QUICK REVIEWS pt. VII

Hello my lovely readers! I'm just blowing through these books this month. Let's get into it with more quick reviews!

Ghosts of a Holy War: The 1929 Massacre in Palestine That Ignited the Arab-Israeli Conflict by Yardena Schwartz
In 1929, in the sacred city of Hebron--then governed by the British Mandate of Palestine--there was no occupation, state of Israel, or settlers. Jews and Muslims lived peacefully near the burial place of Abraham, patriarch of the Jewish and Arab nations, until one Saturday morning when nearly 70 Jewish men, women, and children were slaughtered by their Arab neighbors. The Hebron massacre was a seminal event in the Arab-Israeli conflict, key to understanding its complexities.

*Another great addition to books about the ongoing, long-fueled conflict between the Arabs and Israelis. A humbling read.

Searching for Savanna: The Murder of One Native American Woman and the Violence Against the Many by Mona Gable
In the summer of 2017, twenty-two-year-old Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind vanished. A week after she disappeared, police arrested the white couple who lived upstairs from Savanna and emerged from their apartment carrying an infant girl. The baby was Savanna’s, but her body would not be found for days.

*This was an important topic, especially for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, but it was poorly written and extremely convoluted. It's unfortunate, because ultimately it's the family of Savanna that suffers even more. 2.5 out of 5 stars

Diary of Anne Frank: Critical Edition by Anne Frank

 

Hello my lovely readers!

This was technically a re-read, but it's my first time reading this version of Anne Frank's diary. Let's get into it!

SYNOPSIS
The only complete collection of writings by Anne Frank, this impressive volume contains three of the extant versions of her Diary (including pages that came to light in 1998), Tales from the Secret Annex (he lesser known short stories, fables, and personal reminiscences), and Cady's Life (her unfinished novel), along with the latest, most definitive scholarly research into Frank's life.

Anne Frank's diary has become a modern classic. It stands alone as the moving testimony of a young girl whose world collapsed around her in the nightmare of Hitler's Final Solution. Published in the United States in 1952, Anne Frank: A Diary of a Young Girl has been translated from the Dutch into nearly seventy languages, and millions of people the world over continue to respond to her extraordinary voice. The Diary of Anne Frank: The Revised Critical Edition presents the most fascinating, comprehensive study of that diary in existence.

Prepared by the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation, this monumental work allows the reader to compare the three versions of the diary itself: Anne's original entries; the diary as she herself edited it in the hiding place of the "Secret Annex"; and the version most popularly known, as edited by Anne's father, Otto Frank, and a Dutch publishing house after World War II, when they removed certain family and sexual references. Every aspect of the diary--including Anne's handwriting and the paper used--is meticulously examined, providing compelling proof and historical of its poignant testament. Absorbing biographical information on the Frank family enhances Anne's personal perceptions, and a summary of critical events during and after the family's arrest--including how the Nazi authorities learned about the Franks and their secret hiding places--adds a new dimension to this tragic, still resonant story.

QUICK REVIEWS PT. IV

 Hello my lovely readers! Let's get into some more quick reviews!

Whack Job: A History of Axe Murder by Rachel McCarthy James
A bloody examination of the axe's foundational role in human history, from prehistoric violence, to war and executions, to newspaper headlines and popular culture.

This was a quick and easy read, but it was more about the history of the ax sprinkled with a few stories about specific murders. The tone was confusing between trying to be a fact based nonfiction or a humorous book. 3 out of 5 stars

I See You've Called in Dead by John Kenney
When Bud Stanley, an obituary writer, accidentally publishes his own obituary in his newspaper, he finally learns how to live.

Cute and humorous book about death and dying. 4 out of 5 stars.

Nazi Wives: The Women at the Top of Hitler's Germany by James Wyllie

Hello my lovely readers! All the books I've read this month have been nonfiction. This book elicited strong emotions from me. Let's get into it!

SYNOPSIS
Goering, Goebbels, Himmler, Heydrich, Hess, Bormann―names synonymous with power and influence in the Third Reich. Perhaps less familiar are Carin, Emmy, Magda, Margaret, Lina, Ilse and Gerda...

These are the women behind the infamous men―complex individuals with distinctive personalities who were captivated by Hitler and whose everyday lives were governed by Nazi ideology. Throughout the rise and fall of Nazism these women loved and lost, raised families and quarreled with their husbands and each other, all the while jostling for position with the Fuhrer himself. Until now, they have been treated as minor characters, their significance ignored, as if they were unaware of their husbands' murderous acts, despite the evidence that was all around the stolen art on their walls, the slave labor in their homes, and the produce grown in concentration camps on their tables.

