What Happened by Hillary Rodham Clinton

Part Of The Synopsis From Dust Jacket: 

For the first time, Hillary Rodham Clinton reveals what she was thinking and feeling during one of the most controversial and unpredictable presidential elections in history. Now free from the constraints of running, Hillary takes you inside the intense personal experience of becoming the first woman nominated for president by a major party in an election marked by rage, sexism, exhilarating highs and infuriating lows, stranger-than-fiction twists, Russian interference, and an opponent who broke all the rules.  

Fair warning, a little of my political side comes out in this "review".

Frankly, I don't know how to objectively review this book. Even if I could somehow manage to be objective, how do you "review" a first person narrative of an election that is still tearing our country apart? I voted for Sec. Clinton in both the Democratic primary, and in the general election. What's more, I would do it again with a joyous heart.  But right now, my heart is broken by the wasted opportunity this country had to be lead by someone of her caliber. Instead, we have a man in the White House who is currently blaming hurricane survivors in Puerto Rico for their own suffering, while he's playing golf. He's poking at the leader of North Korea, his Justice Department is now saying it's okay for employers to fire you for being gay, and Dreamers are just months away from being deported. I told you I couldn't be objective about this.

In What Happened, Sec. Clinton is pretty frank in how she sees the mistakes she made, the fake email controversy and Director Comey's role, divisions on the left, and Russian interference combined into a perfect storm she just couldn't figure out how to navigate. This could be my own biases showing, but I think she's right. Throughout the book, Sec. Clinton lays out her case and does it without whining.  She accepts blame when she should, but doesn't hold back in holding others accountable when it's appropriate to do so.

Sen. Sanders used right wing propaganda to weaken her with his supporters. He painted a corrupt narrative of her that some voters, primarily younger who didn't really know her, bought into. They didn't understand the primary process, couldn't believe she was beating him in the primary, so they bought into this whole notion of the primary being stolen. The fact that it was the same primary system that allowed then Sen. Obama to beat her, was immaterial to their anger. They labeled her corrupt, badgered her supporters online, and a few in WI, PA, and MI threw hissy fits and either didn't vote, or voted for Dr. Stein, who has her own ties to Russia.

The letter Comey wrote to Congress days before the election truly was the final nail in the coffin. She is right when she says the momentum was on her side, but that the letter stopped it cold. It was an unprecedented act of interference in our election system by the FBI. His whole manner was suspect, from his initial statement to that final letter, he behaved in a most unseemly  manner.

The scope of Russian interference is staggering. Giving the Trump campaign opposition research, hacking the email systems of the DNC and John Podesta including the planting of fake emails, creating fake news stories, orchestrating anti immigrant rallies on US soil, taking out political ads on social media, employing thousand of social media trolls, stirring up racial tensions online, and only they know what else they did. The investigation is for from over, but what's already known should chill the blood of every American.

If you couldn't tell by my tone, I'm still a little bitter about the election. I wish I could find the grace and humor that Sec. Clinton shows in this book. Her pain and disappointment are on full display, but so is her warmth and compassion for those she feels she let down. This is a deeply personal memoir, and if it hurt for me to read it, I can't imagine how it felt for her to write it.

It's obviously a book by someone who is never going to run for office again, it's far too candid for that. And that's what hurt the most. Granted I've admired her for years, but seeing this openness from her cements the idea that regardless of how or why it happened, the missed opportunities that were only possible with her in office are a national disgrace.

The Apache Wars by Paul Andrew Hutton

Part Of The Synopsis From Back Cover:

The 1861 kidnapping of the boy who would grow up to be Mickey Free-the only man Geronimo ever feared-started the longest war in American history: the brutal struggle between the Apache and the U.S. government for control of the Southwest. When the Apache Wars finally ended in 1890, the western frontier had closed, and the once  powerful Apaches had been imprisoned far to the east or corralled on reservations. 

It has always amazed me how one decision, one action taken by someone who would normally not be important to history, can alter everything. One action, seemingly done in isolation, can have rippling effects that can never be foreseen. This is a masterfully crafted narrative of one such chain of events, one that even the Oracle of Delphi could not have predicted.

Dr. Hutton obviously knows his subject. The research done, and the obvious love he has for a well spun tale, shine through on every page. Through the lives of those involved in the brutal campaign, he draws the reader into that world. It's not pretty nor safe, it's violent and bloody and almost everyone he introduces on the page will suffer. It's not a period in the history of our country most of us like to think about outside the romanticized era of Hollywood Westerns, but it's a story that needs to be told.

I received this book for free from Blogging for Books, for this review

Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann

Part of the Synopsis from the Dust Jacket:

In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma.  After oil was discovered beneath their land, they rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe. 

Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off.  The family of an Osage woman, Mollie Buckhart, became a prime target.  Her relatives were shot and poisoned. And it was just the beginning, as more and more members of the tribe began to die under suspicious circumstances. 

