books

My Best Books of 2024

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Book shelves
Book shelves

Admittedly, I let this month slip up on me and am rushing to get a post in today before December and 2024 are gone for good. So, here is a list of my favorite books from the past year. Who knows, this year-end review may become a tradition, not as a substitute for a monthly post but perhaps as an addition.

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

Based on an actual reform “school” for juvenile boys in Florida during the Jim Crow era, Whitehead’s prize-winning novel is a heartbreaking, maddening story told by one of the most talented young American writers. It is not just a story about racial discrimination and inequality, but both loom large in the plot. The backstory of the protagonist, Elwood Curtis, is touching and sets the stage for the tragic turn of events that leads to his incarceration. With emotional integrity that never even gets close to being sentimental, the author takes the reader on a horrifying tour of the school’s campus: dormitories, cafeteria, utility facilities, and the one building where unbearable acts of cruelty occur. I get the sense that Whitehead may have conflicting feelings about the passivity of early civil rights leaders, most especially Martin Luther King, Jr., who is heroic and inspirational to Elwood, especially as a young boy. I like this book much better than Whitehead’s other blockbuster hit, The Underground Railroad, which was a fine book but allegorical and thus not as engaging for me as this powerful story.

Dear Regina: Flannery O’Connor’s Letters from Iowa edited by Monica Carol Miller

I worked for almost two years as a consultant, hired by the literary estate of Flannery O’Connor, to create an inventory of the archive of her manuscripts, letters, photos, journals, and other personal effects. During the course of that project, I read each of the letters included in this collection, and it was a real treat to go back and read them again. The relationship between Flannery and her mother is complex, unusual, and in so many ways fascinating, especially considering the number of stories the author wrote where the main characters are a mother and a child.

Among the most interesting developments we find in these letters is how, in a matter of only two years, Flannery becomes much more independent and driven. In the beginning, the young graduate student seems to be nervous about being so far away from home and family for the first time in her life. As time goes by and Flannery is introduced to established writers and publishers who admire her work as a student at Iowa, she becomes more confident in her abilities, which results in a more bold attitude toward Regina. She is willing to rebuke her mother if she senses that Regina is overstepping her bounds or commenting inappropriately about matters she doesn’t understand.

On the darker side, readers can’t help seeing O’Connor’s deeply ingrained racism, her sense of moral superiority, her callous reaction to the suffering of others, and sometimes a general misanthropic nature. Some would argue that she simply resisted the social conventions of her time, especially expectations of young “ladies.” I think it’s more than that. I think she felt terribly awkward in most social situations and preferred to limit human interaction with only a few people. This personality trait may have helped her in the end as a writer and even on a more personal level when her lupus diagnosis forced her to live the last third of her life with her mother in the rural Deep South of middle Georgia.

Miller provides some commentary in her introduction to the book and at the beginning of the phases of Flannery’s tenure at Iowa. I think the book could have been stronger with a deeper analysis of the correspondence, but perhaps the literary estate placed restrictions on the editor. Given the executor’s reputation for such tight control on what has been published in the past, this is a valid speculation. Nevertheless, the estate did permit the letters to be published, which means they are now widely available to readers and scholars of O’Connor’s work. That’s a good thing.

Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Evolution by Cat Bohannon

What a valuable book that almost serves as an updated edition of Natalie Angier’s classic study titled Woman: An Intimate Geography. Bohannon comes out swinging from the first page, observing how medical science has committed egregious errors and arrived at faulty conclusions because it has considered the needs of males and females to be the same when it comes to developing pharmaceuticals and treatments. The differences between the sexes go far beyond their genitals and mammary glands. The author explains why the most common use of male subjects only (human or other animals) for medical research is terribly shortsighted, sometimes resulting in catastrophic and even deadly consequences. And that’s just the first chapter!

Building on the complexities of the female body (while also giving plenty of attention to the difference between sex and gender along the way), Bohannon traces millions of years of evolution to draw some startling and perhaps controversial conclusions about human origins, female anatomy, reproduction, childbirth and child rearing, language, sociological patterns, human achievement, and so much more. The chapter on breastfeeding alone is worth the price of the book — good heavens, I learned so much! 

She makes solid arguments for why some of the great discoveries and advances in early human development may be attributed to women as opposed to men, who have historically taken the credit. Her practice of demonstrating the similarities and intersections of female characteristics across species in the animal kingdom – from orcas to mice, from ducks to our primate cousins — helps to reinforce the evolutionary evidence she produces to explain why women are specifically equipped for all the roles they fill as an equal half of homo sapiens.

I highly recommend it to just about everyone. Women will benefit from knowing more about what makes them tick and how they became the marvelous wonders they are. Men NEED to read it to better appreciate all the women in their lives, beginning with the ones that brought them to life and gave them a fighting chance to survive.

Shakespeare and Company by Sylvia Beach

What a delicious book! I have known about the importance of Sylvia Beach’s little American bookstore in Paris for a while but was not aware that she wrote such a wonderful memoir about her experiences as the owner and storekeeper of Shakespeare and Company. Her membership-supported enterprise was so much more than just a bookshop. It served as a refuge and haven for some of the most gifted expatriates and writers of the early 20th century, including Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and most especially James Joyce. I had no idea that she was the first publisher of Joyce’s monumental novel, Ulysses. She really was a remarkable human being, one who made great sacrifices to support an amazing and historical intellectual community. She even risked her own life during the Nazi occupation of Paris by refusing to compromise her standards or cater to the monstrous regime that swept across Europe before and during World War II.

Grandma Gatewood’s Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail by Ben Montgomery

For anyone who needs a story of inspiration, endurance, and good old fashion intestinal fortitude, look no further than Ben Montgomery’s well written account of Emma Gatewood’s adventures on the Appalachian Trail and her other treks across the country on foot. It is estimated that this grandmother and great-grandmother ended up walking more than 14,000 miles, the distance of half the globe, all after she turned 67 years old. Included in these pedestrian journeys were two thru-hikes on the Appalachian Trail and a third time in sections, back in the late 1950s when the trail was not so popular or populated by hikers. Oh, and she also walked the Oregon Trail, literally, from Independence, Missouri to Portland, Oregon. She was in her seventies when she completed that one. Anybody want to complain about being tired now? Ever again?

Grandma Gatewood overcame terrible conditions on the Appalachian Trail, from rattlesnake encounters to raging storms, from extreme temperatures to blown out shoes (she wore only sneakers!), from fallen trees to flooded creeks, and injuries to her feet, ankles, and knees that would have spelled defeat for most men half her age attempting what she succeeded in doing several times. Her amazing stamina was born out of tragic circumstances: years of mental, emotional, and physical abuse from a monster of a husband.

Walking in the forest in solitude gave Emma Gatewood great joy and satisfaction, although she struggled to remain alone in her quest many times as her story spread during the months she was on the trails. She became a celebrity, and her time walking was interrupted more and more by journalists, photographers, and curious onlookers. For the most part she remained humble and patient, although she did lose her temper a few times with the rudest of the bunch. And then she felt remorse and asked them to forgive her! What an example she set for just about everyone on how to pursue dreams, overcome adversity, and live your best life.

If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin

This is a powerful novel for several reasons, not the least of which is how it captures the sense of despair among African Americans over injustice from the legal system specifically and from the society at large. The narrative is impressive to me considering it is written by someone who lived his later life as a gay man but elected to employ a first-person voice of a young woman. The family dynamics and conflicts that drive the story are made more intense by Baldwin’s skill with descriptive language and dialogue. It’s all so believable. Along the way, he inserts little nuggets of gold that transform this book from a good to a great novel. Here is one fine example.

“Only a man can see in the face of a woman the girl she was. It is a secret which can be revealed only to a particular man, and, then, only at his insistence. But men have no secrets, except from women, and never grow up in the way that women do. It is very much harder, and it takes much longer, for a man to grow up, and he could never do it at all without women.”

The remainder of that paragraph is just as profound as this passage. There is a lot going on in this novel, including the tension that exists among the sexes and how love is exhibited and expressed in such diverse ways. If Beale Street could indeed talk, it would testify to the struggles of black America, as would the streets of Harlem, Birmingham, Montgomery, Atlanta, Detroit, and Tulsa, just to name a few. Baldwin was so familiar with such places, and he courageously explored every square foot of them.

Grace Saves All: The Necessity of Christian Universalism by David Artman

I have read other books on Christian Universalism, but this is the best so far. Artman is a minister who has struggled with the concept of hell and eternal damnation for most of his life, but in recent years he has found a spiritual path that changed his perspective on the Christian faith. He was able to do so with plenty of evidence from Biblical scripture and the guidance of some of the pioneers in the theological study of universal salvation or the idea that, in the end, God saves all humanity. No one is punished forever and ever in the lake of fire, gnashing their teeth, so forth and so on.

Artman explains early on in his book that Christian Universalism is nothing new and that many early Christians embraced this theological position and promoted it. Once he began to look at universalism closely, it just made sense in the context of a loving creator God. For Artman, “it is the only approach to Christian theology which can successfully defend the goodness of God; and therein lies its necessity.” In some ways, Artman and his readers come to universalism through the back door, as if it is the only option left. As he explains it: “Once someone fully grasps the concept that God knows the end from the beginning and is not controlled or regulated by any outside forces, the following realization strikes home – the outcome of all things will inevitably be what God intended from the beginning.”

