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THE BOOKSMITH
Mrs Smith Reads Books
Ten of my Favourite Reads
READERS' RADAR : A to P listed alpha by title 2011 – 2016
READERS' RADAR: R to Z listed alpha by title 2011 – 2016
RAZOR GIRL by CARL HIAASEN
I'm not crazy about crime novels. The bleak Scandi crime novels leave me stone cold – well, they would, wouldn't they? All that snow, ice and long dark winters are bound to produce that effect. Obviously.
And the Pathologist-cum-detective genre make me queasy. If I'd wanted to minutely investigate human anatomy I would have studied medicine. Which I chose not to do. Probably last on my Career Choice list.
Therefore, it is with a sigh of relief that I dive into the sun kissed frolicsome pages of Carl Hiaasen's novels. Any novel set in Florida is allowed to have the word frolicsome in the review – sun, sand, bikinis, East Coast winter fugitives, retirees, oranges, hurricanes … clearly the setting is bound to be jollier than sub-Arctic Norway.
In Hiaasen's semi-mythical world of the Florida Keys, there is a profusion of criminal low-life: scammers, insurance fraudsters, adulterers, gold-diggers, (all that sand encourages the pests), drunks, burglars, weed pushers, cold beers, rattling palm leaves, the Mafia, crooked property agents, lawyers (a.k.a. scum of the earth in Hiaasen's world), muscular heavies, fishing and more cold beers, disgraced but noble ex-detectives, mistresses, car-crashes … it's all fun, fun and more fun still. Oh – last one: the odd murder or two, but that's in passing. And the deceased deserved it anyway.
Hiaasen's latest romp has the added entertainment of a truly terrible red-necked TV Reality Show , the patriarch of which sorry series is the catalyst for a seemingly never-ending chain of events involving a deranged, semi-brain dead fan of said dreadful TV garbage, abduction, kidnap, ransom; the TV show's scheming Agents and Execs, their private jets, suspect contracts, deals and deception, etc. etc. And the cherry on top is that Hiaasen is laugh-out-loud FUNNY. Yes, you heard me. In a crime novel, nogal* .
If you think I've given the plot away, relax: I haven't. The plot in Hiaasen's latest criminal caper has so many wonderful colourful stories tangled up like nylon fishing line, that I couldn't possibly be writing a spoiler.
Thank heavens for Mr Carl Hiaasen, and his cheerful, clever crime novels. He's a prize-winning journalist with a regular column in the Miami Herald ; a born and bred Floridan, still resident in that sunny State. I suspect many of the outrageous incidents and bizarre characters in his fiction originate from his life as a working journalist. You can't make up some of the incidents in his novels, you really can't.
Thank you, Mr Hiaasen, from a jaded reader. Thank you for a marvellous series of novels that provide pages of sparkling entertainment. In fact, now that I think about it, I do believe I am going to start collecting his crime novels. If you've never had the pleasure of reading Hiaasen, do not wait another minute, run to your nearest Library &/or book shop. Start reading. Immediately. Enjoy!
*nogal – South Africanism = yet.
SAHARA – by Michael Palin, photos by Basil Pao
This is the book version of the BBC TV series. The series was entertaining at the time, but by flipping though the book just to enjoy the photographs, one is spared Michael Palin's somewhat forced humour. I enjoyed the rich ochre colours of the dunes and the wave-like ripple patterns in the sand. Pao perfectly captures the mystique of deserts, their immensity, the sheer emptiness and the vivid contrast of a blazing blue sky that definitely borders eternity. And his portraits of the natives of the Sahel: pitch black skin and vivid boldly patterned fabric wraps – the colours are so bold and so primary. Perhaps they make such an impact because the backgrounds are sand and there is nothing to distract the eye?
I'm fascinated by deserts – quite why, I'm not sure. All that space and emptiness? An echo – of sorts – of the Buddha's teaching as seen by the Zennists where emptiness is a recurring theme.
Note to self: I must hunt up my review of the Freya Stark autobiog, plus my notes about her own voluminous travel diaries and writings. And then there is the book I borrowed from the Ixopo Library, in 1990, which has haunted me for years – an account by a young Westerner who joins one of the few remaining salt caravans across the Sahara, and nearly dies on the journey, from heat, thirst, loneliness … the book made a huge impression on me, and of course, I've forgotten his name and the title. If one of my blog subscribers can send me the title, I'd be overjoyed, as I want to read the book again.
SHORT GIRLS – Bich Minh Nguyen
I really relate to the title. Those who have seen me, will understand why.
Novel is my first Vietnamese novel – I enjoyed it even though the theme is the same-old, same-old: immigrants' identities – how to fit into the new country; the clash between traditionally reared parents and American born children. Then there the ties of the local Expat community, with the expectations and cultural norms of the older generation to succeed at all costs. Especially after the parents' big sacrifice to provide a better life for their kids.
Linny and Van are sisters, but they're not close. They grow up and are desperate to escape from Mid-Western Michigan. Their mother dies an early, unexpected death, leaving them with their traditional Asian father who never assimilates and follows the usual paternal pattern of minimal communication: never explains, never apologies. What I particularly liked about the book was that the author left the family mysteries and secrets remain undisclosed. For e.g. what circumstances made the parents decide on such a major step as emigrating to the USA? (particularly given the fraught relationship between the Americans and the Vietnamese post-war). What was the parents relationship with each other really about. At one point the Father retreats to the basement and lives there for years, after a fallout with his wife. But we never find out what triggered the drama. It just happens. He remains in the basement until his wife dies, and then moves back upstairs. And yet the Mother seems to have cared for him, during the basement period, with occasional small kind gestures.
Van is the model star student, marries a successful lawyer, but it doesn't last. Linny lives a rackety life and can't settle. Two daughters, polar opposites, who finally reconcile in adulthood.
Despite a slow start, I read on with growing enjoyment. Recommended.
SNOW by Orhan Pamuk
After ploughing through Pahmuk's The Museum of Innocence I decided to try another of his books. This earlier novel is a great deal shorter, but more complex, than the first one I read.
The blurb says that when the book came out in 2002 it angered Islamists and westernised Turks alike and promptly sold 100 000 copies: it seems to me that any books that irritates absolutely everybody must be doing something right!
Reading Pamuk is like visiting another planet. Although the books are translated skilfully into smooth English, there is a foreign-ness about them, an otherness, a picture of a radically different culture that underlies the characters, the events, the background. Pamuk is not writing about tourist Turkey : the Turkey of Istanbul, semi-westernised, picturesque tiled domes, crowded bazaars, leather goods and woven carpets. No. He is writing about something entirely different, the far north-eastern city of Kars. I had to haul out my giant atlas to locate Kars, it's in the middle of nowhere, en route to the Iranian border. Pamuk is writing about provincial Turkey, where poverty, unemployment, dirt, hopelessness, government surveillance, plots and counterplots, spying, arrest and torture, infuse the lives of the Turkish, Kurdish, radical Islamists and Attaturk secularists residents.
The city is drowned for three days in a mammoth blizzard of snow, cut off from the outside world, cut off from sanity almost, as events develop. He's writing about a familiar theme: when the world of traditional old-style Turkey collides with the wicked West, but this time he throws nationalism versus Islamic reformers into the mix as well. The poet Ka returns from exile in Germany to write an article about the rash of suicides carried out by the 'headscarf girls' who return to head-covering thereby incurring the wrath of the secularists. Ka falls in love with the beautiful Ipek, daughter of the hotel owner, whose other daughter Kadife is in love with the dangerous Islamist revolutionary Blue, one-time lover of her sister …. the plot writhes and twists like a demented snake. Meanwhile the political ferment explodes into a Ruritanian revolution that takes place during a bizarre theatre performance. The wildly improbable theatre troupe of two provide a modicum of comic relief at intervals, notwithstanding the fact that Sunay, the actor/impresario stages a dramatic and extraordinary climax to the events in Kars.
Despite all this tumult and turmoil, the snowy landscape inspires Ka to write eighteen brilliant poems structured on the diagram of a snowflake. He writes down the poems which arrive perfect and complete, as if he is an amanuensis, but for who or what is never revealed. Apart from falling in love, Ka regains (fleetingly) his lost faith when he visits a famous Sheik in the city. As a counterpoint to Ka's adult love for Ipek there are the religious school teenage boys passionately in love with the headscarf girls, to whom they have never spoken, but for whom they are prepared to sacrifice their lives in noble gestures of pure idyllic love. Can you imagine any Western teenagers behaving like this?
Finally, the novelist inserts himself into the story, under his own name (just as he did in the Museum of Innocence) he seems to feel he has to explain why he is telling us the story of the poet Ka. This strikes me as an odd approach. I wonder if he does it in all his books? Clearly I shall have to read more to find out. Question is: do I have the strength? These two books were not an easy read.
STATION ELEVEN – by Emily St John Mandel
I waited nearly two years for the book to surface in a bookstore or library in Cape Town. In the end I succumbed to Book Depository's excellent prices and bought it on-line. It was worth both the money and the wait.
The book is a dystopian novel set in Canada after a world 'flu pandemic kills 99% of the population.