In this last remnant of the Wild West - where oilmen such as J.P. Getty made their fortunes and where desperadoes such as Al Spencer, the "Phantom Terror," roamed - many of those who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered.  As the death toll climbed to more than twenty-four, the relatively new FBI took over.  It was one of the organization's first major homicide cases but the bureau badly bungled the investigation.  In desperation, the young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to unravel the mystery.  White put together an undercover team, including an American Indian agent in the bureau.  Together with the Osage they began to expose one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history. 

Officially, around twenty-four members of the Osage tribe were murdered for their oil. Unofficially, the estimates I've seen start in the sixties, and climb from there. They were murdered by their friends, in-laws, spouses, and community leaders.  Their lives were stolen by the very people they were supposed to trust and look to for help. The depravity inflicted upon the human soul that this book narrates is mind boggling in it's scope, and heart wrenching in the way people were betrayed by those they loved. Just when I think I've heard the cruelest examples of the way humans treat each other, I'm exposed to a story that makes the shows my roommate watches on the ID Channel, seem like child's play.  It is almost impossible for me to express the full depth of emotion I felt as I read this tale of greed so base, that Charles Ponzi is a nobody in comparison to these men.

This wasn't one or two men so blinded by money, that they left their morals at the door. This was an entire community, an entire county, hell bent on taking what they could, damn the methods used. Politicians and lawmen, the ones not actually contracting the killings themselves, did the covering up and lost evidence. Doctors faked autopsies. Inquests were filled with the men responsible for the deaths.

Since Congress had decided that the Osage were not capable of taking care of their own money, white business men were assigned as executors.  Many of those men ended up with dead charges, in many cases more than one dead charge, allowing themselves to "inherit" the oil rights.  The white men who did actually try to investigate, ended up dead themselves.  One man was actually killed in Washington, D.C.

The part that really turns my stomach, other than men marrying and impregnating women solely to kill them later, is the way in which systemic racism allowed this to happen to begin with. It was congressional actions, built out of prejudice and disdain for indigenous Americans, that laid the framework these men took advantage of.  If congress had not taken many of the actions they did, I'm almost convinced this could have all been prevented.  

And the part that just saddens me, is that I went to high school in Osage county.  I lived in Osage county for four years, and I never heard a peep about this.  It wasn't taught in state history, it wasn't talked about by the residents of the town I lived in.  I never heard of this tragedy until I was listening to NPR in the car earlier this year.  How can something of this magnitude not be taught in our schools?  What happened in Osage county should serve as an example of what transpires when racism and greed are combined.

And yes I know, so far I haven't written much of a review, and I'm okay with that.  You guys already know that I'm a sucker for well written narrative nonfiction, and Killers of the Flower Moon is a prime example of it.  I'm sure you can already guess that I would do my damndest to convince all of you to get your hands on this book.  That I would want you to share it with your friends and family.  I would implore all of you to never let what happened in Osage county be brushed aside into obscurity again.

Jefferson's America by Julie M. Fenster

Part Of The Synopsis From Dust Jacket:

At the dawn of the nineteenth century, as Britain, France, Spain, and the United States all jockeyed for control of the vast stretches west of the Mississippi River, the stakes for American expansion were incalculably high. Even after the American purchase of the Louisiana Territory, Spain still coveted that land and was prepared to employ any means to retain it. With war expected at any moment, Jefferson played a game of strategy, putting on the ground the only Americans he could: a cadre of explorers who finally annexed the territory through courageous investigation.

Orchestrating the American push into the continent, Jefferson most famously recruited Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, who led the Corps of Discovery to the Pacific. But at the same time there were other teams doing identical work, jn places were it was even more crucial. William Dunbar, George Hunter, Thomas Freeman, Peter Curtis, and the dauntless Zebulon Pike - all were dispatched on urgent missions to map the frontier while keeping up a steady correspondence with Washington about their findjngs.

But they weren't always well-matched - not with one another and certainly not against a Spanish army of a thousand soldiers or more. The tensions and perils threatened to undermine Jefferson's goals for the nascent country, leaving the United States in danger of losing its foothold in the West.

When I first started the blog, a blog that I've allowed to languish for far too long, I wasn't reading that much nonfiction. I would pick up the occasional political or history book, but it was only one or two a year, and that may be stretching it a bit. If blogging has made a lasting positive change in my reading life, it's in an ever expanding appreciation for nonfiction. The types of books I'm now reading covers a vaster expanse of interests, and I now have a greater appreciation for American history and how much of it I really didn't know.

I of course knew President Jefferson's role in obtaining the Louisiana Territory, what middle school kid hasn't heard of the Louisiana Purchase? I knew of Lewis & Clark and the exploration they embarked on. What I didn't know, or at least forgot about, was everything going on behind the scenes. They didn't teach us about all the maneuvering behind the scenes, the clashes with the Spaniards, or all the obstacles that had to be overcome for our country to stretch from coast to coast.

Before reading this I don't think I understood how much of how we see ourselves as a nationation was crafted by Jefferson. Nor do I think I fully appreciated his role in creating the country we call home, and I don't necessarily mean in our size. I think he is pivotal in envisioning a nation that stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific, but I think he helped craft our character and instilled in our collective psyche a need to see beyond our current borders, to always be reaching for what is next.  He helped mold the American sense of adventuring. After reading this book, my fondness for our third president has only grown.

