The Last American Aristocrat: The Brilliant Life and Improbable Education of Henry Adams by David S. Brown

 

Henry Adams was born in 1838, the year the telegraph was first demonstrated. Native Americans were  forced to relocate and the Underground Railroad was being established. Meanwhile in Britain, slavery was abolished, Victoria was newly on the throne, and Dickens published Oliver Twist. Adams died in 1918 during WWI, the year of the Spanish Influenza and the first time airplanes were used by the USPS. 

Henry was the grandson of President John Quincy Adams, 'the Governor' of Henry's childhood, and the great-grandson of founding father President John Adams. His own father Charles Francis had served as ambassador to England, as had generations of Adams men.

Unlike his predecessors, Adams did not committ his life to public service. He never had children and his wife committed suicide when he was in his late 40s. He spent some time teaching at Harvard, and was popular with the students, but it did not suit him.

Henry became a historian, a world traveler, and an insider Washingtonian socialite. 

"What could become of such a child of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when he should wake up to find himself required to play the games of the twentieth? " he wrote in the first chapter, continuing, "As it happened, he never got to the point of playing the game at all; he lost himself in the study of it."~ from The Education of Henry Adams

It was his book The Education of Henry Adams that introduced me to him. It is a strange book, self-published and shared with his friends. He writes about his childhood in Quincy and his later life, skipping the death of his wife and his most regarded histories. He writes about the changes in society, the rise of capitalists and industry and the power of money.

Like his predecessors, Henry was intellectual, high-minded, and could be contrary. Like his predecessors, he believed one should be called to public duty, not seek it, an 18th c concept dated by his time. Unlike his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, he was not called to serve as an ambassador, although he was his father's private secretary in London. 

Instead, he wrote. He wrote an eight-volume history of Jeffersonian America, he wrote political commentary, he wrote travel pieces and about architecture and medieval history.

John Adams and John Quincy Adams were men of  their time, men of action, called upon to serve their country. Henry was an observer and an outsider, out of sync, never at home.

John Adams was against slavery and John Quincy Adams fought Congress over the ban to discuss abolition.  His father Charles Francis was involved with the anti-slavery Whig party. Henry was uninterested and unengaged with the problems of African Americans. 

As capitalism and business men rose to power, Anti-Semitism became mainstream, and Henry was not immune. He despaired to see that the big money of the 'northern plutocracy" was the rising power in Washington. He railed against corruption and the patronage system, and despaired that too many 'good men' avoided politics as a dirty business. He railed against the rise of the Boston Irish. 

He married a cerebral woman overly attached to her father, a woman liked by few.  After her early death, Adams built her a enigmatic memorial, the details of which he left up to the famed sculpture Saint-Gaudens while he went on a world tour while claiming he died to the world with her. 

The arc of Adam's life crossed a part of American history and politics I was not well versed on, and I found this aspect of the biography to be very interesting. The problems we see today in American politics have deep roots.

Some trivia tidbits from Adams life:

• Henry James wrote in a letter to Edith Wharton that Adams read Jane Austen's Persuasion aloud in the evenings.
• F. Scott Fitzgerald's character Thornton Hancock was inspired by Adams; he had met him when a boy.
• Adams studied under geologist Louis Agassiz at Harvard, saying his class was "the only teaching that appealed to [my] imagination."
• Adams wrote two novels, including Democracy about Gilded Age Washington DC politics; Teddy Roosevelt found it "essentially mean and base."
• Adams fell in love with an unhappily married, beautiful and intelligent socialite who counted on his friendship but rejected him as a lover. She did not find him physically attractive.

I was given a free ebook by the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

The Last American Aristocrat: The Brilliant Life and Improbable Education of Henry Adams
by David S. Brown
Scribner
Pub Date: November 24,  2020
ISBN: 9781982128234
hardcover $30.00 (USD)

from the publisher

A revelatory biography of literary icon Henry Adams—one of America’s most prominent writers and intellectuals of his era, who witnessed and contributed to America’s dramatic transition from “colonial” to “modern.”

Henry Adams is perhaps the most eclectic, accomplished, and important American writer of his time. His autobiography and modern classic The Education of Henry Adams was widely considered one of the best English-language nonfiction books of the 20th century. The last member of his distinguished family—after great-grandfather John Adams, and grandfather John Quincy Adams—to gain national attention, he is remembered today as an historian, a political commentator, and a memoirist.

