LOTS OF REALLY GOOD BOOKS! PART I

The year is coming to a close and I am looking back over the really good books I have read this year and there were a lot of them!  I am a picky but eclectic reader, so I have read a bunch of interesting, well-written, often challenging books.  Here is the first collection of the best.  I hope you choose to check out some of them.

*1. Take My Hand Dolen Perkins-Valdez (Syvil is a nurse at a clinic in Montgomery AL that is found to be ordering Black children and adults to be sterilized without parents or patients understanding what they are signing.  Charges are brought against the clinic that are won by the community, based on a true case in 1973.)

*2. You’re the Only One I’ve Told, The Stories Behind Abortion by  Meera Shah (An abortion physician discusses some patients and others she knows who have had abortions and felt until talking with her, couldn’t tell anyone about it.  The stories were often hard to hear, but were real and powerful examples of the need for us to acknowledge that abortion is necessary and a right and will continue regularly no matter what anti-abortion folks want.)

*3. Enough by Cassidy Hutchinson (The Chief of Staff to Trump’s Chief of Staff had finally had enough and testified before the January 6^th Committee in the House about her experiences on Jan. 6 at the Ellipse and in the White House.  Her whole experience with Mark Meadows and Trump disrupted her life to an extreme extent.)  

*4. The Black Angels, the Untold Story of the Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis by Maria Smilios (This was an interesting book about a subject I knew nothing of before.  The Black nurses came from the South to Statan Island to work at a TB hospital.  The discrimination even in NYC was terrible but the women persevered and did win respect over time.)   

*5. Ghosts of the Orphanage, A Story of Mysterious Deaths, A Conspiracy of Silence, and A Search for Justice by Christine Kenneally (The author uses events at St. Joseph’s Catholic orphanage in Burlington, VT as the example of the kind of violence and abuse perpetrated by the priests, nuns, and lay workers against children at orphanages all over the world between 1935 and the 1970s.  She describes efforts of survivors to find others’ belief in what happened and maybe justice.)

*6. The 9, the True Story of a Band of Women Who Survived the Worst of Nazi Germany by Gwen Strauss (This is the most powerful book I have read so far this year.  Nine women who were in the concentration camp Ravens brook helped keep each other and others in the camp alive.  On their forced march out of the camp, they escaped and went to the front where they were “rescued” by US troops.  The women suffered enormously.)

*7. Why Didn’t We Riot, A Black Man in Trumpland by Issac J. Bailey (This is an astonishing book by a Black journalist who is looking at the underpinnings of Trump’s ascendency to the White House including Black people not speaking up [ because of potentially devastating consequences, the deep DNA of racism within our culture – every white person needs to read this book, Trump supporter or not.)

*8. This is What America Looks Like, My Journey from Refugee to Congresswoman by Ilhan Omar (I loved this memoir of her personal force, her optimism, and her hard work that enabled her to accomplish amazing things like learning English so quickly she was a straight A student shortly after she arrived here from Somalia.)

*9. Showdown, Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination That Changed America by Will Good (After a rather unruly youth, Marshall discovered the law and pursued it on behalf of Black Americans at the risk of his life.  LBJ nominated him to the Supreme Court because he believed it was essential to have a Black man on the SC.  The transcripts of segments of the hearing are included which shows the depts of racism even among serving representatives.)

*10. Quilt of Souls by Phyllis Biffle Elmore (At age 4, the author went to Alabama to live with her grandmother, a woman who cared for everyone and made quilts of pieces of clothing so people would have with them the stories of their loved ones.)

*11. The Bastard Brigade, The True Story of the Scientists, Renegades, and Spies Who Sabotaged the Nazi Atomic Bomb by Sam Kean (This was an adventure book with a cast of strange characters chosen for the work because of their peculiar talents.  My favorite was Mo Berg, a baseball catcher, and unlikely hero who happened to speak many languages fluently and learned physics so he could understand what he was looking for on his missions.)

*12. Chita, A Memoir by Chita Rivera (a fun account of her Broadway career and the many musicals she played in.)

