Reviews by Martha & Ed Quillen
Books – February 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine
WE ORDINARILY RUN reviews “from, for and about” Central Colorado. But since our readers and writers doubtlessly read and enjoy nationally distributed books, too, years ago we decided that we would run recommendations of books of any sort at Christmas. Since then, Lynda La Rocca has consistently met the deadline, and Ed and I have flaked out, mostly because Christmas is one of our busiest seasons — with extra ads, phone calls, and gift subscriptions; expanded bookkeeping demands, family obligations, and calendar entries….
So why, we asked ourselves, not run our recommendations now, for February, when people may actually have time to read and think about books?
So here goes:
Martha’s picks
I’m not even going to try to pick out the “best books” I’ve read in recent years.
I love fiction and have read dozens of highly recommended novels, some of them popular and some literary, since I last compiled a book list for Christmas 2007, among them: A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian; On Chesil Beach; Like Water for Elephants; The Road; The Thirteenth Tale; A Crime in the Neighborhood; Consequences; The Memory Keeper’s Daughter; The Year of Fog; Twilight; Change of Heart; The Lace Reader; The Constant Princess; What the Dead Know….
And most of them were pretty good. Yet I usually found myself a little disappointed. And a couple of them I flat out couldn’t stand. Which makes me wonder if recommendations in and of themselves can somehow taint a work of fiction; perhaps I expected too much.
I was, however, very pleasantly surprised by a few novels — The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox; How to be Lost; Light on Snow; and The Life You Longed For. They were much better than I expected. Yet not everybody I recommended them to has agreed.
Likewise, I like non-fiction, too, and have found most of the books that have been well-recommended by readers and reviewers to be pretty good, and yet somewhat disappointing: The Caged Virgin; How Doctors Think; The Glass Castle; Rethinking Thin; Daydream Believers; Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World….
And so….
I’m not going to recommend the books I liked best, I’m going to recommend the ones I found most thought-provoking. These are the ones I remember best, and found myself thinking about months later:
Overtreated by Shannon Brownlee is a controversial look at the American medical system which concludes that a lot of modern treatment is downright dangerous and unnecessary. Even more provocative, the book shows how such treatments have been popularized and boosted by political attempts to reduce American medical costs. You probably won’t agree with everything in this treatise, but it’s a must read for everyone who wants to see a better, more affordable system advanced by our new President.
The Deserter’s Tale by Joshua Key is definitely a pacifistic propaganda piece — since I’m pretty sure that this barely educated deserter would have found it impossible to state his case so eloquently without ample help from the peace activists who champion his cause. But this is indeed a very eloquent plea, which makes an effective case for a young man who deserted his country in a time of war because he could no longer stomach what he saw happening in Iraq.
Waiting for Daisy by Peggy Orenstein is a tale about the author’s trials with fertility treatments. Much of this book is light and humorous, but that doesn’t conceal the curious ethics, emotional turmoil, questionable outcomes, and bizarre obsessiveness that surround Orenstein’s attempt to conceive.
Because Orenstein lived in the U.S. but often worked in Japan during the time she was trying to conceive, and also because her husband is Japanese/American whereas her family is Jewish, this story rises above the standard personal and medical account and delves into cultural beliefs and attitudes about conception, children, love and life.
Waiting for Daisy is a very personal and yet revealing picture of one woman’s sojourn into the very expensive and often harrowing world of fertility treatments.
She’s Not There by Jennifer Finney Boylan tells the true story of a novelist and English professor who went from being a man to a woman. These accounts were common several years back, and usually annoying — since transsexuals frequently wanted to tell woman what it was like being a woman. Boylan is smarter than that, and doesn’t pretend to know what being a woman means for anyone else.
In fact, this particular tale of sex-change is less about the whys and whereofs of being transsexual than about love and family and friends. The crux of this tale is how Boylan’s parents, friends, wife, children, and business associates handle his transformation, which was something he worried about so much that he hid his proclivities from nearly everyone close to him — until depression, secrets, and suicidal thoughts drove him out of the closet.
This book is about how some families and friends thrive and survive things like sex-change operations — even though they can’t necessarily understand the motivations or totally accept the idea. And Boylan’s friend, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Richard Russo, contributes a truly stunning chapter about how weird and incomprehensible the world can suddenly seem when your best friend and good buddy reveals he wants to be a woman.
Finally, I recommend one novel, The Great Mischief, by Alistair McLeod, for its extraordinary portrayal of living and mining in Canada in the 20th century. The Great Mischief is a novel about the grim and yet emotionally resonant experiences of an emigrant family who landed far north of Ellis Island, and it will be an eye-opener for those who assume that the travesties of corporate indifference and worker exploitation have primarily been a U.S. problem.
