The Collected What If? - Robert Cowley

    2001; 827 pages.  New Authors? : Yes.  Full Title: The Collected What If?  Eminent Historians Imagine What Might Have Been.  Edited by Robert Cowley.  Genres : Essays; World History; Speculative History; Non-Fiction.  Overall Rating : 9½*/10.

 

    I remember the first Alternate History book I ever read.  Its title was If the South Had Won the Civil War, and Wikipedia lists its author as MacKinlay Kantor and that it was first published in 1961.  The book was short, there were some neat pictures in it, and I still recall a lot of the plot details.

 

    I’m guessing it was a Weekly Reader offering, meaning the target audience was Juveniles.  It sparked a lifelong love of the Alt History genre in me; I still read the genre quite frequently.

 

    Which means Robert Cowley’s opus, The Collected What If, was a personal must-read.  Forty-five essays, penned by all sorts of historians, each one examining a pivotal point in history and speculating as to what would happen if things went differently.

 

    Me reading it was a match made in Alternate History heaven, and the three alternate timeline scenarios for the Civil War brought back fond YA reading memories.

 

What’s To Like...

    The Collected What If is a compilation of two of Robert Cowley’s collections of “counterfactual” essays that contains 20 (plus 14 sidebars) and 25 entries (no sidebars) respectively.  The entries are arranged chronologically in both volumes.  Volume One was strictly military what-ifs; Volume 2’s contents were broadened to include some non-military topics, such as what the USA would’ve been like if Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, and John F. Kennedy had never made it to the White House.

 

    Despite the titular “What If” motif, there is a lot of factual history covered here.  That’s logical, since you can’t discuss alternatives until you’ve presented what really occurred.  In fact, a majority of the essays spend much more time on the actual historical events than on what might have been.  The introduction also points out that the book’s content deliberately avoids “frivolous counterfactuals”.  Musing about what Hannibal could have done if he had an H-Bomb, or Napoleon with a stealth bomber, is just plain silly.  The counterfactual has to be plausible.

 

    Personally, I found the actual history accounts just as fascinating as the counterfactuals.  The British could have easily won the Revolutionary War, and Lincoln’s famous Emancipation Proclamation was more a clever political ploy than a great moral step forward.  My favorite essays were mostly those that dealt with ancient history (such as what if the Persian armies had won the Battle of Salamis), but that’s probably a reflection of my personal tastes of reading history books.

 

    The essays are replete with trivial tidbits.  I learned that the concepts of “freedom” and “citizen” did not exist until the Greeks came along.  The etymology of the word “slave” was interesting, and there’s a good reason why George Washington never wrote any memoirs.  It was neat to see two of my heroes, Vercingetorix and Wilfred Owen, getting some ink, and the eerie circumstances and timing around the 1948 deaths of Lawrence Duggan and Harry Dexter White makes me wonder what really goes on in the higher echelons of American national security.

 

    There are some helpful counterfactual maps and illustrations scattered throughout the book.  The longest essay was 34 pages long; the shortest was a mere 9 pages.  Each essay has a catchy title and subtitle to go with it.  For example: “Napoleon’s Invasion of North America: Aedes aegypti takes a holiday”, which should whet the literary appetite of any alt-history reader.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.4/5 based on 76 ratings and 35 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.82/5 based on 603 ratings and 77 reviews.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Diapason (n.) : a grand swelling burst of harmony.

Others: Auto da-fe (n.); Legerdemain (n.); Irrupted (v.).

 

Excerpts...

    Only eleven [German U-boats] were delivered in 1914.  But (. . .) attrition remained very low, since the Royal Navy had little in the way of defenses.

    The initial English efforts against the submarine bordered on the laughable.  Picketboats armed with blacksmiths’ hammers were sent out to smash periscopes; attempts were made to catch submarines with nets like cod; sea lions were even trained to seek out unwanted submerged intruders—none of which met more than the slightest degree of success.  (pg. 602)

 

    But for the potato, what different roads history might have taken?  Would Spain have become such a vast Imperial power, presiding over the first empire in history on which the sun never set?  (Its wealth would be rooted in a mound of silver mined by potato-fed conscript laborers.)  Would Frederick the Great’s Prussia have survived without the potato in the Seven Years’ War (1756-63), paving the way, ultimately, for the ascension of Germany?  . . .  How many crises of the Cold War, one wonders, were fueled by potato-based vodka?  And would we now, in a rare interval of relative peace, be appreciating van Gogh’s first major, and truly memorable, painting, The Potato Eaters?  (pg. 813)

 

Pascal suggested (in his Pensées) that if Cleopatra had been born with a somewhat larger nose, Mark Antony would have defeated Octavian at Actium.  (pg. 429)

    Unsurprisingly, profanity is sparse in The Collected What If; I spotted just ten instances in the entire 827 pages; and those were mostly in direct quotes of historical figures.  One of those was an f-bomb.

