Book review - "In the Kingdom of Ice" by Hampton Sides

Warning: Contains spoilers!

In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette, Hampton Sides chronicles the adventure of Captain George De Long and thirty-two men, who set out to explore the North Pole in 1879.  De Long had his heart set on reaching the pole via ship, going on the flawed information from previous explorers.  

Sides manages to grip the readers' feelings when the group realizes they will never reach their goal and head back toward civilization.  That's when the real hardships begin.  Maybe we have a morbid fascination with someone else's catastrophes and can't stop reading.  Or perhaps the story opens a world to which we will (thankfully) never see.  

I was disappointed when Captain De Long's body was discovered, since he had been the central figure throughout the book.  So when he died trying to return home, it was heartbreaking.  The fact that any of them survived is a miracle.

I enjoyed reading this book.  I like how Hampton Sides presented his research on the subject, which seems to be quite extensive, given the time-frame of the story and lack of communication and records keeping.  

However, a lot of the book seemed to be rather non sequitur, but Sides managed to show why certain passages were necessary and how they related to the story.   

Although there are a lot of scientific details, the book did not get bogged down in data dumps, which is why this book is an entertaining read.

Book review - "The Radium Girls" by Kate Moore

The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women by Kate Moore delves into the lives of the women who painted dials and clocks for the U.S. military during World War I.  The paint they used contained radium, a radioactive substance that glowed in the dark, thus its use for aircraft indicators.  The girls, hired by U.S. Radium Corporation (USRC), were unaware of the dangers of the radium compound they used, and the company reassured them frequently that the substance was perfectly safe.  The girls, mostly teenagers and early-twenty-somethings, developed a technique to make their lines straight.  They put the brushes with the radium compound into their mouth so the bristles could produce the tiny lines required by the company.

Lip…dip…paint.

The girls also painted their fingernails with the compound and put it on their eyelashes, loving the glow-in-the-dark effect it had.  Their jobs were lucrative and they enjoyed having parties and wearing fashionable clothes.  Even after the war ended, there was a demand for radium painted products.

After a few years, some of the women began developing serious health problems and then dying.  It took a while for them, their dentists, and their doctors to make the connection between their jobs and the radium.  Naturally, they went after USRC, whom they claimed knew about the dangers of radium but withheld the information from them.

Naturally, the company did everything it could denying any responsibility and would not claim liability.  The women spent years fighting USRC and time, realizing that they might not live long enough to see justice served.

Moore based her book on a number of interviews with the relatives of the radium girls, and plenty of court records.  Most disturbing, though, was the details in which she describes the deteriorating health of the radium girls, chronicling their rapid declines and suffering to death meticulously.  It got rather stomach-churning in some instances to read what was happening to these women.  In fact, there were times in the book, I thought Moore might be putting too much detail in their symptoms but it does illustrate how poorly these women were treated by their employers, doctors and even townsfolk. 

What is chilling about this book is the corruption of the USRC to deny these girls the lives they should have had all for the sake of making a buck.  The dangers of radium had been known since 1901 when the Curies first discovered it.  The company knew of those dangers but deliberately lied to the girls to cover their complicity.

Sound familiar?

Book review of "Still So Excited!" by Ruth Pointer and Marshall Terrill

One must not criticize an autobiography, especially when the author has laid out their life and experiences with the ugly truth.  To criticize would be to judge that person and we are not to judge one another.  It takes an amazing amount of strength to put those hardships, bad/catastrophic decisions and acts that lack common sense out there for everyone to read. 

But that’s what Ruth Pointer did, in her autobiography Still So Excited!: My Life as a Pointer Sister written with Marshall Terrill, who has written biographies of many celebrities. 

I became a huge fan of theirs when they released their Break Out album which was the apex of their career.  But to read the struggles Ruth and her sisters Anita, June and Bonnie went through to even get their first album The Pointer Sisters.  Their success began to build after its release but went through some highs and lows.  With an emphasis on the highs. It seemed that once fame and success hit, so did the drugs and alcohol.

Ruth divulges everything and does not hold back when discussing her additions to cocaine and crack.  How her addictions led to four failed marriages, major rifts between sisters and letting people take advantage of her and her sisters.  Who knows what we would do if we found ourselves in those situations? 