A small group of actors and musicians band together to form the Travelling Symphony. Not only do they perform music, but also Shakespearean plays, which have proved to be the most popular items in their repertoire.
Twenty years later they are still travelling on their well established circuit in the Great Lakes region, visiting the tiny settlements where people are gamely starting over.
What was so good was that the story didn't haul out the tired tropes of Mad Max, or a pack of Zombies! However, a religious polygamous cult who provided the danger element to the story, which affected lead character Kirsten. Both Kirstin and the cult proved to be linked directly back to the pivotal character, Arthur Leander.
The book is beautifully written and elegantly plotted. Despite the grim premise, the story is engaging and the characters likeable. The theme of Interconnectedness is cleverly woven through the narrative, via the life of Arthur Leander, a famous actor; we see him before and during the pandemic, and the reverberations of his life continuing to affect survivors in the post-apocalyptic world.
The interesting issues were:
What the world lost (apart from inhabitants) : technology and science – there's no electricity and therefore no Internet – imagine the effect of these losses on daily life?
And a big question: what – or even who – would you save as you fled to the wilderness away from the plague? Lead character Kirstin grabs seemingly inconsequential items and stuffs them in to her backpack, and escapes. The objects play an important role in joining together the puzzle pieces of the story.
A wonderful 5 star read. I loved it.
THE ANGEL'S GAME – CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON
Zafon returns to Barcelona (he lives there) for another book-based tale of mystery, twists and turns in another story based on the theme of books and writers, pregnant with atmosphere and mystery …
I loved this book just as much as I loved Shadow of the Wind . I'll never part with either of these books, and know I shall re-read them whenever I need a book that tells a rippingly good story, that keeps me glued to the page and thoroughly entertained. In fact, these two Spanish Gothics constitute my Literary First Aid Kit which I shall apply whenever I suffer from a surfeit of precious, trendy novels. My literary Asprin, if you will. I recommend you add them to your shelves as a precaution.
THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO – Junot Diaz
I finally caught up with this 2008 novel which was greatly acclaimed at the time. It won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction – deservedly so. It's original. There's a nerdy anti-hero (Oscar); feisty Dominican female relatives; the history of the Dominican Republic during the years of the dreadful Trujillo dictatorship and post-dictatorship into the 90s. We get a picture of expat Dominican Republic (DR) people fighting to make a new life in the USA. I enjoyed the book despite seriously grim DR historical content, which was in lengthy footnotes; normally long footnotes annoy the socks off me, but the slightly droll tone of the account made them palatable.
I knew absolutely nothing about the DR and had to consult my atlas to locate the country. I discovered DR was in the Caribbean. The Island of New Hispaniola, was divided into two – Haiti and the DR. Haiti having an even darker, more violent, grimmer history than the DR if that can even be possible.
Reading the book certainly puts the Republic of South Africa's dismal history into perspective. Sometimes we tend to forget we're not the only country with a difficult and dangerous past. Man! those South American dictators were something else – torture was their middle name. Urrggghhh!!
The black DR women were ferocious survivors – loud, harsh, sexy. Their child-rearing methods would not go down well in today's p.c. climate. Despite this, their kids survived, although the book title might give prospective readers a clue. A recommended read, it has warmth and humour, but not for the faint hearted.
THE CALL OF THE LITANY BIRD – Surviving the Zimbabwe Bush War – Susan Gibbs .
The book is an account of events in the Nymandhlovu farming district, southern Matabeleland, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) 1977 to 1983/4, written by farmer's wife, Susan Gibbs.
Sue Gibbs loved the farm, the bush and Rhodesia – this comes through clearly on every page, but in the end President Robert Mugabe's genocidal attacks against the Nedbele, and their leader Joshua Nkomo, plus the crimes of dissidents, who stayed in the bush after Independence and were nothing more than bandits, committing farm murders and ambushes – made life on the farm too dangerous. Despite having the Agric Alert radio system, and despite PATU (Police Anti-Terrorism Unit) and the Army being on hand – despite living in wired enclosures, despite carrying sidearms and driving around in bombproof vehicles on account of the landmines: the slaughter of farmers continued. In the end, these factors drove the Gibbs (and many other farmers) away from their farms, the land and the people they loved. And I need to emphasize that the phrase people they loved refers not only to their friends and families, but also to long-time loyal farm workers and servants.
On a very personal note: I lived in Bulawayo during the 1970s, and worked for a time at the Matabeleland Farmers' Co-op and came into daily contact with many of the farmers mentioned in her book, including her husband Tim Gibbs. The sunburnt, hard-working men and women came into the Co-op on their weekly visits to town, to collect machinery spares, veterinary products, building supplies, seed and fertiliser, plus an enormous range of other items necessary to maintain a farm in the Rhodesian bush.
Our family had a close friend who ran a cattle ranch in the Shangani District, so I could relate to Susan Gibb's account of farm life in Rhodesia – the lovely gardens, the servants, the animals, the snake stories, the floods of visitors. Rhodesian farmers were generous, hospitable folk, always ready to offer a meal, or a weekend on the farm, out in the bush.
On the one hand the book is a lovely read in the nostalgic "when-we" category. On the other, an exposure of black atrocities against white farmers, and their black farm workers, in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe. There was enormous suffering all round in the farming community.
I hope Susan Gibb's book receives wide recognition for an honest account of the attrition.
THE CITY OF DREAMING BOOKS – WALTER MOERS
12/6/09 – my first review:
One of my best reads EVER.
It's totally original. Moers is incredibly inventive. He takes his hero, OPartimus Yarnspinner, to the City of Dreaming Books, a book-obsessed metropolis, where he falls into the clutches of its evil genius, Pfistomel Smyke, who treacherously maroons him in the city's labyrinthine catacombs. Constructed from books (naturally) and inhabited by one-eyed creatures called Booklings., whose vast library includes live books equipped with teeth and claws. Yarnspinner is in a subterranean world where reading books can be genuinely dangerous, where ruthless Bookhunters fight to the death for literary gems, and the mysterious Shadow King rules …..
It has adventure, horror, mysteries, thrills, puzzles, humour, villainous villains, heroic heroes. AND it contains dark line illustrations – what more could anyone want? All this glorious fantasy, and pictures too!
The one missing ingredient is romance.
It was such a meaty, satisfying read, as soon as I finished I turned to page 1 again, and had to stop myself from starting over.
Halfway through I realised some of the weird names were anagrams of famous writers e.g. William Shakespeare who we meet as Aleisha Wimpersleake.
His entire back-story is congruent – I haven't read such a fully realised universe since I read The theme, tone and execution are all book related.
There was a fascinating list of obsolete words which I wanted to look up and now can't find. Will just have to read it again!
I re-read ( 31/5/2010 and by this time, my very own copy – yay!) this marvellously inventive fantasy with its anagrammatic fake authors' names – only managed to unscramble five of them. The book provides all that a good book should: mystery, suspense, horror, comic interludes, adventure , and ends with a satisfactory conclusion where the villains are defeated and the victim of their plot voluntarily seeks a heroic martyr's finale: great glorious grand stuff!
Definitely one of my all time favourite books.
THE COMPLETE POLYSYLLABIC SPREE – Nick Hornby
I've waited at least three years for this book and when I came across it at the Book Lounge I pounced on it, and bought it immediately. Whenever I visit the Book Lounge I find an extraordinary book that is just marvellous. It's because they stock literary books that the chain-stores don't keep.
I enjoy books about books and this one did not disappoint: in fact I devoured it in two-and-a-half days, leapt on line to Takealot.com and ordered the second volume of Hornby's book reviews without turning a hair – can't wait to read it. I made happy lists of NH's Books Read in my own notebook ,so I can trawl the Libraries for his reads. I'm thrilled that he shares my enthusiasm for Gilead and I want to read Marilyn Robinson's second novel. Hornby admits he buys books, piles them round the house and doesn't always read them. Sounds very familiar – it's a good thing we don't share the same living space!
I had fun on the Internet looking up Nick Hornby – he's a busy boy; apart from writing very successful novels, he writes articles about sport, rock music and also writes book reviews. He has cleverly turned his passions into a rewarding career. His novel About a Boy has been filmed, starring Hugh Grant, and I loved it
I Googled The Believer which NH writes for; it's an American literary magazine for which NH's book diaries were written, and formed the basis for Polysyllabic Spree. He's irreverent, erudite, funny, has catholic reading tastes, and he loves Dickens. Note to self: read more Dickens. P.S. Novelist Robert Harris is NH's brother-in-law.
THE EVERYTHING STORE – JEFF BEZOS AND THE AGE OF AMAZON – Brad Stone
A fascinating account of visionary entrepreneur /business tycoon/tyrant Jeff Bezos and the birth and rapid growth of Amazon over the last 17 years..
JB emerges as the manic visionary who practically invented on-line shopping. His business mantras (known as Jeffisms by his acolytes) are: Frugality and Customer Satisfaction. Incidentally, he's clearly the Boss from Hell, I would hate to work for Amazon. Apparently the company is renowned for burnouts and rapid departures. Hardly surprising, given Amazon's meteoric growth since 1995. Squads of talented, bright people have worked for JB and contributed to Amazon's success.
