Extreme Food: What to Eat When Your Life Depends On It by Bear Grylls

Extreme Food: What to Eat When Your Life Depends On It by Bear Grylls
Copyright 2014
William Morrow - Nonfiction/Survival
272 pp., incl. index, picture credits and appendices

If you've seen Bear Grylls eating disgusting things on television, you probably have a decent idea what you're in for in Extreme Food but it's far more than worms, birds' eggs and snake meat (although, ugh, I've seen him cook all of those on TV and that egg and worm omelet . . . just, no).

Let me back up a bit. What I expected of Extreme Food was entirely different from what I got. Grylls talks about food, but he also mentions things you should carry in your backpack if you're going out in the woods, how to build a proper fire, how to make a container in which to do your cooking, which plants are best raw or cooked and what he considers the best way to cook them, how to build a number of different traps to catch edible animals, how to best approach an animal you want to hunt, various ways to kill animals and how to make the tools to do so (including a number of different methods of fishing), how to distinguish animal tracks, which animals to avoid entirely and which of the various hunting methods are typically illegal and should only be used if you are in a life or death situation.

That's a surprising amount of information crammed into such a small book. However, there's a down side. The chapter about fungi, for example, describes both edible and poisonous mushrooms. Unfortunately, Grylls says many are so difficult to tell apart that it's best to purchase a more comprehensive guide and study them. Not helpful on the fly. Nor are some of the illustrations all that clear; although, to be fair, some are quite good.

A few things I learned:

• An air rifle is "the only gun you're allowed to carry unlicensed in the UK [. . .] and the same goes for many other parts of the world too." Interesting from an American perspective. 
• The most important single tool you should carry is a good knife.
• There are a lot more ways to fish than I could have ever imagined.
• Death by alligator would seriously suck.
• I'm definitely more of a roots and nuts type of gal than the shoot-and-skin variety but I was much less horrified by the thought of capturing and cooking animals in a desperate situation than I expected.

One thing that hasn't changed:

• I'm still convinced I'll be the first to die if I'm ever in a group of people stranded in the wilderness. And, the others will eat me. But, it doesn't hurt to learn how to try not to die. 

The bottom line:  There's a lot of interesting information in Extreme Food and it's an enjoyable read, if occasionally a bit disgusting. But, it has its downfalls. If you're looking for a single survival manual to keep handy in the event of disaster (to tuck in your automobile trunk or keep handy if you're camping or hiking), this isn't the book I'd choose. I think you'd be better off reading a more comprehensive manual like that put out by the S.A.S. or the U. S. Army. Having said that, I think anyone who has a general interest in survival may come away from the reading having learned something, so I recommend it but it's definitely not my favorite of the survival guides I've read.

My apologies to anyone on my feed who has seen three versions of this post. I made a mistake in the first version, updated it, and then decided I needed to add a few more thoughts.

©2015 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery  or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert

The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert
Copyright 2015 (released January 6)
Picador - Nonfiction/History/Science
336 pp., including extensive bibliography

I read Elizabeth Kolbert's Field Notes from a Catastrophe in 2010 and didn't realize she'd published a new book till a former blogger friend mentioned it. I ordered it that day without bothering to read about it, but with a good idea about the gist, since Field Notes from a Catastrophe was about climate change.

The beginning of The Sixth Extinction was, I thought, a bit wobbly. A book about past mass extinctions as well as the one humans are currently creating, I expected the chapters to be tied into each other a little better. Instead, each of the first few chapters felt like entirely separate entities. It turned out there's a reason for that bumpy start. Apparently, those first few chapters (I don't know how many) were originally published as individual articles.

However, eventually Kolbert hit her stride and The Sixth Extinction began to feel like it had a purpose, leading up to but not overly strident about the concept that humans have not only altered the earth by driving the climate change that is likely to lead to a mass extinction in the ocean in about 35 years but also about how we've already been causing extinctions of flora and fauna for almost our entire existence. I found it startling, although I don't suppose I should. In today's world, you blink and another animal goes extinct or is added to the endangered list.

Still, the book was surprising in many ways. I've been reading about climate change for a long time and the science is solid but I've never read anything at all about ocean warming. This, it appears, is the concept that ought to induce panic. It's not the melting icecaps, which are causing rising oceans and killing off animals that require the icy regions' strength in order to survive, nor even the warming that's causing storms to grow stronger. Instead, it's the acidification of the water that is a fearful thing. Once it reaches a certain level . . . massive die-off, gloom, doom. Really, the potential loss of all that seafood alone ought to be enough to frighten us to action.

The only downfall to this book is that it can get a little too scientific, at times, at least for some of us. I'm not well-versed in biology; I don't know a family from a genus from a hole in the head, but the author liked using the Latin names of flora and fauna and occasionally went a little deeper into the science than I'd have liked. I can read between the lines but I felt a little stupid, I suppose.

Highly recommended. Another frankly terrifying but exceptional book by Elizabeth Kolbert, excellent as a follow-up to Field Notes from a Catastrophe, although not as in-your-face blunt and a little more technical. The few lines about the likelihood of life as we know it ending in the near future were uttered by scientists, not the author herself.

Side notes: I have an unfortunate tendency to read the comments below articles about things like climate change and I must admit that I don't understand how anyone can possibly fall for the concept that climate change is a hoax, a misconception that's especially prevalent in the U.S. The science backing up the fact that climate change is human-driven (and that we are actually in a cooling period, yet still managing to warm things up in a damaging way) is extensive and has been around for a lot longer than the political division over it (before the petroleum industry began heavily lobbying and buying off U.S. Congressmen, in other words).

Kolbert even talks about how long ago the first person discovered that we were causing climate change. 100 years, people. At one point, a Russian scientist recommended burning fossil fuels to deliberately change the climate, making more of Russia livable and screwing up life for North Americans. All Russia had to do was wait, though, as the dependence upon fossil fuels grew and we made the change without malice.

©2015 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery  or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

Find the Good by Heather Lende

The capacity for love in a human heart is not limited by its size. Rather than divide the heart's chambers into smaller rooms as the family grows, love multiplies them. 

~ p. 37

I believe gratitude comes from a place in your soul that knows the story could have ended differently, and often does, and I also know that gratitude is at the heart of finding the good in this world.

