February 2018 Book List

Here’s my February 2018 Book List. You can get a quick summary of any of the books on the list by looking the book up on Amazon, or at Barnes and Noble, or at your library, except for books to be published in the future. Both Publishers Weekly and New York Times Book Review give critiques of the books they list and have “buy this book” buttons.

Publisher’s Weekly

Jan. 8

The Immortalists: A Novel by Chloe Benjamin

Green: A Novel by Sam Graham-Felsen

Gnomen: A Novel Nick Harkaway

The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey

Fatal Discord: Erasmus, Luther, and the Fight for the Western Mind by Michael Massing (NF)

Red Sky at Noon: A Novel by Simon Sebag Montefiore

A State of Freedom: A Novel by Neel Mukherjee

Nice Try, Jane Sinner by Lianne Oelke (YA)

When Montezuma Met Cortés: The True Story of the Meeting that Changed History by Matthew Restall (NF)

Walking the Bones: A Ryan DeMarco Mystery by Randall Silvis

The Maze at Windermere by Gregory Blake Smith

1917: War, Peace, and Revolution by David Stevenson

Jan. 22

A Land of Permanent Goodbyes by Atia Abawi (Syria, YA)

Peach: A Novel by Emma Glass

The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World by Charles C. Mann (NF)

The Other Side of Everything by Lauren Doyle Owens

Anatomy of a Scandal: A Novel by Sarah Vaughan

Jan. 29

Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom by Keisha N Blain (NF)

This is What Happened (Novel) by Mick Herron

Tempest: Old West Book 3 by Beverly Jenkins (Romance)

This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America by Morgan Jenkins (NF)

The Invention of Ana: A Novel by Mikkel Rosengaard

The Book of the Dead by Muriel Rukeyser (Poems)

The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke by Jeffrey C Stewart (Bio)

A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History by Jeanne Theoharis (NF)

Most Anticipated Books of Spring 2018 (Pub. Between Feb. and April)

Fiction

The Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer

The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner

Circe by Madeline Miller

Speak No Evil by Uzodinma Iweala

Warlight by Michael Ondaatje

Mystery, Thriller, Crime

Green Sun by Kent Anderson

The President is Missing by Bill Clinton and James Patterson

The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz

Science Fiction

Blackfish City by Sam J. Miller (YA)

The Merry Spinster by Mallory Ortberg

Space Opera by Catherynne M Valente

Witchmark by CL Polk

Memoirs

The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath by Leslie Jamison

Brave by Rose McGowan

Eat the Apple by Matt Young

A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership by James Comey

Literary Essays (Criticism)/ Biography

Feel Free: Essays by Zadie Smith

How to Write an Autobiographical Novel: Essays by Alexander Chee

Sharp: The Women Who Made an Art of Having an Opinion by Michelle Dean

History

Beneath a Ruthless Sun: A True Story of Violence, Race, and Justice Lost and Found by Gilbert King

God Save Texas: A Journey into the Soul of the Lone Star State by Lawrence Wright

Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom by Keisha N. Blain

The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote by Elaine Weiss

Political/Current Events

China’s Great Wall of Debt: Shadow Banks, Ghost Cities, Massive Loans, and the End of the Chinese Miracle by Dinny McMahon

Fascism: A Warning by Madeline Albright

Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations by Amy Chua

New York Times Book Review

Jan. 7^th

Crime

Robicheaux by James Lee Burke

Beau Death by Peter Lovesey

The Body in the Casket by Katherine Hall Page

Dead Man’s Blues by Ray Celestin

Fiction

Three Floors Up by Eshkol Neva (Israeli)

Solar Bones by Mike McCormack

The King is Always Above the People by Daniel Marcón

The Floating World by C. Morgan Babst

Continental Fiction

How to Behave in a Crowd by Camille Bordas

Yiza by Michael Köhlmeier, Trans by Ruth Martin

Lea by Pascal Mercier, Trans by Shaun Whiteside

Uncertain Glory by Joan Sales, Trans by Peter Bush

Nonfiction

The Written World: The Power of Stories to Shape People, History, Civilization by Martin Puchner

The Social Life of Books: Reading Together in the Eighteenth Century Home by Abigail Williams

Texas Blood by Roger D. Hodges

Ghost Empire by Richard Fidler

Seduced by Mrs. Robinson by Beverly Gray

Playing with Fire by Lawrence O’Donnell

Enemies and Neighbors by Ian Black

Anesthesia: The Gift of Oblivion and the Mystery of Consciousness by Kate Cole Adams

Counting Backwards: A Doctor’s Notes on Anesthesia by Henry Jay Przybylo

The Race Underground: Boston, New York, and the Incredible Rivalry that Built America’s First Subway by Doug Most

Move: Putting America’s Infrastructure Back in the Lead by Rosabeth Moss Kanter

The Side of Brightness by Colum McCann

Jan. 14^th

Fiction

The Ruined House by Ruby Namdar

The World Goes On by Laszlo Krasznahorkai, Trans by John Batki, Ottilie Nulzet, and George Szirtes

The War that Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

Nonfiction

Craeft by Alexander Langlands

The Road Not Taken by Max Boot

The Bughouse by Daniel Swift

Supernormal by Meg Jay

Late Essays by J M Coetzee

The Thin Light of Freedom by Edward L. Ayers

Vivian Maier: A Photographer’s Life and Afterlife by Pamela Bannos

Renoir: An Intimate Biography by Barbara Ehrlich White

A Generous Vision: The Creative Life of Elaine de Kooning by Cathy Curtis

Jan. 21^st

The Perfect Nanny by Leila Slimani

Green by Sam Graham-Felsen

King Zeno by Nathaniel Rich

Winter by Ali Smith

In the Midst of Winter by Isabel Allende

Dogs at the Perimeter by Madeleine Thien

State of Freedom by Neel Mukherjee

Crime

The Perfect Nanny by Leila Slimani

The Bomb Maker by Thomas Perry

Lullaby Road by James Anderson

A Map of the Dark by Karen Ellis

Books in Translation

The Temptation to Be Happy by Lorenzo Marone, Trans by Shaun Whiteside

The Time of Mute Swans by Ece Temelkuran, Trans by Kenneth Dakan

Spring Garden by Tomoka Shibasaki, Trans by Polly Barton

Happy Dreams by Jia Pingwa, Trans by Nicky Harman

Nonfiction

Winter by Karl Ove Knausgaard, Trans by Ingvild Burkey

The Last Girl by Nadia Murad

The Years by Annie Ernaux, Trans by Alison L Strayer

Off the Charts: The Hidden Lives and Lessons of American Child Prodigies by Ann Hulbert