*13. Redeeming Justice, From Defendant to Defender, My Fight for Equity on Both Sides of a Broken System by Jarrett Adams (Everyone interested in justice and our screwed-up legal system must read this book about an innocent man charged with rape and sentenced as a 17-year-old to 28 years.  He describes the near total inhumanity of the system that did this to him.  He decided then to become a lawyer which he did.)

*14. The Grandest Stage, A History of the World Series by Tyler Kepner (I loved this look at the many World Series between 1903, the first to 2021. There are the greatest, the worst, the most interesting, etc.  There are people, stats, and just a lot of memories.)

*15. 10 Birds that Changed the World by Stephen Moss (Who would have thought that birds had such a massive impact on human existence over time.  Some of the birds:  ravens – smart, resourceful, all over, bald eagle – a symbol of power as with all eagles, pigeons – messengers who live with and have evolved with humans.)         

*16. Cooperstown Confidential, Heroes, Rogues, and the Inside Story of the Baseball Hall of Fame by Zev Chafets (This was a fun romp through the Hall of Fame, established in 1936 to remember the heroes and sometimes rogues of baseball and there were a lot of both.  The question of doping is presented as just one-way athletes have always tried to improve their abilities.  I have not made a personal judgment on that one yet.)

*17. Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County, A Family, A Virginia Town, A Civil Rights Battle by Kristen Green (PE County in Southern VA decided that instead of integrating as Brown v. Board required, they would close the county’s schools and open a private academy for white children, ignoring the education of Black children, about a third of the county’s population.  The schools were closed 5 years but the academy continued to operate, only integrating in 1986, but not really.  The author learned that her family was involved in establishing and running the academy which she and her siblings attended.)  

*18. Opinions, A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding other People’s Business by Roxane Gay (I loved this collection of essays on a range of topics from movies and TV to political activism to good advice, to gay writes for the NYT and other publications.)

*19. Generations The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents, And What They Mean For America’s Future by Jean M. Twenge (This was a fascinating book about the contributions each generation has made to our culture and what impacts they have and will continue to have on our society.  None should be dismissed as either irrelevant or the most valuable.) 

*20. Matt and Me by Putsata Reang (I loved this memoir of a child who came to America from Cambodia with her parents just at the beginning of the “killing fields.”  She barely survived, but grew into an intelligent caring journalist but against her parents’ culture is gay and married a woman despite her mom’s wishes.)

*21. The Good Virus, The Amazing Story and Forgotten Promise of the Phage by Tom Ireland (This was an amazing book about a special type of virus that attacks bacteria and has been used to treat bacterial infections that are resistant to antibiotics.  It is good that it is being investigated seriously after the neglect of over a hundred years in the west.)

*22. Deadly Force, A Police Shooting and My Family’s Search for the Truth by Lawrence O’Donnell (This book is the story of a young Black man shot by police in Boston in 1975 and the trial that the O’Donnell family of lawyers prosecuted to try to prove the police guilty.) 

*23. Why the Innocent Plead Guilty and the Guilty Go Free and Other Paradoxes of Our Broken Legal System by Jed S. Rakoff (Wow, this book really delves into the way our system forces accused persons to make plea bargains even when they are innocent.  It looks at how rich persons and corporations are not held accountable because of their wealth and claim of “too big to fail” and are not expected to make changes to prevent what happened.)

*24. Life on Other Planets, A Memoir of Finding My Place in the Universe by Aomwa Shields (I loved this memoir of a Black girl who wanted to study astronomy and be an astronaut.  She grew up to find a way to combine her love of astronomy and acting to become an effective teacher and speaker as well as a researcher in the field of astrobiology.)

*25. Poorly Understood, What America Gets Wrong About Poverty by Mark Robert Rank Lawrence, M. Eppard, & Heather E. Bullock (This was an amazing book about the myths Americans hold about people in poverty.  The authors give suggestions for changing our thinking about it then making changes in providing resources for people who are poor.  The biggest myth is that it is their fault.)   

*26. American Eclipse, A Nation’s Epic Race to Catch the Shadow of the Moon and Win the Glory of the World by David Baron (This book described the science and not quite science that led to a variety of Americans including scientists, male and female, heading west to Wyoming to record the July 1878 total eclipse.  Their records were the most detailed to that time.) 