I received this book for free from Blogging for Books, for this review

Finding Fontainebleau: An American Boy in France by Thad Carhart

Synopsis From Dust Jacket: 

For a young American boy in the 1950s, Fontainebleau was a sight both strange and majestic.  A provincial town just south of Paris, it is home to France's greatest chateau where Thad Carhart's father was assigned as a military officer.  With humor and heart, Carhart conveys a rich panoply of French life in the '50s: the discovery of a Paris still covered in centuries of black soot; the strange bewilderment of a classroom where wine bottles dispensed ink for penmanship lessons; the excitement of camping in nearby Italy and Spain.  What emerges is an insider's view of a postwar Europe rarely seen or largely forgotten. 

Against this background of deep change for France stands the Chateau of Fontainebleau.  Begun in 1137, fifty years before the Louvre and more than five hundred before Versailles, the Chateau was a royal residence for centuries.  A string of illustrious queens and kings - Marie Antoinette, Francois I, the two Napoleons - added to its splendors without appreciably destroying the imprint of their predecessors.  As a consequence, the Chateau is unique in France, a supreme repository of French style, taste, art, and architecture.  Carhat tells us the rich and improbable stories of these monarchs and of their love affair with a place like no other.

Before I started blogging, I could have counted on one hand the amount of memoirs I had read in my life. Over the last seven years, I have had the opportunity to read/review quite a few memoirs, and I have absolutely fallen in love with a genre I never knew I would.  Reading the lyrical beauty of Finding Fontainebleau has just added to that love affair.

Part memoir, part travelogue, and part history book, Finding Fontainebleau has given me a greater appreciation for France, and for the first time in my life, I want to book a ticket, and get my butt over there.  Mr. Carhart, who is now one of my favorite contemporary writers, has a skill in storytelling that makes me green with envy.  I could only hope to write half as well as he does, though I know that it will never come to be.  He weaves his personal history with that of France and Fontainebleau, and instead of being a fragmented mess, he is able to tie the two stories together.  The narrative undulates back and forth, but never feels out of control.

For the last few weeks, this was the book I would read once I was in bed.  And like any good bedtime story, the melodious tenor of Mr. Carhart's written cadence sent me to dreamland night after night. What I'm reading rarely influences what I dream of, but I can still recall my leisurely stroll through the rooms of Fontainebleau.  I can only hope that I will be able to visit those halls for myself, but if that never comes to pass, I will have Finding Fontainebleau waiting on my shelves.

I would like to thank Lisa of TLC Booktours for the opportunity to read and review this book.  Please visit the tour page to read more reviews.

Lincoln in the World: The Making of a Statesman and the Dawn of American Power by Kevin Peraino

Part Of The Synopsis From Publisher:

This is the story of one of the most breathtaking feats in the annals of American foreign policy—performed by one of the most unlikely figures. Abraham Lincoln is not often remembered as a great foreign-policy president. He had never traveled overseas and spoke no foreign languages. And yet, during the Civil War, Lincoln and his team skillfully managed to stare down the Continent’s great powers—deftly avoiding European intervention on the side of the Confederacy. In the process, the United States emerged as a world power in its own right. 

Engaging, insightful, and highly original, Lincoln in the World is a tale set at the intersection of personal character and national power. The narrative focuses tightly on five distinct, intensely human conflicts that helped define Lincoln’s approach to foreign affairs—from his debate, as a young congressman, with his law partner over the conduct of the Mexican War, to his deadlock with Napoleon III over the French occupation of Mexico. Bursting with colorful characters like Lincoln’s bowie-knife-wielding minister to Russia, Cassius Marcellus Clay; the cunning French empress, Eugénie; and the hapless Mexican monarch Maximilian—Lincoln in the World draws a finely wrought portrait of a president and his team at the dawn of American power. 

Somehow in all the reading I've done on American Presidents, I've managed to skip over President Lincoln,  I've never read anything about him, including one of President Obama's favorite books, Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin.  I've read more about former First Ladies, than I've read about our 16th president.   I'm glad that with reading Lincoln in the World, that glaring oversight has been taken care of.

President Lincoln's foreign policy tends to be overshadowed by domestic policy in most school history books, which is understandable given the plethora of issue that gave rise to the Civil War. To be quite frank, I can't remember a thing from either high school or college on the subject., and that's assuming they even taught us anything about it, and that's highly doubtful. With Lincoln in the World, I was given a chance to not only learn the history of what took place during his administration, but it's given me some insight into some of the foreign policy issues that are still facing us today.

This could have been a dry, boring book, spouting off dates and names.  Instead, while it was meticulously researched and presented, it was engaging.  The author took a ton of information, and was able to not only condense it, but explain it in such a way that made me feel like Goldilocks.  Nothing was over my head, nothing was being dumbed-down to make me understand the implications of what I was reading, it was just right.

I received this book for free from Blogging for Books, for this review.