I thought Amazon.com was just a book retailer but they've morphed from their original concept literally into an Everything Store : clothing/ tools /jewellery/baby supplies/ DVDs – you name it, riding roughshod over competitors en route. Because of their mega sized operation they can play the long game, waging a war of attrition with ever decreasing prices until their smaller competitors roll over and die or sell out to the giant. JBs vision led his company into development of the Kindle, space travel , the smartphone, and cloud storage for computer data. It's worth following the Wikipedia link here to read more detail about amazon.com .
Bezos seemingly does not understand the meaning of words like boundaries and limits. Having taken Amazon so far, one wonders what he can possibly dream up next? Is there anything left to visualize? Personally, I wish he'd turn his laser-gaze on to a cure for the common cold. He'd certainly make another gazillion dollars if he did. Apparently JB is not motivated by money or a flashy lifestyle – Brad Stone shows a man who values his family's privacy and lives a relatively modest life. Stone's engrossing book is crammed with facts, figures, history, fascinating anecdotes.. You don't have to be an MBA student to read and appreciate the book – I certainly am not, but I read every page with great interest and enjoyment. Highly recommended.
The Faraway Nearby – by Rebecca Solnit
Had I finished the book prior to posting My 2016 Year in Reading on my blog (http://despatchesfromtimbuktu.wordpre…) this book would have occupied the #1 slot: 2016 Book of the Year.
It is superlative, both in terms of language, structure, content and storytelling.
Solnit writes vividly, yet cleanly. Her book is part memoir – an account of her difficult relationship with her mother and her mother's slow, fatal descent into Alzheimers – and part story. I found her chapters on the Arctic absolutely fascinating.
In fact, almost every paragraph provides enough substance for a week's reflection.
I could rave on and on.
If you enjoy memoir or essays, buy this book immediately. .
I can't wait to read it again. I can't wait to read more of her work.
THE MOLE PEOPLE by Jennifer Toth
Who needs SF/Fantasy when an alternate universe exists right under our noses? Provided you live in New York City, that is.
An extraordinary book by an extraordinarily brave young woman: 24 year old Jennifer Toth, who explored the sub-culture living below the streets of Manhattan in disused (but also in currently operational) subway tunnels, closed/abandoned Metro Stations, in caves and natural caverns underground. She went into the tunnels for 2 years – a dangerous project, which she stopped when Blade, a tunnel dweller, threatened her life. Two common threads emerge in the book: drugs as a frequent cause or reason to drop out, and it sounded as if the majority of Tunnel Dwellers (aka The Mole People) were black – a big indictment of the American social and educational system.
The Tunnel Dwellers should not be confused with the street-living homeless, who live aboveground.
Toth interacted with the Metro Transit Police, – often mostly policing search, harassment and eviction operations, down in the tunnels. Other NGOS, and Social Agencies, had projects with the Mole People. But Toth found them to be ineffectual, or in the case of NGOs, sometimes self-surviving. The Metro Transit Police 's methods and attitudes she found to be questionable. Official estimates of the numbers of tunnel dwellers ranged uncertainly between 4 000 – 6 000. In short, nobody really knew.
Below ground are established, organised communities, some with 'Mayors' as community leaders. The Mole People care and look after their own, one community even had a designated nurse, and a teacher!
Apart from the groupings, she found singles, pairs or trios. Some dwellers are completely mad (literally chucked out by the Health & Welfare system). There are the drunks, the druggies, plus the plain dis-functional, who are unable to live in ordinary society; criminals on the run, refugee children , for Heaven's sake, fleeing abusive families or the awful Child Welfare/Adoption system. And then the Libertarians who reject taxes, Government, and every aspect of society and want to do it 'their way.' Jennifer Toth also met a couple of PhDs, living underground with their small store of treasured books. Go figure.
Some Mole People even had low grade jobs above ground, e.g. in the fast-food outlets, or janitorial work, but chose to live rent free underground, because they could not afford the rental on even the most modest accommodation in NYC.
Toth met the Graffitti artists, who chose the tunnels or walls of embankments on which to inscribe their art. Yet another, different semi-underground group.
A darker group were a formal Gang who undertook contract killings (sometimes for as little as $20! How bizarre is that?)
America is definitely not the land of golden opportunity that we might assume it to be. The book will feature on my 2015 Top Reads, that's for sure! Read it if you can. I read it, wide-eyed, counting my blessings.
THE ORCHID THIEF – Susan Orlean
For years I've been promising myself that when I'm in my dotage, housebound and no longer able to run around like I do now, I shall grow orchids. It's something I've always fancied doing. I'm now having second thoughts, having read Susan Orlean's account of all things orchid related in Florida, USA. Although, let's face it, I don't see orchid growing in Cape Town, South Africaowever, I'm now having second thoughts, having read theII
, being one-hundredth as exciting as orchid growing in America.
It's an extraordinary book. No wonder it featured on the New York Times Bestseller list – I've never read anything like it in the non-fiction category. And by the way, difficult to believe it is non-fiction. The book is hot, steamy, lush and colourful just like the Florida Keys where some of the events (I nearly said 'action') takes place. Throw in the local Florida Seminole Indians who claim rights to anything on their tribal land i.e. the muddy, gator infested swamps, where orchids flourish. Add a band of orchid thieves, smugglers, growers and collectors, add a few adjectives like: manic , obsessive, passionate, and conniving and you've got my liveliest non-fiction read of 2015.
From early 1800s to the close of the 19th century, the heyday of orchid hunting and collecting, the chapter is titled "A Mortal Occupation", aptly titled, because the casualties were legion. Orchid hunting in the jungles of South America and Asia was perilous, ruthless, dangerous, life-threatening. If not from tropical disease, dangerous wildlife, hostile inhabitants then there were the other orchid hunters to contend with. Many of the exploits of the orchid hunters read like episodes from an Indiana Jones adventures.
A Victorian orchid Grower, living in Britain Frederick Sander, was ruthlessly competitive. He employed professional orchid hunters who routinely gave up their lives to fuel his passion. His chief adversary was a German collector Carl Robelin, and these two Victorian orchid hunters went to extraordinary lengths to secure rare plants.
That old buccaneering, adventuring attitude to orchid collection appears to live on in the world of orchids. The 21st century orchid scene is rife with burglaries, swindles, and shenanigans which would fit well into any of Carl Hiaasen's Florida crime novels.
Who knew such beautiful flowers generated such passion, such criminality? Who knew that modern orchid shows attract orchid fanatics, some of whom are millionaires; some of whom bankrupt themselves in pursuit of their passion? At its height, in Europe, mid 1800s, the orchid craze surpassed the Dutch tulip craze of centuries ago.
Maybe I'd better start my orchid growing project now, whilst I'm still strong enough to fight off rival collectors?
Don't miss this book: its hugely entertaining and informative. The book is not that recent, it was published in 1998, but it's worth hunting down. (In the true spirit of orchid collecting!)
THE MOUNTAIN SHADOW by GREGORY DAVID ROBERTS
This big, sprawling novel, with a cast of thousands, re-connects us with GDR's alter-ego, the Australian Lin a.k.a. Shantaram, and his exploits in the Bombay underworld.
Some of the characters from the first novel, blockbuster Shantaram, are re-assembled, plus squads of new ones. There are few new quirky, attractive characters , the Zodiac Georges. Two street people, who are undying friends, both named George and differentiated by their birth months, hence Gemini George as opposed to Scorpio George. The new characters also provide arch villains. There's the deeply unpleasant Lightning Dilip, the sadistic police sergeant , who routinely beats up suspects, and extorts bribes on every occasion. Concannon, the homicidal Irishman, wants to beat Lin to a pulp. I could never quite understand why. There are many others, but as I said, there's a cast of thousands.
Testosterone and violence permeate the first third of the book; thereafter we have holy men, spiritual teachers and quests for love and faith, mingled with bouts of violence. It's an uneven mix.
The story revolves mainly around the convoluted, not to say torturous, romantic relationship between Lin and his soul-mate, Karla and one of the novel's major weaknesses are the pages and pages of waffly dialogue between them when they have verbal sparring matches. Boring. As are the tedious passages about earnest philosophical issues, with spiritual overtones. GDR needs to make up his mind whether he wants to write a Philosophy 101 textbook, an exposition on his personal brand of spirituality, or a ninja novel. A mix of all three ingredients doesn't work and we have to toil through 873 pages to confirm this for ourselves.
Mercifully GDR is restrained when it comes to writing about sex. He does not indulge in pages of soft porn as so many blockbuster writers do. He confines s his purple passages to one dreadful poem and for emotional or soulful pages.
When Mountain finally staggers to a halt, with all loose ends tidied up, it's an anti-climax. A review on Goodreads said something about a possible third Shantaram novel. No. Enough already. I enjoyed Shantaram, but his second outing on the theme is way, way too long.
