I never thought of myself as a ‘reviewer’. I’ve always said that I liked to read and then write snarky comments about books I’d read. Over the years, I made snarky comments about 843 books. Some I despised, but I did like most of them enough to purchase them in the first place.
I thought about dragging all of the old comments to the new, improved website, but then I decided I’d rather not. However, I have listed below comments I made about forty of the books I particularly liked and wanted to recommend to others. Just keep in mind that some of these comments were written twenty years ago.
1491 by Charles C. Mann (2006) I’m going to go out on a limb and say that this might be the most important book I’ll read this year. If you didn’t already know any of the following, maybe you should pick it up, too:
* In 1491, there were more people living in the Americas than in Europe.
* Smallpox brought by the Europeans really did kill 95 percent of the Indian population-usually before they ever laid eyes on a European. *The bison population had been held in check by the Indians. The massive bison herds that are such a staple of the ‘pristine’ West did not come into being until after the Indians who controlled their population died off.)
*’Indians’ really do prefer to be called “Indians”.
* There were cities in the Americas, such as Tenochtitlan, that were not only larger than any contemporary European city, they also had running water, beautiful botanical gardens and immaculately clean streets.
* Native Americans transformed their land so completely that Europeans arrived in a hemisphere already massively “landscaped” by human beings.
Whatever your environmental or civil rights politics might be, you really should be aware of the incredible advances in Native American scholarship that have taken place in recent years. Check it out.
An Unpardonable Crime (2005) is, as they say, a regular page-turner. Set in London in the early 1800’s, it speculates on-among other things -the relationship between 12-year-old Edgar Allen Poe and his estranged father. Andrew Taylor has done a masterful job of capturing the feel and pace of the time. The protagonist seldom makes a move before eating and relieving himself. I respect that. I enjoyed it thoroughly, and I don’t even regret that it kept me up until 4:00 one morning. Well done.
Back to Blood by Tom Wolfe (2012) The question before us is, “How relevant is Tom Wolfe to today’s world?” Clearly, I’m in no position to answer this question, but as always, I’ll tell you what I think. I think he’s as relevant as he’s ever been. Cop out? I don’t think so. I never thought of him as cutting edge, but lots of people thought that books like Bonfire of the Vanities and A Man in Full perfectly captured times and places like Wall Street during the boom and Atlanta in the glory days of real estate. Maybe they did. While he captures lots of details around the edges perfectly, the books themselves were-let’s say melodramatic. Back to Blood is the same. In the cultural petri dish that is Miami, we’re told on several occasions that Miami is the only city in the world where a majority of residents moved there from somewhere else. (I would have thought that Washington, DC also fell into this category, but I’m sure that Mr. Wolfe did his homework.) As I said, Wolfe nails the details. And also as usual, he tells a story that is as hard to swallow as the two-day old croissant at The Versailles. It took a while to figure out where the book was going, but once it became apparent that the answer was “nowhere in particular,” I relaxed and enjoyed it a lot.
The Churchill Factor by Boris Johnson (2014) It never occurred to me that this book would be a contender for the coveted title of my Favorite Book of the Year. I’m not what you’d call an aficionado of Winston Churchill, and I’ve generally considered Boris Johnson to be something of a flake. I still suspect Boris is a flake, but I have to admit he’s written the most user-friendly biography of Winston Churchill I’ve seen. That’s not to say that it’s the most encyclopedic: That honor belongs to one Winston Spenser Churchill, who always made sure that he committed his side of any story to history. Rather than the details of his life, Johnson is more interested in what made Winston tick. Why was he always the most dynamic person in any room, in addition to being the smartest. Johnson puts it down to Churchill’s intelligence and energy. Of all the politicians of his generation, Churchill was not just the best speaker, the best writer, the best joke-maker, the bravest, the boldest and the most original. It was crucial to the Churchill factor that he was the biggest policy wonk you ever saw. See what I mean? This book is immensely readable, and if you are one of the couple-hundred million or so people in the United States who doesn’t know much about Winston Churchill, this is a book I can’t recommend highly enough. As Mr. Johnson says, Churchill matters today because he saved our civilization. And the important part is that only he could have done it.
The City of Lost Fortunes by Bryan Camp (2018) If you follow this page at all (I know you don’t, but I can dream), you know that I seldom gush about a new writer. But a new voice has arisen in New Orleans, and I’m very excited to tell you about him. Bryan Camp starting writing The City of Lost Fortunes in the back seat of his parents’ car when they were evacuating New Orleans prior to Hurricane Katrina. Considering that was thirteen years ago, I’m not sure how prolific he’s going to be in the future. But if his first book is any indication, we can look forward to good things. Not since the Vampire Lestat was haunting the cemetery across from Commander’s Palace has the New Orleans vampire/zombie/ voodoo/demigod community been presented so entertainingly. Mr. Camp expertly walks the tightrope between reality and fantasy as he tells the story of a son of a god named Jude Dubuisson, whose curious supernatural talent is that he can find lost things. He’s been in a funk since Katrina, spending most of his time at a card table selling his services to tourists who’ve lost their earrings. Jude’s inertia has left a hole in the demigod community, which like nature, abhors a vacuum. The book unfolds as every god in the city (many more than you might imagine), vampire, zombie, and voodoo priest complicate his efforts to solve murders and reclaim his lost destiny. I loved this book. At the risk of sounding like somebody’s grandfather, I regret that every paragraph held an f-bomb or two. But I got over it, and although I would advise you to keep the book away from the kids, I think you’ll like it, too.
