Tag: book reviews

Stephen Starring Grant, Mailman: My Wild Ride Delivering the Mail in Appalachia and Finally Finding Home 

(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2024), 285 pages. 

At the beginning of the COVID pandemic in 2020, Steve Grant found himself without a job. At age 50, with a family to support and in need medical insurance for cancer treatment, he leaves behind his white-collar life and becomes a mailman. This book humorously recalls his training for and then delivering the mail. He did this for a year, after which he accepted a position like the one he held before the pandemic.  During this year, working with all types of people, he comes to appreciate the constitutional mandated role the Postal Service plays in America.

Grant grew up in Blacksburg, Virginia. His father, who would die before he finished the book, worked as a professor of engineering at Virginia Tech. Grants spends a lot of time discussing his parents, especially his father who had been his Boy Scout leader and introduced him to the outdoors. Before the pandemic, Grant mostly lived in major cities. But with young daughters, he decided to move his family back to Blacksburg, thinking it was the perfect place to raise children.  

At several places he discusses firearms. Grant grew up hunting and fishing and understand that many (if not most) of the people living in the rural areas around Blacksburg packed guns. His father had been shot but survived in the 2007 shooting at Virginia Tech. Grant, himself, had also been glazed by a bullet from a drive-by shooter while working on a project in Austin, Texas.  The Postal Service has strict laws and don’t allow guns on Post Office property, including their vehicles. Private vehicles which Grant and most rural carriers drive, is a gray area and at times Grant carried a gun, not on person but stuck between his seat.  

With the rhetoric around the election of 2020 and the role the Post Office played in delivering absentee, he felt himself in danger. Thankfully, he never had any problems but noted that there one postal worker in the nation did mishandle ballots. This was in New Jersey and the mail carrier, a Trump supporter, tried to avoid delivering ballots to those he suspected to be Biden supporters. 

While he may have overestimated the danger of transporting ballots, the Post Office is a dangerous job.  Today, it’s more dangerous than coal mining.  Only loggers, workers on oil wells, and garbage collectors have higher rate of on-the-job accidents. Seven out of every 100 employees experience some kind of injury each year.  From repetitive injuries to dog bites, to vehicle accidents to wasp swarms, mail carrying can be dangerous. 

As for the knowledge of one political leaning, Grant let his readers in on a not too secret fact. We think Santa Claus knows the naughty from the nice, but it’s really the mailman. They know what magazines you read, what sex toys you receive, and a lot of other stuff about each person along a mail route.  And while lots of stuff come in brown envelopes for conceal, the post office has a good idea of what’s inside. And occasionally things such as sex toys are not concealed. He told about the morning as all the mail carriers were sorting their mail, on oversized sex toy in a clear plastic bag appeared in a woman carrier’s delivery for the day. She lifted it up for everyone to see, bragging that she’d be delivering someone a good time. 

While Grant delivered the mail in 2020 and early 2021, the volume increased. By July 2020, they were surpassing the Christmas rush. Then, when Amazon and UPS got into an argument and the online retailer shipped everything through the Post Office, things got even busier. Most of this time, Grant just delivered packages, freeing the regular mail carriers to get the mail out.  Having come out of a corporate world and with an understanding of logistics, Grant made suggestions. He quickly learned no one was interested. The only interest they had in him was delivering mail. He learned his lesson.

While admitting the job was difficult, Grant also came to appreciate the role the Post Office plays in the American experience. The Post Office has a mandate to treat everyone the same, unlike other package delivery folks. While it is a bureaucracy, they try to treat their clients as citizens, not customers. And, as he reminds us repeatedly, they don’t receive money from Congress and are self-funded. 

Grant appreciated those who thanked him for delivering the mail. From a cookie or a cup of coffee to passing on old magazines, many people showed gratitude. Of course, there were others who blamed him for delayed packages. And then there are dogs. These best friends seem to be DNA-wired with a dislike of mail carriers. In training, they taught them how to defend themselves and were provided pepper spray. 

Reading this book, I gained empathy for the challenges of those who deliver our mail. I also appreciated Grant’s insights into the job and how, even though each carrier has different ideas and political points of view, they form a family and look out for one another. While some may bristle at some of Grant’s political views (he’s a liberal with a concealed carry permit), he strives to rise above politics and offer a vision for everyone to get along in a time of political chaos.  I recommend this book. 

Kiki Petrosino, White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia 

(Louisville, KY: Sarabande Books, 2020), 107 pages

This delightful selection of poetry reflects on what it means to be mixed race in Virginia. Petrosino divides the poems into sections, some of which appear to be based on a DNA sample such as “What Your Results Mean: West Africa 28%” or “Northwestern Europe, 12%, or “North and East Africa, 5%. The two larger sections are based on places. Albermarle contains many poems about Thomas Jefferson’s home, Monticello. Some are set in the present, as the poet tours the home, and others look back to when it was a working plantation In Louisa, the poems are drawn from courthouse records and information of those long gone including free blacks during the time of slavery.  

Most of these poems I found easily accessible, except for three sets of poems whose titles are the DNA percentages. Each percentage section contains several pages consisting of words positioned randomly across a page. I have seen a few other such poems, but I just don’t understand them. Did she write these poems by taking a part of her DNA description and selecting words and deleting all the rest to make the poem?  

I decided to read these poems because the author will be a featured speaker at Calvin University’s Festival of Faith and Writing this year. Kiki Petrosino teaches poetry at the University of Virginia. I recommend her book for white readers to learn how those of mix race descendants must feel in a society which seems to focus too much on racial supremacy.  

Malcolm Guite, Waiting on the Word:  A Poem a Day for Advent, Christmas and Epiphany 

(Norwick, UK: Canterbury Press, 2015), 158 pages.

Guite is an Anglican priest and a poet who lives in England but has a large following around the country.  I was first introduced to him in 2022 at the HopeWords Writing Conference in Bluefield, West Virginia. At first, I wasn’t sure what to make of the man. His appearance reminded me of a hobbit who had groupies following him all around.  Since that time, I have read several of his works. I find him to be not just an engaging poet, but a scholar with a deep knowledge of poetry, the Bible, and language. I have also learned of others who appreciate his poetry such as Russell Moore, who comes out of a Southern Baptist tradition which is far from the formality of Anglicanism.

In this book, Guite offers a poem a day from the day of December through January 6, Epiphany.  While some of his poems are his own such as Refugees, which I recently used in a sermon, most are from other poets. These include both contemporary poets such as Scott Caird and Luci Shaw to more classical poets such as George Herbert, John Donne, John Keats, Christina Rossetti, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and John Milton. After each poem, Guite provides several pages of commentary in which he draws from his vast knowledge of poetry and Scripture to help make the poem more accessible. 

This is a perfect book to read and reread as a seasonal devotional. 

Andrew Ross Sorkin, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History and How It Shattered a Nation 

(Audiobook, 2025), 13 hours and 30 minutes. 

I listened to this book mostly while driving down to Harkers Island to fish with my uncle and siblings. Sorkin approaches the Wall Street crash of October 29, 1929 from the perspective of the major players on Wall Street, in banking and in the government. He also includes a few outside of financial circles such as Charlie Chapin and Winston Churchill, who was an invited guest to stock market in October 1929. 

I tried to reserve this book from the library but I’m behind several people and was not able to obtain a copy to review the names of the characters (of which their are many) within the book.

 The times were different. Before the 1920s, only a small percentage of Americans invested in the stock market. Then during the boom, bankers offered deals for more common people to invest, especially through buying stocks on a 10% margin. This worked fine as long as the stocks rose. As more people invested in a market, stocks rose beyond their value. But when the bubble began to bust and the stocks lost value, banks began to demand more money to meet the margin people had invested. And when people couldn’t make the margin payments, they lost as well as the banks. Soon, the market was in a freefall.

Lots of money was lost, but not everyone lost. Those who sensed the market was overvalued had shorted their stocks.  One man, already rich, made a huge fortune by betting against the market. He came home that day, with his wife having already moved their stuff into the servant’s quarters, thinking they could no longer afford their house. Then she learned his good fortune as he’d made 11 million the day of the crash. But he later lost his fortune as he continued to play the market like a casino. 

While I enjoyed listening to this book, I felt Sorkin could have tied together better what was happening in the world. Especially the issue of German repayments for the Great War, which he writes about in detail, but I felt he didn’t tie it to the general economic conditions of the world economy. Also mentioned but not in detail were the problems with tariffs. Instead, Sorkin captures the lives of bankers during this time of economic turmoil. The book primarily covers from the end of Coolidge’s through Hoover’s and early into Roosevelt’s presidency. 

