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NonfictionGraphic Memoirs

Brittle Joints

In beautifully colored and evocative frames, Brittle Joints shares illustrator Maria Sweeney’s experiences living with a rare disability.
In beautifully colored and evocative frames, Brittle Joints shares illustrator Maria Sweeney’s experiences living with a rare disability.
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The changing experience of time

The Folded Clock, as crafted by novelist Heidi Julavits, is intricate and delicately worked. Time doesn’t flow linearly in this memoir as we might expect. What at first glance appears to be the diary of a writer in her 40s living an enviable life—an apartment in Manhattan, a house in Maine, sabbaticals in Europe—turns into a structure more complex, like an origami crane. Meditations on marriage and friendship appear and reappear. Diary entries might skip six months, or jump back a year. Julavits arranges the raw material of her diary in such a way as to provoke insight across the units of time that we normally experience: the day, the week and the month.
NonfictionHistory

The key to the rise of L.A.

Review by Robert Weibezahl

Los Angeles would not exist as the sprawling, highly populated global center it is today were it not for one man. At the turn of the last century, William Mulholland, a civil servant self-educated in the ways of water engineering, all but willed Southern California’s future when he masterminded one of the greatest engineering projects of all time: the Los Angeles Aqueduct.

Bringing massive amounts of water south to this day, this monumental achievement was wrapped in controversy from the start, and in our more conservation-oriented age, there is still resentment about how Los Angeles “stole” the water of the central Owens Valley, dooming that rural area to an arid fate. Still, even Mulholland’s critics concede that the colorful Irish immigrant was a visionary who shaped the way that precious water is controlled not only in California, but also throughout the West.

Mulholland’s story has been told before, but perhaps never so compellingly as Les Standiford tells it in Water to the Angels. Newly arrived in California, Mulholland began working for the water department as a well- and ditch-digger, but impressed the company president with his unvarnished candor and knowledge. Mulholland’s single-minded mission was to bring water to L.A., and, unlike many others, he never made a penny from the project beyond his public salary.

Standiford expertly weaves the internecine drama behind the building of the aqueduct with a modern inquiry into its legacy (and even touches upon the movie Chinatown, which used the bones of the story but played fast and loose with the facts). Water to the Angels leaves little doubt that the forward-thinking Mulholland was as original as the city he birthed.

 

This article was originally published in the April 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Los Angeles would not exist as the sprawling, highly populated global center it is today were it not for one man. At the turn of the last century, William Mulholland, a civil servant self-educated in the ways of water engineering, all but willed Southern California’s future when he masterminded one of the greatest engineering projects of all time: the Los Angeles Aqueduct.

A poet’s journey toward adulthood

It’s rare that a memoir is so emotionally engaging that a reader may wish to reach back through time and envelop the author in a warm parental hug. But that’s the impulse poet Tracy K. Smith engenders in this account of growing up as a dutiful daughter in a small town in northern California during the 1970s and ’80s. “My mother was proud of my decorum,” Smith recalls. “She liked having a little girl who instinctively wanted to obey.” Smith was much more than a compliant child, though. She was also preternaturally attuned to everything happening around her and determined to find a place for it in her rich imagination.
NonfictionTrue Crime

The history of a young psychopath

Review by Anne Bartlett

What with all the CSI television dramas, books by FBI profilers and frightening news stories about serial killers, we’ve become quite familiar with the concept of the criminal psychopath, a person without remorse. But even now, most of us are shocked when a child is a murderer. In 1874, when our current ideas about mental illness were still in their infancy, 14-year-old Jesse Pomeroy seemed to many like a demon from hell.

As what we would now call a tween, Jesse kidnapped and tortured little boys not far from his home in Boston. A stint at a reform school just taught him better criminal techniques: After his release, he killed a girl and a boy in South Boston. He was quickly captured (though not quickly enough to save the second victim). The troubling question for Bostonians: What next for Jesse? Execution, imprisonment, treatment? Attitudes toward him changed as the study of mental illness evolved.

Roseanne Montillo’s absorbing The Wilderness of Ruin explores Jesse’s crimes and the decades-long debate that followed in the context of 19th-century law, medicine and literature. She particularly focuses on the life and social circle of writer Herman Melville, whose emotional troubles influenced Moby-Dick and Billy Budd, among other works. Melville’s friend Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (father of the Supreme Court justice) was among those who argued that Jesse should be studied, not hanged.

Perhaps most compelling is Montillo’s portrait of Jesse, who was intelligent and resourceful, but in modern terms clearly a dangerous psychopath. Bostonians were likely very lucky that he started his criminal career before he was sophisticated enough to cover his tracks.

 

This article was originally published in the April 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

What with all the CSI television dramas, books by FBI profilers and frightening news stories about serial killers, we’ve become quite familiar with the concept of the criminal psychopath, a person without remorse. But even now, most of us are shocked when a child is a murderer. In 1874, when our current ideas about mental illness were still in their infancy, 14-year-old Jesse Pomeroy seemed to many like a demon from hell.

