The Best of 2013

As best I can figure, I read 64 books this year, all but a couple of them cover-to-cover. Using the same 15% rule that I used in 2012 and 2011, I should select the 9.6 best books - so the following, in the order I initially read them, are my top 10 reads from 2013. I should note that a few themes jump out as me as I look over my list: disease (typhoid, tuberculosis, yellow fever, and zoonotic) and war (the Civil War, the Lincoln County War, World War I, World War II ) chief among them. So perhaps next year I ought to strive for a more cheerful selection. In any event, happy reading!

Good Book
(reviewed January 4, 2013)
David Plotz's hilarious take on the Old Testament. There is also an element of the serious, as well, when Plotz summarizes Judges 11:  Do you not hold what Chemosh your God gives you to possess? So we will hold on to everything that the Lord our God has given us to possess." As Plotz concludes, "And there, my friends, you have practically the entire history of Israel, of the Middle East, and of planet Earth, in two short sentences."

The Guns of August
(reviewed January 10, 2013)
 Barbara Tuchman's tome on the opening days of World War I is mesmerizing, masterful, and mighty depressing. The crux of the book is the many failures - diplomatic and military - that ultimately led to four years of unrelenting bloodshed across Europe, and eventually the world. I have read more World War I books than I can remember and only The Beauty and the Sorrow comes close to matching The Guns of August.

After Appomattox: How the South Won the War
(reviewed February 7, 2013)
Stetson Kennedy believes you should reconsider what you probably think that you know about the end of the American Civil War: North wins, South loses, and the rest is just details. Andrew Johnson, in one of his finer moments (of which there were to be enough for Congress to impeach him), sent a messenger south to inform the generals stationed there that the president was "for a white man's government, and in favor of free white citizens controlling the country" (p. 45). Using a decade of such incidents as his foundation, Kennedy builds and supports the argument that the end result was as though Grant had surrendered to Lee at Appomattox and not the other way around.

The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914
(reviewed February 19, 2013)
David McCullough has clearly done an almost-unfathomable amount of research - on the Suez Canal, the history of Panama, early engineering and railroading technologies and techniques and American imperialism (add Panama to the list of places Teddy Roosevelt took by storm), to name a few of the areas he visits in great, but highly readable detail. Path is 600 pages of everything you ever wanted to know about the Panama Canal and many things you never knew you wanted to know.

A Man in Uniform
(reviewed March 10, 2013)
Kate Taylor's little mystery centered around the Dreyfus Affair was one of the first, and best, fiction books I read this year. The idea is a mysterious woman comes to a relatively small-time lawyer whose family has extensive military connections, pleads that Dreyfus is innocent and charges him with not only gaining an appeal for Dreyfus, but with finding the real spy. It has the makings of a great mystery wrapped in the packaging of 20th century Paris.

Turn Right at Machu Picchu: Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time
(reviewed July 21, 2013)
Mark Adams visits Machu Picchu the way the Incas did. On foot. No facilities. Serious off-the-beaten path adventuring. And then he weaves his own adventure together with that of the "discovery" of Machu Picchu by Hiram Bingham III and with the colonization of Peru by the Spanish some 500 years ago. Taken together, this could be a circuitous, hard-to-follow read, but it's remarkably well done, humorous, insightful, and informative. All told, Turn Right at Machu Picchu is some of the best travel writing I've ever read.

The House at Tyneford
(reviewed July 30, 2013)
Natasha Solomons probably could not have created a more tragedy-laced, heartstrings-tugging, tear-inducing story if she had tried to. "Please treat the church and houses with care; we have given up our homes where many of us have lived for generations to help win the war to keep men free. We shall return one day and thank you for treating the village kindly." - notice pinned to the door of Tyneford Church by departing villagers. In her author's note, Solomons informs the reader that Tyneford is based on Tyneham, which was requisitioned by the British army in 1943 and to which not a single resident was ever allowed to return.

Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic
(reviewed August 24, 2013)
David Quammen is my favorite author. In Spillover, Quammen has set out to understand the origins of any number of diseases that transfer from animals to people. He provides a detailed examination of some of the better known ones - such as AIDS, ebola, and yellow fever - as well as ones I certainly had never heard of: Nipah, Hendra, and Marburg virus to name a few. In the process, Quammen criss-crosses the planet, from Bangladesh and the Congo to Washington, DC, and the Outback, speaking with molecular biologists, immunologists, epidemiologists and the like, rendering their science-speak into understandable, and highly readable, prose. I've said it before and I'll say it again: this is who I want to be when I grow up.

Somerset
(reviewed September 17, 2013)

Leila Meacham's prequel to Roses was probably my favorite fiction read this year. Somerset is the meandering story of the generations of Warwicks, Tolivers, and DuMonts, who form the backbone of both books, as they make their way from the antebellum south to the untamed lands of Texas. The star of the story is Jessica Wyndham, a girl-woman of, some might say, misplaced passions who is at the heart of all that follows. This is storytelling as it was meant to be, it turns gently unfolding and  soaring and always difficult to put down.

Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman
(reviewed November 17, 2013)
Robert K. Massie has created a meticulously researched and engagingly written portrait of Russia's last female ruler. Of all the biographies I read this year - Lady Almina, Countess of Carnarvon; Hetty Green; and Gertrude Bell to name a few - that of Catherine the Great was certainly the most complete, most thorough, and largely because of the subject, the most interesting. After all, the reign of Catherine the Great was notable for its length as well as all she accomplished - partition of Poland and victories in the Crimean, for example. Not bad for someone who entered the world as a minor German princess, may or may not have murdered her husband, and had, ahem, no legitimate claim to the Russian throne.

The President Is a Sick Man: Wherein the Supposedly Virtuous Grover Cleveland Survives a Secret Surgery at Sea and Vilifies the Courageous Newspaperman Who Dared Expose the Truth

The President is a Sick Man by Matthew Algeo has been on my reading list since early summer - I finally had a chance to read it over the Christmas holidays and am happy to report that I much enjoyed it. The extent of my knowledge about Grover Cleveland prior to reading this book was that he is the only man to be elected to the office of president twice, in non-consecutive terms. I was unaware that he was renowned for his honesty to such an extent that he was known for having once said, "tell the truth," which struck the citizenry as completely remarkable. (And says something about how little we have progressed in the last century, as least as regards the trustworthiness of our politicians.)

So, here's the deal: Grover Cleveland discovers a rough spot on the roof of his mouth. Ultimately, it needs to be removed, but at the height of the then-worst depression in the country's history, all parties are concerned that news of the president's health crisis may accelerate the tailspin. Thus, the operation must be top secret, especially as the doctors believe Cleveland to have a cancer of the mouth (this at a time when the word "cancer" is rarely uttered aloud - for more on that, check out The Emperor of All Maladies). Also the public is especially spooked by cancer of the mouth, as that is the form of the disease to which General-cum-President Grant has recently succumbed.

At just over 225 pages, this is a quick read about an almost unknown episode in the presidency of a little remembered president. It is also a book that will cause most readers to consider not only how medicine has changed (which is obvious), but how our thinking about medicine and illness has changed - as well as how the expectation of privacy, particularly for public figures, such as the president - has been reshaped by this thinking and by technology. There are probably few readers out there who will want to add The President is a Sick Man to their "must read" list, but those who do read it should come away with a better sense of President Cleveland, and perhaps even of the Gilded Age.

The Last Gunfight: The Real Story of the Shootout at the O.K. Corral - And How It Changed the American West

I didn't know much about Wyatt Earp or the O.K. Corral before I picked up Jeff Guinn's Last Gunfight at the Minneapolis airport a few weeks ago - I certainly didn't know that the gunfight wasn't actually at the O.K. Corall, nor that "cowboy" was a slur used to denote the lowest of the low in frontier society - cattle rustlers, stage robbers, and and murderers among them. I also can't claim to have any great interest in Earp and Company - I had just finished reading about Billy the Kid, though, and learned so much about the West that, especially for $2, I decided Last Gunfight was worth a shot.

Indeed, Guinn paints an equally beguiling portrait of an untamed, unrepentant West where, he tells us, if gunfights where not common, the possibility of them always loomed; men, and not a few women, were armed as a matter of course, whiskey flowed, tempers flared, and Guinn seems to have found a record of the shooting skills - real or perceived - of nearly every man in Cochise County circa 1880. Arizona Territory was just that, a territory rather than a state, the Apaches raided somewhat at will, and the railroad had not yet reached the small towns that cropped up around every silver strike. In such a place it was easy for someone who had run afoul of the law in one place - public brawling, petty theft, breaking jail, running prostitutes, you know, typical frontier transgressions - to be the law in another place. Such was the case for Wyatt Earp who, once he mended his ways, began a lifelong obsession with wearing a badge. (This despite a deep and abiding friendship with the "tubercular dentist," Doc Holliday.")

