Tag: book reviews

Louis L’Amour, Education of a Wandering Man

(New York: Bantam Paperbacks, 1989), 258 pages. 

Education of a Wandering Man is only the second book I’ve read by Louis L’Amour. The other book, Comstock Lode, I read in 1988. At the time, I was heading to Virginia City, Nevada , the center of the Comstock,. I would be there for a year as a student pastor. L’Amour mostly wrote fiction. In Education of a Wandering Man, we have a memoir which looks at L’Amour’s life up through World War 2. After the war, he’d become a best selling author. We learn about his travels and reading. L’Amour hoboed, hitchhiked, and walked around the American West. He shipped out as a merchant marine from East and West Coast ports. He preferred the West Coast ships as they had been unionized which meant better berths and food. The book consists of many stories which I enjoyed but also found a bit disjointed.

L’Amour begins this book in Singapore, on the day his classmates graduated from high school in Jamestown, North Dakota. L’Amour quit school two years earlier. His travels took him all over Southeast Asia in the prewar years. As he travelled, he read. And his reading wasn’t just light fiction. He read classics, history, geography, and philosophy. Traveling to new lands, he sought out books (and interpreters) to learn about the places places he traveled. He was also a great listener, allowing him to collecting stories which would later be used in his books. Additional jobs he held included working as a security guard, at mines, sawmills, and as a boxer. Over time, he also became curious and studied indigenous cultures in America. All this became material he later used as an author.

In the mid-1930s, he began writing short stories, a form he continued to love. Writing in the 1980s, he laments the decline of the short story market after World War II. Fewer places now exist for writers to publish such work. Before publishing his first novel, he had written over 100 pieces for magazines and journals. 

I enjoyed reading about him traveling through places I’d traveled or lived in the American West. Not only did he spend time in Virginia City, he met a few old miners from the Bonanza era of the 1870s. L’Amour sought them out and listened to their stories. He also traveled through Randsburg, California. I found myself intrigued that he met Eric Hoffer (the longshoreman philosopher who wrote The True Believer. And I was jealous of him being able to see Mesa Verdi at night when the rangers place candles in the ruins. He saw this twice, once with his musical friend, Charlie Daniels. 

During the Second World War, L’Amour wanted to serve in intelligence. By this point, he had seen much of the world, and from his readings had insight into many different places. The lack of a college degree kept him out of intelligence. However, he was accepted into Officer Candidate School and served in Europe. 

At the end of the book, he lists the books he read between 1930 and 1935, years he averaged over 100 books a year.  And most of these books were not light fiction! This book shows the importance of travel, listening, and reading to form a sharper mind to interpret and understand the world. I highly recommend it, even to those not interested in L’Amour’s writings about the American West. 

George Saunders, The Braindead Megaphone: Essays

(New York: Riverhead Books, 2007), 257 pages. 

I have read five or six of George Saunders books. For some reason, I have only reviewed one:A Swim in a Pond in the Rain in Which Four Russians Give a Master Class in Reading, Writing, and Life. All the other books by him have been short stories. Unlike the other books I’ve read by him, this book consists mostly of non-fiction essays. Many, but not all ,of the essays are travel related.

The first essay, from which the work takes it title, is a humorous critique of the news media. In a way, he blames the general population for putting up with their nonsense. He equates today’s mass media to someone in the past attending a party with a megaphone. They drown out all other conversations. In the second essay, he travels to Dubai for GQ to check out “The New Mecca.” He falls in love with this “fake town” where things seem perfect. But he notices many cracks in the facade, especially with the imported workers. 

In other essays he appreciates the writings of Kurt Vonnegut while working as a geologist in Indonesia. He also applies a similar critique of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn in his essay, “The United States of Huck.” He travels to Nepal to meet “Buddha Boy,” a boy kid on an epic fast as he mediates. And then there’s a bit of fiction as he creates a Dear Abbey-like newspaper column titled “Dear Optimist.” Mr. Optimist can be a jerk, but so upsets a reader that he is killed. The killer, a total jerk, takes over the column. While it sounds bizarre, it’s also funny. In “Thought Experiment,” he lampoons the idea that any of us are “self-made.” None of us come without benefit of the environment upon which we’re raised. 