What does work is GDR's pages about the city of Bombay itself, its vibrant street life, its slums, mansions, and inhabitants; the myriad mini-stories of human struggles. I was intrigued to read about the business activities of the Bombay underworld, and the pervasive graft and corruption at all levels throughout the city. Even subtracting 50% of the accounts as literary hyperbole, it made me realise that the country I live in is in the junior league, compared to the shenanigans in Bombay. Which, in a weird way, makes me feel a little better.
At the end of 2015, which has been a tough year, I needed a relaxing, escapist read. I guess GDR's novel was it, but, boy oh boy, it was a long haul! Where was his editor, I wondered? Maybe if you've written a wildly successful blockbuster first novel like Shantaram, your editor treads softly.
Speaking of which, there's an intriguing final page titled Proclaimer where GDR makes it crystal clear he does not endorse the criminal lifestyle, drugging, drinking or smoking, and has merely used them as foundations for his story. There's a terse note on the back jacket flap that says GRD has retired from public life to pursue other projects and writing.I was intrigued, and a Google search led me to an in-depth interview with GDR by the Sydney Morning Herald. The interview was tagged 'The final Interview with GDR'.You can find it at:
http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/gregory-david-roberts-final-interview-on-the-mountain-shadow-by-shantaram-author-20151005-gk1o20.html
As ever, GDR has plenty to say.
THE MUSEUM OF INNOCENCE BY ORHAN PAMUK
A LONG, meaty read. I had to work hard to finish the book. Due to my sore neck I had to spend hours lying on my bed, so I could read for hours. Luckily, or else I would not have finished it. Our Book Club chose the book because it was by a Turkish author and we hadn't read any Turkish books in the seven years of our Club's existence.
The blurb described the novel as "a work of romantic love" – if this was romantic love, then it isn't my version. The blurb went on: "a haunting novel of memory, desire and loss … with fascinating insights into a society tugged between East and West" : a much more accurate summation. Especially the East/West conflict. I enjoyed the descriptions of the city (Istanbul and the Istanbullus and traditional Turkish life and I enjoyed the stories about the outdoor cinemas held in gardens, on balmy nights, under the mulberry trees) but the main character – Kemal – I could cheerfully have attacked with an axe, after reading every other page! Under the heading of MEN. He behaved so badly towards his lover Fűsan; however, in retaliation, she made him suffer for years.
I could not believe my eyes when I read the last sentence in the book : "Let everyone know, I lived a very happy life". This, as the ending of a book about obsessive love, after pages and chapters detailing years of misery, loss, and fixation!
I liked the little touches e.g. Lemon, the canary. This bright yellow little caged bird belonged to Fusan and was probably one of the happiest brightest characters in the entire book! If not the only gleam of brightness in the book.
On the whole, the Turkish men came across as chain smoking hard drinkers – several of them dying in their early sixties, of heart attacks. The women also smoke constantly. Because Turkey is the home of Turkish tobacco, I suppose this was not unsurprising or unrealistic. But what was a surprise to me was the portrayal of rich, upper class society. I never thought of Turkey during the 60s/70s as having the Filthy Rich that are portrayed in this novel.
My first book by this Turkish Nobel Laureate. I might try some more.
The Outsider – Albert Camus
My first stab at Camus could just be my last. It was a short book – 119 pages – which meant I actually managed to finish it. Book first published in French in 1942.
One of the things that struck me forcibly about the book, was the change in social attitudes. Now, in 2013, the attitude to beating up your girlfriend and being cruel and abusive to your dog, both actions treated in a calm tone of acceptance in the novel, are shocking to the politicised, sensitized eye of today. Ditto the casual naming of the local Arabs) as 'natives' jars in today's ears (book is set in Algeria – Camus was Algerian).
I read the foreword by Cyril Connolly and discovered novel was intended as an attack on French bourgeoisie attitudes prevalent in her colonies as well as a portrait of 'the Mediterranean man' as opposed to the man of mainland Europe. Neither of these themes was obvious to me, as I was reading.
To me, it was a portrait of a man who might possibly be suffering from Asperger's syndrome. Mersault was portrayed as a man with zero emotional tone. He was a sensual man – he enjoyed physical sensations – smoking, swimming, sex – but came across with no emotional affect at all. He also seemed to be curiously passive throughout his arrest and trial. At the end, when he is badgered by the priest to acknowledge the existence of God, he refuses and finally looses it, when he attacks the priest. Even when he murders the Arab on the beach – it comes across as curiously flat.
During the murder trial, it seems as if the prosecutor is more incensed at Mersault's calm unemotional lack of reaction to his Mother's death and funeral, than he is at the murder of the Arab.
It was a curious and disquieting novel. I don't think I shall be trying any more Camus.
THE VIEW FROM THE CHEAP SEATS – NEIL GAIMAN
The book is a must-read for Fantasy, Sci Fi, graphic novels, music fans. Neil Gaiman has his finger well and truly on the pulse of popular culture. He started his career 30+ years ago as a writer, but he's a versatile chap, and has been involved right across the cultural spectrum.
I first came across him when I read his Good Omens which he co-authored with the late, great Terry Pratchett. The book remains one of my favourites, and if you haven't read it, do yourself a favour and hunt up a copy. It's funny, (of course it is – TP was involved), offbeat, and marvellous. You probably need to delve into a second-hand bookstore, but it'll be worth the effort.
The View contains essays, transcripts of speeches made at the opening of big events like Comicon … in LA; it contains magazine articles; it contains introductions to an impressive number of Sci Fi and Fantasy novels, collections and anthologies. Gaiman knows everyone in the SF/Fantasy world, and for those writers who preceded him, e.g. Jules Verne, H G Wells, he provides anecdotes of his boyhood reading experiences, when he first became acquainted with (and was enchanted by) the great forerunners of speculative fiction. For this reason, the book is a marvellous reference source, and I shall treat it as such.
The book is a terrific dipper : you know what I mean – a chapter here and there, or an intro to a collection of the great masters of horror, like HP Lovecraft, for example. Lovecraft sounds creepy beyond horror, but it has reminded me I've never read any of his stories. I'm not too sure I'm brave enough to remedy this lack. Time will tell!
TOLSTOY & THE PURPLE CHAIR – Nina Sankovitch
I've just finished reading. I'm completely bowled over. On a number of counts. Firstly, I'm drop-jawed at Nina's basis for her project: she set out – and SUCCEEDED – in reading a book a day, for a year. That's 365 books, people. Furthermore, she wrote a book review on each book, prior to diving into her next book. And this was accomplished by a woman who is a wife, and mother to four busy boys … so tick the boxes for taxi driving, laundry, cooking, cleaning, homework supervision … do I have to continue?
She embarked on the project to overcome her sadness and grief over the early death of her sister, who died way too soon, a cancer victim. Three years on, Nina realised she needed to get off the must-keep-busy –at-all- costs track, so she decided to read a book a day, for a year, and treat it as a job. She sat in her smelly purple chair (the family cat, don't ask) and read for hours. She did note that she reads fast: 70 pages an hour. But even so. Not all the books were skinny little volumes, but I think she avoided the doorstopper books. Not unreasonably! Actually, on my re-read, I picked up the fact that when choosing books off the Library shelves, she aimed for books with a spine of about one inch width, not more.
There's an efficient catalogue of the books she read; I can't wait to annotate my own copy once it arrives. I've noted some great reading suggestions in her list, and managed not to deface a Library book by ticking items on the list. I definitely need my own copy, so I can deface it with ticks, notes and marginalia to my heart's content.
So apart from successfully finishing her mammoth task, remaining married, sane and emerging from the process as a healed human being, she has produced a wonderful book that is part memoir, part reading journal, part healing manual; the minute I finished the book I raced to my PC to order my own copy immediately.
If you love books and reading, do not miss this book!
TWILIGHT by Stephanie Meyer
My bookish friend Norma and I were discussing the popular series of vampire novels for Young Adults, written by Stephanie Meyer. Neither of us had read any of her books, and were wondering what made them such a huge success. So I read 'Twilight' for research purposes. My curiosity is now satisfied. However, had I not seen the movie version, I don't think I would have persevered with the book. I enjoyed the movie, which I saw prior to reading the book. There were pages and pages of dialogue consisting of vapid teenage mumbling or angst, which didn't advance the plot one iota. Teenage preoccupations and obsessions are not very interesting at best. But then, I'm not a teenager. The dialogue reminded me of murky marine encrustations on a sunken ship's hull.
The best thing about the books are the covers. They are dramatic, sexy and striking in their black, red and white artwork. In fact, the book covers are absolutely brilliant. What a pity the contents don't follow suit. Again and again the author has her characters sighing, or (worse yet) smirking, followed by numerous repetitive descriptions of the Vampire's marble beauty, perfection, glorious eyes, etc. etc.
I discovered to my utter amazement that the author is a Mormon, and attended Brigham Young University. I wonder what the Mormon position is on the topic of the Undead? Much has been made of the Abstinence Factor in her novels, it's been hailed as a bright beacon of purity in the hormonal swamp of teenage lust. If we're talking about lust and the Undead I'm much more enthusiastic about Anne Rice's vampire novels – they have a lush, erotic sensual quality which is truly bewitching. And the quality of the writing is a hundred times better. No more Stephanie Meyer for me. Lead me to the Vampire Lestat, please ….