Dancing to the Precipice: Lucie de la Tour du Pin and the French Revolution by Caroline Moorehead (2010) Like manna from heaven, this book showed up unannounced and unbidden in a Royal Mail envelope from a publisher in London. I’m sure it’s available here or else, it would have made no sense to send me a copy. In any event, I was happy to get it. (And if you’re a publisher who’s looking for some free publicity, I’m always happy to get a free reader.) Lucie Dillon, Marquise de la Tour du Pin (tower of the pine) was the child of second cousins in the Dillon family of Roscommon and the wife of Frederic, a diplomat in service in both the ancien regime and under Napoleon. Lucie might have been a footnote to history had she not taken up her pen and written her own memoir. Said memoir, according to the author, has not been out of print since it was published in the early 1800’s. So even though Mme de la Tour du Pin seems perfectly able to speak for herself, she now has a wonderful autobiography to fill in the parts of her life that she herself might have blushed to speak of. Ms. Moorehead is outstanding writer, and she tells the story of Lucie and her age in a most compelling and readable manner. If you have any interest in the Revolution and its aftermath, and you’d like to know how it specifically impacted the lives of those who fled from it and/or lived through it, I recommend Ms. Moorehead’s excellent book to you.
The Daughters of Mars by Thomas Keneally (2013) I won’t read a better book this year, and neither will you. Mr. Keneally’s last book, a little number called Schindler’s List, did rather well. Reading The Daughters of Mars, you can already see the movie in your head. Two sisters from the Australian outback go into nursing and sign up for service in WWI. Despite early differences, they both find themselves in the same nurse regiment shipped off to the Gallipoli front. We follow the girls through the War to End All Wars. Keneally’s writing is sublime, of course, and the end of the book will leave you heartbroken and uplifted at once. I can’t recommend it highly enough.
The Day Freedom Died: The Colfax Massacre, The Supreme Court, and the Betrayal of Reconstruction by Charles Lane (2008) When I was working for the first Republican Governor of Louisiana since Reconstruction in the early 1980’s, the head of the State Police took me aside and told me that whenever I planned to travel through Grant Parish (on the main drag between Shreveport and Alexandria), I was to be careful, never speed, never stop, and call the State Police immediately if I ever got stopped by the authorities. At the time, I thought he was just telling me to watch out for speed traps, but the more I came to know about Colfax and its surrounding parish, the more I began to suspect that the dangers were more ominous than a speeding ticket. Reading Mr. Lane’s book twenty-five years later made me realize that outsiders were never particularly welcome in Grant Parish. The book’s premise is that “reconstruction began with a glorious promise–that America could emerge from the Civil War as the world’s first true interracial society.’ Maybe so. But it ended amid bloodshed and crass political bargaining. The Colfax Massacre was a pivotal moment in this tragic saga. Mr. Lane does a wonderful job of interpreting the obscure and often contradictory facts of this sad tale.
Dead Wake by Erik Larson (2015) Mr. Larson, author of great books like In the Garden of Beasts and The Devil in the White City, should probably keep his politics to himself, but he brings his impressive talents to an investigation of the torpedoing of the Lusitania in 1915. The research seems to be impeccable, and the writing is first-rate. Most people think that the U-Boat attack on the Lusitania prompted America’s entry into World War I, but as Mr. Larsen points out, that didn’t happen for another two years. The attack did, however, set wheels into irreversible motion. I’ve always wondered why the Lusitania never seemed quite as glamorous as the sinking of Titanic three years earlier. Now I realize that an attack by other humans in broad daylight in plain sight from the Irish headlands isn’t quite as romantic as the notion of hitting an iceberg on a cold night in the middle of the ocean. And of course, Titanic was on its maiden voyage and alleged to be unsinkable. Nobody was under those kinds of illusions three years later. Mr. Larson has done it again. Check it out.
The Devil’s Punchbowl by Greg Iles (2009) I’ll always appreciate John Grisham, but Greg Iles is Mississippi’s best living writer. (Note: Mr. Iles passed away in 2025.) In the Acknowledgements of his most recent book, Iles points out that his beloved Natchez isn’t as dangerous as his book might suggest. To which I could only reply ‘How could it be?‘ In the book’s short time frame, enough crime is exposed in Natchez to keep the entire state law enforcement community busy for months. The mayhem centers around Penn Cage, a successful prosecutor/author/local boy who is now serving as mayor and perhaps the only idealist in town. Penn’s the kind of guy you like reading about, but you know that if you ever met him in real life, you wouldn’t have much to discuss and you might just hate him. He’s nobody’s idea of a good ole boy. I promise that you’ll thank me for recommending this book to you.
Dummy Line by Bobby Cole (2008) offers further proof that everybody in Mississippi has written a book except me. (Note: Unfortunately, I’ve recently fallen into that trop.) And in this instance, it’s a really good book. In reality, Mr. Cole is an executive with the Mossy Oak hunting supply firm in West Point. This book is about–surprise!–an executive at a hunting supply firm in West Point who goes turkey hunting with his ten-year-old daughter at a deer camp somewhere in the wilds of West Alabama. Before they have a chance to pop a cap on some gobbler’s ass, they find trouble in the persons of practically every redneck ex-convict between Tuscaloosa and Livingston. The book is a well-written page-turner that kept me awake and reading until dawn. That’s about the highest praise I can offer any book.
