New Year, old scandal

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Watergate tourist. I know: sad.

The Last of the President’s Men by Bob Woodward
3 words: fascinating, strange, bitter
My Watergate obsession rages on.
And when Bob Woodward releases anything linked to those days, I get truly a little bit scarily excited.
So this book made me bliss out (even though it made me sad to see the word “Last” in its title — Bob, don’t let the well dry up!)
It’s the story of Alexander Butterfield, the person who blew the whistle on the taping system in the Oval Office.
I’d always wondered why he spilled the beans, and this book basically answers that question. 
Dude was ticked. 
He’d given up an important position in the Air Force to work for his old buddy Haldeman in the White House, only to discover his boss’s boss had severe social anxiety and was too nervous to meet him for weeks. (We’re talking here about the President of the United States, people.)
And that’s merely the tip of the iceberg.
One of my favorite lines from the book: “The Nixon inner circle sounded like both snake pit and kindergarten.” (27)
Oh, boy.
So, yeah, some dirt is dished here. Seems like Butterfield’s still kind of holding a grudge, which could cause a person to take this book with a grain of salt, except: Woodward pre-salted it. He acknowledges Butterfield’s lingering anger and knows it’s part of the reason he consented to share long-concealed documents he removed from the White House when he left.

Fascinating stuff.

It’s official: I’m related to a witch

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Witch House, Salem (photo credit: Library of Congress)
The Witches: Salem, 1692 by Stacy Schiff
3 words:
detailed, narrative, dense
Related to a witch! 
Actually,
I’m not. 
But my 8th great grand uncle* (a male witch—even more
unexpected!) was accused of witchcraft (and later released).
This was
vaguely horrifying and mostly thrilling. It may have been the high point of the
book for me.
Years
ago, I read Saint-Exupery: A Biography by
Stacy Schiff, and it was one of those remarkable reading experiences where a
book just drew me into its world and I wanted to stay there.
So this
new book, The Witches, enticed me powerfully.
Schiff has become a Name in the world of biography writing, and I was excited
at the thought of reading another one of her books.
And then
I got into this book, and I felt frustrated.
Here’s
why: Schiff does a masterful job of gathering and presenting an immense array
of research, so she is able to present a wonderfully detailed account of the
events of 1692 in Salem. She places the reader in the scene, which is a
terrific accomplishment.
But I
was bothered by the lack of analysis of why
this group of adolescent girls was twitching and writhing and accusing
others of being witches—and why innocent people were confessing to being
witches.
There
was no sense to it! And it was really bugging me.
And I
realized that as a reader, I needed some interpretation along the way, to help
explain the madness that was taking place in Salem—to cut my irritation with the
utter nonsense of the situation.
Relief
arrived in the final chapters, where Schiff explains some of the possible
reasons for the witch accusations and trials. But I’d
just experienced over 300 pages of descriptions of utterly bizarre behavior
without much of an explanation. I was worn out and slightly peevish.
That
having been said, I don’t want to undercut the book overall. Beyond being a
magnificent researcher, Schiff has a delightful writing style—and even manages
to add some humor occasionally, despite the grimness of her subject matter.
For
example:
“He that
summer took in thirteen-year-old Martha to see to her cure. She cantered,
trotted, and galloped about the Mather household on her ‘aerial steed,’
whistling through family prayer and pummeling anyone who attempted it in her
presence, the worse houseguest in history.” (21)
And:
“…the
devil aimed to destroy the villagers because they bickered among themselves and
their ministers. (In fairness, were those the criteria, Satan would have had
his choice of New England congregations.)” (303)
I wanted
to love the experience of reading this book. But I merely liked it. I remain un-bewitched.
*my personal
history of genealogical nerdiness is indeed quite something