2025 Reading Summary:

I completed 46 books in 2025, about the same number that I read in 2024. However, in 2024, I spent much of the summer bogged down in Augustine’s City of God. This year, I didn’t read any book with 1200 pages of small print, but I did read several serious histories and biographies. Here’s the breakdown and comparison to the past couple of years:

	2021	2022	2023	2024	2025
Total Read	54	53	53	45	46
Fiction	8	4	8	6	7
Poetry	5	6	1	3	5
History/ Biography	13	17	13	12	21
Theology/ ministry	16	22	15	11	9
Essay/Short Stories	8	3	6	1	3
Humor	4	1	3	2	4
Nature	6	9	13	10	3
Politics	3	3	5	10	14
Memoirs	10	11	4	14	10
Writing how-to	2	2	1	1	1
Women authors	14	7	16	14	10
Read via Audible	20	20	26	19	22
Books reviewed	30	34	39	32	46

The numbers don’t add up because many books appear in multiple categories.  

2025 Recommendations

This year, I did a monthly recaps in which I reviewed all the books I completed in the previous month, so I won’t give you a yearly recap of all the books. Instead, here are some of my favorite books that I recommend:

Best fiction:  Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Grow While this novel sometimes pushed believability, I really enjoyed it. Part of that comes from having grown up around the salt marsh in North Carolina. 

Most enjoyable read: Bernard DeVoto, The Hour: A Cocktail Manifesto This short book about the cocktail hour had me laughing throughout its pages. Who’d thought a western historian could be so sarcastic and funny? 

Best Theology: Malcolm Guite, Waiting on the Word (reviewed above). While not heavy theology, it was a pleasure to read and connect poems with scripture and theology. 

For understanding America: Timothy Egan, A Fever in the Heartland. Indiana in the 1920s was a hotbed for the Klan. Controlling the state government, they looked to expand nationally, but thankfully due to the sexual appetites of the leaders, they fell from grace. Racism and sexism are still with us today. 

For understanding the World: Alexander Vindman, The Folly of Realism. Vindman, whose family fled Ukraine when he was a child and who later became an army officer working in international relations, has a unique perspective for understanding the situation in Ukraine and how it relates to America.  

Reading summaries from other blog friends:

Bob’s Fiction

Bob’s Non-fiction

Kelly’s

Pace, Amore, Libri

AJ Sterkel

Jacqui

Candice Millard, River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search of the Nile

 (New York: Doubleday, 2022), 349 pages including notes, bibliography, and an index.  In addition are 16 pages of prints. 

It’s amazing that in the middle of the 19^th Century, vast areas in places like Africa remained unknown, including the source of the Nile. . In comes Richard Burton, the English explorer, who put together a team to find the source. While he didn’t succeed, one of his assistants and nemesis, John Hanning Speke did discover and document the source of the Nile in a later trip. To put this in context of what was occurring in the world at the time, the first trip was when the Indian Mutiny occurred. Speke’s later expedition was during the American Civil War.

This book is filled with excitement and misadventures. One such event involved an attack attacked in what is now Somalia, which was just as dangerous then as now. In the attack, a spear pierced Burton’s cheeks, leaving him with a lifelong scar. 

I have had this book has been on my radar for several years, but I found myself questioning if it was worthy to read. the time in to read it. But having read the other three books by Candice Millard (The River of Doubt, Destiny of the Republic, and Hero of the Empire), all of which I enjoyed, I finally decided to give this book a try.  I’m glad I did.  

Millard provides biographical information not only of Speke and Burton, but also several others involved in the expedition. One of these, Sidi Mubarak Bombay, was most interesting. An African, his village was attacked when he was a child. Taken to India as a slave, upon the death of his master, he came back to Africa and helped with all the expeditions.  

Burton and Speke’s relationship was always tense. At the end of the expedition, Burton fell ill which delayed his returni to England. Speke, who went ahead of him, claimed credit for the expedition’s finding. The story of Burton and Speke ends tragically. The two were to have a debate, but hours beforehand, Speke died from a gunshot. Was it an accident (as he was a skilled and safe hunter) or did he do it on purpose? 

I found myself interested in Burton and may have to read more about his life. Burton mastered languages. As a non-Muslin (he was mostly agnostic), but with a master of Arabic and having studied the Koran, he traveled to Mecca and participated in the Hajj. Dressing the part, he passed himself off as Shaykh Abdullah. He lived to tell of his adventures which he published in a book. 

 Unlike Speke and most Britains, Burton preferred native dress. He also didn’t see himself as superior just because he was British but respected the people and their customs. However, some things he abhorred such as the Arab slave trade through Africa, which was still going on in the middle of the 19th Century.  However, his interest repulsed many in Victorian England such as translating the Karma Sutra into English. 

A side story in this book is the relationship between Burton and his young wife, Isabel Arundell. To the horror of her mother, Isabel fell for Burton when she was vyoung. They had a long relationship, but because of Burton’s travels and her family’s disapproval, they didn’t marry for some time. Not only was Burton not affluent, the Arundells were Catholic. Isabel had even considered becoming a nun if she couldn’t gain Burton’s interest. She was willing to travel with her husband on his journeys, but Burton was beginning to slow down by the time they married. She remained devoted to him and helped him with his writings. 

 This is an exciting book and, somewhat like the first book I read by Millard, River of Doubt. In River of Doubt, she explores a 1914 expedition by Teddy Roosevelt down one of the uncharted rivers in South America. Both books are good stories with lots of insight into the time and what those involved in the expeditions endured. 

James M. Dixon, Things I’ll Never Forget: Memories of a Marine in Viet Nam, 

Malcolm Hillgarter, narrator (2018, Brilliance Audio),9 hours and 36 minutes.

Graduating from high school in 1965, and not sure what he wants out of life, Dixon joins the Marines. Describing the dinner where he broke the news to his parents is well told. His mother drops her coffee cup and leaves crying. His father congratulated him, but then you learn the family are Quakers, even though his father had served in World War 2. Dixon had initially wanted to join the Army rangers with a friend. But they discovered he was slightly colorblindness and the Army refused to take him. Leaving, he and his friend talked to the Marine Corp recruiter, who promised all kinds of things which turned out not to be true. Unaware of the lies, the two signed up. 

The first part of the book tells of his experiences in boot camp at Parris Island. I didn’t realize they had shortened basic training and advance infantry training as the war begin to heat up. Humor fills training experience..  After completing these two courses, he heads to school in Camp Pendleton, California, to be trained as a MP (military police). From there, he travels by ship to Vietnam, with stops in Hawaii and Japan.  This was certainly no cruise with the overcrowded ship swaying in the high seas they first experienced leaving the West Coast.

Dixon’s first half of his Vietnam tour was as an MP, mostly guarding the Danang airbase. Then, as happened to many Marines MPs, the Corp transferred him to the grunts. This was much more dangerous as they ran missions into enemy held positions where they set ambushes (and at times found themselves ambushed). He tells the stories straightforward, without glamorizing or glorifying them. Some things he did and saw are hard to stomach. In one battle, he saw a VC dressed figure duck. He shot and then realized it was a boy without a weapon.

On another occasion, they dropped charges into a tunnel, thinking it was a VC hideout only to learn it contained a mother and children.  Once, on an extended mission, they captured two VCs. The Lieutenant had the interpreter to ask one about enemy position.  He refused to say anything, so the Lieutenant pulled his pistol and shot the man in the head. The other captured soldier began to tell them everything. When they felt they had learned what they could, they let him go, only to shot him in the back as he fled.  

Dixon later became a radio operator. This was even more dangerous as radio operators were one of the three most likely positions to be shot by snipers (officers and corpsmen or medics were the other two). He didn’t like this position but when his platoon’s radio operator when down, he was nearby and ordered to pick up the radio. 

During his time in Vietnam, he lost a lot of friends and several of their deaths stick with him. One of the saddest involved two buddies who had spent their time together. One was killed and then booby trapped by the VC, so when the other found his deceased friend, he rolled his body over only to take the bast of a grenade that had been planted under the body.  

I am still not sure about this book. I can’t understand a Quaker who tells such stories without judgment. However, the book is well written. The author, after Vietnam, taught school for over 30 years. 

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After a period of dryness, the end of October turned cool and rainy. And, with watching an incredible World Series, it was time to pull out a puzzle. This is “The World of Jane Austen,” and is the third such puzzle we’d done, the other two focusing on Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare.

While I have completed a lot of books this past month, part of the reason is that two of the books were mostly read during June. I just happened to finish them in July!  Also, as I am trying to find a way to reduce my library. For the past thirty-five years, I have had expense accounts to buy many of my books, which have resulted in way more books that one needs. I have once again begun to check out books from the library. Two of the books here (James and The Folly of Realism )were library books. 

Leo Damrosch, Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World 

(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), 573 pages including notes and an index. Audio book narrated by David Stifel, 20 hours and 43 minutes. 

Impressed with Damrosch’s The Club: Johnson, Boswell and the Friends who Shaped an Age, I explored other books written by him.  Having never read a biography of Swift, even though I read Gulliver’s Travels twenty-some years ago, I dug into this book. Swift lived a generation before Boswell and Johnson. While I listened to the book, I also brought a hard copy to reread sections. 

