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Inside a North Korean classroom

Suki Kim, author of the highly regarded novel The Interpreter, went to North Korea to teach English under doubly false pretenses. Her fellow instructors at Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST) were evangelical Christians pretending to be nonreligious teachers. (“North Korea was the evangelical Christian Holy Grail, the hardest place to crack in the whole world,” she writes.) To be accepted into the program, Kim pretended to be an evangelical pretending to be a nonreligious teacher. She feared exposure on all sides.
NonfictionNature

Fighting to save our feathered friends

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

Michele Raffin was a suburban California mom who’d finally signed up to join a gym when, to her dismay, her personal trainer was extremely late for their session. When he finally arrived, he had a good reason for the delay: He’d come across a wounded bird by the side of the freeway. In what would become a life-changing moment, Raffin met that dove and tried to save it. And though it didn’t survive, she found herself a few days later responding to a newspaper ad seeking someone to rescue another dove. Her course in life was set.

Today Pandemonium Aviaries (her kids chose the name) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to breeding bird species that hover on the edge of extinction. Through Raffin’s fascinating account, we get a glimpse of the challenges of breeding wild birds in captivity. We follow her story of how one bird led to another, and another, and we learn what it takes to bear the responsibility for hundreds of living creatures.

Along the way, we meet some endearing personalities including Sweetie, a tiny quail left in a paper bag at a supermarket on its way to become someone’s dinner, and Oscar, a flightless Lady Gouldian finch with an indomitable will to survive.

As Raffin (and her family) become increasingly committed to rescuing and caring for birds, they realize that their charges require ever more specialized knowledge and care. Slowly but surely, and not without some heartbreaking setbacks, Raffin takes her place in the rarefied world of aviculture. Her sanctuary is now known for its success in breeding vulnerable species such as the lovely blue Victoria crowned pigeon of New Guinea.

Packed with dramatic incidents and unforgettable characters, both avian and human, The Birds of Pandemonium is the engaging story of one woman’s journey and her commitment to conservation.

 

 

This article was originally published in the October 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Michele Raffin was a suburban California mom who’d finally signed up to join a gym when, to her dismay, her personal trainer was extremely late for their session. When he finally arrived, he had a good reason for the delay: He’d come across a wounded bird by the side of the freeway. In what would become a life-changing moment, Raffin met that dove and tried to save it. And though it didn’t survive, she found herself a few days later responding to a newspaper ad seeking someone to rescue another dove. Her course in life was set.

The life of an American TV legend

Norman Lear wants to show you his scrapbook, and—after 92 years—it’s a pretty thick one. Although he established himself as a comedy writer at the dawn of television in 1950, writing for Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, Lear didn’t really become a public figure until the 1970s. During that golden decade, he revolutionized TV with such socially conscious sitcoms as “All in the Family,” “Sanford and Son,” “Maude,” “Good Times,” “The Jeffersons” and “One Day at a Time.” Unlike the comedies that preceded them, these series explored such touchy subjects as racism, ethnic prejudices, homophobia, women’s rights, abortion, sex education and single parenthood.
NonfictionTechnology

The danger in dividing attention

Review by Kelly Blewett

After closing New York Times reporter Matt Richtel’s compelling book A Deadly Wandering: A Tale of Tragedy and Redemption in the Age of Attention, I couldn’t help but think of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. Both chronicle the story of a crime. If you’ve ever read In Cold Blood, you know how the story builds with palpable suspense. The same is true here. The crime, though, isn’t coldblooded murder, but something seemingly more mundane: a car accident on a hillside in Utah that killed two rocket scientists and was caused by a careless teenager. The alleged crime is negligent homicide, because the teenager, Reggie, may have been texting just before the crash.

The accident occurred in 2006, when there was no state law against texting and driving. And in the immediate aftermath of the crash, Reggie vehemently denies being on his phone. But soon law enforcement officers aren’t so sure they believe him. What follows is a detailed reporting of the ensuing legal battle—and the effects it has on the key players on both sides.

Along the way, Richtel makes a sinister suggestion: This accident could have happened to anyone. By meeting with neuroscientists who study the science of distraction, Richtel provides a powerful backdrop that explains the significance of Reggie’s accident. It is important not only for the people involved and the driving laws in Utah, but also for all of us out in the everyday world with our phones, those tiny devices constantly demanding attention. When does wandering attention cross the line? When do each of us become, against our better judgment, dangerous?

 

This article was originally published in the October 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

After closing New York Times reporter Matt Richtel’s compelling book A Deadly Wandering: A Tale of Tragedy and Redemption in the Age of Attention, I couldn’t help but think of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. Both chronicle the story of a crime. If you’ve ever read In Cold Blood, you know how the story builds with palpable suspense. The same is true here. The crime, though, isn’t coldblooded murder, but something seemingly more mundane: a car accident on a hillside in Utah that killed two rocket scientists and was caused by a careless teenager. The alleged crime is negligent homicide, because the teenager, Reggie, may have been texting just before the crash.

