Book Review: The Apocalypse Factory: Plutonium and the Making of the Atomic Age (2020). Steve Olson.

In my senior year at university as a political science major, I wrote two long papers on different aspects of the Manhattan Project and the development of nuclear weapons, one of which focused particularly on why the U.S. government made the decision to drop two atomic bombs on Japan at the end of World War II, and whether that was the right decision, based on all the complex geo-political and military calculations that American leaders had to take into account in making that world-changing and city-destroying decision at the end of the war.

In the intervening half century, the history of the development of nuclear weapons and how we began the perilous nuclear age has continued to draw the interest of historians, philosophers and scientists. We might have expected that almost everything about the Manhattan Project and the race to beat Hitler’s Germany in developing atomic weapons has been researched and published by now, but that turns out not to be true.

In The Apocalypse Factory, we learn about another key chapter in the story, which has received relatively less historical coverage: the story of how plutonium, a radioactive element which occurs rarely in nature, became the essential ingredient in atomic weapons, and how it was first manufactured for the American nuclear weapons industry.

Olson relates the history of the academic chemists in the late 1930s who first created plutonium from uranium through complex chemistry experiments, how plutonium and the ability to manufacture it as a byproduct of uranium-based fission solved key problems of bomb-making, and how Manhattan Project scientists and leaders, in combination with the DuPont company, quickly created a factory at Hanford, Washington, to turn plutonium creation into an industrial process.

From the history of the invention of nuclear weapons science and technology, and how the industrial processes were developed, the author goes on to provide a brief social history of the Tri-Cities area in eastern Washington, which grew rapidly from rural desert scrub land under the wartime urgency of the project, as thousands of workers poured into the area under conditions of strict secrecy. 

It’s a particularly interesting look back for those of us in Washington state who know about Hanford and it’s terrible waste disposal problems, but not as much about the more human story of how the three cities grew together, and developed their own distinct local culture.

The latter part of the book tells the story of the Nagasaki bombing, which is uniquely tied to the Hanford plutonium story in that the Hiroshima bomb (the first bomb dropped on Japan) was a one-time design, using uranium as the bomb fuel, where the two masses of uranium to be combined to start the runaway fission process were fired at each other down a gun-like barrel. The Nagasaki bombing used the plutonium implosion design, which has become the model for all subsequent atomic bombs. In that sense, the Nagasaki bombing is more closely tied to the work done at Hanford than at the other Manhattan Project sites.

After exploring the human and infrastructure impacts of the bombing, the author talks a little about the legacies of plutonium production: the permanent threat of nuclear weapons to human civilization which has thus far eluded real solutions, and the environmental problems of waste cleanup at the Hanford site. None of it is news, especially to those of us in the Northwest, but Olson does a good job covering the backstory, and the lasting problems left over from the war-driven invention of this monstrous technology of destruction. Recommended.

Movie Review: The Beatles: Get Back! (2021). Disney+.

Another month has slipped by, and here we are – it’s Rock and Roll Friday at The Memory Cache blog again! Today I’d like to begin by posing the question: what happens when you take more than a hundred hours of archival film of the most important rock and roll band ever while they were in the studio during the recording of their final album together, and hand it to one of the greatest filmmakers in our lifetime to make a documentary mini-series?

The very exciting answer to that question is that you get the three-part Beatles docuseries The Beatles: Get Back! by Peter Jackson, running about eight hours total, covering a 21-day series of recording sessions at Twickenham Studios and then Apple Studios in London with the Beatles as they made the Let It Be album in 1969. The mini-series is available on the Disney+ streaming service, and was released in late November of last year.

As Beatles fans and historians know, the film footage shot during these sessions was originally used to create the documentary film The Beatles: Let It Be, directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg. That film has long been regarded as a depressing and negative farewell send-off to the Beatles, focusing as it did on the tensions in the band that were driving it toward the inevitable breakup that followed shortly thereafter.

When Jackson, a lifelong Beatles fan, was approached about the possibility of revisiting the source film to make a new version of essentially the same subject as the The Beatles: Let It Be documentary, he was reportedly reluctant to take the project on, until he saw all the film, and realized there might be a more interesting and uplifting story to be told in retrospect than had been presented in the original documentary.

And indeed, that is what he has done. It’s worth noting there was also a formidable technical challenge involved, which was that much of the 50-year old source film was not in good condition, so he had to use the same kinds of advanced cinematic magic he had employed in restoring and enhancing 100-year old archival film for his 2018 World War I documentary, They Shall Not Grow Old, to make a movie that had the look and feel, and the visual and sound quality, of a contemporary production.

But the main challenge for Jackson, with the help of Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, and the support of Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison, was always going to be to show the Beatles as they really were, together, at work and in a private setting, this incredibly talented group of four professional musicians whose astonishing history together had welded them into a close-knit family, even with all the pressures and animosities that were by then corroding their ability to stay together as a band.

I can see how this show might not be for everyone. The three episodes are each long (2-3 hours apiece), and for much of the time, not that much is happening in terms of action or plot. The four Beatles come and go, with their friends, wives and lovers, and their entourages, while the others are trying out new bits for the songs they’re writing together, or pairing up to play some of their old songs just for fun. We hear their playful banter with each other, which was real – we can see that it wasn’t something they just put on for the media in public, or created for their movies. We also hear them discussing their relationships, like an old married couple squabbling about the frustrations of a long domestic life together.