In addition to having read Gulliver’s Travels (and Swift’s short parody, “A Modest Proposal”), which made me curious about Swift’s life, in 2011, I was in Dublin. I attended worship at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. I knew Swift served as the dean of the cathedral. He was also buried there. I found it shocking to learn Stella burial is next to him. Stella, is a woman to whom he may or may not have been married. Learning this, I became even more intrigued with Swift. 

I enjoyed Damrosch’s extensive biography. While somewhat academic, this book is very easy to read and includes lots of snips from Swift’s clever writings. In the prologue, Damrosch teases the reader with one of Swift’s affairs, then provides a brief survey of other Swift biographies. Chapter 1 begins with Swift’s early life, in which there are a lot of gaps and questions. It’s assumed he was born at his uncle’s house in Dublin, Ireland, in 1667. Oddly, as a toddler, Swift’s wet nurse Tok him to England. He wasn’t reunited with his mother until he was older. It is assumed his father died before his birth although Damrosch hits at other possible explanations. .

Damrosch leads us through Swift’s life. Swift thought highly of himself and I am curious if he ever preached on humility. He held out hope for a better position in life. Only later did he eventually settle in the position of Dean at St. Patrick’s in Dublin.

Even though he was born in Ireland, Swift considered himself as English. But in time, he became a champion of the Irish cause. But it appears his concern was only for Irish Anglicans. He didn’t care for the Catholics, who made up most of the Irish subjects. He also had disdain for the Scots and Presbyterians

Of course, the Anglican communion was filled with political landmines. Swift didn’t make it easy to navigate, especially after it was discovered he was the “anonymous” author of a satire of the church titled, A Tale of a Tub.  In that book, Jack represents John Calvin, Peter the Catholic Church, both with whom he had issues. Marty was for Martin Luther, whom he seemed to admire more. However, Swift was more about enjoying life and making jokes and less concerned about theology. .

In addition to church pollity, Swift was also interested in the politics of the United Kingdom. Considering he lived during the first Scottish Jacobite Rebellions, English politics were never boring. 

Swift also enjoyed women. In addition to Stella, there was Venessa.  A woman twenty years younger, Swift and she carried on quite an affair. In their correspondence, instead writing about their sexual attractions, they substituted “coffee.” Each would write things like “I can’t wait to drink your coffee.” This silly way of flirting kept a rising member of the clergy from suspect. 

In the end, after Stella’s death, Swift memory faded. He worried about such a fate. In Gulliver’s Travels, when Gulliver is in Luggnugg, he learns of people who do not die, but instead face eternal senility. Certainly, death was more desirable than living like that. By the end of his life, Swift lost his memory. 

This is a massive book with great details into Swift’s life. If you’re interested in Swift, I recommend it. 

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Ron Shelton, The Church of Baseball: The Making of Bull Durham, Home Runs, Bad Calls, Crazy Fights, Big Swings, and a Hit

 narrated by Ron Shelton, (2022), 8 hours and 12 minutes. 

Shelton wrote and directed the 1988 movie “Bull Durham.” In this book, he recalls his minor league career in the late 60s and early 70s. He began playing Single A ball in Bluefield, West Virginia (which was eye opening for a boy from California). He eventually worked his way up to a Triple A team in Rochester, NY. During the first baseball strike, he decided to hang it up. The first half of the book talks about how his ideas for the movie came about. Almost everything in the movie, he experienced or heard about as a ball player. 

In the second half of the movie, Shelton talks about the making of the movie. Kevin Costner, who played Crash Davis, immediately fell for the script and helped him promote it to studios. Susan Sarandon read the script and even though she wasn’t being considered considering for the Annie character, she earned the spot for the leading lady. The third star, Nuke, played by Tim Robbins, took longer to arrange. Durham became the setting for the movie. During the filming, Shelton continually battled the “suits” in Hollywood.  

In addition to learning about how Shelton came up with this idea (based on a Greek play with his baseball experiences), the reader gets an insight into the hassle of making a movie.

I still remember watching the film in Ketchum, Idaho, the summer I was running a camp in the Sawtooth Mountains. I still think it’s a great movie and this book makes me want to watch it again.  

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Alexander Vindman, The Folly of Realism: How the West Deceived Itself About Russia and Betrayed Ukraine 

(New York: Public Affairs, 2025), 290 pages including notes, bibliography and index.

Born in Ukraine, when it was a part of the Soviet Union, Vindman’s family became one of the last group of Jews to leave the country in 1979. Finding himself in America, he served and retired from the US Army as a Lieutenant Colonel. The last half of his career he worked as a military attaché for the United States embassy in Kyiv and Moscow and later for the President as an advisor on Eastern Europe.  His positions allowed him a front row seat for much of what happened between the United States and Russia following the breakup of the Soviet Union.  Of course, there may be some bias,. This is understandable with his background. However, the book is written in a way that strives to understand the positions of Russia, Ukraine, Europe, and the United States. 

This book begins under the presidency of George H. W. Bush. The Soviet Union broke up and many of the former “republics” became independent states. During the first Bush’s term and the first half of Clinton’s term, American interest centered on freeing Ukraine from nuclear weapons. When the Soviet Union split up, Ukraine overnight became the third largest nuclear power in the world. But with Ukraine’s dark history of Chernobyl, it was willing to give up its weapons. Furthermore, it knew it couldn’t maintain the nuclear stockpile, especially as many of the weapons approached the end of their lifespan.  In a way, Russia and the United States agreed (for different reasons) that the weapons needed to be dismantled and turned over to Russia. 

Starting with the Soviet breakup and for the next 30 years, the United States respected Russia as the legitimate heir to the Soviet Union. For their part, Ukraine just wanted protection from Russia as it attempted to build a new country. 

As the 21^st Century began, both the United States and Russia found themselves on the same side of the war against Islamic extremism. After the nuclear weapons in Ukraine were eliminated, the United States looked the other way as Russia attempted to control the Soviet’s former states. After all, the United States needed bases in former Soviet states for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Under Putin, Russia strove harder to influence the politics of many former Soviet States, especially Ukraine and Georgia. They even hired an American political operative, Paul Manafort, to help them break Ukraine up so they would have more influence. Manafort later managed Donald Trump’s first Presidential campaign. Convicted for fraud and witness tampering, Trumped pardoned him.. Manafort helped soften the image of Yanukovych, whom the Kremlin wanted as Ukraine’s president. Yanukovych won in a Russian influenced election. . Afterwards the people of Ukraine, desiring to aligned with Europe, revolted. He fled the country. Russia then invaded Crimea and the Donbas. Vindman, working out of the Moscow embassy, was able to report on Russian soldiers moving into the Donbas, which Russia had said was a separatist movement.  

Most of this book deals with the period from 1989 to 2014, when Russia began military operations in Ukraine. Vindman makes it clear that Putin’s desire is an empire, like that of the Soviet Union. And the belief in Russia is that without Ukraine, they will not be able to have an empire.  

Vindman is critical of all Presidential Administrations. Much of our policy focused on maintaining a positive relationship with Russia, while forgoing ideals of freedom. Vindman shows the failure of America not living up to our own ideals about freedom as opposed to looking out for our short term interests when it comes to foreign policy. He argues that our foreign policy needs not only a realistic approach, but one which honors our ideals. This book provides the readers with an insight into what led up to the Russia attacks on Ukraine.  I would recommend this book, along with Anne Applebaum’s Red Famine to better understand the Ukrainian situation.

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Percival Evett, James 

(New York: Doubleday, 2024), 302 pages. 

Surprise, I do occasionally read fiction. James is a fictional story in which Jim, Huck Finn’s sidekick in Mark Twain’s novel, tells his side of the story. I found this to be a good and fast read with some surprising twists which I won’t reveal in case you want to read the book. I hope you do and highly recommend it. 

James shows us how those in oppressed situations must live to maintain peace and enjoy some safety. He and his fellow slaves must show deference to all white people. This includes the way they speak. James educated himself by teaching himself to read and “borrowing books” from Judge Thatcher’s library. But he can’t let on that he has read many of the classics and musts talk with the dialect of a slave.  He also is unable to speak up when other slaves are punished. His most valuable possession is the stub of a pencil which he uses to write his thoughts down on paper. 

Many of the stories are like those in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. James and Huck spend their time on a raft and try to figure out life. They catch and cook catfish from the river. They run into the two con-artists, Dauphine and the King, who have a notion to sell James or to turn him in as a runaway and collect the reward. And they also meet up with a minstrel group without a tenor. Hearing James sings, the leader buys James as his tenor. However, to perform, they still must paint up Jame’s to make him “blackfaced,” cause no white crowd would come to see an actual black man sing.  Through these stories, we see the absurdity of a society in which half the population are in bondage. 

