Surely You Can't Be Serious (David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker)

Surely You Can't Be Serious: The True Story of Airplane!
David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker
St. Martin's Press
Nonfiction, Autobiography/Media Reference
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: Few movies can claim to have changed the entertainment landscape like the 1980 classic Airplane!. From the opening shot of the jet plane tail slicing through the clouds to the menacing chords of the Jaws theme to the final roll of credits riddled with humorous inserts, it redefined what comedy could do and changed the lives of most everyone involved, not to mention numerous fans in the decades since its premiere. But long before Ted Striker developed his drinking problem or Captain Oveur asked a young boy about gladiator movies, the Zucker brothers and their best friend Jim Abrahams were just three Midwestern boys who loved to laugh and make others laugh. This is the story of the long, unlikely journey that took them from Wisconsin to Los Angeles, from improvised stage shows to the silver screen, and from obscurity to international stardom.

REVIEW: Airplane! was a staple of my childhood (as was the criminally short-lived and ahead-of-its-time TV series Police Squad!; I never found the Naked Gun trilogy quite as consistently funny as the series, myself, even before the whole O. J. Simpson thing soured me on rewatches); it's one of those movies where one can watch it a dozen time and catch something new each and every time through. For all the silliness, though, it would've fallen flat on its face if it hadn't been so meticulously and artfully constructed, from the script to the cinematography to the casting choices to the score. This book delves into how the trio learned to work together, hone their sense of humor and writing skills via live theater, and not only survived the culture shock of 1970's Los Angeles but managed to eventually live every creator's dream of landing a studio contract and filming a genre-defining hit. It was not a straightforward road, nor was it one without doubts or setbacks or mistakes.
The story wanders somewhat in the telling; written in something like screenplay format, the book is a dialog, like an interview where the trio are sitting down to tell their story to the audience of the reader. Along the way are extras and interjections from colleagues, cast members, executives, and several people whose lives were influenced by Airplane!. (The audiobook features several guest narrators for these different "parts".) As a result, the story sometimes feels a little scattershot, moving back and forth and wandering on tangents before getting back to the main "plot" of the making of the movie. This lack of focus almost cost it a half-star, but overall it's an interesting examination of the movie that never should've existed, and a lost era when Hollywood still embraced unique, new voices and was willing to take risks. The Zuckers and Abrahams are right that Airplane! couldn't have happened today. (Though I personally always take such assertions with a little grain of salt; no envelope-pushing classic could be "made today", in part because different times have different envelopes and in part because they themselves already pushed that envelope, so any attempt to make the same thing again isn't close enough to the edge anymore to push anything. That doesn't mean today's metaphoric envelopes don't still have edges to be pushed, or that nobody is capable of pushing them, though in today's climate of endless franchises and remakes, it's far less likely a major studio would back such an experiment. But I digress...) The whole is an intriguing glimpse of cinematic lore for anyone who enjoys the film or the history of cinema and comedy.

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This Book is Not Yet Rated (Peter Bognanni) - My Review
Young Frankenstein: A Mel Brooks Book: The Story of the Making of the Film (Mel Brooks with Rebecca Keegan) - My Review
Fan Fiction: A Mem-Noir (Brent Spiner) - My Review

Fordlandia (Greg Grandin)

Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City
Greg Grandin
Picador
Nonfiction, History
***+ (Okay/Good)

DESCRIPTION: Few companies can claim to have transformed the world quite like Ford. Though not the first to come up with the assembly line process and other innovations, company founder Henry Ford melded them into an indelible symbol of the modern industrial age, building an empire that changed how people lived and worked. He didn't just sell cars and employ workers: he created a lifestyle, an idealized vision of America that, he was sure, would revolutionize the world and bring about a new golden age, amalgamating industry and agriculture and "pure" moral living. But not every venture was a success. In 1927, with factories hungry for latex and rubber, Henry Ford decided to risk a new, audacious scheme: a rubber tree plantation in the heart of the wild Amazon river basin, one that would not simply produce latex, but would export Ford's work ethics and prove the superiority of his American vision, to the point of conquering one of the last great wildernesses on Earth. He and his agents managed to secure the land, as well as concessions from a foreign government eager to bring some of Ford's legendary prosperity to an impoverished region. But troubles plagued "Fordlandia" from before the first American boot touched Brazilian soil. Rather than be Henry Ford's crowning achievement, it instead became a forgotten footnote and cautionary tale.

REVIEW: I only recently got around to Aldous Huxley's classic dystopian work Brave New World, which posited a nightmarish future where "Fordism" took root around the globe. It reminded me that I'd seen this book once or twice go through the library system where I work, so I figured it might give me some background information on what Huxley was responding to. Fordism was, indeed, a real phenomenon and philosophy associated with Henry Ford and his empire, one whose reach spread far beyond his factories and Model T's... one riddled with seeds of disaster. What Huxley explored in fiction, Fordlandia explores in history, as the decades-long venture demonstrated just how little of Henry Ford's envisioned utopia survived contact with reality, especially reality in the jungle.
The rise and eventual fall of Henry Ford as an American icon mirrors that of many of today's magnates, including the contrast between the truth and popular public perception... and how, the longer their success lasted and the more power they accumulated, the more they drifted into their own worlds, increasingly paranoid and hostile to any who might rupture the bubble. Ford was not the most caring and altruistic man to begin with; one of his most trusted underlings was a violent bully (useful for busting unions and enforcing Ford's increasingly draconian restrictions on what employees could and could not do - even off the clock, in their own homes), he treated his son Edsel terribly, his antisemitism was notorious, and despite claiming to be a suffragist and hiring non-white workers at the same wage as whites, the schools he established in company towns had very clear notions about what women could learn and his factories somehow put Black workers in the most dangerous roles with the least options to advance. In Brazil, the company did not even try to hide the racism; they wrote off indigenous populations as "too lazy" to consider hiring, and more than one Fordlandia supervisor tried to blame labor problems on racial friction. Above all, Henry Ford seemed absolutely convinced that his industrial innovations and a strict enforcement of "traditional" American values and lifestyle (or, rather, a Puritanical interpretation of the rural Midwestern values and lifestyle he grew up with) would create a global utopia... if only he could convince the rest of the world that they were really better off admitting American superiority in all things, from business to culture.
There was, from the start, an inherent flaw in Ford's planned future: the lifestyle he held up as an ideal was the very one that his Model T drove to virtual extinction. That flaw, and others, only became more magnified when the company attempted to establish "Fordism" along with its rubber tree plantation in the remote heart of a foreign country, one where little effort was made to understand local custom, so convinced was the company of its own superior ways. Henry Ford also famously eschewed the very concept of "experts", which did not bode well for efforts to mass produce latex; there's a reason that rubber trees in the wild rarely clustered together (as would inevitably happen on a plantation), as the very jungle where they evolved was of course where there were innumerable insects, fungi, and other pathogens. Only in places like Asia and Africa, devoid of the native pests, could monocultures of the trees be expected to thrive... a lesson that the Ford Company would learn too late, and even then stubbornly refuse to take to heart.
Grandin traces the origins of the concept of Fordlandia from the rise of Henry Ford's global conglomerate and celebrity reputation (and the political situation that enabled that rise), through the plantation's rough history and the parallel hardships and evolution of the Ford Motor Company in America (which quickly transitioned to a bright vision of a future utopia, where workers were actually paid enough to buy the products they helped produce, to a mechanized and dehumanizing nightmare where the workforce was bullied and beaten into submission), and to Fordlandia's ultimate failure and Henry Ford's decline. The aftermath of both the plantation and the industrialization that Ford helped usher into the world - how Ford's original (if unrealistic) grand utopian vision of a future where industry and agriculture would bring harmony has instead become a grim reality of misery and exploitation of land and people at an unimaginable scale (and only getting worse by the minute) - puts the project and Henry Ford's legacy into perspective.
At times, the names and dates could be a little much to keep straight, but overall Grandin does a decent job exploring the subject. Since I originally read this book for context on Brave New World, I did indeed find a new understanding of what Huxley was commenting on with his book, showing the world what an ultimately monstrous and nightmarish future Fordism would bring about if allowed to thrive. The visions offered by today's billionaire industry titans, the spiritual descendants of Henry Ford and his ilk, are no less nightmarish and, I suspect, ultimately at least as toxic and detrimental in their long-term consequences (to be paid by the rest of humanity, of course, never them).