Artman still believes in the free will of humanity. He just posits that ultimately God will win over even the strongest deniers, the faithless, the atheists, criminals, etc. Now, it may take a very long time to bring them back into the fold, but Artman’s God is more patient than Job, and will not stop pursuing the lost until they are found. The one issue I have with this concept is the admission by universalists that punishment is still very much a part of God’s plan, and God will use it if necessary to bring the wayward back to God, where they belong. The punishment is not forever and it isn’t revenge. It is just a tool God uses to achieve the goal. Artman believes “there is coming a time envisioned in which everyone will happily acknowledge the salvation of God which has come through Christ.” I’m not sure that punishment through torture is ever effective in producing true repentance, and certainly not a happy acknowledgement.

Artman remains close to his Christian faith with his belief that Jesus Christ is still the proper pathway to salvation. He doesn’t directly address how unfair it may be for people who live outside the boundaries of Christian tradition to find and board the Jesus bus headed to heaven. This is a book of Christian Universalism, and therefore, very Jesus centered, which may prove frustrating to those outside that faith tradition. To his credit, Artman recognizes there is scriptural evidence that contradicts some of his findings and conclusions. “Since all theologies end up facing passages of Scripture which are hard to deal with, the question is not if these passages will be dealt with, but how. All theological approaches must face this dilemma. No theology gets a free pass.” He reconciles scriptural contradictions wearing “Jesus-colored glasses,” taking comfort in the fact that Jesus ate with criminals and refused to throw stones at adulterers, so he cannot imagine that God doesn’t possess the same compassion and forgiveness.

In the end, Artman looks at the spirit of the Bible and the life of Jesus to reach a rational theory of how God operates, and universal salvation is the only outcome that makes sense. For those who would question his rationale, he replies: “Making an overall interpretation of the Bible is a difficult thing to do. There is no single biblical approach that doesn’t run into scriptural problems. And so, we must finally ask which biblical approach aligns most closely with the goodness of God, the character of Jesus, and the overall narrative arc of the Bible. On the whole I believe the Inclusive approach offers the best solution.” Good answer, Dr. Artman. Good answer.

Flannery at the Grammys by Irwin H. Streight

Professor Streight has written a very fine and thoroughly researched study of Flannery O’Connor’s impact and influence on songwriters in the pop music genre. I have long been interested in this topic, and I frequently made mention of those connections to visitors at Andalusia, O’Connor’s farm home in Milledgeville, Georgia, during my 13-year tenure as the director there. I still remember vividly sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch at Andalusia the day singer/songwriters Jim White and Mary Gauthier made their field recording of “Fruit of the Vine,” which Streight mentions in this book. They both exhibited such a sense of reverence during their visit.

O’Connor’s body of work is a Comstock Lode for songwriters, composers, playwrights, screenplay writers, and visual artists, which I consider a testament to her genius and durability as a writer. Streight focuses most of his attention on the more familiar and acclaimed rock and folk artists/groups who have paid homage to O’Connor in their work, such as Bruce Springsteen, R.E.M., U2, Lucinda Williams, Mary Gauthier, and Kate Campbell. But he digs even deeper to discuss songwriters in the alternative genres of metal, punk, and a few other less definable types.

Streight pushes toward the exhaustive in his study as he devotes a chapter to how often O’Connor’s themes and language show up in song lyrics, even though there may be no direct correlation between the author and the lyricist. He admits to the stretch in these cases, but the observations are interesting, and the connections are certainly worth acknowledging. The “Bonus Track” chapter on stage names from O’Connor’s novel, Wise Blood, and her characters is fascinating although probably not a strong connection to the author in most cases. All in all, Streight’s book should be of great interest to anyone interested in how pop culture reflects and reacts to serious fiction. This is a valuable contribution to O’Connor scholarship.

A Reading List for Library Nerds

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The reason I can get away with such a derogatory title for this post is because I am a librarian, or at least I am by training, and for much of my career, by practice as well. Over the last few years, I have picked up several books, both fiction and nonfiction, that feature libraries or librarians as the primary subject. Here is an annotated list of these books, which I highly recommend to librarians, library patrons, or bibliophiles in general. Enjoy!

Library stacks
Library stacks

Nonfiction

The Library: A Fragile History by Andrew Pettigrew

In this dense and comprehensive history of libraries, the author also tells the story of the evolution of the book: its creation, distribution, preservation, and impact on civilization. He devotes considerable time discussing how private collections were the norm for libraries during most of recorded history and that public access is a relatively new phenomenon.

The fragile part of the history is illustrated by the many threats to books and the libraries that contain them, from natural disasters to warfare, from censorship to reduced support by private and government sources. The book begins and ends with perhaps the most famous library of the ancient world at Alexandria, which in some ways serves as a model for all libraries that followed. Written language is one of the hallmarks that separates our species from all the rest; therefore, the institutions that serve as repositories of written language must be considered as instrumental in documenting and preserving that distinction.

One of the more interesting takeaways from this book is how, at least until the modern era, fiction was held with such little regard by the literate elite of western society (and this book focuses on libraries of western civilization). Novels were even considered a corruptive force, especially as they were in such demand by women as a form of escape from the drudgery of living in subservience to their husbands, taking care of children, and maintaining the home.

The author contemplates the impact the digital age will have on books, which could be perceived as another threat to the library. It is reassuring that he observes how radio, movies, television, and computers may have competed for the attention of readers, but books and libraries continue to survive and at times even thrive in the age of mass media.

Overdue: Reckoning with the Public Library by Amanda Oliver

Public libraries and the services they provide usually reflect the communities where they are located. The public library where I was the director was medium sized in a county of about 43,000. We had our share of quirky folks, unruly adolescents, crusty curmudgeons, and houseless citizens among the day-to-day users who came in regularly to check out books or bring their children to story time. Also, our town had the state’s mental institution, which had been decentralized in the 1960s resulting in plenty of mentally ill people in government subsidized houses, or sometimes, just wandering the streets. As expected, many of them found their way to the library.

My public library was probably typical for a rural community in central Georgia — plenty of challenges but nothing too much out of the ordinary. By contrast, Amanda Oliver spent several years working in a public library in one of the toughest trenches a government employee can work: Washington DC. If there is a common thread running through her book, it is a sense of conflict the author feels about knowing how desperate many of her patrons were for help just to survive and trying to preserve her own mental health and physical safety while trying to assist them with their needs. She bemoans the fact that this country is woefully unable to take care of the poor and mentally ill, who have to rely on help wherever they can find it.

By their very nature, public libraries are places of refuge for the marginalized, and librarians are first responders, sometimes in the most literal sense. Oliver shares stories of having to administer first aid and other medical procedures for people with addiction and a whole host of health problems. She calls into question the role of the public library in a society that has abandoned those who are at most risk from economic insecurity and mental illness, including those with violent tendencies. She offers some chilling reports about librarians who have been injured or killed by crazed individuals who come through their doors. She reports how installing security equipment and hiring public safety personnel have become top priorities in many public libraries around the country.

On the bright side, it is clear that Oliver believes strongly in the mission of the public library to provide information services, very broadly defined, and to assist patrons with needs that have little or nothing to do with reading. In spite of how difficult her job was, she stayed committed to directing people to information, resources, and agencies they needed, sometimes just to survive. She effectively offers her readers a healthy, though not copious, collection of statistics to drive home her points. Perhaps the most encouraging stat of all for me was that the number of public libraries in America is greater than the number of Starbucks. We must be doing something right here.

The World’s Strongest Librarian by Josh Hanagarne

Hanagarne managed to write the funniest and the saddest book in this category at the same time. It is sad because the author has struggled so many years with a disorder that is so misunderstood and at times terribly debilitating. It is funny because Hanagarne manages to find humor even in the worst circumstances. His comic timing is quite good, with prose that reminds me so much of David Sedaris. Hanagarne makes his father sound remarkably similar to the way Sedaris makes his father sound. They both come off as crusty, no-nonsense guys who were forever trying to toughen up their children to face the “real world.”

Hanagarne’s memoir doesn’t focus nearly as much attention on his work as a librarian as it does his upbringing in a Mormon family facing the embarrassing and humiliating symptoms of Tourette Syndrome, which he personified by giving it a name – Misty (as in Miss T). His determination and tenacity in wrestling with his condition is inspiring. He never gave up. On the contrary, he often pushed himself into situations that anyone else with Tourette Syndrome would avoid, like choosing a profession that is traditionally associated with being quiet. And then he continued to bust open stereotypes by being a librarian AND a fitness enthusiast. It is not surprising that Hanagarne has found fitness regimens to be among the most successful tools in battling Tourettes.

From a confused childhood to the discovery and love of reading, from the awkwardness of making friends and dating to pushing through as a high school athlete, from pulling away from the faith of his parents to finding happiness in marriage and being a father, Hanagarne’s story is touching, heart wrenching, fascinating, and funny. And his use of Dewey Decimal System call numbers and subject headings as chapter leads is brilliant. Josh Hanagarne is a remarkable human being.