 

    There also were a few typos, such as: cause/caused; want/wont; lead/led; and the bizarre enchiphered/enciphered.  How spellchecker missed that last one mystifies me.

 

    Some readers were understandably disappointed in the factual/counterfactual ratio.  That didn’t bother me, but I love reading about history, no matter whether it's actual or speculative.  Also, keep in mind this is an 827-page, full-sized, hardcover book; reading it will be a significant investment of time.  It took me a full month to get through it.

 

    For me, The Collected What If was a great history read, both the real and the imagined parts.  As memorable as MacKinlay Kantor’s book was, it was neat to see what a bunch of historians can do to make the genre a reading delight for adult audiences as well.

 

    9½ Stars.  We would be remiss if we didn’t mention the final entry in the book, and the only one that violated the chronological order system: “What if Pizarro had not found potatoes in Peru: The humble roots of history”.  The second excerpt above, is from it.  It borders of being whimsical, but was actually food for thought.  Pun intended.

Death by Black Hole - Neil deGrasse Tyson

   2007; 362 pages.  Full Title: Death by Black Hole and Other Cosmic Quandaries.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Science; Essays; Non-Fiction; Astrophysics.  Overall Rating : 9½*/10.

 

    Consider the following declarations.  The North Star is the brightest star in the nighttime sky.  The Sun is a yellow star.  What goes up must come down.  On a dark night you can see millions of stars with the unaided eye.  In space there is no gravity.  A compass points north.  Days get shorter in the winter and longer in the summer.  Total solar eclipses are rare.

    Every statement in the above paragraph is false.

    (from “Death by Black Hole”, pg. 293)

 

    Are you curious as to why the above statements are untrue?  Do you ask questions like: What would happen if you (or a star) fell into a black hole?  How can 100+ different elements get created from a single "Big Bang"?  What the heck is a supernova?  A quasar?  What’s the likelihood of a killer asteroid wiping us out like one did to the dinosaurs?  Can God and Science coexist?

 

    The answers to the above questions, why those first statements are all inaccurate, plus many more, can be found in Neil deGrasse Tyson’s book Death by Black Hole.

 

    And you don’t have to be an astrophysicist to understand what he’s saying.

 

What’s To Like...

    Death by Black Hole is a series of 42 essays, plus a Prologue, by the eminent author/astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.  He divides them up into seven sections, and 362 pages, meaning the essays are relatively short: just 8+ pages on average, which my brain appreciated.

 

    The essays cover a wide variety of science-related topics.  Some of my favorites were:

    05 : Stick-in-the-Mud Science

        The amazing experiments you can do with just a stick, a string, and an hourglass.

    12 : Speed Limits

        Measuring the speed of light.

    25 : Living Space

        How likely is life to develop elsewhere in the Cosmos.

    26 : Life in the Universe

        How likely is intelligent life to develop elsewhere in the Cosmos.

    30 : Ends of the World

        Three possible ways it might happen.

    32 : Knock ‘em Dead

        Mass extinctions: what caused them?

 

    This is my second Neil deGrasse Tyson book (the other one is reviewed here), and once again I was in awe of his ability to simplify complex scientific concepts to where even readers with non-technical backgrounds can comprehend and enjoy them.  Tyson has a knack for blending science with modern-day culture.  Deep subjects such as Lagrange points and quasars are mentioned alongside things like Pink Floyd (Dark Side of the Moon, naturally), Star Trek “redshirts”, and astrophysical bloopers Tyson noticed while watching several blockbuster science fiction movies.

 

    The book is a trivia nerd’s delight.  I was surprised to learn that an unopened can of Pepsi will float in water, while an unopened can of Diet Pepsi will sink.  I learned the etymology of the words algorithm, solstice, and quasar; laughed at the use of the terms spaghettification and astro-illiteracy; and smiled when the author revealed he’s had an asteroid named after him (”13123 Tyson”).  The world’s record low temperature (-129°F, in Antarctica) gave me shivers, while the world’s record high temperature (+136°F, in Libya) made me break out in a sweat.

 

    The science-oriented trivia was equally enlightening.  I enjoyed learning about Foucault’s pendulum, why the astronomer Percival Lowell honestly believed he observed canals on Venus, and how a Greek mathematician named Eratosthenes calculated the Earth’s circumference (to within 15% of the precise value) in the third century BCE.  The odds of life developing somewhere else in the Universe were much higher than I would have guessed, and I was fascinated that the element Technetium doesn’t occur naturally on Earth but has been found in the atmosphere of a couple of red giant stars in our galaxy.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.8*/5, based on 2,047 ratings.

    Goodreads: 4.07*/5, based on 29,573 ratings and 1,367 reviews

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Syzygy (n.) : a conjunction or opposition, especially of the moon with the sun.

Others: Noctilucent (adj.).

 

Excerpts...