In many ways, the gunfight itself is the least interesting part of Last Gunfight. Far more interesting are the passages about frontier law and courts, the role in Wells Fargo in mounting posses and paying bounties, and politicking in the territories. Still, this is a book for those seriously interested in the West or in the more obscure corners of American history.

Chain of Thunder: A Novel of the Siege of Vicksburg

I almost gave up on this book. It's the sequel, essentially, to Blaze of Glory, and if you read that review, you know I raved about Jeff Shaara and also, if you've read many other reviews, you know that I love historical fiction and am especially drawn to work (fiction and non-fiction) about the Civil War. Nevertheless, I nearly added Chain of Thunder to my "did not finish" list. Had I done so, it would have been a shame, as I was at least half-way through when I was seriously considering quitting, and this is a book whose second half is much stronger than the first half.

The first half is about soldiers slogging through the mud. The food is terrible, the water is such that said soldiers can rarely see through it, the marches are long (and in Mississippi, hot), and the life of a soldier is a hell unto itself, and that's when the enemy isn't trying to pump him full of lead. Which he usually is. And to be completely honest, I was not interested in 490 pages on the tedium of being a soldier or the politics of generals, for that matter. I was drawn to Chain of Thunder in no small part because Shaara mentioned in the opening pages that, for the first time, he was incorporating the viewpoint of civilians. As such, Miss Lucy Spence, a spunky 19-year-old Vicksburg girl was one of the key voices of the story. Only, for the most part, she's absent from the first 200+ pages of the book. I imagine this is because, until the Federals lay siege to the city, there's not much for her to say or do.

Once they do lay siege she, like virtually all other Vicksburg civilians, moves into a cave that's been hand-dug into the side of a cliff, subsists on rat and mule - when there's food at all - and eventually works as a nurse tending the wounded and dying soldiers who are quickly turning against their commanding general, John Pemberton. (That the Pennsylvanian-turned-Southerner known derisively as "Old Pem" formally surrenders the city on the 4th of July is more than the citizens and soldiers alike can swallow.) Lucy's story, which is simultaneously unbelievably horrifying and inspiring, is really the glue that holds Chain of Thunder together. The rest of the book, to be honest, is old hat. Sherman and Grant smoke cigars and spend a lot of time atop horses. The Confederate generals receive conflicting orders from their command structures. There's a lot of mud and musket balls and misery. I believe this would have been a stronger book had Shaara lessened the emphasis on the conflicts leading up to Vicksburg and begun with the siege itself.

That weakness aside, this is well-written, compelling reading for those inclined to focus on the strengths: not only Lucy Spence's story, but the anecdotes that reveal the face of war in the age of the telegraph - when the wires weren't cut. Grant learns of Stonewall Jackson's Chancellorsville death from a Mississippi train engineer. Pemberton cannot write Johnston for a shortage of writing paper. We're a long, long way from the Marshall Plan. Or drones.

Perhaps the most telling detail, though, comes in the afterward, when Shaara informs the reader matter-of-factually that Independence Day was not celebrated in Vicksburg again until 1945. The baby born in the midst of the siege would have been 82 years old.

Alice, Let's Eat: Further Adventures of a Happy Eater

A few months ago, one of my friends posted a great review of Alice, Let's Eat. I wasn't familiar with Calvin Trillin, but her "bottom line" was that the book was hilarious, as she had come to expect from Trillin.

Alice, Let's Eat is a memoir in which Trillin recounts many of the great meals and delicacies he has enjoyed over the years, mostly (but not always) in the company of his dear wife, Alice. As many of the meals and regional delicacies he recounts are tied closely to one corner of this world or another, Alice, Let's Eat is a bit of a travelogue as well as food log. I like to travel. I like good food. And I especially like to eat good food when I travel (it's quite possible that the best meal I've ever eaten was at the Blue Pig Tavern in Cape May, New Jersey...unless it was at 82 Queen in Charleston, South Carolina...or, well you get the idea). Frankly, I thought I'd be hard-pressed to find more appropriate Thanksgiving reading than Alice, Let's Eat - which I kept thinking of as "Let's Eat, Alice," not to be confused with "Let's Eat Alice," a very Eats, Shoots & Leaves mistake, but I digress.

In any case, I found Alice, Let's Eat to be amusing, if not hilarious. It took until the end of one chapter for me to realize that, yes, country ham was evidently a real dish, that it did come was remnants of mother earth still clinging to the meat, and yes, Alice is obviously a much more adventurous cook - and eater - than I. And if I hadn't already figured that out, it would have been hard to miss when she attended a church picnic where the fixings included healthy helpings of beaver, coon, and bear chops.

This is a quick, fun read for anyone who likes food, travel, memoirs, or some combination thereof. Strict vegetarians may be appalled by the quantity of meat consumed within these pages; everyone else is more likely to mesmerized.

Blaze of Glory: A Novel of the Battle of Shiloh

Years ago, I read  - and loved - Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels about the Battle of Gettysburg, follow up by Jeff Shaara's Gods and Generals and The Last Full Measures (the bookends to the father-son trilogy as J. Shaara refers to them in the introduction to Blaze of Glory). More recently, I read Gone for Soldiers, about the war with Mexico and the ways that it shaped nearly every Civil War general of consequence, North and South. And, as I said in my review of the latter book, no one writes war like Jeff Shaara (except his father, Michael, now deceased). In any case, I like Jeff Shaara's style, his body of work, and his topic area.

Nevertheless, Blaze of Glory was not quite all I hoped it might be. Part of that, certainly, is no fault of the author: Albert Sidney Johnston (whose death was the defining moment of Shiloh, if not the entire Civil War) and James Seeley are no R.E. Lee or "Stonewall" Jackson - they are not the gripping characters whose history has become part of the national conscience, references to whom any educated person might be expected to recognize without too much trouble. Shaara includes narratives from the perspective of a Wisconsin private, Fritz Bauer, as well, and to good effect. Fritz (whose parents are German immigrants but who has been nicknamed "Dutchie" by the more Euro-challenged members of his regiment) is a likeable soldier, and his angle as a foot soldier rather than a general is a nice addition. He is, however, deeply memorable the way Joshua Chamberlain or Ulysses Grant or even Nathan Bedford Forrest is memorable, though.

More than the characters, the pacing felt uneven. Many chapters were gripping - not least when Sherman (he of the infamous March to the Sea) realizes his camps have been completely taken by surprise after telling his pickets time and again that they are imagining the sights and sounds before them. In other places, the story seems to plod, Shaara taking as long to tell some part of the battle as it might have taken to fight it.

At the end of the day, this is a fine  read, but is best suited to those with a deep interest in the war in the West, as the battles beyond the Appalachians were known, or an absolutely unquenchable thirst for material on the Civil War.

The Cartographer of No Man's Land

The Cartographer of No Man's Land is another World War I story, so read no further if you're tired of the Great War. Canadian Angus MacGrath enlists after his brother-in-law is reported MIA; their bond is such that he is determined to find his BIL, regardless of the fact that there's a war on. Angus is told he'll be a cartographer in London, but naturally ends up on the front lines (all the better for searching for a missing soldier, no doubt). The book, P. S. Duffy's debut novel, alternates viewpoints between Angus in France and his son, Simon Peter, home in Nova Scotia. In that way, The Cartographer of No Man's Land becomes as much a coming-of-age story as a war story, and maybe more so.

I didn't love this book. I liked it, but it began very slowly and I was well, well into the book's 384 pages before I cared about the characters. I believe this is partly owing to the fact that there are a lot of characters, both in France and in Canada, and because of the perspective switching I'd have to jump back to previous chapters to remind myself who someone was; it was also, partly, owing to the fact that the story unfolds slowly, with much key history sprinkled here and there throughout the book. The book begins in February 1917 and ends in April 1918, which actually seems quite (too) compressed given all that happens.

Duffy does a nice job weaving in one of the greatest disasters to ever befall Canada's Maritime provinces, the Halifax Explosion in December 1917. Nova Scotia is beautiful land; it is surprising that, as prominently as Mahone Bay figures into the story, frequently I felt The Cartographer of No Man's Land could have been happening anywhere. In describing the Halifax Explosion, Duffy gives the reader the strongest sense of what this place - Nova Scotia, 1917 - was really like.

Ultimately, I liked Cartographer well enough, but unless you absolutely can't get enough of World War I fiction, you probably aren't missing too much.

Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman

Several months ago, my friend Clio wrote a mostly glowing review of Robert K. Massie's Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman. Unfortunately, at about the same time my mom read the book and gave me a less-than-glowing report. Good daughter that I am, I listened to my mom. My bad.

So how did I even come to read Catherine the Great? My local library is currently closed for renovations, so the only library books I have access to are e-books; evidently, many people find themselves in this predicament (the library is a popular place) and every week it seems fewer title are available. I downloaded it and never looked back. In fact, I thoroughly enjoyed Massie's meticulously researched and engagingly written portrait of Russia's last female ruler.

Catherine, Massie informs his readers, entered the world as a minor German princess by the name of Sophie Friederike Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst-Dornburg (but not too minor: two of her first cousins did become kings of Sweden!). In any case, she was plucked from relative obscurity when Russia's Empress Elizabeth summoned her, at the age of 14, to travel to Russia and marry the Empress's nephew, the future Peter III. 

To say the marriage was unhappy is a bit of an understatement - it's not entirely clear that the marriage was ever consummated, to say nothing of the small matter of Peter's death, which Catherine may or may not have orchestrated in order to become Empress. (Based on the few days I spent in St. Petersburg this summer, I can report that the locals still appear divided as to Catherine's role.) Not surprisingly, once in power, Catherine proved a formidable ruler. Her years on the throne included some of the most momentous years in Russia's history. From the partition of Poland, which brought Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine under Russian control, to the wars with Turkey, which gave Catherine the Crimean peninsula and ports on the Black Sea, she presided over Russia's physical enlargement, and the accompanying growth in its spheres of influence. 

Her reign was also notable for its length. Catherine ruled longer than Peter the Great, and longer than virtually all of her contemporaries - certainly longer Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, whose removal from the throne (and subsequent beheadings) upset Catherine's view of the world and, arguably, from which she never fully recovered. Certainly, Catherine was concerned with the politics of an ever-shifting world. A complex woman, she was also a consummate art collector, friend of the great philosophes and, at least in the beginning, an enlightened thinker and reformist. (Also, she had many lovers, including more than one near the end of her life who were something like one-third her age.)

Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman is, on the whole, an extremely interesting biography of a fascinating woman. I do feel the first part of the book, which focuses on Catherine's years as a German princes and Russian archduchess, is slightly better than the part of the book focused on her years as Empress. The reason is that, in order for the reader to understand the magnitude of the challenges facing Catherine, Massie provides an in-depth analysis of many of the issues. On the one hand, this is useful, and does make for an informative read. On the other hand, I didn't really need so many details on, say, serfdom or the politics of the French Revolution, and I occasionally felt a bit bogged down by the level of detail Massie provides. Still, this is small complaint, and shouldn't hold back an otherwise-interested reader. Speaking of which, who should read this book? Those interested in European history, certainly, but also anyone who loves a good biography, strong writing, and an author who can transport the reader to a world that can be hard to imagine.

The Tinsmith

I can only assume that I am not the target audience for Tim Bowling's The Tinsmith.

This is odd, given that I've long devoured any Civil War-themed reading I encountered. For example? you ask. April, 1865; 1861; anything written by Jeff Shaara; and of course, my all-time favorite, Gone with the Wind, (which needs no blog post by me) and Rhett Butler's People and presumably you get the idea. Also odd since I seem to be on Wild West kick (To Hell on a Fast Horse, Hell on Wheels, and high on my reading list, The Last Gunfight). Bowling's Tinsmith is a Civil War mystery that follows the two main protagonists for 20 years, from the battlefield of Antietam, where their bond was forged, to the salmon canneries of British Columbia, where they find themselves fighting many of the same forces they tried to vanquish when they wore the blue of the Union army.

The story sounded promising. So what's the problem? To begin with, it's just too bloody. From a gruesome death that is central to the story (and as the backdrop of the story is the bloodiest day in American history, you can be sure the death is pretty damn gruesome) to what seems to be gratuitous gore at the canneries (and, yes, I know it was bloody work, but still), I found myself regularly skimming chunks of the narrative, lest I see too clearly the scene being presented to me. Also, Bowling simply has too many characters. It is particularly difficult to keep up with the ones who appear on a handful of pages, disappear for 100 pages and then reappear, as if by magic, leaving the reader scratching their head at one too many coincidences (or in plain confusion). Worse, in several cases, there are sub-plots that seem to serve no greater purpose. At one point, a spiritualist arrives on the scene, but I never did figure out why (or how she was part of the larger story).

Lastly, Bowling, through his characters, seems to feel the need to remind the reader every few pages of past events, namely that the protagonists, Dr. Baird and John, first encountered one another at Antietam, that Antietam was bloody hell, and that it was a (the?) defining moment in their lives. And just for good measure, the chapters are told from different perspectives...also meaning that we hear, for example, about Antietam, over and over from different characters. More than once I thought, didn't I read those lines of dialogue 200 pages ago only to flip back and confirm that, yes, 200 pages ago I read the lines from Dr. Baird's perspective. Now I am reading them from John's.

I wanted to like this book. Very much so. But I couldn't and I didn't. If you want a fine Antietam mystery, I can highly recommend Jim Lehrer's No Certain Rest. But pass on The Tinsmith.

Tsukiji: The Fish Market at the Center of the World

I was, admittedly, way more excited about this book than I should have been. You see, I rather love the Tsukiji Fish Market. It might be my favorite place in Japan - every variety of plant or animal found in the seven seas spills forth from styrofoam boxes (who am I kidding - the Japanese are far too orderly for that - it only feels as if it were spilling forth); it is a veritable labyrinth crammed with generations-old stalls and dozens of little sushi shops are piled on top of one another throughout the labyrinth. And if you don't believe that you can get anything from the sea there, take a careful look at the last picture: whale bacon. (The other other white meat??) But enough about the market.

Sushi, and seafood generally, is tremendously important to Japan's economy and, as Theodore Bestor notes early on, the value of what passes through Tsukiji in a single year is valued in the billions. And here is where my interests differ from those of Bestor. I am interested in Tsukiji as an economic engine. Bestor is interested in the anthropological aspects of the market. What makes the sellers tick? How are the various stakeholders connected to one another? What are the origins of some of the traditions at the market? How would moving the market affect the people, the relationships, their sense of self and place and time? These are fine questions, they are, but honestly the answers bored me after a couple hundred pages. Then I began skimming. In earnest.

In the early chapters, Bestor does a fine job making the market come alive, but as the page count rises, the anthropological analysis becomes increasingly academic (read: dull). The most salient - and interesting - points are conveniently available in an article Bestor wrote summarizing his findings. For those wanting more, though, particularly from an economic perspective, I strongly recommend The Sushi Economy, which examines the entire phenomenon of sushi in Japan and around the world. Bon appetit. You may want to pass on the whale bacon.

I would not tell a lie: you are looking at whale bacon.

To Hell on a Fast Horse: Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett, and the Epic Chase to Justice in the Old West

Perhaps I should be embarrassed to admit this, but I was only vaguely family with Billy the Kid, and I'd never heard of Pat Garrett before I read this book - which I picked up at the library entirely because of the title. That I quickly discovered it was set in New Mexico, which I've come to believe is one of the most beautiful, yet underrated, parts of this country, was the icing on the cake. (I've included a couple of pictures below in an attempt to show you what I mean.)

As in Dick Kreck's Hell on Wheels - hell, it seems, being a very common theme in books about the American West of yesteryear - Mark Lee Gardner draws his reader into a time and place that has entirely vanished, except in the collective imagination. Outlaws were common then, every man - and not too few women - packed at least one weapon at all times and gambling, liquor, and errant (to say nothing of well-aimed) shots were entirely commonplace. Cattle rustling was rather an accepted risk, and Billy the Kid and his friends might have continued merrily along, stealing a horse here and a heifer there, if it weren't for the fact that two of the men who died at their hands were Sheriff William Brady and his deputy, William Hindman. (As Gardner notes, no one, including the US District Attorney, appeared to be upset by the outcome of a previous murder trial for the death of one Andrew Roberts, which resulted in the entire case being dismissed.)

Even if they'd wanted to put an end to the Kid's antics, no one had been able to arrest him for years, not until Pat Garrett accepted the challenge to become one of the first bounty hunters. It was Garrett who made possible the trial - both for Roberts and for Brady/Hindman - and whatever flaws he may have had personally (he himself having killed not too few men and being an inveterate gambler who once told Teddy Roosevelt, when asked about his gambling, "I know the difference between a straight and a flush, Mr. President, and in my section of the country, a man who doesn't know this doesn't know to keep the flies off in fly season.") - he was also deeply committed to justice.