Now, historian David Brown sheds light on the brilliant yet under-celebrated life of this major American intellectual. Adams not only lived through the Civil War and the Industrial Revolution but he met Abraham Lincoln, bowed before Queen Victoria, and counted powerful figures, including Secretary of State John Hay, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, and President Theodore Roosevelt as friends and neighbors. His observations of these men and their policies in his private letters provide a penetrating assessment of Gilded Age America on the cusp of the modern era.

The Last American Aristocrat details Adams’s relationships with his wife (Marian “Clover” Hooper) and, following her suicide, Elizabeth Cameron, the young wife of a senator and part of the famous Sherman clan from Ohio. Henry Adams’s letters—thousands of them—demonstrate his struggles with depression, familial expectations, and reconciling with his unwanted widower’s existence.

Presenting intimate and insightful details of a fascinating and unusual American life and a new window on nineteenth century US history, The Last American Aristocrat shows us a more “modern” and “human” Henry Adams than ever before.

Emily Dickinson's Gardening Life: The Plants and Places That Inspired the Iconic Poet by Marta McDowell

 

I purchased Emily Dickinson's Gardening Life by Marta McDowell as part of my reading about Emily Dickinson as I developed a quilt. 

This is a gorgeous book, from the cover and the end papers to the illustrations that fill the pages. 

McDowell incorporates Dickinson's poems flawlessly. 

Readers are taken on a year-long journey into the garden, from early spring to winter, each season telling a part of Emily's life journey. 

It was a joy to read, an escape from lock-down in the early spring, an inspiration as I tended our own garden, and this autumn found me dreaming of visiting The Homestead some day when this pandemic is over.

Chapters include an annotated list of Emily's plants and a visit to her home and garden.

This would be a wonderful Christmas gift for the reader of Dickinson or gardener in your life.

I have McDowell's book All the President's Gardens on Kindle. But after holding this book in my hands, with its lovely artwork and illustrations, the heft of it, I may need to buy a hardcover copy...along with Beatrix Potter's Gardening Life!

Covid-19 Life: Nature in the 'Burbs, Books TBR

The leaves are all down, except for a black willow at the end of our street. It is time to notice other things on our walks. Like squirrel nests! 

The city park is filled with oak trees which feed the squirrels. 

We have the Eastern Grey Squirrels and Fox Squirrels I remember from growing up, but now there are more black squirrels than any other.

I researched why they have appeared in Michigan and discovered that they had been introduced intentionally! Their color helps to protect them during the cold winters and so they have thrived. 

According to Wikipedia, the black morphs had nearly disappeared when John Harvey Kellogg decided to repopulate Battle Creek, MI, with the black Eastern Gray Squirrel in 1915. In 1958 and 1962, the black morphs were trapped at the Kellogg Biological Station and released on the Michigan State University campus! They were also reintroduced at Kent State University in Ohio.

Where there are squirrels and bunnies and chippies (and yes, skunk, opossum, raccoon, rats, and mice, too) there will be raptors. Our city is filled with all of these creatures.

Today we saw this hawk circling our street.

I have seen a hawk sitting in a tree, watching a squirrel. The squirrel was distraught, wanting to go into its nest but he knew the hawk was there. He ran up and down the lower trunk while the hawk flew from branch to branch. Lucky for the would-be prey, the hawk grew bored and flew to other feeding grounds.

A number of winters ago there was a hawk on our roof holding a frozen rate. Last summer I saw the peregrine falcon winging overhead.

On a community Facebook page I mentioned seeing raptors in the city and one person was aghast. She thought 'velociraptor' not hawks!

Telephone lines and fences and houses and garages block our view from the house, but the sunsets and sunrises are easier to see now the leaves are down.

I have so many 'win' books that have not arrived! Instead, I received a book that was a total surprise! Jane Smiley's new novel Perestroika in Paris sounds like a charming read!

To come is The Land of Big Numbers by Te-Ping-Chen, stories from China, from BookishFirst. And new on my NetGalley shelf is Susan, Linda, Nina, and Cokie: The Extraordinary Story of the Founding Mothers of NPR by Lisa Napoli.

I will soon have another quilt top completed, I started a small embroidery project, and am toying with doing some painting.

There is plenty to keep me busy as we self-isolate. Michigan and our county has seen escapating Covid-19 cases.

Over 329,00 cases and 8,875 deaths in Michigan.

Over 40,000 cases in Oakland County and 1,310 deaths.

Our city has 260 cases and 18 deaths total, 217.03 positive cases per 10,000 people.