    One night a couple decades ago, while I was on winter break from graduate school and was staying at my parents’ house north of New York City, I turned on the radio to listen to classical music.  A frigid Canadian air mass was advancing on the Northeast, and the announcer, between movements of George Frideric Handel’s Water Music, continually tracked the descending outdoor temperature: “Five degrees Fahrenheit.”  “Four degrees.”  “Three degrees.”  Finally, sounding distressed, he announced, “If this keeps up, pretty soon there’ll be no temperature left!”  (pg. 180)

 

    When people believe a tale that conflicts with self-checkable evidence it tells me that people undervalue the role of evidence in formulating an internal belief system.  Why this is so is not so clear, but it enables many people to hold fast to ideas and notions based purely on supposition.  But all hope is not lost.  Occasionally, people say things that are simply true no matter what.  One of my favorites is, “Wherever you go, there you are” and its Zen corollary, “If we are all here, then we must not be all there.”  (pg. 297)

 

“Get your facts first, and then you can distort ‘em as much as you please.” (Mark Twain)  (pg. 329)

    I can’t think of anything to quibble about in Death by Black Hole, other than a single typo on page 132 referring the reader to “Section 9” for more information about the possibility of God stepping in “every now and then to set things right”.  There is no section 9.  That’s probably a printing error, since correct would be “Section 7”.

 

    A number of Amazon and Goodreads reviewers felt otherwise.  Some of their complaints:

 

    Neil deGrasse Tyson’s writing is too cute.  The book had no pictures of black holes.  The book’s cover was torn and the pages wrinkled.  Fake print.  Too hard.  Too simple (“cute beginner astronomy book”).  Too pessimistic.  Too anti-creation.  Too scary.  Not enough about black holes.

 

    Sigh.  For me, this was a great read that thoroughly met my expectations.  The essays are deep, yet not incomprehensible, unlike some other astrophysics books I’ve struggled through.  I highly recommend it to anyone seeking a greater understanding about how the Cosmos got here, where it’s going, what we know about the objects and forces that make up the Universe, and how we obtained that knowledge.

 

    9½ Stars.  One last teaser for the book.  Chapter 12 presents the history of scientists trying to determine the speed of light, starting with Galileo in the 1600s and continuing to the present day.  It thoroughly fascinated me.  The teaser is: if you wanted to do your own testing, how would you go about trying to measure the speed of light?

I Feel Bad About My Neck - Nora Ephron

   2006; 137 pages.  Full Title: I Feel Bad About My Neck, And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : Essays; Humorous American Literature.  Overall Rating : 8½*/10.

 

    Besides being a noted journalist and filmmaker, Nora Ephron (b.: 05/19/1942 – d.: 06/26/2012) was a prolific writer of screenplays (many with her sister, Delia Ephron), essays, drama, and one novel, Heartburn.

 

    Her most famous screenplays are probably Silkwood (1983), When Harry Met Sally (1989), Sleepless in Seattle (1993), and You’ve Got Mail (1998), and in addition to screenwriting, she also directed those last two movies.

 

    Being an “essayist” usually means writing articles that appear in magazines and newspapers.  Eleven of the essays in I Feel Bad About My Neck are listed as having previously appeared in Harper’s Bazaar, The New Yorker, The New York Times, O At Home, The Oprah Magazine, and Vogue.

 

    I Feel Bad About My Neck made it all the way to #1 on the New York Times Non-Fiction Best Seller List on September 10, 2006.  In 2019, it was included as #100 in The Guardian’s list of the 100 best books in the 21^st Century.

 

What’s To Like...

    I Feel Bad About My Neck consists of 15 essays of varying lengths, ranging from 3 to 20 pages.  Each is well-written and with a lot of dry humor.  I’d describe the writing style as what you’d get if you picked up “next door neighbor-ish” Erma Bombeck and set her down in Breakfast At Tiffany’s.  The circumstances may be different, Nora was decidedly financially more affluent, but both authors had the talent to blend keen female insight about daily life with an abundance of folksy wit.

 

    My favorite essays from the book were:

    04 : On Maitenance

        All about mani-pedis are other beauty treatments.

    07 : Moving On

        Living in an upscale apartment in NYC.

    12 : The Lost Strudel or Le Strudel Perdu

        Marcel Proust meets Cabbage Strudel.

   13 : On Rapture

        The bliss of reading a good book.

    15 : Considering the Alternative

        Thoughts about one's mortality.

 

    I found that last essay especially poignant.  Yes, it’s lighthearted, but it is also Nora Ephron telling you about the reality of being an “elderly person”.  It seems a fitting close to these essays, and it left a lump in my throat.  The second excerpt below gives you a taste of her musings.

 

    The book also has an informative slant.  The term “mouse potato” was new to me; and unsurprisingly, I'd never heard of “Kelly bags”.  One of Nora Ephron first jobs was as an intern in the JFK White House, and it was enlightening to get an “inside peek” at what that job entailed.  On a lighter note, I learned what birth control pills and Julia Child’s first cookbook have in common.