Everybody Behaves Badly: The True Story Behind Hemingway’s Masterpiece The Sun Also Rises by Lesley M. M. Blume (2016) I’ve never seen a novel cited in the subtitle of another book until now. Curious. Be that as it may, Papa Hemingway’s ill-fated road trip to the San Fermin feria of 1923 with some dodgy friends is indeed the subject of Ms. Blume’s excellent book. I’d thought that this material had been beaten to death over the decades, but Ms. Blume has made it fresh and informative. And while you might not actually care whatever happened to the women who were the inspirations for Lady Brett Ashley, Frances Clyne, and the various low-lifes who played the male characters in the book, it was fun to read about how the rest of the Paris ex-pat community felt about being outed in Hemingway’s pages. Most of Hemingway’s acquaintances (not sure he really had friends) felt that while his writing was inspired, the book itself was better classified as reportage than fiction. If you’re remotely interested in the Lost Generation and those who tried to cash in on it, I think you’ll get a kick out of Everybody Behaves Badly.
Everybody’s Fool by Richard Russo (2016) Nobody’s Fool–starring Paul Newman, Bruce Willis, Jessica Tandy, Melanie Griffith, Philip Seymour Hoffman, et al–is one of my favorite movies of all time. It’s 22 years old now, and it’s still in my regular watching rotation. Every time I see it, I find something new to love. It was based on Mr. Russo’s book of the same name, and he now takes us back to Bath, New York, and the early 1990’s. It’s about five years later. Miss Beryl (Tandy) is gone, but almost everyone else is roaming at large. Raymer the cop (Hoffman) is now chief of police in North Bath, and we travel with him through the streets of town, encountering sadistic son of a bitches–and cobras. (You know how I love cobras.) It’s a wonderful reunion with old friends and easy to imagine all of the original characters inhabiting these roles–although with the loss of Newman, Tandy and Hoffman, it’s not going to happen. I didn’t read Mr. Russo’s original book, but it seems that he might be working too hard here to sustain a level of absurdity that wasn’t in the film and may not in his first book. Sure, a small town in upstate New York could sustain a toxic waste incident, a building falling on somebody and a cobra attack in the same day, but what are the odds? Here is your summer beach book.
Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink (2014) This was widely regarded as the best book of 2013–in New Orleans, anyway, and it’s not hard to see why. For five horrible days during and in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, hundreds of patients and staff members of the Memorial Medical Center on Napoleon Avenue were trapped in the hospital, surrounded by 4-12 feet of water in the middle of the drowned city. (Personal Note: My dentist’s office was next door to the hospital, and all of my dental records were destroyed in the flood. I could fake my own death like that.) During the flood, the doctors, nurses and staff of the hospital acted heroically to evacuate and/or save the lives of dozens of patients. But shortly before all patients and staff were finally evacuated on that terrible Thursday, the number of deceased patients parked in the hospital’s chapel increased from about a dozen that witnesses saw that morning to the 45 that were evacuated the following week when emergency personnel returned to the hospital. Most of the corpses were immobile elderly patients who had been brought to the hospital for safety before the storm, and most of them had been seen alive on the morning of the evacuation. So what happened? Sheri Fink has a theory that dozens of patients were euthanized by one of the hospital’s staff doctors. Five Days at Memorial is the story of those days and the subsequent murder trial of the doctor in question. It’s a fascinating book, and by far the cream of the Katrina non-fiction crop. I can’t recommend it highly enough. (Another Personal Note: I do have one bone to pick with the author: She describes Greg Beuerman as “tall and perpetually tan.” When I read stuff like that, I wonder what else she might be lying about!)
Grant by Ron Chernow (2018) Some people who have opinions about such things have said that U. S. Grant is our most underrated president. Over the past 150 years, he’s had a bad rap because of scandals during his administration that really weren’t his fault. (He did, however, appoint the ne’er-do-wells who committed the crimes, so he’s definitely culpable to some degree.) He certainly had a life. His career had crashed and burned by the time the Civil War broke out. During the war, he revealed himself to be a brilliant tactician-even if those tactics were so mundane as to use the crushing economic advantages of the North to exhaust the South. After the war, his steadfastness in upholding the rights of newly-freed slaves in the South held the Jim Crow era off for another decade and was practically the only thing keeping the nation from sliding back into war. In recent years, Chernow’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biographies of Alexander Hamilton and George Washington have been central to the resurrection of the reputations of those Founding Fathers. I’m not sure that he will be able to stick the trifecta with Grant, as the 18th president was a quiet, humble man who never aspired to prominence-despite the fact that he was the only President between Jackson and Wilson to serve two complete terms. After the completion of his second term, he made a four-year circumnavigation of the world, during which he became the most popular man on the planet. His last achievement was the posthumous publishing of his memoirs, which became the biggest selling set of books in the 19th century.