Jan 28^th

Fiction

The Nothing by Hanif Kureishi

Red Clocks by Naomi Alderonan (What if abortion were illegal again)

Here in Berlin by Cristina Garcia

The Mannequin Makers by Craig Cliff

The Largesse of the Sea Maiden by Denis Johnson

London and the South-East by David Szalay

The Years, Months, Days: Two Novellas by Yan Lianke

Nonfiction

Trumpocracy by David Frum

The Newcomers by Helen Thorpe

Show Medicine by Victoria Sweet

Fire and Fury by Michael Wolff

The Last Man Who Knew Everything by David N Schwartz (Enrico Fermi)

The Meaning of Birds by Simon Barnes

Birdmania: A Remarkable Passion for Birds by Bernd Brunner

Birding without Borders: An Obsession, a Quest, and the Biggest Year in the World by Noah Strycker

Bipolar Disorder

Gorilla and the Bird: A Memoir of Madness and a Mother’s Love by Zack McDermott

The Glass Eye: A Memoir by Jeannie Venasco

Mental: Lithium, Love, and Losing My Mind by Jaime Lowe

Amazon

Literature and Fiction

The Friend: A Novel by Sigrid Nunez

A Long Way From Home: A Novel by Peter Carey

Only Killers and Thieves by Paul Howarth

Asymmetry: A Novel by Lisa Halliday

In Every Moment We Are Still Alive by Tom Malmquist, Henning Koch

Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi

The House of Impossible Beauties by Joseph Cassara

How to Stop Time by Matt Haig

Call Me Zebra by Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi

Chicago: A Novel by David Mamet

An American Marriage: A Novel by Tayari Jones

The Great Alone: A Novel by Kristin Hannah

Still Me: A Novel by Jojo Moyes

White Houses: A Novel by Amy Bloom

Mystery and Thrillers

Force of Nature: A Novel by Jane Harper

The Deceivers (A John Wells Novel) by Alex Berenson

A Dangerous Crossing: A Novel by Ausma Zehanet Khan

The Plea: A Novel by Steve Cavanagh

Girl Unknown: A Novel by Karen Perry

The Kremlin’s Candidate: A Novel by Jason Matthews

The Woman in the Water: A Prequel to the Charles Lenox Mystery Series by Charles Finch

Kill the Angel: A Novel (Caselli and Torre Series) by Sandrone Dazieri

The Gate Keeper: An Inspector Rutledge Mystery) by Charles Todd

Look For Me (D.D. Warren by Lisa Gardner

Biographies and Memoirs

The Monk of Mokha by Dave Eggers

The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border by Francisco Cantú

The Kings of Big Spring: God, Oil, and One Family’s Search for the American Dream by Bryan Mealer

Limits of the Known by David Roberts

Everything is Horrible and Wonderful: A Tragicomic Memoir of Genius, Heroin, Love, and Loss by Stephanie Wittels Wacks, Aziz Ansari

Brave by Rose McGowan

I Wrote This Book Because I Love You: Essays by Tim Kreider

Without Precedent: Chief Justice John Marshall by Joel Richard Paul

I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death by Maggie O’Farrell

Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover

Nonfiction

The Future of Humanity: Terraforming Mars, Interstellar Travel, Immortality, and Our Destiny Beyond Earth by Michio Kaku

Text Me When You Get Home: The Evolution and Triumph of Modern Female Friendship by Kayleen Schaefer

What Are We Doing Here?: Essays by Marilynne Robinson

Close Encounters with Humankind: A Paleoanthropologist Investigates Our Evolving Species by Sang-Hee, Shin Young Yoon

Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boy’s Club of Silicon Valley by Emily Chang

The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist: A True Story of Injustice in the American South by Radley Balko, Tucker Carrington, Intro by John Grisham

Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet by Yasha Levine

Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life by Hassim Taleb

The Kings of Big Spring: God, Oil, and One Family’s Search for the American Dream by Bryan Mealer

Feel Free: Essays by Zadie Smith

The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups by Daniel Coyle

Science Fiction and Fantasy

The Gone World by Tom Sweterlitsch

The Philosopher’s Flight: A Novel by Tom Miller

How to Stop Time by Matt Haig

Your One and Only (There is Nothing More Human Than Love) by Adrianne Finlay

Into the Fire by Elizabeth Moon

Fire and Bone by Rachael A Marks (the occult)

Gunpowder Moon by David Pedreira

Artemis by Andy Weir – Book

Artemis by Andy Weir is the kind of book you want to read in one bite. It is just so much fun that the word yummy would apply if a book was a meal (which, in a way it is). Andy creates for us the small domed community of Artemis on the Moon. He describes it for us through the eyes of his irreverent narrator, Jas (Jasmine), whose Dad came to the Moon from Saudi Arabia when Jasmine was young. There are several domes, each named after the astronauts who first journeyed to the Moon. There are rich folks on the Moon who live in the nicest spaces in the nicest dome. There are poor folks who live in more crowded spaces in another dome. There are domes where businesses operate. Jasmine’s father is a skilled welder who owns a fairly large work space until Jas, in a teenaged misadventure, burns it down. Fire is one of the most feared elements in Artemis. There is nowhere to run to. Jas owes her father a lot.

Right now Jas has a pretty big chip on her shoulder, constructed of guilt, dumb gumption, immaturity, and ambition. We meet her when she is taking her test to qualify to lead groups of tourists in EVA’s (Extra Vehicular Activities) on the Moon’s surface. We see how her impatience to earn her own way and move out of the space that she is living in, which is described as a coffin, without a private bathroom, lead her to neglect a careful inspection of her EVA suit. She almost dies and, surprise, fails her test. Because her impatience makes her careless, people she has known since childhood are leery of trusting her with much responsibility. This doesn’t sound like fun, but Jas is telling the story and she is full of sarcastic humor and she is indomitable. She is unfazed by her screw-ups. She just resolves to push on to the next adventure.

Jas is not totally alone. She still can rely on her father who loves her, but she tries not to. She has had a longtime pen pal in Kenya. Kenya is in charge of Artemis, the KFC (irony, humor?) and most goods ship to Artemis from Kenya. Jas is a porter who delivers goods from shipments as they arrive. This is how she earns her meager living right now, along with a bit of smuggling. But Jaz wants to be rich. She wants to live in the best dome and have her own luxurious bathroom. So when Tran offers to pay Jas 1 million slugs (credits) to do something very destructive, for what seem to be very good reasons, the whole, almost-fatal comedy of Moony errors ensues. Jas does love Artemis and she loves her father and she enlists the help of some very reluctant friends who obviously care about her. In the end we guess that Jas will finally enter a somewhat calmer adult lifestyle and we learn that not all her ventures have been so convoluted as the one we enjoy in Artemis. She has actually found a niche in Artemis.