To Hell on a Fast Horse is full of outsize characters and improbable events. Yet, Gardner both brings them alive and brings them all down to size with pithy language that is worthy of the people and events he describes. When writing of a posse hunting for one of Billy's outlaw friends, Gardner writes that he could not be caught: "Folliard's horse was damn fast; outlaws generally try to steal the best horses," and of the Kid himself, he "was not an early riser - long nights of women, dancing, and gambling will do that."

To Hell on a Fast Horse should be required reading for anyone with even a hint of interest in the American West. And, of course, you should all try to visit New Mexico.

1913: In Search of the World Before the Great War

Charles Emmerson has set out to find the world as it was 100 years ago, before the Guns of August [1914] and the theretofore unimaginable carnage unleashed by the first World War. Emmerson's world is one of empires, and it is these building blocks that he uses to construct 1913: In Search of the World Before the Great War.

Chapter-by-chapter, the reader is taken on a tour of each empire and outpost: the British, of course, and the American, the Austro-Hungarian, French, Ottoman, Russian, and even the beginnings of the Japanese empire. By examining life, politics, and the zeitgeist in leading cities from London, Washington, Paris, and Vienna, and stopping by Jerusalem, Mexico City, Durban, and Beijing, Emmerson provides an intricate birds-eye view look at the world as it was. (In total he covers 23 cities on all six inhabited continents, an impressive feat.) This is actually the second book on pre-WWI empires that I've set out to read this year and, whether it was the organization or Emmerson's tone and style, I much preferred 1913 to The Age of Empire.

Personally, I found the chapter on the Austro-Hungarian Empire to be the most interesting, followed closely by those chapters that chronicled the last days of the Ottoman Empire, likely because I knew the least about these two empires and, therefore, felt I learned the most. For 1913 is an excellent sampler, something to whet the appetite before digging in deeper to anyone of these empires. As Emmerson notes in his closing paragraphs, this book seeks to capture, "a world bathed in the last rays of the dying sun, a world of order and security, a world unknowingly on the brink of the seminal catastrophe of the twentieth century" (p. 456). Of this, he has done an admiral job. For the reader seeking more, though, wanting to understand the full story - and consequences - for any one of these empires, that reader may want to consider any of the following in lieu of or in addition to 1913.

• For more on the American empire: The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War

• For more on the Japanese empire: Flyboys

• For more on the consequences of empire in the Middle East:  Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia or Desert Queen: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell (Lawrence and Bell are both British, so there is also quite a bit about the British Empire, but each offers an excellent look at the Middle East before - and after - World War I).

• For more on the British empire: The Perfect Summer, England 1911: Just Before the Storm (Sorry, I read this before I started the blog, but Juliet Nicolson's look at Britain just a couple of years earlier than Emmerson's is really outstanding.)

• And, of course, I would be remiss not to add The Beauty and the Sorrow to this list, as it remains, for me, the most in-depth and moving look at World War I imaginable. As a POW remarks, “the great lords have quarreled, and we must pay for it with our blood, our wives and children” (p. 18-19). Emmerson's book ends on the brink of the quarrel.

The Distancers: An American Memoir

One of my favorite memoirs is Edmund Love's The Situation in Flushing, followed closely by his recounting of college days in Hanging On, Or How to Get Through a Depression and Enjoy Life (the title of which refers to an economic breakdown, as opposed to a mental one). I had hoped that Lee Sandlin's The Distancers, which is also about the (nearly) forgotten ways of life in (nearly) forgotten Midwestern farm towns, would be similar. To be honest, I was a bit disappointed.

The fact of the matter is there is too little memory in the memoir for my liking. The Distancers ceases to be a memoir fairly early; it is the history of the Sehnert family from its arrive from Germany in the decades before the Civil War up through the latter decades of the twentieth century. It's not that their story is disinteresting or that there aren't enough quirky characters to engage the reader. There is plenty of interest and not a few true characters. Squished into 180-odd pages, though, The Distancers compresses the generations together, a few years in the life of this one, a few in the life of that one, until it is impossible to remember the grandfather from the great-grandfather from the great-great-grandfather without thumbing back dozens of pages to recall the particulars.

What Sandlin does best is paint a portrait of a way of life long since past. The desire to reach into the past and pull it forward, to bring it to the reader in all its glory (and occasionally, all its grit) is palpable, and in this way The Distancers is quite similar to The Situation in Flushing. Where Sandlin does this best is, rather naturally, in the decades he can personally recall, which is the middle of the twentieth century. Earlier than that, the desire is still there, but the result is fuzzier; he is, after all, stitching together a past that is nearly forgotten. Perhaps if The Distancers had been longer, I would have felt it more complete, or perhaps I am just too picky. While I'm not sorry I read Sandlin's memoir, I still prefer those of Edmund Love.

Call Me Zelda

I bought this book because I was interested in the story of the Fitzgeralds, particularly Zelda. I ended up feeling I'd been sold a bill of goods. Call Me Zelda is primarily the story of the entirely fictional Anna Howard, Zelda's personal psychiatric nurse-cum-friend. Anna has an complex history and she's not an uninteresting character, but she is most definitely the protagonist of a book that purported to tell the story of Zelda Fitzgerald's last, and saddest, decade, as she spun further from reality in one institution after the other. Or so I thought.

I expected something along the lines of The Paris Wife or even The Aviator's Wife. Instead, I found myself tucked into a work of (almost pure) fiction. Happily, the setting for most of the book is Baltimore, and neighborhoods I know - or at least remember - well, appear throughout, from Mount Vernon, to the streets around the Johns Hopkins hospital, to the still very rural Towson. Erika Robuck also did a nice job depicting the relationship between Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald (although I cannot say how accurate Robuck's description is - maybe entirely, or maybe colored largely by what she hoped it might have been). In any case, it is fascinating to read about and the way they simultaneously needed and destroyed one another.

Aside from the fact that the book wasn't what I expected, my fault and mine alone, I had one other real quibble. Call Me Zelda is divided into acts; I really enjoyed the first, and longest, and couldn't help but wish that Robuck had ended the story there; not only was the second act often cloying, but the conclusion of the first act really felt like the natural end of both Anna's story and Zelda's.

Overall, Call Me Zelda is a mixed bag. The story feels somewhat contrived, and is (most likely) not nearly as close to the real story as I would have liked, but as a work of fiction, the plot and characters are interesting, particularly in Act One. 

Somerset

Several years ago, I carted Leila Meicham's Roses to Brazil with me. Hard-backed. It was a foolish thing to do for two reasons: 1) At 600+ pages, the tome probably weighed five pounds. 2) I could barely put it down long enough to work. I spent every free minute reading furiously (and if I'm completely honest, crying), hardly even noticing the scenery. So I was just a teensy bit excited to score an advance copy of Somerset over the summer.

Somerset is the prequel to Roses and tells the meandering story of the preceding generations of Warwicks, Tolivers, and DuMonts as they make their way from the antebellum south to the untamed lands of Texas. The star of the story is Jessica Wyndham, a girl-woman of, some might say, misplaced passions who is at the heart of everything that follows. All of Meicham's characters, though, inhabit the pages so fully that one wants to reach into the pages and shake them - or hug them, as the case may be. There are lessons here, as well, in the prices to be paid, both personal and societal, to settle untamed lands...or to resettle them for the white man, at least.

If I cannot claim to have liked Somerset quite as much as Roses, that is merely a testament to the captivating story that books tells, rather than a knock on Somerset. The prequel feels less dramatic, (and therefore less heart-wrenching), perhaps because the reader already has a sense of what comes next - and that something does, in fact come next. In this way, it shares much in common with Rhett Butler's People (the fact that Margaret Mitchell was long in her grave before this prequel was written, aside), another antebellum-postbellum rendering of the South. 

Letters from Hillside Farm

Letters from Hillside Farm is another of the books I picked up at the conference this past summer. The book, written by Jerry Apps, is the story of the fictional Struckmeyer family who moves from Cleveland to a Wisconsin farm during the heart of the Great Depression. Their story is told through the letters 12-year-old George writes to his grandmother back in Cleveland - and her responses to him. To be sure, this is no Worst Hard Time. In fact, and I admit this rather sheepishly, I got about 20 pages into the book (which is only 150 pages) before I realized that this is primarily a children's book - probably aimed at the 12-year-old set.

Nevertheless, I continued for two reasons: 1) Apps does a nice job of bringing farm living, and small town Americana in general, during the 1930s to life. It was fun to read about traveling circuses and one-room schoolhouses regardless of the fact that I've done so many times in the past. 2) This book reminded me why I first loved to read, and why that love has continued through the years. In that sense, it was escapist reading more than even something like Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Slayer - another book best enjoyed by the middle school set.

