Edna Bonhomme’s frank, timely A History of the World in Six Plagues reveals how infectious diseases have been leveraged by colonialism and capitalism.

Design, Nonfiction

Defining Style

Emphasizing personal style, Joan Barzilay Freund’s Defining Style is a freeing, inspiring and extremely innovative look at interior design.

History, Nonfiction, Women's History

Nonfiction Women's History History

Expect Great Things!

The inspiring, companionable Expect Great Things! celebrates the legacy of the Katharine Gibbs School for women and its tenacious scholars.

All Nonfiction Coverage

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Growing up in the Bronx badlands

by bookpagedev

Biography, Nonfiction

Nonfiction Biography

We Two

Review by Faye Jones

by Faye Jones

As the future Queen of England, Princess Victoria was the most eligible bride in Europe. She saw marriage as “the most important business transaction of her life.” Her cousin Prince Albert was raised to make a good marriage, and there was no better marriage prospect than Victoria. Romantic love had little to do with it. Still, somehow these two did make a happy marriage. Gillian Gill brings a fresh perspective on the well-told story of Albert and Victoria in We Two. By looking at them as not only husband and wife, but also co-rulers and often rivals for power, she portrays the pair, often seen as old-fashioned, more like a modern power couple.

This pair who put a name and image to their age didn’t always fit the stereotype. Albert was ambitious and believed he would be king in actuality if not in name. With Victoria’s first pregnancy, his dream seemed to be coming true. He took over the reins of the government, but had to be cautious because the English people did not want a foreign-born ruler. They were loyal to Victoria; they tolerated Albert. By the time of Albert’s death, Gill shows that there were serious power struggles going on within the marriage. The childbearing years were (finally) over for Victoria; she now had the energy to renew her interest in affairs of state. Furthermore, that interest had been whetted as she took on the role of wartime queen during the Crimean War. Letters show that she was beginning to assert herself more in family affairs as well.

Who knows what story we would tell if Albert had shared the other 40 years of Victoria’s reign? Albert’s early death solidified the myth of their perfect marriage and that myth would domesticate Albert’s reputation. He had wanted to be “the Eminent Victorian” and certainly had the brains, drive and administrative skill to make a mark on history. But after his death, Victoria stole the spotlight from her husband as she excessively mourned him, sealing his fate. This is one of the sad ironies of the prince’s life: that a man who hoped to put his stamp on history is mostly known for his marriage.

Faye Jones is dean of learning services at Nashville State Technical College.

By looking at Queen Victoria and Prince Albert as not only husband and wife, but also co-rulers and occasional rivals, Gillian Gil puts a modern lens on this historic pair.

The man who knew too much

by bookpagedev

Biography, Nonfiction

Nonfiction Biography

Go Down Together

Review by Alison Hood

by Alison Hood

Bonnie Parker, gun-toting girlfriend of trigger-happy Clyde Barrow, didn’t smoke cigars; she wrote poetry. The title of investigative journalist Jeff Guinn’s latest book, Go Down Together, is taken from one of Parker’s poems, the haunting “The End of the Line,” in which she predicts death at the hands of “the laws.” Guinn, who has previously written fictional musings about Santa and Mrs. Claus, now takes on a more nitty-gritty topic: the desperate, violent and short lives of Bonnie and Clyde.

This meticulously researched and cleanly written narrative, which draws upon family memoirs, letters, diaries, historical documents, interviews and the most definitive books done by Barrow historians to date, effectively strips away the romantic fancies fed to the American public about Bonnie and Clyde over the last 75 years, especially those in the 1967 movie starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. Guinn’s superior investigation of his subject, focused through an objective lens, blends almost seamlessly with skillful pacing and appropriately placed tension–storytelling at its best.

Clyde and Bonnie were both from the wrong side of the tracks in Dallas: poor, uneducated and trying to survive, along with their extended families, the devastation of the Depression years. Before they met at a party on January 5, 1930, Bonnie was unemployed and hoping for fame and glory as a poet, or as a Broadway starlet. Then she met Clyde, well-dressed but not tall or particularly handsome, someone who “liked making all the decisions.” Petite, feisty Bonnie fell immediately in love and the attraction was mutual. Clyde, who barely had a high school education, started out with odd jobs, supplemented his meager income with stealing chickens, then, influenced by his big brother, Buck, graduated into car theft (the Ford V-8 was his favorite, and he even sent Henry Ford a complimentary letter extolling the virtues of the car).

From 1930 to 1934, Bonnie and Clyde, with the help of other ne’er-do-wells who comprised the ever-shifting Barrow gang, inexpertly robbed small businesses, banks and eluded the law, shooting their way (although Bonnie never fired a shot) to the open road and yet another heist. They zigzagged around the South, always returning to their families in Texas, and lived mostly in the cars they stole, camping in the countryside or staying at motor courts. Their lives were harried, cramped and tense. The media loved them and the public–with many people seeing the couple as latter-day Robin Hoods who were getting the jump on rich, corrupt bankers–did too.

