A History of the World in 100 Objects

I love the premise of A History of the World in 100 Objects. It grew out of a BBC Radio series in which 100 objects from the British Museum were painstakingly selected, described, and then their history and importance explained to the listeners. As I read each the mini-chapter dedicated to each of the items, it almost felt like I was listening to All Things Considered on NPR. Neil MacGregor, Director of the British Museum, and de facto author of the book (the pieces have been reprinted exactly as they were spoken on the air, so much of the text comes from others), did a fine job selected a variety of objects spanning the millennia and continents in order to create a cohesive history of man and civilization. And yet.

By the time I'd read 60 object-chapters, I was pretty much done and by the time I got to 80 I decided, even so (relatively) close to the end, that this book would be the second this year to bear the ignominious distinction "DNF." Man, it seems, hasn't really changed all that much: there were many examples of money - coins, coins, more coins, paper money, and credit cards - the standard sculptures - ranging from the Elgin Marbles of the Parthenon to one of the great, famed, stone statues of Easter Island - and a variety of religious and secular trinkets - glassware, porcelain, mirrors, and miscellaneous knickknacks. After several hundred pages, I was no longer curious about the musings of one or another expert on an obscure aspect of sociology, art history, or any other discipline. The pictures are beautiful, but I prefer my museum objects in all three dimensions.

To fully appreciate this book it is necessary to enjoy sociology, art history, and related fields more than I evidently do.

The Worst Hard Time

The Worst Hard Time is the gritty story of the Dust Bowl that gripped the Plains in the 1930s. Like my friend Clio, whose own review convinced me I should add this book to my list, I was largely ignorant of the scope and magnitude of the Dust Bowl. Yes, it was very hot and dry and caused many people, like the famous Okies in The Grapes of Wrath, to head for California. I had never known or imagined, however, that in the areas most badly afflicted (and Steinbeck's migrants did not hail from the worst afflicted parts), when it rained, which it seldom did, the clouds dropped mud from the sky. Cattle and farm animals suffocated on the dust, scores of children and the elderly died of dust pneumonia, and a single storm could bring enough dust to bury an entire Model A Ford. Other storms were capable of traveling thousands of miles, flinging dirt onto the Capitol building in Washington, DC, and even onto ships hundreds of miles out in the Atlantic.

Timothy Egan does a masterful job of bringing these anecdotes to life and of introducing the reader to the individuals who lived in the Dust Bowl and helping us understand why they left or, harder to grasp, why they stayed. Egan also concisely explains the causes behind the Dust Bowl. These causes are a hard lot to follow. There are, of course, the railroads and railroad barrons, but more disturbingly is the federal government. Egan does not sugar coat that it was the federal government, in a fit of manifest destiny, that encouraged more and more settlers to take to the plains, to plow up the grass, to plant more wheat than the country needed, to take on ever greater debt, and so on, until it all collapsed with the onset of the Great Depression.

After years of indifference during the 1930s, the federal government finally took action, buying millions of acres of dusty fields to return to grass. Under the Civilian Conservation Corps, they also planted some 220 million trees in an attempt to anchor the land to itself. Today, Egan notes that "some of the land is still sterile and drifting," and a colleague in Colorado informs me that the devastating fires sweeping through her state are kindled in no small part by the trees that were planted during the Depression.

Overall, this is an incredibly interesting and well-written book, one that I would especially recommend for history buffs or avid readers. It's one of two books I loaded onto my mom's Nook before she left for Europe earlier this week, so I hope she'll enjoy it as well!

Periodic Tales: A Cultural History of the Elements, from Arsenic to Zinc

Periodic Tales is an example of what happens when I spend too much time in aiports... Essentially a book of short stories about various of the elements, their histories (from ancient times and alchemists to the Manhattan Project) and the ways humans have interacted with them through time (from the Biblical references to brimstone, aka sulphur, to the intricate titanium creations of jewelers today), it seemed like an interesting read. For dorks. Only.