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Ruthless River (Holly FitzGerald) - My Review
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The Greatest Nobodies of History (Adrian Bliss)

The Greatest Nobodies of History: Minor Characters from Major Moments
Adrian Bliss
Penguin
Nonfiction, History/Humorous Nonfiction
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: Leonardo da Vinci, Charles II, "Buffalo" Bill Cody... these and other names are familiar figures from history books. But truth is often difficult to come by, when so much is lost to time, and what survives can be (and often is) colored by the biases and misconceptions of those recording it, and when so much focus is given to great names that the experiences of ordinary folk is all but forgotten. In a series of "recovered" documents, explore little-seen perspectives on great men and great moments from witnesses standing just to the side of history, with testimonies from such impeccable observers as Henry VIII's "groom of the stool" (tender of the royal chamber pot), a vestal virgin on trial for failure to tend the sacred temple flame of ancient Rome and bringing various "disasters" down upon the empire, the emu field marshal who led her troops through Australia's first war against the birds, and more.

REVIEW: I've seen some of Bliss's short online videos on a variety of subjects, and was curious how he'd come across in long-form writing. Drawing on what is known (or can be inferred) from history and adding a fair dollop of imagination and some humor, he presents ten unique, intriguing, satirical, and even sometimes touching stories, covering historical figures and events ranging from Ancient Greece to the early twentieth century.
As in most short story collections (which this more or less is), the tales vary a little in quality and tone, though none of them are outright clunkers. From the epistolary story of a nameless wealthy Athenian writing a series of complaints about the uncouth and shocking behavior of the philosopher Diogenes whose outlandish ideas spread like wildfire to the "war journal" of an emu field marshal, from the story of a Cromwell-supporting English oak tree's fateful encounter with a fleeing King Charles II, even through the stories of a Renaissance ferret's art modeling career and the eager young understudy of Buffalo Bill's aging horse in the showbiz years, Bliss never fails to find unique angles to approach his topics. He also doesn't fail to create decent characters and arcs within each story, so they work as historical fiction (or fantasy, if you need to stretch to account for anthropomorphism in your characters) in their own right. Once in a while they feel a little long, and occasionally the English humor threatens to be a trifle thick, but they never fail to interest or amuse, and some have unexpectedly emotional moments.
Following each story, Bliss offers the facts (or at least the facts as can best be known; in 2025, we're seeing real-time evidence how even events happening right in front of us, with unprecedented means of preservation at the fingertips of innumerable observers, can be warped and twisted, particularly by those with ulterior motives to ensure a particular version of reality is seen as the one and only true account. Just imagine how much worse that distortion becomes when far fewer people had the means to record their observations, and those observations have been handed down through innumerable retellings and/or translations like a centuries-long game of Telephone... only the original player is long gone and can't tell us how laughably twisted the message has become when it reaches the end of the chain). Some of the stories stick fairly close to known events, and others are more inventive, but all invite the reader to pursue further reading if any subject strikes their fancy, demonstrating how history can be as exciting and seemingly improbable as any fiction.
On the whole, I found it enjoyable, and Bliss did a decent job narrating the audiobook (with an expanded cast in a few of the tales).

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The Complete Maus (Art Spiegelman)

The Complete Maus: A Survivor's Tale
The Maus series, Volumes 1 and 2
Art Spiegelman
Pantheon
Nonfiction, Graphic Novel/History/Memoir
***** (Great)

DESCRIPTION: Art Spiegelman always had a troubled relationship with his father, Vlatek. He knew that the man, like Art's mother Anja, had experienced terrible things during Hitler's reign in Europe, but still Vlatek could be so very, very difficult to be around. It wasn't until much later that a grown Art, now a successful cartoonist and writer, decided to try recording his father's experiences in graphic novel form. Thus, in a series of interviews and encounters spanning several years, the story unfolds, the story of how a successful young Jewish man in Poland saw the world he knew destroyed and witnessed horrors no human should ever have to experience again.
This edition includes Volume I: My Father Bleeds History and Volume II: And Here My Troubles Began.