Flight the Wright way

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The Wright Brothers by David McCullough
3 words:
triumphant, character-driven, family
David
McCullough is one of my guys. Two of his books appear in my blog banner, which
I realized only when I was reading his latest, about the Wright brothers.
(courtesy of Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division)
Me and
Wilbur and Orville, we go back a ways, too. 
For
years, I’ve gotten all misty-eyed and boring at cocktail parties* every
December 17, because I regale anyone within earshot with the news that it’s the
umpteenth anniversary of the first powered flight. 
I say the words “Kitty Hawk”
and “Kill Devil Hills.” 
I say the words “muslin-covered wings” and “wind tunnel.” 
I speak in awestruck tones about seeing the Wright Flyer at the Air and Space Museum.
I’m seriously
the life of any party.
So this
book had me all in a flutter. The
flutter was worth the while.
McCullough
is a wonderfully comforting writer, who is a master of his craft. His sentences
just flow.
The
other thing that makes him comforting is that he tends to tell the heroic
stories, in a tone that’s relatively wart-free. He’s not out to tell how the
Wright’s competitors tried to make them out as mean-spirited moneygrubbers
whose protection of their patents bordered on the obsessive.
No, this
book is about their hard work and their triumph. And it’s very much about their
personalities and their family.
Neither
man married, and they lived with their father and sister. Which sounds kind of
horrid, except that it sounds like they had rather a happy home life.
And they
were quiet fellows who largely kept to themselves, at least until fame struck.
So there
are quiet, wonderful moments like this one, when Wilbur was about to take off
on a demo flight in France:
“Finally,
at six-thirty, with dusk settling, Wilbur turned his cap backward, and to Berg,
Bolée, and the others said quietly, ‘Gentlemen, I’m going to fly.’” (p.
170)   
Reading
those words made me stop and clap a hand against the center of my chest and do
the heartstruck look.
So,
yeah.
McCullough
is a pleasant, talented author, and he’s writing about these quirky fellows
whom he finds pleasant and talented himself, so it’s a whirlwind of goodness.
And
despite the theme of flight, McCullough keeps it down to earth:
“Their
nephew Milton, who as a boy was often hanging about the brothers, would one day
write, “History was being made in their bicycle shop and in their home, but the
making was so obscured by the commonplace that I did not recognize it until
many years later.’” (p 113)
Warm,
heroic, and stoic.
*I avoid
cocktail parties like the plague. But anywhere else I am, I bore people with
this December 17 business. Avoid me on that date.

Huge buzz, decent book

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Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of
the Lusitania by
Erik Larson
3 words:
immediate, tragic, anecdotal
I’ve
lived my entire life as a Lusitania ignoramus.
If
you’d’ve asked me what I could tell you about it, I’d’ve said “British ship
sunk by the Germans during World War I. Americans on board, so the U.S. entered
the war.”
Yeah,
sort of right. Partial credit. Actually, it took 2 more years for the U.S. to
declare war. (Who knew?!)
So this
is an Erik Larson book, which often means we’re gonna have dual narratives.
This one’s no exception. Except: Wait—there’s more!
Here
we’re on board the Lusitania; on
board the U-boat that sunk the ship; hanging out in the code-breaking room in
England; and eavesdropping on President Wilson, who’s wooing his second wife. And
there are some side trips to shipping offices, too.
But the
main storyline is, as expected, onboard the Lusitania,
which (didn’t know this, either) had an unusually large number of children and
babies aboard during its last voyage. (Sad, guys. This stuff is sad.)
Larson
did some fine research, so we get to hear the story from several of the
survivors. He paints a detailed picture of life on the ship.
Now,
maybe this is just me, but one thing I expected from this book—since it’s
tragedy and it’s true, and I love that stuff—didn’t actually happen. I thought
I’d become slightly obsessed with the topic, Googling and YouTubing and looking
up other books about the Lusitania. 
But I find that this book is enough. And I’m not sure whether that’s because I’m not
the ideal audience [pretty sure I am] or because Larson’s narrative didn’t completely
pull me in to the story. Unlike every time I’ve read Walter Lord’s A Night to Remember, the classic
account of the sinking of the Titanic,
Dead Wake didn’t make me feel like I
was there. I’m beginning to think there’s something about Larson’s style that just doesn’t
jibe with me. 
This is
a fine book in many ways, and I liked it rather much. But I really wanted to
love it.

More doom. More gloom.

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Five Days in November by Clint Hill with Lisa McCubbin
This was a positive reading
experience, guys, even though the book is sad. I picked up this book before
bedtime one night, and ended up reading way later (way later) than I’d planned.
Though, as I’ve said
before, I know this story.  
I mean, for
goodness’ sake, we all do.  

(photo courtesy of the John F. Kennedy
Presidential Library and Museum)
I’d read Clint
Hill’s other book Mrs. Kennedy and Me and loved it. So I
wondered if this book would feel redundant. But its focus is quite different.
While the first book dealt with his working relationship with Jacqueline
Kennedy, this book is all about the trip to Texas in November 1963. And it’s filled with
photos, many of which I’d never seen.
While I’ve read a
lot of books about JFK, I tend not to focus on those days in November. Other
than William Manchester’s remarkable The Death of a President, I’ve focused on the president’s life rather than his
death.  
But the way Clint
Hill’s book brings the behind-the-scenes perspective to the story makes this
book different. It feels like someone describing a death in the family. 