~ p. 62

Find the Good: Unexpected Life Lessons from a Small-Town Obituary Writer by Heather Lende appeared on my doorstep on Friday and since I loved the other two books Lende wrote, I sat down to read it the moment I opened the package. Don't you love that lovely lemon cover?

Find the Good follows the same pattern as Lende's other books, this time with a focus on seeking out the good things in life. Heather Lende has been an obituary writer in small-town Haines, Alaska for many years and most of her stories revolve around the people she writes about -- discovering the good things in their lives worth mentioning when she writes their obituaries and applying what she's learned about how they lived to her own life. She's so hyper-involved in her community that I always feel a little adrift when I close one of her books. I don't live in a place where "Outsiders" (as we're known) are particularly welcome. But, at the same time I feel inspired to keep trying to find my place.

The only two negatives about the book are the fact that it's so short (which is also a plus if you're just looking for a quick read about looking for the positive in life) and the fact that it's so heavily focused on people who died. I always end up wondering how it's possible that there's anyone left at all in Haines when I close one of Lende's books. But, as I said, I love her writing. She zones in on love, family, spirituality, living your days in the best way possible. She reminds me a bit of Anne Lamott.

Recommended - I laughed, I cried, I will read anything Heather Lende writes.

Other books by Lende (links to past blog posts):

If You Lived Here I'd Know Your Name 
Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs (page down for one-paragraph review)

Many thanks to Algonquin Books for sending me a copy of this little gem!

©2015 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery  or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo is a book I bought after reading Bybee's review.  I love this quirky little book about how to do a massive decluttering job and keep your home tidy. The author is Japanese so there are influences from her culture but it still applies well to my American home. The key concept is that you must get rid of everything that doesn't give you a "spark of joy" when you pick it up in your hands. If you keep only the things you love, you'll be happier. She advises going through items by type, rather than going from room to room or keeping only things you've used in the last two years -- two of the most common organizing methods.

I have some minor problems with her method. She says when you go through your clothing (clothing is first on the list of things to tackle) you should pull out absolutely every piece of clothing you own and touch each item to see if it gives you that spark of joy. If not, toss it or donate it. The problem is that even though we recently moved to a larger house, space is still at a premium and the sheer quantity of possessions we've amassed is just too much. I can do chunks but I can't do everything at once -- especially when it comes to books.

Fortunately, the concept is already helping. Although I may not be able to go through absolutely everything as a category at once because I've been that bad, the "spark of joy" is a concept that works for me. I doubt you'll ever hear me tell a piece of clothing thank you for the joy it gave me, but those eccentric touches to her style made the book doubly entertaining.

©2014 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery  or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

From the stacks - Spillover by Quammen, The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell

I just recently acquired Spillover by David Quammen and The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell (the former purchased after book buddies talked about it; the latter via Paperback Swap after a lengthy wait). Both are books I enjoyed for completely different reasons.

I bought Spillover after eavesdropping on a conversation between Jill of Rhapsody in Books and Michele of A Reader's Respite. Subtitled "Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic," the book is about diseases that cross the animal-human barrier, how scientists isolate such diseases, find the animals from which diseases spill over to humans and work backward to find reservoir animals (those who continue to carry the disease, with or without the disease infecting its hosts), why viruses are particularly scary, which are most likely to cause devastation if they aren't stopped quickly enough during an outbreak, how diseases have traveled and been contained in the past, etc.

At around 600 pages, Spillover goes pretty deep into the history and origins of quite a few terrifying illnesses, like Ebola, SARS, Marburg, and AIDS. My timing was interesting. As I began reading this book, my cousin (an epidemiologist who used to work for the CDC) was sharing articles about the latest Ebola outbreak in Western Africa. The outbreak had been going on for around 3 months without being contained and was not yet making the national news but the numbers (cases and deaths) were just beginning to outpace previous outbreaks. Now, of course, the disease has exploded; the latest outbreak is unprecedented in many ways and I think, if anything, we're probably not concerned enough, at least in the right ways. The panic about Americans being flown home under careful conditions was silly. It's the idea of someone infectious hopping a plane without realizing they're infectious that's of concern. [Update: I guess we'll see how that goes, since Ebola has arrived in the U.S. in an uncontained manner.]

I also learned that I've been misled into believing that deer are responsible for Lyme disease. They are not, and mass killings of deer have been proven not to lower incidents, but deer killings for reduction of Lyme disease are still occurring.

Spillover is both fascinating and terrifying. When you read it, you'll find yourself thinking you should always, always wear a medical-grade mask on airplanes, possibly gloves. You'll wash your hands more frequently and worry about the person coughing nearby. It's a bracing read. But, it's also an important one. I had no idea, for example, that the SARS outbreak of a few years ago really was a "pandemic", an epidemic that traveled around the world. It's so difficult to tell whether or not the news is blown out of proportion that I really thought it was no big deal. Fortunately, that particular pandemic was contained before it became as deadly as it could have but it is extremely easy to acquire and is a vicious killer with a high death rate. And, then there's AIDS, a slow-moving but long-lived pandemic that we have come nowhere close to conquering. David Quammen has since written a book entirely about the search for the reservoir of AIDS. Spillover was published in October of 2012 by W. W. Norton and Co.  My thanks to Jill and Michele for talking about it. I love a good, messy medical read and highly recommend it to those interested in medical history.

Also, if you're interested in following non-inflammatory news about Ebola and other emerging illnesses and outbreaks, CIDRAP is by far the best online site.

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell originally came to my attention via Les's review at Prairie Horizons. I added the book to my wish list at Paperback Swap and waited. It was a long wait. I just happened to receive my copy about a week or two before Trish of Love, Laughter, and a Touch of Insanity (link leads to Trish's post about The Sparrow) began talking about doing a Sparrow Read-along.

I'm snatching the description from Goodreads:

In 2019, humanity finally finds proof of extraterrestrial life when a listening post in Puerto Rico picks up exquisite singing from a planet which will come to be known as Rakhat. While United Nations diplomats endlessly debate a possible first contact mission, the Society of Jesus quietly organizes an eight-person scientific expedition of its own. What the Jesuits find is a world so beyond comprehension that it will lead them to question the meaning of being "human". Worlds like "provocative" and "compelling" will come to mind as you read this shocking novel about first contact with a race that creates music akin to both poetry and prayer. 