Guinn clearly explicates Bonnie and Clyde’s journey into crime and mayhem. Included is an excellent overview of Depression-era America and an interesting look at the U.S. law enforcement system in the 1930s–especially illustrated by how the posse that brought the lovers down was formed. Guinn takes us through the bad decisions, robberies, car chases and ill-judged shooting sprees to the inevitable end of these outlaw lovers, who died in a brutal barrage of bullets on a lonely Louisiana dirt road on May 23, 1934. It was as poet Bonnie had predicted: “Some day they’ll go down together . . . to a few it’ll be grief–to the law a relief–but it’s death for Bonnie and Clyde.”

Alison Hood writes from Marin County, California.

Guinn takes us through the bad decisions, robberies, car chases and ill-judged shooting sprees to the inevitable end of outlaw lovers Bonnie and Clyde.

Dry: A Memoir

by bookpagedev

Animals

Animals

The lion’s share of affection

Review by Alison Hood

by Alison Hood

In 1969, Anthony Bourke and John Rendall, two Aussies new to London, wandered into Harrods. There in the second-floor “zoo” were two caged lion cubs. One cub regally pretended they didn’t exist, enchanting them. One hefty price tag and many negotiations later, the boys took the lion they ironically dubbed “Christian” home to a flat over a Chelsea furniture shop named (appropriately) Sophisticat. Soon, Christian had the complete adoration of his owners, the shopkeepers and London at large, often posing in the front shop window to the delight of fans and passersby.

By late 1970, Christian, to his owners’ consternation, had outgrown his bijou digs. What follows is a wondrous, serendipitous tale that tracks Christian’s migration from London streets to Kenyan wilderness and the new friends, both lion and human (notably lion expert George Adamson of Born Free fame) that he finds there. Most astonishing, however, is that in 1971, after a year’s absence, Bourke and Rendall returned to Africa and successfully reunited with Christian who, though magnificently mature, greeted them exuberantly: Christian never forgot the men who had first fed, sheltered and played with him.

The heart of A Lion Called Christian, which first was published in 1970 (and has since been updated due to the appearance of the widely viewed 1971 reunion footage on YouTube), highlights the remarkable, enduring bond between the authors and their regal pet. Written in a simple, straightforward style, this book is not great literature, but is a memorable story that tells of the life and work of George Adamson, the African wilderness and the mysterious, life-affirming connection between man and animal.

I’m in a hurry and don’t know why

by bookpagedev

Sports

Sports

A run for the roses

Review by bookpagedev

by Alan Prince

On the first Saturday in May, sports fans look toward Churchill Downs, where last year the fantasy of a lowly longshot beating the odds turned into reality. The tale of this unlikely Kentucky Derby winner is told in Funny Cide: How a Horse, a Trainer, a Jockey, and a Bunch of High School Buddies Took on the Sheiks and Bluebloods . . . and Won (Putnam, $24.95, 320 pages, ISBN 0399151796). It’s an exhilarating story of how 10 friends traveling in rented school buses instead of limousines, eating hamburger instead of steak, and guzzling beer rather than sipping champagne snared racing’s biggest prize. No gelding had won the Kentucky Derby since 1929, and no New York-bred horse had ever won it, but Funny Cide’s owners from upstate New York showed that a relatively cheap horse with a modest pedigree could defeat the most expensive horseflesh.

Collaborating with the principals, Sally Jenkins, co-author of champion cyclist Lance Armstrong’s best-selling It’s Not About the Bike, also tells the story of Funny Cide’s jockey JosÅ½ Santos, once the nation’s leading jockey who was bouncing back from injuries, divorce and debt. “This is the one,” Santos had confided to his agent a year before the Kentucky Derby. “This is the one.” As a three-year-old, Funny Cide won only two of eight starts, but those victories were in the Derby and the Preakness, the first two legs of the Triple Crown. Millions of middle-income fans, feeling they owned a piece of the horse, generated a surge of excitement for the sport as the third leg, the Belmont Stakes, approached. Funny Cide lost that race on a sloppy track and as he slowly headed back to the barn area with his head down, hundreds of thousands of bettors at Belmont Park applauded him and booed the winner.

Horse racing’s goal is simple: If your horse crosses the finish line first, you win. However, attaining that goal is more complicated, as we see in Jane Smiley’s A Year at the Races: Reflections on Horses, Humans, Love, Money, and Luck. A versatile writer whose previous works include the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Thousand Acres and the best-selling comic novel, Horse Heaven, Smiley now turns with unbridled enthusiasm to the realities of a sport/industry, citing scores of personal experiences. Her theories linking equine thought processes and emotions to human actions are intriguing.

Smiley offers a sage observation about young women who fall in love with horses and give up virtually everything else as she did. She writes: “Someday, we would have boyfriends, husbands, children, careers that’s what horses are a substitute for, according to adult theorists. But what truly horsey girls discover in the end is that boyfriends, husbands, children, and careers are the substitutes for horses.” Alan Prince of Deerfield Beach, Florida, is an expert on horses that lose.

