The Reason for the Darkness of the Night: Edgar Allan Poe and the Forging of American Science by John Tresch

The Reason for the Darkness of the Night: Edgar Allan Poe and the Forging of American Science by John Tresch is the first biography I have read of Poe. I was totally enthralled. Tresch's approach gives us a man of technological and scientific insight, an expert craftsman with the pen, an original thinker, and a relentless worker. And yet, everything was against Poe, he struggled to provide basic needs, and his dreams were always beyond reach. 

Edgar Allan Poe portrait

It is one of the saddest biographies I have ever read. A genius with everything against him, a man who achieved great heights and died with nothing. Had he been born in a different time, would his fate have been happier?

My Grandfather's set of Poe

I first read Poe in my grandfather's 1926 paperback 101 Famous Poems in which I discovered The Raven, The Bells, and To Helen. Then, I discovered a complete set of Poe on gramp's shelves and borrowed the volumes so often, he told me to just keep them. This was almost 57 years ago! 

Like my own grandfather, Poe's father had abandoned his mother and with her death was an orphan. Like my grandfather, Poe was taken to be raised by a family without formal adoption. Like my grandfather, Poe was sent into the world without enough financial support to live on. Like Poe, my grandfather was an engineer, a writer, relentlessly working three jobs to support his family. Unlike my grandfather, Poe had been raised by a wealthy family and had expectations of being supported to continue that lifestyle. Plus, he had inherited the family problem of alcoholism.

Poe embraced two interests: the advancement of a distinct American literature that could rival Europe's, and an interest in science and technology. His classical education, training at West Point, deep reading, and relentless pursuit of financial security and fame was derailed by his inability to handle alcohol, which was almost impossible to avoid in society or business. 

He took on his aunt and cousin as family, his love for both deep and sincere. They starved with him and followed him from home to home. He married his child bride cousin, who died of tuberculosis, perhaps the inspiration for his poem Annabel Lee.

Poe lived in an age when science and pseudoscience and faith clashed. He reacted to the new scientific ideas that precluded purpose and meaning to existence.

Tresch begins and ends with Poe's lecture Eureka! which presented radical ideas that later were seen as foreshadowing current theories accepted in the scientific community. He neither envisioned a universe controlled by a deity, or abandoned by a deity, or once created remained unchanged. His universe was dynamic and evolving. He saw that science had its limits in understanding the human experience and place in the universe.

Poe lived during the rise of the magazine, and he relentlessly wrote articles of every kind, published in magazines such as Graham's Ladies and Gentleman's Magazine; forty years ago I bought an 1841 bound volume in a Maine antique shop which included numerous works by Poe, articles on cryptography and autography (analyzing signatures), The Colloquy of Monos and Una, and the poems Israfel and To Helen.

It was so interesting to read Tresch's comments on these articles and poems. The Colloquy, he comments, includes lines that foretold the future: "Meantime huge smoking cities arose, innumerable. Green leaves shrank before the hot breath of furnaces. The fair face of Nature was deformed as with the ravages of some loathsome disease.[...]now it appears that we had worked out our own destruction in the perversion of our taste, or rather in the blind neglect of its culture in the schools." He continues, "Taste along could have led us gently back to Beauty, to Nature, and to Life."

With my new insights into Poe, I really must return and reread his work. 

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

My Edgar Allan Poe quilt features a raven and his handwritten Annabel Lee manuscript printed on fabric.

The Reason for the Darkness of the Night: Edgar Allan Poe and the Forging of American Science
by John Tresch
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Pub Date June 15, 2021
ISBN: 9780374247850
hardcover $30.00 (USD)

from the publisher

An innovative biography of Edgar Allan Poe—highlighting his fascination and feuds with science.

Decade after decade, Edgar Allan Poe remains one of the most popular American writers. He is beloved around the world for his pioneering detective fiction, tales of horror, and haunting, atmospheric verse. But what if there was another side to the man who wrote “The Raven” and “The Fall of the House of Usher”?

In The Reason for the Darkness of the Night, John Tresch offers a bold new biography of a writer whose short, tortured life continues to fascinate. Shining a spotlight on an era when the lines separating entertainment, speculation, and scientific inquiry were blurred, Tresch reveals Poe’s obsession with science and lifelong ambition to advance and question human knowledge. Even as he composed dazzling works of fiction, he remained an avid and often combative commentator on new discoveries, publishing and hustling in literary scenes that also hosted the era’s most prominent scientists, semi-scientists, and pseudo-intellectual rogues. As one newspaper put it, “Mr. Poe is not merely a man of science—not merely a poet—not merely a man of letters. He is all combined; and perhaps he is something more.”

Taking us through his early training in mathematics and engineering at West Point and the tumultuous years that followed, Tresch shows that Poe lived, thought, and suffered surrounded by science—and that many of his most renowned and imaginative works can best be understood in its company. He cast doubt on perceived certainties even as he hungered for knowledge, and at the end of his life delivered a mind-bending lecture on the origins of the universe that would win the admiration of twentieth-century physicists. Pursuing extraordinary conjectures and a unique aesthetic vision, he remained a figure of explosive contradiction: he gleefully exposed the hoaxes of the era’s scientific fraudsters even as he perpetrated hoaxes himself.