The Library Book by Susan Orlean

The author cleverly uses the Los Angeles Central Library fire in 1986 as her main hub to explore the history and culture of libraries. Her focus is generally on the Los Angeles system, but throughout the book she takes a few side roads to include libraries, past and present, in other locations in this country and around the world. Her deep appreciation of this ancient institution is abundantly evident throughout the book. She manages to take what so many people would consider a deadly boring topic and make it intriguing, fascinating even. Although at times the chapters read more like separate essays, some of which could easily stand alone, Orlean manages to make them flow together and connect as she unravels the mysteries surrounding the disaster in L.A. However, the real reason the book is a bestseller is because Orlean is such a good writer. The Library Book is a wonderful combination of biography, history, mystery, and investigative reporting.

I Was a Stripper Librarian by Kristy Cooper

Okay, yes, the title is titillating, the cover looks just a tad risque, and this is a self-published book. But, let’s immediately set aside our bibliographic elitism, decide we are NOT going to judge a book by its cover, and take an honest look at this memoir from someone who worked in two professions that, at least on the surface, seem like polar opposites. Kristy Cooper argues that being a stripper and a librarian are not nearly as different than most of us would think, and she provides enough examples to be convincing. Admittedly, this book cannot be taken as seriously as some of the other titles in this list — the authors are not trying to do the same thing here.

I suspect most Americans would be surprised to learn how many women and men enter the sex industry, as the author labels it (although stripping seems to stretch the definition to my way of thinking), in order to make ends meet or to get out of debt, especially student loans. A simple Google search on the topic brings up numerous TV spots and articles posted over the last few years about young folks who pay their way through college by stripping. Cooper is unapologetic about her decision to do the same — it was simply pragmatic. She tried other more conventional jobs, but none paid as well for the amount of time and labor required.

This book is well-written and interesting. Cooper does not come across as some bubble-headed babe trying to impress us with her lap-dancing talents, although some of the stories she shares are fascinating, troubling, and at times hilarious. Her vocabulary is impressive. Her writing style is rather simple and straightforward, but it works fine for this type of book. She assures her readers that there are plenty of people in the adult entertainment industry who are extremely intelligent, some of whom have advanced degrees like she does. Although she is no longer in the industry, she certainly advocates for it. She is also a remarkable champion for the library profession and has even established a nonprofit organization to facilitate her philanthropic work, especially for librarians.

Ultimately, readers will either approve or disapprove of Cooper’s dual occupational choice, but no one can deny that she made it work for her circumstances. She implies that stripping never made her feel dirty or immoral, but I have to wonder if the objectification factor eventually did a number on her. The best example, and perhaps the saddest to me, was when she was considering whether or not to get implants because her breasts were smaller than that of the average female strippers with whom she worked. Even though some of her male customers recommended she leave them alone, she knew that a bigger chest in a topless bar translated to more income. At one point she decided that her breasts were not really a part of her body as much as they were a commodity or resource for her craft. As true as that may be, I hated to hear it.

Fiction

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

I read this book for an online book club I helped moderate for the university where I work, but I was intrigued by it when I first saw it reviewed in the New York Times Book Review. My honest assessment of this novel is that it is entertaining, but it still has more of a juvenile style to it, probably because Haig has written several books for children. The subject matter and language are clearly for an adult audience, but the plot and rhythm still feel more like a fairy tale to me, perhaps like a C. S. Lewis children’s novel.

The premise of The Midnight Library is very similar to the film “It’s a Wonderful Life.” The name of the town in the timeless holiday classic film is Bedford Falls; Nora’s album is called Pottersville; a character in the novel has the last name Bailey. (The author tweeted about this to a fan.) If we give too much thought to the mechanics behind the story – the impossible challenges presented by being inserted into the middle of an unfamiliar life – the novel doesn’t exactly “work” so well. I had to employ a type of dissociation to make it through.

Nora and Hugo discuss Schrödinger’s cat, the popular thought experiment that illustrates an apparent paradox of quantum superposition – alternate possibilities happening simultaneously. Is there a deeper meaning that Haig is trying to get at with this novel or is it just supposed to be an entertaining read? Is this a story that explores the concept of quantum mechanics and string theory? At any rate, Haig’s novel prompts readers to think (or rethink) how different their lives might have been had they made different choices along the way.

I am surprised at how much attention it received from major review sources, but then again, Haig is a journalist too, so there could be some professional courtesy going on as well. Haig does a good job of pulling the reader into the story. Most of us can imagine ourselves in Nora’s shoes and are compelled to speculate what decisions we would make given the circumstances.

The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray

This may not be a great novel, but it is a good story based on the life of a real person. Belle da Costa Greene was J. P. Morgan’s personal librarian, an amazing African-American woman who was forced to hide her true identity and pass as white in order to succeed at an incredibly important job. Using biographies, personal papers, and secondary sources, the authors attempt to recreate the life and accomplishments of Greene, complete with her romantic relationships, her hardships, her family life, her savvy business dealings, and the struggles she faced through it all in keeping such a huge secret. In the category of historical fiction, this novel ranks among the best I have read. 

Introducing the Ozarks: An Annotated Bibliography

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In late 2018, my wife and I moved from Georgia to Springfield, a town of about 170,000 people in southwest Missouri. It’s a great location for us because we have family and close friends in Georgia, Kansas, Texas, and Arizona. We really enjoy traveling, especially to the desert southwest, but we like the Florida beaches and places like New York City, Chicago, and Nashville. Living in Springfield strategically positions us near the center of the country and makes it easier to get to family, friends, and fun destinations. The icing on the cake is the small national airport that is a mere twenty minutes from our house, which is serviced by three major airlines and a few budget carriers.

Southern Missouri and northern Arkansas make up the bulk of the region known as the Ozarks. It as an area of the country defined by a variety of factors, from geology and topography to culture and customs. It is also quite beautiful. It is rich in natural resources, especially water, minerals, and forests. It is a complicated region in almost every category imaginable. Although it boasts no major cities, it does have some bustling urban centers. There are some wealthy people in the Ozarks, but there are far more families living in serious poverty. On the political spectrum, it is largely conservative with pockets of progressivism mostly in and around the cities.

Admittedly, I knew very little about the Ozarks. I had never set foot in Missouri and only visited once just a few months before we moved here. To get “learned up” about our new home, I did what I always do when encountering something new and unfamiliar. I started reading. The following is an annotated list of books I have read about the Ozarks over the last three years or so. My bibliography is in no way intended to be comprehensive or even representative; however, these books have given me greater insight into the history, culture, and people of the Ozarks. All of these titles are nonfiction, but I have also read fiction by Ozarks writers or stories set in the region. Perhaps sometime I will write a post reviewing those books as well.

A History of the Ozarks, Volume 3 by Brooks Blevins
A History of the Ozarks, Volume 3 by Brooks Blevins

A History of the Ozarks, Volume 3: The Ozarkers by Brooks Blevins
Brooks Blevins is the uncontested authority on the history of the Ozarks. He is a professor at Missouri State University in Springfield, where I am also employed. But his full-time residence is in northern Arkansas, so he has his feet planted in the two main states of the Ozarks. He is a fine writer, a serious scholar, a respected teacher, and an all-round nice fellow. I have only read this 3rd volume of his trilogy, but I intend to at least go back and read the 1st volume covering the early history of the region.

Blevins is at his best when he is dispelling many of the misconceptions and over-generalizations of the Ozarks as a place full of backwoods hillbillies with no connection to the modern world. He also does a great job of pointing out the most attractive features of the region without romanticizing or falling into the trap of exceptionalism, which is always tempting to do if you are so identified with a place, which I believe he is.

The chapters on “Ozarks Society” and “Putting on a Show,” along with his “Conclusion,” were the most interesting to me because they highlight how much the Ozarks have changed over the last 150 years and are continuing to evolve. I’m not sure I agree with Blevins that the specific location of the Ozarks, a topic of serious debate for generations, is best defined by where the Ozarkers live; however, there seems to be a strong sense of place appreciated by so many people who live here, quite similar to sentiments held by many people in the Deep South about their region. This is a solid historical overview of a complex and fascinating part of the country in the modern period.

Living Waters: The Springs of Missouri by Loring Bullard
This book is well documented and researched. The photographs of the springs and streams they feed are stunningly beautiful. The layout of the book makes it easy and enjoyable to read. However, aside from the technical aspects of the book, Bullard clearly has a passion for his subject that is both personal and professional, which is demonstrated in the text of every page.

The organization of the book is especially fine, with chapters focusing on features and functions of springs rather than on individual locations. Bullard incorporates a considerable amount of history to offer context and appreciation of how past generations have understood and valued springs in the state and have taken advantage of them as valuable natural resources. Of course, the environmental message throughout is of paramount importance — we must take good care of our state’s springs because of the vital role they play in providing clean water for the ecosystems they feed.