Sadly, I now can say I know someone with Covid, along with knowing many people who has a family member that became ill, and several people who lost loved ones. 

Stay safe, out there. Use a mask. Stay home. Better to miss one Thanksgiving than to lose a family member.

Beethoven: A Life in Nine Pieces by Laura Tunbridge

I listened to the 'Hammerklavier' on YouTube with the music appearing in the visual. "Beethoven's impossible piece" was dedicated to his student Prince Rudolf whose health precluded him from actually playing it. In the year of its composition, Beethoven said that he had not known how to compose, but he knew now. 

I was stunned by the music. I studied piano as a girl and have enjoyed playing (badly) for my own enjoyment. I had some idea of what was required to perform it. Few could actually conquer it, Laura Tunbridge writes in her new biography, Beethoven.

I have heard Beethoven in concert many times. I had never heard this piece before and would have remained ignorant if not for Tunbridge including it in her book. It is one of the nine pivotal compositions she uses to tell the story of Beethoven's life.

The composer lived through turbulent times and decades of war. 

The age of reason morphed into the romantic era. Beethoven took music into the sublime and beyond, shocking people with its dissonance and loudness. Some complained that the music was too cerebral, 'elaborate musical puzzles.' 

Through Beethoven's music, Tunbridge presents a complete biography. The familiar questions of the identity of 'The Immortal Beloved' and the changing dedication of the 'Eroica' are discussed, but also the development of the piano and the role of the conductor in his time, self-marketing and sheet music, Beethoven's religious life, and the long custody battle over his nephew. I found it all fascinating, and I felt I had a better grasp of this iconic composer.

I listened to the music as Tunbridge discussed the piece, added so much to my appreciation, doubling my enjoyment of this biography.

I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Beethoven: A Life in Nine Pieces
by Laura Tunbridge
Yale University Press
Pub Date: October 26, 2020  
ISBN: 9780300254587
hardcover $35.00 (USD)

from the publisher

A major new biography published for the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth, offering a fresh, human portrayal

The iconic image of Beethoven is of him as a lone genius: hair wild, fists clenched, and brow furrowed. Beethoven may well have shaped the music of the future, but he was also a product of his time, influenced by the people, politics, and culture around him. Oxford scholar Laura Tunbridge offers an alternative history of Beethoven’s career, placing his music in contexts that shed light on why particular pieces are valued more than others, and what this tells us about his larger-than-life reputation. 

Each chapter focuses on a period of his life, a piece of music, and a revealing theme, from family to friends, from heroism to liberty. We discover, along the way, Beethoven’s unusual marketing strategies, his ambitious concert programming, and how specific performers and instruments influenced his works. 

This book offers new ways to understand Beethoven and why his music continues to be valued today.

About the author

Laura Tunbridge is Professor of Music at the University of Oxford. She is the author of three monographs—Schumann’s Late Style, The Song Cycle, and Singing in the Age of Anxiety—and the recipient of a three-year Major Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust for a project on string quartets. 

Covid-19 Life: New on my TBR Shelf, Virtual Book Clubs, Quilting Projects

With the pandemic raging, many of us are self-imposing a lock down. 

Last week, the quilters met at the park. It was a warm day, reaching 77 degrees. Several came without masks and other slowered their mask to talk. 

This is not safe behavior. So, I will join the quilters who prefer to Zoom meet.

But first, we visited with our family before the weather changed. We visited my brother, sitting on his deck. Deer came to the yard and birds visited the feeder as we talked.

He designed and built a shed that is like a small cabin with a porch swing facing the canal that goes to Cass Lake.

Canal to Cass Lake

And we visited our son and his girlfriend outdoors, with masks, watching the grandpuppies play in the yard. We only spent a few moments indoors to see Gus, the new kitten.

Gus

Sunny

The weather quickly changed, the leaves came down, and it finally feels like November.

local Oak and Moon last week

Luckily, I have plenty to keep me busy. My TBR galley shelf is filled up and I have dozens of incomplete quilt projects to finish and fabric to 'use up'.

Bellevue Literary Press sent me the ARC of Norman Lock's new book in his American Novels series, Tooth of the Covenant which is about Nathaniel Hawthorne. I have enjoyed four other novels in the series and some day hope to read the others. 