I bought a membership in Audible because I planned to start exercising and I wanted to be very efficient with my time. If I could read and exercise at the same time I would be one of those people who make every second of their life count. I am having a problem with Audible, though, because I cannot see the spelling of the character’s names. I don’t like to read any reviews before I write mine so you may see some very creative spelling from me sometimes. The Moon community is home to people from almost every nation on Earth and offers a real challenge to Rosario Dawson who reads the book to us (I can listen on my Alexa). There are lots of accents which help to differentiate characters and add character to whoever is speaking. After a while the accents sound too similar and some accents sound less authentic than others. Still Dawson’s reading is suited to the saga of Jas and Artemis and the accents add another layer of entertainment to this tale, which gives us a sort of Moon thriller, and a tutorial in space science. Science is not usually this much fun (except perhaps in The Big Bang Theory with its clever writers). Andy Weir also reminds us that our flawed human nature will go with us wherever we go.

Grant by Ron Chernow – Book

Grant by Ron Chernow is not a book; it is tome. He writes a very contemporary biography of Ulysses S. Grant, perhaps unclouded by the political passions and machinations of the 19^th century. We often hear more that is negative about Grant than what was positive. We hear he was often drunk, that he headed one of the most corrupt governments in our history, that he was a gullible and simple man, without social graces or persuasive public speaking abilities. Writers in the past accepted, for the most part, that Grant had strong military successes, but opinions of his abilities range from a lazy leader to a military savant (which Chernow feels is much closer to the truth).

Prior to the Civil War, America was experiencing a time of great divisiveness (perhaps even worse that what we are seeing in the 21^st century). Slavery and state’s rights were the issues that most passionately divided the nation (and they still are 151 years later). Strong abolitionist movements in the northern states enraged the South whose lifestyle and economy revolved around slave labor. The South claimed that the Federal government had no right to make laws in this matter. The verbal battles were bitter and the differences irreconcilable. Whatever you may feel is the reason for the Civil War (the GOP still cites the state’s rights issue; while Dems tend to cite the issue of keeping human beings as slaves), Grant evolved on the issue of slavery until he came to believe that it was an anathema and absolutely the point of the war. The Union considered the South to be traitors who wanted to dissolve the Republic. Although it may drive you crazy, you need to remember that in the 19th century Southerners were the Democrats and the abolitionists were Republicans.

Chernow does not sidestep graphic descriptions of the terrible tragedy of human destruction left in the wake of every victory and every defeat in the brutal Civil War. Grant, who seemed unable to be a successful businessman, proved to have a genius for warfare, a focus that seemed to appear only when battle loomed, and a broad and long view of the overall geography, scope, and strategy involved in any given battle. Since Grant was educated at West Point, he knew many of the officers on both sides in the Civil War and he had personal insight into how they would behave. Try not to read about these battles while eating.

I can never cover all of the information imparted in this biography. It is minutely comprehensive and still, somehow, eminently readable. It is long but well worth the investment in time. What I appreciated most about Ron Chernow’s tome is the attention he gave to what happened in the South after the war. Perhaps Grant was too sympathetic to the officers and men when the war ended at Appomattox. He did nothing to humiliate them. He let them lay down their weapons and leave without persecution to go home to their land and families. But perhaps this allowed the South to keep too much of its pride and they secretly kept alive the resentments that had caused the rift to begin with. Chernow does not skirt the details of the ways Southern slave owners took out their anger on freed Americans of African Descent.

According to Chernow and his exhaustive research Ku Klux Klan activity was far more prevalent and deadly in those years of Reconstruction than represented in the stories we tell ourselves today (and in our school history classes). Current events teach us that those feelings kept alive in the South and imported to the North still inform our politics, and the feelings of white supremacy that seem to have been resurrected, but which never actually left us. Grant earned the lasting respect of black folks by sending troops to try to stop the carnage and the total unwillingness of slave owners to accept the freedom of their former slaves. He supported programs to educate former slaves and the 13^th, 14^th and 15^th Amendments were passed while he was President. Frederick Douglas remained a loyal acquaintance of Grant and expressed his gratitude again and again for the support Grant provided to back up freedom for all Americans. If Grant accomplished nothing else, what he accomplished in the arena of freedom and equality for formerly enslaved Americans should move him far above the rank he held until now in the pantheon of American presidents. He deplored the fact that Reconstruction did not end racial hatred in Southern whites.

Mr. Chernow does not buy the tales that make drunkenness a key trait in Grant’s life. He finds a pattern to Grant’s binges and gives him credit for fighting against the hold alcohol had for him when he was without the comforts of his family (as soldiers often are). He admits that Grant was connected to a number of corrupt schemes while he was President and later when he resided in NYC. But if you follow the money you find that Grant never was at all corrupt himself. He was guilty of being unable to see through people, especially when they were friends. Since many people had been his fellow soldiers he tended to give them credit for being loyal friends when they were actually involved in collecting payoffs in scams such as the whisky ring, and the Indian ring, and other scandals of the Gilded Age. Juicy, interesting, and deplorable stuff. Many government rules were different than they are today and corruption was easy if you valued money over morals. Probably a number of rules and protections in our current government were passed to fight the human impulse to corruption which exists, of course, to this day.

It’s a wonderful biography, well researched and full of quotes from primary sources and although it may put a crimp in your accounting of the number of books you get to read this year it will offer such in-depth quality that you will not mind the hit you take in terms of the quantity of books you get to read.

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng – Book

Celeste Ng writes about families. In her first novel, Everything I Never Told You, one of her characters, the family’s oldest child Lydia, who is found dead in a lake, takes us on an exploration of the dynamics in her mixed race (white mom “Oriental” dad) family. In her second book, Little Fires Everywhere Ng introduces us to two modern families, one that may look like a classic nuclear family (except for the fact that their house is on fire), and another that looks like anything but. In this second book we focus, in flashback, on Elena Richardson, her husband and their four children (Lexi, Tripp, Moody and Izzy). Elena is a mom who never realized her dream to be a famous journalist, a mom who may think that she limited her future by settling down and putting her family first and her journalistic goals second. But it is quite possible that it is her inability to untie herself geographically from the Shaker Heights neighborhood into which she was born (where the author also was born) that kept her in a position on the local paper instead of in a big city news room. Elena loves Shaker Heights because it is a neighborhood founded on principles of security and stability and community involvement that she finds comforting.