Tracing Poe’s hard and brilliant journey, The Reason for the Darkness of the Night is an essential new portrait of a writer whose life is synonymous with mystery and imagination—and an entertaining, erudite tour of the world of American science just as it was beginning to come into its own.

Lincoln in Private by Ronald C. White

 

Facing protesters over "Mr Lincoln's war," President Lincoln was preparing a reply when a congressman complimented him on so swiftly composing from scratch. Lincoln pointed to an open desk drawer filled with scraps of paper with his "best thoughts on the subject." He explained, "I never let one of those ideas escape me."

These private notes and reflections were a valuable resource for the president, and a more valuable exercise for working out and preserving his thoughts. Never meant for public consumption, his notes were open and revealing about his private beliefs and feelings.

Some of his notes had been destroyed when he moved from his Illinois home to Washington, D.C. But 109 were found after his death, deposited in a bank vault. Lincoln's secretaries Nicolay and Hay included some of these private notes in their ten volume history. 

Lincoln in Private by Ronald C. White explores ten of these private notes, contemplating on what we can learn from them about Lincoln. They vary from a lyrical description of encountering Niagara Falls to a mediation on Divine Will in human affairs.

Lincoln's ability to logic out arguments comes across in these notes. He was exceedingly well read, delving into newspapers and books from across the country, including pro-slavery sources. He thereby could counter arguments from the opposite political spectrum, understanding their position.

White takes readers through a thorough exegesis of each note, putting it in historic context as well as explaining its significance.

I am even more impressed by Lincoln. Considering his lack of formal education and rural roots, his depression and life challenges, his genius could not be contained, but, luckily for our country, found its proper application in at our most critical time in history.

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

Lincoln in Private: What His Most Personal Reflections Tell Us About Our Greatest President
by Ronald C. White
Random House Publishing Group - Random House
Pub Date May 4, 2021
ISBN: 9781984855091
hardcover $28.00 (USD)

from the publisher

“A fascinating tour inside the mind—and the heart—of Abraham Lincoln . . . An important and timeless work.”—Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of His Truth Is Marching On

From the New York Times bestselling author of A. Lincoln and American Ulysses, a revelatory glimpse into the intellectual journey of our sixteenth president through his private notes to himself, explored together here for the first time

A deeply private man, shut off even to those who worked closely with him, Abraham Lincoln often captured “his best thoughts,” as he called them, in short notes to himself. He would work out his personal stances on the biggest issues of the day, never expecting anyone to see these frank, unpolished pieces of writing, which he’d then keep close at hand, in desk drawers and even in his top hat. The profound importance of these notes has been overlooked, because the originals are scattered across several different archives and have never before been brought together and examined as a coherent whole.

Now, renowned Lincoln historian Ronald C. White walks readers through twelve of Lincoln’s most important private notes, showcasing our greatest president’s brilliance and empathy, but also his very human anxieties and ambitions. We look over Lincoln’s shoulder as he grapples with the problem of slavery, attempting to find convincing rebuttals to those who supported the evil institution (“As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.”); prepares for his historic debates with Stephen Douglas; expresses his private feelings after a defeated bid for a Senate seat (“With me, the race of ambition has been a failure—a flat failure”); voices his concerns about the new Republican Party’s long-term prospects; develops an argument for national unity amidst a secession crisis that would ultimately rend the nation in two; and, for a president many have viewed as not religious, develops a sophisticated theological reflection in the midst of the Civil War (“it is quite possible that God’s purpose is something different from the purpose of either party”). Additionally, in a historic first, all 111 Lincoln notes are transcribed in the appendix, a gift to scholars and Lincoln buffs alike.

These are notes Lincoln never expected anyone to read, put into context by a writer who has spent his career studying Lincoln’s life and words. The result is a rare glimpse into the mind and soul of one of our nation’s most important figures.

The Life She Wished to Live: A Biography of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Author of The Yearling by Ann McCutchan

I went into this biography only somewhat familiar with Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings--mostly from the movie version of The Yearling and the movie Cross Creek based on her life. As I read, my interest was held and then I was riveted. By the end, I was moved and a fan.

Rawlings was one of the 1930s writers whose career was benefited by Max Perkins of Scribner, the legendary editor who worked with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe. I had read the biography Max Perkins by A. Scott Berg--forty-plus years ago!--but did not recall Rawlings. 

I spent my teen years reading 20th c writers, including those Perkins mentored, but I don't remember finding women writers listed on the 'greats.' Where was Rawlings? Likely, relegated to the children's section, represented by The Yearling.

Rawlings's mother had hoped for more from life. She determined her daughter would achieve what she had not. When no musical ability was displayed, but Marjorie won a prize for a story, her mother supported—and pushed her—into writing.

Cross Creek, Edward Shenton illustration

After college, Rawlings became a hack writer and journalist until she felt ready to assume her life's real work as a writer. 

She and her husband, also a writer, purchased a Florida orange grove in a backwater community, setting up in a ramshackle house without electricity or plumbing. 