And it’s heartbreaking. 

Anne Frank walking tour

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Before my fabulous friend’s
and my recent visit to Amsterdam,
a Dear Man told me about two amazing things that greatly enhanced the
experience. 

First, he alerted me to this remarkable site, which contains photos
of (and related to) Anne Frank, blended with current photos of the same sites.
Looking at these photos left me speechless.

  
Then he found the
Anne’s Amsterdam app, which allows a person in Amsterdam
to do the same thing, only in real life. For true!
So my friend and I
trekked around Amsterdam with the app, and she (who can navigate, unlike some
of us) located these sites for us to visit. 

At some of these locations, I did gasping and standing still and staring wide-eyed. Actually, I mostly did that the entire time. 

 

The school Margot attended

         A statue of Anne Frank, on the site 
          where the next photo was taken…

Anne Frank (on right)
(photo courtesy of Anne Frank Stichting,
Amsterdam)

The Frank family’s home, 
where the following footage was filmed

I don’t know how many times I’ve watched this, but it’s lots.

The bookstore where Otto Frank bought Anne her diary

The Van Pels family’s home
The thing that was interesting, too, was that the Frank family’s home didn’t bear a plaque. It appears to be just any other home in Amsterdam, and it looks like people live there. For some reason, this surprised me. You could be walking down the street, and you wouldn’t know you were looking at a place that was so significant. It’s a bit strange. 
Amsterdam is an amazing city for so many reasons, but the absolute highlight was seeing the Anne Frank House and visiting these other sites. 
It was one of the best things I’ve ever had the opportunity to do.  

Visiting the Anne Frank House

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Anne Frank House: A Museum with a Story published by Anne Frank House
Back when I first
read Anne Frank’s diary, I dreamt of visiting the house where she and her
family and the others were in hiding. And I swore that when I first went
overseas, that would be my destination. And then I wondered whether it ever
would really happen.
A decade or two
passed (or maybe three) and finally the opportunity presented itself. And I
kept repeating to myself, “Lucky, lucky, lucky…” because really: how many of us
get to actually realize a childhood dream?
And then I thought
of how Anne’s childhood dream—of publishing her story—came true, but how it
happened only after her much-too-young, much-too-terrible death. And then I
felt that awful sick feeling that comes over me when it hits me that that was
really real.
So when I visited
the Anne Frank House recently, the experience was very real and also surreal.
And when I saw the swinging bookcase, I stopped in my tracks and blinked a
whole bunch to keep from crying.
People, it’s an
emotional experience to visit that place. 
The good people at
the Anne Frank House museum have put together a remarkable website that allows virtual visits.  
But there’s nothing
that really compares to being in that space. My God. Anne’s movie star pictures
are still on the walls of her room, and one of the doorways still contains the
marks the Franks made to record their daughters’ growth in height. 
It’s devastatingly
moving.
The museum’s book, Anne Frank House: A Museum with a Story,
is a wonderful companion. It provides photos of the spaces with the furniture
in place, so you can get a sense of what it was like when the Frank family, Van
Pels family, and Fritz Pfeffer lived there. (The rooms are now devoid of
furniture.)
At the end of the
book, there are pages about the fate of each of the occupants of the secret
annex. And it was in this section that I struggled to keep it together.
A small book, but
an important one.

Anne Frank: The Diary

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(photo credit: Anne Frank Stichting, Amsterdam)
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
When I was in 6th
grade, I read a book that captivated and devastated me. And those feelings have
remained the same ever since.
The first time I
read Anne Frank’s writing, I experienced shock and amazement and horror and
wonder. Marveling that a girl my own age could write the way she wrote. Horrified
at the hatred that caused her death.
And when my book
club read her diary earlier this year, those feelings returned tenfold. Because
reading her words and her ideas as an adult reader, I realized from a
completely new perspective how remarkable she was.
And then I said
some really strong curse words because she was killed.
When I read her
diary earlier in life (all those times I re-read it), I was reading the edited
version. The first time I’d read The
Definitive Edition was this year, and I kept wondering if the reading
experience was different only because I was now an adult, or whether reading
the longer edition made that big a difference. I’ll never know. I’d’ve had to
have read the edited version this year, followed by the definitive edition, to
have gotten a good sense.