The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea by Jack E. Davis (2017) Mr. Davis is a professor of environmental history at the University of Florida, and his book fairly oozes with his certainty that the Gulf of Mexico is a wonder of the world that humans aren’t doing their part to preserve. Mr. Davis traces the story of human interaction with the Gulf, from the Indians who lived along its shores who built shell mounds that still exist, to the Europeans who traipsed along its shores looking for treasure–oblivious to the embarrassment of riches all around them. He studies the fishermen who depend on the Gulf’s bounty for their livelihood; the oil men who depend on it for their fortunes, and Walter Anderson, the unofficial hero of the book, who asks nothing of the Gulf but to allow him to be a part of it. We’re told the stories of the birds, the fish, the reptiles and the insects that made the Gulf what it is. Mr. Davis wouldn’t be doing his job if he didn’t throw in some dire warnings about what could happen if we don’t start taking care of the 600,000 square-mile treasure that’s been handed to us. But he makes his very powerful points in a way that doesn’t make the reader want to stop reading. He even offers hope for a better, cleaner future. Even if you don’t live in a part of the country where one’s life can be divined by how one relates to the Gulf of Mexico, this book should be studied and enjoyed.
Highway 61 Resurfaced by Bill Fitzhugh (2005) For the past few years, I’ve been wondering what effect the casino industry would have on the literature of the State of Mississippi. Based on the writings of Mr. Fitzhugh, Elmore Leonard, and others, not much. These authors’ characters are just as quirky as any that Bill Faulkner ever dreamed up–and they have more interesting places to go to display their ignorance. Exhibit A is this book by Mr. Fitzhugh which is the ripping tale of Rick Shannon, a disc jockey with a passion for classic rock and a penchant for solving crimes. In his travels, he meets most standard Mississippi Delta stereotypes with entertaining results. Check it out.
Hurricane Punch by Tim Dorsey (2007) That greatest of all Bond villains, Auric Goldfinger, once said, “Once is happenstance; twice is coincidence; three times is enemy action.” So it is in literature. One humorous observer of Florida life (Dave Barry) is a bolt out of the blue; two (Carl Hiassen) is a coincidence; three (Tim Dorsey) is a genre. Mr. Dorsey’s book is hilarious. It gloriously chronicles the adventures of a Sunshine State malcontent named Serge A. Storms, who loves every single thing about the State of Florida–except the people who live there. As much as I want to praise the freshness of Mr. Dorsey’s characters and their antics, I want to caution him in equal measure not to let them get stale. I’ve almost stopped reading Carl Hiassen because he seems to be repeating the same characters and plotlines. I wouldn’t want Mr. Dorsey to fall into that trap.
In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin by Erik Larson (2001) If you can only read (or stomach) one book about Nazis this year, make it this one. Mr. Larson follows his wonderful The Devil in the White City and somewhat less wonderful Thunderstruck with an account of the early years of the Third Reich as Hitler consolidated his power. I’m delighted to say that Mr. Larson is at the top of his game. William J. Dodd, chairman of the Department of History at the University of Chicago, thought his career was in the dumps when Franklin Roosevelt made him his fourth or fifth choice to be America’s ambassador to Germany in 1933. FDR’s parting advice to his selection was to be an exemplar of humble, democratic, American values. This dictate was to work to Dodd’s disadvantage in Berlin where German officials snickered in their massive Mercedes sedans as they passed Dodd on the Unter den Linden, driving himself in the used Chevrolet he had brought with him from Chicago. Likewise, the good old boys of the American diplomatic establishment, who generally neglected to live within their own salaries and make as extravagant show as possible in their foreign appointments, were a constant source of irritation. Yet, in the end, the humble Dodd did what FDR had asked of him, and at the end of his tenure was recognized as one of the most principled diplomats in the tumultuous German capital. This is a great book about a significant time and place. Mr. Larson has researched in thoroughly and presented it wonderfully.
The Language of God by Francis Collins (2006) In the process of haunting bookstores this summer, I think I’ve seen about a hundred different books that seek to reconcile God and science. I haven’t actually read it, but my favorite title is Can a Smart Person Believe in God? by Michael Guillen. All I can say is that Mr. Guillen had damned well be better BE a smart person, or else he’s opening himself up to a lot of whoop-ass. Francis Collins most definitely IS a smart person. Among other things during the course of his career, he’s headed up the Human Genome Project. Along his life’s trajectory, he has moved from indifference to religion to agnosticism to belief. Philosophically, he’s now somewhere in the realm of C. S. Lewis and believes strongly that “the principles of faith are, in fact, complimentary with the principles of science.” Whether this is a premise you believe or would like to believe, aren’t you at least a little curious to find out?
Life and Death in Shanghai by Nien Cheng (2013-published in 1987) I’m breaking my own rules by telling you about a book that was published 25 years ago, but it’s such an extraordinary book that I would be doing a disservice by not telling you about it. Ms. Cheng was a native of Shanghai who had been an employee of the Shell Oil Company when Mao came to power in 1949. Her life and work continued to be pleasant until September 27, 1966, when the Cultural Revolution which had begun to sweep through China also began to gut her personal life. After having her home looted, she was placed in a detention center (i.e. prison) for over six years. Although distraught and malnourished, she never gave in to it and continued to protest her innocence and irritate those who would have her confess her guilt. A sticker on the cover suggests that over 1 million copies of it have been sold over the years. One of the most remarkable things about this book is where I bought it–the gift shop of the Shanghai Museum of Art. Throughout the first 500 pages or so, I could not understand how such a book–so critical of the Chinese government which is still sufficiently repressive that the paragraph I’m typing right now cannot be published on Facebook–could be available in what might be the most visible public building in Shanghai. This is a great book. If you’re interested in recent Chinese history–or just in a phenomenal story about the triumph of the human spirit, I can’t recommend this book highly enough.