The book is written from two perspectives. It's not a spoiler to say that Emilio is the only survivor of the expedition. You know from the beginning that he has returned both physically and emotionally damaged. He's extremely ill, badly injured, traumatized and depressed. He's also unwilling to speak about what happened on Rakhat. Scenes from after Emilio's return are interspersed with those from the past, describing the discovery of the signal from Rakhat, the decision to launch an expedition, the personalities involved and what happened once they arrived. As Emilio heals, his story unfolds.

The Sparrow is an emotional, exhausting read. As I was reading I noticed that people used words like "gutted" to describe how they felt. One mentioned feeling shocked midway through the reading. I didn't feel a real emotional punch till near the end. Some of the deaths were unexpectedly violent and particularly gut-wrenching. Emilio's experience, though, was the part that moved me the most. You have a vague idea what happened to him but not the details, till near the end of the book. It was what happened to Emilio and how he ended up blaming himself that made me feel queasy with horror. But, I closed the book feeling satisfied and tired and ready to chatter about it. There's plenty to discuss, so it was a good book for a read-along and definitely one I'd recommend, particularly for book group discussion. I didn't love it. It sounds like I did but from a macro viewpoint it was not a favorite; it's a book with elements that I adored, some that I disliked. I was alternately engrossed and bored, inspired and wearied. I loved the characterization and the mode of transportation to Rakhat, more than anything. My thanks to Trish for the nudge. I probably would have just plunked The Sparrow on the shelf and waited till it called to me. I'm glad I read it with a group, instead.

©2014 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery  or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

More minis - Run, Don't Walk by A. Levine, The Color of Fire by A. Rinaldi, My Drunk Kitchen by Hannah Hart

In my continuing quest to catch up with myself, I give you a second round of mini reviews. One was sent by a friend, one unearthed during the library organization and one received from the publisher.

Run, Don't Walk by Adele Levine, P.T.  - published in May, Run, Don't Walk is the memoir of a physical therapist who worked at the former Walter Reed Army Medical Center, now closed and combined with a naval medical facility. 

As a therapist at Walter Reed, Levine worked with military amputees, helping them adjust to life without one or more limbs and learn how to live with prosthetics.

I've seen photos of famous people visiting soldiers at Walter Reed and the equipment is well described so I had no trouble visualizing the work amputees do to recover, but there were a few things that did surprise me, chiefly the fact that the amputees' therapy room was designed like a fishbowl, so that people could walk past and peer inside. Celebrities came through specifically for the photo-opportunities (although one, in particular, was admired for not arriving with photographers).

Run, Don't Walk is fascinating, educational and will definitely make you admire the determination, humor and courage of amputees and the people who work with them. It's not just about the author and her job, it's about the individuals and their struggles, how humor and friendship heal, the kindness shown by those in the world outside the hospital in unexpected ways and how Walter Reed has been abused by people who aren't really in need of therapy, as well.

Highly recommended - A well-written memoir that will touch your heart and soul. The copy I read was an ARC sent by a friend.

The Color of Fire by Ann Rinaldi is a book that I happened across while sorting books, over the weekend. I've read other books by Rinaldi (A Break with Charity is the only one I can recall, off the top of my head) and knew they're quick reads so I flopped down on the library floor, began to read The Color of Fire without bothering to read the description and found that the story was about a historical event I'd never heard of. 

The Color of Fire takes place in 1741 and begins with a series of fires. Phoebe is a house slave who knows she has an easy life. Her master and mistress are kind to her and the other slaves and servants. Cuffee also works for the Philipse family. But, when he's seen running from the scene of a fire clearly set by arsonists, he's arrested. Mr. Philipse stands up for him but when he's accused a second time, there's nothing Philipse can do to help. A mob mentality has taken over the town and they're out for blood.

Based on a true story, the tale of how frightened slaves --many of whom were innocent but caught in a chain in which the promise of release persuaded individuals to name other alleged conspirators -- led to nearly two dozen deaths by hanging and burning at the stake. 

Recommended - A horrifying fictionalized account of how group frenzy much like that of the Salem Witch Trials led to the death of both innocent and guilty without regard to evidence or facts.  The Color of Fire has received some scathing reviews at Goodreads and most common complaint seems to be a distaste for the ending. I liked the ending. While I thought the book was predictable, I actually felt a little more comfortable having a good idea how it would end, even if the real-life outcome was appalling and gruesome. 

My Drunk Kitchen by Hannah Hart is a book I received from Harper !t for review and I'll just confess up front that I'm sticking this one in last place to bury it a bit. 

Hannah Hart is a YouTube sensation who began her "My Drunk Kitchen" videos on a night when she was bored. She had moved to New York City and was missing her friends back in California. It's a fake cooking show and I had never seen it but I figured there would be something of interest in it. Maybe a simple recipe or two that you could cook while drinking heavily? I don't drink -- I'm just a disinterested cook, so the easier, the better.

Unfortunately, all I got out of this book was a bit of goofy wisdom that I didn't need. The photos are smashing; I definitely give the book kudos for gorgeous presentation. And, I laughed at the "fortune" in Hart's version of fortune cookies (fortunes stuffed into croissants). To see if I was missing some crucial factor that made My Drunk Kitchen funny instead of just -- with apologies to the author, this is just how I feel -- a pointless waste of lovely, high-quality paper, I looked up her YouTube videos. Sigh. Not for me. I'm just the wrong audience.

I am doubly baffled by the fact that John Green wrote the foreword and Neil Gaiman blurbed it, both very positively. I just don't get the humor in this book.

Not for me, but check out Hannah Hart's "My Drunk Kitchen" videos at YouTube. If you think she's entertaining, definitely grab a copy. It's getting terrific ratings and clearly I'm not the right audience. The photography is stunning and there are bits of useful wisdom, I suppose -- nothing new to a world-weary middle-aged woman, but My Drunk Kitchen is uplifting in an offbeat way. Also, my 22-year-old thought her suggestion to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, cut them into 9 squares and stick toothpicks in each square was a fabulous party suggestion! Umm . . . maybe we need some mother-son cooking lessons?