Ed’s picks
With the election and inauguration of a new President who, as he once put it, “doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills,” it might be a good time to consider some biographies of those chief executives whose portraits do grace our currency — as well as a few others.
For George Washington (president from 1789 to 1797), I commend the one-volume Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner. While there are many other biographies, some extending to encyclopedic dimensions, this one is clear and concise, and yet so thorough that whenever I’ve needed to look up something about Washington, I’ve found it here.
John Adams (1797-1801) does not appear on our currency, but his reputation has climbed in recent years, thanks to a delightful biography, John Adams by David McCullough. Our second president comes across as brilliant but grumpy, and a fellow you’d like to converse with for hours. This book was the basis for the HBO series last year (now available on DVD, which I plan to watch as soon as this edition gets mailed), and my only disappointment was how little attention the book paid to the Alien and Sedition Acts.
John and Abigail Adams may have been the closest couple ever in the White House, and their correspondence is a pleasure to read. That forms the basis for a biographical novel I enjoyed, Those Who Love by Irving Stone. Indeed, Abigail’s strong character was so impressive that Martha and I named a daughter after her.
Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809) appears on the seldom-seen $2 bill, and attracts plenty of attention from biographers, with topics ranging from the Declaration of Independence to the Louisiana Purchase to his relationship with Sally Hemings. My favorite of these is Thomas Jefferson: American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson by Joseph Ellis. Ellis has written several other books about that era (i.e., American Creation and Founding Brothers), and they’re all great reading.
THIS CAN’T GO THROUGH every president — for one thing, I haven’t read biographies of all of them — so we’ll skip to the $20 bill and Andrew Jackson (1829-1837). Jon Meacham’s American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, which came out last year, has been getting good reviews, but I found it disorganized and hard to follow. I much preferred Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times by H.W. Brands. Andrew Jackson comes across as a tough-minded warrior, flawed in many ways, but always holding your interest.
I keep my eyes open for a good biography of James Knox Polk, who appears on no currency, but who did acquire the West for the United States by negotiating with Great Britain for the Oregon Territory and by warring with Mexico for a part of Colorado, along with New Mexico, Texas, California, etc. His story is told, to some degree, in The Year of Decision: 1846, by Bernard DeVoto, which should be must-reading for every history buff on this side of the Mississippi River.
There’s no end of books about the man on the $5 bill, Abraham Lincoln (1861-1865). The best biography I’ve encountered is Lincoln by David Herbert Donald, just one flowing but detailed volume, one where I’ve always been able to find whatever Lincoln information I was looking for. In recent months, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin has received plenty of attention, and it’s well worth reading, too.
As something of an aside here, the biography Jefferson Davis, American by William J. Cooper is an informative pleasure. Even if there had never been a Confederacy, Davis would be an important figure in American history — Mexican War hero, prominent U.S. senator, Secretary of War. Did you know he once visited Colorado after the war?
Now to the $50 bill and Ulysses S. Grant (1869- 1877). His Personal Memoirs was a best-seller in its day, and deservedly so. It has a clarity and honesty that penetrates through all the details about long-ago battles. But it ends at Appomattox. Grant’s presidency was a failure in many respects, tainted as it was by scandal. But his presidential record wasn’t all dismal, and I learned a lot from Grant, by Jean Edward Smith.
Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909) made it to Mt. Rushmore, but not our currency. The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris is as good as biography gets, engaging and informative, a book you don’t dare start reading after 8 p.m. because it will keep you up all night. Alas, its successor volume, Theodore Rex, while informative, isn’t nearly as good, and Morris’s biography of Ronald Reagan, Dutch, was barely worth the time.
I’ve read quite a few biographies of Franklin D. Roosevelt, but none was so striking that it leaps to mind. However, his successor, Harry S. Truman (1945-1953) was the last President ever to campaign in Central Colorado, and is the subject of a great biography: Truman, by David McCullough. It’s rich in details and sweeping in its scope, and a great book to curl up with on these long winter nights.
AS FOR PRESIDENCIES since Truman, maybe there hasn’t been enough time for the considered judgment a good political biography requires. Most writing about Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-61), for instance, focuses more on his military career than his presidency. John F. Kennedy (1961-63) books tend to be hagiographies or hatchet jobs. And so it goes through Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. I’ve read some decent books, but nothing I want to recommend.
Anyway, there are plenty of good books about those guys on our dollar bills, and you don’t even have to be a history buff to enjoy them.