Would I read Letters from Hillside Farm again? No. But, I don't regret finishing it the first time.

The Summer of Beer and Whiskey

The Summer of Beer and Whiskey (whose full title includes How Brewers, Barkeeps, Rowdies, Immigrants, and a Wild Pennant Fight Made Baseball America's Game) is the history of the 1883 St. Louis Browns. The team, which played in the old American Association, which was itself created by the Browns' German immigrant founder, Chris von der Ahe. Von der Ahe was a saloon keeper first and foremost and he founded the team - and insisted they play on Sundays - for one reason: to see more beer. The league that he then created for them to play in was derisively known as the Beer and Whiskey League, for upstanding citizens of the 1880s did not attend ball games on the Lord's Day - Sunday ball did not come to Philadelphia until 1934.

As for von der Ahe's team, well, with the possible exception of Arlie Latham and Charlie Comiskey (yes, the same Comiskey whose Chicago White Sox would create baseball's biggest scandal), the Browns were a ragtag group of men who won many a game by grit, determination and sometimes knavery, if not skill. They were also plenty happy to be imbibing great quantities of said liquor. Yet, in a story full of colorful characters, the one with the darkest story stands out most: Cap Anson who perhaps singlehandedly forced baseball into decades of segregation.

Edward Achorn does a fine job rendering the atmosphere of 1883 into text. He has painstakingly researched virtually every detail of the 1883 season - too thoroughly in some places. While the characters spring from the pages, reading a pitch-by-pitch retelling of a game that was played 130 years ago was simply too much. I loved the broad strokes by skimmed the minutiae. The final verdict? The Summer of Beer and Whiskey is probably best served to only the most ardent of baseball fans.

The Sixteenth Rail: The Evidence, the Scientist, and the Lindbergh Kidnapping

I found The Sixteenth Rail in my pile of unread books recently and decided to read it now primarily because I just read The Aviator's Wife, about the Lindberghs, a couple of weeks ago. The Sixteenth Rail is the story of the Lindbergh trial, or specifically of the evidence at the trial regarding the ladder used to commit the crime. The evidence was gathered and presented by one of the country's early forensic scientists, Arthur Koehler, a xylotomist. (What, you ask, is a xylotomist? One who studies wood, particularly the microscopic properties of wood.) Koehler would use his xylotomy skills to trace several of the rails and rungs in the handmade ladder found at the Lindbergh property to the man who was eventually arrested, tried, and executed for the crime, Bruno Richard Hauptmann.

I'm of two minds about this book. On the one hand, it's absolutely fascinating to consider the detective work that went into tracing the ladder components, particularly considering this was at the height of the Great Depression. Author Adam J. Schrager has clearly research every bit of minutiae pertaining to Koehler's quest and that, in and of itself, is no small feat. However, I often got bogged down in the very minutiae that gave the book substance. Paragraph after paragraph detailing the rpms and knife formations of different planers was too technical for my taste; likewise, the pages detailing testimony at the trial feel as if they are merely the official court transcripts rendered into chapter form. The most colorful bits were those that revolved about any number of characters, in the truest sense of the word, who were pulled into the orbit of the crime. At the end of the day, there was simply too much wood for me to recommend this book to most readers. Only the most dedicated crime readers or Lindbergh fanatics would fully appreciate Sixteenth Rail (being neither myself, I am sure I could not fully appreciate it either).

Fun side note: Both the author, Adam Schrager, and the scientist, Arthur Koehler, have undergraduate degrees from the University of Michigan. Go Blue!

Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic

I know what I want to be when I grow up. David Quammen. Okay, fine, you heard me moon over his The Boilerplate Rhino earlier this summer, but really, each time I read one of his books I appreciate what he does all the more...and can only wish that I might be a globe-trotting, tome-writing, scientist-cum-author. So, what's the story with Spillover?

In his latest book, Quammen has set out to understand the origins of any number of zoonoses (diseases that transfer from animals to people). He provides a detailed examination of some of the better known ones - such as AIDS, ebola, and yellow fever - as well as ones most readers have probably never heard of: Nipah, anyone? Hendra? Marburg virus? Typhoid Mary makes an appearance, as does Henrietta Lacks (a great, great read, but before I started the blog). To cover such ground, literally and figuratively, Quammen criss-crosses the planet, from Bangladesh and the Congo to Washington, DC, and the Outback, speaking with molecular biologists, immunologists, epidemiologists and the like, rendering their science-speak into understandable, and highly readable, prose.

The opening pages provide an entirely-too-vivid description of Hendra, a virus that spills from bats to horses to humans with terrible consequences for equines and people alike. I skimmed them, to be honest, and fervently prayed that such imagery would not be a regular occurrence. It wasn't, although many of the descriptions did give me flashbacks to my days working for the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, when I first became aware of the myriad, bizarre ways a person might suffer and, not rarely, die.

This is a long book, over 500 pages, broken into nine sections each containing roughly a dozen mini-chapters. Occasionally, by necessity, the language gets a bit technical (which Quammen acknowledges readily, cheekily adding that if his reader has followed, say, the evolutionary stages of a virus, that reader has a promising future in biology). Still, the writing is engaging and the adventures are certainly never dull (searching out primate dung in the far reaches of Africa and capturing bats - flying foxes, specifically - in Southeast Asia, for example, to say nothing of the logistics that are often involved...on second thought, I want to be David Quammen, but with flush toilets and room service).

My only real complaint is that the last 30 or so pages seem to drag in comparison to the rest of the book. The hypothetical story of the Cut Hunter and Voyager, for example, are completely superfluous given the painstaking work in the preceding hundreds of pages. All the same, though, for anyone with an interest in science, off-the-beaten-path travel, and good writing, you won't find a better book this year. Just be sure to skim (or skip) those first few bloody pages.

The Aviator's Wife

Having enjoyed Melanie Benjamin's previous books (Alice I Have Been and The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb, which seems never to have made it into the blog, but which I remember liking), I have been looking forward to reading her most recent novel, The Aviator's Wife. Benjamin's third book is in the same vein as her previous two - historical figures reimagined and revisited. In this case, the character is Anne Lindbergh, aka Mrs. Charles Lindbergh, himself known by any number of nicknames, not least "Lucky Lindy" after his successful solo flight from New York to Paris in 1927.

Character voice - the extent to which Benjamin is able to embody Anne Lindbergh and make the reader forget that The Aviator's Wife is a fictional account - is the real strength of this book. The weakness is the characters themselves. Anne and Charles both become, very quickly, people it is hard to like (although the reader can at least feel sorry for Anne who is so hunted by the early paparazzi that one cannot help but compare her to Princess Di - or Kate Middleton). Both Anne and Charles are complex characters, but Charles is portrayed here, accurately or not, as a domineering bully, pompous and bombastic on the best of days; cruel and sneering on the worst. Also he seems to have been an anti-Semitic Nazi-sympathizer, which doesn't really help him much. As for Anne, although I was frequently irritated by Anne's seeming indecision and weakness, I also recognize that it is difficult (at best) to judge a woman who lived in such a different era, when opportunities and expectations were so very different from today.

As with The Paris Wife (the story of Ernest Hemingway's first marriage to Hadley Richardson, and still the best of the historical fiction character embodiment novels that I've read), it's hard to know where the facts end and the fiction begins. Benjamin includes a few pages of notes at the end where she sites specific incidents that are true - such as the kidnapping of their firstborn - for example, as well as incidents she created for the purposes of her story. Still, I was left scratching my head over her decision that Anne would never reveal Charles's womanizing to their children; this information is clearly in the public domain today, so it's not clear if the real Anne ever felt this way or if Benjamin made that decision for her own reasons.

To Serve Them All My Days

R. Delderfield's To Serve Them All My Days opens with a shell-shocked veteran of three years on the Western Front being discharged from the hospital and seeking a teaching position at a boys' school, Bamfylde. The next 600+ pages follow him through the years and decades as he endeavors to teach, lead, and ultimately serve the hundreds of boys who pass through his classroom - and life. It's a kind of idyllic English school set upon the moors where every boy (and teacher) has a nickname, the headmaster is rather jovial and there's a quirky cast of supporting actors. The drumbeat of the past echoes loudly; come what may, this stolid place and its traditions are not going anywhere, or even giving an inch.

In many ways, To Serve Them All My Days can be compared to a river. At times it rushing forth, pushing and pulling the reader through a torrent of rapids, then nearly running dry, all the while flowing from its source (World War I). The strongest feature is the protagonist, David (also referred to as P.J., for reasons that I never understood) and Pow-Wow (for reasons that are at least explained). Early on, I became invested in him and in his story, such that I was able, right up to the end, to overlook a number of weaknesses and irritants.