James Wyllie's Nazi Wives explores these women in detail for the first time, skillfully interweaving their stories through years of struggle, power, decline and destruction into the post-war twilight of denial and delusion.

When Brooklyn was Queer by Hugh Ryan

Hello my lovely readers! This book was fabulous. Let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS
When Brooklyn Was Queer is a groundbreaking exploration of the LGBT history of Brooklyn, from the early days of Walt Whitman in the 1850s up through the women who worked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard during World War II, and beyond. No other book, movie, or exhibition has ever told this sweeping story. Not only has Brooklyn always lived in the shadow of queer Manhattan neighborhoods like Greenwich Village and Harlem, but there has also been a systematic erasure of its queer history—a great forgetting.

Ryan is here to unearth that history for the first time, and show how the formation of Brooklyn is inextricably linked to the stories of the incredible people who created the Brooklyn we know today. Folks like Ella Wesner and Florence Hines, the most famous drag kings of the late-1800s; E. Trondle, a transgender man whose arrest in Brooklyn captured headlines for weeks in 1913; Hamilton Easter Field, whose art commune in Brooklyn Heights nurtured Hart Crane and John Dos Passos; Mabel Hampton, a black lesbian who worked as a dancer at Coney Island in the 1920s; Gustave Beekman, the Brooklyn brothel owner at the center of a WWII gay Nazi spy scandal; and Josiah Marvel, a curator at the Brooklyn Museum who helped create a first-of-its-kind treatment program for gay men arrested for public sex in the 1950s. Through their stories, WBWQ brings Brooklyn’s queer past to life.

Before Gender: Lost Stories from Trans History, 1850-1950 by Eli Erlick

Hello my lovely readers! I have a LOT to say about this book, so let's just get into it.

SYNOPSIS
Highlighting influential individuals from 1850-1950 who are all but unknown today, Eli Erlick shares 30 remarkable stories from romance to rebellion and mystery to murder. These narratives chronicle the grit, joy, and survival of trans people long before gender became an everyday term.

Organized into 4 parts paralleling today’s controversies over gender identity (kids, activists, workers, and athletes), Before Gender introduces figures whose forgotten stories transform the discussion

Mark and David Ferrow, two of the first trans teens to access gender-affirming medical treatment following overwhelming support from their friends, family, and neighbors.Gerda von Zobeltitz, a trans countess who instigated an LGBTQ+ riot 40 years before Stonewall.Frank Williams, a young trans man who was fired from over a dozen jobs for his gender.Frances Anderson, the world’s greatest female billiards player of the 1910s.

Bold and visionary, Erlick’s debut uncovers these lost stories from the depths of the archives to narrate trans lives in a way that has never been attempted before.

Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution 1863-1877 by Eric Foner

Hello my lovely readers! This was the book I chose to read for #MegaMay on Bookstagram. Let's get into it!

SYNOPSIS
Reconstruction chronicles the way in which Americans—black and white—responded to the unprecedented changes unleashed by the war and the end of slavery. It addresses the ways in which the emancipated slaves' quest for economic autonomy and equal citizenship shaped the political agenda of Reconstruction; the remodeling of Southern society and the place of planters, merchants, and small farmers within it; the evolution of racial attitudes and patterns of race relations; and the emergence of a national state possessing vastly expanded authority and committed, for a time, to the principle of equal rights for all Americans.

"Promise Me You'll Shoot Yourself": The Mass Suicide of Ordinary Germans in 1945 by Florian Huber

Hello my lovely readers!

If you can't tell...I'm in my death and dying era. Let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS

By the end of April 1945 in Germany, the Third Reich had fallen and invasion was inevitable. As the Russian army advanced, horrifying stories spread about the depravity of Red Army soldiers. For many German people, there seemed to be nothing left but shame, guilt, and fear. For tens of thousands of them, the only option was to choose death for themselves, and for their children. Promise Me You'll Shoot Yourself recounts this little known mass event.
Using diaries, letters, and memoirs, historian and film-maker Florian Huber traces the euphoria of many ordinary Germans as Hitler restored national pride; their indifference as the Führer's political enemies, Jews, and other minorities began to suffer; and the descent into despair as the war took its terrible toll, especially after the invasion of the Soviet Union. Above all, he investigates how suicide became a contagious epidemic as the country collapsed.
Drawing on eyewitness accounts and other primary sources, Promise Me You'll Shoot Yourself presents a riveting portrait of a nation in crisis, and sheds light on a dramatic yet largely unknown episode of postwar Germany.

Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them by Timothy Egan

Hello my lovely readers!

Wow...this book. It was a tough read, but I could not put it down. Let's get into it!

