Tag: book group

1920’s, the birth of the FBI, and ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’

  • Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann (Doubleday) 2017
  • In 40 words or less: After the Osage Tribe was relocated to Oklahoma, oil was discovered making the Osage the wealthiest people in the USA. Pillars of the white community systematically stripped them of their rights, money, and lives.
  • Genre: History
  • Locale: Oklahoma and Washington, DC
  • Time: 1920’s
  • Another untold chapter in US history brought to life almost a century later. The corruption that decimated the lives and assets of untold Osage family members also claimed the lives of some seeking to provide justice. Grann’s careful research sheds light on the formation of the FBI, the first national police force.

Even as students, we are aware the history we are taught is limited. Not only do the winners of wars write the histories, but many stories are buried out of fear or by others to whitewash the truth. For many of us, the early days of the FBI are tied to Prohibition, bootlegging and the Chicago gangsters of that era. These were the impetus for the creation of the first national police force which became the FBI. It was a force made up of accountants and lawyers in anticipation of fighting smuggling, tax evasion and the like.

Something strange was happening to Mollie Burkhart, her two sisters, and mother. Mollie was part of the Osage aristocracy – lovely homes, house servants, well-educated – and very wealthy. One sister died of an unexplained wasting disease, their mother was inexplicably ill, and then Anna disappeared. Anna was a bit wild but had strong ties to her family and had no reason to run. While she was seen right before her disappearance, the trail quickly went cold. There were too many odd things happening within the Osage that didn’t add up and some outside help was needed.

This is a many-layered story of racism and sanctioned plundering. Indians, and more particularly women, were considered incapable of managing their own affairs so guardians were appointed. White husbands were granted the right to control their wives’ allotments. And this system was ingrained in the lawyers, insurance agents and bankers of the community. These cabals endangered the safety of anyone questioning the system. It was into this that an odd undercover operation of the FBI run by a Washington outsider tried to shed some light.

Killers of the Flower Moon is deserving of all the accolades it has received. Every line is researched in detail, giving the reader a rare opportunity to see the crimes unfolding almost contemporaneously. This is very important history beyond Oklahoma and is finally getting attention. Book groups, even those primarily reading fiction, will find David Grann’s telling compelling.

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‘Waking Lions’ is a contemporary thriller and morality tale

  • Waking Lions by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen (Little, Brown and Company) 2017. Translated by Sondra Silverston.
  • In 40 words or less: After a long night at work, Dr. Eitan Green decides to run his car in the desert. In the darkness, he hits an Eritrean man, leaving him to die. The repercussions go far beyond one man, his family or community.
  • Genre: Fiction
  • Locale: Beer Sheva, Israel
  • Time: Contemporary
  • Gundar-Goshen’s novel pushes the boundaries of genre and could take place in many countries where refugees illegally cross borders in desperation.

“A writer is like a pickpocket: they want what belongs to others and make it their own. But by doing that they are inevitably caught, not by the police, but by their own story.” Ayelet Gundar-Goshen in a guest post for the blog The ProsenPeople

Ayelet Gundar-Goshen grabs the reader from page one and never lets go. Eitan Green is a rising star neurosurgeon in Tel Aviv when he gets on the wrong side of his mentor and is “exiled” to Beer Sheva, a far less prestigious placement. After a rough night, he decides to take his new SUV for a drive in the desert before going home to his wife Liat, a police detective, and his two sons. The road is dark, empty and wide open – until it’s not. Eitan hits a man, stops and realizes the injuries will be fatal. Recognizing that the man is Eritrean, and likely a refugee, Eitan makes a split second decision that nothing can be done for the man but his life likely will be destroyed if he stays.

Come morning there is a knock at the door. An Eritrean woman is holding Eitan’s wallet, dropped at the scene. Eitan is prepared to pay to keep the secret from the authorities and his wife. The price of silence is far more than money, his medical expertise and time. And so the coverup begins.

Gundar-Goshen’s training in psychology serves her well as she reveals the inner voices of Eitan, Liat, and Sirkit, the victim’s widow, each at different points in the novel. Eitan’s relocation to the desert was due to trying to maintain the moral high ground. Now, he is perpetually juggling, lying to his wife, lying to his colleagues, trying to keep up with the demands of a double life.

Liat, very accomplished but still a woman in a man’s world has to keep proving herself at work. At the same time, she is shouldering almost all the burden at home.  Eitan and Liat have always stood strong together and the changes are very unsettling.