While few people will fully agree to everything Saunders writes, I recommend this book. Not only do we need to be challenged, but we also need to laugh. Saunders provides both. 

Douglas R. Egerton, The Wars of Reconstruction: The Brief, Violent History of America’s Most Progressive Era

narrated by Eric Jason Martin, (Audible Studios for Bloomsbury, 2014), 16 hours and 4 minutes. 

It’s common in the South to hold to the view that the Reconstruction as harsh and undemocratic. Egerton, however, suggests it was one of the most progressive eras in American history. It was democratic as it opened up politics for all American men. Many of the African Americans who won seats in local and state houses and Congress, had been enslaved a decade earlier. However, contrary to popular belief, only about 20% of Southern political positions were filled by African Americans. Furthermore, they were not as incompetent as often portrayed. Also during this period, literacy among former slaves grew rapidly, a benefit which could never be recalled. 

In this study of the Reconstruction, Egerton begins with the Civil War. How, from the beginning, a large numbers of slaves sought refuge behind Union lines. He leads the reader through the Northern debate on what to do with the slaves and whether or not they should be armed and allowed to serve in the military. It wasn’t until later in the war they were allowed to serve as soldiers. At first, they were second class soldiers, paid less than their white counterparts. Later, they received equal pay. Another oddity which was debated had to do with northern slaveholders in states like Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware, who received a bounty for allowing their slaves to serve in the Union Army. The availability of these soldiers allowed the Union to greatly expand its army. This helped bring the war to a quicker end.

Egerton devotes much time to Andrew Johnson’s Presidency. A former slaveholder, Johnson seemed uninterested in helping the freed slaves. He interested lay in helping the plantation owners of the South. Yet, despite the Presidents reluctant support, the Freedman Bureau, it increased literacy of former slaves. It also kept them (and many white Southerners) from starving in the years after the war. A significant number of workers with the Freedman Bureau were free African Americans from the north. 

In the years after the Civil War, many of those who fought for the Confederacy continued to fight for White Supremacy through guerrilla activity. Groups like the Klan, sought to prevent former slaves from voting. In addition to discouraging voting, they sought to keep the former slaves in subservient positions. As the wars against Native Americans rose not the American Plains, the federal transferred the calvary stationed in the South to the West. This left on the mobile infantry in the South. Such forces were unable to quickly respond to the fast moving and hooded “night riders.” 

Southern resistance not only involved violence. Groups, such as the Daughters of the Confederacy, put political pressure on school boards to teach the Reconstruction as a failure. Books were written and later made into movies such as “Birth of a Nation” and “Gone with the Wind.” These helped create an alternative and negative view of the Reconstruction. 

Egerton devotes significant time to discuss the seemingly failures of the Reconstruction. He identifies many reasons the progressiveness of the era struggled. A leading reason can be credited to the resistance from Southern Whites. Even those whites who would have benefited from the progressive programs of Reconstruction, shunned them out of what they considered loyalty to their own race. The era didn’t just end, it collapsed. 

Other reasons for the failure included Republicans moving away from a more radical platform to a a more pro-business orientation. Business Republicans refused to support issues such as a land ownership for former slaves. 

One minor but surprising issue involved tension between lighter skinned mix-raced freemen (as opposed to freedman, who were former slaves) in the South. The “freemen,” were often the ones who gained power. They looked out for themselves, and did not push hard enough for the radical changes desired by their darker skinned brothers and sisters. While there can be some truth in each reason, in the end violence brought an end to the era and ushered in the rule of Jim Crow. 

Another question he debates is when Reconstruction actually ended. While most historians see the era ending 1877, at the end of Grant’s second term as President. However, the end wasn’t so clear-cut. Many former slaves in places throughout the South, especially Louisiana and North Carolina, continued to vote and hold office long afterwards. However, by the turn of the 20th Century, Jim Crow laws had been firmly established throughout the South.