SYNOPSIS
The Roaring Twenties--the Jazz Age--has been characterized as a time of Gatsby frivolity. But it was also the height of the uniquely American hate group, the Ku Klux Klan. Their domain was not the old Confederacy, but the Heartland and the West. They hated Blacks, Jews, Catholics and immigrants in equal measure, and took radical steps to keep these people from the American promise. And the man who set in motion their takeover of great swaths of America was a charismatic charlatan named D.C. Stephenson.

Stephenson was a magnetic presence whose life story changed with every telling. Within two years of his arrival in Indiana, he’d become the Grand Dragon of the state and the architect of the strategy that brought the group out of the shadows – their message endorsed from the pulpits of local churches, spread at family picnics and town celebrations. Judges, prosecutors, ministers, governors and senators across the country all proudly proclaimed their membership. But at the peak of his influence, it was a seemingly powerless woman – Madge Oberholtzer – who would reveal his secret cruelties, and whose deathbed testimony finally brought the Klan to their knees.

Dinner with the President by Alex Prud'homme

Hello my lovely readers!

I am really surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. Let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS
The American presidents have been hosts to some of the most significant moments in our history over meals at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And during such occasions, our commanders-in-chief have understood the value of breaking bread with both friends and foes—Thomas Jefferson’s nation-building receptions in the new capital Washington, D.C.; Ulysses S. Grant’s state dinner for the king of Hawaii; Booker T. Washington’s groundbreaking supper with Teddy Roosevelt; Richard Nixon’s practiced use of chopsticks to pry open China; Jimmy Carter’s détente between Israel and Egypt at Camp David.

Here, Alex Prud’homme invites readers into the White House kitchen to reveal the sometimes curious tastes of twenty-six of America’s most influential presidents, how their meals were prepared and by whom, and the ways in which their food policies affected people around the world. As each president grew into his distinguished role, his personal tastes evolved White House menus over time—from simple eggs and black coffee for Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War and celebratory turtle soup after, to squirrel stew for Dwight Eisenhower, jelly beans and enchiladas for Ronald Reagan, and arugula for Barack Obama. What our leaders say about food touches on everything from our nation’s shifting diet and local politics to global trade, science, religion, war, class, gender, race, and so much more.

The Husband Hunters by Anne de Courcy

 Hello my lovely readers!

You ever get excited for a book because of the topic and then are severely let down because of the writing? 

Yeah, that was me with this book. Let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS

Towards the end of the nineteenth century and for the first few years of the twentieth, a strange invasion took place in Britain. The citadel of power, privilege and breeding in which the titled, land-owning governing class had barricaded itself for so long was breached. The incomers were a group of young women who, fifty years earlier, would have been looked on as the alien denizens of another world - the New World, to be precise. From 1874 - the year that Jennie Jerome, the first known 'Dollar Princess', married Randolph Churchill - to 1905, dozens of young American heiresses married into the British peerage, bringing with them all the fabulous wealth, glamour and sophistication of the Gilded Age.

Africatown by Nick Tabor

 Hello my lovely readers!

While in the library last year, I picked this book up because I had already read Barracoon by Zora Neale Hurston and had recently watched two documentaries about the survivors of the Clotilda and its lineage and legacy. 

When I saw this book on the shelves, I knew I had to read it. Let's get into it!

SYNOPSIS

In 1860, a ship called the Clotilda was smuggled through the Alabama Gulf Coast, carrying the last group of enslaved people ever brought to the U.S. from West Africa. Five years later, the shipmates were emancipated, but they had no way of getting back home. Instead they created their own community outside the city of Mobile, where they spoke Yoruba and appointed their own leaders, a story chronicled in Zora Neale Hurston’s Barracoon .

That community, Africatown, has endured to the present day, and many of the community residents are the shipmates’ direct descendants. After many decades of neglect and a Jim Crow legal system that targeted the area for industrialization, the community is struggling to survive. Many community members believe the pollution from the heavy industry surrounding their homes has caused a cancer epidemic among residents, and companies are eyeing even more land for development.

At the same time, after the discovery of the remains of the Clotilda in the riverbed nearby, a renewed effort is underway to create a living memorial to the community and the lives of the slaves who founded it.

The Presidents vs The Press by Harold Holzer

 

Hello my lovely readers!

I bought this book while on my books about journalism kick. I'm not someone who is particularly interested in politics. I vote in my local elections and the presidential election, but I don't necessarily care to talk about politics or anything like that. But it's mainly focused on the role the media plays in each U.S. president's term. Let's get into it!

SUMMARY

From George Washington to Donald Trump, presidents have attacked, manipulated, denigrated the press.