But we also get to see the miracle of their music creation process. Unlike most of the earlier Beatles albums, the songs on the Let It Be album were written in the studio, in real time. It wasn’t like most of their albums, where John, Paul and George would show up with songs already written, and ready to record. In this documentary, we watch them coming up with new lyrics, guitar bits and chords, and Ringo’s unique drum tracks, right before our eyes. And to them, these creations were all new – they hadn’t heard them as iconic sounds of the 1960s, played millions of times since around the world for over a half century, as we all have.

The documentary ends with their famous roof-top concert, where they played their last public performance together, and showcased many of the songs that would be on this final studio album they made together. It’s a triumphal moment, and another demonstration of the close bonds between the four of them, even as things were falling apart. We see the sheer joy and fun of playing for a live audience again, after more than three years of not touring, that captures for a final time the magical connection they had together as a close-knit brotherhood of legendary performing artists, which was such a powerful part of what has made them so beloved by generations of fans.

For anyone who is interested in the Beatles, this documentary is indispensable. It definitely has its bittersweet moments, and it inevitably shares some of the unavoidable facts about the state of their relationships at that time that made The Beatles: Let It Be seem like such a bummer, but it also highlights much of what the Beatles still shared with each other, particularly their joy in creating and playing their unique brand of generation-defining rock music. Highly recommended.    

Book Review: The Lincoln Highway (2021). Amor Towles.

The Lincoln Highway is the third and most recent bestselling historical novel by Amor Towles, who left a twenty-year career as an investment professional to become (more or less out of nowhere) one of our most skilled contemporary novelists and storytellers. It has some similarities to the other two novels, but diverges in its narrative approach, which entails jumping back and forth between the stories of four different characters, all tied together by their roles in a youthful road trip.

Towles’ specialty seems to be in focusing in on the lives of rather ordinary fictional characters, and artfully depicting their everyday growth and struggles, while bringing alive the historical eras in which their lives take place. In the process, his beautifully drawn main protagonists also come into contact with other interesting characters, and find themselves in unexpected situations that range from the amusing and mundane to the morally challenging and dangerous.

In his first novel, Rules of Civility (previously reviewed), his main protagonist is a young woman from a lower class background, trying to work, party and find her way into the elite social world of New York’s upper class during the 1930s. In A Gentleman in Moscow (also previously reviewed), Towles’ main character is a former member of the Russian aristocracy, now trying to build a life under house arrest in Moscow in the post-revolutionary 1920s.

The Lincoln Highway is primarily the story of Emmett, an 18-year old Nebraska boy in 1954 rural America, who is being driven home at the beginning of the story to his late father’s farm. Emmett is driven by the warden from the reform school where Emmett had been incarcerated for the past year, for accidentally killing another young man with an angry (if perhaps justified) punch. Waiting there for him at the farm are his exceptionally bright 8-year old brother, as well as a neighbor girl (who appears to be fond of him) and her farmer father, who wants to acquire the farm.

In the course of the first chapters, we realize that Emmett is basically a good kid, who lost his temper and made a mistake, but who’s done some growing up as a result of his hard life experience. However, his immediate prospects are discouraging: the family farm is forfeit because of his father’s inability to make it work, so Emmett has a different plan. He wants to abandon the farm, take the small amount of money he inherits, and set out with his younger brother in his well-maintained Studebaker sedan to California, where he hopes to start buying and renovating houses, and building a good life for the two of them.

Unfortunately, fate has different ideas, in the form of two of his fellow young prisoners, who appear unexpectedly after escaping and stowing away in the warden’s car, with their own plan to join Emmett and his brother on their road trip. These two young fugitives have come up with a plot to steal one of their inheritances on the way, and share the loot among the four of them. What could go wrong? But of course, plenty could and does go wrong, and eventually they will all end up not in California, but in New York instead.

Along the way they get separated, face different dangers, meet unusual new characters, reunite, and bring their strange road trip to its unexpected end, with powerful and life-changing consequences for each of them.

At the beginning, as soon as the two escaped prisoners showed up and revealed a little about their respective characters and backgrounds, I could barely stand to keep reading. It was so obvious that they were going to spell trouble for Emmett and his little brother, and that their clever plot would go wrong. Three teenage young men with histories of poor judgment, and a vulnerable but precocious child, heading off in a car on a seemingly larcenous and crackpot quest? It sounded like a prescription for a heart-breaking disaster.  

Fortunately, the plot twists and surprises continued to be intriguing and unexpected, and new revelations continually added depth to each of the characters, so I kept with the story just to find out what would happen next. It turned out to be well worth the trouble, as the pace steadily picked up, and the suspense increased all the way to the dramatic conclusion. Recommended.

TV Review: Dark Winds (2022). AMC+.

I just finished watching the first season of this very good new mystery series, based on the Tony Hillerman series of novels and characters, and co-produced by George R.R. Martin (of Game of Thrones fame) and Robert Redford.

The story takes place in the early 1970s, on a Navajo reservation in the Southwest. The tribal police chief, Joe Leaphorn (convincingly played by Zahn McClarnon, who also played tribal police chief Matthias in Longmire), is trying to solve several crimes on the reservation which he suspects may be linked, with the help of a new deputy, Jim Chee (Kiowa Gordon), and Joe's more experienced female deputy, Bernadette Manuelito (Jessica Matten).