James’ mind is always on his wife and daughter, whom he hopes to buy out of slavery. The book ends as the Civil War begins. James frees his family and takes revenge on some who had been especially cruel. Instead of “lighting out to the territories,” as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn ends, they move north. That’s enough hints to the story. There’s one larger twist you’ll have to read the book to learn.

My one complaint is that James is “too well read” in the classics. He has read (and carries on make-believe conversations with John Locke. Others he read include Voltaire. I found this hard to believe that one without a tutor could read and grasp the  full meaning of such books. However, it’s still a good story. 

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Rebecca Solnit, Orwell’s Roses 

(2021) narrated by Rebecca Solnit,  7 hours and 51 minutes.

“In the spring of 1936, a writer planted roses.” This begins the book, a sentence which, which in various forms, Solnit returns to throughout this collection of essays centered around the plant and the writer.  Each section provides new insight into roses and to Orwell. 

This is not a biography, even though the reader will gain insight into Orwell’s life. It’s more a mediation, as Solnit weaves together insights of the flower and Orwell. We learn about how and why the plant is grown. One tangent takes us into the greenhouses outside of Bogota, Columbia, where they grown most of the roses sold in the North America. We learn of the brutal conditions of those who work inside these compounds. 

We also learn about Stalin, who Solnit suggests could have been Orwell’s muse. After all, much of his writing in the last decade of his life was in response to the world Stalin (and Hitler) attempted to create. While Stalin didn’t grow roses, he did grow lemons (or had them grown for him for unlike Orwell, Stalin didn’t get his hands dirty). Orwell, who politically was a socialist, feared what would happen in a totalitarian world. 

The book delves into politics, economics, and aesthetics. The latter is important.  During and since high school, I have read much of Orwell’s writings (Homage to Catalonia, Burmese Days, Animal Farm, 1984, and his much of his massive, Collective Essays). I don’t think I would have considered Orwell’s appreciation of beauty, but as I listened to this book, I pulled out my copy of his essays and reread several. Solnit is right. While Orwell was often sick and his view of the world wasn’t positive, he does appreciate beauty. 

I highly recommend this book especially in our world today in which authoritarianism seems to have much appeal to many people. I believe you’ll appreciate Solnit’s masterful use of language as she conveys a sense that Orwell has something to say to our generation.

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Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life 

(San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2011), 198 pages including notes and an index.

I’ve had this book for a couple of years. Robert, a friend from Utah, suggested it to me in 2023. I brought it and my first attempt to read it just didn’t take. But the second time, something caught, and I read it. Possibility, this has to do with me pondering retirement. Two years ago, I was avoiding such thoughts. Now, I’m long past the age I could retire. The topic of retirement frequently on my mind.

Rohr divides our lives into two halves. The first half, we build a life. We also prepare for the second part. In the second half, we’re to be an elder, a mentor, and help others build. I like his distinction here of the two halves. He roots his thoughts in Biblical passages in addition to insights from his life, literature, philosophy, mythology, and other religions. 

Early in the story, he shares a story of a Japanese ritual for those who served in the military during World War II. Many came home broken. They’d been loyal soldiers. Not knowing anything else, they needed to be helped to move into a new phase of life. They were thanked for their serve and then instructed by the elders in villages and cities to leave their “loyal soldier” life behind. They were now needed to help rebuild their society. This created a transition for those who had served in the military. Rohr then goes on to compare a successful transition to the older brother in the Prodigal Son parable, who was unable to let go of the past.  Failure to let go of the past will lead to failure in the second half of life.

If we’re living, we’re changing. We need to learn to manage change within ourselves and our community. One of the keys to Rohr’s idea is to focus on the good of the community, something which I believe our society lacks these days. You’ll find lot more wisdom in this book.  I recommend it. 

I have been in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan for the past two weeks with limited internet and not very active in blogland. I’ll write more about my time there, including a 50+ mile paddle around Drummond Island over the next few weeks. Here are the reviews of the books I read or listened to and completed in June. The long drive to the UP allowed me to listen to two of these books.

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Derwin L. Gray, How to Heal Our Racial Divide: What the Bible Says, and the First Christians Knew, About Racial Reconciliation

 (Tyndale, 2020), 281 pages including notes.

Gray was an African American defensive back who played football for Brigham Young University and later for the Indianapolis Colts and the Charlotte Panthers. After several seasons of professional football, he was led by a teammate to accept Jesus. Later, with his wife, he started Transformation Church in Charlotte, North Carolina. His church is an intentionally mix-race congregation. Gray was a speaker at this year’s HopeWords Writer’s Conference. 

 In the introduction and opening chapter, Gray discusses why he talks about race so much in his sermons. God has created the world with a variety, a kaleidoscope of colors. God loves diversity and longs to bring us all together, through the church, into one family. However, our churches are often less diverse than most our secular world. 

After the first chapter, Gray launches into a Biblical overview, where he starts with Abraham and discusses why he believes that God’s purpose from the beginning was to create a multi-racial family.  While he mentions that concept of humanity being created in God’s image, he begins his survey of scripture with Abraham’s promised family. While I might have started at creation itself, by tying together Abraham’s story with the vision of Isaiah, the teachings of Jesus, and the writings of Paul, Gray makes the case that God’s desire is for a multi-racial family. Of course, like all families, in this sin-filled world it will be messy. But in the life to come, we will experience it in fulness. 

In the second part of the book, Gray discusses what he has learned at Transformation Church and offers ideas for how we can forge relationships across color barriers. For white readers, he explains the differences in how blacks see the world from our perspective. 

I appreciate Gray’s interpretation of God’s vision. This book would make a great study for a church group. Chapters are short and ends with a beautiful Trinity-focused prayers followed by highlights, questions, and ways to implement what is being taught. 

Les Standiford, Palm Beach, Mar-a-largo, and the Rise for America’s Xanadu

narrated by John McLain,(Tantor Audio, 2019), 8 hours and 11 minutes. 

I have been a fan of Les Standiford since I first read his book on the Florida East Coast Railway, Last Train to Paradise. Since then, I have enjoyed his book on Charles Dickens and the writing of the Christmas Carol, The Man Who Invented Christmas, and his book on business partnership of Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick, Meet You in Hell.

Palm Beach, Mar-a-largo, and the Rise of America’s Xanadu picks up the story of the visionary builder, Henry Flagler, whom Standiford introduced in Last Train to Paradise. In this book he mostly focuses on Flagler’s hotels and personal life instead of his railroads. Flagler first arrived in what would become Palm Beach in 1893. Soon, he was building resort hotels. After his wife was committed to an asylum (she thought she was engaged to the Russian Czar), Flagler obtained a divorce. Later, at age 70, he married a 34-year-old-woman from a wealthy North Carolina family, Mary Lily Kenan. Many North Carolina colleges have buildings named for the Kenans). The Kenans still control the Breakers, the five-star hotel Flager built on Palm Beach. 

Early on, Palm Beach was a resort for the newly rich. These who people not accepted into the “old money society” of Newport and other locations. In time, with the likes of sewing machine heir/developer Paris Singer and architect Addison Mizner, Palm Beach became an exclusive place with Mediterranean styles.  Standiford ponders if the high walls of the mansions and resorts were designed to keep out those who didn’t belong or to hide the scandal occurring within. 

After Flagler, Standiford focuses on the Post family. C. W. Post, who established Postum Cereal Company, doted on his daughter Marjorie Merriweather Post. In her 20s, she inherited much of her father’s estate and expanded the business (even into frozen foods). Marjorie was the one who built Mar-a-lago (which means from the lake to the sea as the property goes from Lake Worth on the backside of Palm Beach to the Atlantic). One of the interesting marriages in her long life was to E. F. Hutton, the New York stockbroker. Marjorie, the richest woman in American, and was the “senior partner” in that relationship. During the Great Depression their marriage broke up, partly for political reasons. Margorie was a supporter of Roosevelt’s “New Deal” while Hutton felt FDR was a socialist and preferred “trickle-down economics.”

In the early 1960s, Marjorie even offered Mar-a-largo was a winter White House, but it was decided the building was too expensive to maintain and impossible to safely secure the president. 

After Mar-a-lago had been shuttered for a decade, Donald Trump purchased the property at a basement price. From the beginning Trump ownership came with controversy. He bragged about paying more for the property until the tax bill came in at the higher rate, then he sued to get them to tax it at a much lower rate (from 13 million to 7 million). Finally, he worked out a deal to make the property a private club which provided him with tax favors and allowed him to share the burden of owning the property with others. 

This is a fascinating story. I enjoy how Standiford weaves together the stories of interesting characters around Palm Beach. 

George Saunders, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain in Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life

Narrated by the author and others. (Random House Audio, 2021), 14 hours and 44 minutes.