 

    There’s a bit of French thrown into the text, with both a nod to Edith Piaf and the phrase “Le sac, c’est moi.”.  Nora Ephron was a bookaholic (“I need a book to keep me company”), and I always enjoy learning what books impressed other bibliophiles.  Here, the author loved Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (so did I!), Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White (haven’t read it, but looks good!), and Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past (well, two out of three ain’t bad).

 

Excerpts...

    According to my dermatologist, the neck starts to go at forty-three, and that’s that.  You can put makeup on your face and concealer under your eyes and dye on your hair, you can shoot collagen and Botox and Restylane into your wrinkles and creases, but short of surgery, there’s not a damn thing you can do about a neck.  The neck is a dead giveaway.  Our faces are lies and our necks are the truth.  (pg. 5)

 

    She said, “You know what drives me nuts?  Why do women our age say, ‘In my day…’?  This is our day.”

    But it isn’t our day.  We can’t wear tank tops, we have no idea who 50 Cent is, and we don’t know how to use almost any of the functions on our cell phones.  If we hit the wrong button on the remote control and the television screen turns to snow, we have no idea how to get the television set back to where it was in the first place.  This is the true nightmare of the empty nest: Your children are gone, and they were the only people in the house who knew how to use the remote control.  (pg. 129)

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.3/5 based on 1,565 ratings.

    Goodreads: 3.71/5 based on 49,392 ratings and 5,748 reviews.

 

My first husband is a perfectly nice person, although he’s pathologically attached to his cats.  (pg. 104 )

    I Feel Bad About My Neck is a quick and easy read, an ideal option if you have a book report due tomorrow and haven’t even opened a book yet.  Ironically. that’s probably my main gripe – at 137 pages, it’s simply too short.  Even Erma Bombeck’s books usually run 200-250 pages.

 

    The language is just short of squeaky clean.  I only noted two cuss words, and if you’re looking for “tell-all” bits of the author's personal life (she was married three times), you’ll be disappointed, although she's not above shooting a spousal zinger now and then.

 

    Finally, it should be noted that, as the book’s subtitle points out, I am not the target audience.  This is a woman, writing about being a woman, and hoping it resonates with other women.

 

    Nevertheless, I was entertained from page 1 through page 137, and it’s always a pleasure to come across a talented author that I hadn't gotten around to reading before.  I was unaware that Nora Ephron only ever wrote one novel, but if I come across any more of her “essay” collections at the used-book store, I will undoubtedly pick them up.

 

    8½ Stars.  I have one Erma Bombeck book, The Grass Is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank, collecting dust on my Kindle.  It's been a while since I read anything by her, so maybe it's time to get reacquainted with her essays.

The Partly Cloudy Patriot - Sarah Vowell

   2002; 200 pages.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Essays; Politics & Government; US History; Anecdotes.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

    Sarah Vowell wrote three fantastic History books between 2008 and 2015, all of which I’ve read and reviewed.  The Wordy Shipmates chronicles the Puritan colonists; Unfamiliar Fishes tells how the United States came about acquiring the Hawaiian Islands; and Lafayette in the Somewhat United States which focuses on that the famous French general who helped our cause in the Revolutionary War.

    I enjoyed them all, giving each on a rating in the 8-9 Stars range, and since then I’ve been looking forward eagerly to whatever historical subject she next researches and writes about.  Alas, five years later, I’m still waiting.  If she’s put written any books since then, neither Wikipedia nor Amazon are aware of it.

    Fortunately, there are four Sarah Vowell books from the 1997-2005 timespan, in which, I gather, she writes about a variety of topics instead of focusing on just one.  I’ve got three of those books on either my Kindle or my TBR shelf.  And since it’s been five years since I last read anything by her, I felt it was time to pull one of them off the shelf and get cracking.

    I chose the one with the enigmatic title The Partly Cloudy Patriot.

What’s To Like...

    The Partly Cloudy Patriot is a collection of nineteen articles from Sarah Vowell, about evenly split between ones that were previously published and ones  that were new.  Their length varies from 4 to 32 pages, which means some can technically be called essays and others called anecdotes.

    The articles cover a broad spectrum of genres, including historical (the Salem witch trials); politics (presidential libraries); athletics (arcade basketball, aka “Pop-a-Shot”); art (German cinema); Hollywood (thoughts about Tom Cruise); travel (there’s a restaurant in the Carlsbad Caverns); bloopers (maps that show California as an island), and family (Sarah Vowell is a twin!).

    My two favorite chapters were Rosa Parks, C’est Moi, which cites various people who have dared to compare themselves to Rosa Parks, and the titular The Partly Cloudy Patriot, which examines the not-so-patriotic ways some people define “patriotism”.  My two favorite chapter titles were God Will Give You Blood to Drink in a Souvenir Shot Glass and Tom Landry, Existentialist, Dead at 75.  I’ll let you guess what those two chapters are about.