What stands out about this series is the way it weaves together traditional crime story elements with many culturally and historically relevant factors for the time and place. For example, there is a Native American militant group involved in a deadly armored car robbery in a nearby town, which is being tracked by a cynical and shady FBI agent as well as by the Navajo police. This leads to the usual jurisdictional conflicts, very true to life, between tribal authorities, the federal government and the FBI.

There is murder on the reservation too. There are Navajo traditional spiritual beliefs to be considered, and perhaps even some black magic, along with rural poverty, discrimination and the lives blighted by it, that all must be factored into the process of solving the crimes. And there is the lingering aftermath of an explosion at a uranium mine on the reservation that took several native workers’ lives, and the unresolved mysteries surrounding that community trauma.

It took me a couple of episodes to warm up to this series, but then I began to really appreciate the authentic characters, the complex plot, the growing suspense and the sensitive portrayals of native life and family dynamics. I also thought the show created convincingly realistic challenges for Leaphorn, Chee and Manuelito to face in trying to solve these crimes, and provide good law enforcement and social justice for their people, in the harsh and often hostile environment of the reservation. 

From what I can find on the internet, it appears that this series has been continued for at least another season. I look forward to more episodes of this entertaining new mystery show from AMC+ whenever it returns for that new season.  Recommended.

Movie Review: The Janes (2022). HBO Max.

This inspirational new documentary of events from half a century ago could hardly be more timely or relevant to current events, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s recent decision in the Dobbs case to overrule Roe v. Wade, and thereby revoke the constitutional rights of women to control their own reproductive freedom, specifically the right to obtain abortions.

The Janes is the story of a small collective of young women in Chicago, who in the early 1970s came together to create an underground network to help women obtain abortions, which were still illegal at that time. 

Building on their own experiences, and those of friends and family members, the group tried a variety of approaches for providing illegal abortions. In the beginning, they relied on existing illegal abortion providers, and used their organizational skills to handle information dissemination, set up secret communications, and provide scheduling, funding and transportation for young women who lacked the skills, connections and money to find abortionists themselves. That in itself was a remarkable achievement for a small group of young amateur conspirators.

However, as several of the now-elderly members of the group recount in the film, they soon realized that the skills required to safely do an abortion as a routine medical procedure were not impossible to acquire, even for people who had not been trained or certified as medical doctors or nurses. 

Eventually, several of the young women learned to perform abortions themselves, and were then aided by the collective in setting up constantly-moving one-day clinics in borrowed homes and apartments, to which the patients would be driven using the same sort of clandestine operational methods used by spies, terrorists, resistance fighters and criminals. And they were criminals – at least to the local police in Chicago, based on the existing laws and social norms at that time.

For a short time, they managed to safely arrange and carry out many hundreds of abortions. But like most ongoing black market activities involving many consumers, eventually the authorities got wind of it, and managed to raid one of their pop-up clinics, capturing several of the principals and charging them as illegal abortionists. And it would have gone badly for them, except for the timely intervention of the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in Roe v. Wade in 1973 (by a 7-2 margin) that abortion was a constitutional right of all women in the United States, before their prosecution could be concluded.

The story of the Janes collective, so well told in this documentary, has become legendary as an example of the kinds of bold early feminist militancy that arose in the 1970s, where women began to make the difficult decision to consciously refuse to be limited by sexist laws and male-imposed control over their bodies and reproductive choices. 

As we are seeing in the resistance to the Dobbs decision, this determination of women to control their own bodies and their destinies has not abated in the intervening half century. Their determination is being demonstrated in the rapid rise of new political and legal activism in support of the right to prevent and end pregnancies, as well as in the formation of new networks (again, sometimes clandestine) to provide information, medications and services to women living in areas where abortion has been outlawed.

This film provides an enlightening history of the desperation women feel when their right to choose has been taken away by law and society, for the particular enlightenment of several generations of Americans who have never lived under these conditions. It also shows the kinds of creative acts of resistance to state control and meddling in private medical decisions that can be expected whenever abortion is banned, as is now happening again in so many states. Highly recommended.

Book Review: Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man (2020). Mary Trump, PhD.

I decided after a year or two of the Trump presidency that I wasn’t going to read most of the tell-all books about Donald Trump, his life, his corrupt administration, and all the bizarreness that constantly surrounds him. I read several of them early on, but quickly concluded that reading these books was a joyless and monumentally depressing exercise.

Having recognized before he was even elected that Donald Trump was clearly a sociopath and a narcissist, I soon discovered that reading more details of his pathetic existence and chaotic administration brought me few additional insights into his condition and behavior, and no enjoyment whatsoever. Another disincentive to reading Trump-related books was the fact that every shocking new detail of his story contained in the latest sensational book release immediately appeared on every cable news show and in the constant news coverage of Trump, so there was never anything new or surprising to be learned by the time any of these books reached the bookshelves.

Despite all that, I recently read Mary Trump’s Too Much and Never Enough, the only book to appear so far written by an actual Trump family member. The author is someone who knew the long history of the family members and their relationships from close-up personal experience. Her insider’s account is enhanced and made even more credible by the fact that she is also a PhD clinical psychologist, who specializes (not surprisingly) in the sorts of dysfunctional psychological conditions which appear to abound in the lives of many of the Trump family members.