The first is the sheer number of characters. This makes sense from the standpoint of the numbers of teachers, boys, and parents that David interacts with in the roughly 25 year span of the book. That said, it is impossible to keep them all straight, particularly as they are sometimes referred to by their surname and sometimes by a nickname. Out of necessity characters disappear for long stretches - sometimes hundreds of pages - to the extent that Delderfield is frequently in the position of  interjecting any number of parenthetical asides that seem to serve no purpose other than to remind the reader of the circumstances under which we previously met a character.

Had it been 200 pages shorter, To Serve Them All My Days would have been an excellent, excellent read. As it is, there is too much repetition. Case in point: yes, yes, yes, I remember that David's father and brothers were killed in a mining explosion. If I had to guess, which I do, I'd say Delderfield reiterates that little fact no fewer than 25 times. Is it an important part of who David is? Yes. Would, say, five times have been sufficient for me to know and remember that? Absolutely. The books also bogs down in ancient English history. Again, I get that David is a history teacher. But, I don't need him to stop in the middle of a picnic and give a full lecture on something that happened in this very spot two hundred years earlier to get this. Removing much of this, excuse me, extraneous information would have helped move the story along that much better.

Finally, I was disappointed in the ending. After 600 and some pages, I expected - dammit, I deserved! - to feel a sense of closure. Instead, there is...nothing. Many of the central characters have gradually slipped away in the last 100 pages, but not with any finality, such that I was expecting right up to the last to know what was happening with many of them. What's more, the ending felt at odds with David's entire personality and, in that sense, unlikely and disingenuous.

Through it all, though, a sense of calm - that old English idyll - pervades the book. When David lost himself on the moors, or watched the mists settle about the fields, or contemplated the sun sinking in a profusion of color, I was there. I could picture Bamfyld and the characters nearly leapt from the pages, so vividly were they drawn. Whatever my annoyance at wading through pages of long-dead Kings and ancient battles, there was never any question that I would finish this book.

The Chaperone

In Laura Moriarty's The Chaperone, 15-year-old Louise Brooks escapes an unhappy home in Wichita for the big lights of New York City. She makes the trip in the watchful company of fellow Wichitan Cora Carlisle, who seemingly has it all - a handsome husband, a lovely home, college-bound twin sons, and the respect and admiration of every lady worth her salt in or around Wichita. What neither woman can know of the other is the baggage that each carries with her to New York in the form of rather dark secrets from the past.

Louise Brooks was a real person. I first heard of her when I read Flapper earlier this year. She was a silent film star who made it big - bigger than even Clara Bow, perhaps - before being (mostly) lost to history. She really did travel to New York in the summer of 1922 in the company of a chaperone, one Alice Mills. After a few mostly fruitless searches for information on Alice Mills, I have the impression that Moriarty likely came to the quick conclusion that a true-to-life historical fiction in the mold of The Paris Wife wasn't feasible (and might have been far less interesting even had it been) and so created her own chaperone, with a vibrant, twisting story of her own.

All of which is fine and dandy but the question, of course, is what did I make of The Chaperone? It was a good vacation read - easy to pick up and put down, with relatively few characters and a memorable plot that didn't have me turning back the pages to remember one or another obscure detail. That said, it wasn't such a page turner that I ever felt a pang at having to lay it aside and, generally, I felt it was a rather middling read. I much preferred Alice I Have Been or, more recently, The House at Tyneford to The Chaperone. I was more than a bit surprised to discover that it's being adapted into a movie and that Julian Fellowes is writing the screenplay - with Cora Carlisle being played by Cora Crawley, I mean Elizabeth McGovern, herself. If you know me at all, you already knew that I have no plans to see the movie.

The House at Tyneford

From the opening lines, the reader understands that this will be a sad, sad story. Before the opening lines, in fact, with the prologue of sorts: "Please treat the church and houses with care; we have given up our homes where many of us have lived for generations to help win the war to keep men free. We shall return one day and thank you for treating the village kindly. - notice pinned to the door of Tyneford Church by departing villagers."The opening lines tell the reader that the house has fallen to ruin, pockmarked by bullets and succumbing to them and ravages of time. All of this before we even meet our protagonist, Elise, a 19-year-old Austrian Jew on the brink of being separated from her family, sent to the safety of England to become a parlour maid. This, from a girl who has never drawn her own bath. We are prepared for tragedy from the outset but, just as Elise could not be prepared for her future, we are not prepared for the succession of tragedies contained within this book's pages.

The House at Tyneford is a haunting story, in no small part because the reader knows that, even if these characters have been created entirely by Natasha Solomons to exist in this fictional space, real people did live these horrors, or if not exactly these, than others which are similar - or worse. Ultimately, this is a story of resilience and survival and love. It is what people can do - and do to one another - when they are pushed beyond the limits of what seems possible. In that way, The House at Tyneford, shares much in common with Suite Française or Roses (Leila Meacham) or even Gone with the Wind - each defined by a woman whose life and love is irrevocably altered by war.

Even the author's note is tinged with tragedy. Tyneford, Solomons writes, is based on the ghost village of Tyneham which was requisitioned by the British army in December 1943. Every man, woman, and child was turned out, never to see their homes again. The shops and homes were used for target practice, then left to the vagaries of the wind and rain. The protagonist, too, was inspired by a living person: the author's great aunt who, like Elise, left the only life she had known to enter domestic service in English.

Four stars.

Dear Girls Above Me (Inspired by a True Story)

I'm pretty sure I have USA Today to thank - or blame - for bringing this book to my attention. The premise is this: Charlie McDowell, a rather hapless, and aimless, guy in his late 20s, discovers that he can hear practically every word spoken by the people in the apartment directly above him. (Also everything they do.) Unfortunately, these people appear to be two of the dumbest bipeds since the beginning of time. Example: Isn't it weird that we use the same word for the devil as we do for the most fab fabric? Charlie deduces they do not know the difference between satan and satin. In any case, he names the girls Cathy and Claire and then starts a Twitter account in which he pens 140 character missives to them, hence the "Dear Girls Above Me." Said account becomes wildly popular and then inspires this book. (It probably doesn't hurt that his mother is an Oscar-winning actress.)

Here's the thing: there's just not enough material here to be a full book. It's a rather "fab" idea for a Twitter account, and the account is really funny, but in book format, it really starts to drag and is not helped any by McDowell's insertion of childhood anecdotes about, say, Disneyland. Said anecdotes do nothing to move the story forward and usually left me scratching my head - and skimming quickly to find the next interesting bits. As the review on the cover says, "By introducing us to the memorable American folk heroes known as the 'the girls above him,' Charlie McDowell sneakily does one better: he introduces us to Charlie McDowell..." The problem, for me at least, is that I don't really care that much about Charlie McDowell; I'm more interested in Cathy and Claire who remind me way too much of a girl I went to school with for years who once asked, in front of the entire class, how she could have possibly gotten a negative score on an AP prep exam. Her name also began with a C.

Unless you really enjoy the intimate details of total strangers' daily lives (and childhood),  I'd recommend giving Dear Girls Above Me a wide berth.

Turn Right at Machu Picchu: Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time

For years I looked forward to the arrival of the "Best of..." books, and in particular the Best American Travel Writing. Let's be honest: reading and traveling are only two of my very most favorite things to do - and not necessarily in that order - so naturally reading about traveling ranks pretty high. It's a genre I've mined pretty well, from Paul Theroux to J. Maarten Troost to David Quammen. Mark Adams is as good as any of them. I will say it plainly. I loved Turn Right at Machu Picchu.

I have never had any great, burning desire to visit Machu Picchu. This feeling was more or less confirmed a couple of years ago after my parents returned with tales of toilet paper-less hotels, restaurants with dirt floors and, yes, guinea pig on too many menus. I, therefore, rather foolishly determined I wouldn't read Turn Right at Machu Picchu when I first heard about it a year or so ago. But, its cover beckoned to me recently and the paperback version was slim enough to make for good airplane reading.

Much of what makes this book so wonderful is that Adams (like Quammen an editor at a outdoor/adventure magazine) weaves together three stories that, on the surface, are quite unrelated. The central narrative is Hiram Bingham III's early 20th century expeditions to Peru that included his "discovery" of Machu Picchu. (And, yes, Bingham is directly related to the Hiram Bingham of Hawaiian islands infamy. Imperialism coursed through his veins.) In stumbling across the details of Bingham's expeditions, Adams decided to retrace the original route, which entailed some serious hiking/camping/being off the beaten path. As in, for example, a total lack of, uh, facilities (which actually makes for one hilarious anecdote in particular).