REVIEW: I've heard of this book for many years, a Pulitzer Prize-winning record of one of history's greatest modern atrocities through the eyes of one survivor, but it never quite ventured onto my reading radar. In recent times, as efforts to censor and outright ban books gain more traction (and disturbing signs of history repeating itself play out in broad daylight, to the unheeded warnings of many and the cheers of those too ignorant to know how this story always goes and those gleefully aware and spurring it on), I decided it was high time to give it a try; anything they're trying that hard to silence must be necessary reading. I finally manged to secure a used copy... and I only wish I'd gotten to it sooner.
The tale opens with a brief glimpse of a young Art - portrayed as a mouse, all characters in the book being anthropomorphic animals - out roller skating with friends only to fall behind when his skates break. He goes home to his father, but if he was expecting sympathy, he gets none. "Friends? Your friends?" Vlatek tells his son cynically. "If you could lock them together in a room with no food for a week... then you could see what it is, friends!" This moment sets the stage for the unfolding tale, which takes up again when Art is a grown man, his relationship with Vlatek best described as "complicated"... as are Vlatek's relationships with many people, particularly Mala, the woman he married after Anja's death by suicide. The two snipe at each other ceaselessly, driving one another to their wit's end (with Art too often caught in the middle). Even many years later, Vlatek still mourns Art's mother, herself also a survivor of the camps, a pain that often expresses itself in anger and helpless frustration, not helped by failing health. Art's efforts to record Vlatek's memories are as much about trying to bridge the gap with his father and reconnect with memories of his mother (whose own memoirs Vlatek burned in his grief, a tragedy Art struggles to forgive) as documenting a vital part of world history as experienced by one man. In this way, Art develops both himself and his father as full characters, in the present and the past, not just hollow placeholders to parrot facts and figures about the Holocaust experience. This lends the story more weight than anything I recall reading in history class, driving home that these were people, real people, warts and all, who thought and dreamed and loved and feared, not statistics and not some dismissable "other" from long ago and far away. In the present, Art and Vlatek meet several times, visits often ending in frustration and arguments, while Vlatek's past - starting from just before the young man met his future wife and Art's mother Anja (daughter of a wealthy and influential man who learned too late that money was no shield against evil) and wending through the buildup to Hitler's invasion of Poland and the relentless stripping down of rights and basic humanity on the way to the camps themselves. The illustrations sometimes bleed into surreality, the only way to effectively render the terrible events unfolding. Through it all, Vlatek persisted then as he persists in modern times, through a mix of resourcefulness, luck, and sheer stubbornness, traits Art comes to understand (even if he still can't help but find the old man difficult to the point of exasperation).
Spiegelman's simple, expressive renderings and heavy lines are surprisingly eloquent and effective, and the story as it unfolds in both past and present comes together splendidly, as much a tribute to one man's endurance as a testimony of an ugly time that should never be repeated (and yet, unfortunately, has been and is and most likely will be; I'd call these times and events "inhuman" if they weren't so often the flame to which humanity seems to keep fluttering like a moth, time again and again). This is a book that only becomes more important and even necessary as witnesses to World War II fade in the rear view mirror just as fresh new horrors appear through the mists ahead, a dire warning sign as well as a tiny glimmer of grim hope that maybe, eventually, these new evils too might fall and light return to a darkened world.

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A City On Mars (Kelly and Zach Weinersmith)

A City On Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?
Kelly and Zach Weinersmith
Penguin
Nonfiction, Humor/Science
***** (Great)

DESCRIPTION: Few things epitomize the Space Age dream like visions of cities on distant worlds, a future where humanity expands through the final frontier of the solar system. The challenges appear daunting, but so did the challenge of a manned moonflight, and we ticked that box decades ago. Surely, in this age of supercomputers and AI and swarms of satellites, with tech billionaires throwing money and resources at bringing down the cost of space travel, we'll see the first permanent human presence on another world in a matter of decades, at most... right?
Maybe not quite.
While it's true we've come a long way from the days of Sputnik, there are numerous problems to be solved - from thorny legal matters of who owns space and its resources to the practical matters of survival, let alone reproduction, in environs inherently hostile to life - before anyone rolls out the welcome mat on their Martian home. In this book, these obstacles are explored, with speculations on what a space-bound future might actually entail.

REVIEW: From The Jetsons to Star Trek, from space fantasy like Star Wars to grittier takes like 2001 and The Expanse, sci-fi and popular culture are steeped in visions of orbital habitats, space stations, and otherworldly colonies, a seemingly-inevitable next step for the wandering ape that emerged from Africa to spread to essentially every habitable corner of the Earth, adapting to wildly different conditions along the way. Successes like the 1960's moonshot and the International Space Station help keep the dream alive, further fueled by boasts from billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and their races to build a better rocket, with exploitation of off-world resources and/or Martian colonies as the stated end goal. But the actual logistics of building and maintaining a human presence on another world, let alone a self-sustaining one, are immense. With humor and some interesting asides, the Weinersmiths break down the challenges confronting any would-be space colonizing civilization, a fair bit of which involves research that hasn't even been adequately done, such as how reproduction in a low-gravity environment would work and what the long-term effects of space radiation would be on an average population (our sample size, and sample specimens, of humans spending significant amount of time off-planet being statistically minuscule and based on trained specialists who had gone through rigorous pre-mission screening). Experiments to create entirely self-sustaining biomes are also not nearly robust enough to tell us what we'd need for a truly independent colony over the long term. Even finding a place to colonize is fraught with problems, from the limited prime real estate on the Moon (only a tiny fraction of locales are ideal) to the toxic "soil" of Mars to the technological challenges of that old staple of sci-fi, the spinning habitat that generates its own gravity. And that's not even getting into the psychological challenges, legal dilemmas, or potential security risks of sending people out into space who could potentially fling rocks down at our planet and re-enact the dinosaur-killer asteroid impact.
Does that mean that space colonization, even in orbital stations, is entirely impossible and will never happen? No, it does not, but the authors make some very valid points as they argue that we're going to have to do some very hard work, some very hard science, and some very deep thinking before we're ready to step offworld.
The whole makes for a fascinating, interesting, and occasionally amusing exploration of a fascinating concept. I'll still enjoy my sci-fi and space operas, of course, but I'm not so blinded by shiny fictional objects as to not understand that the reality, if it ever happens (exceptionally unlikely in my lifetime, or the lifetime of anyone reading this review), will be something far different, if equally as awe-inspiring and fascinating (again, in theory and concept, if unlikely to be fact anytime soon). I couldn't find any down sides or nitpicks, so I awarded this book top marks.

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Soonish (Kelly and Zach Weinersmith) - My Review

Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man (Emmanuel Acho)

Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man
Emmanuel Acho
Flatiron Books
Nonfiction, History/Memoir/Politics
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: Is racism really a problem in modern times? Can Black people to be racist? What about "reverse racism" against whites? Why can't we all just stop seeing color - won't that make the problem go away? Former football player and current sports commentator and podcast host Emmanuel Acho answers questions about race that many white people hesitate to ask.

REVIEW: If nothing else has become glaringly apparent in the decade since Barack Obama's presidency, it's that American racism is not only alive and well, it's become emboldened enough to step from the shadows and openly feast on whatever progress has been made since at least the 1960's. Acho does not pretend to speak to the experience of all Black Americans, but he does honestly and thoroughly explore a number of topics related to racism, from the personal prejudices and biases that seep into daily life and color decisions to the systemic racism built into the institutions that govern all aspects of our public existence, going all the way back to the nation's founding and persisting to the present day. He even addresses "that" word, its volatile history and if it's ever okay for someone outside the community to use it. It makes for an interesting, candid, and frequently depressing and infuriating look at the many faces, many forms, vexingly persistence, and adaptive mutability of a problem that underlies so many of today's challenges, challenges that threaten everyone but that share common roots.

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Democracy in Retrograde (Sami Sage and Emily Amick)

Democracy in Retrograde: How to Make Changes Big and Small in Our Country and in Our Lives
Sami Sage and Emily Amick
Gallery Books
Nonfiction, Politics
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: It's no secret that the state of America's democracy is dire. Voting rights are under attack, the very notion of who is or is not a citizen has been thrown into the shredder, and the party that pushed a literal, televised insurrection has grasped the levers of power. Institutions and guardrails are being destroyed at exponentially increasing rates, and those doing the destruction aren't even trying to hide the anti-democratic, anti-Constitutional roots of their motivations. Is it too late to stop the complete collapse of the country we thought we knew? The authors offer ideas for finding hope and motivation even in the darkest times.