*27. In Defense of Witches by Mona Chollet (Hundreds of years after the witch hunts and murders, people are still fascinated.  Three kinds of women were the ones most often targeted:  independent women, the childless woman, and the older woman.  These were vulnerable women because they were often not under the thumb of males.  They were often objects of pity and horror.  Surprise, surprise, these women in different parts of the world are still harassed and oppressed.  

*28. Nothing But the Truth by Marie Henein (The descendant of Egyptian and Lebanese parents, the author became a defense lawyer in Canada where she fought sexism and to improve the criminal justice system.  She describes the value her family had in shaping her life.)

*29. Blood Money, The Story of Life, Death, and Profit Inside America’s Blood Industry by Kathleen McLaughlin (I used to regularly give blood and knew some people “sold their blood, but I never thought of the whys of it and that mostly poor Americans donating plasma provides treatments for people all over the world, but the donors are paid poorly considering the prices recipients pay.  The author, one of those plasma recipients investigated the issues involved in the “industry.)

*30. Killers of the Flower Moon, The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann (There were murders of so many people and so many in public positions were involved!  The organization that became the FBI came in to help but never really got to the bottom of the horrific crimes.  Osage members were wooed by white men and women and married.  The whites often ended up killing their spouses so they could get the wealth that had come to the Osage in OK due to the oil discovered on their land.  White people were the only ones allowed to administer the money, so killed for it.)

*31. Days of Infamy, How a Century of Bigotry Led to Japanese-American Internment by Lawrence Goldstone (The author takes the reader through the many events related to laws in America that made it acceptable to discriminate against, even imprison people of Japanese descent.  This included court cases, treaties, and local ordinances.  Every white American needs to read this one.  Gr. High and older)

*32. Soil, The Story of A Black Mother’s Garden by Camille T. Dungy (This poet describes the evolution of her garden from when her family moved into their Colorado home through the pandemic.  It was poetry in prose.  She intertwined history, the racist acts in the area and country, denigration of the environment, and other real-life stories with the plants and animals of her garden.) 

*33. The Mad Girls of New York, a Nellie Bligh Novel by Maya Rodale (Nellie goes to New York to be a big city reporter.  Her first story is investigating an insane asylum for women in NYC.  She goes as an inmate to find out about the women imprisoned there because they were inconvenient and the cruelties perpetrated on them by the staff.)

*34. Defiant Dreams, The Journey of An Afghan Girl Who Risked Everything for Education By Sola Mahfouz (Sola was born in 1996 under the Taliban when education was denied to most girls.  She received a bit of education from abusive people then started learning through Khan Academy.  She won scholarships and came to the US for college to study physics.)    

*35. A Traitor in Whitehall by Julia Kelly (In this mystery novel, Eleanor worked at a munitions plant near London when she is approached by a British agent who wants her to monitor activities at Whitehall during WWII.  She ends up solving a murder and being hired as an intelligence officer.)

*36. Surely You can’t Be Serious, the True Story of “Airplane” by David Cucker, Jim Abrahams, & Jerry Zucker (The authors had the idea for “Airplane” and with a lot of work and care, it turned out to be one of the funniest movies ever, using serious actors to make the comedy work.)

*37. Of Greed and Glory, In Pursuit of Freedom for All by Deborah G. Plant (The author’s brother is in Angola Prison in Louisiana for a crime he did not commit.  His case caused Plant to wonder about Black Americans and presents the case that slavery never fully ended in America.)

*38. Opposable Thumbs, How Siscal and Ibert Changed Movies Forever by Matt Singer (Two movie reviewers who started out not liking each other, started working together in 1975 and came to appreciate each other’s review style to make exposing viewers  to movies they should or should not see.) 

*39. A Fever in the Heartland, The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America and the Woman Who Stopped them by Timothy Egan (D.C. Stevenson blew into Indiana saw the simmering hatreds there, and jumped in to lead the haters into the Klan while he took over police and governments.  He abused women at will, was a drunkard while claiming his holiness.  He raped a woman and caused her to attempt suicide.  Her dictation of what happened to her, given before she died convinced the jury of Stevenson’s guilt.  He never did reform.)