UNACCOMPANIED WOMEN – JUNE JUSKA
I loved the book, I devoured it! Yes! older women can and do still have an active libido. Perish the thought. What a wonderful warm, wise, funny book. June Juska has written honestly relating the events before, during and after placing her personal ad in the New York Review, candidly stating "before I turn 67 I would like to have sex with a man I like. If you want to talk first, Trollope works for me".
Her first book 'A Round Heeled Woman' relates how her her bold, brave request changes her life. In this second book , written at age 72, she continues her search for love, friendship, sex and by no means least: a roof over her head. Along the way she shares stories from readers of her first book – powerful, sad, happy, touching stories from the older generation. Her book is the real deal – not romantic slush, not womens' magazine motivational: it's about real life with real people . Read it: you might identify yourself amongst the pages!
REVIEWED AUTHORS
REVIEWED AUTHORS A C Sparks A J Jacobs Abdulrazak Gurnah Abigail Drake Abir Mukerjee Abraham Verghese Abubaker Adam Ibrahim Akira Yoshimura Albert Camus Alex Latimer Alex Michaelides Alexander Chee Alexander McCall Smith Alexandra Fuller Alexandra Heminsley Alice Hoffman Allen Johnson Amnthony Horowitz Amor Towles Andrew Krivak Angela Carter Anita Nair Ann Napolitano Ann Patchett Anna Hope Anne Enright Anne Lamott Anne Lapidus Brest Anne Tyler Anthony Bourdain Anthony Osler Avni Dosh Banana Yashimoto Barbara Comyns Barbara J Zitwer Barbara Kingsolver Barbara Mutch Becky Chambers Ben Schott Bernadine Evaristo Beverly Ryecroft Bianca Marais Bich Minh Nguyen Bonnie Garmus Brad Stone Bridget Collins Brit Bennett Britta Rostlund Camilla Bruce Carl Hiaasen Carlos Ruiz Zafon Carmen Maria Machado Cathleen Schine Chandler Baker Charlaine Harris Christine Mangan Claire Fuller Claire King Clare Pooley Connie Shelton Craig Johnson Cynthia Ozick D M Guay David Michie Dawn French Deborah Koonts Deborah Rodriguez Delia Owens Deon Meyer Diana Duff Donald Barthelme Donna Leon Donna Tartt Edith Eger Elif Shafak Elizabeth Buchan Elizabeth Enfield Elizabeth Gaskell Elizabeth McKenzie Elizabeth Spann Craig Elizabeth Strout Elly Griffiths Emma Donoghue Eric Newby Erika Fatland . Erin Morgenstern. Estelle Richards Faith Martin Farahad Zama Gemma Halliday Georgette Heyer Gerald Murnane Gregory David Roberts Gretchen Haley Gyles Brandreth H C Carlton Hafsa Zayyaan Haruki Marukami Helen De Witt Helen Dunmore Helen Macdonals Helene Thornton Herve le Tellier Imraan Coovadia Ingrid Winterbach Irna van Zyl Isabel Allende Ishmael Beah Ivan Vladislavic J G Farrell Jane Harper Janni Howker Jason Matthews Jean-Paul Didierlaurent Jennie Rooney Jennifer Kline Jennifer Toth Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar Jenny Offill Jessica A Fox Jhoka Alaharti JMG le Clezio Joanna Nel Joanne Fedler Joanne Harris Jo-Anne Richards Joe Heap1Robert Harris Johan Vlok Louw John Boyne John Eppel John Freeman John Webb Johnathan Safan Foer Josephine Tey Julia Baird Julia Walton Julie Cohen Julie Mulhern June Juska Junot Diaz Karen Dionne Kate Atkinson Kathy Rentzenbrink Kazuo Ishiguro Keija Parssinen Kent Haruf Khadija Abdalla Bajaber Kira Salak Kirsten Weiss Kyra Davis Laura Cumming Lauren Beukes Lauren Groff Leslie Langtry Lev Parikian Levison Wood Lionel Shriver Louise Levene Lucia Berlin Lucy Burdette Lynne Truss Marianne Cronin Marion Poschmann Mark Haddon Mark Winkler Martin Hammer Martin Latham Mary Lawson Matt Haig Maureen McCarthy Max Porter Meeti Shroff-Shah Meg van der Merwe Michael Ondaatjie Michael Palin Mick Herron Mikhail Bulgakov Miranda Cowley Mohsin Hamid Namwali Serpell Nataniel Nathan Lowell Natsu Miyashita Neil Gaiman Nick Hornby Nick Petrie Nick Spalding Nicola Barker Nina Sankovitch Ocean Vuong Olga Tokarczuk Orhan Pahmuk P G Wodehouse Pamela Burford Paolo Cognetti Patrick Leigh-Fermor Paul Constant Smit Paul Therous Peter Allison Peter Mayle Petina Gappah Phillipp Sendker Pierre Peju Pip Williams Qarnita Loxton R G Balson Rachel Joyce Raynor Winn Rebecca Davis Rebecca Dinnerstein Knight Rebecca Makkai Rebecca Solnit Remy Ngamije Renee George Rhoda Janzen Rhys Bowen Richard Osman Richard Powers Roald Dahl Robert Galbraith Robert Hillman Robert MacFarlane Robert Macfarlane & Stanley Donwood Robert Muponde Rose McCauley Rosemund J Handler Ruth Cracknell Ruth Ozeki S F Bose S W Clemens Sakiya Murata Sally Andrew Sarah Maine Sarah Perry Sean Greenhalg Sequoia Nagamatsu Shyam Selvadurai Sigal Samuel Sigrid Nunez Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu. Sophia Money-Coutts Sophie Green Stefan Fatsis Stephane Bond Stephanie Scott Stephen Greenblatt Susan Gibb Susan Kiernan-Lewis Susan Orlean Susanna Clarke TA Willberg Tara Westover Tatamkhulu Afrika Tim Winton Tommy Orange Toshikazu Kawaguchi Val Emmich Vaseem Khan Veronica Black Vladimir Nabokov Walter Moers Waris Dire William Boyd William Kent Kreuger William Trevor Yuval Noah Harari Zinzi Clemmons Zoe Folbigg Zukiswa Wanner .


text:
The Best Biographies of Warren Harding
Posted by Steve in Best Biographies Posts, President #29 - W Harding
American history, Andrew Sinclair, biographies, book reviews, Francis Russell, John W. Dean, presidential biographies, Presidents, Robert Murray, Samuel H. Adams, Warren Harding
[Updated]
Biographically speaking, it seems Warren Harding comes in just two flavors: depressingly dull…or positively fascinating.
And the right choice of Harding biographies for you seems to depend on whether someone's personal life – or his politics – are your thing.
After reading four biographies on Harding I was not surprised by how bad his presidency was (historians have generally condemned it as near-awful) but by how bad it was not. Perhaps I simply expected worse than I found – or maybe I've just been de-sensitized by the deficiencies of our modern day heroes?
In many respects Harding was ill-equipped for the demands of the presidency. Spectacularly salacious documentation also confirms that his personal life was a mess. And although he appears to have played no role in their evolution, several scandals emerged from within his administration which haunt his legacy. His presidential patina is deservedly tarnished.
But having vicariously survived the presidencies of political paragons such as Pierce, Buchanan, Johnson, Fillmore and Tyler (among others) I don't see Harding as setting the Gold Standard for abysmal. For me, Harding merely defines the essence of "bottom quartile."
And if he had possessed the public relations savvy of Ulysses S. Grant (whose administration was no stranger to scandal) or Bill Clinton (whose personal foibles are legend), Harding might today even be considered almost average…
* My first Harding biography was Francis Russell's 1968 "The Shadow of Blooming Grove: Warren G. Harding in His Times." Russell was one of five enthusiastic biographers who pounced on Harding's papers when they were released by the Ohio Historical Society in 1964.
Russell's book was not first to market; that distinction belongs to Andrew Sinclair. But Russell possessed one potential advantage over the rest of the field- he had previously stumbled upon a cache of colorful letters between Harding and one of his alleged mistresses. But while he was able to inject the "spirit" of those letters into his biography, the actual content had to be redacted due to a lawsuit brought by Harding's descendants.
Despite this legal constraint, Russell's biography was by a huge margin the most sensational – and one of the least scholarly – of the Harding biographies I read. Fans of slightly tawdry but captivating tales of infidelity will appreciate this book. But if a tabloidesque exposé is what you're after, surely there must be a better subject than Warren Harding? (Full review here)
* Next I read John W. Dean's 2004 "Warren G. Harding." As a member of The American Presidents series this book delivers exactly what you would expect: a clear, concise and competent analysis of Harding's life, including his presidency.
Among the four Harding biographers I encountered, Dean was Harding's most enthusiastic supporter. Dean's biography seemed designed not only to inform…but also to rehabilitate Harding's reputation. And he was reasonably convincing.