    It was fun to get to know the author a bit.  As mentioned, Sarah is a twin (fraternal, not identical), is an atheist who was raised a Pentecostal, has endured family Thanksgivings (haven’t we all?), and worked as a teenager in a map-dealer’s store.  She’s also a diehard Dallas Cowboy fan, but hey, nobody's perfect.

    Being a Pennsylvanian by birth, I enjoyed her walk through the Gettysburg battlefield, and chuckled at the brief mention of the unique town of Hershey.  I liked the literary nods to The Great Gatsby and The Cross and the Switchblade.  I read the latter at some point in my junior high years.   Luther and Johnny Htoo were new to me, as was the chocolatey caffé mocha from Starbucks, and the Tom Landry Christian comic book left me scratching my head.

    Sarah Vowell’s wit abounds throughout, which made this a fun read from beginning to end.  And while my favorite books by her will continue to be those that focus on a single historical subject, The Partly Cloudy Patriot serves as an excellent stopgap until she gets back to writing full-length books again.

Excerpts...

    I wish that in order to secure his party’s nomination, a presidential candidate would be required to point at the sky and name all the stars; have the periodic table of the elements memorized; rattle off the kings and queens of Spain; joke around in Latin; interpret the symbolism of seventeenth-century Dutch painting; explain photosynthesis to a six-year-old; recite Emily Dickinson; bake a perfect popover; build a shortwave radio out of a coconut; and know all the words to Hoagy Carmichael’s “Two Sleepy People”, Johnny Cash’s “Five Feet High and Rising”, and “You Got the Silver” by the Rolling Stones.  (loc. 1308)

    In 1873, Canada’s first prime minister, John MacDonald, saw what was happening in the American Wild West and organized a police force to make sure Canada steered clear of America’s bloodbath.

    That’s it.  Or, as they might say in Quebec, voilà!  That explains how the Canadians are different from Americans.  No cowboys for Canada.  Canada got Mounties instead – Dudley Do-Right, not John Wayne.  (loc. 1599)

American history is a quagmire, and the more one knows, the quaggier the mire gets.  (loc. 1676 )

    I've yet to find much to gripe about in any Sarah Vowell book, and that’s true for The Partly Cloudy Patriot as well.  I think I counted eleven cusswords in the whole book, mostly where she’s quoting someone.  There are some interesting pictures, although not every chapter has one.  And if your political viewpoint is staunch right-wing, you probably should give this book a pass.

    The Partly Cloudy Patriot was a quick and easy read, so if you have a book report due in two days in your high school Civics class and you haven’t even started reading anything yet, this may be your saving grace.

    8 Stars.  Take the Cannoli and Assassination Vacation remain in my library.  Hopefully it won’t take another five years to read one or both of them.

Defining Moments in (Black) History - Dick Gregory

   2017; 271 pages.  Full Title: Defining Moments in [Black] History – Reading Between the Lies.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : Historical Essays; African-American History; Non-Fiction; Socio-Political Commentary.  Laurels: 2017 NAACP Image Award (winner); 2018 BCALA (Black Caucus of the American Library Association) Literary Award.  Overall Rating : 7½*/10.

    America today is once again in a Black Lives Matter crisis, and while I am fully support the protesters and activists, I also have to admit that I know very little about their mindset.  It’s therefore a good time to read something/someone relevant to the movement, but who and what to choose?  Well, let’s use the “BOFFO” criteria.

    B.  Black.  It makes sense to select a black author, because they will inherently be more attuned to BLM than us white folks, just like you wouldn’t pick a male author to describe what labor pains feel like while giving birth.

    O.  Old.  It would be best if the author participated in the 1950’s/60’s Civil Rights protests, yet was also still around when the BLM demonstrations of this decade were going on.

    F. Famous.  Famous people rub elbows with other famous people, and it would be interesting to hear what black professional athletes, movie actors, and politicians think about the protests from someone who knows them personally.

    F. Funny.  Yes, Civil Rights and Black Lives Matter are serious topics, but a couple of witty anecdotes every once in a while would help lighten the mood.

    O. Outspoken. There’s no need to sugarcoat the subject.  The author should have a reputation of telling it like it is.

    That’s all fine and dandy, but who’s out there that fulfills all our BOFFO preferences?

    Well, Dick Gregory for one.

What’s To Like...

    The "meat" of Defining Moments in (Black) History consists of five essays written by Dick Gregory, plus a Frontspiece (worth reading), Foreword (skippable), Introduction (kind of a sixth essay), and Epilogue (the author’s closing thoughts).  A brief summary of the Essays:

    Introduction : Dick-ol-o-gy (3%)

        Getting used to the writing style; getting used to the comedic interludes.

    Essay 1 : Searching For Freedom  (11%)

        The early history of slavery in the US.

    Essay 2 : Solidarity  (22%)

        The Civil Rights movement in the 1950’s/60’s and the organizations formed to promote them.