*40. The Irish Boarding House by Sandy Taylor (In this novel, Mary Kate’s grandparents who raised her have died and she is trying to figure out what to do with her life when she learns she has inherited a large sum of money from her mother that she never knew.  She buys a boarding house and rebuilds the cottages where she grew up.  Her boarding house becomes a family place where she shares her love and care for others.  A positive uplifting book!) 

So, check out a few of these and share your thoughts about what you read. 

GRATITUDE IN A TIME OF PAIN AND BETRAYAL

By Ruth A. Sheets

November 24, 2024

Nearly 3 weeks ago, an election was held which will impact our lives for at least the next 4 years and if predictions are accurate, far longer than that.  The American people had a choice that day of voting for Harris who wanted to see more joy in the world; more rights for people, particularly for women over their own bodies; more opportunities for working-class and financially disadvantaged Americans; more opportunities for people living in this country for many years, to become citizens, more work toward stopping global warming; more appreciation of the diversity of this nation in our attempts to make this a “more perfect union, and the other choice, less of all of the above.  The American people, if voting counts are correct, chose the latter and here we are, anticipating what that is going to be like.  I admit I feel betrayed. 

 

So, for the past almost 3 weeks, I have been working to move past the intense grief that my fellow Americans chose hopelessness, pain, anger, fear, distrust, incompetence, and above all, hatred as leadership for our nation. I keep hearing people trying to understand or pontificate over the reasons, but I am not sure there is a reason beyond the often unexamined, unadmitted All-American racism, misogyny, xenophobia, homo/transphobia, classism, and more that stalk our nation.  Evidence of this can be seen all over the country, particularly in the “red” states where governors and legislators are competing to see which state can do the most damage to its non-white, non-male, non-rich, non-christian, non-straight citizens.  The strange thing to me is that somehow, the victims just keep re-electing those who do the most harm.

 

Knowing all this and also understanding that I will not give up despite the darkness ahead, I decided I must hold onto the hope, joy, love, and care that Mr. Trump and his gang are trying so hard to destroy as they undermine programs that actually help people who are not rich as they are, and perhaps, our democracy itself. 

 

I have been considering what I am grateful for and I thought it might help me see the beauty in the upcoming holidays and change of season.  So, here goes.  I am grateful that . . .

 

• - I have an amazing family that is nearly as diverse as this nation and its members are talented in so many ways from my youngest grandnephew living just down the road to my older sisters, living too far away, alas;
• - I have music as a centerpiece in my life, a family that had us all singing before we could talk
• - I sing with a musical group that brings pleasure to audiences because the music of early America is fun, sometimes reverent, and helped shape our nation’s founding;
• - I received a guitar for Christmas when I was in high school and although I am not too good at playing it, I still can accompany people to sing a whole lot of really great songs;
• - I have the privilege of continuing to teach as a tutor for kids who have so much potential, but don’t yet believe it, with colleagues who are enormously skilled and caring;
• - I have a great place to live, nearly 29 years, when I never thought I would have something so nice;
• - I can cook and bake muffins my nephew Parker loves, and well, I do too;
• - I love reading and have access to recorded books of all kinds, at least one in 6 that are really good, so in addition, I am grateful for such outstanding writers and poets;
• - yesterday, my brother-in-law was able to fix my computer, phew!;
•  

There is more I am grateful for, bit thinking about just those I have named here has brought me some peace, so I will leave it there for now.  One thing I have learned, though, gratitude can’t be a competition to see whose slices of life gratitude are more valid or significant than someone else’s.  This exercise is just a way of looking to the positive.

 

So, I hope you, too, will find an opportunity to run through the things that make you feel gratitude.  I suspect we all will need those thoughts to help us through the next months and years among people who will come to realize that maybe their choice wasn’t a very good one, and others who are working hard to cause that realization.

 

Happy Thanksgiving!