Madness is Better Than Defeat by Ned Beauman (2018) I couldn’t begin to give you a sensible impression of this book. Suffice to say that Mr. Ned Beauman is an excellent writer who apparently wakes up each morning and just goes where the day takes him. Here he tells the story set in 1938, when a movie company decided to film a movie at a recently discovered Mayan pyramid in the rain forest of Spanish Honduras. When they got there, they discovered that they’d been beaten to the site (by one day) by an expedition from New York which had been dispatched to dismantle the pyramid and move it to some tycoon’s estate on Long Island. The rival groups separate camp on the pyramid and around its base and wait for the other side to give in and go home. But they don’t. The two groups, both cut off from news of the outside world, spend two decades in the jungle before matters are finally resolved. During that time, the groups are led by a former gossip columnist for a New York newspaper, and an escaped former Nazi who can’t believe his luck that he’s stumbled upon the only dolts on the planet who don’t know how WW2 turned out. If you read Madness in small doses, I suppose you’d find it hilarious. Unfortunately, that’s not the way I read books. I tend to pick them up and devour them until they’re gone-which is not a great way to read this book. The book is relentlessly inane and gives you the impression that it’s just going out of its way to be baroque. Madness is Better Than Defeat is a great read-just maybe not all at once.
Madness Under the Royal Palms: Love and Death Behind the Gates of Palm Beach by Laurence Leamer (2009) For years, I’ve been telling aspiring fundraisers that their role model should be Angela Browder Gauntt Koch Stockham (hereinafter referred to as Angela). Angela and her first husband Sonny moved from their native Montgomery, Alabama, to New Orleans in 1990 or thereabouts. They were young, attractive, rich and fun. While they might not have crashed the doorways of “old” New Orleans (I’m not even sure they wanted to), they were active in what passed for the young crowd of the city. But they grew apart and divorced in 1996. Angela didn’t need money (I know this because I think I still have a copy of her divorce decree), but she did need some structure in her life, so we hired her to be a fundraiser for the Tulane Children’s Hospital. She didn’t last long in the job. One night, a friend set her up with a date with one of the Koch brothers. They hit it off, got engaged on their fifth date, married, and moved to Palm Beach. Apparently, a couple of years later, he hit her hard enough to break the pre-nup. I mention this because the rest of Angela’s story is one of several presented in this book about people behaving interestingly in a tropical paradise. I especially recommend this book for folks who want to know if the very rich really are very different from you and me. They are.
The Measure of Our Days by William Winter (2006) The first political campaign I ever worked on was that of William Winter, who ran for Governor of Mississippi in 1967. He was–and is–the personification of a “progressive Democrat” should be. He lost that election but was eventually elected in 1979–which caused other problems for me. By that time, I was living in Baton Rouge and working as a speechwriter for Louisiana’s governor, Dave Treen. Governor Treen had some great qualities, but public speaking wasn’t one of them. As a speechwriter, it was kind of irritating to have my boss be compared with the eloquent governor next door, but as a native Mississippian, I was proud that the people of Mississippi had elected him twelve years too late. This collection of Governor Winter’s speeches, essays, and television commentaries ranging on topics from “Race and Reconciliation” and “Living and Dying” to why fraternities are good for Ole Miss, reflect a character that is intelligent, warm and thoughtful. I can safely say that his is a book I will treasure for a long, long time.
Mississippi’s Civil War by Ben Wynne (2006) As Mr. Wynne says, No matter how many monuments are built, no matter how many buildings are named, no matter how many “Southern” histories are written, no matter how many parades are held or graves decorated in the South, it is impossible to change the outcome of the Civil War. But the way the history has been told certainly has. Mr. Wynne’s book is definitely not one of the “Southern histories” he mentions. To quote the author again, If white Southerners of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries could not rationalize positive reasons that their fathers and grandfathers had gone to war in 1861, as well as a positive version of the war’s outcome, they would be forced to face two grim realities. First , their ancestors had taken up arms against the land of their birth, an act that meets most definitions of treason. In addition, because the Confederacy failed to accomplish its military objectives…, the soldiers who fought for the South had indeed died in vain. These are strong words for a native Mississippian to be saying about “The Wa-uhr”, and thank God, Mr. Wynne has the guts to say them. It is the book’s strength, and an outstanding reason to give it some of your attention.
6/19/2007 Response from author Ben Wynne:
Dear Mr. Isch, I came across the link to your book review page and just wanted to drop you a quick note and thank you for the positive remarks about Mississippi’s Civil War. Had I been asked to pick a couple of quotes to sum up what I was trying to get across in the book, I would have chosen the exact same ones you put in your review. I’d say we have gotten 95% positive feedback on the book so far, although I’ve caught a little flak from members of the “heritage crowd. I also read your review of William Winter’s book (see previous review, above) and agree wholeheartedly. I went to high school with one of his daughters, and Andy Mullins, who did the editing, was one of my high school teachers as well. They are all great people. Hope all is well in Mississippi. Best Wishes, Ben.
