There’s much to wonder about in archaeologist Monica L. Smith’s thought-provoking, capacious, often witty new book, Cities: The First 6,000 Years. Why is it, for example, that in the very long history of the human species, cities—beginning with Tell Brak in Mesopotamia—are only 6,000 years old? What confluence of events helped urbanism arise at roughly the same time in many different places? And why are cities here to stay?

That is only the beginning of my questions. An archaeologist and professor of anthropology at UCLA, Smith has excavated ancient sites around the world and brings her wide and deep experience to her perspective on urbanism. Throughout her engaging book, she also affords the casual reader a glimpse of the tools and techniques of her trade.

Cities, Smith posits, were our first internet. They offered connectivity. They required dense, migratory populations where unfamiliarity became a measure of human relations. They also needed diverse economies and ritual buildings like churches. They were defined by verticality and a different scale of human experience than was available to rural populations. If that is obvious, less so are Smith’s ideas about consumption. In a chapter called “The Harmony of Consumption,” she asserts that “trash is an affirming badge of affluence” and digs among ancient trash heaps—surprising for their density of castoff human-made things—to prove it.

In other chapters, again drawing on her knowledge of ancient civilizations, she notes the vital importance of infrastructure. She observes that someone had to manage these projects: dams, pyramids, city grids, water supplies and trash removal. She describes these projects and project managers in surprisingly, almost shockingly contemporary terms. Can it be that ancient city-dwellers were not so different from 21st-century urbanites? Cities, it seems, have always required a level of middle managers and technocrats. Then, as now, there was a population of people from different backgrounds, vitally concerned with the nuts and bolts of life.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a Q&A with Monica L. Smith for Cities.

The isolated islands of the Polynesian Triangle have been a source of fascination since European explorers first sailed into their harbors in the 16th century and discovered thriving communities previously unknown to the rest of the world. But much of their lore still remains a mystery. Where did these people come from, when did they arrive, and how on earth did they manage to traverse the mighty Pacific and settle these remote locales?

In Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia, Harvard Review editor Christina Thompson weaves together history, science, folklore and the islands’ ancient oral traditions, archeology and genealogy, creating a mesmerizing, page-turning account of Polynesia. Thompson includes an intriguing cast of characters ranging from Captain James Cook and Tupaia, the Tahitian navigator he befriended, to modern explorers such as anthropologist Ben Finney and his Micronesian master navigator, Mau Piailug, who together sailed from Maui to Tahiti in 1976 in a traditional 60-foot canoe using only ancient navigation tools to prove it could be done.  

Thompson’s personal interest in the subject was piqued by her Maori husband and sons, who are direct descendants of Polynesians. This deep curiosity shines through in the meticulous background and details she provides such as diary entries, maps, Polynesian chronologies, geological topographies and weather patterns. 

While much of the Polynesian puzzle is still a mystery (and may never be completely solved), Thompson’s book sheds light on a fascinating region. Sea People is a revelatory summation of this vast area steeped in culture and tradition.

On the morning of September 15, 1963, an explosion at 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, killed four girls gathered in the church’s ladies’ lounge and injured 22 other people. Ku Klux Klan members were immediately suspected of bombing the African-American church. But years passed, and for a variety of reasons, the suspected domestic terrorists walked free.

In November 1977, national attention was drawn back to the case and to the city once nicknamed “Bombingham” when attorney Bill Baxley successfully prosecuted a suspect in the bombing. A young law student, Doug Jones, looked on from a balcony. He was raised only a few miles from 16th Street Baptist Church, yet like many young white people at the time, Jones was largely ignorant of the strife faced by children of color. And though that trial was successful, more bombing suspects remained free.