One odd note:  Hannah Hart has a tiny freckle on the tip of her nose that is visible in photos throughout the book but which was edited out of the cover photo. I found that mildly offensive. So she has a prominent (albeit faint) freckle? Leave it be. My opinion. Hart is very, very photogenic, freckle and all.

©2014 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery  or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

50 Children by Steven Pressman, The Accidental Caregiver by Gregor Collins and Children's Wartime Diaries, ed. by Laurel Holliday

I've decided to combine 50 Children and The Accidental Caregiver with Children's Wartime Diaries in one post because they have WWII as an element in common. 50 Children: One Ordinary American Couple's Extraordinary Rescue Mission into the Heart of Nazi Germany by Steven Pressman is about the rescue of 50 Jewish children from Vienna, Austria after the Anschluss (the peaceful but harrowing occupation of Austria by Nazis).  The Accidental Caregiver is a memoir about an actor who became one of several caregivers to an elderly Jewish woman who escaped Vienna, also after the Anschluss.  So, they have escape from the Nazis in common. The third book is mostly about children who were not so fortunate. Although they have the war in common, they're entirely different books.  I just thought it was very cool when I realized Maria Altmann, the elderly woman, was also a Viennese Jew, after reading 50 Children and then it occurred to me that this would be a perfect time to mention Children's Wartime Diaries. I love it when there's an unexpected tie between reads.

50 Children (an ARC received from HarperCollins) is one of the best-written and most surprisingly gripping books set during WWII that I've read in a while. 

Gil and Eleanor Kraus were living a fairly quiet life in Philadelphia, Gil as a lawyer involved in charitable organizations, his wife a socialite who adored their two children. When Gil was approached by the head of a Philadelphia Jewish organization with the request to head up an effort to rescue 50 children from Nazi Germany, he said "yes" without even giving it any thought. Eleanor was heavily involved as she had to persuade a number of people to divulge deeply personal information necessary for the affidavits needed to prove that there were people able and willing to care for the children when they arrived in the U.S.  

After the Anschluss, it became clear that children in Austria were at even greater risk so the origin changed but not the mission. 

Gil, being a lawyer, realized that the only way the rescue could possibly occur during a time when immigration was strictly limited would be to stick to the letter of the law. Consequently, there's a great deal about the red tape, the detailed paperwork and the people Eleanor and Gil Kraus had to deal with. So, I was a bit surprised that I never found 50 Children dull.  Instead, I really found it quite gripping and beautiful but a little sad -- sad because not every child who applied for a spot could be taken, sad because the heads of other Jewish organizations who had failed to do similar were envious enough to speak out against them, sad because you can't read about those left behind without knowing the fate of the majority. 

But, how beautiful the stories of the children themselves, told toward the end of the book, about how much fun they had during their summer together at a camp building and how lovely the reflections of the rescued children, now grown, still living.  And, how amazing that 3 Jewish adults (they were accompanied by a pediatrician, who actually fell in love in Berlin . . . that's a great story, as well) were willing to risk their own lives, going into Nazi-occupied nations to interview children and parents, dealing with paperwork and interviews to obtain visas, and then accompanying the children from Vienna to Berlin and onward to the U.S.

There is a photograph at the head of each chapter and my favorite is a photo of Gil Kraus reading to 4 of the children, with the following quote:

While the number 50 is but a small drop among the hundreds of thousands of lives yet to be saved, still in all each life is worth a world unto itself.  ~ Gil Kraus

Highly recommended - I get a little soppy just thinking about this book. It is a heroic tale, brilliantly researched and told in compelling narrative that makes the story feel quite tense, even though you clearly go into the reading knowing the outcome. 

The Accidental Caregiver: How I Met, Loved, and Lost Legendary Holocaust Refugee Maria Altmann by Gregor Collins is not merely about an escape from Austria, although Maria Altmann's escape story is told. Rather, it's about how Gregor, an actor, became one of Maria Altmann's caregivers, his time working with her, and his journey abroad after her death. 

When I was updating my progress reading The Accidental Caregiver -- a rare e-book purchase whose reading took me a few days because my iPad is crashing frequently -- I glanced across a few of the reviews at Goodreads and found that some people considered the author egotistical. I didn't feel that way at all, although there are moments that Maria humorously whips her head to the side to indicate that she wants to see Gregor's handsome profile.  Even when those moments happen, they're about Maria rather than the author.  At least, that's how I saw it.  

Maria Altmann was in her 90s when Gregor Collins became one of her caregivers.  She was quite a feisty, vigorous woman but during the 3 years Gregor worked for her she went into a sharp decline and passed away. The author had dated a number of shallow women who confused him; he wasn't even sure what he was looking for in a woman.  But he fell in love immediately with Maria's fearless, happy-go-lucky, sometimes raunchy and definitely life-affirming ways.  Sometimes Maria could be a bit shocking but it's the fact that Gregor and Maria both felt an immediate rapport that makes the book such a joy.  

Highly Recommended - I loved The Accidental Caregiver enough that I deliberately dragged out the reading a bit (aided by regular iPad crashes) and found both author and subject charming in their own ways. There are some misused words but I loved the light writing style and, no, I didn't feel like the author was uncomfortably self-centered. I gave it a 4.5/5 at Goodreads -- not much taken off for minor editing problems. The Accidental Caregiver is, after all, a memoir so it's not just about Maria Altmann but about the author's feelings about her as the author cared for her and then (briefly) his couch-surfing journey around Europe.  Loved it and wish I had the chance to know Maria. The book is currently being made into a film, which I hope will be widely released so I'll have the opportunity to see it.


Children's Wartime Diaries: Secret Writings from the Holocaust and WWII, ed. by Laurel Holliday, is a book I've meant to mention and which ties in to the other two books pretty well.  It's a set of diaries (some complete, others partial) written by children during the Holocaust.  I have the full versions of some of them on my shelves. 

I read Children's Wartime Diaries a couple months ago.  The surprising thing about the writings in Children's Wartime Diaries is that most of them (with only a couple exceptions) are every bit as well-written as Anne Frank's diary.  Some are even more jaw-dropping. Such skilled writing from children so young!  Many of the children died, their writings retrieved later by a friend or relative, so it's a heartbreaking read and the cruelty they experienced is . . . well, it leaves me speechless just to think about what some of them endured. Two diaries written by British youngsters lend a little levity to the book (those two are both on my shelves in complete form) although they do eventually begin to feel the full impact of war on their own home turf. 