My NetGalley shelf is filling up! New books include:

• John Keats, a biography by Suzie Grogan
• Jane Austen’s Best Friend: The Life and INfluence of Martha Lloyd by Zoe Wheddon
• The Life She Wished to Live: A Biography of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, author of the Yearling by Ann McCutchan
• Wonderworks: The 25 Most Powerful Inventions in the History of Literature by Angus Fletcher
• The Bookseller of Florence: The Story of the Manuscripts that Illuminated the Renaissance by Ross King
• The Last Green Valley by Mark Sullivan interested me because it is about Germans in the Ukraine under Soviet rule who had to escape during WWII

Previous books on my NetGalley Shelf include

• The Fortunate Ones by Ed Tarkington
• The Invisible Women by Erika Robuck
• Girl Explorers by Jayne Zanglein
• Brood by Jackie Polzin
• Lady Bird Johnson: Hiding in Plain Sight by Julia Sweig
• Astrid Sees All by Natalie Standiford
• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
• The Souvenir Museum by Elizabeth McCracken

I purchased several books for book clubs and readalongs. 

Little, Brown & Co reissued Brideshead Revisited for its 75th anniversary and arranged a read along. I read the edition that was published when the television miniseries was out.

I purchased Jess Walter's brand new novel The Cold Millions for the Barnes & Noble book club December 1. I so enjoyed his novel Beautiful Ruins.

Our local library book club is discussing The Bear next week with author Andrew Krivak Zooming with us!

This week I joined the Leesburg Public Library, FL, to discuss Jerome Charyn's novel The Perilous Adventures of the Cowboy King, imagining Teddy Roosevelt's early life, with Charyn Zooming with us at the end to answer questions.

The book club enjoyed the novel and the 'energetic' and 'dramatic' characterization. Those who were not familiar with TR's life appreciated learning about him while others remarked the novel was not a history. Charyn talked about finding the voice and the music for his novel, and how writing in the first person offers a greater intimacy that a history or biography cannot provide. "Writing is dreamin," he remarked.

I have signed up for a number of other online events with authors.

I tried to sort out my collection of vintage quilt tops, fabrics, and trims and embellishments. I was inspired to play with them and made a small quilt.

I used a vintage embroidered linens, crotchet, trims, buttons, and a quilt top. 

Every day I take a walk around the neighborhood. I was surprised by this squirrel going in and out of a hole in the tree.

Another day I saw this really fat squirrel in the park!

It's time to prepare for winter. Like the squirrel, we are stocking up on food and supplies. I have plenty of hand quilting to keep me busy--and warm as the quilts lay on my lap while quilting. And loads of books to read.

Stay safe out there. Take care of each other.

Angry Weather: Heat Waves, Floods, Storms, and the New Science of Climate Change

 

Angry Weather by Friederike Otto tells readers about the importance of attribution science in understanding climate change. The Weather Attribution Team has developed a way to connect localized extreme weather events to climate change. To do this, they must be able to model what the world would be like if there was no climate change and then calculate if the weather event was created by climate change.

Otto considers recent extreme weather and explains if it was connected to climate change. She also addresses broader climate change issues.

Attribution science is a complex idea, and perhaps if Otto did detail the process I would not understand it. Still, it is a weakness in the book that the scientific method is not discussed.

Parts of the book were interesting, and she addresses some issues with passion. But overall, it was a boring read and it was hard to pick it up to finish the book. I don't know if the translation added to this problem, or if this remarkable scientist just isn't a remarkable writer.

I was given a free book by the publisher through LibraryThing in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Angry Weather: Heat Waves, Floods, Storms, and the New Science of Climate Change

By Friederike Otto

Translated by Sarah Pybus

hardcover $32.95

ISBN: 9781771646147

Published On: September 15, 2020 

from the publisher

A pioneering scientist solves a pressing climate question: Can we pin the blame for individual extreme weather events on humans?

Massive fires, widespread floods, category 4 hurricanes—weather disasters are becoming more frequent each year, but not everyone agrees on what causes them. Renowned University of Oxford researcher Friederike Otto provides an answer with attribution science, a revolutionary method for pinpointing the role of climate change in extreme weather events. Anchoring her book with the gripping, day-by-day story of Hurricane Harvey, which caused over a hundred deaths and $125 billion in damage in 2017, Otto reveals how attribution science works in real time, and determines that Harvey’s terrifying floods were three times more likely to occur due to human-induced climate change.

At a time when our inability to determine climate change’s role in weather events has impacted everything from how much aid a devastated region receives to the culpability of corporations and governments, Otto’s research laid out in this groundbreaking book will have profound impacts, both today and for the future of humankind.  