While many may not appreciate Egerton’s scholarship, wanting to continue to insist the Civil War was about State Rights, this book deserves to be studied. Egerton quotes James Longstreet, one of the most capable Confederate Generals, who supported Reconstruction. Longstreet led an integrated police department in New Orleans after the war. On the war not being about slavery, Longstreet quipped, “Why not talk about witchcraft if slavery was not the cause of the war, I never heard of any other cause of the quarrel than slavery.”  

Egerton’s research maintains a focus on the condition and struggle of African Americans during and after the Civil War. While the focus is primarily about the South (where most lived), he also point out the harsh conditions people of color faced in the North during the era. Many places in the North denied voting to African Americans at a time when they were voting in places like South Carolina. Racism in America has never been limited to one region of the nation.

I confess to feeling shame when I read about what my fellow southerners, some who may have been ancestors, did to restrict the progress of the former slaves. We should learn from the past and not try to clean it up, so that we can help create a society where all people might flourish. 

I have been away on vacation and will try to get back around soon and catch up with folks. I’ll tell you more about my travels later, but let me catch up on my readings…

Karen Russell, The Antidote A Novel 

(New York: Alfred P. Knopf, 2025), 422 pages, some photos and notes. (Audible, 16 hours and 55 minutes). 

This novel is set in Uz, Nebraska in 1935, at the height of the Dust Bowl. The story takes place between two well-known events, the Black Sunday dust storm and the flooding of the Republican River. The town of Uz is fictional, borrowed from the home of Job in the Bible. The book of Job comes up frequently in the novel as the people in this town struggle and many leave in response to the drought and dust. Job ends with God speaking through a whirlwind. In The Antidote, near the end, a tornado sweeps through Oletsky’s property. While God doesn’t speak from the storm, the message is clear. 

Russell tells the story of Uz through several characters. There is Harp Oletsky, a bachelor farmer whose crop seems immune to the dust storm destroying everyone else’s fields. Harp lives with his niece, Asphodel Oletsky, an orphan high schooler, who loves basketball.   In town, there is a Prairie Witch, later identified as Antonina Rossi. She can take memories from people, saving them from their unpleasant past. The Sheriff uses her skills at the jail, which in time we learn is a means to cover up misconduct. Her talents allow people to forget the past and avoid being haunted by their deeds.  Another important character is Cleo Allfrey, an African American woman sent by the government to photograph the disaster on the plains. When her camera is stolen, she buys another which has special abilities she only learns after the film is developed. The camera captures views from the past. And finally, we have Harp’s scarecrow and the Sheriff’s cat. Both observe and become involve in that which happens

During the months in which the novel takes place, the Uz girls’ basketball team, even after their coach leaves, wins the state championship.  The sheriff is in a political race. He thinks he has the election in hand because he solved a serial killing of women in Nebraska, one in which the killer places a rabbit foot on the victim’s body. But then, the killings continue and the man convicted of the murders sits on death row with people wondering if he was guilty. 

When circumstances bring together Harp, the prairie witch, the photographer, and his niece, things come to a head. They learn not only the truth of the evil sheriff, but also of their past. Harp retrieves his father’s memories, long stored with an old witch of another town. Learning the truth of his past bothers him. He knows how his family who were forced out of Poland by the Germans in the late 19^th Century, But now he’s haunted for they did the same thing, taking land from Native Americans. They also learn of modern racial tensions with African Americans.  Harp envisions a new society addressing the evils of the past. Of course, this vision almost leads to Harp’s murder by those who want to hold on to a mythological view of pioneer families taming the wilderness. 

This is a great book which I almost gave up on because of the supernatural elements in the story. I’m glad I stuck with it. Russell uses language beautifully. Her work raises questions as to how we remember the past and what role it plays in the present. She also provides insight into racism. In an age in which we want to sanctify the past mythologies, she reminds us of that we’d like to forget, and the loss it will be if the past can be whitewashed.  There are other themes, too, within the novel including how people handle loss and face difficulties.  I recommend it and hope to discuss the book with others who have read it. 