Running a business took much of their energy and time and money, but the Cracker and African American neighbors also gave her material for her work. 

Rawlings’s research brought her to live with neighbors to experience their lives, and she went on crocodile and snake hunts. 

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings book Cross Creek (1933 ed.)
and The Yearling (Grosset & Dunlap movie tie-in edition)
from my personal library

Rawling's life held many disappointments and challenges. Her first marriage failed, her husband jealous of her success. She struggled with alcohol use and continual health concerns. Her personal relationships were tested, including an extended lawsuit. She suffered from doubt. She also achieved the Pulitzer Prize and a second marriage with a supporting and loving husband.

I had moments of discomfort with Rawling's language of white supremacy, referencing her African American friends and servants by what we today would consider derogatory terms, but which represented typical white mores at that time. 

McCutchan takes readers on a journey into Rawling's transformation from accepting her inherited values to becoming friends with Zora Neale Hurston and raising her voice for equal rights.

Edward Shenton illustration for The Yearling

Rawlings also became involved with environmental groups. 

A study in contrasts, Rawlings could tap into her society background and was friends with writers and publisher's daughters, but she could be bawdy and rowdy, toting a gun on a hunt. She even went into the scrub wearing a silk nightgown to rescue an animal. I loved her esteem for Thomas Wolfe and her heartbreak over his early loss before he could reach his artistic maturity.

This is terrific biography.  

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

The Life She Wished to Live: A Biography of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, author of The Yearling
by Ann McCutchan
W. W. Norton & Company
Pub Date April 26, 2021   
Hardcover $35.00
ISBN: 9780393353495

from the publisher

A comprehensive and engaging biography of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of the classic The Yearling.

Washington, DC, born and Wisconsin educated, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings was an unlikely author of a coming-of-age novel about a poor central Florida child and his pet fawn—much less one that has become synonymous with Floridian literature writ large.

Rawlings was a tough, passionate, and independent woman who refused the early-twentieth-century conventions of her upbringing. Determined to exist outside her comfort zone, she found her voice in the remote hardscrabble life of Cross Creek, Florida. Between hunting alligator and managing an orange grove, Rawlings employed her sensitive eye, sharp ear for dialogue, and philosophical spirit to bring to life an unknown corner of America in vivid, tender detail—a feat that earned her the Pulitzer Prize in 1938. 

The Life She Wished to Live paints a lively portrait of Rawlings, her contemporaries—including her legendary editor Maxwell Perkins and friends Zora Neale Hurston and Ernest Hemingway—and the Florida landscape and people that inspired her.

About the Author: 

Ann McCutchan is the author of five books of memoir, essay, and biography. The founding director of the University of Wyoming's MFA in creative writing program and former editor of American Literary Review, McCutchan grew up in Florida and now lives in Wyoming.

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

It was an age when scholars studied the ancient Greek and Roman philosophers in search of answers to contemporary concerns. Book collectors scoured monasteries and abbeys across Italy and Europe seeking rare and neglected books. 

Golden Age Florence was a a republic, a literate city that educated boys and girls, a place where both wealthy and tradesmen ordered volumes for their personal libraries. 

It was also an age of cruel acts of vengeance, political intrigue and family wars, a time of plague, while the Ottoman empire threatened from the East. The church was in turmoil, powerless girls were married off or sent to an abbey, either way locked away from the world.

While some sought truth in Plato and Aristotle, others rejected anything but the Holy Bible and traditional Christian beliefs. 

As one bookseller in Florence wrote,"All evil is born from ignorance, Yet writers have illuminated the world, chasing away the darkness." He was Vespasiano da Bisticci. He started life as an eleven-year-old assistant in a book shop, a stationer and bookbinder, doing manual work that required great strength. He went on to be renowned as the "king of the world's booksellers", a trusted friend to the wealthy and powerful and the scholar. 

The Bookseller of Florence is the story of  Vespasiano's career, set against the story of bookmaking during the shift from hand written and illuminated manuscripts bound in velvet and jewels to the mass production of the printing press. And it is the history of Florence and Italy during the early Renaissance.

Saving ancient manuscripts, copying them, and distributing them for scholarly study did not protect the texts. Without libraries to store and protected them, many sat neglected or where destroyed by fire and warfare, or carried off to disappear.  

King covers a lot of territory! I was only vaguely familiar with Italian and Catholic history previously---and found it fascinating. I will read more! (Such as King's Brunelleschi’s Dome, on my Kindle TBR shelf.) I learned about every aspect of book making, the switch from papyrus to parchment to paper, the advances in writing fonts, how printing presses work.  

Yes, the book is filled with a huge cast of  historic people and events, but my interest never flagged. I was swept up in this epic history.

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

I read Ross King's last book Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies, reviewed here.