In the end, however, Dean was too forgiving of Harding's failings – for the worst of his political appointments, in particular. But for readers committed to reading one biography on each president, Dean's biography of Harding is probably the best among a fairly mediocre lot. (Full review here)
* My third Harding biography was Andrew Sinclair's "The Available Man: The Life Behind the Masks of Warren Gamaliel Harding." Published in 1965, this was the first Harding biography published after the release of Harding's papers in 1964.
Unfortunately, the haste with which Sinclair pushed this biography to press is demonstrated not only by its brevity (it is by far the shortest of the scholarly biographies) but also its overwhelming meaningful insight.
Sinclair substituted clever deduction for penetrating research and relied on platitudes and generalities to paint Harding with an excessively broad brush. But perhaps to his credit, Sinclair resisted the temptation to focus on the sensational stories of Harding's personal life. Or perhaps he simply lacked the time? (Full review here)
* The last Harding biography I read was Robert Murray's "The Harding Era: Warren G. Harding and His Administration." Published in 1969, this proved to be the most sober and scholarly of the Harding biographies. It was also fairly well-balanced, neither unfairly castigating Harding nor endlessly praising him. But it was far from ideal.
Murray devoted little attention to Harding's childhood, his formative career as a newspaper publisher or his burgeoning political career. The first 54 years of Harding's life were documented in less than 10% of the book's pages.
Nowhere else have I seen a more detailed, well-researched or thoughtful (if unexciting) study of Harding's presidency. But in order to truly understand Harding the man one must study far more than Harding the president. And in this respect, among a few others, Murray's biography of Harding fell short. (Full review here)
[Added November 2022]
* I've now read Ryan S. Walters's just-released "The Jazz Age President: Defending Warren G. Harding." In many respects, the title says it all – this is a passionate defense of Harding's presidential legacy; it is not a comprehensive or weighty biography. The narrative focuses primarily on the between Harding's presidential campaign and his death just 29 months after his presidential term began. And while many readers are likely to find it interesting and thought-provoking, its best and worst arguments for Harding's reappraisal are conveyed through a distracting partisan lens. (Full review here)
I have added Samuel H. Adams "Incredible Era: The Life and Times of Warren Gamaliel Harding" to my follow-up list. Published in 1939, this is one of the earliest and best-known of the Harding biographies. It seems deeply flawed in several respects, but might prove interesting due to the early, central role it played in tarnishing Harding's legacy.
Best Biography of Warren Harding: John W. Dean's "Warren G. Harding"
Most Scholarly Biography of Harding: Robert Murray's "The Harding Era: Warren G. Harding and His Administration"
Most Captivating Read of Harding: Francis Russell's "The Shadow of Blooming Grove: Warren G. Harding in His Times"
23 thoughts on "The Best Biographies of Warren Harding"
Jim Kane said:
Love the insights here Stephen.
I am now reading Downes' The Rise of Warren Gamaliel Harding: 1865-1920. It did not get high ratings on Goodreads but I found a pdf file of it.
Enjoy Amity Shales' Coolidge work. I will be interested in your thoughts on it. Also, read Coolidge's bio, it is in the public domain.
Steve said:
I almost added Downes' bio to my follow-up list but it seems to focus on everything but Harding's presidency (and vice presidency). I'll be keen to hear what you think of when once you've finished it. Perhaps it and the Murray biography would be perfect together?
Could be. Will let you know!
Tom Moore said:
Harding earns my respect for one action: pardoning Eugene Debs.
alamo2000 said:
Harding is certainly underrated as a president — far from great, but the notion that he ranks dead last (in many academic surveys) is laughable. And I say that as an academic! But given the progressive biases in academia, he pales next to his immediate predecessor (Wilson) as well as FDR. But while acknowledging his personal faults and the corruption that existed in certain parts of his administration, he was actually rather successful in his brief tenure. And compared to the extremely negative consequences of the Pierce, Buchanan, and Andrew Johnson presidencies….. And given the erratic nature of many aspects of Wilson's presidency, it's not hard to make an argument that Harding is preferable. I think I would be quite comfortable ranking a dozen president's lower than Harding, based purely on accomplishments.
I couldn't have said it better myself!
Patrick Hubbell said:
My take-away of Harding came from 1920: The Year of the Six Presidents by David Pietrusza.
Disarmament treaties; taxes lowered; national debt reduced by $26 billion; reduced unemployment from 12 to 3%; abolished 12-hour workday in steel industry; established Bureau of the Budget; first federal conference on unemployment; first federal social welfare law; first federal highway program. Southern Democrats in Senate blocked an anti-lynching bill passed by House.
Keep in mind that this economic success followed the devastating aftermath of the Great War.
In December 1921, Harding did what Wilson never would, commuting Gene Debs's sentence, effective that Christmas Day. "I want him to eat his Christmas dinner with his wife,' he ordered Daugherty. . . Harding insisted that Debs visit him at the White House on the way home to Terre Haute. 'Well,' boomed Harding, 'I have heard so damned much about you, Mr. Debs, that I am now glad to meet you personally."
Harding turned out to be more independent-minded in thought and action than people had predicted or than history has generally recorded.
When Harding wanted something for himself, he certainly tried to get it. He allowed others to go their own way over matters that did not interest him in order to gain their support for what he wanted.
Sean C. said:
Howdy, and I dig your blog. Have you heard of a book called The Ohio Gang by Charles L. Mee, Jr.? It's a fairly concise biography of Warren Harding, written to be both entertaining and informative. Probably not the four star bio you're looking for, but given the dearth of well-reviewed Harding biographies, it might warrant a visit your second time through.
Thanks – ironically a friend of mine got me that book somewhat as a "gag" gift for my birthday (thinking that since it was about Warren Harding it couldn't possibly be meaningful in any way). But despite mediocre reviews, I'm probably going to read it as part of my follow-up. There just isn't much on the Harding presidency so it's worth a look!
matthewm53 said:
My wife found me a copy of "The Strange Death of President Harding from the diaries of Gaston B. Means, a Department of Justice Investigator" as told to Max Dixon Thacker. New York: Guild, 1930. Means was quite a shady character – I think he might have been mentioned in "The Shadow of Blooming Grove" – I read that a bit too long ago. Means was in prison over swindling money from a lady regarding the search for the Lindbergh baby.
I don't remember Gaston Means (it is a memorable name…how did I miss him!?!?) but I'm intrigued by the book your wife uncovered. I'll have to look into it and see if it's something I need to go back and read – the "Harding" section of my bookshelf isn't exactly overflowing!
Richard M Dasheiff said:
In Robert Murray's "The Harding Era: Warren G. Harding and His Administration" (1969) he writes about Gaston B. Means.
On page 477, reference 38. A recent biography of Means which strives to separate truth from fiction is Edwin P. Hoyt. "Spectacular Rogue: Gaston B. Means" (Indianapolis, 1963).
On page 490, reference 53. Gaston B. Means, "The Strange Death of President Harding (as told to May Dixon Thacker)" (New York, 1930). The following narrative, including quotations, is from the book.
And an excerpt from Murray's book, pp. 490-1
The Harding reputation, already sufficiently battered by Nan Britton's disclosures, was further damaged by the publication in 1930 of another book – this one by Gaston Means, entitled The Strange Death of President Harding.[53] Ghostwritten for Means by Mrs. May Dixon Thacker, this work was a compendium of Means's alleged relationship with Harding and the Harding administration. Mrs. Thacker, who was the sister of Thomas Dixon, the famous author of The Klansman, gathered the material from Means while he was an inmate in Atlanta Penitentiary. The result was a runaway best seller.
Undocumented and nonspecific, the book was both libelous and ridiculous. Yet the gullible were willing to believe it. Means told of secret spying missions for Mrs. Harding, of amorous trysts and love letters to strange women by General Sawyer, and of gross sexual infidelities by the president. He described frequent meetings with Jess Smith at Daugherty's H Street address where drunken orgies were attended by Harding at which chorus girls were sometimes injured by flying glass. Means claimed that he had handled as much as $500,000 at one time for the Ohio Gang, that Daugherty was the evil mastermind behind it all, and that Daugherty got to be attorney general by blackmailing Harding through his knowledge of Nan Britton. He further claimed that he had investigated the Britton affair for Mrs. Harding, stole Nan's diaries and letters, and gave them to Mrs. Harding who after reading them murmured: "I ought to kill them both. . . . That's what I ought to do. . . . They deserve it. . . They are not fit to live." Thereafter, said Means, Mrs. Harding used the Britton letters to terrorize her own husband in a vicious struggle with Daugherty to dominate him. Jess Smith, who was the "weak link" in the Ohio Gang, was murdered because he knew too much. Mrs. Harding's illness in the early fall of 1922 was triggered, stated Means, by her sudden discovery of the Britton affair, and her adoration of Warren Harding gradually turned to hate. In her fear that her husband would be either exposed or impeached, and with "her brain on fire" from both the prattlings of soothsayers and the knowledge that she was a discarded wife, Mrs. Harding planned the Alaskan trip along with General Sawyer, her chief accomplice. By implication, Means established the conditions for Sawyer and Mrs. Harding to slip the president poison rather than medicine on the return journey down the west coast. The lack of an autopsy, Means said, represented prima facie evidence of foul play.