I did learn a number of interesting, if generally useless facts: the tip of the Washington Monument is capped with aluminum, the kohl that Cleopatra used to darken her eyes was likely comprised of antimony, euro bank notes are printed with an ink of europium and, in theory, you can make your own phosphorous from urine. (Your own, or anyone else's, I suppose. Hugh Aldersey-Williams does win points in this review for performing - and then publicizing - just such an experiment with four liters of his own urine. Admittedly, the urine reeked. Also, the experiment, which involved collecting the urine for days and then allowing it to evaporate before roasting it and grinding it in a pestle, was unsuccessful.)

In the closing pages of Periodic Tales, Aldersey-Williams writes concisely of his aim: to show that the elements are all around us in both a material and a figurative sense. He does this very well, but ultimately my interest in the periodic table and its elements wasn't strong enough to truly enjoy the book. My final verdict is that total science nerds may enjoy it, but others should probably take a pass.

Death in the City of Light

Paris during World War II seems to have made it back on my list again. Death in the City of Lights is no ordinary WWII read, though: it's the true account of a serial killer, Marcel Petiot, preying on a cross-section of Parisians (for example, Jews fleeing Nazis as well as gangsters and prostitutes) at the height of the Occupation. Not only that, but the serial killer is a seemingly well-respected physician with connections to both the Resistance and the Underworld.

David King's telling is meticulously researched and recounted. In all of my previous reading of Paris during the war years, I had never heard this story, which is quite remarkable, not least because even today authorities are unsure of how many individuals Petiot killed - at least 26, but possibly as many as 150. (The uncertainty is due to the ways in which people simply disappeared during the war, a terrifying history in and of itself which bears thinking about.) King begins this book with the gruesome discovery of the bodies, then weaves the tangled web that confronted the authorities (full disclosure: I skipped the paragraphs that appeared to have too high an "ick factor" for me). At times I was as confused as Inspector Massu and Company must have been, but with his prodigious research, King does a fine job of untangling the web in an Epilogue that provides reasonable and satisfactory answers to most questions.

Death in the City of  Light is well-written and provides fascinating insight into the relationship between the various factions in Paris during the War. However, I did have two complaints. The first, which probably could not be entirely helped is that the cast of characters is tremendously long and I had a hard time remembering the relationships between them. (This is further compounded by the fact that many of them have additional code names or aliases and so even keeping straight, for example that Petiot is also Captain Valeri, Dr. Eugene, and Dr. Watterwald!)  In other cases, a character may disappear for hundreds of pages before reappearing, in which case I was grateful to be reading this on my Nook, which enabled me to do a quick search and remind myself who the person in question was. Obviously the latter instances could have been more easily addressed by the author than the former. My second complaint was that, once this book moved into the trial phase, it became a bit lopsided: some of the best passages come from the trial, which was aptly described as a "circus" at the time, but some of the most tedious passages are also contained in those chapters.

I think this is a great read for anyone looking to gain deeper insight into World War II Paris or those who would like to read something that's a bit "off the beaten path," so to speak. A more casual reader, less interested in the workings of the Occupation or mid-twentieth century Paris, may find it less enjoyable.

The Uncommon Reader

It’s the Queen’s Jubilee! Okay, so I missed it by a few weeks, but I actually read this little book—at 119 very small pages, the novella designation is very apt – closer to the Jubilee than I’m finally posting my review of it. (Also, I should add that it has been on my list for quite some time, but all the coverage of the Queen did spur me to actually drive to the library and check it out.)

So, what if Queen Elizabeth II started reading one day and became so addicted that it was all she wanted to do? That is the central question of Alan Bennett’s book, which begins with a rather improbable visit by Her Majesty to a traveling bookmobile/library. Never a tremendous reader, she is suddenly hooked and cannot get enough of the written word. She rides in carriages with a book open on her lap, she dismisses the Prime Minister early from their weekly sessions so that she can resume her stories, and she selects staff based on their appreciation for all things literary. The “peripheral” grandchildren are sent to purchase the titles their grandmother wishes to read next.