Over the past decade, I have read and listened to several of Saunders’ collections of short stories. Saunders teaches at Syracuse University. This book is based on one of his favorite classes in which he uses Russian authors. Those he draws upon wrote during a creative period of Russian history (between Napoleon’s invasion and the Bolshevik Revolution). Each section of the book begins with the story. In the audio version, a different voice reads the story, followed by Saunders’ discussing it. Many of the stories are about simple every day and even mundane events. Saunders helps his students and readers see how such a setting can make a great story. The stories include: 

Anton Chekhov, “In the Cart”
Ivan Turgenev, “The Singers”
Anton Chekhov, “The Darling”
Leo Tolstoy, “Master and Man” 
Nikolai Gogol, “The Nose”
Anton Chekhov, “Gooseberries”
Leo Tolstoy, Alyosha the Pot”

Some of the stories like “The Nose” are quite funny and many of the others, especially “Alyosha the Pot” are sad. This book would be helpful for anyone wanting to improve their writing, especially if they are working with fiction!  It is also a good introduction into Russian literature. Before reading this book, I had read some of Chekhov and Tolstoy’s stories, but not the others in the collection. 

Alex Pappademas, Quantum Criminals: Ramblers, Wild Gamblers, and other Sole Survivors from the Songs of Steely Dan

 audio book narrated by Michael Bulter Murray (Tantor Audio, 2024), 7 hours and 15 minutes. 

The rock group Steely Dan blended jazz and weird lyrics into some memorable rock tunes. Donald Fagen and Walter Becker were the band’s mainstays. The two met in the late 60s at Bard College. Both loved jazz. In an earlier band in college, Chevy Chase (the comedian), played the drums. Over the years, Fagen and Becker drew on numerous other musicians to meet the needs of the sounds they sought, but the two remained the mainstay of the band until Becker’s death from cancer in 2017.

The band is known for mellow jazz-like tunes mixed, at times, with outrageous lyrics. Their songs feature those who down and out or on the other side of the law. These characters, which include drug dealers, violent or dirty old men, and a kid about seeking “cop suicide” as he yells, “don’t take me alive.”  Other songs involve love triangles. And then there’s the desire for inappropriate relationships. “Rikki Don’t Lose that Number,” was about Fagen trying to date the wife of a college professor at Bard.

Mostly, the extreme lyrics are presented without moral evaluation. The music behind the lyrics mellows the songs. Fagen and Becker often refused to interpret the songs, leaving them for the listener to figure out or if not, just to enjoy. It’s not surprising that the band’s name came from sexual object in Wiliam S. Burrough’s novel A Naked Lunch. 

Quantum Criminals runs through the discography of Steely Dan, while providing insights into the lives of Becker and Fagen. Those who enjoy the music of the band might enjoy this book. Or you might prefer to skip the book and just listen to their jazzy music without knowing all the secrets imbedded into the lyrics. The print book includes artwork by Joan LeMay depicting the characters in the songs of Steely Dan. 

While I only completed two books in May (compared to five in April), I am posting three reviews. I finally set out to complete Taylor Branch’s trilogy about the Civil Rights movement in America. I have one more volume to go!

Jim Shea, Get Up and Ride: A Humorous True Story of Two Friends Cycling the Great Allegheny Passage and C&O Canal 

(2020), 189 pages with some maps and photos. 

Somehow Facebook knows my brother and I are planning to peddle from Pittsburgh to Washington, D. C. in late May. I learned of this book in which two brothers-in-law did the same trip in 2010 from a Facebook advertisement.

Two brothers-in-law. One teaches and has his summers off. The other finds himself between jobs. They decided to do the trip they’d been talking about for a few years. This book is easy to read and humorous, although much of the humor reminded me of listening in at a restaurant to conversation of a family unknown to me. This is not Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods or the writings of J. Marteen Troost traveling in the South Seas. But I did laugh and their stories helped me envision my own planned trips. I just hope the weather is as good for us as it was for them. (It wasn’t as I showed in my blog: Part 1 and Part 2).  I can handle one day of rain, but it would be a bummer to have a week of rain! 

Most of the humor of the book come from the experiences of Jim and Marty before they set off to peddle to Washington. We learn about how they often vacation together (after all, their wives are sisters). While one is from Pittsburgh (and still lives in the Steel City), the other is from just outside Washington but now (or at the time of their trip), also lives in the Pittsburgh area. One is an avid bicyclist, and the other is kind of along for the ride. While there are a few humorous things which happened during their ride, most of the laughs come from how they relate within the two families. 

The author of the book speaks of not reading much as if that means he won’t sound like a Hemingway or Steinbeck. At least he can make light of himself, but I would suggest that he read more and learn about how humor works. Bill Bryson’s short adventures on the Appalachian Trail, A Walk in the Woods,  which he turned into an international best seller might be a good place to start. 

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Taylor Branch, Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years 1963-65

 (New York, Simon & Schuster, 1998), 746 pages including index, notes, and one set of black and white photographs.

This is the second volume of Taylor Branch’s massive undertaking of chronicling the Civil Rights Movement during the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. Unlike the first volume (review below), this is less of a biography of King than recapping what happened in these three pivotal years to the Civil Rights movement. This included the Burmingham Church Bombings, the death of voter registration workers in Mississippi, and significant Civil Rights work in Mississippi, St. Augustine (Florida), and Selma Alabama. In the background there is the death of John Kennedy and America’s deepening involvement in Vietnam. 

In a way, reading this book is like reading the newspapers for three years. At times, it seems Branch jumps around, but the movement was in such flux with events happening in multiple places at the same time.

The book also takes us inside both political parties in 1964, as they struggled with what to do with the Civil Rights movement. The Democratic candidate, Lyndon Johnson, had just passed the 1964 Civil Rights act, shifting African Americans further away from the party of Lincoln, who’d freed the slaves. Furthermore, the Republican candidate Goldwater tried to avoid discussion on Civil Rights, there were those within the party who used the movement to steal away Democrats who were unhappy with their party’s move toward supporting the movement. This was the campaign in which Strom Thurmond would become a Republican and Jackie Robinson would condemn his Republican party as being the party of “white men only.” Robinson would later leave the GOP. 

Much is made of the FBI’s role with both King and other Civil Rights leaders. They helped solve the murders of Civil Rights leaders, but they also kept close eyes on the leaders of the movement, watching for communist connections. Through wiretaps, they learned of King’s infidelities an even used this to encourage King to commit suicide. They attempted to thwart King’s reception of the Noble Peace Prize, which he later received. They also called in Cardinal Spellman to give him the dirt on King to block a papal visit. While Spellman supposedly took the information to Rome, the meeting papal meeting still occurred partly due to the intervention of Rabbi Abraham Heschel. Like the first book in the series, King isn’t seen as totally a saint or sinner, but a man who struggled with depression and his own humanity.

Branch spends considerable time providing a background on the Nation of Islam and the conflict between its founder, Elijah Muhammad and Malcom X. The Nation of Islam created a vision of separation of the races and violence toward their enemies, which contrasted to King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference vision of a beloved community. The book begins with a deadly police encounter after a Nation of Islam meeting in South Central Los Angeles in 1962. Toward the end of the book, the Nation kills Malcom X after he left the Nation for a purer form of Islam. His view of religion had become less racially focused, and he softened his stance toward King’s nonviolent resistance. 

This book also shows the tension within churches over supporting Civil Rights. Not all African American churches supported the Civil Rights movement, with some seeing it too dangerous. After all, there were many firebombed churches in the American South during the early 1960s. Northern Episcopal bishops struggled with what to say as they didn’t want to be seen as challenging their southern colleagues. This led to the wives of some bishops taking up the clause. One of the interesting stories was the wife of a Massachusetts bishop and mother of the state’s governor, Mary Peabody, who was arrested and jailed for protesting in St. Augustine. 

I recommend this book to anyone wanting to better understand the Civil Rights movement in America. I don’t plan to wait another 19 years before I read Branch’s third volume. The final volume holds interest in me as I remember some of the events which happened. 

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This review is from 2006, after reading the first book in Branch’s series: 

Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63

 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), 1064 pages including index, notes, and two sets of black and white photographs. 

This book is an enormous undertaking, for both the author and the reader. The author provides the reader a biography of the Reverend Martin Luther King’s work through 1963, a view into the early years of the Civil Rights movement, as well as showing how the movement was affected by national and international events. This is the first of three massive volumes by Taylor Branch that spans the years of King’s ministry, from his ordination in 1954 to his death in 1968.

This volume also provides some detail about King’s family history and his earlier life through graduate school at Boston University. I decided to read this book after hearing Branch speak in Birmingham AL in June. It’s like reading a Russian novel with a multitude of characters and over 900 pages of text. However, it was worth the effort as I got an inside look as to what was going on in the world during the first six years of my life.

Branch does not bestow sainthood, nor does he throw stones. The greatness of Martin Luther King comes through as well as his shortcomings. He demonstrates King’s brilliance in the Montgomery Bus Campaign as well as in Birmingham. He also shows the times King struggled: his battles within his denomination, the National Baptist; King’s struggles with the NAACP; as well as his infidelities.