Elena is not a real hands-on mom, but her sort of distracted style seems to suit her first two children, at least until the decisions of puberty begin to challenge their judgment. Her style does not suit her two younger children quite as well, and, in fact, put her at odds with her youngest daughter Izzy, an impulsive and creative child who needs affection and approval, as opposed to the disapproval and dismissal she experiences from her mom. Izzy does not take her mom’s tempers and slights quietly as her brother Moody does; she acts out to make sure she gets attention, even if that attention is mostly negative.

When Mia Warren enters the lives of this geographically planted family she brings with her a whiff of a sort of gypsy existence, and she brings her daughter, Pearl, the fortunate recipient of her seemingly effortless warmth and affection. Elena hires Mia to help in the morning and cook dinners in the evening, and Elena’s children bask in the parental interest exhibited by Mia, while Pearl longs for the geographical stability of the Richardson family. Mia and Pearl have moved too many times, but this time Mia promised Pearl she would stay put. Eventually Elena becomes jealous of the attractions between her children and Mia. She sees a clue in a photograph in a museum, a photo of Mia with a baby and she uses journalistic research techniques, and resources she has not needed for years, to investigate Mia and to expose her secrets. Why does Mia seem to have no roots – a burning question to a woman to whom roots have seemed all important? Is Mia someone who could be a danger to Elena’s children?

We, as readers, also understand that Mia has a secret in her past and that even Pearl does not know what that secret is. We find Mia likeable but we don’t totally trust our judgment which is based on too little information. We don’t think her secret could be anything terribly bad, but we don’t know. Elena Richardson earns our censure for invading Mia’s life and our gratitude because she unlocks the secrets that Mia guards so carefully. Mia also gave up what could have been a successful career for her daughter but until we get the facts we are not sure why. (Can’t tell you.)

There is another story within this story about an Asian immigrant mom, befriended by Mia, who loses her job just after the birth of her baby. Since the father has bowed out of the relationship the mom, Bebe Chow, finds she cannot care for her baby. She leaves her at the local fire station. The baby is subsequently given to a long-time childless couple, friends of Elena Richardson and her husband. When Bebe gets a new job, she tries to get her child back and finds she must fight this affluent and loving couple in court. (Interesting note about Audible, it encourages creative spelling of characters’ names.)

We are asked to think about what makes someone a parent. Is blood stronger than any other bond? Are children ever born to the wrong parents? Should children sometimes get to pick their own parents? We see the supportive relationship that has developed between Mia and Izzy. What happens in this relationship is one event in this book that raises many questions in our minds and hearts, but I would spoil the book for you if I discussed it here. (Moody’s role in the family is another matter that we continue to contemplate after finishing Ng’s book.) I did find that I liked Celeste Ng’s second book, Little Fires Everywhere, better than her first one.

January 2018 Book List

Amazon

Literature and Fiction

Red Clocks: A Novel by Leni Zumas

The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin

The Largesse of the Sea Maiden by Denis Johnson

Green: A Novel by Sam Graham-Felsen

The Boat People: A Novel by Sharon Baia

Heart Spring Mountain: A Novel by Robin MacArthur

Oliver Loving: A Novel by Stefan Merrill Block

The Music Shop: A Novel by Rachel Joyce

A State of Freedom: A Novel by Neel Mukherjee

This Could Hurt: A Novel by Jillian Medoff

Biographies and Memoirs

The Most Dangerous Man in America: Timothy Leary, Richard Nixon and the Hunt for the Fugitive King of LSD by Bill Minutaglio, Steven L. Davis

Here’s the Real Magic: A Magical Search for Wonder in the Modern World by Nate Staneforth

Winter by Karl Ove Knausgaard

Brave by Rose McGowan

The Epic City: The World on the Streets of Calcutta by Kushanava Choudhury

The Stowaway: A Young Man’s Extraordinary Adventure to Antarctica by Laurie Gwen Shapiro

When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir by Patrisse Khan-Cullors, ashe bendele

The Wizard and the Prophet, Two Remarkable Scientists and their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World by Charles L. Mann

Furnishing Eternity: A Father, A Son, a Coffin and a Measure of Life by David Giffels

The Girl on the Velvet Swing: Sex, Murder and Madness at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century by Simon Baatz

Mysteries and Thrillers

The Wife: A Novel of Psychological Suspense by Alifair Burke

Robicheaux: A Novel by James Lee Burke

The Woman in the Window: A Novel by A. J. Finn

Gnomon: A Novel by Nick Harkaway

The Bomb Maker by Thomas Perry

Anatomy of a Scandal: A Novel by Sarah Vaughan

Need to Know: A Novel by Karen Cleveland

The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey

Munich by Robert Harris

The Chalk Man: A Novel by C. J. Tudor

The Wife Between Us: A Novel by Greer Hendricks, Sarah Pekkanen

Nonfiction

The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life by Kevin Simler and Robin Hansen

The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam by Max Boot

When: The Scientific Study of Perfect Timing by Daniel H. Pink

The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World by Charles L. Mann

The Deepest Will: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity by Nadine Burke Harris, MD

The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning: How to Free Yourself and your Family from a Lifetime of Clutter by Margareta Magnusson

Tell Me More: Stories About the 12 Hardest Things I’m Learning to Say by Kelly Corrigan

Saving Tarboo Creek: One Family’s Quest to Heal the Land by Scott Freeman, Susan Leopold Freeman

Achtung Baby: An American Mom on the German Art of Raising Self-Reliant Children by Sara Zaske

Uneasy Peace: The Great Crime Decline, the Renewal of City Life and the Next War on Violence by Patrick Sharkey

The New York Times Book Review (Abbreviated Lists at Christmas Time because Special Seasonal Books are Reviewed, which I won’t list here)

December 17^th

Nonfiction

Cartoon Country by Collen Murphy

Vacationland by John Hodgeman

The Gifted Generation by Daniel Goldfield

A Promise at Dawn by Romain Gary, translated by John Markham

The Kites by Romain Gary

The Vanity Fair Diaries: 1983-1992 by Tina Brown

Bloodlines by Melissa del Boque

The Trade by Jere Van Dyk

Fiction

The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty

Timeless by Armand Baltazar

December 24^th

Nonfiction

God: A Human History by Reza Aslan

What the Qur’an Meant by Garry Wills

Belonging: 1492-1900 by Simon Schama

The Book of Separation by Tora Mirvis

The Great Shift by James L Kugel

The Exodus by Richard Elliott Friedman

The Abu Dhabi Bar Mitzvah by Adam Valen Levinson

Martin Luther by Eric Metaxas

Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts by Christopher de Hamel

Bethlehem, Tracing the Life of a Storied Little Town by Nicholas Blincoe

Heaven on Earth by Michael Shermer

Finding Oneself in a Coffin by David Giffels

Fiction

Crimes of the Father by Thomas Keneally

By the Book by Francis Ford Coppola

Found object

Harriet Tubman’s hymnal

December 31^st

Nonfiction

Windfall by Meghan O’Sullivan

Megafire by Michael Kodas

Firestorm by Edward Struzik

The Great Quake by Henry Fountain

Quakeland by Kathryn Miles

The Ends of the World: Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans and Our Quest to Understand Earth’s Past Mass Extinctions by Peter Brannen