Published in Partnership with the David Suzuki Institute.

Friederike (Fredi) Otto is a physicist, climate researcher, associate professor, and the acting director of the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford. Otto is also a co-investigator on the international project World Weather Attribution, which assesses the human influence on extreme weather and has been profiled in the New York Times, Nature, and others.

The Decameron Project: 29 Stories from the Pandemic

 When reality is surreal, only fiction can make sense of it.

Early in the lockdown I was jarred by television images of people at parties and large groups, people not wearing masks, family gatherings around dinner tables. None of it reflected my reality: my spouse and I isolated in our home, walking in freezing weather before anyone else was on the street, learning Instacart and Doordash and Zoom.

This collection of stories caught my attention because they were reflections of this new reality. And, seeing the top-notch writers who contributed, I knew I would not be disappointed.

The stories reflect the shifting concerns and fears we experienced and are experiencing.

Oh yes, the early dearth of toilet paper! In a panic, my spouse ordered some from Amazon at an exorbitant cost. It took three months to arrive from Asia. 

Zooming, homeschooling your kids, the obsession with news, watching for a glimmer of hope. The daily deaths. Learning how death can show up any time. 

The fleeting happiness of isolating in place with another. Dreading that this is the new normal for ever. Teenagers obliviously carrying on as usual. Making masks. Scarfing up Chromebooks.

We are sharing a nightmare. Those who escape will be haunted. Some of these stories stick in my mind as perfect reflections of what haunts me.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

The Decameron Project: 29 New Stories from the Pandemic
by The New York Times
Scribner
Pub Date: November 10, 2020  
ISBN: 9781982170790
hardcover $25.00 (USD)

from the publisher:

A stunning collection of new short stories originally commissioned by The New York Times Magazine as the COVID-19 pandemic swept the world, from twenty-nine authors including Margaret Atwood, Tommy Orange, Edwidge Danticat, and more, in a project inspired by Boccaccio’s “The Decameron.”

When reality is surreal, only fiction can make sense of it.

In 1353, Giovanni Boccaccio wrote “The Decameron”: one hundred nested tales told by a group of young men and women passing the time at a villa outside Florence while waiting out the gruesome Black Death, a plague that killed more than 25 million people. Some of the stories are silly, some are bawdy, some are like fables.

In March of 2020, the editors of The New York Times Magazine created The Decameron Project, an anthology with a simple, time-spanning goal: to gather a collection of stories written as our current pandemic first swept the globe. How might new fiction from some of the finest writers working today help us memorialize and understand the unimaginable? And what could be learned about how this crisis will affect the art of fiction?

These twenty-nine new stories, from authors including Margaret Atwood, Tommy Orange, Edwidge Danticat, and David Mitchell vary widely in texture and tone. Their work will be remembered as a historical tribute to a time and place unlike any other in our lifetimes, and offer perspective and solace to the reader now and in a future where coronavirus is, hopefully, just a memory.

Nowhere Like This Place: Tales from a Nuclear Childhood by Marilyn Carr

I admit, the cover drew my attention, especially the subtitle Tales from a Nuclear Childhood. I enjoy memoirs, and not just those written by the famous, or media darlings, or politicians. Because ordinary people can have interesting lives, too.

In Nowhere Like This Place, Marilyn Carr  reminisces on her childhood growing up in a planned Ontario neighborhood where everyone's dad worked at the nuclear reactor plant, known as 'the plant,' although Carr at first thought her dad spent the entire day riding the bus that he took to work.

With ironic humor, Carr recalls growing up as I did, in a world filled with unrecognized threats. 

Asbestos floor tiles that needed constant waxing and asbestos clay projects in school. Baby car seats with a horn that did nothing to protect the baby. Kids at the beach without lifeguards. Biking all day in bear country, eating wild berries and drinking from the river. Lead paint and eating glue. And snow boots that neither protected from the cold or offered traction on the ice.

She recalls the awful 1960s cuisine of Tang and oleo-margerine, girls puzzling on how to wear snow pants with a skirt or garter belts with a mini-skirt, and the eternal problem of missing Barbie doll shoes. 

It was a world of risk to be a kid back then.

First jobs, hobbies she dreamt would lead to a career, girlfriends and learning about boys--all the normal things girls go through--are recalled.

This was a joy to read, funny and warm, entertaining and nostalgic. There are not deep insights, no overcoming of neglect or abuse. Sometimes it is good to just sit back and enjoy someone's journey.  