White Man’s Heaven: The Lynching and Expulsion of Blacks in the Southern Ozarks, 1894-1909 by Kimberly Harper
Harper presents a thoroughly researched and well documented scholarly study that helps explain why the southwestern Ozarks is such a white region of the country. Lynching occurred in many places across the South, and obviously, into the Midwest. Many white people who had lived during the time of slavery, whether they actually owned slaves or not, resented the new autonomy of black people in their communities during Restoration. Over the decades, resentment evolved into a fear. “While blacks may not have been true economic, social, or even political competitors in the region, whites viewed blacks as a threat to their wives, daughters, and police officers.” Obviously, much of the fear centered on the perceived sexual predation of black men. “It was believed that women were not safe in the country or the city, so long as African American men roamed free.”

However, Harper goes beyond the acts of horrible white mob violence to explore why African Americans were driven out of communities, often at the same time lynching took place. Similar action was taken in other parts of the country — Forsyth County in north central Georgia comes to mind. Other areas of north Georgia, especially in the Appalachian foothills, still have small black populations to this day.

In the Ozarks and in the north Georgia mountains, the economy in the early 20th century was primarily subsistence farming, which did not require much labor outside the extended family of the farmer. As Harper observes, “This was in contrast to the black-majority regions of the South, where inexpensive and readily available black labor composed a significant segment of the local economy, making African Americans indispensable to local white employers.” One could easily make the same argument in recent decades for why white farmers have not been so anxious to deport undocumented Latinos from regions of the South where industrial agriculture is dominant and depends on vast numbers of inexpensive laborers.

This is a fine addition to American history and African American studies. Harper’s book joins more recent work on lynching by prominent African American scholars. Highly recommended.

Hipbillies: Deep Revolution in the Arkansas Ozarks by Jared M. Phillips
I had the opportunity to hear the author speak on a panel with two people who were involved in the Back To Land movement in the Arkansas Ozarks at a conference in West Plains, Missouri, in September, 2019. The people who decided beginning back in the 1970s to trade in urban dwelling for a rural, subsistence lifestyle among the hills and “hollers” of the Ozarks are often referred to as Hipbillies — a hybrid of hippies and hillbillies.

Phillips does a good job of placing this movement in the context of 20th century back-to-the-land and counter-culture philosophy characterized by the works of people like Wendell Berry and Gary Snyder. He gives proper credit to the successes of the Hipbillies while also recognizing their failures and some of their less-than-pure intentions. He credits them for fighting for environmental health, sustainable agricultural practices, and social justice issues. One of their greatest accomplishments was succeeding in modest changes to how the US Forest Service approached the management of timber.

Phillips admires how the Hipbillies, especially the pioneers from the early 1970s, faced overwhelming odds and even life-threatening circumstances yet still persevered to make it as homesteaders in a part of the country where the land is not so forgiving. He dispels some of the myths about how native Ozarkers rejected the Hipbillies. Instead, they often embraced them and even saved their lives during harsh winters and unpredictable farming seasons. There were clashes in places like Eureka Springs, but that was more a conflict between counter-culturists and town leadership.

The Hipbillies had big dreams when they landed in the Ozarks. “What was sought, then, was a rehabilitation of American culture — one that began in the dirt and grew over time like the forest that slowly reclaims and heals a ruined field,” Phillips writes. He contends that the Hipbillies took themselves seriously as revolutionaries. They “came to the Ozarks seeking refuge and a place in which they might build a new world for themselves, and hopefully, all of humanity . . . . While they did not always succeed, the story is not over — they are still alive and are still powerful cultural, political, and economic forces in the Arkansas highlands.”

Hillbilly Hellraisers: Federal Power and Populist Defiance in the Ozarks by J. Blake Perkins
The myths and stereotypes about the Ozarks are deeply ingrained in our consciousness, but they never have painted a true picture of the people and their culture, desires, needs, problems, etc. Perkins’s book reinforces one essential truth about Ozarks people: they tend be proud and fiercely independent, even in the face of long-term adversity.

There is a strong tradition of tension between individual rural families and individuals and/or institutions in authority. Poverty has always been a dark shadow hanging over the Ozarks, even when other parts of the country were climbing out of it. Although many people here petitioned for government assistance in the past, there is a history in this region of distrust of government programs, which ended up being administered and exploited by local and state officials. Law enforcement was fine as long as it didn’t try to stop individuals from scraping out a living, even through illegal means. More than anything, native Ozarkers have always just wanted to be left alone. When their autonomy was threatened, especially by outside forces, they sometime became violent.

Ozarks Hillbilly by Tom Koob and Curtis Copeland
Koob and Copeland do a good job here of presenting the stereotypes of the Hillbilly as the term has been used in literature and other art forms to describe many of the rural folk in the Ozarks. The authors argue that, contrary to the traditional image of a lazy, shiftless, ignorant, depraved character, the Ozarks Hillbilly is quite industrious, shrewd, and highly skilled. Hillbillies are survivalists and generations of them have struggled to provide for themselves and their families in a harsh and unforgiving environment.

I found it odd in a book about the Ozarks how much time the authors spent on discussing Appalachian Hillbillies. They seem to have keen interest in the way Hillbillies were presented in Deliverance, the novel by James Dickey and the popular film adaptation starring Burt Reynolds and Ned Beatty. There are definitely similarities between the two regions of the country, which have been explored by numerous scholars. The stereotypes of the rural residents of both areas also share commonalities. Perhaps a comparison/contrast book would have been even more helpful and intriguing. 

Where Misfits Fit: Counterculture and Influence in the Ozarks by Thomas Michael Kersen
For Kersen, the town of Eureka Springs, Arkansas, serves as an archetype for his thesis of how counterculture distinguishes the Ozarks and is among its more charming and sustaining features. As he states it, “The magic of Eureka Springs is that the town is a mass of contradictions and microconflicts that breed [sic] creativity.” No wonder that the book’s title is also the semi-official motto of the town: Where Misfits Fit.

Kersen does a good job of weaving the eccentricities of the people who occupy the Ozarks into the history of the region. He first offers his identification of the region, defining it by geography and culture. He then proceeds to outline its countercultural characteristics through popular myths, artistic expression, supernatural fixations, cult activity, musical influence and inspiration, and the back-to-the-land movements primarily of the 1970s (the author’s parents brought him to the Ozarks from Texas as part of this larger movement).

A thread running throughout the book is Kersen’s use of the adjective “liminal” to describe the Ozarks – a place that is difficult to box in and that continually crosses lines. He writes that “the Ozarks defies boundaries of all sorts — it is a work in progress.” Here again, the contradictions of the area come into play. For instance UFO enthusiasts that have been drawn here for decades rely on scientific knowledge about astronomy and space exploration but scorn scientists who fail to validate their paranormal claims. Kersen recognizes that “eccentric places attract eccentric people — people willing to live and think in the margins.” He also believes the Ozarks “offers something unique for its inhabitants and even American culture at large.”

I found some of the most valuable information in the Conclusions chapter, especially about the impact of in-migration into the Ozarks from countries around the world. The author wonders how Ozark identity will change as the racial and ethnic profile of the region continues to change. The book has extensive end notes, an impressive bibliography for further reading and study, and a decent index. Just a few points of criticism: the book could have benefited from skillful editing. There are too many typo kind of errors for an academic press book. Also, I suspect this book is a collection of separately-written essays because there is considerable repetition of information in the chapters. Otherwise, it is a fine book that is both accessible and informative.

Lake of the Ozarks: My Surreal Summers in a Vanishing America by Bill Geist
I was drawn to this book primarily because I visited the Lake of the Ozarks just a few months after settling here. I didn’t know anything about Bill Geist as I never watch Sunday Morning on CBS. I may have read his columns before but am not aware if I have. I can relate to many of the references Geist makes to growing up in the 1960s and 70s, although he is a bit older than I am. Some readers will no doubt be put off by the political incorrectness of the author’s perspectives, language, and the circumstances from his adolescence, but I suspect he is being perfectly honest and straightforward with his recollections and descriptions of his life and times working for his uncle and aunt at their lakeside lodge. There are some really laugh-out-loud passages in this book, which made it an enjoyable read.

Footprints in the Ozarks: A Memoir by Ellen Gray Massey
This is a pleasant read. It isn’t challenging; the text is straightforward; it doesn’t reveal anything new about the Ozarks region; it gets a bit sentimental in places; and it is so bucolic that the reader can almost smell the cow manure on the farm where Massey lived and raised her family. She also worked as a high school English teacher, and apparently quite a good one. She supervised her students over a ten-year period as they produced a quarterly journal titled Bittersweet. The value of this book lies in Massey’s descriptions of the social mores of her community, the relationships of family and friends, the tragedies her family faced (including the death of her husband), and how life in the rural Ozarks was fulfilling and rewarding to her, as it has been for so many others for many generations.

Coming Clean About Robert E. Lee, the Civil War, and the Deep South

~ If You Want My Opinion ~ 1 Comment

Ty Seidule has written a book that immediately and unequivocally transforms him into a turncoat in the eyes of many southerners. Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner’s Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause (St. Martin’s Press, 2021) is not the first book to challenge Confederacy sympathizers, but it offers a unique perspective from an author who has made the journey from apologist to critic and is completely forthright about a subject that is still extremely sensitive for so many Americans.

