorize the Gettysburg Address and Patrick Henry’s “Give me Liberty or give me death…” speech).” This book is so well written and fascinating, it prompted me to read the other two volumes of the biography, and I eagerly await the fourth – in fact I want to e-mail Robert Caro to make sure he is taking care of himself so that nothing happens to him before the book is finished.
I read Personal History by Katharine Graham (1998 Pulitzer Prize for Biography) while I was pregnant with, and for a while, in labor with my second daughter. I probably would have read it eventually anyway, since All the President’s Men is one of my favorite books of all time, but even with my pledge to read award winners, it took me three years to get to it. Although it probably appeals to Washingtonians and readers of the Washington Post more than it appeals to the average person, it is still a great read. Katharine Graham is easy to dismiss as a person with money and advantages who fell into a family job at the right time. However, when you read how things happened in her own words, she comes across like any other person, unsure of exactly what she should do but determined to do the best job she can. Her husband was a bit crazy and abusive, and still she stood by him, driving me to distraction with her explanations and excuses of his behavior. When he came to his tragic end, as awful as it is to say, I was relieved for her, because she could never have achieved what she did if he had stayed around. Shortly after I read Personal History, I read Ben Bradlee’s autobiography (which understandably did not win any awards – it is a piece of crap- but my brother had a copy so I read it). His self congratulatory drivel makes Personal History stand out even more as a great autobiography.
So there you have it folks, my first attempt at book reviewing, and I must admit, a pretty crappy one at that. I have lent some of these books to other people, so I don’t have them at my fingertips to reread and revisit. I suppose reviewing books that have already received the highest awards in the country is a bit ridiculous, but my main motivation is to encourage you to take a look at them especially if, like me, you never would have thought to. These books are full of information and entertaining too. If you don’t have time to read 3000 pages of biography on Lyndon Johnson, at least read Arc of Justice or Personal History. You won’t be sorry.
posted by Shannon at 10:59 PM
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