The Bookseller of Florence
The Story of the Manuscripts That Illuminated the Renaissance
by Ross King
Grove Atlantic/Atlantic Monthly Press
Pub Date April 13, 2021
ISBN: 9780802158529
hardcover $30.00 (USD)

from the publisher

The Renaissance in Florence conjures images of beautiful frescoes and elegant buildings—the dazzling handiwork of the city’s skilled artists and architects. But equally important for the centuries to follow were geniuses of a different sort: Florence’s manuscript hunters, scribes, scholars, and booksellers, who blew the dust off a thousand years of history and, through the discovery and diffusion of ancient knowledge, imagined a new and enlightened world.

At the heart of this activity, which bestselling author Ross King relates in his exhilarating new book, was a remarkable man: Vespasiano da Bisticci. Born in 1422, he became what a friend called “the king of the world’s booksellers.” At a time when all books were made by hand, over four decades Vespasiano produced and sold many hundreds of volumes from his bookshop, which also became a gathering spot for debate and discussion. Besides repositories of ancient wisdom by the likes of Plato, Aristotle, and Quintilian, his books were works of art in their own right, copied by talented scribes and illuminated by the finest miniaturists. His clients included a roll-call of popes, kings, and princes across Europe who wished to burnish their reputations by founding magnificent libraries.

Vespasiano reached the summit of his powers as Europe’s most prolific merchant of knowledge when a new invention appeared: the printed book. By 1480, the king of the world’s booksellers was swept away by this epic technological disruption, whereby cheaply produced books reached readers who never could have afforded one of Vespasiano’s elegant manuscripts.

A thrilling chronicle of intellectual ferment set against the dramatic political and religious turmoil of the era, Ross King’s brilliant The Bookseller of Florence is also an ode to books and bookmaking that charts the world-changing shift from script to print through the life of an extraordinary man long lost to history—one of the true titans of the Renaissance.

Susan, Linda, Nina & Cokie: The Extradordinary Story of the Founding Mothers of NPR by Lisa Napoli

I was in my early twenties when we moved to Philadelphia in 1975. I don't know exactly when we discovered National Public Radio, it seems to have always been part of our life. 

We listened to Fresh Air, All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Thistle & Shamrock, World Cafe, Piano Jazz, Car Talk, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, Diane Rehm, and later Here and Now, 1A, plus classical music and folk music and jazz. 

I recognized the voices of our virtual friends on the airwaves. But I did not know much about them.

Susan, Linda, Nina & Cokie is the story of  the "founding mothers" of NPR, whose voices we know like old friends. Lisa Napoli has written an entertaining, highly readable book that tells their stories and the barriers they broke. These women were integral to the rise of public radio. They were different in background and personality, but each rose to the top, bonded, and supported each other. 

I remember my first full time job in 1972 and the sexism in the workplace. A coworker discovered her salary was far less than the salary of the man who had the position before her. He had a family to support, she was told; her husband was her support. Another coworker told me to get a credit card in my name, and a credit rating. When her husband passed, she was unable to get a car loan. It was a time when women were judged by their appearance and attraction. A black coworker was chastised for wearing 'ethnic' earrings. I was fired for a fashionable frizzy perm.

This was the world Susan, Linda, Nina and Cokie encountered when forging their careers. 

When a young Linda Cozby (later, Wertheimer) saw trailblazer Pauline Frederick reporting the news, it was a revelation. "To hell with being Edward R. Murrow's secretary," she thought. "I'm going to aim higher."

In 1959, Susan Levitt Stamberg's "blue-chip" education wasn't as important in the workplace as her ninety-nine words a minute typing speed. She started as a secretary for the new 16 magazine where she chose the winner of the "I Miss Elvis Contest" when Elvis entered the U.S. Army. She advanced to secretary at The New Republic, which gave her a "crash course in Washington." When start-up station WAMU-FM needed a full time producer, at low pay, she found the challenging job she needed.

As a girl, Nina Totenberg, daughter of an eminent violinist, was inspired by Nancy Drew. It struck her that "journalism seemed as close to detective work as she could imagine." Her first job in journalism was working on the women's pages of a daily newspaper.

Cokie Boggs came from an elite background of democratic, Southern, Catholic, politicians. But when she fell in love with the Jewish Steve Roberts, who planned a career in journalism, she knew a political career was out. Cokie found employment in television, including Meet The Press. After Steve and Cokie married, she had a checkered career as her husband was assigned across the world.  While having babies and raising her children, she worked with Steve. While abroad, reporting breaking news for CBS made her mark and her career.

NPR's development, advances, and economic woes is a major part of the book. 

Susan earned a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Cokie became one of the best-known women in America. Nina's coverage of the Supreme Court, including the Anita Hill sexual harassment suit against Clarence Thomas, earned her top awards. Linda was with NPR from its beginning, integral to All Things Considered, and reporting on Washington politics.

The book is as inspirational as it is informative.

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

Susan, Linda, Nina & Cokie: The Extraordinary Story of the Founding Mothers of NPR

by Lisa Napoli
Abrams Press
Pub Date:  April 13, 2021
ISBN: 9781419750403
hard cover $28.00 (USD)

from the publisher

A group biography of four beloved women who fought sexism, covered decades of American news, and whose voices defined NPR

In the years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, women in the workplace still found themselves relegated to secretarial positions or locked out of jobs entirely. This was especially true in the news business, a backwater of male chauvinism where a woman might be lucky to get a foothold on the “women’s pages.” But when a pioneering nonprofit called National Public Radio came along in the 1970s, and the door to serious journalism opened a crack, four remarkable women came along and blew it off the hinges.