Woolly: The True Story of the Quest to Revive One of History’s Most Iconic Extinct Creatures by Ben Megrich

Understanding the Mammoth: A Tale of Giants, Unicorns, Ivory, and the Birth of a New Science by John McKay

The Only Girl in the World by Maude Julien

The Doomsday Machine by Daniel Ellsberg

Inheritance of the Earth by Chris Thomas

Column of Fire by Ken Follett – Book

Column of Fire by Ken Follett is the third book in the Kingsbridge Series and my least favorite of the three. It’s not that it was difficult or did not tell a story. It was not so terrible that it made me set it aside or stop reading. I liked the fictional characters placed among the actual historical figures enough to wonder what would happen to them but I did not feel strongly invested in them. I always realized they were fictional and there to involve the reader in the events occurring in the mid 1500’s and beyond in England, France, Spain, and the Netherlands.

Religion was the key issue of these times after the declarations of Martin Luther and the beginnings of a Protestant movement that was growing and alarming Catholics. Protestants thought they could talk directly to God without a priest as intermediary. They published Bibles in national languages, rather than Latin, so people could read the Bible by themselves or in church services. They did not feel any allegiance to the Pope in Rome. Catholics saw Protestants as heretics and felt it their religious duty to crush them and their interpretation of Christianity. As Column of Fire begins Protestants are hunted by Catholics, considered criminals by royals, and must practice their religion in secrecy. But this book also covers the pivotal moment when events, especially in England, turned this dynamic around. By the end of the story Catholics are on the defensive and, at least in England, Protestants can worship without fear.

Since England had recently lost Queen Mary Tudor, a strongly Catholic queen, there were two women who could possible take the throne, Elizabeth Tudor, tolerant of Protestantism, and Mary Queen of Scots, strongly Catholic. The story of how Elizabeth took the throne and how she held it against Catholic sympathizers who stood to lose both their brand of religion and lots of power and money has fascinated readers for centuries. Elizabeth held her throne with the help of talented spies and one of these spies was William Cecil.

Ned Willard becomes one of Cecil’s spies, moving in and out of France, with family in Spain for a while (Barney Willard), who later becomes a shipper and a ship’s captain adding more clout to Ned Willard’s information network. There is a villain, in fact there are two and they are just about as hateful as you would like them to be. Pierre Armande de Guise is an ambitious, soulless creature who uses information he steals through his first wife Sylvie Palot, a list of important Protestants in Paris, to ingratiate himself with the de Guise family and to realize his life time ambition of being a royal (however tangentially). Rollo Fitzgerald, brother of Ned’s first love Margery trains a group of sinister priests and hides them in English households for when Mary Queen of Scots takes the throne from Elizabeth, and an invasion plan is afoot.

Even with the historical drama of this critical time in Europe the book never really taps into that drama. Women are expendable and are damaged by the villains but few men are and there is just little tension and fright in most of the telling of this story. Fortunes do switch from the Catholic Fitzgeralds to the Protestant Willards but Ned is never in any real danger and seems more like a nice guy than a spy. So, what we get in Column of Fire by Ken Follett is a good story, but not a great story.

November 2017 Book List

Books seem to be available so quickly that the topics authors have written about this month are still trending on social media and in the news. Some books are self-published and the turnaround on that can happen fast, but even books from publishers seem to arrive on the market faster than they once did. You will find lots of nonfiction titles in this list that talk about Russia and obviously the news is the source of interest for that subject. You will also find books that may have been timed to appear close to Halloween. And you will find new books by popular authors also in this lengthy book list. Once again, I will have to choose selectively for my future reading endeavors as there are too many titles to cover. This time I find myself attracted to some of the biographies and memoirs.

November Editor’s Picks

Vacationland by John Hodgman (NF)

The City of Brass by SA Chakraborty

The Vanity Fair Diaries 1883-1992 by Tina Brown

An American Family by Khzir Khan

Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds

Everything is Awful and Other Observations by Matt Bellassai

In the Midst of Winter by Isabel Allende

Literature and Fiction

Hiddensee: A Tale of the Once and Future Nutcracker by Gregory McGuire

Heather, the Totality by Matthew Weiner

Future Home of the Living God: A Novel by Louise Erdrich

The Revolution of Marina M: A Novel by Janet Fitch

The End We Start From by Megan Hunter

Wonder Valley by Ivy Pochoda

Hunter of Stories by Eduardo Galeano, Mark Fried

Mysteries and Thrillers

The Unclaimed Victim by DM Pulley

The House of Unexpected Sisters (The New Ladies #1 Detective Agency Novel) by Alexander McCall Smith

The Midnight Child (Jack Reacher) by Lee Child

Hardcore Twenty Four by Janet Evanovich

Artemis: A Novel by Andy Weir

The Quantum Spy: A Thriller by David Ignatius

The Extraditionist (A Benn Bluestone Thriller) by Todd Merer

End Game (Will Robie Series) by David Baldacci

The Rooster Bar by John Grisham

Wonder Valley: A Novel by Ivy Pochoda

Typhoon Fury by Clive Cussler

Science Fiction and Fantasy

The Sisters of the Crescent Empress by Leena Likitalo

Artemis: A Novel by Andy Weir

The Nine (Thieves of Fate) by Tracy Townsend

Biographies and Memoirs

An American Family by Khizer Khan

Gold Dust Woman: The Biography of Stevie Nicks by Stephen Davis

The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spy Master James Jesus Angleton by Jefferson Morley

The Vanity Fair Diaries 1985-1992 by Tina Brown

Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine by Joe Hagan

American Witness: The Art and Life of Robert Frank by R. J. Smith

Sisters First: Stories from Our Wild and Wonderful Life by Jenna Bush Hager and Barbara Pierce Bush

Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Political Life by Robert Dallek

Vacationland by John Hodgman

Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser (NF)