    Essay 3 : The More Things Change, the More Thy Stay the Same  (41%)

        Politics and the passing of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965.

    Essay 4 : Making Something Out of Nothing  (59%)

        Notable black people in the Arts.

    Essay 5 : Running in Place, Embarrassing the Race  (85%)

        Notable black people in Sports.

    The essays are written in a “conversational” style, which took me a while to get used to.  I have a feeling someone taped Dick Gregory as he spoke, and then transcribed it.  The result is a lot of “As I said”, “Follow me now”, and “But, keep in mind, as I keep saying“ type of expressions, plus an occasional cussword.

    Dick Gregory does a lot of name-dropping along the way, but that’s okay.  It was enlightening to read his opinions about all sorts of famous folks, both historical and recent.  Rosa Parks, my personal hero, gets major ink, as do Muhammad Ali, Toni Morrison, Tiger Woods, Sidney Poitier, and Maya Angelou.  I had forgotten about Tommie Smith and John Carlos, and it's embarrassing that I’d never heard of Mae Jemison.

    The discourse on “the difference between racism and white supremacy” was educational for me.  For lovers of trivia, it’s pointed out that November 11th is both Veteran’s Day and  Nat Turner’s Death Day.  I think I’ll start commemorating it for the latter event.  You’ll also learn things like why Louis Armstrong was nicknamed “Satchmo”.

    I was surprised to learn the Dick Gregory had a rather low opinion of both Abraham Lincoln and John Kennedy.  He views Bill Clinton in only a slightly better light, but really appreciated John Brown’s commitment to abolition.  The history of The Supremes was fascinating, and oddly enough, one of my favorite bands, The Doors, get a brief mention.

Excerpts...

    For those who haven’t been to jail but kind of wonder in the back of their minds what it was like in the civil rights days, let me explain it to you.  First day you get arrested, the food is horrible.  Second day, it’s miserable.  The third day, it doesn’t taste too bad.  The fourth day, you’re asking for the recipe.

    By the time I got down south to protest, blood was running in the streets.  (loc. 1274)

    Once you admit that there’s somebody in the universe other than you, white supremacy goes out the window, doesn’t it?  Organized religion as we know it goes out the window, doesn’t it?  My grandmother didn’t have space in her head to believe there could be a Baptist on Mars.  Worst of all, in the view of white supremacists, if we start to think we’re not alone in the universe, then white supremacy doesn’t mean a thing, because we would all become earthlings.  There wouldn’t be a Memphis or a Chicago or an America or a Russia or a China or an Africa – we would be Earth people.  This is what this thing is all about.  (loc. 3500)

“White is not a color; it’s an attitude.”  (loc. 678 )

    The book has some weaknesses.  For starters, the comedic interludes, while entertaining, were also distracting.  Yes, you can tell Dick Gregory’s spiel about the history of hurricanes is not to be taken seriously, but it wasn’t clear whether the Jocko Graves anecdote was fact or farce; ditto for the "turtle, butterfly, and dinosaur" object lesson.  A lot of the historical tie-ins – such as the role of the (black) Tuskegee airmen saving the day for the whole D-Day invasion – seemed overstated.

    Even worse were Dick Gregory's conspiracy theories.  Lincoln and Kennedy were both killed by the banks.  Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed by someone other than James Earl Ray.  Otis Redding and Sam Cooke were both killed by the Jewish owners of record companies.  The King Kong movie was really a slander against the boxer Jack Johnson.  Tiger Woods was brought down by white supremacists.  And last and laughably least, Michael Jackson was killed by the government.  Using lasers.

    It was also sad to see the author struggling to defend some of his personal friends, such as Bill Cosby.  It’s noble to have a friend’s back, but the evidence against Cosby is overwhelming.  Dick Gregory can’t refute it, so he justifies it by saying lots of others in the movie industry were doing the same thing, and they weren’t punished.  Somehow, that sounds eerily similar to wing-nuts defending Trump's grabbing of female genitals.

    But overall, the pluses about Defining Moments In (Black) History outweigh the minuses.  It’s important to remember these are essays, not dissertations.  You’re getting Dick Gregory’s opinions about important steps in the road to black freedom, not a scholarly presentation of facts.  He’s trying to instill a sense of pride in black readers through telling them their history that was never taught to them and giving them lots of black role models,  He couldn't care less whether some of the details are debatable.

    When viewed in that light, the book is a powerful effort.  And it shouldn't be surprising at all that Dick Gregory gave the Black Lives Matter movement his wholehearted endorsement.

    7½ Stars.  Defining Moments In (Black) History was Dick Gregory’s seventeenth and final book.  He was born on October 12 (Columbus Day!) in 1932, and he passed away on August 19, 2017, less than a month before, on September 05, the hardcover version of the book was published.  RIP, sir!

Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls - David Sedaris

    2013; 278 pages.  New Author? : No.  Genre : Essays; Non-Fiction; Anecdotal Humor.  Overall Rating : 7½*/10.