The FBI also had mixed review. Agents stood up to Southern law enforcement officers, insisting that the rights of African Americans be protected. They often warned Civil Rights leaders of threats and dangers they faced. However, once King refused to heed the FBI’s warnings that two of his associates were communists, the agency at Hoover’s insistence, set out to break King. Hoover’s inflexible can be seen as he reprimanded an agent for suggesting that King’s associates are not communists.

The Kennedy’s (John and Robert) also have mixed reviews. John Kennedy’s Civil Rights Speech (and on the night that Medgar Evers would be killed in Mississippi) is brilliant. Kennedy drew upon Biblical themes, labeling Civil Rights struggle a moral issue “as old as the Scriptures.” Yet the Kennedy brothers appear to base most of their decisions based on political reasons and not moral ones. This allows King to sometimes push Kennedy at his weakness, hinting that he has or can get the support of Nelson Rockefeller (a Republican).

Although we think today of the Democrat Party being the party of African Americans, this wasn’t necessarily the case in the 50s and early 60s. Many black leaders, especially within the National Baptist Convention leadership, identified themselves as Republicans, with Lincoln’s party.

Many of the black entertainers played in the movement. King was regularly in contact with Harry Belafonte, but also gains connections to Sammy Davis Jr., Lena Horne, Jackie Robinson, James Baldwin and others. The author also goes to great lengths to put the Civil Rights movement into context based on the Cold War politics. Both Eisenhower and Kennedy found themselves in embarrassing positions as they spoke out for democracy overseas while blacks within the United States were being denied rights.

The book ends in 1963, a watershed year for Civil Rights. King leads the massive and peaceful March on Washington. Medgar Evans and John Kennedy are both assassinated. And before the year is out, King has an hour-long chat with the President, Lyndon Johnson, a Southerner, who would see to it that the Voting Rights Acts become law. 

As a white boy from the South, this book was eye opening. I found myself laughing that the same people who today bemoan the lack of prayer in the public sphere were arresting blacks for praying on the courthouse steps. The treatment of peaceful protesters was often horrible. There were obvious constitutional violations such as Wallace and the Alabama legislature raising the minimum bail for minor crimes in Birmingham 10-fold (to $2500) to punish those marching for Civil Rights.

I was also pleasantly surprised at behind-the-scenes connections between King and Billy Graham. Graham’s staff even provided logistical suggestions for King. King’s commitment to non-violence and his dependence upon the methods of Gandhi are evident. Finally, I found myself wondering if the segregationists like Bull O’Conner of Birmingham shouldn’t be partly responsible for the rise in crime among African American youth. They relished throwing those fighting for basic rights into jail, breaking a fear and taboo of jail. The taboo of being in jail has long kept youth from getting into trouble and was something the movement had to overcome to get mass arrest to challenge the system. In doing so, jail no longer was an experience to be ashamed off and with Pandora’s Box open, jail was no longer a determent to other criminal behavior. 

I recommend this book if you have a commitment to digging deep into the Civil Rights movement. Branch is a wonderful researcher, and his use of FBI tapes and other sources give us a behind the scenes look at both what was happening within the Civil Rights movement as well as at the White House. However, there are so many details. For those wanting just an overview of the Civil Rights movement, this book may be a bit much. As for me, I’m looking forward to digging into the other two books of this trilogy: A Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963-65 and At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68.

Timothy Egan, A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them 

(2023, Penguin Books, 2024), 404 pages including index and notes on sources. 

A Personal note: In late 2010, I was visiting with Earl, a parishioner of First Presbyterian Church of Hastings (Michigan), who was dying.  Earl was 96 years old and had lived in Hastings since 1950. Another friend of Earl’s, who was also in his 90s, was present. I no longer remember his name, but I remember that he had grown up in Hastings and was Catholic. The man talked about coming back into town with his father, from a trip to Grand Rapids. On a field outside of the town there was a large cross burning and a huge crowd of men in white robes. His father immediately ordered him to get on the floor of the car. Fright took over his father (and him).   In the 1920s, the Klan was popular in the heartland, as Egan reminds us.  

My review:  Does character matter? Do we expect our leaders to adhere to moral standards? These are questions we should ask ourselves. After all, in the past decade, we’ve had the “me too” movement, which lead to many resignations of politicians, preachers, educators, and others in positions of leadership. Then, in a backlash, none of it seem to matter as we elect to office those convicted of sexual offenses.  The appointment of others despite moral failures including sex and drug abuse and alcoholism occur.  In a way, reading Egan’s book about a situation in the 1920s, makes me wonder what has changed. If anything, this book just makes another case proving human depravity. 

In the early 1920s, D. C. Stephenson arrived in Indiana. Within two years, he would become the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan of the state. By the mid-20s, Indiana had the most Klan members (by percentage of population) of all the states. The Klan was no longer strictly a southern institution. Many municipalities even in the heartland already had “sundown laws,” which barred African Americans after the sunset. The Klan was also strong in Colorado and Oregon. 

The growth of the Klan in the 1920s was racist, just like the Southern Klan during Reconstruction. But they had broadened their racial views to include immigrants from Eastern Europe, especially Catholics and Jews. In the West, they added Asians to those they saw as a threat to American values. Notre Dame University became a big target in Indiana. Egan suggests that their mascot, “The Fighting Irish” came not from their undefeated football team, but the students battling the Klan who held a rally in South Bend. 

In addition to racial hatred, the Klan of the 1920s encouraged the purity of white women and supported prohibition. While the Klan was men-only, there were significant numbers of auxiliary groups for women and children.  

In Indiana, the Klan held power. They donated to both political parties and to churches with whom they sought to ally in their vision of an idolized America. They owned the governor and legislatures and local officials. People assumed Stephenson would eventually fil an empty Senate seat. The Klan was thinking big, including having eyes on the Presidency. 

But for the Klan leadership in Indiana, especially for Stephenson, the rules didn’t apply. He was a masochist and felt women were his for the taking. He used intimidation to silence women he abused. Also, with his close supporters, he not only drank, but drank to excess. 

When Stephenson set his eyes on Madge Oberholzer, an attractive young woman who’d asked for his help for her job with the state, things swirled out of control. She resisted his advances. He kidnapped her. When she made it back home, she was dying. He had not only brutally beaten her but had also severely bitten her all over her body. When she couldn’t escape, she attempted suicide. 

As she lay dying from her abuse, she dictated a statement which was notarized as her testament, a legal maneuver which allowed her to “speak from the grave,” into a court of law.  His friend, the sheriff, arrested Stephenson. But instead of eating jailhouse food, the sheriffs wife cooked his food.

Stephenson and two associates went to trial. The trial began after a lot of legal maneuvering over what could and couldn’t be admissible as evidence. While the court didn’t allow several additional women to testified of their rapes by Stephenson, it also kept out of court Stephenson’s past included an abandoned wife and child. While Stephenson’s followers attempted to bride officials and jury, the jury returned a verdict of guilty of second-degree murder.  

The trial brought to the public’s attention the hypocrisy of the Klan’s leadership. In the aftermath of the trial, the Klan in Indiana declined almost as fast as it had risen. 

Americans should read this book. The use of “American enemies” to cause a groundswell against the “others” is nothing new. Thankfully, in the 1920s, folks like Madge Oberholzer and a few brave newspapers, ministers, academics, and politicians stood fast against the rising intolerance. It’s never fun to be the one who speaks out, but speaking out is important. 

Hannah Anderson, All That’s Good: Recovering the Lost Art of Discernment 

(Chicago: Moody Publishing, 2018), 215 pages including study questions for each chapter and source notes.

I became acquainted with Anderson’s work through the HopeWords Writer’s Conference in Bluefield, West Virginia, which I have attended three times. Anderson is a regular at the conference and one of the ones who works behind the scenes to put the conference on each year. (Soon, I hope, I’ll post a review of this year’s conference).  I am also looking forward to hearing good things about her when she preaches for me this June (sadly, I’ll be out-of-state that Sunday). 

This book is divided into three parts. The first part deals with what’s good and why we should seek it out. In part 2, Anderson approaches discernment using Paul’s exhortations at the end of Philippians. Drawing on verses 8 and 9, she works through the verses dealing with “whatever is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely and commendable. In Part 3, she looks at the meaning of the good and how we’re to work through a community for the common good. 

Anderson writing is a pleasure to read. She draws on her own memories to illustrate her points. I recommend this book to those interested in fostering a world where we celebrate the good, the beautiful, and the empathic.  This is the second book I’ve read by Anderson. The first, Humble Roots, I reviewed in 2022.

Pat Conroy, The Great Santini 

(1976, HarperAudio 2023), 18 hours and 4 minutes. 