Worlds Elsewhere: Journeys Around Shakespeare's Globe by Andrew Dickson

Synopsis From Dust Jacket:

Ranging ambitiously across four continents and four hundred years, Worlds Elsewhere is an eye-opening account of how Shakespeare went global.  Seizing inspiration from the playwright's own fascination with travel, foreignness, and distant worlds - worlds Shakespeare never himself explored - Andrew Dickson takes us on an extraordinary journey:  from Hamlet performed by English actors tramping through the Baltic states in the early sixteen hundreds to the skyscrapers of twenty-first-century Beijing and Shanghai, where "Shashibiya" survived Mao's Cultural Revolution to become a revered Chinese author. 

En route, Dickson traces Nazi Germany's strange love affair with, and attempted nationalization of, the Bard, and delves deep into their history of Bollywood, where Shakespearian stories helped give birth to Indian cinema.  In Johannesburg, we discover how Shakespeare was enlisted in the fight to end apartheid.  In nineteenth-century California, we encounter shoestring performances of Richard III and Othello in the dusty mining camps and saloon bars of the Gold Rush. 

No other writer's work has been performed, translated, adapted, and altered in such a remarkable variety of cultures and languages.  Both a cultural history and a literary travelogue, Worlds Elsewhere is an attempt to understand how Shakespeare has become the international phenomenon he is - and why. 

I'm going to put this out there before we even get started, I'm not a huge Shakespeare fan. It's not that I don't like him, but I can't say I would ever go out of my way to read one of his plays.  In college, I played Philostrate in a production of A Midsummer's Night Dream, set in feudal Japan.  I've enjoyed a few movie versions of Much Ado About Nothing, and I love the movie version of Titus Andronicus that I've seen.  And outside of mandatory reading in high school and college, that's the extent of my dabbling with Shakespeare  So for you die hard fans, I'm sorry that I'm not in love with the Bard, at least not as much as you are.

That lack of exposure to Shakespeare, is why I agreed to review this book.  I was intrigued by the concept; the author traveling the globe, learning how particular cultures absorbed and interpreted his works for their own.  For the most part, I really enjoyed the journey that Andrew Dickson took me on.  I do wish he would have been able to visit a few other countries, but I get that finances dictate how much global traveling you can really do.  And while there were moments that felt bogged down in detailed minutiae, I appreciated the work he put into the book, and his love for the subject shines through on every page.

After finishing the Worlds Elsewhere, while I can't say that my interest in Shakespeare's work has been increased, I will admit to having a little more respect for him, and the influence he has had on a global scale.  I don't think I truly had an appreciate, or understanding, of how popular he was across the globe, and how adaptable his works are to other cultures, at least not on the level I was exposed to in this book.  For that alone, for gaining a new appreciate for an author who is globally loved, I'm grateful for reading this book.

I would like to thank the publisher, Henry Holt, for providing a copy of Worlds Elsewhere, in exchange for an honest review.
                                                                                                                                                                               

Shakespeare Turned 400 Today! Let's Celebrate With A Giveaway of Worlds Elsewhere by Andrew Dickson!

Today, April 23rd, 2016, marks William Shakespeare's 400th birthday! Incidentally, it's also the anniversary of his death.  In celebration, I have a copy of Worlds Elsewhere: Journeys Around Shakespeare's Globe by Andrew Dickinson, provided by Henry Holt, to give away.

If you ever wanted to know how Shakespeare's fascination with travel, though he never went anywhere, influenced his work, this is the book for you.  But it's more than that, it's also a journey through time as the world has embraced him and his works, of how different cultures have interpreted and assimilated his work into their societies.  It's a fascinating book, and one that I'm still digging into.  I will have a review coming up shortly, but for now, I'm hoping you guys are ready to find out how to get your own copy. 

All you have to do is leave a comment, telling me a personal tidbit about your relationship with Shakespeare.  It's open to interpretation, so I'm looking forward to reading your comments.  Please leave an email address that I can contact you with, if you are the winner.  Sadly, this is only open to U.S. Residents.  The giveaway will run until 11:59 pm CST, on 5/7/2016.  The winner will be selected by random draw, and I will contact the winner by email. The winner will then have 4 days to get in touch with me, before I draw a new winner.  

So good luck, and if you want to read more about the book, please visit the website at: WorldsElsewhereBook.com 

Trapped Under the Sea by Neil Swidey

Synopsis From Dust Jacket:

A quarter century ago, Boston had the dirtiest harbor in America.  The city had been dumping sewage into if for generations, coating the seafloor with a layer of "black mayonnaise."  Fisheries collapsed, wildlife fled, and locals referred to floating tampon applicators as "beach whistles."

In the 1990s, work began on a state-of-the-art treatment plant and a 10-mile-long tunnel - its endpoint stretching farther from civilization than the Earth's deepest ocean trench - to carry waste out of the harbor.  With this impressive feat of engineering, Boston was poised to show the country how to rebound from environmental ruin.  But when bad decisions and clashing corporations endangered the project, a team of commercial divers was sent on a perilous mission to rescue the stymied cleanup effort.  Five divers went in; not all of them came out alive.