    Here's a writing assignment for you.  Compose a 10-page essay on getting a colonoscopy.  There’s one catch, however.  You have to make it entertaining.  Something readers will chuckle at, and that will make them want to immediately read more essays by you.

    After that, write four more essays on these topics: Being robbed while in Hawaii; Litterbugs (in the UK); People ahead of you in lines at food places who won’t stop chatting with the cashier; and Kids throwing temper tantrums in stores.  Remember to make all of them amusing.

    When you’re finished with those, try to think of another 21 topics from your personal experiences to pen essays about.  Make sure that your readers will still find all of them witty and that the stories will resonate with them.

    Now that you've got all these personal anecdotes done, go out and buy David Sedaris’s book, Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls, and see how his tales compare with yours.  I’m guessing you’ll have gained a much greater appreciation for just how challenging it is to write books of this genre.     

What’s To Like...

    Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls is David Sedaris’s seventh book of anecdotal stories about his life, and I’ve read all the previous ones.  There is an eighth one, Calypso, that was just released this past May, but I’ll wait until the hoopla (and price) dies down before snagging it.

    The lengths of the essays are fairly consistent – about 10 pages each (26 chapters covering 278 pages).  Normally, David Sedaris closes these books with a longer narrative, but here the final chapter was a collection of short-&-silly poems about all sorts of breeds of dogs.  I don’t recall the author offering any of his poetry before, and I found these bits of doggy doggerel hilarious.   My other  favorite chapters were:

    08.  Easy, Tiger.  Learning foreign languages (Mandarin and German).

    09.  Laugh, Kookaburra.  Feeding kookaburras and turning off stoves.

    18.  #2 To Go.  Eating "real" Chinese food.

    22.  Day In, Day Out.  Keeping a diary.

    23.  Mind the Gap.  An essay written in English, not in Yankee.

    24.  A Cold Case.  Losing your passport and wallet in Hawaii.

    The book’s contents follow the usual pattern – all the stories are personal experiences, and not in any order - chronological or otherwise.  David Sedaris is a writer by profession, gay, grew up in a crazy family, travels extensively promoting his books, and has lived in various parts of the world, including New York, North Carolina, England, France and Italy.  A couple of the chapters were written in wingnut style, and one was written in Britspeak.

    I delighted in the details. In one chapter, he recounts spending some time in a city called Brindisi, a place I’d never heard of.  His insights about living in France  were LOL funny.  I shuddered while reading the chapter on colonoscopies since I’m overdue and avoiding my first one.  It was neat to see he’s familiar with Edith Pargeter’s (aka, Ellis Peters') Brother Cadfael novels.  And the chapter about his compulsion of picking up litter resonated with me; for a while we had a guy in our neighborhood who did the same thing, at 5:30 every morning, even when it was pitch black outside.  I know because I’d see him every morning as I left for work.

    You should keep in mind there are R-rated words and adult situations in the book.  Art Linkletter would have a cow.  Misogynists and homophobes should steer clear; David Sedaris is unashamedly married, and unashamedly gay.  Finally, in case you’re wondering, the titular owls show up in Chapter 17; but the diabetes never appears.  Wikipedia gives a brief explanation for the title.

Excerpts...

    Shaun’s father, Hank, was a psychiatrist and sometimes gave his boys and me tests, the type for which there were, he assured us, “no right answers.”  He and his wife were younger than my parents, and they seemed it, not just in their dress but in their eclectic tastes – records by Donovan and Moby Grape shelved among the Schubert.  Their house had real hardcover books in it, and you often saw them lying open on the sofa, the words still warm from being read.  (loc. 559)

    There wasn’t a lot of familiar in China.  No pork lo mein or kung pao chicken, and definitely no egg rolls.  On our first night in Chengdu, we joined a group of four for dinner – one Chinese woman and three Westerners.  The restaurant was not fancy, but it was obviously popular.  Built into our table was a simmering cauldron of broth, into which we were to add side dishes and cook them until they were done.  “I’ve taken the liberty of ordering us some tofu, some mushrooms, and some duck tongues,” said the Western woman sitting across from me.  “Do you trust me to keep ordering, or is there anything in particular you might like?”  (loc. 1818)

Kindle Details...

    Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls sells for $11.99 at Amazon.  David Sedaris's other collections of anecdotal essays are all available, and in the $8.99-$14.99 price range.

Did I just refuse to marry my mother?  (loc. 469)

    Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls is another solid installment in the life-&-times of David Sedaris, but I wouldn’t call it my favorite.  This is mostly due to the tone of the book, at least at the start.  For me, the best David Sedaris stories are the ones written in a self-deprecatory style.  But here his mood in a number of them is that of a grumpy old man.  He rants about parents no longer disciplining their kids enough, moans about how crappy of a person his dad was, and whines about having to take swimming classes as a kid.

    If these topics had been tackled with the author’s usual amount of insight and wit, things would’ve been fine.  Unfortunately, here he just seemed like he wanted to vent.