Susan, Linda, Nina, and Cokie is journalist Lisa Napoli’s captivating account of these four women, their deep and enduring friendships, and the trail they blazed to becoming icons. They had radically different stories. 

Cokie Roberts was born into a political dynasty, roamed the halls of Congress as a child, and felt a tug toward public service. Susan Stamberg, who had lived in India with her husband who worked for the State Department, was the first woman to anchor a nightly news program and pressed for accommodations to balance work and home life. Linda Wertheimer, the daughter of shopkeepers in New Mexico, fought her way to a scholarship and a spot on-air. And Nina Totenberg, the network's legal affairs correspondent, invented a new way to cover the Supreme Court. 

Based on extensive interviews and calling on the author’s deep connections in news and public radio, Susan, Linda, Nina, and Cokie will be as beguiling and sharp as its formidable subjects.

The Twelve Lives of Alfred Hitchcock: An Anatomy of the Master of Suspense by Edward White

Alfred Hitchcock. His name alone can brings chills, fond spooky memories, discomfort, and nostalgia. 

I was still ten years old in 1963 when I saw The Birds from the back seat of the family car, parked at the local drive-in movie theater. My parents thought I would fall asleep.

 

I didn't. The scene of a man missing his eye balls gave me nightmares for years. 

The next year, in 1964, I was nearly twelve when I saw Marnie. I am sure my folks did not expect me to be asleep that time. I did not understand it, I had no concept of sexual dysfunction, so of course watched it every time it came on television, trying to puzzle out the feelings it raised in me. 

Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955-1962) was a childhood staple. I learned the theme song, The Funeral March of the Marionette, on piano. It impressed the neighbor boy who was also a Hitchcock fan. I had story collections like Alfred Hitchcock's Ghostly Gallery: Eleven Spooky Stories for Young People.

Over the years, watching the classic films I had seen in the movie theater with my folks, including Vertigo. Rear Window, and North By Northwest, and those I only saw later on television, like Psycho, I understood things I could not as a girl.

And I wondered why in the world did Mom take me to see those films! Today, scenes of rape, obsession, murder, and suicide would not be considered proper fare for the under-13-year-old child.

As far as I can tell, the only harm these movies did me, other than nightmares about eyeless men, was a penchant for stylish suspense stories.  I knew that birds would not flock and attack me in reality, or crop dusters chase me. 

"He was a child, you know, a very black-comedy child" screenwriter Arthur Laurents said of Hitch. Perhaps that was his appeal to children. Raised on Dick and Jane while undergoing 'duck and cover' drills and watching adults glued to the news during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, we were ready for the safety of theatrical horror.  War became daily television fodder and political assassinations punctuated our teen years and watching Hitchcock movies on television were not as shocking any more.

I had never explored the man behind the persona. The nine-line sketch Hitch walked into on his show was all I needed to know. The sketch, I learned in The Twelve Lives of Alfred Hitchcock, Hitch himself drew and propagated as part of his image.

Edward White's biography considers the man through the lens of twelve aspects of his personality, each fully explored through Hitchcock's life and art. 

On the one hand, the book is hugely informative and gave me a full picture of the man and the artist.

On the other hand, Hitchcock remains a mystery. He carefully controlled his persona, as deliberately and thoughtfully controlling our image of him as his films controlled our responses.

Was his marriage to Alma platonic? Did he remain a virgin expect for once, resulting in the birth of his daughter? Did he lunge at actresses and ask his secretary to 'erotically entertain' him? I saw Tippi Hendren talk about her experience. Can we tell the difference between the persona Hitch offered and truth?

He grew up with WWI air raids, the 1918 flu pandemic,  in a rough part of town, with a Catholic Education. There is a lot of horror to draw from with that background. 

And yet, Hitch was averse to conflict and could not deal with "complex emotions."  He would not use animal cruelty in his films and preferred to have his victims thrown off a building than shot as in American films. 

Still,  he was fascinated by violence and cruelty, grew up reading classic British crime fiction including G. K. Chesterton and John Buchan. He once expressed his belief that he would have made a great criminal lawyer.

I learned about his  middle class, Catholic childhood, his struggle with his appearance, the art and film and stories that inspired him.

The book is always fascinating, always interesting, and often disturbing. Especially when I ask myself what kind of person is a Hitchcock fan, as perhaps it reveals things about myself I would rather not consider.

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

The Twelve Lives of Alfred Hitchcock: An Anatomy of the Master of Suspense
by Edward White
W. W. Norton & Company
Pub Date: April 13, 2021 
ISBN: 9781324002390
hardcover $28.95 (USD)

from the publisher

A fresh, innovative biography of the twentieth century’s most iconic filmmaker.

In The Twelve Lives of Alfred Hitchcock, Edward White explores the Hitchcock phenomenon—what defines it, how it was invented, what it reveals about the man at its core, and how its legacy continues to shape our cultural world.