For those interested in a non-fiction book on the Dust Bowl, I highly recommend Timothy Egan’s The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl.

Erik Larson, The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz 

(Crown: New York, 2020), 584 pages with sources and index.

May 1940 was the worse time to be asked to convene a new government. The nation was at war. British soldiers sent to Norway to fight against the German invaders needed to be extracted. The British Expeditionary Force in Europe faced a German onslaught through the Low Countries, as they attempted to outflanking the French and British armies.  And it kept going downhill as France fell back and many, but not all, of the British soldiers on France soil found themselves with their backs to the sea at Dunkirk. And then France surrendered and the United Kingdom had to deal with their large and modern navy in the hands of the Germans. Shortly after France fell, the bombings began. Tragedy filled Winston Churchill’s first year as Prime Minister.

Larson focuses on this year in his usual detailed style, drawing on the life not only of Churchill, but others around him. We learn about the capable men, such as Lord Beaverbrook, whom he recruited to increase aircraft production. We also learn about his enemies such as Herman Goring, the head of the German Luftwaffe and Rudolf Hess, who attempted an unusual means of diplomacy.  

The reader is also drawn into Churchill’s family and personal life. We learn about struggle with personal finances, his unique relationship with his wife, and the struggle with his children. Churchill had many weird habits such as regular baths from which he worked as the bathroom became crowded with advisors and secretaries. Like Stalin, he also seemed unable to sleep till long after midnight. He enjoyed good food and drink, but he also felt a connection to the people of the nation. Often, after a major bombing, Churchill visited the burning cities and connected with those suffering. This endeared him to the nation. 

Of course, Churchill needed rest and a respite from the trials he faced as a leader in war. Friends stepped in to provide him with various retreats, such as Chequers, which became his home away from home on weekends. 

The reader also learns of Churchill’s hope throughout this dark period that America would enter the war.  He kept in constant contact with American diplomats in Britain, as well President Roosevelt. But America, at this time, attempted to remain in isolation. Congress tied Roosevelt hands. The American President struggled to gain approval to provide Great Britain with old and obsolete navy destroyers through what would become the Lend-Lease act. Of course, that would change in December 1941, with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. But in 1940 and most of 1941, no one saw the attack on the horizon.  While that attack brought America into the war, the German attack on Russia in June of 1941 helped reduce the pressure on the British Isles. 

This book provides an interesting history lesson, reminding Americans World War 2 started over two years before Pearl Harbor. The book should also provide thoughtful readers a warning of the danger of American isolationism. 

Kyle Meyaard Schaap, Following Jesus in a Warming World: A Christian Call to Climate Action 

(Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2023), 200 pages including notes. 

I heard Meyaard-Schaap at the Festival of Faith and Writing at Calvin University in April and picked up his book right afterwards.  Coming from a conservative Christian background, he takes on the evangelical wing of Protestantism for ignoring the issues of environmentalism. He even challenges this attitude as failing to live up to their “pro-life” rhetoric.  

Much of the book involves Meyaard-Schaap recalling the “Big Story” of scripture. Moving from Genesis to Revelation, he interprets the Bible as God’s love story for the world. He challenges, with scripture, those who believe God will destroy this world and create a new one. As he points out the passage at the end of Revelation about a new heaven and earth should be translated as a restored heaven and earth. The word used here isn’t the same word we might use for a newly built house. Instead, John in Revelation uses kainos, a word implying that God doesn’t start over but restores his masterpiece (page 59). Just as the world is transformed, so will we. We see this promise in Paul as well as in Revelation. 