She still holds some bitterness and anger against the people who kicked her father out of the church he built from the ground up and established a congregation.  We can usually forgive someone who has wronged us, but when someone wrongs a person we love, like a parent, spouse or sibling, those hurt feelings might never go away. 

Ruth talks about the night she decided she had had enough of the drugs and alcohol and decided to go sober.  That was in 1985 and she has been clean and sober ever since.  Unfortunately, the same could not be said about June or Bonnie.  Ruth doesn’t mention if Anita had any problems with drugs, alcohol or husbands.  It almost sounds as if Anita was the only sister who did not have the same troubles as the other three.

Although June was on a downward spiral, they managed to release albums until the 1990’s with Only Sisters Can Do That being their final album of original material.  None of them came close to the success as Break Out.

It’s heartbreaking to think of what could have happened if June had managed to clean up.  Would they still be making beautiful music?  Again one cannot judge her since she experienced a horrific, terrifying ordeal as a teenager.  Ruth mentions more than once this incident might have unhinged her for the rest of her life.  Who knows what demons tormented her all her life?

Ruth is still out there performing with her daughter Issa and granddaughter Sadako and still so excited.  And she just can’t hide it!

This is an amazing book, albeit heartbreaking and sad in someplaces, yet uplifting and positive!

Book review - "Pirate Women" by Laura Sook Duncombe

The introduction to Pirate Women: The Princess, Prostitutes and Privateers who Ruled the Seven Seas, author Laura Sook Duncombe makes it clear there were plenty of women pirates throughout history but their stories have been suppressed and ignored because of men!  So is this a book regaling the exploits of female pirates who have been ignored by history or does the author have a chip on her shoulder and wants to make a point?  To me, the answer is both.  She even cites pirate historian extraordinaire David Cordingly who expressed doubt that Anne Bonny and Mary Read could have lived aboard a pirate ship.  Duncombe writes:

“When even a historian covering women sailors refuses to acknowledge that women pirates existed, there is a problem in the field.”

Laura honey, Cordingly isn’t doubting their existence. He (and many others) find it difficult that Bonny and Read could have kept their identities secret from so many men in the cramped, overcrowded decks of pirate ships. 

If an author discussing female pirate history misunderstands a simple statement, what else was taken wrong?

It is clear that Duncombe has done her research and reports on obscure women pirates but does her readers a disservice by frequently digressing to figures who are fictional or who’s existences are not verifiable.  Probably a quarter of the women she writes about are only legends.  Why waste our time on fairy tales if you’re wanting to defend the existence of real women pirates?

Beyond that, Duncombe’s definition of ‘female pirate’ is broad in the sense as it pertains to women who did not very nice things when a ship is involved.  One example is her telling of Jeanne de Montfort who raised an army to reclaim a duchy for her son.  Since she used a ship to “steal” the duchy that means she’s a pirate, right?  When you have to justify your definition and ask the question, perhaps this wasn’t a great example to use for illustrating women pirates.

As I mentioned earlier, Duncombe does give examples of women pirates who for whatever reason have been lost in history.  Whether these omissions are deliberate sabotage by men or not, she does not make any conclusions but the book reads as if  the author has an axe to grind. 

Book review - "Red Moon Rising" by Matthew Brzezinski

Years ago, I read James Oberg’s awesome book, Red Star in Orbit, which chronicled the Soviet Union’s space program and its competition against the United States’ newly formed NASA, up to the beginning of the Space Shuttle program.  Brzezinski’s work, Red Moon Rising: Sputnik and the Hidden Rivalries That Ignited the Space Age, reads as a prequel to Oberg’s but from the political side of the situation.

After WWII, the Soviet Union struggled to get back on its feet after the devastation and consumption of its resources.  However, in the United States, life could not have been better.  The economy was booming.  WWII hero Dwight Eisenhower was in the White House and the US had a large arsenal of missiles ready for military purposes if the need should arise.

The Soviet Union had only a handful.  Nikita Khrushchev, First Secretary, wanted to close that gap.  He was not interested in space.  He just did not want to appear vulnerable and defenseless if the Americans were to launch missiles at them.

Sergei Korolev managed to get Khrushchev to consider putting a satellite in orbit, one that could carry warheads into space where they could be launched to anywhere on the globe with impunity.  With Khrushchev’s blessing, the Chief Designer (as Korolev is referred to in Brzezinski’s work) proceeds to accomplish what no one had done before.  Successfully put an artificial satellite in orbit around the world.