Sirkit is an enigma. Seemingly untouched by grief, she redirects her energy into securing medical help for other refugees under cover of night.  Her story, both past and present, is far more complex.

Waking Lions is built layer upon layer. With each layer, more people and more questions of right and wrong, good and evil, are involved. Intricately interwoven are the deceptions that can destroy a marriage, the vulnerability of refugees, and the exploitative exercise of power. A New York Times notable book in 2017 and recipient of other accolades, this is an ideal read for individuals or groups who wrestle with issues of so prevalent today.

 

 

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Ending the book review hiatus

hiatus (noun) hī-ā-tus

According to Merriam Webster, a hiatus is “an interruption in time or continuity : break; especially : a period when something (such as a program or activity) is suspended or interrupted “

Well, my reviewing hiatus is coming to an end.

If you’ve been following my posts and reviews, you may have noticed the silence over the last few months. It’s not that I haven’t been reading, but I’ve been reading differently. The political and social storms of the last year have taken over the conversation – at the dinner table and wherever people gather. The book groups I work with have been similarly affected by political overload.

Living just outside the beltway, the past year hasn’t been measured from January 1, 2017, to January 1, 2018, rather from the inauguration/women’s march to the government shutdown. The events of the year have led to new involvement and activism, and the expectation of daily upheavals of one variety or another.

Not surprisingly, in the book world, some of the emerging themes dovetail with current events. Harrowing stories of immigration and survival appear weekly as memoirs and fiction. Each has the power to put a human face on very difficult issues, particularly for readers who may have little contact with immigrant communities. Racism, assimilation, and America’s economic and cultural divide are also common topics. While I have added a number of these to my to-be-read lists, reading them while absorbing the news is often just too hard.

So what have I been reading? In addition to books for group discussions, I’ve upped my reading of “comfort books”. For me, it’s a combination of historical mysteries and new books that are getting buzz in newspapers and online, though I’m steering clear of “ripped from the headlines” themes. Look for posts on the following titles over the next few weeks as I start reducing the backlog:

  • Waking Lions by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen
  • Ginny Moon by Benjamin Ludwig
  • Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance – a view one year later
  • Y is for Yesterday, an appreciation of Sue Grafton

Out of gratitude for your patience as I worked through this, I’m including a link to end of the year top book picks from a variety of sources. Bookreporter.com is one of my go-to sources for future book group choices. Here is  Bookreporter.com’s compilation of 2017 Best Books lists.

So when next we’re in touch, please let me know what you are reading. I’ll happily share what I’m carrying in my bag!

 

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‘Daring to Drive’: One Woman Changes a Kingdom

  • Daring to Drive by Manal Al-Sharif (Simon & Schuster); June 2017; in collaboration with Lyric Winik
  • In 40 words or less: From childhood, Manal Al-Sharif was unwilling to settle for the roles assigned by teachers and religious authorities. Necessity pushed her to defy convention and drive. Her story provides insight into the harshness of life for less-privileged Saudis.
  • Genre: Memoir
  • Locale: Saudi Arabia
  • Time: 1980’s – 2012
  • As a part of telling her personal story, Manal schools the reader on the history and customs of Saudi life, particularly since 9/11. The critical role Aramco (the state-operated oil company established by John D. Rockefeller) plays in offering women wider opportunities, somewhat outside of the constraints of the broader society, is a catalyst for Manal’s activism.

If you doubt for a moment that one person can bring about major change, Daring to Drive and this week’s dramatic announcement that women will be permitted to drive on the streets of Saudi Arabia prove it. Manal Al-Sharif was not born into an activist family. Her upbringing was in a harsh home, governed by strict Islamic rules and the unbending strictures of an education system determined to minimize girls’ opportunities and ambitions.

Manal always went her own way. She simultaneously questioned the authority of her teachers while exploring very fundamentalist religious teachings, putting her at odds with many including her siblings. 9/11 was a turning point for her, causing her to reassess her belief in the strictest religious teachings and the true nature of the factions calling for the demise of the West.

It is information technology that finally brought Manal to national and world attention. While she wanted to be an engineer, this was not a profession open in any way to women. The limited higher education options included a single path to information technology. Her tenacity and good fortune brought her to Aramco,  giving her a taste of some of the freedoms and opportunities open to women elsewhere in the world. As she learned of the Arab Spring through her laptop, another rarity, she realized that Twitter could provide the platform to bring together Saudi women across the country willing to drive!

