Pete Croatto

by Pete Croatto

In the introduction to One and the Same, journalist Abigail Pogrebin admits that writing a book about identical twins was something she was loath to do, equating it to “volunteering to do a public striptease. Because being a twin goes to the core of who I am and I was wary of examining that.”

Thankfully, Pogrebin avoids a literary bump’n’grind, instead merging interviews, research and memoir into a fascinating look at the lifelong dynamics of twins. Along the way, she freely admits that she and her twin sister Robin, a reporter for the New York Times, have drifted apart. That revelation gives the book an interesting slant: while interviewing other twins, doctors and her friends and family, Pogrebin gauges her own relationship with Robin. This is more than just journalism; it’s a search for personal clarity.

At the same time, Pogrebin is a good reporter on two fronts. First, she is able to get her twin sources to share personal, sometimes heartbreaking, information about a special relationship: “There’s a closeness that we have—even if it isn’t spoken—that my husband can’t duplicate,” one tells Pogrebin. Second, she examines myriad issues, both medical and social, without confusing the reader or deflating the personal tone. Pogrebin’s first-person narrative, coupled with her thirst for knowledge, makes for an immensely satisfying, enlightening read on what too many people dismiss as a genetic gimmick.

Pete Croatto is a freelance writer based in New Jersey.

Lifestyles

Lifestyles

The mysteries of manhood

Review by Pete Croatto

by Pete Croatto

In popular culture, when men talk about being men they follow a certain formula. We’re probably going to hear about the protagonist looking deeply into the eyes of his firstborn child, his wild single days and the emotional rigors of being a husband. There’s almost a sense that men live the same life; just the names of the primary characters change.

Novelist Michael Chabon’s book of essays, Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son, fits into that paradigm, but not perfectly. Thank goodness. Chabon focuses on the almost-overlooked moments of his life, and the result is a sparkling, clear-headed collection that provides a glorious look at the makeup of a man.

The Pulitzer Prize winner (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay; Wonder Boys) waxes poetic about the creative benefits of the crappy TV shows and movies of his youth, compared to the polished, CGI-animated treats of today, which “don’t leave anything implied, unstated, incomplete.” He talks about the growing sense of doom accompanying his daughter’s blossoming into womanhood and how getting a men’s purse, or “murse,” represents one of the key benefits of getting older—not caring what other people think. Chabon also installs a towel rack, worries about his wife and examines other wonders of childhood: getting lost, the seductive power of basements and the shattered world of scatological humor.

As has been observed repeatedly, Chabon is an awesome talent. He’s blessed with observational shrewdness and a gift for nimble wordplay, but that never obscures the points he makes. (That last talent has served him well as a novelist, and it’s especially helpful here.) The essays, most of which previously appeared in Details, are nostalgic, funny and introspective while never straining for style points or wallowing in sentiment. It’s the kind of writing you read twice, not to get a better understanding, but to better appreciate the man’s abilities. Chabon is a regular guy—except that he can expertly explain himself with smooth, embracing eloquence. The rest of us have to stick to the same old story.

Pete Croatto is a New Jersey-based freelance writer.

Nonfiction, True Crime

Nonfiction True Crime

The birth of the American Mafia

Review by Pete Croatto

by Pete Croatto

Thanks mostly to movies and television, the Mafia has been romanticized and glamorized. Historian Mike Dash isn’t interested in adding to that. Instead, his readable, revealing saga, The First Family, chronicles the birth and early days of an American institution.

Dozens of men and women figure prominently in this checkered history, so much so that Dash provides a rogues’ gallery for readers to keep up. (Note: you’ll need it.) Three people play prominent roles: Giuseppe “The Clutch Hand” Morello, a thug from Sicily—the real birthplace of the Mafia—who immigrates to New York City in 1894 and builds “the first family of organized crime in the United States.” Two lawmen give him perpetual trouble. One is Italian-born detective Joseph Petrosino, whose standing as “New York’s great expert on Italian crime” proves invaluable to the city but ultimately deadly to him. The other is William Flynn, head of the Secret Service’s New York bureau, whose dogged investigation into Morello’s counterfeiting operation marks the beginning of the end for “The Clutch Hand.”

There’s a lot to digest, but Dash (Batavia’s Graveyard) goes beyond offering a timeline with thugs. He describes the awful conditions in Sicily that created the Mafia, while examining the harsh lives of Italian immigrants in New York in the 1890s and early 20th century. Crime was a most appealing option, and since amateurs could be successful, there certainly was room for a professional outfit. Like any good entrepreneur, Morello saw a need and provided a service. He had a good run, but after his imprisonment in 1910, greed, infighting and bloodshed became increasingly common. Let’s just say that lots of people didn’t die from natural causes, including Morello in 1930.

Sexy, macho details aren’t prominent, but by eschewing those, Dash clearly shows the dark side of the plucky immigrant story. For Giuseppe Morello, the American Dream meant bringing the Mafia—his salvation—to America. Morello was a success story, just not the kind you learned about in school.

New Jersey writer Pete Croatto belongs to AAA, but not the Mafia.