REVIEW: This book was published in July 2024. At that time, I would've agreed that there was, indeed, some chance of at least limiting damage from the bad actors who have successfully infiltrated the system and grasped control of the media narrative to push their messaging and drown out opposition. I'm not at all certain of that anymore, one year later. In any event, the authors explore ways to connect with like-minded individuals and build intentional communities - ideally in-person communities, as so much of the internet has been siloed into echo-chambers and ultimately compromised (many online public spaces being actually in the hands of private individuals pushing their own agendas and influence, rewarding outrage and divisiveness) - in order to work toward change. They discuss the different ways people can contribute: not everyone is a leader, but most everyone can likely find something useful to do, some place where their interests and passions intersect with a need. As usual, though, there are those of us who fall through the cracks; I lack access to in-person communities, for one, and for another I lack anything tangible to contribute. I'm also congenitally invisible, so even in the off chance I found a place to show up I'm not particularly useful except as an inert object. Still, ideas like these are likely the only way to turn anything around or, as I sadly suspect will be more likely, eventually rebuild anything from the rubble that will eventually be left to whoever or whatever manages to survive what's coming.

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Dinosaurs (DK Smithsonian)

Dinosaurs: Prehistoric Life from Dinosaurs to Humans
DK Smithsonian
DK
Nonfiction, YA? Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Life/Science
***+ (Okay/Good)

DESCRIPTION: By the start of the Mesozoic - the "Age of Dinosaurs" - life in some form or another had been proliferating on Earth for several hundreds of millions of years, until a mass extinction event (not the first, but one of the most iconic) that ended the Permian Period. From the devastation would rise many grand, diverse plants and animals that would define an era... and the same would happen at the end of the Cretaceous Period, when the Cenozoic began. Using numerous diagrams, fossils, and reconstructions, this book charts life on Earth from the start of the Triassic to the appearance of modern humans.
Material in this volume was previously in Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Life from DK Publishing.

REVIEW: I picked this up in the Barnes and Noble discount section because it included many non-dinosaur life forms (plants, insects, and invertebrates, as well as covering Cenozoic times) that are often glossed over in other books on prehistoric life I have... well, that, and I had a gift card that made it free to me. Considering what I paid for it, and the new-to-me material it covered, I can't say I'm entirely disappointed, but I can also say that I would've liked more.
After the overview at the start - giving a quick look at what evolution is, what fossils are, and how we know what we know about biomes that died out long before our own ancestors began walking upright, let alone writing science books - this book starts with the Triassic. I admit I'd hoped for a little on the pre-dinosaur life forms, which I have found frustratingly little on in armchair-accessible works, but at least this volume covers something more than the usual suspects, offering fossils and a few reconstructions of plants, invertebrates, and several non-dinosaur (or non-dinosaur-ancestral, as the "terrible lizards" themselves took some time to rise to dominance) entries. Some were interesting, but most feel like quick post-it notes that only tantalize, that don't always explore what's significant about this particular entry to justify inclusion over others... and a few are just plain irritating, showing only fragments while others that claim in the text to have excellent fossils aren't show well, or at all. More than once, I found places where text contradicted itself, likely the result of incomplete editing as content was revised over subsequent editions. And there are several scientific terms that the book throws around without including a glossary. Those frustrations aside, books like this rest largely on visual appeal, and Dinosaurs does deliver fairly well there. In addition to the bite-sized entries, there are several insets comparing extinct life forms to modern counterparts. This may not be the only book on dinosaurs and prehistoric life one will ever need (no such book exists that I'm aware of), but it's not a bad entry point or addition to a layperson's library on the matter.

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Dinosaurs (Carl Mehling, editor) - My Review

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou)

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Maya Angelou
Ballantine Books
Nonfiction, Autobiography
****+ (Good/Great)

DESCRIPTION: Long before she became known internationally for her poetry and civil rights activism (among other accomplishments), Maya Angelou was a young girl sent far away from her mother, to live in the segregated town of Stamps, Alabama with her grandmother and disabled uncle. Here, in Mama's store, with only her brother Bailey as confidant, she would learn lessons that would shape her later life.

REVIEW: I'm sufficiently ignorant and unsophisticated to only have a passing familiarity with Angelou and her works; this audiobook was another part of my admittedly-haphazard effort to patch over the innumerable knowledge holes in my brain. Given the direction of recent events, where books like this are being challenged and removed from too many public spaces (anyone who plays semantics Twister to pretend that's not actually "banning" books or throttling the spread of ideas can kindly find another book review blog to follow, thanks), I figured it was high time to try it. Displaying a poet's ability to deeply and vividly evoke a time and place and life, Angelou weaves stories of her childhood, stretching from Jim Crow Alabama to St. Louis and California as she and her brother move between homes and relatives. Along the way, she has memorable encounters with colorful characters, while also experiencing the dark, twisted legacy of racism and classism (and sexism) in their innumerable guises, plus some personal traumas. Alongside the pain and despair and rage, she also experiences moments of hope and solidarity and beauty, the many threads and experiences coming together as she grows up and begins to build a future for herself that challenges the boundaries others would put around her. It makes for an interesting, inspiring, if sometimes depressing and harsh, read... and the fact that so many in 2025 still actively seek to shut books like this away, along with the questions it forces one to ask of oneself and the things it forces one to see about the world around us, is all one needs to know about how far America has failed to progress since Angelou's youth.

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Between the World and Me (Ta-Nehisi Coates)

Between the World and Me
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Random House
Nonfiction, Essays/Memoir/Sociology
****+ (Good/Great)

DESCRIPTION: In a series of essays written for his son, award-winning writer Ta-Nehisi Coates reflects on the long, complicated history of race and his own unfinished journey to understand what it means to be Black in America.

REVIEW: If there's one thing recent events/backslides in national policy in 2025 have driven home with the force of the Chicxulub dinosaur-killer asteroid, it's a need to confront the ongoing cost of racism in regards to... well, pretty much everything in the modern world, particularly the "Western" modern world, because what looked to many of us like progress was just more wallpaper plastered over the gaping cracks and toxic mold devouring our collective house. (And, yes, as a straight white woman I had an unearned luxury of ignorance for far too long.) By tying lessons and lives and events from history into his own life and ever-evolving understanding, Coates presents a gripping, often cutting narrative. To ask if there's hope for a race-free future is to ask the wrong question, another wallpaper-over-the-mold question that tries to handwave away the hard, individual and institutional self-examination and systemic changes that would be required to begin to reach such a place. There is anger, there is despair, there is even bewilderment, but also a certain determination (it would be wrong to really call it optimism or hope, especially not in the flowery bright-sider way those words are too often used). These are not always easy essays to read (or listen to, as this was another audiobook - as a side note, the author does a great job narrating, which is not something I can say for all authors, but I digress), but they are needed essays.