FINAL ELECTION THOUGHTS

By Ruth A. Sheets

November 4, 2024

What many of us have noticed over the past decade or so is that Donald Trump's voice has a cadence that can almost mesmerize people into thinking first, that he is strong, then that he is going to do something for them, then that he will gladly identify for them the people they should despise, if not actually hate.  That seems to be comforting for a lot of people who have bought the myth of "the American dream."  They believe that they have a platter that must be filled with all the goodies they are sure they deserve:  a job that pays a lot with little thinking involved, a family with no real challenges, and a house in the suburbs surrounded only by people who look and think as they do.  That "dream" has not been a reality for more than a few people for a long time, but reality is not what Trump's message is about. 

I keep hearing that Harris does not reach the "working" people as Trump does, while she is the one who is closest to and who has done far more for the working people than Trump has or ever will.  It is ironic that a man who has never worked a day in his life would claim to be for the workingpeople.  He proved with a McDonald’s stunt and one that had something to do with a garbage truck that he has no clue.  He couldn’t have made change for those pretend customers at Micky D’s and couldn’t really manage the fryer either, but there are actually people out here who believe he worked there longer than Kamala Harris did, a woman who worked a summer at a real, open McDonalds.  I don’t know what that garbage truck thing was except to maybe claim that America is garbage.  I am wondering why he would want to rule garbage, but maybe, that says more about Trump than this nation.

 

It seems to me the thing Trump really taps into is white fear and loathing.  White people for centuries have been told and promised that we are the best, the brightest, the most valuable, the most righteous beings on Earth and that everyone else is less, much less, even animals.  What amazes me is that any white Americans have been able to move beyond that place of privilege.  Many have, but many have not.  We see that privilege among Trump supporters who don't even need an honest reason for supporting a man who literally cares nothing for them and has told them so, a man who is an insurrectionist, a breaker of his oath, a constant liar, a convicted criminal, an adjudicated rapist, and the rest.  They just know he is white, can point out to them the people they should blame for their problems, who lets them ignore history, even recent history that has RICH white people sending their former jobs overseas to countries where people of color can do the work far cheaper, who will tolerate appalling conditions American workers, even those without unions, would not tolerate. 

Our media platforms have decided that Trump is a useful tool to give their rich benefactors whatever they want, so they "sanewash" Trump and diminish whatever Harris does and has done.  It's a neat little package for whitedom. 

 Where does this put us?  Tomorrow is Election Day.  The utter ignorance and bad faith of many of our media platforms could help put Trump, an empty suit with a bunch of unscrupulous sycophants back in the White House, this time with no one on board who will stand in defense of our nation, our people, and our democracy, and against Trump’s destruction and ignorance. 

 So, as always, it's about power and money and who we want to hold those potentially destructive forces, and what we will permit them to do with them.  It's also about who Whitedom will blame and what they will do if they don't get what they believe they want and deserve. Trump and friends are much like toddlers in a bad parenting situation, toddlers who will terrorize the family if no one stops them.  These toddlers have the sensibilities of 3-year-olds but with all sorts of weapons and folks letting them do whatever damage they can.  Who in the world wants to have toddlers in charge of our government?  I don’t understand how anyone would. 

RESPONSES ON A THREAD

 By Ruth A. Sheets

I’m a regular commenter on a few threads on Substack.  The issue this weekend for Robert Reich was Trump’s bizarre speech about golfer Arnold Palmer, a legend who did not deserve Trump’s diatribe about his anatomy.  As usual, the thread took a variety of directions.  Here are a few of my comments with brief intros as to what I was actually responding to.  As you can see, we didn’t stay long with Trump’s “Penis Envy,” the title of the post.