I am about the same age as the author, and I was raised in Georgia, the state where he spent many of his formative years. I know the landscape. I understand the vocabulary. I am keenly aware of how a horrible war that the rebellious Confederacy lost over 150 years ago left wounds that in many circles have yet to heal. I have seen the battle flag of that failed insurrection flying in the bed of pickup trucks, hung in windows of trailers and houses, proudly displayed on government property, and waved through the halls of the U.S. Capitol by modern-day insurrectionists. I have seen the long, dark shadow cast by the iconic and mythical leader of those Confederate forces – a man who is still revered and memorialized all over the South with language usually reserved for Biblical characters described in Sunday School lessons and from pulpits.

Confederate Response to Juneteenth in Graham
Confederate Response to Juneteenth in Graham Anthony Crider, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

It takes amazing courage for a southerner who is also a decorated officer of the U.S. Army and a retired history professor at West Point to openly and very publicly admit that Robert E. Lee committed treason and should be viewed as a traitor to his country. And that’s exactly what Ty Seidule has done. I applaud his bravery and the extensive research he has completed to make that claim. This is a damn fine book, not because it covers new ground or reveals any real hidden truths, but because someone in a position of authority and respect is making a form of confession that deserves serious consideration.

Seidule has heard every excuse in the book for why the Civil War wasn’t about slavery, for why the Confederacy didn’t really lose the war, and for why Robert E. Lee was such an honorable man. For the first twenty years of his life, he believed the excuses too. He probably doesn’t give quite enough credit to his wife for finally helping him escape the vortex of Confederate mythology. She forced him to question what it means to be a “Christian Southern Gentleman,” something he had aspired to from childhood through his graduation from Washington and Lee University, an institution that has been responsible more than any other place for perpetuating the cult of Robert E. Lee. His thoughts about what it means to be a Christian and a gentleman have drastically changed through the years, and his perception of the South is much clearer than it was when he was a young man.

Robert E Lee Memorial, Richmond, VA
Robert E Lee Memorial, Richmond, VA Hal Jespersen at en.wikipedia, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

This book should be required reading in just about every college and university in the South, and even in many other parts of the country where the Civil War is still romanticized beyond recognition for what it truly was: a rebellious uprising against the United States of America. Seidule spends a lot of time talking about the impact of the novel and movie “Gone with the Wind,” which is appropriate; however, I wish he had given some attention to the earlier movie, “Birth of a Nation,” especially in his discussions of the Ku Klux Klan. One of the most striking arguments he makes concerns the inaccurate terminology that has been used for generations to describe the Civil War, including the ridiculous names for the conflict itself, from “the recent unpleasantness” to “the war of northern aggression.”

Seidule also makes a convincing point about how using the term “Union” is an inappropriate way to describe the U.S. Armed Forces while they fought against the Confederacy, as if the Union were some entity separate from the United States. That distinction brings us back to the problem with Robert E. Lee, who abandoned his commission as an officer of the U.S. Army and chose to side with a rebellious confederacy of states – a domestic enemy against whom Lee had sworn to protect his country. In the end, Lee was more loyal to the State of Virginia and the other southern states than he was to the United States, and that makes him a traitor. And it’s about time southerners and the rest of the nation came to terms with that stinging but absolutely honest indictment.

Robert E. Lee and Me by Ty Seidule (book cover)
Robert E. Lee and Me by Ty Seidule (book cover)

Toward a Better Understanding of Our Species: A Reading List

~ If You Want My Opinion ~ Leave a comment

Over the last few years, I have been on a binge reading books about the human species — everything from how we got here to where we might be going. These studies have explored topics such as evolutionary biology, immunology, sociology, psychology, futurology, and perhaps a few other ologies I can’t identify. Mostly, these books have been enlightening, informative, and even entertaining at times. I decided to share some of my favorites here.

Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation by Bill Nye (audio version)

It takes a special talent to translate complicated scientific principles to lay readers like me. One of my favorite scientists who excelled at it was Carl Sagan, so it was no surprise to learn that Bill Nye was a student of Sagan. I have read and listened to many books through the years exploring the topic of evolution, and this is certainly one of the most accessible. The inspiration for this book comes from a debate the author had back in 2014 with Ken Ham, founder of the Young Earth creationists. He spends some time in the first part of the book presenting the major points he and Ham made in the debate, and he refers to the event on several occasions in subsequent chapters. In reality, the debate is just a launching point. Nye’s discussions mostly focus on science, leaving creationism in the dust.

Bringing to the table his skills as an entertainer, a television personality, and a fine writer, Bill Nye presents a fine overview of evolution — not just human evolution, but evolution of life on this planet and even speculation on how life may have evolved and may still be evolving elsewhere in the universe. Hearing him read his own book makes the narrative even more compelling, and his quirky sense of humor keeps it from getting dry or boring. Bill Nye is still making science fun! Highly recommended for readers who like popular science and aren’t looking for too much detail or depth.

The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease by Daniel H. Lieberman

Lieberman takes a different approach to evolution and human origins than what I have seen thus far in most books. Using human evolutionary principles to explain the development of environmentally and socially induced medical problems turns out to be astounding, and for the most part, convincing. The author uses the latest fossil evidence to provide a chronicle of the development of modern humans, tracing our origins back to the earliest hominids and even more archaic common ancestors. Perhaps this discussion gets a bit too deep in the weeds for the ultimate purpose of the book, but I have always been interested in the topic and didn’t mind the extensive review. Readers who are short on time can probably skip the first section on human origins and still benefit from the rest of the book.

Lieberman uses terms like “mismatch” and “de-evolution” to explain how human culture, especially in affluent parts of the world, has facilitated ailments or diseases that are partially if not completely avoidable. As humans moved away from being hunters/gatherers to farmers and eventually industrialists, we developed some rather bad habits of excess and self-indulgence that our bodies have not evolved to handle very well. Instead of addressing the root causes of the problems, we have used our well-developed brains to create methods of treating the symptoms with varying degrees of success.

It seems to me that Lieberman’s observations are indisputable when he writes about unhealthy diets and sedentary lifestyles resulting in illnesses such as type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease. Toward the end of the book he employs more speculation about issues such as overcrowded wisdom teeth, foot problems, and myopia, but even so these chapters are thought-provoking and carefully explored. Lastly, Lieberman is another good writer and joins the league of scientists who can make complex subjects accessible for lay people. Well done.

Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst by Robert M. Sapolsky

If there were one word to best describe Sapolsky’s book in my mind, it would have to be “thorough.” Okay, “long” would work too, but that would make me sound like a simpleton. Truthfully, there were times during this book that I felt like one. Sapolsky spends a good portion of his book explaining how the various systems of the human body work in concert to shape our behavior: the brain, hormones, sensory organs, nerves, etc. For the lay reader, the detailed descriptions of the brain’s components alone, with their complicated functions and not-so-familiar names, are challenging enough. Then again, we are warned by the subtitle that this is a book of biology. Sapolsky provides more neuroscience than most of us probably need in order to accept his conclusions about how the body, right down to the molecular level, functions with our environment, circumstances, and experiences to make us behave or misbehave. Honestly, at times it gets a bit laborious.

The author’s amount of documentation is staggering. He addresses a host of other scientists and social scientists whose research in human behavior parallels his own, and I think his treatment of them is respectful and fair, even though he may disagree with their findings. He is also never short on evidence and examples to substantiate his own findings, sometimes to a fault. He has a tendency to repeat historical events to support his claims, such as the World War I Christmas truce of 1914 between British and German soldiers or the My Lai Massacre on March 16, 1968 during the Vietnam War.

Getting to the heart of this book is difficult without resorting to cliché and oversimplification. By the time I finished, I had decided that human behavior is complicated and that there are far too many internal and external factors involved to come up with a unified theory on why we do what we do. Evolution, genes, DNA, secretions, and synapses all play their part, but they are no more essential in our actions than upbringing, peer pressure, education, traditions, and a whole host of outside influences. Our behavior is shaped as much by what happened to our hominid ancestors thousands of years ago as it is by what happened to us an hour before we committed some act of compassion or cruelty. On a grand scale, our behavior as a species is somewhat predictable. On an individual level, not so much.

This is a book worth reading, even though it will occupy many hours of your time. Aside from the science and psychology, it’s entertaining. Sapolsky is quite funny, blending in pop culture references, occasional profanity, and good old clever wit. He has a talent for breaking down intricate scientific principles with common, everyday illustrations to which almost anyone can relate. For those who have a serious interest in this area of study, Behave is worth the time. I predict it will be an important addition to the scholarship for years to come.

Human Errors: A Panorama of Our Glitches, from Pointless Bones to Broken Genes by Nathan H. Lents

It is clear from early on in his book that Lents has a side motive in this study, which is to dispel the myth of intelligent design in biology, specifically human biology. The paraphrased common refrain throughout the book is “if you were an engineer tasked with designing the human body, this is not the most efficient means by which to achieve the goal.” One of the most interesting parts of the book to me is the assortment of problems humans have as a result of not yet fully evolving to upright, bi-pedal locomotion. Many of our joints and bones are subject to easier injury. Our sinuses try to defy gravity by draining upward instead of downward. And then there is the deadliest problem of all — women trying to give birth to infants with big heads through a narrow pelvis.