Brzezinski follows Korolev’s journey through set-backs, financial difficulties, disasters, rivalries and mounting pressure from all sides.

I found it humorous that Korolev and Khrushchev did not immediately understand the impact of what they had done.  Not until the whole world reacted with awe at Earth’s new artificial satellite.

Brzezinski did stumble in the epilogue.  He states that when the Chief Designer died in January 1966, “Russia’s moon dreams died with Sergei Pavlovich Korolev”.  As any student of history will recall, during the 1960’s, the space race between the US and the USSR rose to fever pitch and ran hot and heavy from Yuri Gagarin’s 1962 orbital flight until Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon in 1969.

Despite this, the book is an important read for anyone interested in space history.

Book review - The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan

I started reading this twice before but always got side-tracked or some other excuse, and put it aside.  So after reading two previous non-fiction books which take place during the same generation.  I decided to tackle Timothy Egan’s The Worst Hard Time.  This work centers on the 1930’s Dust Bowl, where over-plowing and careless use of resources created one of the biggest man-made environmental disasters ever.

In the late 1920’s and early 30’s, people swarmed to the Oklahoma and Texas Panhandles, northeast New Mexico, southwest Kansas and southeast Colorado.  The native Americans had been routed from the area (again) and “great American hunters” had decimated the bison almost to extinction.  The path was paved for white farmers to make their way to endless free land, grasslands for miles with no trees in sight.

It seemed like a boon to anyone trying to get rich and establish a huge farm spread.  Then acres of land were being plowed and turned over by the millions.  An area half the size of England had been turned into wheat farms.

It was good while it lasted, maybe two years.  Then the rains stopped and the stock market crashed.  All of a sudden, wheat sold at a fraction of its cost to harvest it.  Bumper crops in Russia and elsewhere helped drive the price down as well.  At the start of the 1930’s, people in the northeast starved while tons of grain rotted on the ground in Oklahoma.

This was just the beginning of the Dust Bowl.  The destruction of the top soil and the hearty grasses that could withstand extremes in weather holding it in place left soil open to the wind and elements.  Egan’s description of the years of drought, frequent sandstorms that blotted out the sun, and the desperation of the people as they watched family members suffer and die from dust pneumonia is heart-wrenching and the reader can almost feel grit between his teeth.

Egan’s book is also a testament to the human spirit, determined to go on, not letting the fury of Mother Nature’s revenge run them out of their homestead.  He took first-hand accounts from the survivors of the Dust Bowl who remember those terrible years as if they were last week.

Book review - Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann

One of the comments on the dust jacket of this book describes it as “emotionally devastating” and I found that to be an understatement.  David Grann’s book covers the 1920’s northeast Oklahoma when the Osage Indians were sitting on one of the richest oil reserves in the world.  Just two or three generations prior, the government relocated hundreds of thousands of native Americans to Oklahoma, the infamous Trail of Tears.

The idea was to move the native Americans to an area of the country where it was arid, rocky, hilly and the soil was not conducive to growing crops.  No one else wanted it so why not give it to the “Indians”?

It sounded like a good idea to the American government and white people until oil was discovered on this land.  Soon the Osages were riding in chauffeured limousines, building huge houses and turning small towns such as Gray Horse and Fairfax into thriving cities.

But wealth like that is going to draw trouble.  With the help of corrupt the American and Oklahoma governments, the white people began scheming on how they could get their hands on all that money.  Although plots were woven to inherit or control Osage lands, some decided to take a faster route and resorted to murder.

Molly Burkhart’s sister disappeared suddenly.  Her body was found several days later, badly decomposed.  The cause of death was determined to be a bullet fired into the back of her skull.  Despite no exit wound, the bullet was never located. 

More Osages were killed in this manner, but others were poisoned.  Whether the plan was outright violence or more insidious, the goal was the same.  The Osage had little help from law enforcement and virtually from the government.  Here is where the emotional devastation comes in, as the extreme injustice is allowed to flourish with impunity.  Corruption was everywhere and the Osage powerless to defend themselves, robbed of their wealth.