A New Day in the Delta by David W. Beckwith (2009) I put off reading this book for a long time because I was reasonably sure I’d hate it. Happily, I can say that I couldn’t have been more wrong. Mr. Beckwith is now retired and living in the Florida Keys, but in the late 1960’s, he spent a year on the front line of the racial revolution that swept the town of Leland, the State of Mississippi, and the nation. Mr. Beckwith was a white novice schoolteacher at an otherwise all-black school in Leland during the year that federal courts ordered schools in Mississippi to be desegregated. His memory is clear; his story is powerful and inspiring; and his writing is insightful. Apparently, Mr. Beckwith is a staunch record-keeper, a brilliant researcher and/or a memory savant. After forty years, I’m amazed that he could recall his year in the crucible in such detail. I’m also delighted. Bravo.
Once a Southern Soldier by Lee E. Wilson (2011) I’ve known Lee E. since he was just a small….well, he was never small. I guess I’ll just say I’ve known him since he was in high school. He has put his passion for Civil War history into this, the first of two books about the western campaigns of that war. As you might expect, the second book will be called Always a Southern Soldier. Once follows Bill Ayer of Duck Hill (yes, that Duck Hill) from Shiloh to Van Dorn’s raid on Holly Springs. Along the way, he takes a shot at General Sherman, spies for the Confederates, and saves the lives of Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant and her son. It’s quite a ride. My biggest concern while reading the book was that Mr. Wilson throws around the names of Mississippi towns like Duck Hill, Grenada, Oxford, Holly Springs and Corinth, but I don’t think he took into account the possibility that there might be someone in the reading community who might not know where all these places are, relative to one another. So I sent him a note and suggested a map for the second book.
One Mississippi by Mark Childress (2007) You can’t imagine how much I wanted to love this book. Mark Childress? Good writer! I liked Crazy in Alabama a lot. Mississippi public high schools in the early 70’s? This is my heritage! First paragraph about riding bikes behind the mosquito truck to get high? This is why I sincerely believe that most of the X-Men are from small towns in Mississippi. Older brother who joined the service because he’d rather be in Viet Nam than Mississippi? Nick says hello. Making out in the parking lot at Jitney Jungle? We didn’t have Jitney Jungle in my town, but it sounds about right. Living each year for the State Band Contest? Who didn’t? Not knowing that a friend is gay until he tries to crawl into bed with you? That was practically a cliche in the ’70’s. Late in the book, a line was crossed. High school boys met Cher. There was gay sex at the Interstate rest area. A car blew up. There was a shooting at school. My initial reaction was that the author was padding the book. Then I realized that–like every other book in the world–this wasn’t really my autobiography, and all was forgiven. Check it out.
Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark by Brian Kellow (2012) Maybe I shouldn’t be commenting on this book. I can’t be objective about Pauline Kael. Almost every useful thing I’ve learned about watching movies is something I learned from her. Perhaps the most important lesson was that you shouldn’t think too much about whether movies are “good” or not. You should trust your instincts about whether or not you liked it and let other people ask whether or not it’s “art.” (She also taught me that when reviewing things like movies and books, you should write like you’re talking to someone and say “you” a lot. But I digress.) For years, I told people that Nashville was my favorite movie. (I still like it, but wow, has it aged!) In reality, I think I liked it because Pauline told me to. There haven’t been a lot of bios of Ms. Kael over the years. When she was alive, people would approach her from time to time to suggest that she write her memoirs. Her response was always the same. “I already have.” What she meant was that she put so much of herself into her writing about her relationship to the movies that there wasn’t much else left to say. While that sentiment is probably true, there are nuances to her life that Mr. Kellow has done a fine job of presenting here. In a nutshell, she thought of her family as her staff and her staff as her family. You don’t have to love Pauline Kael to appreciate this book, but it does help if you like movies.
The Perfect Plan by Pete Boone (2009) So. What do Baton Rouge business leader Milton Womack (a real person), East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney Doug Moreau (another real person), the Archangel Michael (a real archangel), Satan, the Antichrist and a fictional Irish Setter named Molly all have in common? (Take your time. I’ll wait.) They’re all characters in this vision of the End of Days by former Ole Miss Athletic Director Pete Boone. Less a book and more like Mr. Boone’s personal testament, the book offers a perplexing plot that I don’t think Mr. Boone quite thought through completely. Suffice to say that the Archangel Michael appears to an Ole Miss graduate and orders Pete to save the world. (Stop laughing.) And he does. (But doesn’t saving the world from the Antichrist really go against God’s prophesy? Just a thought.) I admire Pete Boone a lot, and I look forward to whatever he endeavors to write in the future–as long as someone besides SpellCheck is doing the editing.
Road of Bones: The Siege of Kohima 1944 (2010) by Fergal Keane Have you ever been to the Lennoxlove Book Festival? Me neither. Lennoxlove is a grand old Scottish house near the town of Haddington, twenty miles east of Edinburgh. The festival is always held the third weekend in November, which means that it usually ends the day before I get to Haddington to have Thanksgiving with friends. One of this year’s highlights was Fergal Keane reading from his new history of the siege of Kohima, which he calls the last great battle of imperial Britain. Happily, my friend went to hear him speak and got me a copy of the book. (Which was only fair as I’d cajoled John Grisham into writing a 100-word note to her in a first edition of The Firm. But I digress.) If you never heard of this battle in far off India, it might have something to do with the facts that: 1) the only Americans participating in it were airmen who were dropping supplies into the remote town near the India-Burma border; and 2) it was wrapping up about the same time that D-Day was unfolding in Normandy. The book is well-researched and written, and you’ll find it hard to put down. You might disagree with some of its assertions–for example, this undeniably fierce but poorly supplied Japanese force might really have been capable of marching deep into India and knocking it out of the war at such a late date in 1944. In any event, you’ll find Mr. Keane’s arguments compelling. If you’re a student of history, I recommend it highly.
Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton?s Doomed Campaign by Jonathan Allen and Annie Parnes (2017) I’ve said a number of times that I was so consumed by the Baton Rouge mayoral campaign in 2016 that I paid little attention to the Presidential campaign that was (finally) held that same day. Every time I did look in on it, I was assured by our wonderful media that the election was in the bag for Hillary and that there was no point in giving it too much attention. I was so exhausted on Election Night that I went straight home from a party I’d been staffing and fell into bed at 11:00. I had no idea who the new President would be until I turned on the radio the next morning at 7:00. Even then, I had to hear the news a couple of times to be sure I’d heard it correctly. I wasn’t shattered (far from it), but I was shocked. What the heck happened? Shattered is fascinating, and–unique in reportage since the election–puts the blame for Clinton’s loss squarely where it belongs–on the shoulders of one Hillary Rodham Clinton. Since the election, listening to Clinton and her supporters blame everything and everyone for the loss has raised my mild case of schadenfreude to something approaching an epidemic of contempt. Allen and Parnes provide proof on practically every page that HRC was just never someone with either the charisma or the character to be President. Three points came through the narrative to me: 1) It would be interesting to know how much of the material that is not complimentary to Mrs. Clinton would have made it into this book if she had won? I suspect not much. 2) It’s telling how Clinton has said since the end of the campaign that her campaign “did everything right” and the election was stolen from her–despite evidence to the contrary; and 3) why the hell didn’t we hear about any of this stuff while the election was going on? The answer to the last question is that the authors say they conducted all their interviews “on background, promising that none of what they found would be printed until after the election. Shattered is fascinating.
South of Broad by Pat Conroy (2009) OK. Here’s a metaphor for you: South of Broad is the South. It can lift you up in a hundred ways and break your heart in a hundred more. Few people in the history of our planet can romance a sentence like Pat Conroy, and some of the passages in this book will bring tears to your eyes and laughter to your soul. And yet, you don’t believe in what’s going on for a minute. I also grew up in the South during the time span that this work covers, and while the blacks, the whites, the gays, the straights, the rich, the poor, the educated and the ignorant could and did form lasting bonds of friendship during those times, ALL of them didn’t form ONE group that stuck together for decades as they do here. There’s lots of character development going on in this book (always a good sign) and lots of plot–but somehow it seems like too much. And yet. I recommend this book to you. Mr. Conroy’s writing lifts this soap opera to the heavens, and I’d hate for you to miss it.
Suspect by Robert Crais (2013) Love dogs? Of course, you do. You’re going to love Maggie, a German Shepherd (I always want to call them Alsatians) Army dog, who was shipped home after her beloved trainer was gunned down in an ambush, despite her best efforts to protect him. She makes her way to the K-9 division of the Los Angeles Police Department and a trainer named Scott, who himself is suffering the stress of losing a partner in action. They’re quite a pair, and I think you’ll like them both as much as I did. In the process of getting on with their lives, they solve a murder and make new friends. It’s a great trip. Check it out.
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin (2005) Sometime when you’ve got a week on your hands, check out this epic history of the administration of Abraham Lincoln. It’s a long, long read, but I can guarantee that it will be well worth your time. As usual, Ms. Goodwin does a masterful job of presenting her complex subject. The highest praise I can give the book is that I’m planning to read it again at some point. (Historical Trivia: Did you know that during the Siege of Vicksburg, the anti-semetic general and later president U. S. Grant signed an order compelling all Jews to leave the State of Mississippi? Lincoln rescinded the order within a month. Somehow, that wasn’t covered during my Mississippi History class in the seventh grade.)
True Evil by Greg Iles (2006)
Mr. Iles does not present the people of Mississippi and Louisiana as any better or worse than we are, and I suppose that’s about as much as one can hope for in the world. As he has in the past, he tells a tale about sex, drugs and money as well as practically anyone writing today.
The Two Sisters Cafe by Elena Yates Eulo and Samantha Harper Macy (2010) This is a book that I’ve been waiting for 25 years. Well, not THE book I’ve been waiting for–but A book. Let me explain. As a kid growing up in Batesville, one of my babysitters was a neighbor named Harriet Harper. Apparently, babysitting me wasn’t the height of her aspirations because as soon as she was able to do so, she left Batesville and moved to New York, where she became a successful actress under the name Samantha Harper. She was in Oh, Calcutta! on Broadway and in Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman) on television. She eventually married a fine actor named Bill Macy and moved to California. She and Bill would come back to Batesville from time to time, and sometimes, they’d come to my mother’s open house at Christmas. On one of those occasions, she met my precious Aunt Arralee, who told her that she had been named for an aunt named Arralee Charity Craig Matthews. In delight, Samantha said that some day she’d write a book with a character named Arralee Charity Craig Matthews in it. Alas, this is not that book. But while we wait for that opus, this is a fine substitute. Gentlemen, this is not a book for you. It’s chick lit of the first order, and perhaps new age chick lit at that. As it is set in rural Kentucky in 1952, I really doubt whether the women in its pages were as aware of their chakras as they claim. But, having said that, it is delightful on a number of levels, and like actress Sharon Gless, who gives a blurb on the back cover, I can easily see this book being turned into a television series and running forever. While there is an overarching story arc, there are also a number of nice little vignettes that could be adapted for a compelling series. If that happens, I hope there’ll be room for Arralee Charity Craig Matthews.