Although the author focuses on human “errors,” he also mentions when other species do or do not share our evolutionary challenges. Readers are given detailed explanations of issues associated with vision, swallowing and breathing through the same tube, diet, vitamin production, reproduction, immunity, and even cognition and social interaction. He will perhaps lose a few readers toward the end of the book when he explores the prospect of immortality, which delves a bit deeply into the speculative.

As other scientists have observed (like Lieberman above), Lents argues that modern technology and especially modern medical advances have made, and will continue to make, evolutionary adaptations unnecessary, thus altering the “survival of the fittest” model of passing on genes from one generation to the next. I suspect the jury is still out on whether or not that modification will be beneficial to our species in the long run.

Superhuman: Life at the Extremes of Our Capacity by Rowan Hooper

I have read other books about people with extraordinary abilities (memory, strength, musical talent, etc.), but Hooper covers a range of amazing traits and characteristics, some of which are not so mysterious but nevertheless admirable. He includes individuals who have faced incredible injury, disability, and other challenges with remarkable grace and joy. He even explores what it means to be happy. I found the chapter on sleep and dreams the most fascinating of all. It’s an uplifting exploration of humanity and the potential of our species.

Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker

Speaking of sleep, here’s a book that received considerable attention in the media. Perhaps a more accurate title would be Why We Must Sleep. Adding “dreams” in the subtitle is almost a ruse to attract more readers, but we can give Walker a break here – he does include a discussion on dreams, but it is not even close to being the main attraction. Nor should it be. This book explores the necessity of sleep while explaining in detail its different phases and their importance. The author freely admits in the opening pages that he loves sleep, and he has obviously devoted his career to the study of it, not just in humans, but many species.

The overwhelming conclusion is that sleep is not an option nor a luxury. It is absolutely essential to survival. Perhaps most of us could have guessed that, but Walker presents us with an ocean of data to prove it and drive the point home convincingly. There are some fascinating stories in this book about sleep research that most of us have never dreamed of (sorry), and again, not just on humans.

The major takeaway from the book is simple. In order to remain healthy and happy, people need to be consistently getting 7-8 hours of sleep a night (9 hours wouldn’t hurt, but don’t go far beyond that threshold). Walker argues, not always convincingly but most of the time, that sleep deprivation can harm us in almost every way we can fathom — physically, mentally, and emotionally. I expected him at any moment to write, “You know that ingrown toenail that’s been bothering you for the last few weeks?”

Anybody who cares anything at all about general health and how to improve it should read this book. Of course, anyone interested in sleep has to read it. I can’t imagine a more thorough study of the subject for a popular audience. Fair warning: Walker is a scientist and a purist. He is laying out the facts to the best of his knowledge, which is extensive. There is no sensible approach or moderation, no wiggle room. If you want the very best sleep, and by extension the best health, you have to give up everything that hinders sleep, including alcohol, caffeine, jobs that interfere with sleep schedules, late-night activities, etc. And don’t even think about sleeping pills! Therapy is the ONLY answer to sleeping disorders. This level of slumber austerity is going to be rejected by most people, but at least we can be better aware of how important sleep is to our well-being and do our best to get a little, or a lot, more shut eye.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari 

I know this book gets dinged by reviewers for some outrageous claims, unsubstantiated conclusions, and superficial treatment of 100,000 years worth of history. Much of the criticism is warranted. For instance, one of Harari’s recurring suppositions is that humans from the past, although they lived in more hostile environments, were no less “happy” than people in modern civilization. This revelation shouldn’t come as a surprise if we consider that humans can only truly appreciate the living conditions of the present, not the future. Most of us are content with our world as it is because it is all we know.

Still, Harari is a good writer with some thought-provoking theories. He charts the process of how our modern species won the evolutionary competition to become the dominant primate and eventually reshape the global environment. At times he pushes the iconoclastic approach a bit too far in order to ramp up the buzz factor, and thus more readers. Based on the sales, his strategy worked. Academic historians are not going to be pleased, and critical readers of history will probably be disappointed. Popular audiences have enjoyed it immensely, and that’s fine. Most readers will take away a few fascinating nuggets from this ambitious survey of human history.

Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari 

Harari waits until the very end of his book to tell readers that the previous 450 pages of forecasting are not really a prophesy, only an exploration of possibilities. Some of the ideas will sound ridiculous, but many of them are certainly plausible. The discussion of a hybrid creature combining human and machine that could possibly surpass homo sapiens to become the dominant species is not so far fetched. Interestingly, Harari spends an unusual amount of time near the beginning of the book writing about religion and its impact on human evolution and modern society, which may explain the title. It’s almost as if this could be two different books. The only place that the book became tiresome for me was the final chapter on data. If I had to classify it, I would describe Homo Deus as speculative nonfiction. I think his previous book, Sapiens, is more important. If we don’t take it too seriously, Homo Deus is a fun and intriguing read.

A View of Flannery O’Connor’s Woods

~ If You Want My Opinion ~ 3 Comments

(Based on a lecture presented at “Reason, Fiction and Faith: An International Flannery O’Connor Conference,” at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome, Italy, April 20-22, 2009)

American author Flannery O’Connor completed the short story “A View of the Woods” in September 1956, three years after the major electrical utility company in Georgia finished construction of a dam on the Oconee River, which winds it way south through Baldwin County, Georgia, and cuts a path just east of downtown Milledgeville. There are interesting similarities between the circumstances in O’Connor’s short story and the developments that were taking place in the Milledgeville area where O’Connor was living when she wrote it. To some degree, O’Connor’s story envisions the rapid commercial and residential development that would eventually threaten the landscape of Andalusia, the family farm operated as a dairy in the 1950s by O’Connor’s mother, Regina Cline O’Connor.

Flannery O’Connor moved back to Milledgeville in 1951 from Connecticut, where she had been living with Robert and Sally Fitzgerald since September 1949. Andalusia is located directly on the north-south highway passing through Milledgeville, which was officially designated U.S. Highway 441 in December 1948. The dam on the nearby Oconee River created Lake Sinclair, covering over fifty square miles with approximately six hundred miles of shoreline in three different counties. Within a short time, residential development began to claim sections of the lake’s shoreline as families started investing in weekend cabins at first, followed by increasingly lavish permanent homes. Greater interest in lake recreation brought the construction of marinas, boat ramps, fishing supply stores, camping facilities, and parks. Highway 441 was the major artery connecting the town of Milledgeville with the growing lake community and points farther north with larger highways leading to the state’s capital, Atlanta.

Lake Sinclair
Lake Sinclair

Government officials and a good portion of the electorate across the rural American countryside in the 1950s and 60s were ravenous to “catch up” with the big cities and attract jobs, build infrastructure, and provide new and improved services to their communities. Milledgeville was no exception, and the creation of Lake Sinclair paved the way. Textile manufacturing plants began to move in during the late 1940s when construction of the dam was underway; the first drive-in theater opened in 1950; the local telephone company was purchased by an outside conglomerate to expand service in 1957, the year that “A View of the Woods” was published. In that same year, Milledgeville experienced its first modern expansion of the city limits, moving the northern boundary just a mile from the driveway to Andalusia.

Beginning in the first paragraph of O’Connor’s story, the reader is presented with circumstances that mirror Milledgeville’s mid-twentieth-century progress. After explaining the family dynamics that will ultimately drive the story to its shocking conclusion, the narrator provides details of the circumstances surrounding Mr. Fortune’s windfall. The power company’s dam floods much of the countryside, providing Mr. Fortune with lakefront property. He knows there will soon be commercial development, creating even greater demand for his land.

Mr. Fortune’s idea of improvement includes paved highways filled with new-model automobiles and flanked by supermarkets, gas stations, motels, and a drive-in theater. His vision is inspired by the success of a nearby entrepreneur identified as Tilman, whose very name invokes an inherent conflict in the story between plowing the land and manning the till or the cash box. Tilman’s eclectic country store is complete with a barbeque pit and is reminiscent of many establishments that populated rural highways in the United States sixty years ago, and in some areas, still exist today. In her story, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” O’Connor included a similar roadside establishment called The Tower, where Red Sammy Butts sold his famous barbeque in a combination gas station and dance hall.

In her typical fashion, O’Connor offers marvelous and visually descriptive language to profile her characters and to punctuate their traits. Tilman’s evil nature is clearly identified with an appearance that invokes mythological satanic images. Mr. Fortune’s deal with Tilman to sell the lawn that provides his daughter’s family with a view of the woods is an obvious reference to Faust’s pact with the devil from the classic German legend, an observation made in early critical works on O’Connor by Frederick Asals and other scholars. Like a demon being promptly transported back to hell after shaking Mr. Fortune’s hand on the transaction, Tilman slouches back under the counter.

O’Connor presents Mr. Fortune as an ambitious landowner, driven by pride and domination, whose hunger for progress and personal acclaim blinds him to the pure beauty of the natural world. Mr. Fortune’s canvas of the future is painted with deception, revenge, and even violence. The story pairs reckless commercial progress with greed and avarice, contrasting the irresponsible destruction of natural resources to the stewardship of preserving the rural landscape. In describing the disintegration of a cow pasture into a red-clay pit by the heavy machinery in the beginning of the story, O’Connor uses the words “disembodied,” “nausea,” and “revulsion,” analogous of an assault by a deadly disease or virus. Later in the narrative, Mr. Fortune envisions the woods and trees being drenched in blood from the wounded, barely visible sun setting behind them, the mysterious sacramental image that O’Connor repeated many times in her fiction.