You Might Also Enjoy:
Why Does Everything Have to Be About Race? (Keith Boykin) - My Review
All Blood Runs Red (Phil Keith with Tom Clavin) - My Review
How to Be an Antiracist (Ibram X. Kendi) - My Review

The Paranormal Ranger (Stanley Milford, Jr.)

The Paranormal Ranger: A Navajo Investigator's Search for the Unexplained
Stanley Milford, Jr.
William Morrow
Nonfiction, Autobiography/Paranormal and Unexplained Phenomena
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: The modern Western world has long dismissed notions of ghosts or curses or other such phenomena, considering them hallucinations or hoaxes or simple misunderstandings. Many cultures, however, still consider such things as real as gravity and electricity... and many people around the world from many cultures, some of which should "know better", still experience unexplained encounters.
Stanley Milford, Jr., son of a Navajo father and Cherokee mother, grew up with a foot in two worlds, that of mainstream white America and that of Native culture. As a boy, he adored the many cop shows on TV and knew he'd love nothing more than to become a law enforcement officer, one of the Navajo Rangers who patrol the vast desert reservation protecting the people, the archaeological sites, and the environment. But he also had more than one unusual occurrence that lent weight to the native tales and legend he learned, enough to make him less dismissive than some would be when people would report unusual activities such as bigfoots harassing their livestock or skinwalkers stalking their land. For many years, he and a partner would explore unusual events, leading to many strange encounters.

REVIEW: I was a long-time X-phile, and this book looked to strike a similar vein to some of the older books on unexplained phenomena that I used to enjoy, with a little different and non-"Western" take on the matter. The author approaches the subject and his experiences with both logic and cultural understanding, an approach that works rather well for events that would seem to defy current scientific consensus of what can be real and what cannot exist. More often than not, he and his partner serve a greater purpose by ensuring that people feel heard and understood, and are not simply dismissed or actively derided for what they experienced; their investigations gather some interesting evidence and even result in some close encounters, but as Milford says more than once, these aren't usually cases where there's a suspect to apprehend or some legal recourse for victims. The author also explores his own life and career beyond the paranormal aspects that were only a small part of his overall job. Throughout runs a strong thread of Native culture and belief and history, including portions of creation (or "emergence") myths, which offer lenses and tools with which to understand aspects of reality that are too readily dismissed by the mainstream/white world. The whole makes for some interesting storytelling. As for how much I believe... I'd call myself agnostic on the matter, though I'm not about to tell someone they did not experience a thing just because I did not experience a thing.

You Might Also Enjoy:
Monsters (John Michael Greer) - My Review
Elatsoe (Darcie Little Badger) - My Review
Unsolved Mysteries: Past and Present (Colin Wilson and Damon Wilson) - My Review

Tidy the F*ck Up (Messie Condo)

Tidy the F*ck Up: The American Art of Organizing Your Sh*t
Messie Condo
Simon and Schuster
Nonficton, Humor/Organization
****+ (Good/Great)

DESCRIPTION: Let's be honest: your home is probably a mess. It's nothing to be ashamed about; messes happen to the best of us. Between work and family and a culture that trains us that buying shiny new things is the only way to happiness, everyone faces a rising tide of stuff, which must somehow fit into a finite amount of space. But whenever we look for help, we see self-appointed tidiness gurus whose solutions involve impossible lifestyle changes and/or infinite time or money to invest in proprietary organization systems. Here, at last, is a practical approach to actually getting a handle on the clutter creep and reclaiming a little living space.

REVIEW: This quick-reading title is both a jab at popular organization fads and franchises and a practical, down-to-earth way to declutter and organize one's life. Emphasizing that everybody needs to decide for themselves what they consider their ideal habitat and that organizing should involve using what one already has before shelling out money on baskets and boxes and totes, the author offers tips and tricks as well as a good, often humor-laced explanation for why everyone really should put in a little time and effort to tidy up. It's as much about psychology as it is about practicality, and it often takes a little psychology to convince ourselves that, yes, we really can let go of those movies we never watch or the clothes we never wear or that ceramic clown figurine collection left to us by Great-Aunt Maude that we can't stand but we feel guilty about even considering parting with. The lessons here can apply to pretty much anyone.

You Might Also Enjoy:
The Habit Fix (Eileen Rose Giadone) - My Review
Unf*ck Your Habitat (Rachel Hoffman) - My Review

Fundamentals (Frank Wilczek)

Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality
Frank Wilczek
Penguin Press
Nonfiction, Science
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: What is the universe? How did it begin? How will it end? What is it made of, and how can we tell? Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek walks the reader through ten fundamental concepts that help explain the world around us, the discoveries that illuminated them, and what further questions remain.

REVIEW: Oh, what a difference a mere few years makes... Published in 2021, Fundamentals at times seems impossibly optimistic as it extols a wonderful potential future for humanity and the sciences, how civilization has only grown more accepting of science and empathy, how AI will soon usher in a golden age for the planet. It was almost painful to listen to in early 2025, in a country whose leaders have openly railed against the "sin of empathy" as a destroyer of Western civilization, that has deported scientists and hacked research off at the knees and cowed universities into submission, that has become almost giddy in its rush to reject the very concept of science and the accumulated intelligence and knowledge of centuries as it elevates the basest and most debunked superstitions to national policy and law, how the AI Wilczek hoped would save the world has become a major destructive force in the hands of greed that is being used to undermine the notion of reality itself... but I digress. Setting aside the stark contrast of the dismal present compared to the author's hoped-for future (which seems rooted in a sadly unrealistic notion of our species, or at least those of our species who have grasped the most power to shape our destinies), this is an interesting, if occasionally overwhelming, exploration of the nature of reality itself, from the smallest subatomic particles and forces to the greater universe at large, from clues about cosmic origins and hints about its future. Along the way, he explains the processes that led to the various discoveries and theories, how everyone can benefit from adopting a more scientific attitude toward life and the unknown, and how science is in no way incompatible with philosophy or even (non-fundamentalist) theology. Though - once again - I was unable to find the promised downloadable supplemental PDF file with this Libby audiobook, I found it intriguing. I just had a very hard time even pretending to share a glimmer of the author's wonder and optimism through the metaphoric stormclouds on the national horizon...

You Might Also Enjoy:
It's Not Rocket Science (Ben Miller) - My Review
Everything All at Once (Bill Nye) - My Review
Astrophysics for People in a Hurry (Neil deGrasse Tyson) - My Review

All Blood Runs Red (Phil Keith with Tom Clavin)

All Blood Runs Red: The Legendary Life of Eugene Bullard - Boxer, Pilot, Soldier, Spy
Phil Keith with Tom Clavin
Hanover Square Press
Nonfiction, Biography
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: Born in the late 19th century to a former slave father and Native American mother, Eugene Bullard's parents considered him the "lucky" child as the seventh of their family... but being a half-Black boy in Jim Crow Georgia was about as far from lucky as one could get. From an early age, Eugene was determined to escape the rampant, violent racism that he saw all around him, determined to reach the shores of France, where his father told him true equality was possible. Despite only having a second-grade education, the boy ran off as soon as he could manage - little imagining what he'd accomplish in the coming decades, from becoming one of the first Black fighter pilots in the Great War to rubbing shoulders with celebrities in his own jazz bar to spying on Nazis and more.