In Bending Toward Justice: The Birmingham Church Bombing That Changed the Course of Civil Rights, current Alabama U.S. Senator Jones recounts the church bombing that became a rallying point for the civil rights movement, as well as the criminal cases against the two surviving bombing suspects that he prosecuted in 2001 and 2002 as a U.S. attorney. Some people around the nation—and certainly in Birmingham—argued that the past should stay in the past. A prison guard once told Jones that the elderly bombers shouldn’t be left to die in jail. Jones disagrees. Throughout the book, he reiterates the importance of justice—for the girls’ families, certainly, but also for all people affected by this act of terrorism. Bending Toward Justice is a vivid journey toward that understanding. As Jones and co-author Greg Truman lay out the details of these pivotal civil rights cases, they also examine how much the country has learned—and how much it still has to grow.

Journalist Matti Friedman has reported from around the world, including Israel, Lebanon, Morocco and Moscow, and is the author of Pumpkinflowers: A Soldier’s Story of a Forgotten War, about Israeli soldiers in Lebanon, which was chosen as a New York Times Notable Book. In his new book, Spies of No Country, Friedman, who is now based in Jerusalem, combines his in-depth knowledge of Israel with a riveting narrative to recount the story of the Arab Section, an Israeli spy operation active from January 1948 to August 1949.

The Arab Section began with a dozen spies (several were caught), but Friedman focuses on four men here, all in their early 20s in 1948, and follows them in amazing detail. Only one, Isaac Shoshan, now in his 90s, is still living, and this book sprang from Friedman’s interviews with him over several years. Friedman notes, “I’ve learned over years as a reporter that time spent with old spies is never time wasted.” And that was especially true in this case. As Friedman reflects, “His memory was a sharp blade.”

Those memories help to illuminate a tension-filled tale of espionage during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, with Shoshan and others operating undercover in Beirut. The spies of the Arab Section formed what would later become Mossad, Israel’s infamous intelligence agency.

Based on both interviews and archives, Friedman drops readers into the complex, shifting and dangerous landscape of the 1948 conflict. Spies of No Country is a fascinating journey into the past that reads like a spy novel—except in this case, it’s all true.

Climate change: It may well be the most significant challenge of the 21st century—or any other. But how much do we know about the impact that significant climate change had on societies in the past?

In Nature’s Mutiny, historian Philipp Blom examines the Little Ice Age, the great climate crisis of the 16th century, and traces the powerful—and often expected changes—it had on Europe. This is not, by any means, a dry treatise. Blom begins by reflecting on a painting of a winter landscape by the Dutch artist Hendrick Avercamp. On the surface it appears to be an idyllic depiction of a community enjoying the ice. But there is more to be seen here. Blom writes, “Avercamp’s landscapes describe this frigid world and hint at the new social order that would emerge from it.”

The Little Ice Age lasted a century. It brought about harsh frosts, poor harvests and significant changes in European societies. Blom’s analysis encompasses economics, philosophy, commerce and migration. Throughout, he addresses one key overriding question: “What changes in society when climate changes?”

Blom’s conclusion is a sober one. He writes that “it is possible, perhaps likely, that the current economic and political principles of highly developed societies—growth and exploitation—will result in their decline or even collapse.”

There is fear, Blom tells us—something we already know. But he also affirms, “There must be hope.” Blom’s compelling examination of how societies and cities adapted to unexpected change in the past is both fascinating history and a timely title for our own time.

One weird feature of the little-understood phenomenon of radiation poisoning is that after the initial acute nausea, there is a latency period when many people feel OK. The Soviet soldiers under Captain “Moose” Zborovsky, for example, were able to slosh around for an hour in potentially lethal, gamma-emitting water while they desperately repaired the ruptured drainage under the melting core of Chernobyl’s Reactor Four, and at the time merely felt “exhausted, with an odd taste of sour apples in their mouths.”

Were these men heroic, servile, foolhardy or ignorant? This is one of many questions that will swirl in the minds of readers of Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster, Adam Higginbotham’s spellbinding book about the April 1986 nuclear explosion at Chernobyl. Based on nearly 80 interviews with survivors and a deep dive into declassified Soviet documents, this account pulses with the human dramas that unfolded as people, including more than half a million conscripts, contended with the deadly explosion and its aftermath.