The critical literature provides an abundance of commentary on the personification of landscape and the role of nature in O’Connor’s fiction, from Carter Martin to Christine Flanagan. We recognize that Mr. Fortune’s lack of apprehension is manifested in his inability to appreciate the mysteries of creation that literally surround him. The woods in this story provide a backdrop for a small sanctuary, “the lawn,” where the Pitts children can play in safety, a respite from the otherwise contentious and even threatening environment that is ever present. In a letter to Elizabeth Hester dated December 28, 1956, O’Connor made the analogy conclusively when she compared the woods to Christ. They seem to walk on water and are surrounded by light. O’Connor associates the forest with purity.

Mr. Fortune’s obsession with obliterating the pastoral setting and beginning construction of his commercial empire is a rejection of purity and an abuse of innocence, an evil intention that is also reflected in his disintegrating relationship with his granddaughter, Mary Fortune. He considers the child his protégé, or even a prized possession; however, his ambition goes too far when he announces his plans to destroy the lawn. As the tension grows to hostility between Mr. Fortune and the child, she calls him the “Whore of Babylon,” and indeed he has become a prostitute by selling off the family property. After all, he is “pure Fortune.” When the child becomes an obstruction to his strategic plans, his fixation turns to rage and results in the horrible murder of his granddaughter.  The old man’s damnation is sealed.

To translate O’Connor’s theme in this short story as a summary condemnation on all commercial development would be a careless overstatement. Mr. Fortune’s daughter and son-in-law are by no means portrayed as altruistic or even humane. At the same time, the old man’s intentional conversion of land and trees to pavement and buildings, with total disregard to the desires of his family, characterizes him as irresponsible, if not evil. His hasty decisions and actions are illustrative of many mid-twentieth century landowners in America who sold property that had been in their families for several generations, placing their birthrights in the hands of developers who were delighted to build and pave over the woods and fields.

Many Americans, including elected officials, are starting to understand that unrestricted and mostly unregulated urban expansion has led to the destruction of the natural landscape that characterized rural America: the lawn where we play, where we graze our calves, and where we look at the woods from the porch, in Mary Fortune’s words. It is only in recent years that government agencies have started to encourage landowners to preserve their holdings, even providing tax incentives to keep land undeveloped.

Flannery O’Connor’s uncle, Dr. Bernard Cline, purchased the Andalusia property in the early 1930s and later acquired more land adjacent to the farm, which remained undeveloped for many years as a haven for wildlife. Such was not the case for so much of the land adjacent to Dr. Cline’s property. Perhaps it wasn’t O’Connor’s intention, but her story ends up being a prediction of the disappearance of the countryside that once surrounded Andalusia. Her forecast came true to some degree, with the eventual expansion of Highway 441 that carved away two acres of the east boundary of the family farm. The encroaching commercial development that followed was inevitable, including the Milledgeville Mall, which was constructed a mile south of Andalusia only eight years after O’Connor’s death. The next two decades would see the proliferation of fast-food and franchise restaurants, retailers, motels, convenience stores, car dealerships, nightclubs, and the king of capitalism, Walmart. The concentration of this rapid growth was located within a two-mile radius of Andalusia.

The Woods of Andalusia
The Woods of Andalusia

While opinions vary widely on what constitutes good stewardship of the land and protection of the environment, Andalusia’s caretakers have been able to take advantage of urban encroachment while still providing a view of the woods for the many visitors who have made their way to the property since it opened to the public in 2003. Although Milledgeville is in a very rural area of the state, Andalusia’s location on a U.S. highway brings travelers right to the driveway. Most American tourists reach their destinations in automobiles, and when they arrive, most of them expect accommodation and comfort. Abundant businesses within one mile of Andalusia’s entrance are more than capable of meeting the basic needs of travelers, including fuel, food, lodging, and entertainment. However, the farm structures of Andalusia are positioned a few hundred yards from the highway with a buffer of trees on all sides. This limited isolation allows visitors to make their way up the driveway to the main house, where their imagination can easily transport them back in time to 1964, as if Flannery O’Connor had just departed Andalusia for the last time.

Certainly, Andalusia is off the beaten path, and O’Connor’s readers who truly desire to experience the countryside that inspired some of her best fiction must leave the city and the interstate highways. The rewards for making that departure are certainly worth the effort. The current owner of Andalusia is Georgia College, the liberal arts institution in Milledgeville descended from O’Connor’s alma mater, Georgia State College for Women. I am hopeful and encouraged that the College is committed to preserving the view of the woods at this internationally significant landmark, a proper memorial to such a gifted writer.

Andalusia pond and main house
Andalusia pond and main house

So Many Books, So Little Time

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The title of this post is familiar to reading enthusiasts. We have seen it on mugs, posters, social media memes, etc. I once had a tee-shirt with the slogan printed in multiple colors on navy blue fabric. Serving as a professional librarian for fifteen years of my career, peddling books was my trade. Librarians everywhere through the years have repeatedly attempted unsuccessfully to dispel a popular myth about the profession: librarians spend all their time reading. Nothing could be further from the truth. We have no more time to devote to reading than most other professionals. We spend our time, talents, and energy making sure that our patrons have what they want to read. Libraries have certainly undergone major changes in recent decades, but the central mission of making information available to users is still the same as it was when the Library at Alexandria was established over 2,000 years ago.

I was fortunate to have family members who read to me as a small child and instilled within me an appreciation for books. We had a set of the World Book Encyclopedia even before I started school, and as I learned to read, I spent an increasing number of hours browsing through the volumes. In elementary school, my teachers appointed me as a student library assistant, which probably gave me an early understanding of the importance of libraries.  I was turned on to reading on my own with our Weekly Reader elementary magazines in school. I went through the comic book phase that most young boys did during the 1960s but eventually moved on to science fiction novels as I moved into adolescence. The first lengthy novel I can remember reading in high school was Jaws by Peter Benchley, published in 1974. From that point on, I began to move away from science fiction and toward mainstream fiction. I am forever thankful to my mother for driving me to the central branch of the public library and allowing me to spend so much time perusing the shelves for the next reading adventure.

In addition to three wonderful English teachers in high school, I had several professors in college who helped me develop a thirst for literature. My undergraduate degree was in English, and after going on to get an MA in history, I started my first full-time job in a public library. A few years later, I earned a degree in librarianship. I continued to read classics in literature while also adding works by contemporary writers of serious fiction, with the occasional nonfiction book thrown in as well. It was during this period of my life that I made a conscious decision to devote most of my valuable reading time with either literary classics or contemporary award-winning books. I am willing to spend two or three hours watching a movie just for fun, but typically I want more than just entertainment when committing over ten hours to a book. The major exceptions to this rule are audiobooks and titles associated with my profession, gardening, religion, and science.

As is true with so many aspects of our lives, modern technology has had a tremendous impact on the practice of reading. From the early experiments with electronic books in the 1970s to the e-readers of today, the definition of the book is constantly evolving. My wife bought my first Kindle in 2008, and as much as I love bound pages of print, I was enamored with the device from the moment I downloaded a title, which was The Road by Cormac McCarthy. To read a review of a new book and have it in my hands ready to read in less than 60 seconds is miraculous to me. Yes, there are some disadvantages to e-readers, but to my way of thinking, the benefits far outweigh the shortcomings. For readers who also enjoy traveling, the ability to carry multiple books in the palm of your hand is just about perfect. I am on my fourth Kindle so far.

Book collection
Book collection

In 2010, a dear friend introduced me to Goodreads, my first social media site for readers. To date I have added to my profile 559 books completed over my lifetime, 190 of those since I joined the site. Goodreads is a web community that allows members to share with Friends what they are reading, look at book descriptions, read and write reviews, and see author’s profiles. The site boasts 80 million members worldwide. I primarily use Goodreads to track my own books and to write reviews of what I have read. I also share my reviews and recommendations on other social media sites, primarily Twitter.

I have never been ambitious enough nor had the attention span to have two books going at once — until last year, when I became an Audible subscriber. A subsidiary of Amazon, Audible is an online portal for purchasing, downloading, and listening to audiobooks. It allows customers to search for or browse a large collection of audiobooks, which they can buy using money or membership credits. Users can listen to downloaded titles on computers or mobile devices. I spend a significant amount of time driving, and my car is equipped to play audio files from my phone through its speakers. Now, while I am reading a book in print or on my Kindle at home, I am also listening to an audiobook when I am away from the house. With this new reading approach, I have drastically increased the number of books I am completing. From 2010 to 2017, I was averaging about fifteen books per year. In 2018 alone, I read or listened to 63 books.