Drawing on hundreds of interviews an thousands of documents collected over five years of reporting, award winning writer Neil Swidey takes us deep into the lives of the divers, engineers, politicians, lawyers, and investigators involved int he tragedy and its aftermath, creating a taut, action-packed narrative. The climax comes just after the hard-partying DJ Gillis and his friend Billy Juse trade assignments as they head into the tunnel, sentencing one of them to death.

Deer Island Sewage Treatment Plant

One of my biggest joys in having a book blog, is in being able to read nonfiction books I would never have heard of otherwise.  I've always read nonfiction, but in the past, is was on subjects I already knew about, or it was a book someone had suggested, or given to me. Blogging has opened my nonfiction eyes, in ways I never though about, when I started Wordsmithonia.  I've been exposed to people and events I have never heard of, been fascinated by subjects I would never have thought about on my own, and most of all, it's given me a better sense of the way other people view the world.

With Trapped Under the Sea, I feel as if a piece of our country's history, which I would almost bet most people outside of Massachusetts aren't familiar with, has been exposed for all of us to see.  Our national media seems to focus on the latest political scandal, or piece of celebrity gossip.  Stories that should be making national headlines don't.  I think it would be safe to say that more people know about Britney Spears shaving her head, than know the names of the men who lost their lives in the Deer Island tunnel.  And I would also think it's fair to say that even the majority of the people who were exposed to this story in the news, don't remember it now, and probably never knew a ton of the details to begin with.

From what I can gather, this book actually started off as two part story in The Boston Globe Magazine. Running in August of 2009, Swidey delved into the lives of the divers involved, and finally put voice to their story.  What started off as that two piece story, has turned into one of the best examples of narrative nonfiction I've had the privilege to read in quite a while.

Most of you already know that I'm a huge fan of the two Mitchell Zuckoff books that I have read.  Frozen in Time and Lost in Shangri-La, are two of the best examples I can give of what a good narrative flow is in a nonfiction book.  Both, Mitchell Zuckoff and Neil Swidey, have a way of telling a story in its most natural form.  Trapped Under the Sea reads like a well crafted novel.  This is not a dry spewing forth of names, dates, and events.  This is a well written, compelling story of the lives of those affected by the tunnel disaster, and of those that contributed to it's happening.  It's a fascinating look at the decisions that led to this event, and it doesn't shy away from the consequences of it either.  Where most authors may have ended the story at it's logical conclusion, Swidey takes us into the aftermath, chronicling not only the investigation, but how the personal lives of those involved were changed by the events that day.  It doesn't shy away from the messy details, or the negative ways in which the men who survived, spiraled out after the disaster.

I'm sure some are going to read this book as an indictment of the greedy corporate climate, that so many like to point fingers at.  And I'm sure that they would be valid in those thoughts, even if that's not what I took away from this book.  Instead, Trapped Under the Sea, was a celebration of the human spirit and drive that compels so many of us forward..  

It celebrates the men who would even think of going into a 9.5 mile long tunnel under the sea bed.  It glorifies the spirit of those would would do so, even into an environment that has no breathable air, or any safe way out if something were to go wrong.  It makes us proud to be part of a species that can even dream that big, who even thinks of building a tunnel that far out to sea.  It honors all of those who have given up their lives, in the name of human progress and innovation.  It's a testament to what has driven this country since it's founding, but it's also a warning of what happens when the goal becomes more important than the lives of those trying to reach it.

I received this book for free from Blogging for Books, for this review.

Ministry of Fear - 1944

Part Of Synopsis From Back Cover:

On his way to London after being released from a mental asylum, Stephen Neale (Ray Miland) stops at a seemingly innocent village fair, after which he finds himself caught in the web of a sinister, possibly Nazi-connected underworld.

I'm almost positive that Yvette of in so many words... is responsible for me seeing this movie, at least the first time around.  She reviewed it on December 28th, 2010.  I read her review on December 29th, and watched the movie on February 2nd, of 2011.  I only know this because I just went back and read the comments I made on her post.  I've always found Ray Miland rather dashing, and I'm in love with him in The Uninvited, so when she wrote up her review, I knew I had to watch it.

The Criterion Collection just released it on Blu Ray last year, and I'm pretty sure I bought it the week it came out.  How can you not love a movie that starts off with Ray Miland's character being released from an asylum, where he was committed for two year after buying the drugs his wife used to killer herself.  She was dying a horrible death, and she asked for his help in ending it.  Once he bought the drugs, he was unable to go through with the plan, but she got a hold of them anyway, and that was that.  So he was there for two years, and the first thing he does is hope decide to hop on a train for London.  Once he is at the station, he sees a little fete across the way, and since he has time he joins in.

Long story short, he ends up with a cake, meant for someone else.  He is followed onto the train by a fake blind guy steals the cake, jumps off the train, and Ray Miland starts chasing after him.  The guy is killed by a German bomber, dropping bombs on the innocent countryside.  Which if you think about it, a German spy getting killed by a German bomb, is rather hilarious.