The book’s twelve chapters illuminate different aspects of Hitchcock’s life and work: “The Boy Who Couldn’t Grow Up”; “The Murderer”; “The Auteur”; “The Womanizer”; “The Fat Man”; “The Dandy”; “The Family Man”; “The Voyeur”; “The Entertainer”; “The Pioneer”; “The Londoner”; “The Man of God.” 

Each of these angles reveals something fundamental about the man he was and the mythological creature he has become, presenting not just the life Hitchcock lived but also the various versions of himself that he projected, and those projected on his behalf.

From Hitchcock’s early work in England to his most celebrated films, White astutely analyzes Hitchcock’s oeuvre and provides new interpretations. He also delves into Hitchcock’s ideas about gender; his complicated relationships with “his women”—not only Grace Kelly and Tippi Hedren but also his female audiences—as well as leading men such as Cary Grant, and writes movingly of Hitchcock’s devotion to his wife and lifelong companion, Alma, who made vital contributions to numerous classic Hitchcock films, and burnished his mythology. And White is trenchant in his assessment of the Hitchcock persona, so carefully created that Hitchcock became not only a figurehead for his own industry but nothing less than a cultural icon.

Ultimately, White’s portrayal illuminates a vital truth: Hitchcock was more than a Hollywood titan; he was the definitive modern artist, and his significance reaches far beyond the confines of cinema.

Master of His Fate: Roosevelt's Rise from Polio to the Presidency by James Tobin

I know the story well.

First, because I had read James Tobin's biography The Man He Became: How FDR Defied Polio to Win the Presidency. And from reading numerous other books about Franklin Roosevelt.

And yet, I felt the tension and expectation stirring as I read Tobin's middle school biography of how Franklin Roosevelt met the challenge of infantile polio with extraordinary perseverance. 

As Al Smith pressured FDR to run for governor of New York State in a desperate bid to maintain Democratic votes for his presidency, Missy LeHand, FDR's secretary and 'office wife' whispers "Don't you dare!" for she knew what was at stake. 

With more time in therapy at Warm Springs, FDR might walk again. If he returned to his home state and full time work, his chances to walk without crutches or braces was nil. 

FDR had to choose between his personal goal to beat polio and his political hopes. The moment was now--was it worth the cost?

Tobin's ability to describe the medical information about polio and how it affected FDR's body is excellent. Young readers will understand the science and the emotional and social impact of the disease. FDR being 'crippled' meant he had to defy compartmentalization by society, politicians, and especially by voters. 

There was no hiding his disability. He had to wear heavy leg braces, use crutches, canes, and wheelchairs, and had to be lifted into cars. 

He turned the indignity into a demonstration of his strength and positive energy. He lifted his head, smiled, kept an upbeat attitude, communicating that being 'lame' did not affect his mind and his ability to work hard. In fact, he inspired people.

"Through those twelve dark years of pain and upheaval, Roosevelt's leadership was the beacon in the darkness. Because he evidently believed that all would be well in the end, people took hope. And it was no small thing that they knew he had come through a great personal ordeal."~Master of his Fate by James Tobin

Tobin informs about FDR's failings, including his troubled marriage, his distance as a father, times he became angry. He was not perfect. But that is the wonderful thing--imperfect humans can impact and change the world for the better.

The book is also a political history, tracing FDR's career and how his political relationship with Al Smith, and his nomination speech, brought him to public attention. 

Franklin Roosevelt is consistently rated as one of our greatest presidents for leading the country through perilous times and for social programs that we take for granted today. 

Young readers will understand how polio changed FDR's life and made him a better person, and that we can rise above the cards we have been dealt. 

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

Master of His Fate: Roosevelt's Rise from Polio to the Presidency
by James Tobin
Macmillan Children's Publishing Group
Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)
Pub Date: March 23, 2021   
ISBN : 9781627795203
hardcover $19.99 (USD)

from the publisher

Master of His Fate by James Tobin is an inspiring middle-grade biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, with a focus on his battle with polio and how his disease set him on the course to become president.

In 1921, FDR contracted polio. Just as he began to set his sights on the New York governorship—and, with great hope, the presidency—FDR became paralyzed from the waist down. FDR faced a radical choice: give up politics or reenter the arena with a disability, something never seen before. With the help of Eleanor and close friends, Roosevelt made valiant strides toward rehabilitation and became even more focused on becoming president, proving that misfortune sometimes turns out to be a portal to unexpected opportunities and rewards—even to greatness.