Nonfiction

It’s All Relative: Adventures Up and Down the World’s Family Tree by AJ Jacobs

Seduced by Mrs. Robinson: How “The Graduate” Became the Touchstone of a Generation by Beverly Gray

Garden of the Lost and Abandoned: The Extraordinary Story of One Ordinary Woman and the Children She Saved by Jessica Yu

Troublemakers: Silicon Valley’s Coming of Age by Leslie Berlin

Everything is Awful and Other Observations by Matt Bellassai (Comedy)

The Inner Life of Animals: Love, Grief and Compassion, Surprising Observations of a Hidden World by Peter Wohlleben, Jane Billinghurst

What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism by Dan Rather and Elliot Kirschner

Dawn of New Everything: Encounters with Realty and Virtual Realty by Jason Lanier

The River of Consciousness by Oliver Sacks

Ghosts of the Tsunami: Death and Life in Japan’s Disaster Zone by Richard Lloyd Parry

October 8

Fiction

Manhatten Beach by Jennifer Egan

The Ninth Hour by Alice McDermott

A Loving, Faithful Animal by Josephine Rowe

The Twelve-Mile Straight by Eleanor Henderson

New People by Danzy Senna

Sisters by Lily Tuck

3 Novels set in Ireland – Past and Present

A Son Called Gabriel by Damian McNicholl

The Good People by Hannah Kent

The Trout by Peter Cunningham

Nonfiction

A Force so Swift by Kevin Peraino

The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve by Stephen Greenblatt

Bunny Mellon: The Life of an American Style Legend by Meryl Gordon

World without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech by Franklin Foer

The Choice (Memoir) by Edith Eva Eger

What She Ate by Laura Shapiro (6 women and what they ate)

October 15

Nonfiction

Grant by Ron Chernow

2 Books on Sleep

Snooze: The Lost Art of Sleep by Michael McGirr

Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker

More nonfiction

The Ordinary Virtues: Moral Order in a Divided World by Michael Ignatieff

The Unfinished Palazzo by Judith Mackrell

Cuz by Danielle Allen (a woman writes about a cousin she loved who spent his life in prison)

Greater Gotham by Mike Wallace

The Riviera Set by Mary S. Lovell

The Last Castle: The Epic Story of Love, Loss, and American Royalty in the Nation’s Largest Home by Denise Kiernan

Fiction

Crime Fiction

Good Me Bad Me by Ali Land

Deep Freeze by John Sanford

The Scarred Woman by Jussi Adler-Olsen translated by William Frost

Cast Iron by Peter May

Other fiction

Gather the Daughters by Jennie Melamed

Savage Country by Robert Olmstead

October 22

Fiction

The Resurrection of Joan Ashby by Cherise Wolas

For Two Thousand Years by Michael Sebastion

The Revolution of Marina M by Janet Fitch

The Red Haired Woman by Orphan Pamuk

Nonfiction

“Riot Days”: A Memoir of Punk Protest and Prison Activism by Maria Alyokhina (member of Pussy Riot)

The Future is History by Masha Gessen

Stalin, 2^nd vol., Stephen Kotkin

Red Famine by Anne Applebaum

Lenin by Victor Sebestyen

4 Books on Revolution

Arc of Utopia: The Beautiful Story of the Russian Revolution by Leslie Chamberlain

Lenin 2017: Remembering, Repeating, and Working Through by VI Lenin, Ed Slavojzizek

The Experiment: Georgia’s Forgotten Revolution 1918-1921 by Eric Lee

Crime and Punishment in the Russian Revolution: Mob Justice and Police in Petrograd by Tsuyoshi Hasegawa

(There are more lists of “great” books about Russia in the NYT Book Review for Oct. 22, but they are not new)

October 29

Fiction

Dunbar by Edward St. Aubyn

Thriller Roundup

Dead on Arrival by Matt Richtel

The Quantum Spy by David Ignatius

The Marriage Pact by Michelle Richmond

Shadow of the Lions: A Novel by Christopher Swann

Girl in Snow by Danya Kukafka

The Murders of Molly Southbourne by Tade Thompson

Other fiction

The Rules of Magic by Alice Hoffman

The Power by Naomi Alderman

Best True Crime Stories

Black Dahlia, Red Rose: The Crime, Corruption, and Cover-Up of America’s Greatest Unsolved Murder by Pia Eatwell

The Death of an Heir: Adolph Coors III and the Murder that Rocked an American Brewing Dynasty by Philip Jett

Death in the Air: The True Story of a Serial Killer, the Great London Smog, and the Strangling of a City by Kate Winkler Dawson

Ballad of the Anarchist Bandits: The Crime Spree that Gripped Belle Epoque Paris by John Merriman

The 57 Bus by Dashka Slater (for teens and parents)

From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death by Caitlin Doughty

Frankenstein: The First Two Hundred Years by Christopher Frayling

The Apparitionists by Peter Manseau

After the Eclipse by Sarah Perry

Ghost of the Innocent Man by Benjamin Rachlin

4 Suspense Novels

The Child Finder by Rene Denfeld

The Blind by AF Brady

Keep Her Safe by Sophie Hannah

The Second Sister by Claire Kendal

November 5, 2017

Nonfiction

The Impossible Presidency by Jeremi Suri

The Three Lives of James Madison by Noah Feldman

Democracy and Its Crisis by AC Grayling

I Hear She’s a Bitch by Jen Agg

Friends Divided by Gordon Wood (John Adams and Thomas Jefferson)

We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Schlesinger: The Imperial Historian by Richard Aldous

Oriana Fallaci: The Journalist, the Agitator, the Legend by Christina DeStefano translated by Marina Harss

Crime Fiction

Two Kinds of Truth by Michael Connelly

The Midnight Line by Lee Child

After the Fire by Henning Mankell

Fiction

All the Dirty Parts by Denise Handler

Smile by Roddy Doyle

11 New Recommended Books

The Power by Naomi Alderman

Sticky Fingers by Joe Hagan

Five Carat Soul by James McBride

The Apparitionists by Peter Manseau

Girl in Snow by Danya Kukafka

Dunbar by Edward St. Aubyn

Black Dahlia, Red Rose by Pia Eatwell

After the Eclipse by Sarah Perry

The Dark Net by Benjamin Parcy

Ghost of the Innocent Man: A True Story of Trial and Redemption by Benjamin Rachlin

Prince: A Private View by Afshen Shahidi

October 9

The Shattered Lens: A War Photographer’s 81 Days of Captivity in Syria – A Story of Survival by Jonathan Alperyrie with Stash Luczkiw (NF)

Tool of War by Paolo Bacigalupi

The Education of a Young Poet by David Biespiel (NF)

In the Distance by Herman Diaz (F)