It’s 1960. Having just returned to America from a stint in the Mediterranean, Bull Meacham is given the command of his own Marine Corp Fighter Squadron in Ravenell, SC. He meets up with his family in Atlanta, where they had been staying with his wife (Lillian) family. They then make a long early morning drive across Georgia and South Carolina. That drive seems to take forever, but in it we get to experience characteristics of Bull and his family. None of his children want to move, especially Ben, who will be a senior in high school. They’ve all been through this drill of having to make friends again. 

Ben quickly makes two friends. One is a Jewish boy whom he comes to his aid during a fight and the other is a stuttering young African American man who raises flowers, produce, and honey as well as collecting oysters and gigging flounder for a living. Sadly, Ben loses both friends. The Jewish boy’s family sends him for safety while another white boy kills the African American. 

While this goes on, Ben finally beats his father in one-on-one basketball. Bull’s lost didn’t go over well. His father, the Great Santini, fears getting older. He also fears changes to his beloved Marine Corps, that they’re losing their toughness.  A few characteristics of his father became grating by the end of the book. When he would enter the home, he’d shout, “Stand by for a fighter pilot.” He would call those he’s talking to, “Sports Fans.” 

Ben finds his place in high school on the basketball team. He becomes the star, but his father comes to a game drunk and encourages Ben to take out a kid on the opposing team he’s guarding. Ben snaps and breaks the boys arm, which ends with him kicked off the team for the remaining of the season. When Ben turns 18, his father takes him to the officer’s club. Ben comes home drunk, like his father, ruining the planned family dinner that evening. 

This book touches on many themes. Child and spouse abuse, father/son relationships, coming of age, race relationships, life in a small southern town in the early 1960s, and the Yankee/Southern conflict (Bull was from Chicago and Lillian from the South). The story is fictionalized, but Conroy draws on his famil experiencesy. I have heard his novel didn’t go over well in his family and I can see why.  In real life, the Great Santini didn’t die as he does in the book (which I left out of the book as it would be a spoiler). Conroy later wrote a nonfiction book about his father titled The Death of Santini. 

I enjoyed the story. The book is easy to follow. Conroy tells it in a chronological fashion. There are similar themes to the other Conroy books I’ve read (Prince of the Tides, The Water is Wide, and South of Broad). All these books center on the Low Country of South Carolina. Thoese (except for The Water is Wide) were published later in Conroy’s life and show a more mature writer.  I have also seen the movie, which came out in 1979, but it’s been decades so I don’t remember enough to compare the book and the movie.

Two Commentaries on the Gospel of Mark

James R. Edwards, The Gospel According to Mark (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002), 550 pages 

Morna D. Hooker, The Gospel According to Saint Mark (1991, Hendrickson Publishers, 1997), 424 pages

For the past sixteen months I have been working my way through the gospel of Mark. I have preached 53 sermons from Mark. At the beginning, I read through one short commentary by Doug Hare, a former professor of mine. Then, I read through these two commentaries as I worked my way through the gospel, finishing both this past month. 

Of the two commentaries on Mark, my favorite would be the one by James Edwards. I first became familiar with his writing with his excellent 2015 commentary on Luke. This commentary on Mark was published 14 years earlier. Both books are a part of the “Pilar New Testament Commentary” series.  This author is very familiar with the early church and the role Mark’s gospel in the early church. I have previously reviewed his book From Christ to Christianity.  My complaint is that the author didn’t do his own translation and seems to mostly depend on the New International Version of the Bible.

The commentary is easy to read and follow. I especially liked Edward’s use of “Mark’s sandwiches”, a literary technique in the second gospel in which two different themes merge into one passage. The first is mentioned, then Mark moves off on what seems to be a tangent as he writes about something else., Then he returns to the first subject. Soon, having been introduced to the concept, I found such constructions even before reading the commentary. By playing the two ideas off each other helps the reader of the gospel to grasp deeper thoughts. 

I also appreciated how Edwards, when things needed more explanation, would insert an “Excursus” to better explain an idea. 

The second commentary by Morna Hooker was republished as a part of Black’s New Testament Commentaries Series.  In this series, the author was expected to provide her own translation, which she does while admitting that she started her work using the New English and Revised Standard Versions of scripture. Hooker is retired but taught at Cambridge (and the commentary does have an “English feel” to it). 

Like Edwards commentary, Hooker’s work is easy to read and understand. Neither commentary gets so far into the weeds that one has difficulty following. With her own translation of the text, Hooker’s work is a welcomed addition to the more traditional types of commentaries. 

In addition to these commentaries, I have also read all or parts of commentaries by Douglas R. A. Hare, Mark: Westminster Bible Companion (Louisville, KY: WJKP, 1996), William L. Lane, The Gospel of Mark (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1974), Mary Ann Tolbert, Sowing the Gospel: Mark’s World in Literary-Historical Perspective (1989, Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996); Brian K. Blount, Go Preach! Mark’s Kingdom Message and the Black Church Today (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Press, 1998), and David Rhoads and Donald Michie, Mark as Story: An Introduction of the Narrative of a Gospel (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982). 

Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

 (New York: G. P. Putman and Sons, 2018), 372 pages. 

Kya Clark, “the Marsh Girl” lives in the salt marsh of Eastern North Carolina. As a child, her mother abandons the family. Then one by one, her siblings’ leaves. Finally, her father, the one who has run everyone else off, leaves. Abandoned by everyone who should have cared for her, she learns how to survive. She digs shellfish and sells them to Jumpin, an old African American who sells gas and bait along the marsh. Jumpin and his wife Mabel, in a way, become surrogate parents for Kaya. She gets by, eating what she collects along with making enough money to buy cornmeal and oil in town. 

Kya only spent one day in the school. Picked on by other children, she never went back, always staying one step ahead of the truancy officer. She befriends Tate, a former friend of one of her brothers. Over time, Tate teaches her to read and begins to lend her books which allows her to learn more about the marsh. But he, too, leaves as he heads to Chapel Hill for college. He fails to come back as promised. Only later, does he come back and try to re-establish contact as he establishes a nearby research lab on the marsh.  Kya, who had taken up painting, becomes a self-taught an expert in marsh ecology. She even publishing books based on her paintings. 

While feeling abandoned by Tate, Chase, another town boy seeks out Kya. Primarily interested in sex, Chase promises to marry her and build her a house. Then Kya learns through the newspaper of his engagement to another woman.  Later, in 1969, Chase ends up dead, having fallen from a fire tower. It’s not clear if foul play is involved, but Chase’s mother points the finger at Kya. Eventually, the sheriff on sketchy evidence, arrests Kya. Tried for murder, she’s found not guilty. 

After this ordeal, Kya and Tate get back together, living in the marsh until Kya dies from a heart attack in her 60s. Afterwards, Tate discovers Kya’s secret, which he had not suspected. 

Owen captures the beauty and diversity of the marsh. The reader also feels empathy for Kya, someone who has fallen through the cracks. While alone, she develops resilience but is unable to trust anyone else. Only later, at her trial, do we learn there were those in the town who tried to help her, such as the woman at the grocery story who would give her back more change than was due, taking the money out of her own pocket.  

This an enjoyable read. I recommend this book. Having grown up near the marsh in North Carolina, this book helped take me back to a time the marsh wasn’t overgrown with housing. 

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Bernard DeVoto, The Hour: A Cocktail Manifesto

 (1948, Portland OR, Tin House Books, 2010), 127 pages. 

For the past few years, I have avoided alcohol during most of January, at least when I been at home. But I break my fast on the 25^th, to celebrate the birth of the Scottish bard, Robert Burns, with a shot of “Balvenie” and the reading of a few poems.  So, why I chose to read a book about the cocktail hour during January is beyond me. But so far, I managed to keep the fast. Instead of placing this book in a bookcase, I have stored it in my liquor cabinet. For like a good Scotch whisky, one should savor this book.. 

Bernard DeVoto died two years before my birth. But as a some-times 19^th Century Western American historian myself, I have been familiar with his work for nearly forty years. Decades ago, I read a couple of his classics: Year of Decision, and Mark Twain’s America. Both were serious works, although one can’t deal with Twain without enjoying a good joke. Last year I read This America of Ours, a biography of DeVoto and his wife Avis. From that biography, I learned of this little book. Much of the book had me laughing out loud. DeVoto precision details about the making of a good martini ranks up there with George Orwell’s essay on how to make a proper cup of tea. I wonder if perhaps Orwell might have inspired DeVoto as his essay appeared two years before DeVoto copyrighted his work. 

DeVoto and his wife were known for their cocktail parties. Much of what makes this short book so funny is DeVoto’s seriousness. It’s his way or the highway. Those who disagree with him, from his perspective, deserve some terrible fate. 