Again, highly recommended - Surprisingly mature writing in most cases but definitely a rough read because of the horrors experienced by the children who wrote the entries in this book. I cried a lot while reading Children's Wartime Diaries but at the same time I was mesmerized by some of the writing. There were only a couple excerpts that were simplistic enough to feel as if they matched the age of the writers. If you were captivated by Anne Frank's diary, you really must try to find a copy of Children's Wartime Diaries.  I bought my copy secondhand and I'm pretty sure it's no longer in print, but there were plenty available. Prepare to have your heart broken if you do chase down a copy.


©2014 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery  or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

Savage Harvest by Carl Hoffman

Asmat was otherworldly. Compelling. A strange and fecund universe utterly removed from the grip of the world.  The jungle was thick, but the rivers were highways, and they kept it from feeling cloying, oppressive. It was a drowned Eden, full of birds and fish and freshwater and a giant sky that was always in motion. We passed villages you could smell before you got to them, smoke and laughing children's voices and canoes drawn up on muddy banks.  Dugouts lined with standing men paddled by, smoke rising from the coal in the stern.

~p. 52 of Savage Harvest (Advance Reader's Copy - some changes may have been made to the final print version)

Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller's Tragic Quest for Primitive Art by Carl Hoffman is about the author's investigation into how and why the 23-year-old child of one of America's wealthiest and best known families disappeared in the Asmat region of New Guinea in 1961.

The first two chapters read like a novel describing what the author believes happened to Michael Rockefeller, as it occurred, on the day in 1961 when he disappeared. You'll know soon enough if you open the book so I don't consider it a spoiler to tell you that Hoffman believes the young Rockefeller was killed and eaten by cannibals. If you're weak of stomach, you may want to skim the description of his death.

After those first two chapters, the author fast-forwards to 2012 and begins describing his journey to the Asmat region and how and why he went about seeking answers to the 50-year-old mystery.

I'd been thinking a lot about my obsession with what I'd called the primitive, the thing that had driven me to Asmat and Michael's story in the first place. Part of it was simple romance--the romance of the jungle and open fires, of drumming and spears and bows and arrows and dogs' teeth necklaces. But it was also the hope of seeing something, understanding something in my own life, a yearning [. . . ]

~fr. p. 256 of Savage Harvest, ARC

The book describes not only his journey into Asmat to seek answers and the journeys of Rockefeller himself, but also the people and the culture he encountered, the history of the region and its people, early interaction by missionaries and Dutch authorities with the Asmat people when they were still warring and cannabilistic, how and why the known facts about Michael Rockefeller's disappearance were hidden from the Rockefeller family, and detailed descriptions of the violent acts that led up to Michael's death.

Savage Harvest is a fascinating book and I found Carl's theory plausible, his research stellar. I also enjoyed learning about Asmat, a place I'd never even heard of.  The ARC unfortunately lacked any maps, as they often do, but I asked Carl if there would be maps in the finished print copy and he replied, "Yes -- both endpapers. Important!"

The maps are definitely critical. I used Google Earth as much as humanly possible but the portion of New Guinea described is not well covered so I'm going to be watching for a finished copy of Savage Harvest, even though I've already finished the book.  I'd like to get a better grip on the locations I just read about.

Highly Recommended with a note that there are some disturbing scenes. Excellent research, strong writing, convincing theory . . . I thought Savage Harvest was an exceptional and utterly absorbing read. There are bloody portions (the way cannibals dismembered a body is described in detail and the violence between villages is well described) and some creeping critter descriptions that made my skin crawl but surprisingly, they didn't bother me all that much, even though I'm prone to nightmares. I was so completely engrossed that the pages kept flying. The author goes to great lengths to understand a culture that's hard to even fathom, one in which the taboo of eating each other was not just about murder and revenge but about long-held spiritual beliefs.

Seriously. Captivating. Also, the book has plenty of photos so readers get a glimpse of Michael Rockefeller during his trips to Asmat, the native people and the primitive art Rockefeller spent his time buying for the Primitive Art exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Just don't read this book while you're eating. There are moments you might choke on your salad a bit if you do.

Many thanks to Carl for contacting me about reviewing Savage Harvest and to William Morrow for providing a copy.  I enjoyed The Lunatic Express and jumped at the chance to read his latest release. I can't wait to see what he comes up with, next.

©2014 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery  or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

A History of the World with Google Earth by Penny Worms, Ilust. by William Ings

I've mentioned A History of the World with Google Earth by Worms and Ings a couple times, as I read, because I was having such a blast playing with it.  I didn't actually realize there was so much I didn't understand about Google Earth, although there have been times one of the guys has leaned over me, click-click-clicked and expected me to somehow follow all that clicking. In other words, there were definitely some features I didn't know how to use.

A History of the World with Google Earth is meant for children but I would say it's great for a broader age range than just youngsters. As an adult who is finding the newer, sleeker programs sometimes incomprehensible (What was wrong with using icons with words attached to them? I miss that!) I appreciate being walked through how to use a program simply.  A History of the World with Google Earth does just that, telling you about the various icons and which to click to use specific features.  In a single day, I went from not knowing how on earth my husband managed to walk us through the streets of London -- to look for a shop where we stopped for pastries -- to knowing how to navigate from air or street view and jump into 360° photographs. 

Of course, since the book is directed at children, there are lots of fun activities to keep them busy as they take a jaunt around the world, collecting numbers to reveal a bonus surprise location, answering questions, solving puzzles. There are coordinates to lead you to each location in the book, descriptions of what you're looking at, the historical significance of each location and specific items to seek. There are hidden "geographical and historical misfits"(a bit like hunting for Waldo) and well-labeled illustrations help you visualize history in action.  The jaunt through Pompeii in the Roman Empire page spread was one of my favorites.  You should be able to click on this photo to enlarge it.

Here's a closer look at one of the spreads, which gives you a view of one of the historical misfits. Just below the info about Ancient Egypt, you can see a man with a camera standing on the wall:

When I mentioned how much I was enjoying the experience of traveling around the world using Google Earth by going to a few of the locations in A History of the World with Google Earth, each day, one of my friends said it sounded like a good book to go through as a fun summer project with her grandchild.  Absolutely!  It would be great for spring break or summer fun. Some children might need guidance and others will probably enjoy reading and navigating on their own -- it just depends on the individual's needs and skills.  I don't think there's anything wrong with an adult buying this book for his or her self, either. I've used children's books to help me get a start on understanding quite a few things, over the years, including children's history, craft books and even childrens' versions of Shakespeare's plays.  