Of course, much of the most interesting content from the book was also immediately revealed through the mass media as soon as it was published, partly through broadcast interviews with the author herself, so again, the amount of new information in the book that wasn’t already a part of the gigantic trove of public knowledge of Donald Trump by the time I read it was fairly limited. Nevertheless, there was value in hearing the whole story and her clinical analysis directly from her, in book form – it made it more believable, more complete, and more emotionally comprehensible and resonant than most of the Trump literature.   

Mary Trump was the daughter of Donald Trump’s older brother Fredy. The story she tells about the family is almost Shakespearean in its dramatic excesses and its notorious, conniving characters. At the head of the family was Fred Trump, a driven entrepreneur and family patriarch who built a real estate empire in Brooklyn, and became fabulously wealthy, but had little time or love for anyone else. Like most patriarchs, he looked originally to his oldest son, Mary’s father Fredy, to become his principal successor and heir in his real estate business.

The problem with this plan was that Fredy had little interest in or aptitude for his father’s real estate business. He went off to serve in the army, which he liked and where he did well, but this disgusted his father, who had no use for the military or the concept of service. Fredy loved boats and airplanes too, and had the money to buy them and learn to operate them, but his father also had nothing but contempt for these activities. At one point, Fredy even snuck off to become an airline pilot, a goal which he actually achieved on his own, and was able to pursue successfully for a brief period of time, thereby further enraging his father.

But that didn’t last, because Fredy also had alcohol and drug problems, caused no doubt by the constant stress of trying and failing to satisfy his father's plans for him. So Fredy kept coming back to his father and the family business each time he failed at his own projects, trying hopelessly to find a role in the business he could play well, to win his cold-hearted father’s approval, and eventually be able to support his growing family.

Meanwhile, Donald (Fred's second son) was observing Fredy’s failures to meet their father’s harsh and unforgiving expectations, and decided to modify his own behaviors in ways that would gain him “favorite” status with his father Fred. The behaviors he chose were exactly those that we recognize in the troubled and extreme personality we know today. 

He would become a “killer”. He would be the person who disparaged and mocked “losers”, ironically eventually even including his father, after Fred was afflicted with Alzheimer’s Disease. He would learn to treat everyone – even his closest family members – as worthless objects, to be despised, used and manipulated for his own purposes, without any sympathy or empathy for any difficulties they might be experiencing. And he would learn to excel in creating a fictitious public image of himself as a powerful, wealthy, and indomitable businessman, regardless of his lack of any demonstrated abilities or personal achievements independent of those enabled by his wealthy father.

According to Mary Trump, every one of the destructive and dysfunctional behaviors Donald tried out on those around him just gained him more approval from Fred Senior, and more leniency from this cold-blooded father for his obnoxiousness, cruelty and misbehavior. It was ironic, as Ms. Trump points out, that none of Fred's indulgence could ever actually reassure the chronically insecure Donald deep down that his father really loved him. And he probably didn't. Fred didn't appear to have the capacity to love or empathize with others either, just as Donald doesn't.

This is an extremely disturbing but highly credible insider’s look into the dark heart of a family with serious behavioral and psychological disorders, who somehow produced the strange and historically anomalous figure of Donald Trump, whose ambitions, unchecked rage, sociopathy and incompetence have so clouded the recent past, present and perhaps near future of our country. Recommended.

TV Review: Ridley Road (2021). BBC/PBS Masterpiece.

Ridley Road is an intriguing short TV mini-series (of four episodes) from the BBC, which we watched on Masterpiece Theater on PBS. It is fictional, and based on the 2014 novel Ridley Road by Jo Bloom, which in turn was loosely based on real historical situations, groups and people in early 1960s England.

Just coming of age in a still-traumatized Britain two decades after World War II, Vivien Epstein, a modest young Jewish woman (played very ably by Agnes O'Casey), with working class roots and a part of her family living in East London, follows a new boyfriend (Tom Varey) into the anti-fascist resistance against a fast-growing neo-Nazi political group known as the National Socialist Movement (NSM), led by Colin Gordan (Rory Kinnear).

The secret organization she joins, known as the 62 Group, is composed of Jewish people who band together to protect the Jewish community from NSM-led street violence and attacks, a rising tide of mayhem and hate against Jews which they fear is both unrecognized and not of any real concern to the British police and government. The group's initial acts of resistance to this neo-Nazi threat are to try to inform the authorities of what Gordan and his neo-fascist thugs are doing, but when no help is forthcoming from the police, the group organizes its own defenses and combatants to fight the NSM in the streets.

Sensing that they need more inside information, though, Vivien and her boyfriend volunteer to go undercover to infiltrate the NSM. Vivien sets out to gain access to the NSM's highly secretive inner circle, masquerading as an enthusiastic if naive recruit, and ultimately works her way into Gordan's confidence, his home and his family.

Most spy thrillers involve agents who work for government agencies, but this unusual and absorbing drama of England and London in 1962 manages plenty of tension, danger and action in the course of its four episodes, while telling a believable story of a risky self-directed spying operation carried out by civilian amateurs. 

It's a story that also has plenty of resonance in our own time, as we watch private far right-wing armies and paramilitary groups becoming larger, stronger and more emboldened in their violent tactics and hateful objectives. Recommended.