An actress on a life of love

Open Candice Bergen’s A Fine Romance and be prepared to settle in for an evening filled with a few drinks, casual grazing, laughter, tears and rollicking tales from one of America’s finest actresses.
NonfictionBiography

A charged family rivalry

Review by Keith Herrell

Both born in 1884, Eleanor Roosevelt and Alice Roosevelt Longworth could have been classmates in school. It’s easy to imagine Eleanor sitting up front (or even helping teach the class) and Alice occupying a back-row spot, launching spitballs and making wisecracks.

As Hissing Cousins makes clear, the two women from one of America’s foremost families could not have been more different. And that makes for some highly entertaining reading, especially if you like your history sweetened with delicious anecdotes and tasty bon mots.

Eleanor was the niece of Theodore Roosevelt and the wife of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Alice was Theodore’s daughter from his first marriage, fated never to know her mother (who died the day after Alice was born). The first cousins may have been from the same family tree, but complicated circumstances—some political, some personal—pulled them apart as they matured into adulthood. At that point the stage was set, with shy social reformer Eleanor on the side of the Democratic party and attention-loving gadfly Alice casting her lot with the Republicans.

Authors Marc Peyser and Timothy Dwyer have a can’t-miss subject on their hands, and they bring the reader along for an exhilarating ride. Any history lessons, including a brief account of the Teapot Dome scandal, are a bonus, and there’s enough philandering to make the residents of Peyton Place blush.

For better or worse, most of the hissing in Hissing Cousins is done from afar. Face to face, on numerous social occasions, the cousins are all smiles. But as the authors know, where’s the fun—and the book—in that?

 

This article was originally published in the April 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Both born in 1884, Eleanor Roosevelt and Alice Roosevelt Longworth could have been classmates in school. It’s easy to imagine Eleanor sitting up front (or even helping teach the class) and Alice occupying a back-row spot, launching spitballs and making wisecracks.

Declarations from a comma queen

“Let’s get one thing straight right from the beginning: I didn’t set out to be a comma queen.” In fact, Mary Norris explored quite a few interesting career paths before finding her calling as a copy editor at The New Yorker. Her work life began at the age of 15, checking feet at a public pool in Cleveland. She went on to drive a milk truck, package mozzarella at a cheese factory, and wash dishes (all the while managing to pursue a graduate degree in English).
NonfictionHistory

The lost art of the superhero

Review by Priscilla Kipp

BookPage Nonfiction Top Pick, April 2015

It’s reassuring to discover that heroes, both ancient and modern, are not somehow supernaturally endowed after all. Indeed, they may come by their skills quite naturally. In the thoroughly absorbing Natural Born Heroes, which tracks heroism from the times of Zeus and Odysseus to the World War II bravery of a motley crew of fighters, Christopher McDougall makes it clear that incredible acts of strength and endurance are doable. His extensive knowledge of fitness training, nutrition and physiology winds artfully around a tale of superhuman resistance during the Nazi occupation of the Greek island of Crete, Hitler’s designated launching pad for the invasion of Russia.

By the time Crete’s WWII heroes succeed, we know every detail of how they did it, and how, by reviewing the knowledge and skills they possessed, it is possible for their modern counterparts to do the same. Our skills are inborn, McDougall argues, forgotten perhaps, but recoverable. These “natural strengths” can make anyone useful in the most challenging situations. Just ask Norina Bentzel, a Pennsylvania school principal who in 2001 saved her kindergarteners from a machete-armed intruder.

At the heart of McDougall’s story lies a similar David versus Goliath duel. The Goliath in this case was Hitler, who never saw these Davids coming. A band of British special forces—described as the least-likely combatants in all of Europe—managed to kidnap Nazi General Heinrich Kreipe in 1944 under the very nose of his fellow commander. Nazi retaliation against the locals was swift and bloody, yet Cretan resisters risked their lives to aid the kidnappers. How did they—both British commandos and locals—manage to flee the Nazi pursuers and traverse a mountain, with very little food or rest, and challenges at every turn?

McDougall, author of the 2009 bestseller Born to Run and himself a highly trained athlete, solves this mystery with a witty eye for every detail, inspiring his own captive audience along the way.

 

This article was originally published in the April 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

It’s reassuring to discover that heroes, both ancient and modern, are not somehow supernaturally endowed after all. Indeed, they may come by their skills quite naturally. In the thoroughly absorbing Natural Born Heroes, which tracks heroism from the times of Zeus and Odysseus to the World War II bravery of a motley crew of fighters, Christopher McDougall makes it clear that incredible acts of strength and endurance are doable. His extensive knowledge of fitness training, nutrition and physiology winds artfully around a tale of superhuman resistance during the Nazi occupation of the Greek island of Crete, Hitler’s designated launching pad for the invasion of Russia.

Don’t let the light in

At this moment on the other side of the world, a girl is sitting in the dark. A rare skin disease prevents exposure to the sun, to a shining bulb, even to the benign glow of a Kindle screen. She covers up the slightest cracks of light with tin foil. What do people who pass her house on the street think of these ceaseless black-out blinds, she wonders. She doesn't find out.
Nonfiction

Enlightenment with a price

Review by Edward Morris

Those who find the physical world a sufficient source of intellectual and emotional enrichment are likely to be both puzzled and annoyed by A Death On Diamond Mountain. Why would the two middle class American men at the center of the story—both well-educated and neither from a particularly religious family—become so fixated on achieving “enlightenment” through Tibetan Buddhism that their quests take over virtually every aspect of their lives? And given the inward focus of their questing, why should their story matter? The real drama here arises from the charismatic woman both men loved and who ultimately set them at odds with each other.