Once in London, Milan decides to look into the charity that hosted the fete, he meets the Austrian refugees who run the organization, and the games really begin.   For the rest of the movie, we are treated to some of the craziest, most convoluted actions on the face of the planet.  The plot just takes off, and if it can be twisted and turned, it is. But that's the genius of the movie, it's takes the most outrageous plot twists it can, and somehow you still buy into it.  You really believe that a cabal of German spies, has been able to infiltrate every level of society, stealing military secrets and using a tailor to pass them along.  The characters are over the top, just the way they should be in such a story, though some of the acting itself is rather stilted and some of the casting choices, Marjorie Reynolds, doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Hillary Brooke on the other hand, who I also adore, is brilliant as Mrs. Bellane, one of the cabalists, and a fake medium.  It's through here that we are treated to one of the most memorable seance scenes I've ever seen on screen, the tension is thick through the entire thing, and the way light is used, sheer genius.  Actually, the entire movies uses light and shadows brilliantly.  There are a few scenes where the absences of light is used to it's fullest effect, two of the better ones are at the end.

Did I forget to mention that this is all taking place in a London that is in the middle of war, dealing with nightly German bombardments?  I also want to make sure I mentioned the many gun fights, an apartment explosion, and one of the coolest book stores (also a Nazi front), that I've ever seen.  I won't get into how many characters die, or the one who has to die twice.  I won't even mention the lack of resolution concerning some of the characters, such as Mrs. Bellane.  You just have to assume that in the end, they are all rounded up.

What I will say, is that with every viewing, I find myself falling in love with this one more and more.  Fritz Lang, though the movie is supposed to be quite different in tone from the Graham Greene book it's based on, directed a terrific example of Noir, and it plays those tropes to the hilt.  It is quickly becoming one of my favorite movies, and I'm sure it is one that will have many more viewings in my home.

All I Love And Know by Judith Frank

Synopsis From Dust Jacket:

For years, Matthew Greene and Daniel Rosen have enjoyed a contented domestic life in Northampton, Massachusetts.  Opposites in many ways, they have grown together and made their relationship work.  But when they learn that Daniel's twin brother and sister-in-law have been killed in a Jerusalem bombing, their lives are suddenly, utterly transformed.

The deceased couple have left behind two young children, and their shocked and grieving families must decide who will raise six-year-old Gal and baby Noam.  When it becomes clear that Daniel's brother and sister-in-law wanted Matt and Daniel to be their children's guardians, the two men find themselves confronted by challenges that strike at the heart of their relationship.  What is Matt's place in an extended family that does not competently accept him or the commitment he and Daniel have made?  How do Daniel's complex feelings about Israel and this act of terror affect his ability to recover from his brother's death?  And what kind of parents can these two men really be to children who have lost so much?

The impact that this instant new family has on Matt, Daniel, and their relationship is subtle and heartbreaking, yet not without glimmers of hope. They must learn to reinvent and redefine their bond in profound, sometimes painful ways.  How does a family become strong enough to stay together and endure when its very basis has drastically changed?  And are their limits to honesty or commitment - or love?

When I finally got around to reading this book, I read it in one sitting.  I read all 420 pages, and did not put the book down once.  I didn't get up to go to the bathroom, I didn't quench the thirst I started to feel half way through, I ignored my phone, and I told everyone to leave me alone.  And strangely, I had this reaction to a book I'm not all that in love with, and I'm not even sure I realized that until I typed it.

And now that I've let the cat out of the bag, I guess it's on me to try figure out why I was so engrossed in a book, that I didn't love.  Normally, even when I'm really enjoying a book, I don't get so engrossed that I can't put it down.  And the two most recent times before this, The Absolutist by John Boyne and Gillespie and I by Jane Harris, were books that I truly loved.  They were books I would recommend to anyone and everyone, and will reread for the rest of my life.  I'm not sure how often I would recommend All I Love and Know, and I'm really not sure if it is a book I will ever reread.  And quite frankly, I'm still not sure I can tell you why, so I think I just wasted this entire paragraph.

I think part of this issue is my somewhat conflicted view of the entire Israeli/Palestinian conflict.  Like Matt and Daniel, I think what Israel has done to the Palestinians is pretty much the same as Apartheid in South Africa.  I think the idea of an entire Ethnic/Religious group, who has been subjugated by other for centuries, turning around and doing the same thing themselves, I find it puzzling and just a tad bit revolting.  It makes no sense to me.  But at the same time, I agree that Israel has every right to defend themselves against those who don't want them to exist as a nation.  But most of all, I don't have an answer.  I don't know what either side should do, though I think the fighting is taking its toll on way too many innocents.

But I think my general unease has more to do with the relationship between Matt and Daniel.  It's messy and complicated, they have a quasi open marriage, which I still do not understand, though I know it happens. And I think it's in that one little facet of their relationship, my own personal issues with it, that prevents me from loving this book.  With everything going on in their lives, with all the pain and conflict, I get why maybe turning outside the relationship for comfort would be something that could happen.  Especially when one of the partners is doing everything that he can to make it work, and the other has shut down and withdrawn so deeply into his pain, that neither one can see straight anymore. I get the need for connection in the face of pain, and I get the urge to get it anywhere you can when you are no longer getting that sense of worth from the man you love.