Book Review: Surviving Death: A Journalist Investigates Evidence for an Afterlife (2017). Leslie Kean.

It was an odd coincidence to me that Leslie Kean, the New York Times award-winning journalist whose book UFOs I previously reviewed, has also written a book on the other “mysteries of life” topic I have found most challenging to my otherwise rational and scientific view of life. That subject has to do with the question of whether our consciousness may survive in some form and transcend our mortal bodies and lifetimes.

As regular readers of this blog know, there are widely known and well-documented cases of very young children who appear to have detailed knowledge of recent individual past lives which are not easily explainable through rational means, and where fraud or trickery do not seem to be likely explanations.

Kean’s book begins with summaries of a few of the best-known of those cases, and the history of academic and scientific research into this strange phenomenon (prominently led by Dr. Ian Stevenson and then Dr. Jim Tucker at the University of Virginia Medical School). She then moves on to evaluate research into several other related types of "near death" and "beyond death" experiences, both contemporary and historical.

In the course of exploring academic research into other categories of reported “beyond death” phenomena, such as near death experiences (NDEs), apparitions, and mediums, Kean regularly probes the quality and meaning of the reports, the reporters and the data. She also regularly raises and considers the possibility of psychic communications between living people (rather than between the living and the dead) as an alternative explanation for some of the strange events and experiences reported, particularly in cases where subjects report detailed information they shouldn’t have been able to know, which the subjects believed had been conveyed from “beyond life” sources or experiences.   

It's a very intriguing and often hair-curling inquiry. She started to lose me in the later chapters, where it seemed she might be starting to move too much into the realm of New Age belief, especially as she began sharing some of her own personal experiences, which often seemed lacking in verifiable evidence, and which she relates with less of the apparent level of skepticism and critical analysis she typically displays toward paranormal topics in her writing.

I’m always on the lookout for that, because being open to the possibility of paranormal phenomena can easily lead one down some bizarre and perhaps absurd rabbit holes. But there was still much to ponder, and much of interest in this very unusual book.

This world and our existence in it may yet be stranger than they appear. Or then again, perhaps not.  But the essential mystery of our being, where we came from, and where if anywhere our consciousness might go when we depart, make it almost obligatory for many of us to speculate about it, and see if there is more to know.  This book is an interesting and reasonably rational exploration of recent academic research and literature on reported phenomena related to this most universal set of human questions. Recommended.

TV Review: The Gilded Age, Season 1 (HBO Max). 2022.

The Gilded Age in American history is generally considered to be the period starting a few years after the end of the Civil War (~1870) and ending with the turn of the 20th century (~1900). Perhaps because the U.S. was not involved in any dramatic foreign wars (other than the Indian Wars in the West) until the very end of this period, it’s a time that perhaps has had somewhat less attention from historians, readers and movie watchers than many other periods in U.S. history.

Despite that relative lack of focus on the era, though, many transformational changes were sweeping the country at that time. During the Gilded Age, a national network of railroads was being built across the continent; telegraph lines were being laid, to link every part of the continent with instantaneous communications; oil was being discovered and extracted for the first time; and astounding new technological innovations and scientific discoveries like electric lighting were arriving almost daily.

During this time period, the Industrial Revolution was in full swing, as new factories were built, powered by coal and then oil, and filled with new kinds of iron and steel machines of mass production.  At the same time, new emigrant populations from Europe and China, as well as freed blacks from the post-Confederacy South poured into northern cities, looking for work and opportunity in those factories, and making homes in crowded urban tenement neighborhoods.

This is the setting for Julian Fellowes' newest series (this time on HBO Max), The Gilded Age, which he has begun to produce after completing the massively popular Downtown Abbey show.

The Gilded Age is superficially similar to Downton Abbey, in that it focuses on the “upstairs / downstairs” lives of extremely rich families and their household staff in an age of opulence and highly concentrated wealth. But there the similarities mostly end, because unlike the relative backwater of Downton Abbey’s rural British aristocratic world of the early 20th century, The Gilded Age takes place in the 1880s, in the urban bustle and commotion of a dynamic and fast-changing New York City. And rather than a single household full of characters for us to follow, in The Gilded Age, we have two.

One is the city home of two elderly sisters who are exemplars of the “blue blood/old money” class, in terms of their family history, social standing and strict social standards (played by Christine Baranski and Cynthia Nixon).

The other is a gorgeously ornate and huge new house across the street, built by a prototypical newly wealthy industrialist of the era (Morgan Spector) for his even more ruthless social-climbing wife (Carrie Coon). The wife is determined to be accepted into New York high society, despite the constant snubs and obstacles put in her way by the many “Grande Dames” of the blue blood world.

This is the war of social standing and acceptance at the heart of the series: old Yankee wealth and exclusivity, threatened by and resisting the social incursions of a powerful new class of super-rich titans of business (and their wives), who have the money and the determination to overcome their conservative predecessors’ resistance to their social overtures, regardless of their personal roots or family origins.

Into this heated high society war zone come several other key characters. There is a single young woman of “good breeding”, education and modern ideas (Louisa Jacobson), but who lacks independent wealth or prospects, and comes to live as a dependent of her two elderly aunts in the aunt’s mansion after the death of her father.