The Means book delivered a final blow to the Harding image. The seeds of suspicion that Harry Daugherty had inadvertently planted by not testifying in 1926 now came to bitter fruition. It apparently mattered little that President Harding had never met Means or that Means was a perjurer, a thief, a convict, and a swindler. Submerged by sensationalism was the fact that Means did not know Mrs. Harding, that he had never been in the White House, that he had not been present at the places and on the dates he mentioned. Not surprisingly, on November 7, 1931, in Liberty Magazine in an article entitled "Debunking the Strange Death of President Harding" May Dixon Thacker wrote "with humiliation ….. and in justice to the dead" that she now believed she had been duped by Means and that the book was nothing more than a "colossal hoax – a tissue of falsehood from beginning to end."[54] Unfortunately, in the publishing world repudiations seldom rate the same publicity as original accusations and Mrs. Thacker's article did not counteract the effect of the Means book. The damage had been done.
IN REVIEWING The Strange Death of President Harding for the Nation in 1930, Oswald G. Vilard made a telling point. Admitting that the work was vicious and libelous, Villard nevertheless claimed that until such men as Hoover and Hughes came forward to challenge the charges, "Mr. Means and his book will hold the field; he will profit by its phenomenal and unchecked sale; and the volume will spread throughout the country the belief that his allegations are in the main correct."[55]
J.L. Jensen said:
Just snagged a copy of "Dead Last: The Public Memory of Warren G. Harding's Scandalous Legacy." I haven't read it yet, but am curious to read the analysis. It's not a biography, so wouldn't make this list, but is an analysis of factors surrounding his legacy, such as the role of various biographers in shaping his early image and the tension between public memory and academic history. With it's analysis of biographers role on his image, this may be of interest to you, simply because you have developed a 6th sense for sniffing out good biographers, and an analysis that the role of biography plays in shaping image may be interesting.
Sounds interesting. Will be curious to see what you think when you finish it. The title seems to pre-judge the outcome, no? 🙂
Chris Kempley said:
Well my one book per president approach was working well until I got to Harding. I've used the American President's Series as a fallback. It worked well for Tyler, Taylor and Pierce. Plus, I had the advantage of your recommendation on Dean's book.
Unfortunately, if anything you understated the extent to which Dean is enthusiastic in his efforts to rehabilitate Harding. Fawning over every positive aspect and decrying any negativity is how it came across to me.
So it looks like I will have to do a followup book on Harding when I get done. Not a bad outcome, I've already got Chernow's book on Grant, as well as Shelby Foote's Civil War series to do – and who knows how many others.
I'll probably go with Murray or Russell.
James Salerno said:
I picked up "The Life and Times of Warren G. Harding: Our After War President" by Joe Mitchell Chapple, 1924. Anyone have thoughts on this one?
Little Jay said:
Have we heard anything further regarding Ronald Radosh's book? (I enjoyed his other books and am eagerly awaiting this one.)
I've tried to keep my ear to the ground on this one but haven't seen anything notable since their NYT op/ed piece a few years ago. I've heard bits and pieces of rumors since then (along the lines of "don't hold your breath") but I don't have any hard insight at this point.
J.W. Wartick said:
I've been on my own journey of trying to read at least one biography per President. I started back with Washington in maybe 2017? I'm up to Warren Harding. I've been using your website to find recommendations (and linking to it on each of my own looks at the Presidents).
Warren Harding seems like he's going to be another one that's difficult to find a good biography for. I am surprised by how often there's not even a single biography of a specific President at the largest (bigger city) library I'm near. Anyway, I think I may make Harding a two-fer and read a couple just to try to get some balance.
1. Congrats on your journey! Even though there are a couple semi-rough patches along the way, it's well worth the effort! I'll be interested to hear what you decide to read on FDR 🙂 Lots to choose from…
2. Harding is a bit difficult and I think reading two on him will provide balance but also round him out for you. Multiple biographies *always* seems to give me a multi-faceted perspective of someone, no matter how great the first biography is that I decided to read. Good luck!
New Leaf said:
Like many others, I've been reading one biography for each president, and Steve, your blog has been unbelievably helpful. I'm not sure I'd have even attempted the journey without it!
A few thoughts about Warren G. Harding. First, I agree that his presidency was certainly not the mess that some have made it out to be, and he had several predecessors who were far worse. That said, Harding wasn't the best man for the job. He was nominated because several stronger candidates canceled each other out, not to mention the fact that he looked the part and he came from Ohio (an important swing state then, as now). After his untimely death, he was mourned as a beloved hero. That image rapidly tarnished after a tell-all book by one of his mistresses, and the revelations of several scandals within his administration (Teapot Dome being the most famous).
In 2015, DNA tests proved that he really did father a child out of wedlock. And interestingly, the same tests also proved that he did not have any Black ancestors, which was a source of innuendo at that time.
I think that you might have been a little hard on "The Shadow of Blooming Grove" by Francis Russell. It covered his love life thoroughly, to be sure, but given Harding's reputation, it would have been wrong to downplay that part of his life. Lest anyone think that's all the book entails, it's worth noting that Russell goes into quite a bit of detail about his life, his administration, and even beyond Harding himself. There's a long chapter about Ohio politics that barely mentions Harding, but helps introduce important characters in his story and helps set the scene for his nomination. There's another long chapter after Harding's death that tells how Teapot Dome and other scandals played out. It would have been easier, I'm sure, to end the book with his death, but that would have left us hanging to find out what happened with all the issues that were taking place. I thought the book gave a good sense of Harding as a person. It was, for sure, a fun read.
Thanks for your note. It also reminds me there are a few rumored biographies of Harding which promise to take a look at his life and legacy through the fresh lens provided by some of the revelations you cite. My fingers are crossed they are eventually published and that Harding will be better – and objectively – understood in a time when most people probably wouldn't even recognize his name.
Inez said:
Reading Dean's bio of Harding now and coincidentally came across a photo collection of President Harding's Voyage of Understanding that the White House Historical Society has posted here https://library.whitehousehistory.org/fotoweb/albums/XukBjaRdhfNyE6QxYfQW1xWJXhdGHtqh5VgM7Q/ These may be of interest to those who follow your postings.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Research shows that getting even feels good... but at what cost?
Now, I'm not advocating for revenge. I believe that "an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind," and any gratification from revenge is likely to be short-lived. If you've been raised to think of revenge as being generally immoral, feelings of guilt may off-set any benefits of revenge. However, if you don't have any compunctions against revenge, or even if you do, a recent set of studies by Chester and DeWall (2017) in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology sheds some light on how revenge works emotionally and psychologically. Of course, there are - thankfully - other ways than revenge to restore one's emotional equilibrium after being hurt, such as working through the issue with the injuring party, compassion and forgiveness, seeing justice and reparation, punishment even, but the basic instinct to seek revenge, to become sadistic, to bully, is so strong and such a potent source of destruction in our world, it makes sense to better understand what is happening. It's not so clear intuititively how negative action like retaliatory aggression can lead to a positive emotional outcome.
The researchers in this study sought to understand how social rejection can lead to retaliatory aggression. What motivates revenge behavior when we feel hurt, rejected or criticized? When someone experiences negative emotions, why does this lead to aggressive behavior? There is a great deal of violence, from intimate partner violence and stalking, to violent confrontation between one-time friends, to mass casualty events. Of course violence may come from multiple factors, but clarifying the connection between the common experience of rejection and the retaliatory aggression which may often follow is an important step in understanding how to interrupt the cycle of injury and retaliation.
Basically, researchers found that when people feel hurt - socially rejected, insulted, humiliated, angry - we look for ways to restore our feelings to a more positive state. One common way for us to do that is to retaliate, to seek revenge and punish the offending party. They describe the following sequence: when we feel emotional injury, it causes negative emotions. When we feel negative emotions, we look for a way to restore a positive emotional state. One way to restore a positive emotional state is to strike out against the injuring party. When it is possible to do so, most experimental subjects are motivated to seek revenge, and when offered the opportunity, will do so. When their emotional state is assess after getting revenge, it is on par with the emotional state of someone who hadn't experienced emotional injury in the first place.
To spell it out, in the study, researchers set up 6 different experiments to establish a chain of steps linking social rejection with retaliatory aggression. In the first two experiments, researcher established that people who experience greater rejection show greater motivation to repair their negative mood using aggression as a tool, and furthermore showed that subjects who had been excluded from playing an internet based game who felt greater rejection were more likely to be motivated to use aggression with the expectation that it would make them feel better by providing a degree of sadistic pleasure.
In the second two experiments, researchers showed that if they blocked the expectation that getting even would make them feel better, then the motivation to retaliate was decreased. Taken together, the first two sets of experiments persuasively demonstrate that the expectation of feeling better is a strong motivator for revenge because when it is present, people have a significantly greater desire to get even, and when the expectation is absent that revenge will restore mood, people do not have as strong an urge to get even.