According to Forbes magazine, there are anywhere from 600,000 to 1,000,000 books published in the United States each year. Only a small percentage of those will become best-sellers. A much smaller fraction will win the most prestigious awards in the publishing industry, such as the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the PEN/Faulkner Award. Even with the expanded capacity provided by audiobooks, I struggle to keep up with reading each year what I consider the best books published that interest me. I have to pick and choose from the award-winners and highly-recommended titles, while working through classics from the past that I still haven’t read. This is a frustrating process for everyone who loves books, but it is a sweet dilemma that comes with the passion.

 

Book Reviews: Two by Ta-Nehisi Coates

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Between the World and Me
Between the World and Me

Ta-Nehisi Coates won the National Book Award for Between the World and Me. Some readers will criticize him for his lack of attention to a few basic grammatical rules. Okay, he needs to brush up on the mechanics, as many journalists do. Others may not like his style — the book takes the form of a long message to his son about what it means to be a black man in America. I think it is the perfect approach for his subject, making the book personal, emotional, and thoughtful. It reminds me of the innovation with narrative that the white civil-rights advocate Lillian Smith used in books like Killers of the Dream and Our Faces, Our Words. Coates could do a whole lot worse than follow Smith’s example. In our deeply divided society, this book will be rejected by many readers who have lost patience with what they perceive as a hypersensitive generation coddled by American universities where almost everyone is a victim of mistreatment and therefore has an excuse for irresponsibility. I don’t think Coates has fallen into that trap, either real or imagined. I highly recommend this title to anyone who wants some insights into the struggles of what an African-American colleague described once as “waking up everyday, looking in the mirror, and knowing you are wearing black skin.”

We Were Eight Years In Power
We Were Eight Years In Power

Coates is one of the most powerful voices in the country on identity politics and its ill effects on social justice, most especially for African-Americans. In interviews, Coates has made it clear that he sees little hope for conditions in America to improve with regard to the plight of African-Americans. We Were Eight Years In Power: An American Tragedy is a collection of essays, many appearing previously in The Atlantic, that reaffirms that opinion. His vision is definitely pessimistic and perhaps depressing. It would be easy to dismiss Coates as a man made bitter by his own struggles to be heard and to overcome the legacy of bondage that characterizes the black experience in America. But, his analysis is careful and calculating, and to some degree even objective. He is relentless in shining the scorching light on white supremacy and how it has systematically crushed the spirit of African-Americans, even during the Obama administration. Coates now sees white supremacy back on full exhibit, in the open, and he dubs Donald Trump as the “first white president.” The election of Barack Obama clearly set a standard and was perceived by his supporters to alter the course of American history. However, many white Americans distorted that monumental watermark into perversion: “If a black man can be president, then any white man — no matter how fallen — can be president.”

The Independent Bookstore: A Reader’s Oasis

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The last Saturday in April is designated as Independent Bookstore Day, and according to the U.S. Census Bureau, bookstore sales increased 2.5 percent from 2014 to 2015. The American Booksellers Association, which represents independent sellers, reported 1,712 member stores in 2015, up from 1,401 in 2009.  These figures should put to rest the notion that books made of paper are soon to be replaced by electronic forms.  I realize there are plenty of readers who still hold great affection for traditional books — the paper kind.  There are scholars who have argued that reading physical books is a completely different experience than reading eBooks.  Most bookstore owners would probably agree.  Both formats seem to be doing fine, which should be good news to all readers.

Once a medium of information is introduced, it tends to survive no matter what other “new and improved” medium follows.  Some platforms may become obsolete (stone tablets, 8-track tapes, Beta videotape, etc.), but in general, new forms of information delivery don’t dispatch previous ones.  The written word has never stopped people from telling stories or stage acting. Motion pictures certainly didn’t do away with reading.  Radio didn’t destroy movies, television didn’t stop radio broadcasts, and the availability of videos hasn’t destroyed the television industry.  One could argue that computers have only facilitated many of these delivery methods rather than replacing them.  More importantly, none of these has killed the book, regardless of how we decide to read.

There is no question that the last few decades have been tough for small, independent bookstores.  Many of the ones that survived the advent of the mega-bookstores were finally wiped out by the online providers.  Electronic books no doubt delivered another crushing blow to bookstores, but the truly creative entrepreneurs figured out a way to stay relevant and competitive as a niche market.  One approach is to create a salon-type atmosphere that welcomes the reading shopper and provides a sanctuary, a respite from the fast-paced grid that characterizes so much of our society.  Nicole Sullivan, owner of Denver’s BookBar, was quoted in a recent article in The Denver Post.  “As it gets harder for brick-and-mortar businesses, hybrid businesses become more important,” Sullivan said. “It’s either get it fast and cheap online, or come into a store and have an experience. That’s what indies have to offer, a more personalized experience and that sense of community we’ve lost a lot of over the years.”

I have fully accepted the convenience of eBooks and have been an Amazon Kindle customer since the first year they came on the market.  I’m sure some of my library colleagues were horrified by the introduction of virtual books, but now eBooks are a big part of library holdings.  For fiction and other books that rely very little on illustrations or graphics, I actually prefer eBooks.  However, I treasure the large, hardbound gardening, history, and travel books that fill our shelves at home.  Not even iPads or desktops are acceptable for those titles for me.  I also prefer to browse through slick-paper magazines by physically turning pages, not touching a screen.  Because we live in a rural area, the chances of an independent bookstore surviving for very long are slim, so we order many of our books online.  We also go to the web to shop for household goods, clothes, and equipment.  But, when we travel to places like San Francisco, Chicago, and New York, I almost always make a point to visit an independent bookstore.  To me they all seem to have their own “personality” that makes them unique.  If a book is the door that leads to imagination, then a bookstore is a hallway with almost endless possibilities.

Book Lady Bookstore, Savannah, GA
Book Lady Bookstore, Savannah, GA

What Separates Us from Dogs and Cabbage

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Advanced communication is one of the achievements of human beings that sets us apart from the rest of the living world.  To paraphrase one of my most influential college professors: “Language is what separates us from dogs and cabbage.”  As humans, we have fairly sophisticated language skills that take the form of speaking, singing, gesturing, signing, etc.  But other members of the animal kingdom possess forms of these skills too, and some of them have surpassed our own capabilities.  What truly distinguishes us intellectually as a species is the higher brain function we have acquired, and I believe the best illustration of that gift is in written communication. The ability to pass along information from one person to another through writing was one of the hallmarks that transformed homo sapiens into civilized human beings and paved the way for rapid advancement.  Sadly, literacy is a privilege that is terribly under appreciated in this country, especially when we consider that 774 million adults around the world cannot read or write.  In the United States, most people over the age of fifteen can read and write at a very basic level, but we live in one of the most advanced countries in the world.  Shouldn’t we expect much more than just basic written communication skills?

Most of us know that, in order to write well, we must read — a lot.  To write better, we need to read more and read good writing (this is beginning to sound like a first-grade reader, in fact).  I think it is at this crucial point that we fail.  I am shining the light primarily on the United States, although this problem likely extends to a good portion of the developed countries around the world.  In this country, the masses don’t spend much time reading at all.  There are far too many other sources of information and entertainment available other than the written word.  I am not referring to the Internet necessarily, because there is plenty of writing, and even good writing, available on the Web.  Then again, the Web offers so many alternatives to writing also, which do present quite a distraction.  I am certainly not referring to e-books either, which in spite of their dubious reputation in the eyes of some traditionalists and obsessive bibliophiles, are another source of writing.

So now let’s narrow it down to the folks who DO like to read.  According to Pew Research Center, as of January 2014 some 76% of American adults ages 18 and older said that they read at least one book in the past year.  The typical American reads about five books a year, which isn’t extremely impressive, but at least they’re reading . . . something.  However, 24% of Americans don’t crack a book at all, and the number of non-book-readers has nearly tripled since 1978.  Again, we have more distractions to pull us away from reading.  As the comedian John Caparulo says in one of his more ridiculous routines, “Books suck!  That’s why they invented movies.  Who the hell reads?”

Now, before the 76% of American readers starts to get too cocky, I will make one final disturbing observation, and it relates to Caparulo’s point.  Most Americans who read do so only for one purpose: to be entertained.  Before going further, let me say that reading should  be entertaining, but if reading is going to continue to raise us above the levels of dogs and cabbage, then what we read should do more than just entertain us.  It should change us, challenge us, move us, and sometimes even call us to action. This standard not only applies to nonfiction — it goes for novels, short stories, poetry, and drama.  The embarrassing truth is that far too many Americans judge the merit of a book by whether or not it has been made into a blockbuster movie. I would venture to say that the majority of people who went to see the movie The Color Purple when it came out in 1985 had not read the Pulitzer-prize winning novel by Alice Walker, but after seeing the movie praised the book as a masterpiece.  One has to wonder if Gone with the Wind would still be the best-selling book of all time if it had not been made iconic by the motion picture that followed.

We have access through numerous vehicles to the world’s greatest works of literature — from ancient sacred texts to modern classics from various cultures.  Why would we waste what little time we have in this life on anything less precious?  Of course, I phrase that question knowing full well that I am guilty of seeking shallow entertainment all the time, but I have not forsaken the pursuit of fine literature in the process.  We can have both.  But, to spend a lifetime completely absent of serious writing seems to me such a tragic existence for a species with the mental capacity to appreciate it and pass it on to the next generation.