Midnight in Chernobyl also offers profound insights into the failing Soviet system as Mikhail Gorbachev tried to save it with “a new openness.” Despite the new policy, there was much the aging bureaucracy could not readily admit. In a competition with the West, the Soviets had supersized their reactors and, it turns out, deployed a flawed design. A push for speedy construction led to shortcuts and substandard materials. Yet, in what would be the last show-trial of the flagging regime, the explosion was blamed on operator error, and the plant director, knowing the script, went to prison without protest. The Soviets also failed to track the effects of radiation on the many people who worked in the contaminated zone, so to this date, the lethal legacy of the blast is not fully known. Growing public awareness of the cover-up contributed to distrust and the eventual collapse of the regime.

This is an excellent, enthralling account of the disaster and its fallout.

This article was originally published in the February 2019 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Only the hoariest among us remember when the Cuban revolution was chic and Fidel Castro was feted as a modern-day Robin Hood. In his fast-paced and highly entertaining book Cuba Libre!, Tony Perrottet spotlights the bright hopes that propelled the revolution and the herculean effort that enabled a ragtag band to defeat a dictator’s army of 40,000 in just over two years.

President Fulgencio Batista began a reign in 1952 that was remarkable for its corruption and brutality. Castro’s career as a rebel against Batista began a year later, with a failed attack on an army barrack. After his release from prison, Castro retreated to Mexico to plan further resistance. There he met and enlisted the Argentinean doctor Ernesto “Che” Guevara. With a band of 82 men, Castro returned to Cuba by sea in late 1956. A disastrous landing led to most of his troops being captured or killed. The few survivors took refuge in the rugged Sierra Maestra range and trained their eyes on distant Havana.

Perrottet relies on contemporary newspaper accounts and journals to depict the perilous living conditions in the mountains, explain the essential roles of female leaders and illustrate Castro’s genius in public relations. The victories against Batista grew slowly but inexorably and were, for the most part, chronicled sympathetically by the American media. Finally, Castro made his triumphant entry into Havana on January 8, 1959. His honeymoon with the U.S. lasted only a few months, until it became clear that he really did intend to reform the Cuban economy at the expense of those who had drained it.

This article was originally published in the January 2019 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

When Americans woke up on November 7, 2016, it seemed as if we were not one country, but two. There were the red states and the blue states; the pro-Trumps and the anti-Trumps; the Republicans and the Democrats. In the aftermath of President Donald Trump’s election, it seems to some that we are no longer a united nation, but the uneasy yoking of enemy camps. However, in Fault Lines: A History of the United States Since 1974, Princeton professors Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer demonstrate that the current crisis is nothing new. Instead, it is the result of fissures that have been deepening for decades.

In the 1950s, there was an expectation that middle-class white men would be the dominant breadwinners, women would be relegated to the home, and people of color would continue to be treated as second-class citizens. However, as underrepresented groups demanded and fought for equal rights and opportunities, cracks in the status quo began to emerge—sometimes explosively. Like volcanic eruptions along a fault line, the Watts riots in LA, the Stonewall riots in New York City and the Kent State shootings were symptoms of a deeper schism. Aided by advances in technology such as the internet and cable news, along with a growing distrust of politicians in the wake of Watergate and subsequent scandals, the cracks deepened, and American opposition hardened into enmity. President Trump may very well be an accelerant of this process, but he is also a product of it.

Fault Lines started as a series of lectures by Kruse and Zelizer offered at Princeton. Judging from the resulting book, the class was no doubt a wonderful introduction to a critical era in our history. Even for those who lived through these events, Fault Lines gives brilliant context to help us understand how Americans have become so fragmented and rigid in our beliefs. Perhaps, with understanding, we can begin to soften our divisions and heal.

This article was originally published in the January 2019 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.