REVIEW: Eugene Bullard's life reads like an adventure novel, a tale of a boy coming from almost nothing to achieve more than his dreams, for all that many tried to deny him recognition and rewards. It is sadly telling that little of what he accomplished could have happened in the country of his birth, America, where racial animosities and prejudices remain sadly entrenched to this very day, well over a hundred years after his childhood. (In 2025, we're seeing just how shallow Jim Crow's grave really is, unfortunately... But I digress.)
Switching between distant overviews and closer, detailed moments of Bullard's incredible life, the authors paint a portrait of a man who was far from flawless, but principled and determined and unwilling to let the world grind him down. That portrait has some vague spots and blurred edges; between war damage and poor records, there are parts of his story that are just plain impossible to bring into focus, as his own story - recorded in a never-published autobiography - sometimes contradicts what can be determined as actual events. Other parts, though, have been corroborated, such as his impressive war record and long and varied careers, and these are more than enough to make his relative obscurity in modern America a disgrace (and further proof that, even nearly a century later, this country still has trouble grappling with accomplished non-white people and the virulent systemic racism that too often forms a backdrop to their deeds; even now, stories like this are being banned and erased by a regime that makes no secret of catering to white supremacy and alternate-facts history). Not that France was entirely free of problems, either, but it was only in France that a man like Eugene Bullard could flourish as he did for as long as he did, when he did. Proven parts of his story involve acquaintances and friendships with a galaxy of stars of his day, from war heroes to boxing legends to artists and authors to the many prominent entertainers who, like Bullard, found a warmer welcome in France than in America because of who they were. His well-earned loyalty to his adopted country landed him on the front lines in not one war, but two, with the medals and scars to show for it, as well as lifelong friendships that wound up being pivotal in his later years. The telling can be a bit dry and uneven at times, prone to tangents on other remarkable figures of the day, and there are some frustrating gaps that are simply impossible to fill in, people and events lost to time, though it managed to keep my interest even in the slower bits.
Stories like this can be, by turns, inspiring, depressing, and haunting. Inspiring, as they depict a life lived fully in the face of great adversity. Depressing, as such lives inevitably cast one's one rather pitiful existence into that much harsher a glare. Haunting, as such stories as Eugene Bullard's should have been guiding lights and stepping stones to a better and brighter future for our country and world, one where old prejudices and society-warping hatreds are outgrown at last and left in history's dustbin, but instead we find ourselves in a present that looks all too much like the world in which he struggled and fought to be seen as even a human, let alone a truly remarkable man, with nothing but fading ghosts of what could have - what should have - been.

You Might Also Enjoy:
West With the Night (Beryl Markham) - My Review
Born a Crime (Trevor Noah) - My Review
The Black Count (Tom Reiss) - My Review

Let This Radicalize You (Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba)

Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care (Abolitionist Papers)
Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba
Haymarket Books
Nonfiction, Essays/History/Politics
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: It's no secret that we're living in turbulent times. The rolling back of rights, the gutting of environmental regulations just as climate change approaches a dangerous tipping point, the removal of any and all guardrails on greed, the rise of state violence, the stripping of viable venues and options for protest and dissent... not just in America, but around the world, it seems that cruelty, regression, greed, and authoritarianism are on the rise. But giving up has never been an option. In this book, two experienced leaders and organizers explore how to effectively resist in a time that seems openly hostile to resistance.

REVIEW: Since November this year (2024), I've been struggling to find anything resembling hope for the future of the country I live in and coming up with little to nothing, not helped by the fact that I'm not in a position to do much, if anything, about any of the innumerable dangers looming in the new year and beyond (dangers that are already here in some form or another). Don't give up, fight back, is the rallying cry on social media and elsewhere. Where? How? I ask, only to be told once more that if I don't do something and just give up They win. I was hoping this title would help answer those questions, or at least give me some ideas... or hope. Did it manage any of that? A little.
From the outset, it's clear that this book isn't quite targeting me. It's targeting current and would-be leaders and activists, offering advice not just on how to effectively recruit and organize people but on how to avoid burnout, mission creep, losing focus, and other risks, as well as some advice on dealing with the inevitable pushback one will encounter when challenging the status quo, legal and otherwise. A fair bit of word count is devoted to the importance of community and mutual support, not just for political or activism purposes but basic life needs. A vital community, one not reliant on social media (which is useful, to be sure, but, as has been illustrated all too clearly with "X" and others, not something one can rely on for privacy or even safe and neutral discussion), is the essential heart of any remotely successful activism group. The authors address the need to learn social skills and patient listening (skills that have fallen out of common practice in today's age of instant digital gratification and intentionally fractured attention spans), finding ways to meet people where they are and seek common cause for mutual benefit. They also emphasize the need to avoid the creep of dread and cynicism that can paralyze us and end resistance before it begins, essentially complying in advance. That's one heck of an ask, especially in 2024, but necessary just for basic survival.
For people better positioned to start or join activism and resistance efforts, this book offers plenty of information and moral support, plus appendices with practical links (such as how to deal with chemical weapons that police commonly unleash on rallies, and how to resist unlawful law enforcement action). That person may not be me for various reasons of life circumstances (plus me being me; there's a reason the number one advice I was given growing up was that the best way I could help was to stay out of the way, as I'm both congenitally invisible and basically useless), but it was still interesting to get an inside look at how more effective people can rally and organize and, every once in a while, actually succeed. That's hopeful, at least.

You Might Also Enjoy:
I'm Not Dying With You Tonight (Kimberly Jones and Gilly Segal) - My Review
What Unites Us (Dan Rather and Elias Kirshner) - My Review
The Hate U Give (Angie Thomas) - My Review

The Age of Wood (Roland Ennos)

The Age of Wood: Our Most Useful Material and the Construction of Civilization
Roland Ennos
Scribner
Nonfiction, Anthropology/History/Nature
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age, Computer Age... looking back, one might think that our history began when we started shaping rocks to tame the world, and our future lies in silicon chips and electricity. But long before the first axes and arrowheads, long before Homo sapiens itself came to be, our ancestors were relying on another natural material with amazingly useful properties, one that continues to underpin our modern world, one so ubiquitous it's often overlooked: wood. Author Roland Ennos explores how trees and wood helped transform us from arboreal apes to space-age humans, and how rediscovering the versatility of timber products might help create a sustainable future.