I was given a free galley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Read an excerpt here.

Nowhere like This Place: Tales from a Nuclear Childhood
by Marilyn Carr
BooksGoSocial
November 3, 2020   
ISBN: 9781771804356
$7.99 Kindle, $17.99 paperback (USD)

from the publisher

Marilyn Carr’s family arrived in Deep River, Ontario in 1960 because her dad got a job at a mysterious place called “the plant.” The quirky, isolated residence for the employees of Chalk River Nuclear Laboratories was impeccably designed by a guy named John Bland. It’s a test-tube baby of a town that sprang, fully formed, from the bush north of Algonquin Park, on the shore of the Ottawa River. Everything has already been decided, including the colours of the houses, inside and out. What could possibly go wrong?

Nowhere like This Place is a coming-of-age memoir set against the backdrop of the weirdness of an enclave with more PhDs per capita than anywhere else on earth. It’s steeped in thinly veiled sexism and the searing angst of an artsy child trapped in a terrarium full of white-bread nuclear scientists and their nuclear families. Everything happens, and nothing happens, and it all works out in the end. Maybe.

Covid-19 Life: Jitters, TBR shelf, The Fur-grandkids

It's been a tense few days in our home as it has been across America. Our local and state candidates all won reelection, but there is that long wait for the presidential winner to be announced. Our two-mile square town had an amazing turnout in all the precincts, including ours.

We sent a few dollars to candidates across the country, and got some nice thank yous, including this postcard from Mark Kelly!

The weather in Southeast Michigan has warmed up to 70 degrees! The quilter met in the park in the morning when it was in the lower 50s out, so we were bundled up.

I struggled to find some basic supplies. I tried every local grocery store and the drug store. Finally I found them at Target and within hours was there for a pick-up.

I have only been doing drive up pick up. I have not been inside a store since our quick trip into CVS early summer. Everyone wore masks as mandated by our county, and the social distancing marks were on the floor. Still, I was nervous while I waited for my bags, trying to find a place out of the way.

When this pandemic is over, it will take me a long time to get used to being around crowds.

I was thrilled to get the ARC Life Among the Terranauts from Caitlin Horrocks, whose novel The Vexations I loved. Horrocks was our son's writing professor at Grand Valley State University!

Another ARC on my TBR pile is The Fortunate Ones by Ed Tarkington from Algonquin Books. I love all the books I have read from Algonquin. But read this blurb and you'll see what attracted me:

“The Fortunate Ones feels like a fresh and remarkably sure-footed take on The Great Gatsby, examining the complex costs of attempting to transcend or exchange your given class for a more gilded one. Tarkington’s understanding of the human heart and mind is deep, wise, and uncommonly empathetic. As a novelist, he is the real deal. I can’t wait to see this story reach a wide audience, and to see what he does next.” —Paula McLain, author of The Paris Wife

Other ARCs I am waiting for include:

• The next American Novel by Norman Locks coming from Bellevue Literary Press, Tooth of the Covenant. I have read four books in this series.
• From LibraryThing, All that We Carried by Erin Bartels, a Michigan author whose previous books I have reviewed

New on my NetGalley shelf 

• The Bookseller of Florence:The Story of the Manuscripts That Illuminated the Renaissance by Ross King

This month the library book club is reading The Bear by Anthony Krivak--and he is going to Zoom meet with us! We are so excited!

I read the novel as an ARC and revisited it for another library book club so it will be my third time to delve into this novel.

I have been noodling around in the quilt room. I layered a quilt for machine quilting. I played with some things but lost interest. I plan on layering the Hospital Sketches quilt top for hand quilting this winter. I have fabric for new quilts. I can't bring myself to work in the basement quilt room as long as the sun is shining. Those gloomy, Michigan winter days are coming too soon and I can hole away and sew then.

With Covid rampaging throughout the country, and in our small town, we are self-isolating. Except...tomorrow it will be over 70 degrees and we will visit our son and his girl and the fur-grandkids while we can sit outdoors with masks.

Gus the kitten and Sunny, who is a year old, have bonded very quickly. They both like to play. Ellie loves to chase with dogs, but hasn't figured out what to do with a kitten.

When Gus took over Sunny's bed she wasn't sure what to do. She decided just to join him. Now they are snuggle buddies.

Stay safe out there. 