The third narrative is of the colonization of Peru by the Spanish in the 1500s. This is, undoubtedly, the most serious; yet, Adams approaches the history, which could be circuitous and hard to follow, with decided humor. (I especially liked the anecdote about the Inca's investiture which includes the description, "Imagine a presidential inauguration held during Mardi Gras, at which the taxidermied remains of Thomas Jefferson and Dwight Eisenhower were incorporated into float themes, and you'll get some idea of the horrified reaction the Spaniards had to this spectacle." p. 70)

What I'm saying is that it does not matter if you've visited Machu Picchu ten times or if you wouldn't go near it with a ten foot pole. Read this book. It's just that good.

The Corpse with the Silver Tongue

When I reviewed And the Mountains Echoed a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that author Khaled Hosseini was a headline speaker at a conference I was attending. I did not mention that the conference was a kind of heaven for bibliophiles and that the exhibit hall was populated with publishers eagerly offering complimentary copies of their latest titles (and in more than a few cases advance copies of books to be published later this year). The Corpse with the Silver Tongue is one of the complimentary titles I picked up, with a promise to the publisher that I would post a review to a website of my choosing.

So...

Somewhat in the style of Agatha Christie, our detective, Cait Morgan - who is really a criminologist rather than a pure detective - happens to be in the south of France when an old acquaintance (a smooth talking former ad man whom Cait used to work for and now loathes) drops dead at the dinner table. As with many good mysteries, and this is a fine one, one death is never enough. Cait is then plunged headlong into the mystery surrounding an ancient Roman necklace that disappears almost exactly at the moment its owner meets his maker. Thus the crimes, suspense, and story all build.

The strongest aspect of this novel is the plot. At its height, it's a gripping page turner, the outcome of which will not wait to be known. (I read more than one chapter from the backseat of a rush hour cab...and I'm normally prone to motion sickness!) In this way, it's similar to Once We Were Brothers (the two mysteries also share a connection to World War II history) or Bury Your Dead. On the whole, however, I enjoyed Corpse less than either of those books. The reason is Cait Morgan. I found our criminologist/detective to be overly present, to the point of distracting from the story. This is especially true where the reader is privy to her private thoughts (such as the incessant refrain that she must lose weight or quit smoking - but probably won't). Worse is Ace's over-reliance on italics to emphasize a word a point. On certain pages I couldn't help but count the number of italicized words, to the point of needing to go back and re-read the page to focus on what I'd missed with all my counting!

Worse than either of these faults - and the first one, especially, is not so different from some of the faults I identified with Once We Were Brothers - is Cait's naivete, nay recklessness, at a key moment in the story. At that moment, she lost all credibility with me as either a criminologist or a detective and my patience - and interest - waned.

The Corpse with the Silver Tongue is author Cathy Ace's debut novel. The actual mystery, as I said, was good. Perhaps like a fine wine, Ace will also grow better with age. 

Hell on Wheels: Wicked Towns along the Union Pacific Railroad

Ah, the American West. From Little House on the Prairie to John Wayne, there's not an angle that hasn't been examined. As the second half of it's title indicates, Dick Kreck's Hell on Wheels: Wicked Towns along the Union Pacific Railroad is the story of the hard-drinking, straight-shooting, vice-filled little places where early railroad men lost their money - and sometimes their lives. As Kreck so succinctly notes, the Union Pacific "employed thousands of Civil War veterans, tough, battle-hardened men who knew the joys of whiskey-drinking and fighting and partook of both whenever they could" (p. 111).

Still, it would be accurate to say that Hell on Wheels is more about the role of the railroads in how-the-west-was-won than it is about any individual hell-on-wheels town that popped up as the rails went down. In the space of only thirty years, the West - with its millions of bison and war-whooping Indians and unbroken vistas of prairie grass - vanished. And so, as interesting as these little towns might be, my favorite chapters were the early ones that described the early settler experience with the west (my God, I would have been a terrible pioneer) and especially the overland journey before the railroad came, when wagon trains stretched miles long across the prairie. (What can I say; I played a lot of Oregon Trail as a kid.) 

Hell on Wheels is eminently readable. Kreck makes liberal use of primary sources and, even more delightfully, period photography. Yet, with few exceptions, this book fails to capture the spirit of the men - and they were almost all men - who made the railways and the company towns and, in doing so, tamed the West. History buffs will enjoy it, but those looking for a raucous good read about the West, will enjoy Doc far more.

Follow the Money: A Month in the Life of a Ten-Dollar Bill

It's been a rather dismal week for reading. I blame it on the holiday weekend (which meant good food and good company, but little time to read), the erratic stateside delivery schedule of Paris Match (which kindly assured that after receiving no magazine for weeks, I can read a solid month's worth in one go). Also - unfortunately - I blame a really bad selection (which was, even more unfortunately, the only one I packed for the aforementioned holiday weekend): Follow the Money: A Month in the Life of a Ten-Dollar Bill by Steve Boggan.

Several years ago Boggan, a British freelancer, was commissioned to do a story following a single ten pound note around England for as long as possible. As long as possible turned out to be seven days, for on the seventh day the note was banked, but not before having made a circuit of London bars, Hampshire pubs, and markets, golf clubs, and even a dinner party where the bill in question was, according to Boggan, used to sniff cocaine. Anyhow, Boggan had so much fun the first time that he decided to replicate the experiment in the US with a ten dollar bill.

He determines to begin in Lebanon, Kansas, a tiny, dying farm town (population 218) whose claim to fame is having been declared the geographic center of the United States...in 1918. Follow the Money is the story of the people and places Boggan encounters as his bill makes its way from the plains of Kansas onward through Hot Springs, St. Louis, Chicago, and Detroit.

I quit half-way through. First, it's boring. The reviews were great and the book's cover boasts The Sun review prominently "A laugh-out-loud triumph." I didn't laugh once. I found Boggan to be irritating and, frankly, a bit boring. I mean, he came to the U.S. for a month and only brought two pairs of underwear, which he then tries to wash in various hotels rather than simply buying more...and needs to tell his readers this. Seriously? I also wasn't impressed with his let's-turn-follow-the-money-into-middle-America-travelogue approach. Or rather, that approach might have been okay if it weren't for the eminently more readable (and truly funny!) The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America by Bill Bryson. I read this well before I began blogging about my reading list, but I've found a great review of it on another blog.

In short, skip Follow the Money. Read The Lost Continent if you're in the mood for an ambling journey across middle America. Or don't read it if you're not. But I wouldn't bother with Follow the Money in either case.

And the Mountains Echoed

Khaled Hosseini was the plenary speaker at a conference I attended this past weekend. That sentence does not convey how excited I was to hear him speak about his latest book, And the Mountains Echoed, which I happened to be reading over the weekend. (I've been on the library's waiting list for months. It really was pure coincidence.)

He opened his talk by describing the plot in a single sentence: "the course of a life is altered and there are so many unforeseen consequences." It goes without saying, I think, that some of the consequences are positive and some are negative. At its heart, And the Mountains Echoed is the story of the separation of two siblings and the ways in which their lives diverge from the point of that separation. It is told in so many rich voices, not only of the siblings, but of so many other individuals whose paths they cross and whose lives are impacted, directly and indirectly and in ways both large and small. Speaking of his characters, Hosseini told his audience "I derived a lot of satisfaction and pleasure from creating these characters" and his love for them, even when they are not lovable, comes through in the writing. Yet, if there is a weakness, I would argue that it is the array of characters - that is, I rarely felt that a character's story was as fully fleshed out as I would have liked.

Although the subject matter is heavy - the reader knows from the first pages, if not simply from the name on the cover - that this will be a heartbreaking book at times, it is a pleasure to read. And the Mountains Echoed relies on many modes of storytelling - a fable at the beginning, an interview in a literary magazine, a letter written to a friend - that make for an engaging read. Hosseini said that these devices were partly out of necessity, as a way of spanning decades efficiently, "I had to find ways to advance the story that didn't feel laborious," and as such he labeled some of these devices tricks. Whatever you call them, they are the reader's friend.

Hosseini said that And the Mountains Echoed is the book he is proudest of, that he worked harder on it than on the previous two. I certainly found it the best. As I read, I found myself flipping back, re-reading chapters or pieces of chapters, pausing to think about the characters and, certainly, about chance and choice and the many ways in which the course of a life is altered, one path taken and another forgone, and how the consequences of such divergences cascade down through the decades, gently shaping sop many lives along the way.

A King's Story: The Memoirs of the Duke of Windsor

A King's Story: The Memoirs of the Duke of Windsor has been on my reading list for some time, probably since reading Elizabeth the Queen almost 18 months ago. I finally got around to ordering it from MeLCat and, if it couldn't entirely live up to my expectations, I still enjoyed reading the Duke's memoirs.