Highly recommended - Loads of fun for kids and adults, a book that not only teaches how to use Google Earth and informs youngsters about history but also entertains with games, delightful illustrations and activities.  

Funny aside: When I received A History of the World with Google Earth in a box of unsolicited books from Sterling Kids, my initial thought was, "This one looks gimmicky." So, I thought it was pretty humorous to find out just how wrong I was when I sat down with the book and discovered that it was not just useful but loads of fun. Shows how easy it is to mess up when you judge a book by its cover.  What a delightful way to be proven wrong. 

©2014 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery  or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

BOLD: A Cookbook of Big Flavors by Susanna Hoffman and Victoria Wise

BOLD: A Cookbook of Big Flavors by Susanna Hoffman and Victoria Wise is not a book I've sat down to read from cover to cover, although it has some very interesting historical articles interspersed (I've read "Maple Syrup: America's Own Sugar"and "Cuban Americans: Hail to the Cubans", among others ) as well as a paragraph of introductory material at the top of each recipe. However, my husband has been reading the book at night and is enjoying it immensely, I've read bits and we have taken turns flipping through to find recipes.  Since he's the cook and I'm an OCD freak, preparing meals from BOLD has become our couple time.  I sit at the bar and read the recipes to my husband while he prepares (primarily to keep him from drowning yet another cookbook or getting it filthy).  We've tried 5 recipes, so far, and all were fabulous:

Salmon with Watercress Cream, Smoked Salmon and Almonds (pp. 220-21) - We were unable to locate watercress so the cook substituted dill (he's an experienced cook and knew it would work). We'll use watercress when it becomes available. We're watching for it.

Brussels Sprouts with Pancetta and Tangerine (p. 274) - We used clementines rather than tangerines because we already had a bowl full of them.  We ate the salmon above with the brussels sprouts.  I honestly thought it was one of the best meals I've ever eaten and the leftovers were just as terrific, even cold.  Since then, we've had both those recipes a second time.  Sorry, husband just flung them on the plate and I made the mistake of tasting the fish so this was shot in a hurry.  I was hungry.

Wine-braised Pork Tenderloin in Any-jam-you-can-grab Sauce (p. 130): We used raspberry jam and didn't have any white wine so cider served as the substitute.  I don't love pork so I had to eat my words after I scowled and said, "Ugh, that sounds awful." Again, tremendous flavor. This is a pretty complex, lengthy recipe so I would recommend saving it for the weekend.  The pork is at upper left, below.  It doesn't look like much but, oh baby . . . the taste.

Duck Legs Braised with Red Wine and Belgian Endives (p. 203): Another fairly time-consuming recipe. No substitutions were necessary. Duck is another meat that I'm not fond of; it's kind of greasy and gross, if you ask me.  You would not have known it.  I stripped that sucker to the bone.

Cuban Whitefish Chowder with Black Beans and Sweet Potato (p. 67): Chunky, gorgeous, wonderful soup.  It looks less like a chowder (which I think of as milk-based) than a soup (broth-based) but who cares.  It's delicious and gorgeous, definitely a soup worth serving at a dinner party. The one thing we thought this soup needed was more black beans, which are easy enough to add.  Husband soaked dry beans and cooked them rather than warming up canned.

We're going to keep on trying new recipes from BOLD.  While I think the recipes tend to require a medium amount of experience (judging from observation - after discussion, husband agreed it's not a book for beginners) and some are quite time-consuming, they're not lying when they use the words "big flavors". We have been extremely impressed with the results -- 5 recipes, so far, and we loved every single one.  How often does that happen?  And they tend to be really healthy recipes made from fresh ingredients, another plus.

The biggest section appears to be the meat section and the only vegetable recipe we've tried so far was the brussels sprouts recipe, which contains an Italian meat.  If you're a vegetarian/vegan, this might not be the book for you. But, I'm a veggie lover so we'll be trying a lot of the vegetable recipes and if anyone wants me to report back later, just let me know.  I'll be glad to write more, further down the line.

Highly Recommended - A rare cookbook in which every single recipe we've tried has been not just good but fabulous,  BOLD is definitely a new favorite in our house.  The only downfall -- BOLD is a paperback book with no photographs.  If we were flipping through BOLD at a store, the lack of photos might have actually stopped us from buying (my copy came from Workman via Shelf Awareness) but don't let the lack of photos stop you!  Just don't!  I cannot rave about this cookbook enough.  It's fun to read, the recipes are amazingly flavorful and they don't tend to contain long lists of difficult-to-acquire ingredients.

Judging from the piece of paper the cook has tucked between pages 224-25, it looks like we'll be trying Grilled Salmon with Spinach, Pan Broth and Crisp Ginger Topping, next.  I drool upon my keyboard at the thought.

©2014 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery  or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

Before I Die by Candy Chang

Still backtracking to catch up on October and November books.  Before I Die by Candy Chang is a small, coffee-table type book about the author's idea to create a wall covered with the unfinished sentence, "Before I die I want to ______," stenciled repeatedly to enable people to fill in their answers.

The first place a "Before I Die" wall was created was on the side of an abandoned house in New Orleans.  It took some special planning and permission and there were a few hang-ups, but eventually Chang managed to paint the wall. The reaction was surprising. People stopped to think, wrote their answers and talked to each other.  There were problems, of course -- chalk stolen, bad language that had to be cleaned off, walls that became so full they had to be hosed down to give even more people an opportunity to write on them.  But, that first wall was a successful, thought-provoking venture and soon similar walls went up in other cities and gradually the idea spread around the world.  

Before I Die tells about the walls, where they were built, the people who made them, and the sentiments written on the walls. There are photos of people writing on walls and the people involved, as well as some little boxes with quotes from the walls. 