What I don't understand is how they allowed this to happen before the events of the book.  The openness, though maybe not occurring very often, and with a ton of rules, still went on.  They were happily in love, living together, but allowed each other to be intimate with other people.  Call me a prude, old fashioned, or naive, but I've never been able to understand relationships like that.  I try not to judge those who are in open relationships, and for the most part I don't, but I still don't get it.  And I understand it's not my place to get it, since I'm not in the relationship, but it does stop me from investing to much emotion into a fictional couple that I really wanted to love.  And I really don't understand why the author uses that openness as a vehicle for the couple to implode, or at least the proverbial last straw breaking the camel's back..

Since you can tell from the synopsis that it all works out in the end, I don't feel as if I'm spoiling anything for you, when I tell you that it does in fact have a happy ending.  And I can even go as far as saying that I'm happy it ended that way, and that I adore both Matt and Daniel.  I can even go a step further and tell you that I enjoyed the book, that I became invested in both the story and the characters, that I thoroughly enjoyed the time I spent with Matt and Daniel. I'm even willing to admit that it's my own personal hangups that kept me from loving what I read.

And now that I'm done typing, I'm even willing to concede that maybe I loved this book more than I did at the beginning of the review.  Maybe its as simple as uttering my relationship hangups out loud, albeit in type.  Could actually admitting your issues, no matter where they come from, allow you to get over them, to not let them cloud your judgement? Maybe it is that simple, or maybe, just maybe actually sitting down to write a review actually forces you to rethink the entire process over again.  No matter the reason, I'm now willing to admit that I loved the book, and that I would highly recommend. it.  I just hope you guys don't think I'm too schizophrenic now.

I want to thank Trish of TLC Book Tours for the opportunity to read/review this book.  Please visit the tour page to read other reviews, hopefully they will be more coherent than mine.

Here is Where by Andrew Carroll

If you didn't know that Edwin Booth saved the life of Robert Todd Lincoln, months before his brother assassinated President Lincoln, you aren't alone.  I had no clue, and that's the point of this book.  The author, Andrew Carroll, who had files upon files of little know historical oddities, decided to travel the United States, visiting the sites of pivotal points in American history, that most of us have forgotten about.  And forgotten is probably not the right word, let's just say this book is full of events and people that most of us never heard about, though we should have.

He had a few self imposed criteria. They had to be sites that were nationally important, not just some fun local event that didn't have that much of an impact, outside of the neighborhood it took place in.  But most importantly, they had to be unmarked, which most of the time, meant they were forgotten.

But this isn't just a book full of unconnected events and the personalities involved, instead its a travelogue that celebrates this country's past, and honors those that are trying to preserve it.  The author isn't just slapping down some dates and names, he's letting us in on the journey, allowing us to share in the discovery, to revel in our collective history.  Each trip is a separate journey, and we are right there with him, as he visits the sites and talks to the locals, gleaning information from everyone he meets.  You can feel the reverence and even the awe that he feels at times, being on location, where those we should honor, gave up their lives or fulfilled a life time of accomplishments.

He starts us off in Hawaii, not the most logical choice, nor his first choice.  Rather he is forced to accommodate his journey, to meet the demands of where he is going.  And it's with Hawaii that my studying began.  I was unaware of how a kamikaze pilot crash landed on the small island of Niihau.  Nor did I know of his capture by the locals, and how some trusted members of the community, who happened to be of Japanese heritage, tried to help him in escaping.  It's that incident that helped cement the distrust of Japanese Americans, and helped to land them in internment camps for the remainder of World War II.

What follows is a state by state tour, exploring other such events. But he doesn't go off willy nilly, or even follow in a way that makes the most geographical sense.  Instead he breaks the stops down into categories, using these events and places to explore broader themes running throughout our history.  He visits those who are trying to figure out who was here before us.  He delves into the darker side of expansion, discovery and growth.  He visits the homes of men and women who pushed our country forward through innovation and science.  He even touches upon the future, how our past teaches us about what is to come, and how there are those who are trying to preserve it for those generations to come.

And just to put out there one random fact that I never knew, the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918, started in Haskell County, KS.  I live in Kansas, but haven't been into the Western part of the state, I always knew that I never wanted to take a trip to Sublette.

I received this book for free from Blogging for Books, for this review.

In Memoriam: January Through June, 2014

It's almost impossible for any of us to really pay attention to all those that have passed from the public eye.  Whether they are famous or not, every year we seem to lose those that have contributed to society in ways that we may never realize.  They are actors, musicians, entertainers, politicians, activists, scientists, and writers.  They enrich our lives through their works, and without them, our lives would be just a little bit more empty.  I would like to take this time to thank many of them for their contributions.  I obviously can't include everyone on this list, so I will let those I can include, stand in for those I can't.  Whether they are on this particular list or not, we owe all of them a big thank you.