I need daycare

by bookpagedev

Sports

Sports

A run for the roses

Review by bookpagedev

by Alan Prince

On the first Saturday in May, sports fans look toward Churchill Downs, where last year the fantasy of a lowly longshot beating the odds turned into reality. The tale of this unlikely Kentucky Derby winner is told in Funny Cide: How a Horse, a Trainer, a Jockey, and a Bunch of High School Buddies Took on the Sheiks and Bluebloods . . . and Won. It’s an exhilarating story of how 10 friends traveling in rented school buses instead of limousines, eating hamburger instead of steak, and guzzling beer rather than sipping champagne snared racing’s biggest prize. No gelding had won the Kentucky Derby since 1929, and no New York-bred horse had ever won it, but Funny Cide’s owners from upstate New York showed that a relatively cheap horse with a modest pedigree could defeat the most expensive horseflesh.

Horse racing’s goal is simple: If your horse crosses the finish line first, you win. However, attaining that goal is more complicated, as we see in Jane Smiley’s A Year at the Races: Reflections on Horses, Humans, Love, Money, and Luck (Knopf, $22, 288 pages, ISBN 1400040582). A versatile writer whose previous works include the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Thousand Acres and the best-selling comic novel, Horse Heaven, Smiley now turns with unbridled enthusiasm to the realities of a sport/industry, citing scores of personal experiences. Her theories linking equine thought processes and emotions to human actions are intriguing.

The life of an unsung founding father

by bookpagedev

Nature

Nature

The rise and fall of a destructive frontier pest

Review by bookpagedev

by Edward Morris

While fossil evidence shows that the voracious Rocky Mountain locust was rampant in what is now North America as early as the 12th century, it didn’t reach its peak of collective destructiveness there until the 1870s. Miles-long clouds of the insects blanketed the territory between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains by then, destroying untold acres of crops and bringing tens of thousands of settlers to the brink of starvation. By the dawn of the 20th century, however, the dreaded marauder had become extinct. Jeffrey Lockwood, a professor of natural sciences and humanities at the University of Wyoming, describes the locust’s impact on American agriculture, science and social policy, and chronicles his own discovery of how the species died off so quickly in the wide-ranging book Locust: The Devastating Rise and Mysterious Disappearance of the Insect that Shaped the American Frontier.

At the height of their depredations, the locusts swept in like summer storms. “They came rattling and pattering on the houses, and against the windows, falling in the fields, on the prairies and in the waters everywhere and on everything,” wrote a Kansas observer, who told of an invasion of his land that began at one in the afternoon. “By about 4 o’clock,” he continued, “every tree and bush, buildings, fences, fields, roads, and everything, except animated beings, was completed covered.” Once on the ground, these creatures would reduce flourishing cornfields “into a desolate stretch of bare, spindling stalks and stubs.” The devastation was so widespread, Lockwood reports, that local communities could not provide sufficient relief. The state and national governments had to intervene, thus beginning a pattern of farm assistance that continues to this day. Then, as now, some politicians were reluctant to offer help, not for budgetary limitations only but because they thought charity would lead to moral corrosion and dependence. While the state governments argued the pros and cons of relief, they also called for official days of prayer, seeing in the disasters echoes of the biblical plagues. Some of the forward-looking states hired scientists to apply reason to the problem. In the meantime, entrepreneurs poured forth a tide of machines and potions, all designed to obliterate the invaders, but none of which proved very effective. Although he touches on all these side effects, Lockwood concentrates on profiling the major entomologists who took on the locusts and assessing their findings, theories and achievements.

After it became apparent that the Rocky Mountain locust was either extinct or monumentally dormant, scientists undertook to find the cause. Some thought it could be explained by the introduction of alfalfa crops (not a locust favorite). Others argued that it proceeded from changes in weather patterns or the decimation of the buffalo herds. But Lockwood, taking his cue from the fate of the monarch butterflies, whose regeneration zone in Mexico is rapidly being destroyed, contends that it was the settlers’ cultivation of the high fields in the Rocky Mountain river valleys, where the locusts retreated between invasions, that ultimately did in these ravenous creatures.

In spite of the complexity of his subject, Lockwood relates his story with simplicity and humor. Readers with an interest in science and history particularly that of the frontier will enjoy this well-told entomological mystery. Edward Morris reviews from Nashville.

While fossil evidence shows that the voracious Rocky Mountain locust was rampant in what is now North America as early as the 12th century, it didn't reach its peak of collective destructiveness there until the 1870s. Miles-long clouds of the insects blanketed the territory between…

Good men and true

by bookpagedev

Trending Nonfiction

Nonfiction Politics Memoir

How to Stand Up to a Dictator

Maria Ressa

By Sarojini Seupersad

Maria Ressa’s book is a political history of the Philippines and an intimate memoir, but it’s also a warning to democracies everywhere: Authoritarianism is a threat to us all.