The Rules of Magic by Alice Hoffman (F)

The Librarian of Auschwitz by Antonio Iturbe (YA-F)

The Apparitionists: A Tale of Phantoms, Fraud, Photography, and the Man Who Captured Lincoln’s Ghost by Peter Manseau (NF)

Jewish New York: The Remarkable Story of a City and a People by Deborah Dash Moore (NF)

A Working Woman by Elvira Navarro translated from Spanish by Christina MacSweeney (F)

The Secret Life: Three True Stories of the Digital Age by Andrew O’Hagan (NF)

Lost Kingdom: The Quest for Empire and the Making of the Russian Nation: From 1470 to the Present by Serhii Piokhy (NF)

Uncertain Glory by Joan Sales translated from the Catalan by Peter Bush (NF)

The Gourmand’s Way: Six Americans in Paris and the Birth of a New Gastronomy by Justin Spring (NF)

October 16

American Wolf: A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West by Nate Blakeslee (NF)

The Last Mrs. Parrish by Liv Constantine (Thriller)

Extreme Cities: The Perils and Promise of Urban Life in the Age of Climate Change by Ashley Dawson (NF)

The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister’s Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine by Lindsey Fitzharris (NF)

Righteous: An IQ Novel by Joe Ide (F)

Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson (NF)

Venom: The Secrets of Nature’s Deadliest Weapons by Ronald Jenner and Eivind Undheim (NF)

Where the Past Begins by Amy Tan (Memoir)

Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That’ll Improve and/or Ruin Everything by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith (NF)

Renoir: An Intimate Biography by Barbara Ehrlich White (NF)

October 23

The Thin Light of Freedom: Civil War and Emancipation in the Heart of America by Edward L Ayers (NF)

The Safe: A Novel by Christophe Boltanski translated from the French by Laura Marris (NF)

Verax: The True History of Whistleblowers, Mass Surveillance and Drone Warfare by Pratap Chatterjee and Khalil (NF)

Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts: Twelve Journeys into the Medieval World by Christopher de Hamel (NF)

American Radical: Inside the World of an Undercover Muslim FBI Agent by Tamer Einoury and Kevin Maurer (NF)

The Great Jazz and Pop Vocal Albums by Will Freidwald (NF)

Meant to Be by Julie Halpern (YA Fantasy adults might enjoy)

Literally Me by Julie Houts (F)

The River of Consciousness by Oliver Sacks (F)

Dying to Live: A Detective Kubu Mystery by Michael Stanley (F)

October 30

In the Midst of Winter by Isabel Allende (F)

The Meaning of Belief: Religion from an Atheists Point of View by Tim Crane (NF)

Murder in an English Village by Jessica Ellicott (F)

In Pursuit of Memory: The Fight Against Alzheimer’s by Joseph Jebelli (NF)

Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941 by Stephen Kotkin (NF)

After the Fire: A Novel by Henning Mankell (F)

Calder: The Conquest of Time by Jed Perl (NF)

November 6

They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us: Essays by Hanif Abdurraqib (“providing the reader with the sensation of seeing the world through fresh eyes”) (NF)

Mrs. Ormond: A Novel by John Banville (F)

Spineless: The Science of Jellyfish, and the Art of Growing a Backbone by Juli Berwald

Fool’s River (A Poke Rafferty Thriller) by Timothy Halliman (F)

Black Tudors: The Untold Story by Miranda Kaufman (NF)

Nobu: A Memoir by Nobu Matsuhisa (NF)

The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity and My Fight Against the Islamic State by Nadia Murad (NF)

Freya by Anthony Quinn (F)

Bonfire: A Novel by Krysten Ritter (Thriller) (F)

The Illiac Crest by Christina Rivera Garza translated from the Spanish by Sarah Booker (F)

The Buried Giant by Kasuo Ishiguro – Book

I almost didn’t read The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro because it sounded childish and so I put it on my list of books-to-read, but it was a ways down. Then Ishiguro won this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature and I moved the book to the top of my list. I discovered that this is no child’s book, although it is a fantasy that reads a bit like a fairy tale, but more in the old Grimm’s brother’s mode than in the newer spirit of the culturally appropriate versions we tell our children these days.

There is a giant buried under Briton but no one remembers it’s there because a mist or spell has made people forget their past almost as soon as they have lived it. The Saxons live in complexes of interconnected caves and we find Axl and Beatrice in a cave, a lonely cave, set at the very end of such a series of caves. As punishment, perhaps for being elderly, they are no longer allowed to have a candle to get them through the long, dark night. In a snatch of memory that comes and goes they remember that they have a son and they think they remember that he went south to a new village. Perhaps the mist is getting less dense and that is why these thoughts slip through.

Beatrice and Axl seem a lovely, devoted couple. They hold hands. Axl hugs her quite a lot. He addresses her as Princess (does it seem after a while to resemble the “yes dear” uttered by some modern husbands?) Beatrice and Axl have talked many times about leaving their village and going to their son. On this particular occasion they finally make their departure. Beatrice has a pain in her side that will not go away but she keeps up with her husband. On their journey they also hope to find out what causes this infernal mist on their minds. They decide to take a longer route in order to consult some wise people about Beatrice’s pain and as a result they meet some surprisingly interesting people, and they become part of some very significant events.

But memory is not always as sweet as we think it will be. Sometimes, perhaps what is buried should remain buried. The giant that has been buried is all of the animosity that survived the invasion of the Britons into the Saxon lands. And the mist makes sure that these things stay buried. How do Beatrice and Axl come to learn of this? How does their journey turn into a quest? The Britons had an enlightened leader. He tried to stop his men from raping and pillaging, but battles release chemicals that leave men wanting rewards for their victories and the toll on the Saxons is as terrible as the toll in any war when the victors help themselves to the “spoils” of war.

Are there parallels in this for our times? I see some in the Pandora’s Box of ancient hatreds that were harbored in the hearts of various cultural/religious groups in Iraq and kept in check only by a ruler who used threats and tortures to keep these groups from each other’s throats. I see this in our own country which has buried the victory of the anti-slavery forces in order to keep our nation whole, an act which allowed the losers to act like the victors for far too long at the expense of Americans of African Descent and our future unity. This has implications for those who like to say that the Holocaust never happened.

While forgetting may keep the peace for a while the costs of forgetting may be great and the repercussions different than could ever be imagined. Forget or remember – is either a good choice as long as there is hate and war and “the other”? Now I don’t know if these parallels were all intended by Ishiguro in his book The Buried Giant, or if you will interpret the tale in similar ways, but the story is following me around like a bit of a nag and asking me to think about it some more, and that is a good thing.