There is also an educated young black woman (Denee Benton), who becomes the senior aunt’s personal assistant and a successful journalist, despite constant instances of racism, sexism and reflexive resistance (even from her own family) to her attempts at a career and independence in the white male-dominated world of 1880s New York.

There are plenty of other characters with minor roles too, including the son and daughter of the industrialist and his wife, a nephew in the aunts’ household who is socially aspiring but also a closeted gay man, a number of high society figures, and several of the house staff in each house who are drawn into events and the intrigues between the two households and the larger New York high society world.

Will the young lady find an appropriate match (but also true love!) under her aunts’ watchful eyes? Will the young black woman manage to succeed as a writer despite all the social prejudices arrayed against her? Will the industrialists’ driven wife manage to get anyone from high society to show up for her magnificent parties? And will the industrialist force all the blue blood businessmen to bow to the strength of his will, and to the power of his fortune?

It all makes for an entertaining costume drama and period piece, although I found it lacking in some of the charm and fun that made Downton Abbey so appealing and universally loved. More than anything else, none of the characters seemed all that endearing to me, unlike many of the very lovable characters (both upstairs and downstairs) in Downton Abbey. It also seemed somewhat slow-moving. 

But with that said, it’s a worthwhile TV series. It provides a well-imagined view into the social conflicts of the super-rich in an important but under-noticed period in American history, the era that set the stage for the rise of the United States to a position of global power in the 20th century. Recommended.

Book Review: The Overstory (2018). Richard Powers.

I previously reviewed three books by Richard Powers, including his most recent novel, Bewilderment, and two older ones, The Echo Maker and Orfeo, each of which were powerful tales of well-drawn characters struggling with individual personal crises in the midst of the larger calamities of planetary environmental decline and threats.

Powers’ 2018 novel The Overstory is very much in the same vein as these other works, but is perhaps the most remarkable of all of them, in that the central figure in the story is not the humans, but the ancient trees that surround them and sustain them. The dramatic tension at the heart of the story is the conflict between the humans who would destroy the trees, whose very existence supports their own lives, and a small group of humans who dedicate themselves to trying to save the trees and the forests, by whatever means they can devise.

Powers creates a powerful narrative story line about the trees themselves: he vividly describes their incomprehensibly long lives, their astonishing forms of communication and mutual support, and the complex planetary ecosystem which they have created over vast periods of time. In doing so, he provides a fascinating lesson in the contemporary scientific understanding of trees, and reveals many remarkable aspects of this ubiquitous ancient life form that is all around us, yet so often taken for granted.

However, there are important human characters in the story too. And here Powers uses a narrative device that is at first frustrating, which is that he slowly develops the backstories for a number of these characters in isolation from the others, one chapter at a time, so that deep into the book, it still seems that all we have is a series of short biographies of different people in different places, each in some way tied to a story of trees. 

Eventually, though, Powers brilliantly weaves all the threads together, as the characters meet each other, and begin to take individual and collective action, to fight for the trees, and to seek solutions to the environmental crisis they recognize. 

It was at this point, late in the book, that I began to recognize similarities to the real life story of the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) in the American West in the 1990s and early 2000s, whose idealistic young members’ first non-violent tree-sitting actions eventually led to the formation of an eco-terrorist group.  

This book is fictional, and not in any sense a historical account, but the group's development within the novel, the psychological evolution of the members within the group as they become increasingly desperate to stop the logging of old growth forests, and many other aspects of the story seem reminiscent of what is known of the ELF, as well perhaps as that of many other small militant groups of young idealists throughout history.

The Overstory is simply a stunningly powerful novel about trees, our dependence on them, and the increasing urgency and desperation of sensitive souls among us who recognize the destruction we have wrought as a species on the trees and the planet, and try to take collective action to stop the devastation and save the forests. In the process, they run into the limitations of individual and small-group solutions, and are forced to face their own powerlessness to compel the outcomes they believe are necessary to save the world.

Although his most recent novel Bewilderment is also outstanding, and has very similar themes, I believe The Overstory is Powers’ greatest novel thus far, a marvelous book which has forever changed my own understanding of trees, their lives and the essential role they play in the environment of our world. Very highly recommended.

Book Reviews: Honorable Mentions List (Non-Fiction, Biography and History)

Today I'm posting another set of "Honorable Mentions" from my files, with short reviews or summaries, and another five books included together in the list.  Here we go! 
 

Book Review: Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis (2016).  J. D. Vance.

This notable book from the year Donald Trump won the presidency (which book was also made into a movie in 2020 by Ron Howard) is an autobiographical look at the injuries of culture and upbringing in the "hillbilly" part of American society, that is, white, Scots-Irish, and Appalachian, by someone who survived it and moved beyond it.

It described the travails of white working class culture and family life from the inside, in a piece of remarkably moving and eloquent writing, which was received with rave reviews at a time when America was struggling to understand the rage and irrational behavior of Trump’s animated base of white rural supporters.

The author and hero of the story seemed a decent and likable sort, who prevailed against the odds, and who obviously valued family, served his country honorably as a Marine in Iraq, then went to college at Ohio State University, succeeded there, was accepted into and made his way through Yale Law School, and ended up with a loving wife and a highly-paid job in venture capital finance.