In the opening essay, DeVoto praises America’s greatness for we have “enriched civilization with rye, bourbon, and the martini cocktail.” He also praises Scotch and Irish whiskeys alongside of bourbon and rye, insist they consumed straight. He had no use for rum and was willing to damn to hell those who abided in the nasty drink. However, as a historian, he knew rum’s role in American’s history and acknowledges how rum played a role in our freedom and in the institution of slavery. Had the sailor’s “primordial capitalist bosses not given them rum, [they] would have done something to get their wages raised.” 

The second chapter begins with an assault on recipes for various cocktails found in cookbooks and women’s magazines. In DeVoto’s world, these are all unnecessary, for one either drank whiskey or a martini. Pity the poor man who would allow vermouth and whiskey to meet for “the Manhattan is an offense against piety.”  Of course, vermouth is used with gin to make a martini. In DeVoto’s world, it better be dry vermouth. And don’t get cute with your drinks. He bemoaned a bar in Chicago which offered “Whiskey on the Barney Stone.” They used green colored ice. DeVoto suggested the proprietor be “put to the torture.” In a later chapter, he goes after the couple who has all kinds of fancy drinking kitsch such as stoppers featuring women’s legs, fancy stirring rods, and signs about drinking. DeVoto had no patience with such foolishness, but then they were probably making daiquiris. 

Long before James Bond, DeVoto suggested it didn’t matter if one shook or stirred the martini. What mattered, however, was avoiding splinters of ice in the drink. Each round of martinis is to be made fresh. There can be no salvation for the man who makes pitchers of martinis and stores them in the refrigerator. Those who desire an olive in their drink were probably denied a pickle in their childhood which sent them on a lifelong quest for brine. As for those who want an onion, “strangulation seems best.”

The only thing one might mix in with whiskey are bitters, but then only Angostura bitters. And no fruit salads. The fruit from orchards do not belong in cocktails. Drinks should be served cold. I’m not sure what DeVoto thought about Japanese sake, which is usually served warm. Writing in the aftermath of the war, he probably thought it justified the use of the bomb. 

In the third chapter, DeVoto attacks the enemy of drinks—sugar. He believes the reason too many people want sugary drinks is that we give our children too much sugar.  “An ice cream soda can set a child’s feet in the path that ends in grenadine…” While such drinkers are to be pitied, they should also be treated as “a carrier of typhoid.” DeVoto even prophesizes the demise of our Republic will most likely come for “this lust for sweet drinks.” And sugar comes from other sources, not just crystals. Fruit has no place during the cocktail hour. DeVoto suggests “orange bitters make a good astringent for the face,” but they don’t belong in drinks. 

I did take a bit of offense at DeVoto’s attack on winter drinks. He has no use for eggnog or a Tom and Jerry. I assume If he hears I occasionally like a hot butter rum after spending time outdoors on a cold snowy day, he’d roll in his grave. But then, that’s a ski drink, and DeVoto didn’t care for the sport. 

I wish I had read this book 25 years ago. Two friends of mine from Utah, both now deceased, would have enjoyed it. Or maybe just one of them. Ralph insisted on making his and his wife’s martini, one at a time. Thankfully, he always had some good peaty Scotch to offer me. Myron, however, might have taken offense. Myron was one of those martini drinkers who made the drink by the pitcher and stored it in the fridge. DeVoto would have had a cow had he witnessed Myron pouring himself a martini from a pitcher he mixed three days earlier. But I never blamed Myron, for he always offered me a pour from a bottle of Glenmorangie

Obviously, while I have never cared for martinis, I enjoyed this book. If you want a martini, that’s fine. Just offer me some converted rye, corn, or barley, aged in a white oak barrel. Ice would be nice, as long as it’s not green.  

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Sarah Frey, The Growing Season: How I Built a New Life-and Saved an American Farm

 (Audible, 2020), 8 hours and 41 minutes.

In a way, this book reminded me of Stephanie Stuckey’s book which I read last year.  Both are women executives leading major companies. But that’s where the comparison stops. Stuckey came from a well-to-do family. She took over her family’s business as it was about to completely go under and lead back to thriving. However, Frey came from a very modest background and built a major business.  

In this book, Frey describes her childhood on “the hill,” a small farm in southern Illinois. Her dad, who had ties to horse racing, always wanted to have a winning horse and sunk all the money the family was able to provide into his beloved horses. While he doted on his daughter, he could be mean. This was especially true tohis sons and wife. He also had another family before setting out with Sarah’s mother, which gave Sarah and her brothers a huge family of stepbrothers and sisters. Yet, for all his faults, he instilled in his daughter a belief she could do anything.

As Sarah grew older, and her older brothers began to move out on their own, the family began to collapse. Still in high school, Sarah moved out on her own and continued to work and attend school. Having watched her mother buy watermelons for local farmers and sell them to supermarkets, she tries it on her own. Soon, she was borrowing money from a bank for a larger truck. Her business thrived and after two months was able to pay off the truck. She would continue expanding, adding pumpkins to extend her season. Soon, she realized that she should also start raising some of the produce to provide better returns. When the bank took over her father’s farm, she went back to the banker who’d lent the money for the truck. He. helped arrange the purchase of the property from the bank which held the title. 

Then, as a nearby Walmart distribution center opens, she talks the produce buyer to let her provide watermelons and pumpkins. She readily agreed she could supply them the four loads a week, thinking of her normal load and not four loaded tractor trailers. Realizing she was about to get in over her head, she gave a call to her brother. Soon, she has all her brothers working with her. 

In time her business expanded and included not just Walmart, but most major grocery stores. She also began producing drinks made of vegetable and fruit juices. In telling the story, lots of things seem to be left out (such as financing and attorneys). Throughout the book, but especially at the end, she continued to hit several key points. These include giving people a chancl, treating employees and customers right, hiring those with potential whom others over look, and being creative such as using that usually left in the field for other products. While a lot of the book focuses on herself, she always offers thanks to those who helped her along the way.

Frey is also frank about her husband. And while the marriage didn’t work out, it gave her two boys whom she now tries to spend more time with. 

While I felt a lot of details were missing, I enjoyed this book. It’s a fast read/listen.

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John Musgrave, The Education of Corporal John Musgrave

2021, Random House Audio, 9 hours and 38 minutes

He always wanted to be a Marine. At the age of 17, John Musgrave signed up with the Corp, having his parents sign for permission. The summer after graduation, he left the Midwest with a couple of friends for the Marine Corp training facility in Southern California. The experience nearly killed him, metaphorically.  He describes the experience the rude awakening once they arrived by train to graduation. But he endured and became a proud Marine. This was 1966 and, after advance training, he headed to Vietnam. 

At first, Musgrave was excited about the war. They sailed from California to Vietnam on a troop ship. He was first assigned to an MP group in the southern part of the country, but wanting more action, volunteered for a transfer. The transfer landed him just south of the DMZ, a unit known as the Walking Dead, as they were taking so many casualties. He complained when military took away his M14 and gave them all M16, with just one cleaning kit per squad and how they gun so often jammed, which lead to many dead Marines. 

Musgrave writes with honesty, as he had done with his boot camp experiences. He tells about his first enemy kill. He discusses the hardship of slipping through the wire to conduct night patrols. He’s honest about how scared they were, in the dark jungle where one not only had to deal with the enemy but mosquitoes and leeches. 

Twice wounded, the second time he took a bullet in the chest. No one thought he would make it, even some of the doctors who treated him. But one surgeon didn’t give up. Eventually, he is stabilized and moved out of the country to better facilities in Japan before moving back to the States. He’d spent 11 months in country. 

Throughout the first half of the book, Musgrave shares personal struggles. Although his father served in World War 2, he and his mother continued to worry about him being in the Corp. He was in love with a girl from his high school and wanted to get married, but she broke off their relationship. He is also very honest about his religious feelings. As a Methodist, a Catholic neighbor had given him a St. Christopher’s medallion which he carried wore on his dog tags. The medallion causes him to be superstitious, thinking that if he keeps it, it will protect him. However, the day he was wounded a second time, he had a premonition he would die that day. While he lived, it was a close call. 

Arriving back in the states, Musgrave discovered things were different. The anti-war movement was just beginning. At first, Musgrave didn’t want anything to do with it as he began college. But soon agreed that the war was a mistake and began to speak out. He became a leader in the Vietnam Vets Against the War movement and even helped led the protests in Miami during the Republican National Convention in 1972.  

While Musgrave eventually became a leader of the movement, he continued to work to bring Vietnam Veterans together. He is critical of how Vietnam Veterans were not welcome in American Legion and Veterans of Foreign War posts. Through this, he struggles with his pride at having been a Marine and the guilt of having fought an unjust war.  As our nation experienced other wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, he worked with veterans, helping them cope as they returned home. 

I enjoyed the book. Growing up watching the news every night at the dinner table, the Vietnam War was always very real. I knew lots of veterans and wondered if it was in my future. Thankfully, we pulled out of the war when I was a sophomore in high school. As I was preparing for graduation, Saigon fell and the war was over. 

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