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand (2011) It’s a Wonderful Life. Especially if you’re Louis Zamperini, son of immigrants who settled in Torrance, California after the Great War. In high school, a reluctant principal was persuaded to let Louie run track rather than be expelled from school. And run he did–all the way to the 1936 Berlin Olympics, where he finished eighth and persuaded Goebbels to take his picture with Hitler. While training for the 1940 Olympics in Tokyo, WWII broke out, the Olympics were cancelled. Ernie did his duty by signing up to become a bomber pilot. When his plane was shot down over the Pacific in 1943, he and two other members of the crew floated 2000 miles across the Pacific in a life raft. Along the way, he learned to fend off and eventually to capture and eat–sharks by punching them in the nose. When he was eventually “rescued” after 46 days on the raft (a record), he was taken to a series of prisoner of war camps across the Pacific and eventually in Japan. And this is just the first half of the book. Ms. Hillenbrand is a master, and she has chosen her subject well. Ernie Zamperini’s is an American story that will make you glad to be alive. And that’s pretty good.
Under Magnolia by Frances Mayes (2014) When last heard from, Frances Mayes (Under the Tuscan Sun) was lolling about in her courtyard at the Villa Bramasole in Tuscany. She’d completed her renovation of the ruined villa, come to terms with their neighbors, and met a young man whom we were led to believe would become a significant other. Speaking on behalf of 99.99% of us, we were so jealous that we just wanted to stab her to death. So what did she do after that? Well, naturally, she went on a book tour to Oxford, Mississippi, spent a night at the Ole Miss Motel, had a revelation. She called her husband to say that she wanted to move back to the South. WHAT THE HELL? Is she insane? No, as it turns out, she’s just a child of the South who like, hundreds of thousands before her, decided that after making something of herself somewhere else in the world, she had to come back home. Under Magnolia is a memoir of her early years in the 50’s and early 60’s in the postage stamp-sized town of Fitzgerald, Georgia, and later at Randolph-Macon College and the University of Florida. Naturally, her grandfather and grandmother are Big Daddy and Big Mama; naturally, her parents are mutually destructive alcoholics; and of course, there’s a saintly maid without whom she would have been lost as a child. But I oversimplify. The book isn’t at all cliche. Mayes in an astounding writer. I wanted Southern words I’d missed in California. Teeniny, cussed out, pray tell, cut the light, mash the bug, hired out, greased lightning, yo-ho, dogtrot, snake boots, done did, doodly-squat, bellehood, fixing to, take ahold, chirrun, barking mad, young ‘uns, hie, I swan. How can you top that? If you’re a Southern man or woman of a certain age, i.e., mine, this book will knock you over like a ton of bricks. If you’re not, you’ll be certain that it has to be science fiction and continue to wait patiently for Under the Tuscan Sun II.
Washington by Ron Chernow (2010) If you’d asked me a couple of decades ago who my favorite president was, I would have said Thomas Jefferson. That was before I started reading much about him. So now, while others continued to extol his virtues–or Roosevelt (pick one), Lincoln or Reagan, I became a George Washington guy. And I still am, which might explain why I was wary of this book. The last thing that interested me was yet another dry bio spiced up with the occasional tidbit that might compel me to like him less. I don’t like facts getting in the way of my idol worship. Happily, Mr. Chernow has written a masterpiece. He transforms the original George W from a monument as rigid as the obelisk that bears his name to a man of flesh and blood genuinely worthy of the praise he has received over the centuries. While Mr. Chernow acknowledges Washington’s reserved demeanor that served him so well, he also talks about less reserved times such as marching his army to Yorktown and seeing the French reinforcements for the first time. He stood on the bank of a river, jumped up and down, shouted and laughed in delight. Mr. Chernow describes the scene so well that I can see him doing it. To underscore Washington’s concern about the way that others perceived him, he discusses at length the clothes he wore, his dental problems and the care that he took to make Mount Vernon appear to his countrymen as a home of some consequence. If I have a criticism, it would be that Mr. Chernow is fashionably fixated on the slave issue, but I’m sure he didn’t want to be accused of trying to sweep it under the rug. (Interestingly, George’s will provided for the manumission of his slaves after Martha’s death. During the year that Martha outlived him, she was afraid that some of the slaves, impatient for their freedom, might try to kill her. To rectify the situation, she freed them all a few months after George’s death.) This is a great book. You’ll thank me for recommending it to you.
White Shadow by Ace Atkins (2006) This was a surprise. I knew I was going to be spending a few days in Tampa, specifically in the Ybor City area, so I picked up this book at the bookstore in Oxford and saved it for the trip. It’s the tale of criminals (high-life and low-life), cops and reporters in the Tampa of the 1950’s that was almost as much a part of Cuba as Havana. (Even Castro put in an appearance.) If I have a tiny complaint, it’s that jarringly modern turn-of-phrases like “go-to guy” make their way into the story every now and again. But it is a complaint that is tiny indeed, and the book is a jarringly noir-esque vision of a unique time and place. PS: If you don’t think that Ybor City could have been the way Mr. Atkins describes, I’d like to point out that even in April 2007, there are chickens roaming the streets of the neighborhood.)