The real tragedy of the story comes in the aftermath to the book, when after a brief flirtation with the Never Trumpers in the Republican Party, Vance threw in his lot with Donald Trump, racist politics, and dark money billionaires, in his current quest for a U.S. Senate seat from Ohio.

If his answer to “what does the white underclass need to succeed?” is to oppress minorities, encourage racism, suppress voting, support authoritarianism and rob the poor for the benefit of the ultra-rich, he obviously didn’t learn anything noble or helpful from his own journey. The book is still recommended; the author, at least in his quest for a future in our national politics, not so much.


Book Review: The Black Hand: The Epic War Between a Brilliant Detective and the Deadliest Secret Society in American History (2017). Steven Talty.

The Black Hand is a history and biography of Joseph Petrosino, a famous early 20th century Italian-American New York City detective, and his war against the Sicilian "Black Hand Society" of extortionists, bombers and kidnappers, in the broader context of American antipathy to new Italian immigrants.

This inspiring true tale of crime-fighting and political battles within the Italian-American immigrant community was a previously unknown chapter of American history for me, and it explores the roots of the Italian Mafia story in the United States. Apparently Al Capone was a graduate of the Black Hand organization, among other well-known Mafia mobsters of a slightly later and more famous era. Recommended.


Book Review: Last Hope Island: Britain, Occupied Europe, and the Brotherhood that Helped Turn the Tide of War (2018). Lynne Olson.

This is a World War II history of how England became the "last hope" for all the European countries conquered and occupied by Germany during the war, whose governments and fighters contributed to keeping the dream of freedom, and victory over the Axis alive while in exile in Britain.

It contains many interesting tidbits of the national stories of the Nazi-occupied countries and their people, and how their relationships to Britain developed and changed during the war years.

Lynne Olson is a very readable popular historian and writer. She has written several other worthwhile histories of other aspects of World War II as well. Recommended.
   

Book Review: Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire. A 500 year history (2017). Brad Anderson.

Fantasyland is a funny, well-researched history of how America, from the days of its earliest settlers, has been a unique experiment in wishful thinking, fantasy, individual nuttiness, crackpot religious ideas combined with wild entertainment, mass susceptibility to bunkum and conspiracy theories, and the generalized conflation of individual personal belief and emotional feelings with objective fact that led us to the age of Trump.

In short, in the author’s view, what we're seeing now isn't new in American history -- it's a logical outcome of the entire American experience since the earliest days of white settler colonies in North America. That’s perhaps a contrarian view, given the past six years of listening to news commentators saying “We’re in uncharted territory now”, but Anderson makes an amusing and entertaining case for his proposition. Recommended.   

 

Book Review: Angels in the Sky: How a Band of Volunteer Airmen Saved the New State of Israel (2017). Robert Gandt.

This is a very enlightening history of the beginnings of the Israeli Air Force (IAF) in the 1948 War of Independence, and the World War II veteran pilots from all over the world who volunteered to smuggle planes and weapons, and fly them into combat for the newly-formed nation.

The author details a number of clandestine operations that had to succeed against impossible odds for Israel to evade international restrictions on military sales to the region, and the many pilots from previously (and recently) warring nations who volunteered to smuggle planes and fly them in combat for Israel, whether out of idealism, boredom, or the simple need to find meaning and a purpose again in continuing to be fighter pilots at war.

Robert Gandt has written several other good histories as well.  He’s definitely an author whose other books are worth checking out. Recommended.

Book Review: The Premonition: A Pandemic Story (2021). Michael Lewis.

On the back cover of Michael Lewis’s latest non-fiction book, The Premonition, there is a single quote of praise for the author from reviewer John Williams of the New York Times Book Review. The quote says, “I would read an 800-page history of the stapler if he wrote it.”

That is high praise, but an apt description of the quality of Lewis’s story-telling and his books, which among others include The Fifth Risk, which I previously reviewed; The Big Short, his insightful and scathing story of Wall Street and the financial and political shenanigans that caused the 2008 financial crisis; and also Moneyball, his fascinating account of how a gifted young statistician and Billy Beane, the unconventional general manager of the 2002 Oakland Athletics, upended Major League Baseball's traditional player evaluation process and built a winning baseball team of young “dark horse” players on a limited budget. Moneyball was also later made into a popular sports drama movie starring Brad Pitt.

The Premonition takes a look at a topic you’d think none of us would ever want to read another word about, the 2020 onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. It brings to light a gripping story behind the stories we’ve all heard, and it's a story most of us knew nothing about, despite the endless media coverage of the pandemic and how it's been handled here in the U.S.

At the center of his narrative is a small group of unheralded experts in the field of public health, including a 13-year old girl whose school science project turned into a key tool for modeling disease spread within social networks; a California doctor and public health officer whose relentless drive to save lives by taking action based on scientific knowledge constantly ran afoul of political actors and their self-serving agendas; and a small group of epidemiology policy outsiders across the U.S., heavily steeped in the research and history of the 1918 Flu epidemic, who recognized the pandemic’s potential danger almost the moment it first appeared in Wuhan, but had to fight against medical and political establishments in Washington D.C., in the states and at the CDC to make their voices heard, and to come up with effective means for combating the pandemic’s spread.