It’s all a bit silly, really, although at heart, this is less a book about the Queen’s imagined love of reading and more a book about what it means to love to read. For example, Bennett imagines, “the sheer endlessness of books outfaced her and she had no idea how to go on” and compares literature to a vast country to the borders of which one can travel but never reach. “I will never catch up,” the Queen laments on the same page. And it is true. For how many times have you contemplated the books in the library, or even the titles on an (ever-growing) reading list and thought, “so many books, so little time?” Later Bennett writes of the Queen that she “had not expected the degree to which [reading] drained her of enthusiasm for anything else.” I have often been guilty as charged. 

The Uncommon Reader  is definitely a bit far-fetched (to say nothing of the ending, which was very well done and absolutely made me chuckle), but if you are looking for a fast, light, fun summer read, love books, and can sympathize with wanting to do nothing but turn the page and find out what happens next, you’ll not be disappointed. And if you're more interested in the real life and times of the queen, I'd suggest adding Sally Bedell Smith's Elizabeth the Queen to your reading list.

The Girl in the Blue Beret

The second book I read on vacation was, unfortunately, as disappointing as the first (How I Paid for College...). The story is this: it's 1980(ish) and a former World War II pilot is about to retire from his job as a commercial airline pilot. Forcibly - pilots used to be required to retired at 60. Anyway, to mark his retirement, he decides to visit the Belgian site where he crash landed during the war. Remembering the Belgian and French civilians who helped him and the surviving members of his crew evade the Germans and return to London by way of Spain at great risk to themselves, he moves to France and begins to search for these men and women.

The premise is great and, reading in Paris, which is also the setting for much of the book, the location had much to recommend it as well. Yet, after a strong start, it never really held together. For example, a few characters disappeared completely and others were introduced only to have their stories fizzle or to leave me wondering why they had been introduced. Had two characters truly entered the story only as a way to tell the story of one particular wartime atrocity or was I missing something? Clumsily, in fact, the focus of the story changed, zeroing in on the ruthless and barbaric acts the Germans committed and contemplating the impact these acts had on one particular character - whom we never met.

As quickly as the book changed course, it ends, and in a way that left me completely unsatisfied as a reader. Where had all of these characters gone? Not only was I left with that question (as well as the 'whys' I mentioned earlier, but in many ways I was unclear of even how it was ending. If I thought this were to set-up a sequel, I would be more forgiving, but really it felt like the author (Bobbie Ann Mason) simply grew tired of writing. All in all, I had high hopes when I began reading, and probably through the first half of the book even, but by the end I was confused, frustrated, and disappointed.

How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship, and Musical Theater

I picked up How I Paid for College at the immensely wonderful Powell’s Bookstore in Portland, Oregon, earlier this spring. It was a staff pick and, particularly as I had read and enjoyed several other staff picks (Destiny of the Republic chief among them), I skimmed a few pages and decided to purchase a copy. The premise of the story is that Edward Zanni has lived a nice, cushy life until his father remarries to a “stepmonster” and then refuses to pay for him to attend Juilliard. At times, it was funny. Mostly, however, the pranks, frauds, and hijinks felt entirely non-sensical and often gratuitous. The characters largely blended together, which was weird because it was clear that many of them were intended to be the ultimate stereotype of one or another type: the junkie, the exotic foreigner, the eccentric theater student, etc. This was especially strange because I felt like one of the subliminal messages of the book was a sort of “there’s-more-to-any-person-than-meets-the-eye” lesson, where the reader is supposed to look beyond the supposed stereotype to see the whole person. At the end of the day, I just couldn’t buy it, though, and the feeling I had upon finishing the book was one of relief.