The Preserve by Ariel S. Winter

Chief of Police Jesse Laughton and his old partner Kir, now of Health and Human Services, pair up to solve a murder on the Preserve that is soon linked to a series of other deaths. They work together seamlessly, each bringing special strengths to the relationship. They comfortably tease and kid each other, even worry about each other.

Even though one is a 'meathead' and the other Metal.

A plague has decimated the human species and Laughton is part of the remnant population. Kir is a humanoid AI, a man-created robot, part of the robot majority in control of governing. He respects humans for their ability to think outside their natures. He is one of the 'good' AIs.

Kir is unwanted on the Preserve, a reservation where humans can live in self-governing segregation.

For the sake of his wife and their daughter, Laughton became of Chief of Police of the Preserve. His wife is involved in the repopulation movement and the promotion of genetic diversity through a sex clinic. "A baby in every belly" is their motto.

Now, Laughton has the Preserve's first murder to solve. The victim was a Sim developer who created an illegal plug and play program for robot self-gratification. His program fries the circuitry of robots who indulge.

If Laughton can't solve the case soon, he will lose control of the Preserve to the robot government. And that would escalate the rise of hate groups from both humans and machines. The anti-orgo AI faction is chomping at the bit to take control of the non-productive humans with their violent natures. A peace-keeping force could become permanent.

The Preserve was a chilling read while in a pandemic lockdown. "If another plague is coming, it won't be a suit and a couple of doors that save me,"a doctor quips.

It was very unsettling to read that line.

Descriptions of empty cities are disturbingly reflective of our pandemic reality under lockdown. There are shortages of supplies like sugar and coffee. The images are chilling.

Kir grapples with existential thoughts about the purpose of his existence. What's the point of living forever, he wonders. Laughton's purpose is his daughter Rachel and her future. Kir envies him. His offers to care for Rachel for her lifetime, and her children's lifetime, comforts both Kir and Laughton.

Winter's novel is a crime thriller set in a near-future where the human race is decimated by a plague, leaving AI to dominate American society. Through this fictional lens we are confronted with the fundamental questions of how diverse communities can exist together. Historically, we have chosen segregation, reservations, and a power structure based on class and strength of numbers.

Laughton wonders if the Preserve is the right choice for humans. His relationship with Kir proves that AIs and humans can work together, complement each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and even love each other.

I have to wonder about our choices in the next months and years as we battle this complex and frightening virus that has altered our world. Will we continue our tribalism of hate? Or can we rise above our worse natures and embrace and nurture our better angels?

I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Preserve
by Ariel S. Winter
Atria
Publication November 3, 2020
ISBN:1476797889
$17.00 papberback; $11.99 Kindle

What Unites Us by Dan Rather

 

In these days before the 2020 election I have been reading Dan Rather's What Unites Us, recently released in paperback form. 

I was able to join Politics and Prose Bookstore's Zoom talk with Rather. He was interviewed by Jennifer Steinhauer, whose book The Firsts: The Inside Story of the Women Reshaping Congress I read a few months ago.

Rather lays out the shared values Americans which can become a platform for building consensus in our divided country. 

One person, one vote. The freedom of speech, to dissent; freedom of the press--no matter how flawed. The importance of science and knowledge, even if we disagree over specific ideas. Education. Our desire to be an empathetic people.

Rather hopes his book can be a jumping off place for dialogue, starting a much needed conversation. 

Rather harkens back to his childhood and draws from his years as a journalist. He first defines patriotism as opposed to nationalism and ends with what it means to be a citizen. 

In the Zoom talk, a listener asked Rather if the country has ever been as divided as it is today. He recalled the 1960s when rebellions and nonviolent protests erupted over war and racism. Today, he notes, protests include a broader demographic mix in age, class and ethnicity. 

"I'm a reporter who got lucky, very, very lucky," the eighty-nine-year-old Rather responded to being called a 'national treasure.' His tip for aging well? Rather replied luck, genetics, God's grace, determination, and dedicating one's life to something bigger than yourself, and finding a life companion who sticks with you through thick and thin.

Some of my favorite quotes from the book:

Dissent can sometimes be uncomfortable, but it is vital in a democracy.

Like so many others in our country, I journeyed from ignorance to tolerance to inclusion.

Empathy builds community, Communities strengthen a country and its resolve and will to fight back...I worry that our nation today suffers from a deficit of empathy, and this is especially true of many in positions of national leadership.

I remind myself and others that we have been through big challenges in the past, that it often seems darkest in the present. The pendulum of our great nations seems to have swung toward conceit and unsteadiness once again, but it is in our power to wrest it back. 