In the course of telling this inspirational yet depressing story of how the U.S. bungled its early response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Lewis demolishes the image of the CDC as an effective instrument of pandemic response and management. He paints it as it ultimately was seen by this small group of outside experts, as a stuffy and self-serving academic bureaucracy, reluctant to make recommendations or take action that might not succeed, and reflexively protective of its data and knowledge in service to its production of academic research papers rather than the sort of rapid “break the glass” action required in the face of a public health emergency.

Lewis also goes into some fascinating detail about the impact of rapid genomic testing for the first time in this pandemic, and how our ability to quickly read the genetic code of the disease as it mutated from person to person created at least a theoretical means to map the spread of the disease, and better understand what people and events were the “super-spreaders” that needed to be isolated to slow the disease’s spread. This little understood capability was not used very effectively, due to the lack of interest in resourcing widespread testing early on.

The book is a riveting story of private insights and urgency, contrasted with public delay, inertia, inaction and incompetence. In addition to these little known public health and epidemiological heroes behind the scenes, who ultimately ended up providing much of the most effective public health advice for fighting the pandemic, we see a few political figures who did listen, and acted relatively promptly upon the science-based advice coming from these experts, including Governor Gavin Newsom in California, as well as a few senior figures in the Trump administration and at the CDC, who had to operate anonymously and stay “below the radar” to try to steer the federal government toward an effective response.

For all of us who followed the news throughout the pandemic, and were trying to make sense of how the government and the CDC could seem to be so slow, so disorganized, and so lacking in preparedness for a pandemic like COVID-19, The Premonition provides much needed clarity.  It highlights many of the reasons for our national failures in responding to the pandemic quickly and effectively, and puts a spotlight on the small group of people who ultimately had the right answers, but were often thwarted in being able to get federal, state and local governments to follow their advice, and swiftly take the necessary steps to stop the spread of the disease.

It's a powerful, intriguing and illuminating account of the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, and some of the previously unknown human dramas and events behind the scenes that played out as our health system and society struggled to find answers to the emerging public health crisis. Very highly recommended.

Book Series Review: Outlander. Diana Gabaldon.

I previously reviewed the ninth novel in the long series of Outlander novels by Diana Gabaldon, Go Tell the Bees that I Am Gone (2021), but have now decided that I ought to provide a little more information and a description of the entire set of books in the series, which began with the release of the first novel, Outlander, in 1991. That's mainly because, after spending several years reading all nine of the gigantic Outlander novels (each one runs roughly 900 pages of hardback-sized pages filled with small, densely compacted text), I've become a completely devoted fan of this amazing long-running book series.

I was happy to learn last year, around the time Go Tell The Bees That I Am Gone was published, that Dr. Gabaldon (yes, the author is also a PhD biologist) plans to write a tenth and final Outlander novel before the series concludes at the end of the American Revolution. This may take her a few years, if past performance is an indication; each novel she's added to the series has taken roughly five years to appear after the preceding one.  Fortunately, recent online stories confirm that she is now at work on this tenth novel, so at least we can start the clock running on when it might arrive!

I decided to try to read the first book after becoming a fan of the Starz TV show, Outlander,  which is closely based on the book series. These novels (and the show) are a curious mix of genres, combining well-researched historical fiction, romance and sex from a woman's perspective, and science fiction/fantasy, which have drawn generations of enthusiastic readers and now TV viewers to the outstanding TV version of the story.

The main character and principal narrator at the heart of the stories is Claire Randall, a modern Englishwoman and feisty, resourceful young veteran of World War II service as a combat nurse. While on a "getting reacquainted" holiday after the war with her husband Frank, she accidentally falls through a time portal in a ring of ancient standing stones, and ends up alone in early 1740s Scotland, where she has to quickly adapt to a very different world and life in order to survive. 

They're very thick novels, rich in period detail, adventure and racy love stories, and very addicting, but they take a long time to read, and the plot jumps around between olden and modern (20th century) times, so I'll refrain from recounting the contents of each book in my review.

So what are they about? Mainly, they're incredibly rich historical novels. They portray individual, social and family life in the past through a large cast of interesting characters, whose stories and fates are interwoven through their family relationships, wars, rebellion and coincidence across a specific arc of past time, history and locations.

That arc begins with the Jacobite uprising for “Bonnie Prince Charlie” in Scotland in the early 1740s, then moves through the post-Culloden Scottish migration to America, colonial life in the new world, and the years of the American Revolution -- which, as Diana Gabaldon has explained in interviews, is the period when the pre-industrial world was transitioning to the modern scientific and technological era.

They're also wonderful romance novels, focused primarily on one couple (Jamie and Claire Fraser), but also on their children, close family members and friends, and the intimate details of their various sex lives, loves, traumas, battles, adventures and relationships over decades.

But wait, there's more! They also contain a very good sci-fi/fantasy time-travel story, with occasional bits of apparent magic thrown in, as well as a fascinating ongoing exploration of modern medicine in contrast to primitive healing, and the knowledge and beliefs of each, along with convincing portrayals of what ordinary life was like before germ theory, anatomical knowledge and penicillin were discovered.

With all that going on, these Outlander books take forever to read and absorb, but at least from my perspective, it is totally worth it. These books now rank among my top fiction series ever, along with Patrick O'Brien's epic 20-volume Master and Commander Aubrey/Maturin series, C.S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower series, Frank Herbert's original 6-volume Dune series, and J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. Very highly recommended.