Another area of scripture which Meyaard-Schaap focuses is on the meaning of “good news.” He makes the case that Jesus’ message of hope is for the poor in the world, who face the blunt of challenges with climate change. This is true in our own country as the poor often live in the most dangerous places such as next to freeways with exhaust or by chemical plants which spews pollution. But such a crisis becomes greater by those living in places where sea level rise creates a life-threatening challenge. This is another reason for us to be concerned about the environment and pollution. 

In addition to providing reasons for Jesus’ followers to be concerned over climate change, Meyaard-Schaap provides ways that individuals and groups of Christianns can become involved in the debate. He encourages others to join in telling stories of the dangers and of redemption. Finally, he encourages us to be joyful even amidst the tragedy around us. After all, God loves this world and those of us in it, which is indeed good news. 

Tony Horwitz, Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid that Sparked the Civil War 

(New York: Henry Holt, 2011), 365 pages including notes, indexes, and photos. (Audible, 11 hours and 5 minutes). 

This book sat on on my TBR pile for a while. Reading Horwitz’s wife book on his death brought the book back to my attention. Unlike most of Horwitz’s books I’ve read, this book is void of humor. The books I’ve read by Horwitz (Confederates in the Attic, One for the Road, A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World, and Spying on the South: An Odyssey Across the American Divide), he travels to learn about history and places. While the subject matter may not be very funny, his encounters as he travels can be funny and delightful. With Midnight Rising, he sticks to writing straight history as an academic exploring what some suggest is America’s first homegrown terrorist and others saw as a well-meaning but misguided fighter to end slavery. 

John Brown was a complicated man.  Coming from a strict Calvinist background, he broke with his father’s pacifist views and later moved to Kansas just for the purpose of fighting the spread of slavery. Steeped in the Old Testament stories, he saw himself as a modern-day Gideon, leading a small group of freedmen and slaves to strike a blow against the slave economy of the South. I was amazed Brown had pondered his vision of an insurrection starting in Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia) for so long. He even discussed his plan with many other people including Frederick Douglass. While Douglass desired an end to slavery, he felt Brown’s plan foolish and refused to join him. 

But Brown and his sons were gained some support, both from northern abolitionists who financed his operation and a few followers who joined in the raid. They set up in a house in Maryland, north of the city and scouted out the city and countryside before they began their campaign. Many of those who joined Brown knew they would likely give their lives to the cause. Ironically, within Harpers Ferry lived many free blacks. The first death at the railroad bridge at the beginning of the raid was a free black who worked for the railroad.  Brown was able to surprise Harpers Ferry, but the raid began to quickly fall apart as townsfolks took up arms and fought back. Brown and most of his men found themselves pinned down in a firehouse. Their capture came when a contingent of Marines under the command of Robert E. Lee rushed the building. Wounded, Brown was tried while resting on a cot in the courtroom.  Brown and several of his men were executed for their role in the attempted rebellion in nearby Charlestown.  Before his death, Brown predicted the upcoming war between slaveholding and free states, which erupted in 1861. 

This book provides a good study into Brown’s plans and the fatal attack in 1859 in Harpers Ferry.  The next time I visit the town, I will have a better understanding of what happened there so long ago. While the fire house still stands, much of the industrial machinery was removed during the Civil War, leaving the sleepy town without evidence of its industrial past. 

Edward Abbey, The Fool’s Progress: An Honest Novel

 (1988, New York: Avon Books, 1990), 513 pages.  

This is my third time reading The Fool’s Progress, but it’s been 35 years since I last read it. I had felt it was Abbey’s best novel, but I am no longer sure. I do plan to reread The Monkey Wrench Gang. This time through The Fool’s Progress, I found myself repulsed by the narcissistic, misogynistic, xenophobic, and racist views of the protagonist, Henry Holyoak Lightcap. The harsh language, especially in the first 40 pages, turned me off. I almost quit, but glad I didn’t. The book, in my opinion, gets better and many of Henry’s extreme views seem to taper especially after his marriage to Claire.  Warning Spoilers: If you want to read this book, you might want to skip my review as it contains spoilers.