Upon graduating from Stanford, Ian Thorson surrendered to a spiritual restlessness that took him on a nearly two-year tour of religious shrines throughout Europe and Asia. During these wanderings, he became increasingly interested in Buddhism. After his return to America, he encountered Michael Roach, a Princeton-educated seeker who, by the time they met in New York in the late 1990s, was a well-established Buddhist scholar, teacher and author. Roach’s chief aide and consort was the alluring and cunning Christine McNally. Years later, when she shifted her affections from the Roach to the younger and more vigorous Thorson, she became the apple of discord at Diamond Mountain, the retreat Roach had created for his followers in the Arizona desert. In the end, she and Thorson were cast out of this rustic Eden, a fate that led to Thorson’s slow and agonizing death.

Himself a student of Buddhism, author Scott Carney deftly traces the paths that brought these three people together and the machinations that drove them apart. The book also describes the intricacies of Buddhist history and thought and shows how Roach Americanized the religion to comfort the rich and successful.

Those who find the physical world a sufficient source of intellectual and emotional enrichment are likely to be both puzzled and annoyed by A Death On Diamond Mountain. Why would the two middle class American men at the center of the story—both well-educated and neither from a particularly religious family—become so fixated on achieving “enlightenment” through Tibetan Buddhism that their quests take over virtually every aspect of their lives? And given the inward focus of their questing, why should their story matter? The real drama here arises from the charismatic woman both men loved and who ultimately set them at odds with each other.

From self-taught lawyer to global activist

You don’t have to be an expert on Chinese proverbs to discern what might happen when an egg meets a stone, but you will understand much more about modern China and its struggling people when you meet this fearless egg: Chen Guangcheng, the narrator of the riveting memoir The Barefoot Lawyer: A Blind Man’s Fight for Justice and Freedom in China. Born in 1971, blind since infancy, growing up in dire poverty, Chen learns to escape all his constraints. Barred from the village school and its force-fed propaganda, Chen instead learns from his father that the folktales and myths of his homeland carry a message: As surely as empires will rise, corruption will bring them down. Justice must find its way.
NonfictionHealth & Fitness

The ABCs of our vitamin obsession

Review by Marianne Peters

As a child, I remember eating chalky Flintstone vitamins. I don't remember asking why—it was just part of our morning ritual as we siblings sat down for breakfast. As a young mother, I remember obsessing over my daughters' eating habits, wondering if their growth would be stunted by the omission of a key nutrient. I thoroughly enjoyed reading Catherine Price’s new book, Vitamania: Our Obsessive Quest for Nutritional Perfection, because it reveals where some of these ideas and habits originated. What's stunning about her research is how little we actually know about our bodies and the way they employ these chemicals.

The discovery of the substances eventually called vitamins solved a lot of the problems that had plagued humankind for a long time. Many diseases, such as scurvy or beriberi, resulted from a lack of specific nutrients. Once those nutrients were ingested, people usually recovered.

The discovery of vitamins led to problems as well as solutions, however. As Price explains, people became more enamored of processed foods, which lack many of the healthy benefits of whole foods. Once those processed foods became enriched with vitamins, they took on a perception of healthiness they didn't actually deserve. Does it really matter that Pop Tarts have been laced with essential nutrients? They're still Pop Tarts. Another problem was the anxiety created by experts such as Elmer McCollum, who popularized the use of vitamins, but also employed scare tactics that we are still susceptible to today.

Vitamania is carefully researched, and Price is a curious writer engaged with her subject. Her book offers a compelling new perspective on our quest for perfect diets, perfect bodies and perfect health.

As a child, I remember eating chalky Flintstone vitamins. I don't remember asking why—it was just part of our morning ritual as we siblings sat down for breakfast. As a young mother, I remember obsessing over my daughters' eating habits, wondering if their growth would be stunted by the omission of a key nutrient. I thoroughly enjoyed reading Catherine Price’s new book, Vitamania: Our Obsessive Quest for Nutritional Perfection, because it reveals where some of these ideas and habits originated. What's stunning about her research is how little we actually know about our bodies and the way they employ these chemicals.

A post-punk pioneer’s unflinching memoir

Kim Gordon’s memoir, Girl in a Band, begins and ends with two seminal gigs, the final Sonic Youth concert in 2011 that also marked the end of her marriage to front man Thurston Moore and last year’s induction ceremony for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame when Gordon was invited to sing with the remaining members of Nirvana. These experiences, each cathartic in their own way and each described in Gordon’s carefully crafted but emotionally frank language, set the tone for this remarkable book, one that is passionate without self-pity, revealing but not gossipy and never smug. Gordon’s honesty provides a remarkable window into a personality often regarded as the Queen of Cool but who here shows herself to be as sensitive as she is fearless.

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