January 2014

Phil Everly, 1939-2014. American Musician, The Everly Brothers; "Wake Up Little Susie" & "All I Have to Do Is Dream".

Larry D. Mann, 1922-2014.  Canadian Actor; The Sting & Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.

Harvey Bernhard, 1924-2014.  American Movie Producer; The Omen & The Lost Boys.

Russell Johnson, 1924-2014. American Actor; Gilligan's Island.

Dave Madden, 1931-2014.  American Actor; The Partridge Family & Alice. 

Hal Sutherland, 1929-2014.  American Animator; Sleeping Beauty & He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. 

Ben Starr, 1921-2014. American TV Producer; The Facts of Life & Silver Spoons.

James Jacks, 1947-2014. American Movie Producer; Heart and Souls & The Gift.

Arthur Rankin, Jr., 1924-2014.  American Animator; The Hobbit, Mad Monster Party?, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, and a bazillion other TV Christmas specials. 

February 2014  

Maximilian Schell, 1930-2014.  Swiss Actor; Judgement at Nuremberg & The Black Hole.

Philip Seymour Hoffman, 1967-2014.  American Actor; Capote & Doubt. 

Richard Bull, 1924-2014. American Actor; Little House on the Prairie.

Joan Mondale, 1930-2014.  Former Second Lady of the United States of America.

Shirley Temple Black, 1928-2014.  American Actress and Diplomat; Curly Top & Bright Eyes.

Sid Caesar, 1922-2014.  American Actor and Comedian; Your Show of Shows & Grease.

Ralph Waite, 1928-2014.  American Actor; The Waltons & Roots.

John Henson, 1965-2014.  American Puppeteer; The Muppet Show movies.

Mary Grace Canfield, 1924-2014.  American Actress; Bewitched & Pollyanna. 

Harold Ramis, 1944-2014.  American Actor, Director, Screenwriter; Ghostbusters & Caddyshack.

Jim Lange, 1932-2014.  American Game Show Host; The Dating Game & Name That Tune.

March 2014  

Glenn Edward McDuffie, 1927-2014. American World War II Veteran.

Joel Brinkley, 1952-2014. American Syndicated Columnist and Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist.

Berkin Elvan, 1999-2014. Turkish Student.

Ken Forsse, 1936-2014.  American Inventor & TV Producer behind Teddy Ruxpin.

Vincent Lamberti, 1928-2014. American Chemist & Inventor of Dove Soap.

James Rebhorn, 1948-2014. American Actor; Independence Day & Lorenzo's Oil.

April 2014 

Mary Anderson, 1918-2014. American Actress; Gone With the Wind & Lifeboat.

Mickey Rooney, 1920-2014. American Actor; National Velvet & Babes in Arms.

Frans van der Lugt, 1938-2014. Dutch Jesuit Priest Working in Syria.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 1927-2014. Colombian Novelist; One Hundred Years of Solitude & Love in the Time of Cholera. 

Rodney "Skip" Bryce, aka DJ E-Z Rock, 1968-2014. American Musician; "It Takes Two" & "Joy and Pain"

Bob Hoskins, 1942-2014.  British Actor; Who Framed Roger Rabbit? & Nixon.  

May 2014

John Ernest Dolibois, 1918-2014. American Ambassador to Luxembourg & Nuremberg Interrogator.

Jim Oberstar, 1934-2014.  U.S. Congressman from Minnesota's 8th District.

Tony Genaro, 1942-2014. American Actor; Tremors & Hearts & Souls.

Roger L. Easton, 1921-2014. Former Head of the Space Applications Branch of the Naval Research Laboratory. Creator of the Project Vanguard Satellite System, and Inventor of GPS.

Ed Gagliardi, 1952-2014. American Guitarist, Foreigner; "Cold as Ice" & "Hot Blooded". 

Matthew Cowles, 1944-2014.  American Actor; All My Children.

Michael Gottleib, 1945-2014. American Film Director; Mannequin & Mannequin Two: On the Move.

Stormé DeLarverie, 1920-2014.  American Drag King, GLBT Activist & one of the Stonewall Rioters. 

Lee Chamberlin, 1938-2014.  American Actress; The Electric Company & All My Children.

Maya Angelou, 1928-2014. American Author ( I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings), Poet ("On the Pulse of Morning"), Dancer, Stage Actress (Porgy & Bess, The Blacks),  Film Actor (Roots), Singer ("Run Joe"), and Activist.

June 2014 

Ann B. Davis, 1926-2014. American Actress; The Brady Bunch.

Ruby Dee, 1922-2014. American Actress & Activist; A Raisin in the Sun & Jungle Fever.

Carla Laemmle, 1909-2014.  American Actress; The Phantom of the Opera & Dracula.

Casey Kasem, 1932-2014. American DJ, Radio Host, and Voice Actor; American Top Forty, Scooby Doo: Where Are You?, Super Friends, & Transformers.

Eli Wallach, 1915-2014. American Actor; The Good, The Bad and the Ugly & The Magnificent Seven.

Meshach Taylor, 1947-2014. American Actor; Designing Women & Mannequin.