They begin, as any proper memoir should, with his earliest childhood, in HRH's case, both on and at the knee of his great-grandmother, Queen Victoria. Born in 1894, the Duke's childhood and adolescence were lived entirely in the pre-World War I era and his descriptions of that time are full of nostalgic longing. Early in the pages of the books, Prince Edward - later King Edward VIII and then the Duke of Windsor, but whose family always called him David - shows himself as a sympathetic prince. In reading of his longings for "normalcy" and proving himself against other boys of his generation, one cannot but remark that the same sentiments have been expressed by Britain's current crop of young princes. Strong-willed and independent, David succeeds in earning a commission in France during World War I where the sights and sounds of battle will mark him as they did so many of his generation.

Perhaps the most interesting passages of the book describe his post-war visits to the U.S., the affinity he begins to feel with a people whom he feels resemble him somewhat in temperament, and the awe with which he views the conveniences of modern life. He takes pains to note that the untold luxury which has surrounded him since birth still does not include such amenities as centralized heating, which he finds regularly in America.

As he ages, the reader cannot help but notice the myriad ways in which he seems to be a rather reluctant King-in-waiting. It is hard to tell whether this is the result of hindsight - "well, I never wanted to be King anyway," - or if the sentiments are true. They do seem to be borne out by journal entries and correspondence, though, so I will generally give him the benefit of the doubt.

Once David becomes King Edward VIII, the memoirs are zapped of some of their earlier energy. He describes the Abdication crisis in painstaking detail, understandable at a personal level, but a bit of a bore for the average reader. The last chapters are mired in an almost hourly account of who the King met, what he thought, what he said, what they said, and how it was reported in the papers to such a degree that I could not help but feel a degree of relief upon finishing the book.

For the modern reader, of course, a great deal of the interest lies in how the Royal Family has changed in the past 75 years. King Edward VIII, it must be remembered, was forced from his throne for wanting to marry a divorcee. The next King will himself be one. 

Although I enjoyed A King's Story, it must be said that for a reader interested in any of the periods of British history described therein, better reading exists. (For example, Juliet Nicolson's The Perfect Summer and The Great Silence are excellent for understanding England in the years immediately before and after World War I, for example, and The Beauty and the Sorrow remains the best World War I book I've read. All incorporate many more perspectives than the Duke of Windsor is obviously able to do.) For understanding the monarchy, the aforementioned Elizabeth the Queen would be my choice. It is also, not surprisingly, too dignified to contain any of the salacious details of the Wallis Simpson affair. In truth, it is a book best suited for only the most devoted Edward VIII enthusiast.

Nine Years Under: Coming of Age in an Inner-City Funeral Home

To be honest, I read this book because its set in Baltimore and I still have a soft spot for Charm City.

When Sheri Booker was 15, her great-aunt Mary died and, in her grief, the idea came to her to work at the funeral home that prepared Aunt Mary's body for burial. (A family friend owned the funeral home, so it's not as entirely random as the previous sentence makes it seem.) Nine Years Under is the story of her years working at the funeral home - through high school, college, and beyond - and how such work shaped her. Its well-written and does a nice job confronting the drug-and-gun culture that has ravaged so many urban neighborhoods, West Baltimore not least among them. Booker paints a realistic portrait of the people she interacts with, their flaws as well as their strengths. Nine Years Under also taught me more about the mortuary sciences than I expected to learn, from the legal aspects of inheriting such a business to the dirty work of filling in bullet holes.

That said, I found the book lacking in both depth and breadth. Occasionally, Booker delves into her life away from the funeral home, but the passages always seem incomplete and, in some cases, entire out-of-place. The book spans nine years, and while the reader is shown that her personal life can be messy, the balance between too much information and too little is off. The best bits revolve around the interaction with the families, and I wish there were more of these. Too often, pages pass with Booker paying bills and ordering coffins, key parts of her job, to be certain, but less interesting to read about than the families who cannot - or will not - agree which picture belongs on the memorial program. (Whoever pays the bill makes the final decision, Booker tells her readers, and how could it be otherwise?)

As a side note, the metro ride from my apartment to my office passed through West Baltimore, but what I remember more than the thugs, of whom there were plenty, were the occasional transvestites. I was, then, especially amused when one made an appearance at the Wylie Funeral Home.

Desert Queen: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell: Adventurer, Adviser to Kings, Ally of Lawrence of Arabia

Of the hundreds of books I have read in my adult life, Hero, the tome devoted to the life, times, and untimely death of Thomas Edward Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia, is among the best. Gertrude Bell, explorer, archaeologist, and intelligence officer extraordinaire, made several appearances in that book. I was sufficiently intrigued to add Desert Queen by Janet Wallach to my reading list.

Gertrude Bell was as good as advertised. One of the first women to attend Oxford University, she tramped across the desert against the wishes of the British and Ottoman authorities, spoke some half-dozen languages fluently, had the ear of Asquith and Churchill, drew the boundaries of more than one Arab country, installed a king, started a museum, and generally made the moon rise and the stars shine while other women of her generation - proper Victorians, they - drank tea and embroidered cushions. (And I should add that the good Miss Bell had no shortage of contempt for such simpering little ladies.)

Desert Queen, however, was more of a mixed bag. The earliest chapters, in which Gertrude Bell is a young woman finding her way to the East, escaping rogue sheiks, and cutting her teeth as an intrepid agent, are the best. Once World War I breaks out and the questions become all-political all-the-time, Desert Queen has a tendency to become as dry as the surrounding landscape. The political landscape - tribe versus tribe, Shiite versus Sunni, Arab versus Bedouin - is handled much more deftly handled by Michael Korda in Hero. Granted, Wallach delves more deeply into some of the issues unique to Iraq (read: the fight over oil), but in this case I'm not sure all of the details are necessary for the reader to grasp what is at stake.What the two books do share in common is the sense of helplessness that pervades them - the sense of peoples at war for millenia with no end in sight.

Prisoners in the Palace: How Princess Victoria became Queen with the Help of Her Maid, a Reporter, and a Scoundrel

Sixteen-year-old Elizabeth Hastings is a well-born girl with the world at her feet until she's suddenly orphaned. Her parents have left her nothing but debts and sufficient connections to land a position as Princess Victoria's personal maid, where her name is promptly changed to Liza. (So she goes from being Mary Crawley to Anna Smith in one fell swoop.) This is the premise of Prisoners in the Palace by Michaela MacColl. Of course, there's far more to it than meets the eye, for the palace is full of intrigue and scandal: the previous maid has left in disgrace, the wickedly charming Sir John Conroy is plotting to get his share of the power and pounds upon the Princess's ascension, and the dowdy Duchess of Kent, Victoria's mother, is either blind to it all or in on the schemes. Naturally, our heroine Liza zeroes in on the goings on and serves as Victoria's eyes and ears around the palace and beyond.

All told, this is a great piece of historical fiction. I especially appreciated that MacColl included a detailed chapter on the true life and times of Princess Victoria (for example, Sir John was a real life baddie, but Liza Hastings owes her existence entirely to MacColl's imagination). The descriptions of the palace in disrepair and of the sodden slums are eye-opening and intriguing. Liza was sometimes a bit self-righteous for my taste and she sometimes got herself in jams that beggared belief (for this reason, I would compare Prisoners in the Palace to Annette Vallon, which I read before I started blogging and cannot link). Overall, though, I enjoyed the book, which is a quick, light read.

C'est la Vie

In which fifty-two-year-old author Suzy Gershman is unexpectedly widowed and moves to Paris. I'm not sure what it is about these authors who move to Paris - other than the fact that it is Paris - but this is the second book I've read...and not liked. Note to self: it's probably time to stop reading this genre. (Paris, I Love You but You're Bringing Me Down was the first.)

Admittedly, a large part of the problem was that I really did not like Gershman. It bothered me that she up and moved to Paris and left her 20-year-old college student student son to cope on his own only weeks after his father died; it bothered me that six months after her husband died she took up with a married man 20 years her elder; it bothered me that she fretted about money while lunching at the Ritz and the Georges V (constantly reminding her readers that she is not a woman of independent means!),;and it bothered me that she could not go a single chapter without including a reference to the books she wrote that evidently made her famous (the Born to Shop series...I'd never heard of it before). Also the name dropping nearly put me over the edge.

In the plus column, she writes about Paris as only one who loves the city can and the book is a very quick read. Also, it's possible that I'm just jealous of people who can drop everything and move to Paris...but I don't think that's it.

(I just looked her up and discovered she died last summer of cancer. Now I feel a little bad. But trust me: the name dropping was over-the-top.)