The Golden House by Salman Rushdie – Book

The author of The Golden House, Salman Rushdie, and I have lived through the same decades, but his life has been global and large; mine provincial and small. Mr. Rushdie was born in Mumbai, however his influences were both British and Indian. Everyone remembers that he lived in fear of his life as a Muslim under a fatwa because of his book, The Satanic Verses.

In The Golden House, Rushdie writes as a New Yorker. He tells a tale of a Mumbai family, hiding with new identities, under a mysterious veil of danger in New York City. Our narrator is a young American man raised by professorial and loving parents on the edges of the MacDougal-Sullivan Gardens. (They’re real, look it up.) The Golden family lives at the other end of the Gardens and these recent arrivals are endlessly fascinating to René, the son of Gabe and Darcy.

The Goldens were “reborn” when they left Mumbai to live in America with their adopted Roman names. The father claimed the name of Nero, with all its end-of-empire symbolism. His first son took the name Petronius, the second chose Lucius Apuleius (Apu) and the third became Dionysus or D. The names were perhaps a bad idea.

René had always wanted to be a film maker but his life seems too prosaic until it becomes entangled in the low key, but rather tragic, lives of this family with no mother and, seemingly, no past. This novel is, among other things, an homage to great movies/films – European, Hollywood, Bollywood. Salman Rushdie, bursting still with crackling intellectual energy pulls into his story references to the movies he has loved, the same movies we love, except for a few so highbrow they may never have been available in the hinterlands I have inhabited. These movies still live vividly in his prodigious memory and in the minds of many a film buff.

As the Golden family comes apart, because you really cannot escape the past, a politician known as the Joker, guess who, a clownish grafter, is running for the American Presidency. (The parallels between American Democracy and the fall of Rome are hardly subtle.) As we know the Joker wins the election.

This is a very readable novel, without the Muslim/Indian baseline which is foreign to most Americans and makes some Rushdie novels seem somewhat dense. The Golden House is a tour de force by a man who is comfortable in cultures around the globe and does not mind splashing around in his literary bona fides for our enjoyment. Eliot’s “Prufrock” and Shakespeare get cameos among the films – “I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.” Not yet, Mr. Rushdie, not yet.

Those of us who are shell-shocked with worry for American Democracy can find some comfort in the decision this British/Indian man made to put on his New York/American persona in order to help us through these chaotic days (and nights, and months, and years). What began as a comedy could easily become a classical tragedy. However, I think you will read this tragedy with a great big old smile on your face (at least some of the time).

Notes on a Foreign Country by Suzy Hansen – Book

Suzy Hansen won a writing fellowship in 2007 from Charles Crane, “a Russophile and scion of a plumbing-parts fortune,” and it allowed her to go abroad for 2 years. She went to Turkey, much to the dismay of her family and friends. This grant was rumored to have been reserved for spies but Suzy was in Turkey as a journalist. The book she wrote is called Notes on a Foreign Country: An American Abroad in a Post-American World. Hansen goes off to Turkey believing that America is the exceptional nation that it claims to be. She had been taught, as we all have, to feel a certain smugness about being American, brought up in a can-do nation where freedom reigns. But the people of Turkey had not been indoctrinated in the American version of American history. They experienced the Turkish version of American interaction and they were not as enamored of America as some of us, in all our innocence, tend to be.

America has had a sort of missionary zeal about spreading the wonders of our Democracy to nations it has deemed might be tending towards Communism. The period after WWII was all about a sort of contest between Russia and America to divide the world’s nations like so many spoils of war, much the way England and Spain, in all their pride, divided up the world (something the world did not necessarily know about or agree to). We tend to think of America as being different from those early imperialists, but what Hansen learned in Turkey, and then in Greece, and Afghanistan is that imperialism was still practiced by America, but in different forms.

America went on a tear after the Marshall Plan went into effect in the post-world war II years and aggressively wooed any nation that it thought might be susceptible to Communism. It offered “modernization” in the form of convincing nations to develop their resources and to welcome industry and business (Capitalism). It tempted citizens with luxury goods and pricey comforts. Before nations even realized what was happening they began to lose their individuality, their unique culture, even in some cases their language.

America tempted governments with weapons and military accessories like planes and ships and if they were reluctant America would even support political turmoil and install a new leader. All these meddlesome things were done in the arrogant belief that people wanted to live like everyone lived in America. If they even had to modify their Muslim faith to fit in these new tastes that it would turn out well for them (or for America anyway) in the end. According to Ms. Hansen, America, in its extreme hubris has wreaked havoc with cultures all over the world and we have a lot to answer for. She is not alone in this belief.

I was torn as I read this book. I have always respected the idea of democratic governance. I also knew that America had never, from its very beginnings, lived up to its creed. Our forefathers said that all men are created equal and they wrote it down for all to see, even though they kept slaves who were also human beings, and some of them even admitted that these slaves were human beings. The very fact that our Constitution was based on a lie may have doomed American democracy from its inception. That may be why we see ourselves in one rather glittery way and why others think that luster is quite tarnished.

I understand what Suzy’s European friends felt and I understand that they experienced America from a different perspective than we often do. I am rather ashamed of the America she describes in this nonfiction book based on her first-hand observations. Probably, although you may resist the message that Ms. Hansen brings us from our neighbors on this planet, you should still give this book your careful attention. She and her favorite author, James Baldwin, can help you readjust America’s halo.

I want America to face up to its flaws and do better. Although that seems quite impossible right now, I want America to eventually succeed in finding a balance between power and humility. If we cannot mend our ways in the world it is possible that the American culture, as many claim, will truly be in decline. I would hate to see the idealistic aims of our democracy disappear because we cannot contain our rapaciousness, which is often a sin that comes with power.

In the Epilogue Suzy Hansen talks about America after Trump:

“But I did believe that in at least one way Trump voters were little different from anyone else in the country. They, like all Americans, had been told a lie: that they were the best, that America was the best, that their very birthright was progress and prosperity and the envy and admiration of the world. I did not blame those voters for Trump’s election…I blamed the country for Trump’s election because it was a country built on the rhetoric and actions of American supremacy or ‘greatness,’ or ‘exceptionalism,’ … it had been built on the presupposition that America was and should be, the most powerful country on the planet.”

I have not given up on my country yet, despite all its flaws, although I have never been more tempted to become an American in exile, a lifestyle I cannot afford. It never hurts an individual to do some introspection and it never hurts a nation (made of individuals) to turn critical and honest eyes inward. Suzy Hansen’s book Notes on a Foreign Country was an emotional and an intellectual journey.