A journalist’s stunning, searing memoir

Fire Shut Up in My Bones is a stunning coming-of-age story that tracks New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow’s rise from a poverty-stricken childhood in Louisiana to the respected journalist he is today. An introspective and poetic memoir about race, masculinity and sexuality, it also reckons with the impact of childhood sexual abuse on the core of his identity.
NonfictionBiography

Behind the legendary stone wall

Review by John T. Slania

Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson is such an iconic military figure that he is legendary to Civil War scholars and schoolchildren alike. So it’s hard to imagine an author breaking new ground with another Jackson biography. But S.C. Gwynne does just that in Rebel Yell, which deserves comparisons to Shelby Foote’s three-volume The Civil War for its depth of knowledge and graceful narrative. Gwynne, a 2011 Pulitzer Prize finalist for Empire of the Summer Moon, casts Jackson as a human being, not as a bronze figure towering over a battlefield. Readers will come away from Rebel Yell with an understanding of the man that goes beyond his military exploits.

Gwynne is obligated to cover familiar territory, as when Thomas Jackson earned his nickname by standing his ground against superior Union forces at the First Battle of Manassas. A fellow Confederate general shouted, “Yonder stands Jackson like a stone wall,” and the rest, as they say, is history.

Jackson’s military prowess is impressive, but it is glimpses of Stonewall off the battlefield that are more fascinating. We learn that Jackson was a complex character with any number of quirks and tics. He was deeply religious and placed his fate in the hands of God. Thus, while he lived by the Sixth Commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” once the South declared war, he pledged his loyalty and felt that any death he caused was God’s will. Formerly a professor at the Virginia Military Institute, Jackson was introverted and soft-spoken, yet in the heat of battle, his eyes became fiery and his demeanor decisive as he barked out orders. He was consumed by his health, and a bad stomach propelled him to a diet of stale bread and buttermilk. Despite these peculiarities, Jackson rose to become one of the South’s fiercest and most beloved generals, so relied upon that his early death left Confederates wondering whether the war’s outcome might have been different if he had survived.

Gwynne’s masterful storytelling makes Rebel Yell an absorbing choice for general readers and Civil War buffs alike.

 

This article was originally published in the October 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson is such an iconic military figure that he is legendary to Civil War scholars and schoolchildren alike. So it’s hard to imagine an author breaking new ground with another Jackson biography. But S.C. Gwynne does just that in Rebel Yell, which deserves comparisons to Shelby Foote’s three-volume The Civil War for its depth of knowledge and graceful narrative. Gwynne, a 2011 Pulitzer Prize finalist for Empire of the Summer Moon, casts Jackson as a human being, not as a bronze figure towering over a battlefield. Readers will come away from Rebel Yell with an understanding of the man that goes beyond his military exploits.

Confronting a doctor’s dilemmas

Let me confess: I’m a medical book junkie. That said, Terrence Holt’s Internal Medicine: A Doctor’s Stories is my new favorite, both in terms of literary merit and intriguing medical details and drama.
Memoir

ADHD, from the inside out

Review by Kelly Blewett

In Hyper: A Personal History of ADHD, author Timothy Denevi writes, “One of my goals, here, has been to examine the mountains of material on ADHD from the point of view of a patient; to retell a narrative that in the past has been the exclusive province of the people prescribing, as opposed to the people receiving, treatment.” After finishing this riveting and monumental book, I’m happy to report that Denevi has achieved his goal.

There’s something spectacularly eerie about the juxtaposition of Denevi’s story and the larger cultural discussion of the condition we now call Attention DefIcit Hyperactivity Disorder. Denevi takes us back to early-19th-century discussions about hyperactive children, which largely decried their behavior as a moral failure and a byproduct of bad parenting. From there, we see how our understanding of the condition was shaped and reshaped by prevailing psychological paradigms.

Denevi experienced this with his doctors. Some wanted to talk it out. Others were quick to prescribe drugs. Through it all, the author emerges as a fully human and sympathetic subject. His early childhood recollections of participating in research studies at Stanford are as heartbreaking as his positive relationship with his second grade teacher is cheer-inducing. As Denevi bumped around between schools and classrooms, conflicts and obsessions, we see how his parents sided with him every step of the way.

The book becomes more engrossing when Denevi reaches high school, a competitive all-boy’s environment where he finds a duo of like-minded friends, and sets the unlikely goal of attending college. There’s much to be learned in this book about ADHD, about pushing boundaries and respecting them, about parenting, and about the special kind of triumph that can come as a result of hard-earned self-knowledge. Denevi has written a book about a condition that has been studied for a long time, but, truly, it hasn’t been talked about like this.