REVIEW: Due to its generally poor preservation compared to stone artifacts, the importance of wood in our own species's prehistory and the development of civilization has often been glossed over. It's only relatively recently that anthropologists have paid more attention to wooden tool making, a process whose roots can be seen in other great apes today (shaping branches to access food sources like insects or honey, even weaving nests for protection from the elements). When one realizes that wood was essential for mastering fire, an immensely pivotal development, it seems a glaring oversight, but Ennos demonstrates how wood has always been such a common part of our world that we almost don't even see it... and, he argues, we haven't paid enough attention as it has disappeared from more and more of our environment, both artificial and natural. Without mastering wood, our species never would've developed pretty much anything we take for granted now. Even the materials many of us think of as replacing wood - iron, concrete, and the like - depended on wood in some form or another, even just as the charcoal and coke to smelt it. Have we outgrown the need for natural materials like wood, in our age of plastics and synthetics? Not at all; there are still many places where wood and wood products are as good as, even potentially superior to, the often-polluting materials we've created to replace it, not to mention the planetary benefits of growing more (and more diverse, not just monoculture plantations) woodlands and the psychological benefits of reconnecting with forests.
For the most part, this book makes for an interesting tour of wood's uses (and limitations) through prehistory and history, generally centered around "Western" cultures but also looking into other places around the world, such as China and the Americas. There are a few parts where I felt Ennos could've dug a bit deeper - his European roots and perspective seem very much evident throughout, and he also waits until near the very end to even mention issues with biodiversity loss that come with overexploitation of woodlands even before modern machinery made logging so much more devastating to the environment - but overall I found it intriguing.

You Might Also Enjoy:
The Ancient One (T. A. Barron) - My Review
Unbound (Richard L. Currier) - My Review
The Hidden Life of Trees (Peter Wohlleben) - My Review

The Possibility of Life (Jaime Green)

The Possibility of Life: Science, Imagination, and Our Quest for Kinship in the Cosmos
Jaime Green
Hanover Square Press
Nonfiction, Media Reference/Science
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: Are we alone in the cosmos? Ever since humans realized we are not the center of the universe, many have looked to the skies and wondered if, somewhere beyond our tiny sphere, other minds were looking back at us. But where might such life be found? What would it look like? Would we even recognize it if we saw it? What would happen if we ever made contact? Could we even begin to communicate with extraterrestrials? Drawing on experts and sources in history, science, and visionaries in science fiction, the author explores the possibilities of life beyond Earth.

REVIEW: - Given the sheer scale of the universe at large, the idea that Earth alone has been blessed with life of any sort seems almost ludicrously self-centered. Whether that life ever moves beyond single-celled organisms, let alone achieves the level of civilization required to be detected, let alone initiate communication with us, is another matter altogether. In exploring how people have approached the notion of extraterrestrial life and potential for civilizations beyond Earth, the author demonstrates how it's as much about learning more about ourselves and our world - not just on a sheer biological level, but psychological and cultural levels - as it is about speculative evolution.
Drawing on both fact and speculative fiction - Green explores how our fiction about aliens has evolved, and how it reflects both the eras in which it was crafted and ultimately reflects human hopes and fears and understanding - the book explores a broad variety of topics encompassed in the seemingly simple question of whether or not alien life exists. In doing so, it reveals how much we still don't understand about ourselves and our fellow terrestrial life forms past and present; even the definition of "life" itself is slippery, let alone defining life as it might have sparked and evolved under vastly different conditions. On Earth, convergent evolution tends to arrive at similar solutions to general problems - as prehistoric reptiles and whales and fish arrived at roughly similar body plans for optimal aquatic survival, for instance, despite not being closely related - but would that be the case elsewhere? And then there's the matter of brain biology and psychology. When we have great trouble envisioning the world as, for instance, a dolphin or bat experiences it, would we even have a chance of understanding a hypothetical alien ambassador standing right in front of us? There is rarely consensus on any given topic, and Green tends not to rely on just one expert or source. She also acknowledges how cultural biases have colored speculations, even beyond our inherent human thought processes.
There are a few blind spots, particularly in the science fiction works she cites and which she chooses to explore in depth. (How could she discuss aliens thinking and communicating in barely-comprehensible-to-humans ways without mentioning the creations of C. J. Cherryh, who in at least one book (The Pride of Chanur) had a species speaking in matrices that even other aliens often struggled to understand?) A few topics also felt less deeply explored than others, though that's an understandable issue given that, thus far, the whole subject matter of the book is hypotheses and speculation, let alone the bits and pieces that make up that subject. The whole, however, is an interesting enough look at the matter of alien life, and how it ultimately often becomes a mirror in which to better understand our own selves and the futures we both fear and hope for.

You Might Also Enjoy:
To Be Taught, If Fortunate (Becky Chambers) - My Review
On the Origin of Species (Charles Darwin) - My Review
The Zoologist's Guide to the Galaxy (Arik Kershenbaum) - My Review

Why Does Everything Have to Be About Race? (Keith Boykin)

Why Does Everything Have to Be About Race?: 25 Arguments That Won't Go Away
Keith Boykin
Bold Type Books
Nonfiction, History/Law/Politics/Sociology
****+ (Good/Great)

DESCRIPTION: Slavery's been over for ages - why keep bringing up the past? Isn't "equal opportunity" just reverse racism against whites? Why can't we just ignore race altogether? Don't all lives matter? Every time someone mentions racial discrimination and inequality, these and more arguments inevitably pop up, shutting down discussions and derailing progress and demanding time and energy to answer questions that have quite definitively been answered innumerable times (just not the way that those who benefit from ongoing racial inequality would like). In this book, writer Keith Boykin dissects 25 common arguments that have been used to prevent real progress on issues of race, racism, and equity from history to modern times.

REVIEW: Reading this after the election of November 2024 - when a significant portion of the American public deliberately and definitively rejected progress on race (and pretty much every other front), setting the stage for a near-inevitable rapid race backwards on a scale I doubt I'll see recovered in my lifetime - puts a certain painful spin on this book, which deftly explores America's history of racial injustice and its often haphazard and temporary attempts to correct a problem of its own making. Boykin draws on history, personal experience, and current events to demonstrate how racism infiltrates every aspect of policy and life; the reason "everything has to be about race" is because there's no way for any remotely meaningful discussion on any problems facing the country today to occur without acknowledging how race has skewed America and its ostensible promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness since before the founding documents were drafted. It would be like trying to discuss forestry without talking about all that pesky woody plant life everyone keeps dragging into the conversation. The fact that these policies rooted in historic and ongoing racism also tangibly hurt other demographics makes it all the more urgent that they be addressed, but arguments like the ones presented here are designed to keep the topic muddled and turn those demographics against each other, tiring themselves out with explanations and infighting and semantics.
By turns informative, inspiring, and depressing, it makes for interesting reading, though I sadly can't help but suspect that a nation that hasn't apparently learned a thing in over two hundred years of existence - that apparently would rather slit its own throat and throw itself into the grasp of an avowed and proud traitor and authoritarian, potentially abandoning democracy altogether, in a pivotal election where race was very much a factor - is unlikely to ever actually address the problems of race and racism and systemic inequality without near-complete self immolation first... and maybe not even then.