    Maybe he was being too subtle for my dense brain, or maybe he was in a bad mood when he penned some of the chapters..  In any case, he finds his groove about halfway through the book, the wit returns, the tone gets cheerier, and it’s smooth sailing thereafter.

    Or perhaps I was just in a better mood when reading the second half of the book.

    7½ Stars.  One final note.  David Sedaris at long last reveals his secret for coming up with interesting past experiences to write about in book after book.  He’s been keeping diaries, making entries every day, for the past 35 years.  Whenever he needs a new memoir for his next book, he just opens one of the many volumes of his diaries.  Holy OCD-ness, Batman!

When You Are Engulfed In Flames - David Sedaris

    2008; 323 pages.  New Author? : No.  Genre : Essays; Non-Fiction; Anecdotal Humor.  Overall Rating : 8½*/10.

    David Sedaris is gifted, gay, germaphobic writer who grew up in North Carolina in a household that could be the collective poster-children for “Dysfunctional Family”.  Now (herein defined as when he wrote this book)  in his early 50’s , he’s held a number of jobs, had several relationships, and lived in places ranging from the mundane (New York City), to the exotic (France and Japan).

    He’s had his share of weird neighbors (haven’t we all?), crazy relatives, rundown apartments, and cheap hotel rooms that would give and germaphobe nightmares.  He’s also had his boozing, pot-smoking, cigarette-smoking stages (haven’t we all?), and came out okay on the other side of each.  Does he possibly have some wild, hilarious tales to tell about his life?

    You betcha.

What’s To Like...

    When You Are Engulfed In Flames is a set of 22 essays by Sedaris that draw from various parts of his life.  Some of the stories are self-effacing.  I don’t know that I’d write a chapter about a boil on my butt, but Sedaris does.  Several focus on his relationship with his current partner, Hugh, who’s a polar opposite to David in most ways.  Many deal with the slew of bizarre people he’s crossed paths with while traveling and moving about.

    All the essays are witty and well-written.  Some will resonate with you more than others, but all of them will entertain you.  Many close with a bit of thought-provoking introspection by Sedaris after the hijinks have been recounted.  Among my favorites here were :

    The Understudy (the babysitter from hell); That’s Amore (his curmudgeony neighbor, Helen); Monster Mash (working in the morgue); The Man In The Hut (the neighborhood child molester); April In Paris (spiders); Crybaby (switching seats on an airplane); and The Smoking Section (trying to quit smoking).

    I especially liked the stories that were set in France in Japan.  David Sedaris does not pick up a foreign language easily, which leads to the inevitable linguistic misunderstandings and culture shock.  The book’s title comes from an entry at 95%; I’ll leave it to you to discover what it means.

Kewlest New Word . . .

Murphy Bed (n.; phrase) : A bed with a frame and hinges on one end that can be folded up and stored vertically in a wall.

Others : Cush (v.) (which was quite the challenge to find its definition on Google)

Excerpts...

    Like any normal fifth grader, I preferred my villains to be evil and stay that way, to act like Dracula rather than Frankenstein’s monster, who ruined everything by handing that peasant girl a flower.  He sort of made up for it by drowning her a few minutes later, but, still, you couldn’t look at him the same way again.  (loc. 340)

    It’s funny how certain objects convey a message – my washer and dryer, for example.  They can’t speak, of course, but whenever I pass them they remind me that I’m doing fairly well.  “No more Laundromat for you,” they hum.  My stove, a downer, tells me every day that I can’t cook, and before I can defend myself my scale jumps in, shouting from the bathroom, “Well, he must be doing something.  My numbers are off the charts.”   (loc. 1713)

Kindle Details...

    When You Are Engulfed In Flames sells for $9.99 at Amazon.  Most of David Sedaris’ other  Essays books go for the same price.

”It’s safe to assume that by 2025, guns will be sold in vending machines, but you won’t be able to smoke anywhere in America.”  (loc. 3518)

    When You Are Engulfed In Flames is the fourth full-blown book of essays by David Sedaris.  The first three are Naked (1997); Me Talk Pretty One Day (2000); and Dress Your Family In Corduroy and Denim (2004).  They all have the same template – 20+ “regular-sized” essays, then finishing up with one longer entry, which usually furnishes the book’s title.  I’ve read all of these, and enjoyed each one.  Only DYFiC&D was during my blogging days; it is reviewed here.

    Sedaris’ latest offering of essays is called Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls (2013), but I haven’t read it yet.  My library doesn’t offer a Kindle version of it, but stocks a number of Hardcover copies.

    David Sedaris is one of the foremost contemporary American humorists, and I am in awe of his continued ability to find entertaining incidents from his life to write about.  All of his “Essays” books are good, and if you haven’t read any of them yet, I highly recommend starting with Naked or Me Talk Pretty One Day.  I remember being blown away by both of them.

    8½ Stars.