This groundbreaking political biography richly weaves together medicine, disability narratives, and presidential history.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

James Tobin is an award-winning biographer and the author of the adult book The Man He Became: How FDR Defied Polio to Win the Presidency, as well as the children's books The Very Inappropriate Word and Sue MacDonald Had a Book. He won the National Book Critics Circle Award in biography for Ernie Pyle’s War and the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award for To Conquer the Air: The Wright Brothers and the Great Race for Flight. He teaches narrative nonfiction in the department of media, journalism, and film at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

Related books about FDR and his life that I have reviewed

The Gatekeeper: Missy LeHand, FDR, and the Untold Partnership that Defined a Presidency by Kathryn Smith
http://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2016/09/fdrs-office-wife-and-many-loves-of.html

Frank and Al: FDR, Al Smith, and the Unlikely Alliance That Created the Modern Democratic Party
by Terry Golway
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2018/09/frank-al-fdr-al-smith-and-unlikely.html

Lady Bird Johnson Hiding in Plain Sight by Julia Sweig

In 2013, The Rachel Carson Award was posthumously awarded to Lady Bird Johnson for her "outstanding contributions to the conservation and environmental movement." If this surprises you, like it does me, it is because Bird's environmental agenda had been tweaked to the more acceptable "beautification" project. 

In Lady Bird Johnson Hiding in Plain Sight, Julia Sweig explains how people like me remember the roadside wildflower plantings and attack on roadside bill boards and not the deeper issues Bird was promoting--issues of environmental justice and racial equality. 

Every biography offers some new slant, some new insight. And Julia Sweig did not disappoint me with a new understanding of Lady Bird, her relationship with LBJ, and their experience during a tumultuous time.

Sweig does not mince words. She calls white supremacy by it's name. We see history, the landmark legislation, the white backlash, the Civil Rights movement, the riots, and the domestic terrorism from a 21st c. perspective.

Sweig presents Bird as a strong, determined, committed, intelligent woman who was necessary to her husband's well being and career. Bird's work of transforming urban environments for physical and mental health, from eliminating pollution to the beautification of  schoolyards, leaves us impressed by Bird's deep knowledge, dedication, and passion. 

Bird was a workaholic like her husband. She campaigned across the country, edited LBJ's speeches and acted as a sounding board. As First Lady she brought together talent and money to develop her dream of healthy neighborhoods, and she mothered two daughters on the verge of adulthood.  

It was interesting to learn about the private contract between Bird and LBJ concerning his running for another term of office, and how their daughters reacted to his decision.

It is thrilling to read a book that does not diminish Lady Bird to an abused, underappreciated, complicit wife. Sweig shows us a true partnership of equals--or perhaps I should better say, the balanced and insightful woman necessary to her man's success.

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

Lady Bird Johnson on Remember the Ladies
by Nancy A. Bekofske

Lady Bird Johnson: Hiding in Plain Sight

by Julia Sweig
Random House Publishing Group - Random House
Pub Date March 16, 2021  
ISBN: 9780812995909
hardcover $32.00 (USD)

from the publisher

A magisterial portrait of Lady Bird Johnson, and a major reevaluation of the profound yet underappreciated impact the First Lady's political instincts had on LBJ’s presidency.

“An inviting, challenging, well-told tale of the thoroughly modern partner and strategist Lady Bird Johnson, whose skill and complexity emerge fully in this rich tale of history and humanity.”—John Dickerson, author of The Hardest Job in the World

 “This riveting portrait gives us an important revision of a long-neglected First Lady.”—Blanche Wiesen Cook, author of Eleanor Roosevelt, vol 1-3

In the spring of 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson had a decision to make. Just months after moving into the White House under the worst of circumstances—following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy—he had to decide whether to run to win the presidency in his own right. He turned to his most reliable, trusted political strategist: his wife, Lady Bird Johnson. The strategy memo she produced for him, emblematic of her own political acumen and largely overlooked by biographers, is just one revealing example of how their marriage was truly a decades-long political partnership.

Perhaps the most underestimated First Lady of the twentieth century, Lady Bird Johnson was also one of the most accomplished and often her husband's secret weapon. Managing the White House in years of national upheaval, through the civil rights movement and the escalation of the Vietnam War, Lady Bird projected a sense of calm and, following the glamorous and modern Jackie Kennedy, an old-fashioned image of a First Lady. In truth, she was anything but. As the first First Lady to run the East Wing like a professional office, she took on her own policy initiatives, including the most ambitious national environmental effort since Teddy Roosevelt. Occupying the White House during the beginning of the women's liberation movement, she hosted professional women from all walks of life in the White House, including urban planning and environmental pioneers like Jane Jacobs and Barbara Ward, encouraging women everywhere to pursue their own careers, even if her own style of leadership and official role was to lead by supporting others.

Where no presidential biographer has understood the full impact of Lady Bird Johnson’s work in the White House, Julia Sweig is the first to draw substantially on Lady Bird’s own voice in her White House diaries to place Claudia Alta "Lady Bird” Johnson center stage and to reveal a woman ahead of her time—and an accomplished politician in her own right.

Jane Austen's Best Friend: The Life and Influence of Martha Lloyd by Zoe Wheddon

 

Jane Austen was especially close to her older sister Cassandra. She had mentors and friends. And she had Martha Lloyd, who was a 'second sister', and who lived with Jane, Cassandra and Mrs Austen.

They became friends when Jane was yet a girl. Although ten years older than Jane, Martha had much in common with her. 

"Martha was a strange mix of...amusing and highly sensible, experienced yet not educated into a forced air of formality," Wheddon writes. She held a deep Christian faith. 