This novel is somewhat autobiographical. There are many parts of the novel which Abbey drew from his own life including military service at the end of World War 2, serving as a MP in post-war Italy, tramping around the country during a summer in high school, his time working seasonal jobs as a ranger and a fire lookout, and his relationship with a plethora of women. But it’s also fiction. After all, Abbey is from the coal country of Western Pennsylvania, not the coal country of West Virginia.

As the novel begins, Henry’s latest wife has left him. He goes into a rage and then decides to head across country, from his home in Arizona to Stump Creek, West Virginia.  He wants to see, one more time, his brother Will. Driving a dilapidated old truck with a dying dog riding shotgun, he heads across country. Henry mostly sticks to backroads. He stops along the way to see friends. To finance his trip, he sells a gun to one friend who is in the pawnshop business. But he’s also not above using his defunct credit card (in the days before the internet) to buy gas. And if that fails, he has another “gas credit card,” a long flexible rubber hose.  

As he travels, we learn more about Henry’s life and the country through which he drives. We sense his love for this country. Abbey often makes lists for his protagonist, of the trees, the flowers, the animals, music, books and authors, etc.  Henry is a lover of creation. About halfway through the book, Abbey begins to drop hints that the dog and the truck are not the only thing dying in this novel. But it’s only near the end that we learn of Henry’s serious illness. The end of the book leaves the reader wondering how much of what happens is real or is a vision in Henry’s mind as he dies. 

While Henry flunked at becoming an academic, he continues to read philosophy and poetry. His musical taste varies from “country” and “western” to classical. Henry also has a keen sense of vision of what goes on around him. We see bits of both of his parents in Henry. His mother, the Presbyterian organist, and his father, an agnostic anarchist. Henry carries on a debate with a deity he can’t seem to believe in. But also can’t cast away.  Henry could be modelled on Mark Twain. As Edgar Lee Masters said of Twain:: “he threw out the Bible, but it seemed to be attached to a rubber band and was likely to bounce back into his lap at any time.” 

Another character I found myself pondering in this story is Henry’s older brother, Will. Two years older, Will found himself fighting in Europe in the Second World War. When he came back to West Virginia, Will insisted on farming (and living) the old way. He shunned electricity and indoor plumbing and preferred to use horses for farming. I found myself comparing Will to the author Wendell Berry, who also prefer to live a simple farming life. Both Abbey and Berry studied under Wallace Stegner at Stanford University. 

The big change in the book comes with Henry meeting Claire. He’s a middle-aged seasonal ranger in Arches National Park and she is a 19-year-old music student. After Henry’s crazy courtship, they marry. In the story, both appear incredibly happy.

Then, a truck crash in the mountains, claims her life. While the grieving Henry recovers in the hospital, her monied family takes their newborn child. His mother-in-law protects the girl from Henry with an army of lawyers. Henry now lives knowing he has a daughter he will never see (except, perhaps, in dying visions).  This part of the book doesn’t seem to come from any real-life experiences of Abbey, but it does hint at his idealism. It also, too me, seems to draw his earlier novel, Black Sun. Love, for Abbey is fragile and can be easily lost. Often, he was to blame. At the death of Claire, I found myself wondering what would have happened if the two of them settled down as a family. In a way, her death was convenient for Abbey, an unconventional anarchist with a romantic streak. 

If you want to read this book, I encourage you to first read Desert Solitaire, which I reread last year. 

Malcolm Guite, The Word in the Wilderness: A Poem a Day for Lent and Easter 

(Norwich, UK: Canterbury Press, 2014), 192 pages. 

Every day through Lent to Easter (and the week after), Guite provides a poem along with a couple pages of reflection. The style is like a later book of poems he collected for Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany..  Guite wrote many, maybe half, of the poems. Other authors include George Herbert, John Donne, W. B. Yeats, S. T. Coleridge, Dante, Czeslaw Milosz, John Davies, G. M. Hopkins, among others. The commentary links the reader to scripture and theological understandings behind the poetry.  The commentary also provides insights into the style of poetry. I enjoyed these readings and recommend them for anyone looking to grow deeper in poetry and the meaning of Lent and Easter. 