A member talked about Trump and his shenanigans being like a placebo which never will work meaning Trump’s followers are fools, believing in placebos.  My response, Power, I am not sure you are right about placebos being BS.  The reason placebos work so well for some is that human beings have powerful brains, immune systems, and other mechanisms that enable us to change the way we think about a problem within ourselves and readjust our thinking and systems.  That is not a bad thing unless people use that as their sole means of treating a medical problem.  Faith in whatever one holds as more powerful than oneself  has been an important aspect of human survival.  What Trump is offering is not a placebo, it is just blather.  He has no positive ideas, no plans (not even concepts of plans), no understanding of how anything works, which is why he was such a lousy businessman and lousy everything else.  People want to believe in him because he is rich, loud, white, male, and a TV star they have been led to believe really functioned as he did in "The Apprentice."  The masterminds of the program have finally admitted it was an entire fraud, constantly covering up for Trump's stupidity, general ignorance, and inability to judge a person accurately.  Trumpers and Trumpettes want Trump to be that guy and to yell "you're fired" to everyone who has caused them trouble in their lives.  Those folks are afraid of life and everyone who does not think as they do.  They want them to go away, thinking life will be better if they are gone.  They have no idea of how the world works, just as Donald Trump doesn’t.  They may think Trump is a needed drug, but the truth is, he is the infection that is harming them.  He and his billionaire friends want those Trump supporters to be their permanent serfs and are grooming them for that role.  It's working for some because they show up at his rallies, listen to his BS, cheer and laugh on cue when he talks about penises, deporting their immigrant neighbors, putting everyone he doesn't like in jail, turning our military loose on Americans Trump doesn't like.  They know what he wants and they will give it to him whenever he snaps his fingers.  There is real medicine that could help them, voting for Democrats who actually care about them and don't intend to use them against their neighbors, but they prefer their fantasy.  

The thread turned to Christianity and Trump’s efforts to portray himself as Christian when one would rarely find him in a church or doing anything that would be identified as Christian.  I said this. 

Daniel, it seems that the "love" part of the message of Jesus is lost to a majority of those who claim to be Christian but have substituted Trump for Jesus in their lives. The "love" part is just too hard when resentment, anger, fear, and hatred are stronger emotions and can let someone believe it is they who are being crucified by the horrible people who just can't see how badly they have been treated and how wonderful Trump is and just how much he has done for them. They can't name a single thing except maybe "well, the economy" or "I could get groceries when Trump was in office" or "it's the border."  Of course, none of these is honest if they are even asked a follow-up question like, "so what kinds of groceries did you buy 4 years ago that you could afford during the pandemic that you can't now? Are you buying the same brands and quantities?" Then they could be asked "so, tell me how what is going on at the border has impacted you directly? Have you been eating fruits and veggies lately? Who do you think picks those for you? If the immigrants are gone, would you go to work in the fields?" When our media do not follow-up, they are taking the blather that comes from conservatives' mouths as gospel (pun intended) and are playing the Trump game for him. The media have been doing really well at it for the past 9+ years, even presenting Trump and Friends' demand for Obama's birth certificate as legitimate, "well, why not just show it!" Funny that they can't demand an honest medical report for Trump. That would be fair, but it isn't about fair it is about Trump winning no matter the cost.  A bunch of pseudo-christians are clinging to Trump's coattails hoping they'll get maybe a tiny bit of his passed gas that they will call "perfume.".

Then, somehow, we transitioned to Trump supporters believing the Bible as truth from beginning to end, commenting  that people who believe those stories are not too with it.  This was my response. 

Rob, all cultures have stories and probably most believe those stories to be true, at least up to a point.  There are people who believe in Adam and Eve and Noah and the Ark, but most, even evangelical Christians don't.  Science has crept even into their minds because they hold cell phones in their hands, live in heated, air conditioned houses, shop at stores for their needs, and can travel pretty much wherever they want and it is due to science.  They want the Bible stories to be true because they think it explains why life is so hard for them, and makes them somehow special in the world.  There is something idyllic about imagining a garden and two naked people romping around until a snake tells them something they already knew, that the "tree of knowledge" is what will make them truly human.  No one really wants to romp in such a garden forever, or live on an ark for 40 days with a bunch of animals.  They don't want most of the rest of it either, but think they want something different from what they have now because they are told the only reason they don't have it is that others have taken it from them or deny it to them.  Our billionaire class, our gilded "heroes" have promoted all of this to keep people despising each other, distracted  while the rich get richer.  No one asks them the purpose of this acquisition, except that it gives them pleasure to see others suffer if they even notice at all.  We could do better here if we were to vote out of office, those who care nothing for the people.  That is hard because so many of the people have been lied to, deceived, and ignored by those they want to keep in power.  It is almost as though they like their problems so they don't have to push themselves to try anything else.  The stories help provide comfort and a kind of history while the people really do depend on science and probably want to hate it but know they don't want life without it.