Grann unravels the most diabolical schemes that involved Molly Burkhart, her sisters, mother and even her children.  Grann’s book begins to read like an Agatha Christie novel with twists, turns and surprises that would impress the Queen of Mystery herself.

The bad part is this is no cozy mystery.  It is a documented story of greed, racism and murder.

Book review - "Day of Deceit: The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor" by Robert Stinnett

Okay, let me first start by saying I did NOT finish this book.  I barely started the second chapter when I had to put it down.  The title should really say "The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor according to Robert Stinnett."  Stinnett makes it clear in the foreward that he blames FDR for blatantly provoking Japan into attacking Pearl Harbor and knew ahead of time without question the Japanese attack on December 7, 1941.   Other authors of books I have read on this subject manage to stay objective and state the facts without a certain bias.  Stinnett is not one of these.  From the beginning, he sets out stating FDR is guilty and presents the facts, skewed as they are, to prove FDR's perfidy.

Stinnett ignores the fact that the U.S. was critical of Japan's involvement in China and had made numerous attempts to defuse the situation.  As last resorts, U.S. began to cut off trade to Japan, decreasing and then stopping shipments of oil and metal.  This made a huge impact on Japan and they felt they had no choice to retaliate. 

FDR and his staff were certain this would goad the Japanese into an act of aggression but stood their  ground.  They expected an attack but thought it  would be the Philippines or Guam. 

Stinnett's own soapbox and personal vendetta are clear in his writing and wants to do anything, including leaving out certain details, to force the reader into believing him.

Book review - Pearl Harbor Betrayed by Michael Gannon

It’s futile to critique or say something negative about Michael Gannon’s excellent book on the political climate and subterfuge taking place between the United States and Japan in the first eleven months of 1941.  Cannon based his work on documents surrounding the events that led to the December 7 attack on Pearl Harbor when they were unsealed sometime prior to 1999.  

Apparently other books preceded Gannon’s and lay blame on the shoulders of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Admiral Husband Edward Kimmel (in charge of the naval forces at Pearl Harbor) and General Walter Campbell Short (in charge of the Army there).  Gannon meticulously addresses those points and manages to dispel them with the facts presented.  And he’s not the only one to take notice.  After the attack, investigations publicly blamed Kimmel and Short for “allowing” the attack to take place, but after the documents were unsealed, Congress posthumously exonerated both Kimmel and Short from blame.

We will probably never know all the facts though since many documents were destroyed after the war.

Gannon boils it down to a catastrophic breakdown in communication.  Among his examples:  Admiral Kimmel not being informed of the collapse of US-Japan negotiations, the intelligence being gathered wasn’t accurate but being passed on as truth (sounds familiar, doesn’t it?), and the infamous McCollum memorandum.

Gannon presents the facts and urges the readers to make their own conclusions.  The only critique I have of Gannon’s work is that it is not an easy read.  He writes well and his presentation is spectacular but I had to re-read several passages to understand his meaning.

I appreciate the work even more now I realize over 2400 men and women were not sacrificed just to pull America into WWII.

Book Review - In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick

I purchased "In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex" by Nathaniel Philbrick, years ago but didn’t pick it up to read it until I saw it had been made into a movie, to be released December 2015.  It is an interesting book and an easy read, if not uneasy at times.  The true tragedy of the story starts after a sperm whale rams and sinks the Essex.  The men scramble to salvage what they can from the damaged vessel before she is completely lost.

Nathaniel Philbrick relies heavily on the eyewitness account of Thomas Nickerson, the cabin boy on the Essex, discovered in 1980.  Owen Chase, the first mate, published his story with the help of a ghostwriter only nine months after being rescued.  Other survivors also wrote their accounts but they aren’t as well-written, lacking the “authority and scope” of Chase’s account.

Philbrick doesn’t pull any punches when describing the suffering and overwhelming despair of the survivors as they have to resort to eating the corpses of their dead comrades, and then living with that memory for the rest of their lives.  Some of the details get gruesome but it is the reality of their story, disgusting or not.

 

The author notes at the beginning of the book that this is the true story that inspired Herman Melville's "Moby Dick", but where Melville's story ends, with the whale sinking the ship, Philbrick's story begins.  I haven't read "Moby Dick" yet, but I'm sure he didn't include the amount of murder and cannibalism Philbrick did.