Dozens of men and women figure…

Memoir

Memoir

A family’s troubled waters

Review by Pete Croatto

by Pete Croatto

Life on a boat sounds like a dream: sailing in and out of tropical locales, embracing the staggering vastness of the sea, seeing the world up-close and in living color. Then there's the reality: homesick kids, pirates, costly and time-consuming repairs, squabbling. Black Wave details John and Jean Silverwood's tumultuous, yet ultimately rewarding, experience on the Emerald Jane, their 55-foot catamaran. In a span of two years, the California couple and their four kids (ages three to 14 at the start), traveled from the Atlantic coast, into the Caribbean and through the Panama Canal to the Pacific Ocean.

Then, near the end of the adventure, the boat hit a reef in French Polynesia, and was ravaged, pinning John under its mast in the process. With help hours away and John slipping toward death, the family sprung into action, pulling him from the wreckage and keeping him alive. "There is no time to rehearse; whoever you are in those moments is exactly who you are," John writes. "It is who your family is, too." Jean Silverwood complements the book's nautical action with substance. She throws readers into the frenzy of the wreck and details the highs and lows of life onboard, coming across as personable, vulnerable and concerned – in short, a real person and not an adrenaline junkie.

Given the material, it's impossible for Black Wave to be boring; there's plenty to keep readers turning the pages a steady clip, making this an ideal beach (or boat) read.

Memoir

Memoir

Finding the truth behind a father’s death

Review by Pete Croatto

by Pete Croatto

In 1942, New York Times war correspondent Byron “Barney” Darnton died while covering World War II in the Pacific. His son John Darnton was only 11 months old when Barney was killed by a piece of shrapnel.

The younger Darnton’s Almost a Family, in which he traces the irrevocable effects of his father’s death, can best be described as an investigative memoir. Darnton spends the first half of the book describing a childhood without a stable male influence before devoting another chunk to recreating the memory of a man he barely knew. Overall, it’s a poignant look at one man’s efforts to put the pieces of his shattered family back together.

After Barney died, the parenting responsibilities fell to John’s mother, Eleanor. The family’s unexpected second act starts promisingly before a failed news service and raging alcoholism cause Eleanor to unravel, forcing John and his older brother, Bob, to adapt. Before their mother’s recovery, John is shuffled to the homes of sympathetic relatives and neighbors, forced to become independent far too soon.

The author turns out just fine, becoming a novelist and a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the New York Times, his father’s beloved stomping grounds. Darnton then uses those award-winning reporting skills to reconstruct his parents’ past, especially that of his father, who displayed an unquenchable thirst for women and was ill-prepared for the events that unfolded on his last day.

What makes Almost a Family so attractive despite its flaws—the younger Darnton’s newspaper days slow the narrative, and the shift from memoir to reporting is distracting—is that no matter how many questions you ask or how much research you uncover, the dead can’t be defined. “We spend our time upon the earth and then disappear, and only one-thousandth of what we were lasts,” he writes. “We send all those bottles out into the ocean and so few wash up onshore.”

Darnton’s search for answers isn’t weepy abandonment entertainment; it’s the real deal, and one from which many readers will gain solace.

The younger Darnton’s Almost a Family, in which he…

Nature

Nature

The big kahunas

Review by Pete Croatto

by Pete Croatto

According to author Susan Casey, in response to increased temperatures and “other factors no one’s aware of yet,” the world’s oceans have been producing bigger and bigger waves. For researchers and scientists, this has provided a fertile area of foreboding research. But what worries some people brings great delight to surfers, some of whom travel the world finding the next great wave to feed their high.

Casey (The Devil’s Teeth) offers a probing look at both the passionate and the pragmatic sides of these oceanic wonders in The Wave. The first side is represented by surfing legend Laird Hamilton and his friends, who take these gigantic waves—and survive—in two-man teams, equipped with a jet ski, years of experience and respect for the elements. When Casey isn’t tagging along with the humble Hamilton and his affable crew to the next great waves in Hawaii, Mexico and California, she visits experts who explore the scientific side of these massive waves.

Giant, destructive waves are not a recent phenomenon; they have occurred for hundreds of years. What’s vexing, Casey’s subjects reveal, is that there are still a lot of unexplained issues regarding how 80-foot-high waves can appear in typically placid waters, or when all of this geological and temperature-related tumult will exact permanent, worldwide destruction, instead of isolated disasters (e.g., 2004’s Indian Ocean tsunami). The surfers, meanwhile, have no handbook for what they do. Regardless of experience, there’s little room for error, especially with a vocation defined by feel and instinct.

Though some may wince at Casey’s first-person chumminess with her subjects or her gushy outdoors-as-heaven prose, she shows that this occurrence in nature has more than one meaning: It’s an adrenaline rush, a marketing scheme, a cause of apocalyptic-scale concern and a workplace hazard (for a marine salvage expert). Casey’s curiosity in learning about every conceivable aspect of waves makes for compelling reading, regardless of whether you look at waves as a great ride or with great concern.