Eric Goodman with Kaveh Zamanian, Mother of Bourbon: The Greatest Whiskey Story Never Told 

(New York: Post Hill Press, 2025), 298 pages

Mary Murphy married John Dowling when she was just 14 and he nineteen years her senior. Mary’s parents made the arrangements. John was a successful cooper (maker of barrels) and was beginning to invest in Kentucky’s infant bourbon business. Mary, who had finished the third grade, worked at her father’s store.  Both were children of Irish immigrants who had moved to America to escape the potato famine. In the pre-Civil War years, America wasn’t friendly to Irish Catholics.  

It shocked Mary, at first, that she didn’t have a say in the marriage. She also didn’t like the idea of moving away from her family but consented. In n time Mary and John become partners in an expanding whiskey industry.  Their main distillery was Waterfill and Frazier, but they also own part of a distillery with John’s brothers.  And their family began to grow.

John Dowling died in 1903. Upon his death, Mary inherits the business, but soon it’s in threatened. The bank refused to supply the credit and suggested they sell the business. Also, the broker for the business quit. Mary quickly reorganized, takes her business to another bank. She also found another broker, Henrich Hiensohn, a German Catholic who continued to work with Mary until prohibition. 

After the war (World War 1), the Midwest experienced the second rise of the Kul Klux Klan. This group not only went after African Americans, of which Mary was suspect as she employed and treated them fairly, but also Catholics.  Mary reached out to a relative of one of her employees whose son was lynched. Prior to the Klan’s rise, Mary’s namesake (Mary Bond, who had married a Protestant) became a prominent leader within women in Kentucky who attempted to get revisionist books on the Civil War into the school system. Mary and her daughter fell out, but with the rise of the Klan, her daughter admitted to being wrong. The Klan activity also played into Probation as many distillers were Catholic. 

Prohibition presented another challenge. Not being granted a medical exemption, Waterfill and Frazier ceased operations.  Working with Hiensohn, they sold most of their barrels before prohibition. She also had many barrels moved into the basement of her large home, paying taxes on the liquor before prohibition took effect so that it was legal. But this didn’t stop their troubles. After a few years, Mary’s youngest son, Emmett, came back from school at Harvard. He loved to party. He also, unknown to his mother, sold some bottled whiskey to a man in town who was a known for selling illegal liquor. The revenuers raided the family home one night and everyone who living there arrested. They were all released on a $5000 per person bond. 

Much of the book centers on the trials which took place. The book was hrown at the family, with charges not just of bootlegging but conspiracy. The first trial ended in a mistrial, with 10 jurors voting for conviction and two for acquittal. The second trial resulted in a conviction which was appealed but overruled. At this time, the sisters were fined $100. Mary Dowling’s received a fine of $10,000. But most troubling was her two boys living at home, Johnny and Emmett, who received a prison sentence. 

Mary certainly felt the revenue agents took advantage of her. While it later came out that Emmett had sold a few bottles of liquor, this didn’t rise to a conspiracy, nor did it involve the entire family. Everything had been done legally in her eyes. Furthermore, not only had the government confiscated her liquor, but the warehouse where they stored it burned. Rumors circulated that government agents sold the liquor. The fire covered their tracks. She couldn’t help but to feel that they were after her because she was a successful woman and Catholic. 

During this time, she decided to get back into the liquor business by setting up operations in Juarez, Mexico, across from El Paso. She could legally make liquor there.

Interestingly, Mexico didn’t allow its grain to be distilled. Mary had grain shipped in from the United States. Waterfill and Frazier used 50% corn with a mix of rye and barley.  She found a Mexican partner who provided the land and hired local workers. She hired a descendant of Jim Beam to oversee the running of her distillery.  While she went into prohibition financially well off, she made another fortune with Waterfill and Frazier, SA. This distillery did a large business around the border where bars which were filled with Americans (especially soldiers from Fort Bliss). She also allowed those running the business to sell booze to bootleggers who would bribe the border guards to transport the liquor to sell to speak-easies in the America. 