Ultimately, democracy is an action more than a belief. The people's voice, your voice, must be heard for it to have an effect.

I voted absentee last month, delivering my ballot to the city hall. 

Please--vote.

Eleanor by David Michaelis

"All her life, Eleanor believed that she had to earn love--by pleasing others, by undertaking ever more numberless duties, by one more tour of useful Rooseveltian doing.~ from Eleanor by David Michaelis

Compared to her beautiful parents, she was plain. Her mother was a social butterfly and her father was charming. Her mother nicknamed her Granny. Her alcoholic father could make her feel like a princess, but he was unreliable and could not save her. She struggled with confidence all her life.

She found happiness with her grandparents and while away at school where she was mentored by a progressive, free thinking lesbian. She would have liked to become a nurse, but was fated to 'come out' into the marriage market.

She married her cousin when he was still a priggish outsider. She saw him become a handsome ladies man determined to follow their uncle Teddy's career path to the White House. 

She bore nine children. She lost family to alcoholism and disease. When she learned of her husband's infidelity, her mother-in-law forbade divorce. She found love outside of her marriage and family with women and younger men.

"Martha Gellhorn thought of her as 'the loneliest human being I ever knew in my life'."~from Eleanor by David Michaelis

Remarkably, this unfortunate woman turned tragedy into strength, depression into action. She had been ignorant of politics and world affairs and had accepted the status quo understanding of status, race, religion, world affairs. She threw herself into the work of understanding human need. As she traveled the world and the country, she learned, expanded, and became a powerful voice.

She pushed her presidential husband toward positions of equity and inclusiveness and empathy and morality. She expanded the role of the First Lady, a tireless campaigner. 

She was a leader in the United Nations as they forged the first statement of human rights. On the President's Commission on the Status of Women she "identified the issues that soon became the agenda of the women's movement."

David Michaelis has given us a marvelous, empathetic biography of this complex woman. He does not spare Franklin Roosevelt or shroud Eleanor's deep love for Lorena Hickok in doubt. 

Eleanor is a timeless role model who should inspire each generation. Life did not break her, the times did not discourage her, public opinion did not stop her. Eleanor rose above it all to follow her innate moral compass and lead us all to compassion and a just society.

I was given a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Eleanor
by David Michaelis
Simon & Schuster
Pub Date: November 1,  2020   
ISBN 9781439192016
hardcover $35.00 (USD)

from the publisher

Prizewinning bestselling author David Michaelis presents a breakthrough portrait of Eleanor Roosevelt, America’s longest-serving First Lady, an avatar of democracy whose ever-expanding agency as diplomat, activist, and humanitarian made her one of the world’s most widely admired and influential women.

In the first single-volume cradle-to-grave portrait in six decades, acclaimed biographer David Michaelis delivers a stunning account of Eleanor Roosevelt’s remarkable life of transformation. An orphaned niece of President Theodore Roosevelt, she converted her Gilded Age childhood of denial and secrecy into an irreconcilable marriage with her ambitious fifth cousin Franklin. Despite their inability to make each other happy, Franklin Roosevelt transformed Eleanor from a settlement house volunteer on New York’s Lower East Side into a matching partner in New York’s most important power couple in a generation.

When Eleanor discovered Franklin’s betrayal with her younger, prettier social secretary, Lucy Mercer, she offered a divorce and vowed to face herself honestly. Here is an Eleanor both more vulnerable and more aggressive, more psychologically aware and sexually adaptable than we knew. She came to accept FDR’s bond with his executive assistant, Missy LeHand; she allowed her children to live their own lives, as she never could; and she explored her sexual attraction to women, among them a star female reporter on FDR’s first presidential campaign, and younger men.

Eleanor needed emotional connection. She pursued deeper relationships wherever she could find them. Throughout her life and travels, there was always another person or place she wanted to heal. As FDR struggled to recover from polio, Eleanor became a voice for the voiceless, her husband’s proxy in presidential ambition, and then the people’s proxy in the White House. Later, she would be the architect of international human rights and world citizen of the Atomic Age, urging Americans to cope with the anxiety of global annihilation by cultivating a “world mind.” She insisted that we cannot live for ourselves alone but must learn to live together or we will die together.

Drawing on new research, Michaelis’s riveting portrait is not just a comprehensive biography of a major American figure, but the story of an American ideal: how our freedom is always a choice. Eleanor rediscovers a model of what is noble and evergreen in the American character, a model we need today more than ever.