She loved being outdoors, she loved to laugh, she was efficient and calm and she adored Jane's writings. The two friends shared in-jokes.

I did enjoy learning about Martha, her family history, her relationship to the Austen family, all that she contributed to Jane's happiness.  But, Wheddon's writing style felt wordy, long passages of imagined delights, descriptions of what Jane and Martha's relationship was possibly like, and then quotes from letters and other sources upon which her imaginings are based. I wanted to rush her along. The breezy, conjectured passages of what their friendship was possibly like became weighty.

But it seems I am in the minority, as better lights have awarded this biography 5 stars--Lucy Worsley Dr Paula Byrne, Natalie Jenner, Rose Servitova.

Chapters consider aspects of their life, including Fashion, Frolics, Charity, Love Lives and more, to Martha's life after Jane's death.

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

Jane Austen's Best Friend: The Life and Influence of Martha Lloyd
by Zoë Wheddon
Pen & Sword History
Pub Date 28 Feb 2021
Hardcover £19.99 (GBP)
ISBN: 9781526763815

from the publisher

All fans of Jane Austen everywhere believe themselves to be best friends with the beloved author and this book shines a light on what it meant to be exactly that. Jane Austen’s Best Friend; The Life and Influence of Martha Lloyd offers a unique insight into Jane’s private inner circle. Through this heart-warming examination of an important and often overlooked person in Jane’s world, we uncover the life changing force of their friendship.

Each chapter details the fascinating facts and friendship forming qualities that tied Jane and Martha together. Within these pages we will relive their shared interests, the hits and misses of their romantic love lives, their passion for shopping and fashion, their family histories, their lucky breaks and their girly chats. This book offers a behind the scenes tour of the shared lives of a fascinating pair and the chance to deepen our own bonds in ‘love and friendship’ with them both.

John Keats: Poetry, Life and Landscapes by Suzie Grogan

I will never get to England. I had dreamed of it when I was in my twenties and thirties. I wanted to see the places that inspired the literature I loved. Now, I am content to remain an armchair traveler. 

Suzie Grogan's biography John Keats is a real treat, a wonderful way to meet John Keats and learn about his life and work and travels. Grogan discovered Keats as a teenager, memorizing his poetry and studying his life. She makes readers love Keats, too.

I will admit that I had a limited knowledge of the Romantic writers, a deficit I have tried to make up for in my mature years. I had come across Keats while reading about other Romantic era writers. It was time to become more familiar with his poet. 

Keats studied to be a doctor but decided to dedicate his life to poetry. As a teenager, Keats had nursed his mother who was dying from TB. And he had taken care of his brother who also died of TB. As a physician, he knew he had tuberculosis, and it drove him to give up the woman he loved. Keats himself tragically died of TB at age 25.

Severn's portrait of Keats dying of TB

Before his death, he managed a strenuous walking tour, although troubled by a sore throat. Grogan follows Keats's walking journey across north England and Scotland, describing what Keats would have seen and the modern view of the same scenes. The tour helped to inspire some of his best poetry. 

Illustrations enrich the book: Keats's beautiful, refined face, the houses and cottages where he lived or visited, the cathedrals and the streets he knew, statues and art portraying him.

Grogan includes the iconic poems she discusses in the volume, and reading them was an important part of my appreciation.

I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

John Keats: Poetry, Life and Landscapes
by Suzie Grogan
Pen & Sword History
Pub Date: January 31, 2021 
ISBN: 9781526739377
PRICE: £19.99 (GBP)

from the publisher

John Keats is one of Britain’s best-known and most-loved poets. Despite dying in Rome in 1821, at the age of just 25, his poems continue to inspire a new generation who reinterpret and reinvent the ways in which we consume his work.

Apart from his long association with Hampstead, North London, he has not previously been known as a poet of ‘place’ in the way we associate Wordsworth with the Lake District, for example, and for many years readers considered Keats’s work remote from political and social context. Yet Keats was acutely aware of and influenced by his surroundings: Hampstead; Guy’s Hospital in London where he trained as a doctor; Teignmouth where he nursed his brother Tom; a walking tour of the Lake District and Scotland; the Isle of Wight; the area around Chichester and in Winchester, where his last great ode, To Autumn, was composed.

Far from the frail Romantic stereotype, Keats captivated people with his vitality and strength of character. He was also deeply interested in the life around him, commenting in his many letters and his poetry on historic events and the relationship between wealth and poverty. What impact did the places he visited have on him and how have those areas changed over two centuries? How do they celebrate their ‘Keats connection’?

Suzie Grogan takes the reader on a journey through Keats’s life and landscapes, introducing us to his best and most influential work. In many ways a personal journey following a lifetime of study, the reader is offered opportunities to reflect on the impact of poetry and landscape on all our lives. The book is aimed at anyone wanting to know more about the places Keats visited, the times he lived through and the influences they may have had on his poetry. Utilising primary sources such as Keats’s letters to friends and family and the very latest biographical and academic work, it offers an accessible way to see Keats through the lens of the places he visited and aims to spark a lasting interest in the real Keats - the poet and the man.