I really enjoyed Before I Die, although there were two things I thought were mildly lacking. I would have liked to see larger, unblocked photos of the walls so that one could sit and read a wall without bodies marring the view (although it is definitely fun to see photos of people writing) and without straining the eyeballs.  Some of the photos are a bit hard to read. You can see some photos of the walls a bit better via a Google image search of Before I Die, though. The other thing I would have liked is to know more about the author's personal story.  I didn't quite understand what loss set the project in motion. I actually reread Chang's intro a couple of times, trying to figure that out, and came out of it thinking the author lost her mother.  I'm not entirely certain, though.

One thing I particularly loved about Before I Die was the fact that as I was reading I realized there were a lot of life wishes that other people wrote on those walls which I've already experienced. What a tremendously uplifting realization. Some of the sentiments are not bucket list wishes, though, but simple things. You can see a few of those in the photo above:  "Inspire someone," and "Hug my boyfriend," for example.

As I was reading Before I Die, I mentally categorized.  You can't help but notice a lot of repetition from one wall to the next and the author actually did some analysis/sorting of similar thoughts.  Math freaks get their charts and graphs!  Cool!  

Recommended - I don't own a coffee table (never have, actually) so I have no place to set out a coffee table book but I do think the book is thought-provoking enough that it would make a fun book to set out in the hope of stimulating conversation.

©2013 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery  or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

Things We Couldn't Say by Diet Eman with James Schaap

Things We Couldn't Say by Diet Eman
Copyright 1994
William B. Eerdman's Publishing Co. -  WWII Memoir
392 pp., incl. Postscript and photos

Source:  Personal Library, purchased for F2F discussion . . . which I had to miss due to a migraine.  Bummer.

What's it about?

Diet (pronounced DEET) Eman's story is about falling in love just before WWII and how she and her fiancé, Hein Siestma, helped start a branch of the Dutch Resistance when they agreed to hide 3 Jews by finding them homes with farmers in the countryside.  From the original 3, the number grew and exploded to the point that it was difficult for those in the Resistance to keep up with the needs of the hidden.

What I liked about Things We Couldn't Say:

Let's just stop right at the word "liked" and back up.  I was astounded by the bravery of Diet and her fellow resistance workers.  "Like" doesn't even begin to cover my feelings.  I think Things We Couldn't Say is one of the best WWII books I've read in my life.  It is also one of the most harrowing.   There were many, many times I discovered that I'd been holding my breath during scenes of danger.  How anyone summoned the courage to take the risks Diet and the other Resistance members did (transporting people by train in full view, finding places to hide them, carrying forged ration cards and other documents) is truly beyond me.

The most amazing thing about Diet Eman's story:  Diet and many of the Resistance workers were imprisoned and some died but not a single Jew that they hid perished.  Not one.  Wait, no, that's not the most amazing thing!  The real jaw-dropper was the fact that after being imprisoned, in spite of having lived through horrendous conditions and being faced with torture or death, when she was released Diet went right back to work in the Resistance.

What I disliked:

Nothing.  I am shocked that this book hasn't been made into a movie.  It's one of the most heart-pounding, mind-blowing WWII books I've ever read.

When the war ended, I felt like I'd lived through it with Diet.  I had tears of relief streaming down my face.  While I don't think Things We Couldn't Say is as beautifully written as The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom, that's actually a good thing.  Because of the way it's written, you can almost hear Diet's accent.  Incidentally, she was held in the same prison as Corrie ten Boom and her sister Betsy, for a time.  Diet and Hein were also Christians and there's a lot of talk about and to God in the letters and diary entries within the pages of Things We Couldn't Say. But in their case Christianity was a guiding light, a comfort and the compelling reason for their continued work.  Their mission was not to spread Christianity but to put its principles to work. There were times Diet was so exhausted she felt as if she couldn't go on, succumbed to exhaustion or felt her faith floundering, but she continued to do everything within her power to provide for those in need till the end of the war.

There were at least two times Diet received warnings that sent chills down my spine.  In one case, she actually heard a voice telling her she'd better get a good look at the man she was with. Although she refused to give in to what she knew in her heart was true, it was the last time she saw that man alive.

The bottom line:

Highly, highly Recommended - There aren't enough glowing words to describe Things We Couldn't Say.  I found myself thinking, "If everyone in the U.S. read this book, the whining would go away . . . at least for a while."  It's difficult to fathom the hardship, the terror, the hunger and cold and cruelty people experienced during WWII but as I read . . . I was there.  I was simultaneously terrified for Diet and staggered by her courage and intelligence.

Interesting/scary fact:

When Diet wrote the book she said, in spite of ample photographic evidence and first-hand accounts, 22% of Americans didn't believe the Holocaust even happened.  That was almost 20 years ago.  Now, we see denial of horrifying events practically the moment they show up on the news, which only makes Diet's story more important than ever, in my humble opinion.

Will post a week in review on Saturday:

Apologies for the onslaught.  I need to go ahead and write while I'm in the mood and I decided to just go ahead and post three reviews on the same day so that I can add the links to my Books Read in 2013 list.  It's just easier.  I need easy, this week.

©2013 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery  or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

Pain, Parties, Work by Elizabeth Winder

Pain, Parties, Work: Sylvia Plath in New York, Summer 1953
by Elizabeth Winder
Copyright 2013
Harper - Nonfiction/Biography
262 pp.

Source:  ARC for review from HarperCollins

What's it about?

Pain, Parties, Work is about Sylvia Plath's month in New York, working as a "junior editor" at Mademoiselle magazine.  The author's objective is to attempt to "undo the cliché of Plath as the demon-plagued artist".  

What I liked about Pain, Parties, Work:

I haven't read anything at all by Sylvia Plath and I was curious about her, what she was like during her younger years, before she became depressed enough to take her own life.  In Pain, Parties, Work, I thought author Elizabeth Winder did an excellent job of describing the Sylvia that people who lived and worked with her knew during one stifling month living at the Barbizon Hotel in New York City (a place for women only, with tiny rooms and curfews) -- the clothes she wore, her daily activities, the men she dated, the authors she admired, her writing, her brief but memorable friendships. The author talks about Sylvia's love for the beach and tanning . . . her happy place, I guess you'd say . . . and how missing out on her usual summer beach time may have impacted her emotions. 

I think the author did an excellent job of describing Sylvia as a charming, brilliant, fashion-crazy artist and a flirtatious, happy young woman. The book contains plenty of recollections from people who were there during her month at Mademoiselle, the occasional quote from Sylvia's journals and a nice variety of photographs.  I found Pain, Parties, Work fascinating and very difficult to put down.