The employees of the Mexican distillery gave Mary Dowling the title, “Mother of Bourbon.”  That distillery continued to operate until 1984, but after Mary and Emmett’s death, the family ignored its operation.  Oddly enough, the American government had a hand in its demise as it outlawed the sale of bourbon made outside the United States. 

After prohibition took effect, Mary continued to experience sadness. Ida, a daughter who didn’t marry until she was almost 40, died. Then, the next year, John and Emmett died way too young, the same year in which Mary Dowling died.  

I enjoyed this book. The story flowed smoothly. Woven into the last half of the story was a rosary given to Mary by her liquor wholesaler,. Late in their business partnership, he expressed romantic interests. Mary wasn’t interested. The authors used the rosary beads to link to Mary’s own sorrows with her children. This nice touch displayed the importance of Mary’s faith. However, I found myself wondering if it happened or was it just a detail made up by the authors. While Mary Dowling was a real woman who achieved and endured much, with the book being a novel instead of non-fiction, I know the authors had to create a framework and dialogue to make the story more readable.  

I have now read three books by Goodman. In 2019, I read a baseball novel, Days of Awe. In 2020, I read his novel, based on his wife’s parents, Cuppy and Stew.

wBruce M. Metzger, Breaking the Code: Understanding the Book of Revelation 

(Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1993), 144 pages. 

I first read this book in early 2004, when I last taught a class on the book of Revelation. Metzger, an outstanding Biblical Scholar from Princeton, spent part of my last year in seminary on Sabbatical at Pittsburgh. I got to know him a bit during this time as his apartment was next to mine.

Metzger approach is strictly Biblical. He shows how much of Revelation was written in response to was happening within the Roman Empire in the second half of the first century. Even the number of the beast (666) works out to a title of Nero.  A variant number (616) found in some ancient manuscripts matched a variation in Nero’s title.  I used this book as the base for my class, but also drew on a more detailed commentary by Robert Mounce along with Eugene Peterson’s literary commentary, Reversed Thunder: The Revelation of John and the Poetic Imaginaton. 

Alan Gurney, Compass: A Story of Exploration and Innovation

 (New Yor: W. W. Norton, 2004), 320 pages including index, notes, and bibliography.  

I’ve used and felt myself competent with a compass ever since my grandparents gave me one for my 11^th birthday, when I was old enough to join the Boy Scouts. Taking the compass for granted, I had no idea one could write a history of the compass that stretched out to 272 pages of text! Gurney manages to do this by primarily focusing on the use of the compass by the British Royal Navy and commercial ships. I knew that even in the ancient world, it was known that a suspended lodestone was known to point north/south. But I was shocked that it was only recently (last 150 years) that the compass as we know it was perfected. 

The original compass was a dry one, often suspending a thin piece of metal that had been magnetized so that if was free to move and point to the north. Below the pointer, a papers stock which could be moved to correct the heading. This “dry compass” was the main compass of British mariners until early in the 20^th Century. Such a compass had a difficult during rough weather or on a ship firing canons broadside.  This led to use of compasses with the lodestone floating on water (or alcohol). Another problem discussed is magnetic deviation. Interestingly, at one time, sailors hoped that correcting the deviation could help them know their latitude. Later problems arouse as ships used more iron in their construction. Earlier, such problems were noticed as the housing of the compass might use nails which affected the needle.  When the who ship was iron, the problem magnified. 

While this book primarily focuses on the British use of the compass, toward the end the author acknowledges the American Navy to be ahead of the British in the late 19^th Century. American adopted the floating compass for its navy 30 years before Britain. Through this book, we learn of the various individuals whose work with compasses to increase their efficiency.  While there were interesting parts of this book, I realize it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. The book is only about the role of the compass while on water, nothing about its use on land as in orientating. A good companion to this book is Dava Sobel’s, Longitude, which I read in 2017. 

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.