But these two
things kept making me pause and feel a sense of admiration: her insightful
commentary on herself and her situation, and her marvelous prose style. That
girl could write. 
The only saving grace is that her diary was salvaged and published. When a book becomes a stronger work upon re-reading it, you know you’re reading something of enormous power. 
The Anne Frank website states these words, and they fill me with hope for humanity: 
“Otto often concludes his letters with the words: ‘I hope Anne’s book will have an effect on the rest of your life so that insofar as it is possible in your own circumstances, you will work for unity and peace.'”
Yes.

Hellish heavens

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Hell Above Earth:
The Incredible True Story of an American WWII Bomber Commander and the Copilot
Ordered to Kill Him by Stephen Frater

OK, this story is nothing short of amazing. And the fact that it’s
true is just flipping me out.

Here’s the deal: #2 Nazi Hermann Goring’s nephew was an American
B-17 pilot. The young fellow was named Werner Goering, and he was born in the
States to parents who’d emigrated from Germany shortly before his birth.
(And the dude was a Mormon, which I think is also a little bit unexpected.)

So… the U.S.
government was a little bit weirded out about what would happen if:

– Young Werner’s plane went down and he got captured by the Nazis,
thus creating a huge p.r. coup for the bad guys, or
– Young Werner decided to join his uncle Hermann’s cause, mid-war,
in his highly valuable B-17.

So the government found a guy who’d agree to shoot Werner if
either thing were to happen. And this guy—Jack Rencher—became Werner’s best
friend.

Holy crap. That’s all
I’m saying.

So that whole story is downright unbelievable (except it’s true).

(photo credit: Library of Congress Prints & Photographs)

And then add to the mix the B-17 lore the author tosses in for
good measure.

At the EAA Museum in Oshkosh,
there’s a B-17 you can walk through (actually: crouch through) and I
can tell you, those are some seriously tight quarters. Not only that, but they
were flying at 30,000 feet, and it was hella cold up there. And then they’d get
shot at, and lots of them went down in flames. Not great.

Those were some tough fellas.

So the book doesn’t stay on course, because the author deviates
plenty to tell all kinds of great B-17 stories. And for me, that really worked.
But if you’re wanting just the narrative of Werner and Jack and the rest of the
crew, you just might frustrated by the other tales that accompany their strange
story.

But if you’ve got the aviation bug, you’ll just marvel at the ways
people can survive (and the valiant way others died to save their buddies).

Of course, in the end, we learn that some of the story was indeed
too good to be true.

But still. I’m stunned by this book.

(If this sounds intriguing, you can cruise on over to Macmillan, where there’s an excerpt available.)

The war is over

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A House Reunited:
How America
Survived the Civil War by Jay Winik
It really doesn’t get any better than this. Cruising in the car
(OK, commuting) and listening to a
born storyteller talk about a topic you find fascinating. Truly, this is good.
Many years back, I went through a Civil War phase that eventually
waned. But occasionally I have a flare-up of the old condition, and this series
of lectures about the Civil War’s final months was just the ticket.
(The Modern Scholar series: Why am I late to the party on this?
I’ve known about them for years, and yet it’s only now that I dive in. I can be
a strange creature.)
Winik is the author of the book April 1865: The Month That Saved America, which made a good-sized
splash when it was released. And he’s one heck of a good lecturer. He’s got an almost
preacherly cadence (preacherly, meaning: lyrical, not didactic) that drew me
right in. Also, he does this thing where he says, “Picture this scene if you
will…” and then he’ll describe the situation so clearly that you can indeed
visualize it. It’s a good tactic.
So this audio series is all about the way the end of the Civil War
was kind of a mini-miracle—that things worked out as well as they did (given
how horrible things were), and how close things were to not working out at all. It’s actually a bit chilling.
I mean, most of us know the story of the Lee’s surrender to Grant
at Appomattox.
And then shortly thereafter, Lincoln
was assassinated. We all know that. But the thing I sure didn’t realize was
that the South was considering launching into guerrilla warfare when they
realized they could no longer win a conventional war. Yikes, guys. It coulda
happened that way.
And if Lincoln
hadn’t been all “With malice toward none, with charity for all…” we likely
would’ve ended up with a country that never came back together fully.
Here’s a quote from Robert E. Lee that I really think will stick
with me: “I surrendered as much to Lincoln’s
goodness as I did to Grant’s armies.”
It really hits a person that so much depends on the decisions and
the character and the temperament of a few key historic figures, and if any of
those variables had been different, things could’ve gone so very wrong.
Seriously, thank goodness for those humans and their wisdom.