In Hyper: A Personal History of ADHD, author Timothy Denevi writes, “One of my goals, here, has been to examine the mountains of material on ADHD from the point of view of a patient; to retell a narrative that in the past has been the exclusive province of the people prescribing, as opposed to the people receiving, treatment.” After finishing this riveting and monumental book, I’m happy to report that Denevi has achieved his goal.

When the world goes dark

Rebecca Alexander started having vision problems when she was about 10 years old. Eventually, doctors realized she was suffering from Usher syndrome, a condition that would cause her to become both deaf and blind. Not Fade Away: A Memoir of Senses Lost and Found is a compelling account of her journey, starting with childhood and ending with her fairly recent acquisition of a cochlear implant.

Social Science

Face it: Personal contact is good for you

Review by Heather Seggel

Multitasking at work through texts and emails, pumping breast milk for your baby, then grabbing a decaf latte solo as a treat afterward: Is this you? It turns out our collective drive for greater efficiency is leading to lower productivity, reduced immunity and general malaise. In The Village Effect: How Face-to-Face Contact Can Make Us Healthier, Happier, and Smarter, author Susan Pinker (The Sexual Paradox) shares research indicating that face time is the answer to many of our troubles.

When MIT researchers enabled workers to share a 15-minute coffee break, they were surprised: Productivity increased significantly, and the workers reported being happier on the job. This may have been because they could share strategies for dealing with difficult customers, but there's also a less-quantifiable benefit to face time. Breast milk is full of good things for babies, sure, but there's new thinking that one of the benefits of breastfeeding, beyond the contents of the milk, is the physical closeness between mother and child; this form of coddling tends to produce children who are paradoxically more willing to take risks. Similarly, there has yet to be a TV show or computer program that engages children with books the way having a parent read to them from a young age does; what seems like a simple interaction affects much more than you'd think.

Pinker's research takes her to “blue zones” in Sardinia and intentional communities in Northern California. She's thoughtful, humorous and thorough, allowing for the downsides of a trustworthy face (Bernie Madoff had one), while shoring up her argument that finding time to connect on a personal level is more than worth the effort. While The Village Effect is short on ideas to help the disconnected find community, it's nevertheless a thought-provoking introduction to an idea we'll surely be hearing more about.

 

Multitasking at work through texts and emails, pumping breast milk for your baby, then grabbing a decaf latte solo as a treat afterward: Is this you? It turns out our collective drive for greater efficiency is leading to lower productivity, reduced immunity and general malaise.

Stitching the states back together

At the time Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, he did not have a definite plan for dealing with the postwar South. Although 360,000 Union troops had died during the Civil War, the North had not suffered the widespread devastation of the Southern states. The nine million white citizens and four million former slaves who lived in the former Confederacy faced a grim future.
Nonfiction

Lying to survive

Review by John T. Slania

Ramita Navai sets it straight from the beginning: “In order to live in Tehran, you have to lie,” she writes in City of Lies, a gripping portrait of life inside Iran. “Lying in Tehran is about survival.”

The country’s oppressive religious and political atmosphere forces its citizens to lie about issues large and small, lest they face prison or death. Iranians are accustomed to lying about using alcohol and drugs, having sex outside of marriage and about their devotion to God. “The lies,” Navai writes, “are a consequence of . . . being ruled by a government that believes it should be able to interfere in even the most intimate affairs of its citizens.”

Navai spent her childhood in Tehran, but her family left for London when the Shah of Iran was overthrown during the Islamic Revolution. She returns 26 years later to reconnect with her homeland and launch her career as a journalist.

The book is not one of broad brushstrokes. It is a collection of smaller stories of individuals struggling with their lies while trying to discover the truth about themselves. There is Dariush, a revolutionary bent on assassinating a government official, only to encounter disastrous results. There is Somayeh, a young girl who must remain religiously devout, subservient and cloaked in hijab, while her newlywed husband drinks and carouses. Or Leyla, who bucks convention and becomes a prostitute and porn star, resulting in a death sentence.

The stories are real. But they are written in a lively style that reads like a novel. Navai is impressive as a reporter, finding these characters and convincing them to share their stories. She also is an eloquent writer who uses her subjects to tell the larger tale of the degradation of the Iranian culture.

 

This article was originally published in the September 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Ramita Navai sets it straight from the beginning: “In order to live in Tehran, you have to lie,” she writes in City of Lies, a gripping portrait of life inside Iran. “Lying in Tehran is about survival.”

A legendary personal stylist’s candid story

Eighty-six-year-old personal shopper Betty Halbreich stole the show in a 2013 documentary called Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf’s. Her slightly haughty demeanor was belied by a twinkle and a smile playing at her lips. There’s more to this story, she seemed to be saying.

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