This is far more than one woman’s quest. To tell Manal Al-Sharif’s story demanded looks into working-class family life, the juxtaposition of civil law and religious authority, the differential information available to the privileged and ordinary citizens. Decades of Saudi history and custom are woven into the telling. Not surprisingly, Daring to Drive has been received with acclaim in the U.S. and in the United Kingdom, with its large expat Saudi community and many wealthy Saudi visitors. The book has not been available within Saudi Arabia.

Manal was interviewed exhaustively in the development of this book. To bring her story to the page required the failed collaborative efforts of four skilled writers. It took hours of additional Skype conversations and extensive research for Lyric Winik, the final collaborator, to successfully convey the extraordinary personal journey Manal has taken from frightened small child to international activist.

It pays to have friends. My good fortune is to know Jenna and Gadi Ben-Yehuda. Knowing my love of books and authors, they introduced me to Lyric Winik as the book was being released in June. Lyric and I made plans to have her meet with a book group I facilitate on September 26. At 4:00 that afternoon the news bulletins and emails started pouring in – the Saudi Arabian government announced that beginning in June 2018 women would be allowed to drive in public in the kingdom.

Book club meeting, Tuesday, September 26, 2017, discussing ‘Daring to Drive’.

Meeting with a writer is a wonderful experience for a book group. It provides insights beyond the written page – how the narrative was constructed, what research was required, and the challenges of bringing the story to the public. We had many questions for Lyric, and we asked them all. And then we rejoiced for Manal and all the women of Saudi Arabia who have endured so much for so long in silence.

 

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Before Jobs vs Gates there was Edison vs Westinghouse

  • The Last Days of Night by Graham Moore (Random House), 2016; Random House Audio, Johnathan McClain narrator
  • In 40 words or less: The US was on the cusp of electrification in 1988. Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse were battling it out to see whose company and which technology would change the nation.  Moore makes history read like a twisted fairy tale.
  • Genre: Historical Fiction
  • Locale: US
  • Time: 1888
  • This is an ideal audiobook. The story is narrated by Westinghouse’s lawyer, Paul Cravath, who later achieved fame as the designer of the modern law firm. A key figure in the book is Nikola Tesla, whose genius was matched by his idiosyncratic and accented English. McClain’s reading really does the various characters justice.

Thomas Edison is lauded as a genius to be emulated in creativity and business. In truth, he was not a very nice man at all. Graham Moore’s The Last Days of Night is truthful in its telling of one of the most expensive market battles and patent lawsuits in U.S. history – worth a billion dollars in 1888. The fight between George Westinghouse and Thomas Edison was two-pronged: whether AC (Westinghouse) or DC (Edison) current would be the standard for wiring and electrifying the country; and who owns the rights to the design and sale of the light bulb.

In the collection of the Corning Museum of Glass

Moore has chosen Paul Cravath, a young and inexperienced lawyer hired by Westinghouse to handle the suit, as the narrator of the tale. Cravath has a chip on his shoulder. He is disaffected from his family and is not as well connected as his fellow law classmates. Barely out of school, he is caught up in high stakes on-the-job training on the front page of America’s newspapers. Fighting for market share was a very dirty business with bribery, physical violence, even kidnapping part of the game. Cravath later made an indelible mark in legal circles by creating the modern American model of progression within legal firms.

A third major scientific player in this future of America’s homes and businesses was Nikola Tesla, brilliant and only interested in the purity of the idea. Tesla’s knowledge was part of a continuing tug-of-war between Edison and Westinghouse.

There was plenty of real life drama to go around in Moore’s telling of the story. He enriched Cravath’s role, and the human intrigue, by embellishing the details surrounding Cravath’s wife, a beautiful singer named Agnes, who seemingly came out of nowhere into the heights of society.

This book has it all – genius, intrigue, romance, blackmail and corporate greed. Many additional luminaries of the period appear.  After all, they traveled in the same business and social circles. There is more than enough American industrial history to satisfy a history buff, details about the taming of electricity for the scientist, and an awkward courtship to entertain a romantic.

Were that not enough, The Last Days of Night will be coming to the screen this winter starring Eddie Redmayne as Paul Cravath.

 

 

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