What I disliked:

I have mixed feelings about whether the author succeeded at unraveling the tortured artist cliché, simply because the end result was a breakdown that led to the horrors of electrical shock and insulin shock treatment, as well as Sylvia's first suicide attempt.  In the end, the book reveals that in spite of being a captivating and stunningly sharp individual, some very serious issues were brewing beneath young Sylvia's dazzling, visible personality.  From the cover blurb on the ARC of Pain, Parties, Work:

Winder traces the arc of Plath's month at Mademoiselle, showing how Manhattan's alien atmosphere unleashed an anxiety that would stay with her for the rest of her life.

There were broad hints, as that quote indicates, that Sylvia was already unbalanced.  I found it of particular concern that she was physically attacked more than once (not successfully -- she fought off predators well), yet she went out a second time with one of her attackers.

Recommendation:

Recommended particularly to readers who are curious about Sylvia Plath or enjoy biographies.  A surprisingly entertaining account that I found difficult to put down, Pain, Parties, Work has piqued my interest in Plath's writing and I hope to read some of her poetry and The Bell Jar, soon.  Yes, it does end on a sad note and I'm not entirely certain the author's goal was met.  But, Elizabeth Winder did an excellent job of gathering information, including personal accounts and photos, that formed a vivid image of Sylvia Plath as a sparkling young woman with a promising future. Pain, Parties, Work is yet another reminder of how poorly mental illness was treated, not so long ago, as Zelda Fitzgerald's story was in Z.

Since I skipped Fiona Friday, last week, a gratuitous cat photo:

That's all for now!  Happy Wednesday!


©2013 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery  or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

The Pope's Last Crusade by Peter Eisner

The Pope's Last Crusade:  How an American Jesuit Helped Pope Pius XI's Campaign to Stop Hitler by Peter Eisner
Copyright 2013
William Morrow (an imprint of HarperCollins) - History/WWII
292 pp., incl. notes, encyclical text, bibliography, photos and index

[Pope Pius XI] sought a verbal offensive with a major statement that would attack the underpinnings of the Nazi machine.  Pius appeared to have found the vehicle; he had received a copy of a book, Interracial Justice, written by an American Jesuit named John LaFarge.  The book portrayed the lives of American blacks who lived in the poorest strata of society.  It said the church had to establish itself as a moral force in combatting racism in the United States.  The pope did not know LaFarge was in Europe and en route to Rome.  [...]

This was the moment to strike.  In March 1937, the pope had last issued an encyclical--the highest statement the head of the Vatican can make--condemning Nazism.  But he felt compelled to do so again, this time with the words of an American Jesuit who understood the insanity of race.  This time his encyclical would be broadcast throughout the globe, and it would answer the maniacal quest for conquest with basic truths.

--p. 51, The Pope's Last Crusade

LaFarge was to write an encyclical that would use the same reasoning he employed when discussing racism in the United States.  He needed to convey that Hitler's increasing assault on the Jews was based on a myth.  The myth and the barbarity and inhumanity being unleashed in Europe must be challenged.

--p. 60

The "myth" is that of the belief in a superior race.

"Religion, by teaching man his relationship to God, gives the individual a sense of his own dignity and teaches him to respect himself by respecting his neighbors."

--from Franklin Roosevelt's State of the Union Message on January 4, 1939, as quoted on pp. 163-64 of The Pope's Last Crusade.

This review may contain spoilers.  You have been warned!!

Casual review, again.  The basic structure:  Rich American boy becomes priest, is posted in a part of the U.S. with poor blacks, becomes an activist against racism, writes a book and is sent to Europe.  One of the worst racist slaughters in the history of the world is about to occur, so the pope writes an "encyclical" (a papal statement).  Things get worse, the Nazis begin closing shops and shuttling Jews to ghettos and camps, the pope decides to write more, Hitler invades Austria.  The pope is old and very ill, having already recovered from near-death cardiac trouble.  He reads Rich-American-turned-Jesuit-priest's anti-racist book and hears its author is nearby, requests an audience, asks him to write the encyclical and bring it back in person. Priest LaFarge gathers helpers, retreats to write and Hitler is handed Sudetenland on a platter, then . . . well, that would be telling.

The Pope's Last Crusade is fascinating but pretty depressing because the fact of the matter is that it took decades for the unpublished encyclical to surface (not fully intact) and it is now believed that had it been published, the wholesale slaughter we know as the Holocaust might have been a lesser thing -- dramatically so -- because of the sheer quantity of Catholics Hitler would have been up against.

The book also talks quite a bit about President Roosevelt's part in trying to avert war, the viewpoints of the American ambassador to Italy and his wife (mostly the wife, Caroline Drayton Phillips, who was an avid diarist), and Roosevelt's inside connection to Pope Pius XI.

But, you have to read the book to understand what happened, why the encyclical was never published, and why John LaFarge didn't even speak of his part in the writing of this important work for decades.

The Bottom Line:

Recommended - Reads like an unfolding mystery. The story itself is a bit of a let-down but by that I mean the denouement of the actual events, not the writer's portrayal of them.  I enjoyed reading The Pope's Last Crusade and found it fascinating.  It's just so, so sad.  Pope Pius XI was really an admirable, forthright, fearless man who was willing to speak up in the face of potential danger to himself and even at risk of others in the Catholic church, for the sake of righting a wrong.  It's a coulda-shoulda-woulda book.  But, it's also a fascinating story and an interesting peek into the life of a pope, as well as a pretty clear portrayal of the Catholic church's sweeping power and the pope's ability to sway events.

It was really quite fun reading The Pope's Last Crusade as a new pope was being chosen. The book expanded my understanding of why the right choice of head of the Catholic church is so crucial (I'm not Catholic) and also gave me a pretty good view of why the choice of a pope from Argentina is such a shocker -- in a good way, I hope.

Side note: There are a few too many editing errors in The Pope's Last Crusade, like a sentence containing the place name "Place de Concorde" rather than the correct "Place de la Concorde" -- small errors but more than I consider acceptable.  I hope if there's a second printing those errors will be edited out.

Your daily reminder to stop and smell the roses whatever flower is available:

©2013 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery  or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.