You Might Also Enjoy:
How to Be an Antiracist (Ibram X. Kendi) - My Review
Born a Crime (Trevor Noah) - My Review
They Called Us Enemy (George Takei) - My Review

The Truth About Animals (Lucy Cooke)

The Truth About Animals: Stoned Sloths, Lovelorn Hippos, and Other Tales from the Wild Side of Wildlife
Lucy Cooke
Basic Books
Nonfiction, Animals/History/Science
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: Since humans first began noticing the natural world, misconceptions have abounded - not just in folklore or myths, but in the works of apparent experts and theoretically learned people... and not just in ancient times. It's not all just harmless ignorance, either; bad press and flawed understanding can substantially harm conservation efforts and the future of our planet. Zoologist and author Lucy Cooke examines several species that have borne the brunt of our species's seeming inability to separate fact from fiction and superstition from science, from bats to storks and eels to hippos, even the venerated panda.

REVIEW: Anthropomorphizing nature is one of the oldest human traits, turning them into supernatural agents or morality lessons or embodiments of our own aspirations or failings or plain old wishful thinking. Unfortunately, this idealized thinking can prove a serious problem when one is trying to understand the truth, as demonstrated in this examination of several key species. One would think that we'd be over that by now as a species, or at least science would be over that as a discipline, with our advanced understanding of so many fields and our increasing awareness of our own faults, but, as Cooke demonstrates, even in modern times myths and mysteries persist, with many secrets the natural world is still reluctant to offer up for our edification.
With a focus on the "Western" world's views of nature and how the roots of science and understanding were so hopelessly entangled with ideas that appear quite ridiculous now (but at the time were often implicitly believed to be true), Cooke explores the history of natural science and the people who both advanced and regressed the field. From the notion that eels spontaneously generated in river mud to beavers having hidden human-like communities complete with law enforcement, many false notions were rooted in the ancient classical world, where armchair experts repeated travelers tales as gospel truth, often with a dash of moralizing that would be raised to an art form in medieval bestiaries. Animals like the sloth were dismissed and denigrated by Europeans as "useless", when in fact their slow-motion lifestyle is such a successful way to survive in their native habitat that it evolved twice, while bats were treated as agents of evil in much of the world because theoretically intelligent H. sapiens brains apparently could not wrap their minds around something that couldn't be neatly defined as "beast" or "bird", and hyenas were considered cowardly and nasty because they just plain look less noble than a lion (who, it turns out, scavenge hyena kills more often than hyenas scavenge lion kills, despite popular media depictions). Even scientists in "enlightened" ages often skewed data based on their own religious or moral assumptions, even deliberately burying observations they deemed "unsuitable" for general knowledge (such as the sex lives of penguins - especially ironic, given how the nature documentary March of the Penguins was embraced in conservative circles as depicting an ideal monogamous family). Politics also invariably come into play; for many years, it was a commonly understood "fact" that North American animals (and, of course, natives) were inferior to their European counterparts in every conceivable way... a notion that was difficult to dislodge when most of the "experts" penning natural science resided in Europe. Even today, politics warps popular perceptions: for instance, "panda diplomacy" has created a highly artificial image of the panda as a cutesy but clumsy and naturally deficient "teddy bear" in desperate need of human intervention to even reproduce, when in fact human interference and captive breeding has created an entire population of animals so divorced from their very capable wild cousins that reintroductions almost invariably end in disaster. (As for the notion they can't even breed competently, that's yet another result of humans projecting human ideas and moralities onto wild animals; pandas breed just fine outside of captivity, just not very well in monogamous pairings that are forced on them in zoos.) The only thing they need from people is to be left alone with sufficient natural habitat to survive... but that's something nobody seems particularly interested in hearing, let alone doing, even in their native country. And then there's how people have used/abused animals through the ages, where even the best intentions often go awry; the African clawed frog, once a boon in the days before simple chemical strip pregnancy tests, is responsible for the worldwide spread of a toxic fungus devastating global amphibian populations after they escaped or were released into nonnative environments.
As part of her research, Cooke talked with many working conservationists and scientists who are doing their level best to dispel old myths and bad press before time runs out on the conservation clock, as it has for too many species. Misunderstandings and mysteries still plague the field, despite modern technology being brought to bear on matters such as eel reproduction (a reverse-salmon situation, where adults breed in the ocean and the young swim upriver to live for years until returning to the Sargasso Sea to breed... though, as of the book's writing, apparently even now nobody has witnessed the act). There is still so much to learn (and unlearn), even as a fresh tide of intentional ignorance seems to be rising globally in the form of authoritarian governments and would-be theocrats gaining traction.
At times, I'd hoped for a little less focus on the "Western" perception of animals, and maybe a little more on how native populations considered the creatures they lived beside for countless generations (though even they were not above anthropomorphizing and other misunderstandings). The whole is a plea for humans to step off our pedestal and actually look at the world around us, that we are part of (little as many seem willing to admit it). Seen on their own terms, even the "lowest" and "ugliest" animal is valuable and wonderful, with much to teach us if we're willing to learn... which we can't do until we stop insisting we're the pinnacle to which all others should kneel in subservience.

You Might Also Enjoy:
Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? (Frans de Waal) - My Review
Being a Beast (Charles Foster) - My Review
Animal Wise (Virginia Morell) - My Review

Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies (June Casagrande)

Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies
June Casagrande
Tantor Audio
Nonfiction, Grammar/Humor
****+ (Good/Great)

DESCRIPTION: Who (or should that be "whom"?) among us hasn't been the victim of a grammar snob? Ensconced in their ivory towers, surrounded by ancient grimoires containing mysteries of linguistic mastery, they rain thunderbolts down upon the lowly, uneducated peasants who dare split infinitives or misplace apostrophes or confuse homophones or otherwise abuse the holy English language with their cloddish colloquial manglings. Surely, we laypeople think as we cower from the experts' great and terrible wrath, they must be vastly more educated and overall better people than the rest of us. Right?
Wrong.
Syndicated grammar columnist June Casagrande peels back the curtain to reveal the grammar snobs' dirty little secret: they don't know much, if anything, more than we do about how the English language works. The "rules" they cling to with a zealot's fervor often depend on which source one consults, and even the sources can be vague. The only absolute rule is that one must communicate one's ideas clearly. In this book, Casagrande offers numerous tips and tricks to help clear up misconceptions about grammar and bring those snobs down a few pegs.
This audiobook version includes a few of Casagrande's grammar articles, not appearing in the print version.

REVIEW: Like so many things in life, grammar is a basic, useful idea that has been turned into something else entirely by a small handful of gatekeepers... not at all helped by how English as a language often defies logic (even before one takes into account language evolution and drift between various iterations of the language, chiefly England's English versus American English). Much of what we need to know we absorbed subconsciously as we learned the language; it's the attempts to pin down those lessons and bind them in a grammar book that can get so tricky and lead to so much squabbling and - frankly - bullying among know-it-alls. Almost every "rule" has some manner of exception, every style or formality contradicted by some equally-reputable source. Casagrande takes many humorous jabs at other grammar "experts" who love raining stones on others from their own glass houses, even as she offers explanations and hints on how to better understand the subject. It earned the extra half-star for making me snicker out loud at work more than once as I listened.

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