Washington groused about his treatment in the newspapers. Thomas Jefferson used a reporter to find dirt on his rival Alexander Hamilton, only for that same reporter to expose his own affair with his slave Sally Hemings. Andrew Jackson rewarded loyal newspapers with government contracts and Abraham Lincoln shuttered critical papers and imprisoned their editors without trial.

Readers are guided through the clashes between chief executives and journalists, showing who won these battles and girding us for a new fight to protect the nation's greatest institution: a free and functioning press.

The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

 

Hello my lovely readers!

This is my THIRD 500+ page book that I read for the Mega May challenge and I'm so glad I picked it! All the books I've read lately are all somehow interconnected. I just finished The Defender and this book mentions the famed Black newspaper so many times. It was great to be "in the loop." Let's get into it!

SUMMARY
From 1915 to 1970, six million Black Americans moved from the South to the North for the chance at a better life where they would be treated equal to their white brethren. It was called "The Great Migration."

We follow the journeys of three unique people: Ida Mae Gladney, who in 1937 left sharecropping and prejudice in Mississippi for Chicago; George Starling, who fled Florida for Harlem in 1945; and Robert Foster who left Louisiana in 1953 to pursue a medical career and ended up in California.

Author Isabel Wilkerson interviewed over a thousand people and with stunning historical detail, brilliantly captures their first treacherous and exhausting cross-country trips by car and train and their new lives in their new cities they'd soon call home.

A Mind of its Own: A Cultural History of the Penis by David M. Friedman

 

Hello my lovely readers!

You ever read a book that is absolutely fascinating at the start and then begins to lose its way the longer you read it? That's what happened to me with A Mind of Its Own: A Cultural History of the Penisby David M. Friedman. Let's get into it.

SUMMARY
Whether enemy or ally, demon or god, the penis is much more than a body part. Here, in an enlightening and entertaining cultural study, is a book that puts into context the central role of the penis within Western civilization. Deified by ancient pagan cultures and demonized by the early Roman church, the penis was later secularized by pioneering anatomists such as Leonardo da Vinci. 

After being measured 'scientifically' in an effort to subjugate some races while elevating others, the organ was psycho-analyzed by Sigmund Freud. Now, after being politicized by feminism and exploited in countless ways by pop culture, Friedman shows how the arrival of erection industry products such as Viagra is more than a health or business story. It is the latest chapter in one of the longest sagas in human history: the story of man's relationship with his penis.

My Life: A Spoken Autobiography by Fidel Castro and Ignacio Ramonet

 

Hello my lovely readers!

I FINALLY finished this behemoth of a book. It only took me 6 years! I started it in 2017 either before or after I went to Cuba because I didn't know a single, solitary thing about Fidel Castro, other than he evokes strong opinions from people.

I just had to be in the right mindset to read this book because if you know me, then you know military history and wars are an automatic snooze for me. I managed to finally finish though, so here we go!

SUMMARY

Based on more than 100 hours of interviews with Fidel Castro conducted in the span of three years, My Life by Fidel Castro covers all aspects of his life. It's the closest to a memoir we'll ever get from the Cuban leader.

Castro  speaks with raw frankness with Ignacio Ramonet about the events of his life and the legacy he hopes to leave behind.

Gay New York by George Chauncey

 

Hello my lovely readers!

I FINALLY finished this book after reading it for YEARS. Well....I started reading it and then took a super long break and then finally finished it this week. It's not that the book was bad, I just needed to be in the mood to read this. Anyway, let's get into it.

BACKGROUND
In October 2018, I took a solo trip to Spain and Portugal. As I was huffing and puffing up a hill to get to Pena Palace in Sintra, Portugal that I decided to keep pace with this girl named Gina.

She was traveling solo too and we spent the whole day together (well, at least at the Palace) taking photos together and chatting. She told me she was a newly married divorce attorney who lived in New York City. I told her I'd never been to New York City....I didn't see the hype in it. She urged me to come visit her so I could see how great her city was and I said I would.

Exactly one year later, I took a four-day trip to New York. I stayed with Gina, explored Brooklyn and Manhattan and lo and behold, my view of NYC changed. 

I really enjoyed myself and even stopped by to see her in 2021 when I took a day trip to the city with my husband while we were visiting New Jersey.

While in Brooklyn, I stopped by a local bookstore (the name escapes me) and bought Gay New York by George Chauncey.

Vigilance by Andrew K. Deimer

 

Hello my lovely readers!

Just before the end of the month, I finished this absolute beauty of a book. 

I came across Vigilance: The Life of William Still, Father of the Underground Railroad by Andrew K. Deimer several weeks ago while in a local bookstore. I'd recognized the name because when I first started my Bookstagram account and this blog, The Underground Railroad  by William Still was the first book I reviewed. So it was a welcome surprise to find a full biography on Still that was just published last year.

Let's get into it.