Finally, in the last two experiments, researchers showed that people who have experienced greater social rejection on average actually do behavior with greater aggression, exacting revenge and taking punishment for perceived injuries, and finding that their mood is improved for having done so. How did the researchers show this? In the first experiment, participants wrote a short essay which was supposedly exchanged via the internet with a partner's essay. However, there wasn't really a partner, and the essay was pre-written for purposes of the experiment. The subjects then received a random evaluation ranging from very positive to very negative, representing either social acceptance or social rejection. Then they completed a scale showing their emotional state (positive vs. negative), and were then offered an opportunity to say how many pins they wanted to stab into an imaginary voodoo doll which represented the person evaluating their essay, or in other trials how long and how loud they wanted a punishing noise to be.
By doing so, experimenters correlated how negative the evaluation was with how badly the person felt, and with how aggressively subjects behaved against the imaginary injuring party . The second experiment to measure actual aggressive behavior was similar, but used a larger group playing a game that subjects could be excluded from by other players, creating the feeling of social rejection.
In both experiments, researchers found that when negative affect (emotion) was high, subjects had a greater tendency to use retaliatory aggression to improve their mood, and that after they used aggression their mood was statistically the same as those who had not felt rejected and become angry in the first place. In other words, on average, taking revenge did in fact repair damaged mood among those who felt hurt.
So, at least for a single step of feeling injured, revenge is indeed sweet - in the sense that it restores our pre-injury emotional state. But the negative action of the revenge by the same mechanism would likely cause injury to the original injuring party, and the other would then feel motivated to use retaliation to restore their emotional state, leading to an infinite regression of retaliatory aggression. Sadly this is exactly what we see so often in everyday life. This happens with children all the time, among friends who have a falling out and end up hurting each other, to romantic relationships which end up on the rocks, to family feuds which lead to decades of fighting and estrangement, to emotionally injured people who commit acts of terrible violence, to warring ethnic groups and nation-states which end up locked in cycles of decades of violence.
Is this motivation to use retaliatory aggression an evolutionary glitch? It appeals on a basic level, and seems to be "human nature". The immediate impulse is when slighted to seek revenge. It might make sense in some situations where short-term gains lead to an advantage, but it doesn't make sense when we are interdependent upon one another as we are in the modern world. We try to teach ourselves to restore our emotional equilibrium via other means, learning to reflect rather than act impulsively, and consider our options.
We can use conflict resolution approaches, third party moderators to help if need be, compassion and forgiveness-based approaches, religious models or otherwise, justice and reparation seeking, and so on. These all require more work than simply retaliating, but lead to better long-term outcomes. In order to use any of these preferred approaches, we have to tolerate feelings of injury for longer than necessary. Learning to hold onto these feelings without acting immediately takes practice.
Combating the sting of rejection with the pleasure of revenge: A new look at how emotion shapes aggression. Chester, David S.; DeWall, C. Nathan Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 112(3), Mar 2017, 413-430.
I'm pretty sure that my cat got revenge on me one day.
He was blocking my path, lying on one of the stair treads, and I was carrying something down the stairs and couldn't safely step over him, so I asked him at him to move. He wouldn't. I nudged him with my foot, he was planted.
So in frustration I leaned down as far as I could, and yelled as loud as I could, "MOVE!"
He was so startled he almost fell off the stairs, but he scooted away, finally and I was able to get down.
The following morning, my toothbrush smelled like cat pee. Hmmmm.
I think that human urge to get back at people and that human ability to forgo revenge, is what separates the normal humans from the psychopaths.
Those who have no affective empathy and no conscience and no remorse: the psychopaths (and their close kin, the anti-socials, the narcissists and the sociopaths) are the ones who seem to have no "brakes" and let their wounded ego or sense of having been treated unfairly (injustice collectors, grudge holders) propel them into brutal acts of retaliation.
I've heard it called the "talionic impulse." Self-served justice of the "an eye for an eye" type.
Aka: frontier justice, mob justice, riots, mass murder or spree murder, going postal, etc.
Cats are funny. I can't tell how much of their behavior is just cat, and how much is the human being seeing motive where there isn't any. We tend to do that. But as a cat-person, I totally dig it.
I generally agree with the rest of your comment, but perhaps I am too cynical in thinking that it isn't unusual to seek revenge. It seems all too ordinary. I wish it were very unusual and always pathological, but as I suggest I think most people are default "wired" for revenge, and have to take steps not to succumb to the urge.
I think in some cases in excess, it is a sign of pathology and/or evil.
I guess I didn't express myself clearly, but I agree that pretty much everyone has at one time or another felt a keen desire to inflict revenge, but I think most of us are able to stop at the point of actually acting out our desire to "get back" at someone who disrespected or hurt us.
I have wished others dead but never actually followed through with anything of the sort; my go-to response is to just get far away from anyone who treats me so badly that I wish they would die.
But those who give in to their impulse to wreak revenge are (I think) on the psychopathic spectrum: no brakes. No conscience. No remorse. Just a sense of entitlement and justification to wreak vengeance.
Does it really restore it though?
My mom was really revenge prone, but her emotional injuries were always so deep that it feels like it was never enough. She'd do to people 10 times what they did to her, but they never appeared hurt enough compared to what she felt they did to her.
Thanks for your comment and I think you are pointing out an important situation, which is one of the nuances over a longer span of time. I mention the general possibility that retaliation is not a good long-term strategy, and you give a poignant illustration of how it can misfire.
This study looked at people on average who were responding only to the short-term injury. My hypothesis with people who over-retaliate is that there are a few possible reasons for that. One is that they have unprocessed trauma, and they are retaliating for past injuries which the present revenge can never address, in which case the emotional restoration would not work. Another possibility is that there is a problem with intrinsic ability to regulate emotional states, and minor injuries are experienced as being subjectively much greater than they appear to an observer. They can overlap, and there may be other nuances.
If retaliation is excessive and ineffective, than there is something off on the learning process - rather than fading away because it isn't working, the retaliation is persistent even though it doesn't work well. This reminds me of the difference between acute pain, which typically serves as a signal that there is a problem to be addressed, and chronic pain, which may take on a life of its own even after recovery. Pain is supposed to fade away over time, but it can persist and become a problem in and of itself.
Of course, I can't speak to your mother's specific experience, but I can empathize how hard it is to try to relate to someone who retaliates with excessive and ineffective force.
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Mother Who Once Rode 1,400km To Bring Son Home During Lockdown Awaits His Return From Ukraine
Shweta SengarUpdated on Mar 05, 2022, 11:55 IST
Two years ago when her son was in distress, she rode 1,400 km on her scooter to bring him home but today she feels helpless as he is stranded in another countryRazia Begum, a teacher at a government-run school in Telangana's Nizamabad district, is worried about the safety of her 19-year-old son, this time stranded in war-hit UkraineThough 260 students from Ukraine have returned to Telangana, Razia is still waiting for her son - Nizamuddin Aman, who is pursuing MBBS first year at Sumy in the north-eastern part of Ukraine
Two years ago when her son was in distress, she rode 1,400 km on her scooter to bring him home but today she feels helpless as he is stranded in another country.
Razia Begum, a teacher at a government-run school in Telangana's Nizamabad district, is worried about the safety of her 19-year-old son, this time stranded in war-hit Ukraine.
Though 260 students from Ukraine have returned to Telangana, Razia is still waiting for her son - Nizamuddin Aman, who is pursuing MBBS first year at Sumy in the north-eastern part of Ukraine.
Over 500 waiting evacuation from Sumy
Rode a scooter for 1400 kms during lockdown
Aman is among several Indian students at Sumy State Medical University located in Sumy city close to the Russian border.
Reports from Sumy suggest that more than 500 Indian students are waiting to be evacuated. Most of the students are reported to be in bunkers due to continuous Russian shelling. The electricity and water supply systems in the city are said to have suffered in the war.
Sumy is also reported to be cut off from other cities in Ukraine making it very difficult for Indians and other nationals stranded there to move out.
Razia Begum is praying for the safe return of her son. The 50-year-old teacher said she received a call from him two days ago to convey that he is safe. "He told me not to worry as he is safe but I am worried as he is stuck amid war in a foreign land," she said.
Razia Begum has appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao to take all necessary steps to ensure the safe evacuation of her son and other Indian students stranded there.
She admits that this time she is feeling helpless as her son is stranded thousands of kilometres away and that too in another country.
Razia Begum had displayed exemplary courage and determination to undertake a 1,400 km-long arduous journey on her scooter to bring home her son from Nellore district in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh where he was stuck due to the nationwide lockdown. She rode on highways even at night to reach her son.
This was in April 2020. Nizamuddin had gone to Rahmatabad in Nellore district to a friend's place but was stuck due to the sudden imposition of the lockdown following the COVID-19 breakout.
Armed with permission from the police, she overcame all odds to reach Rahmatabad riding solo on her two-wheeler and brought her son back home.
A teacher at a school in Bodhan town in Nizamabad district, Razia lost her husband due to kidney failure a few years ago and has two sons, with Nizamuddin being the younger one. She said her younger son opted for the medical profession so that he could serve patients suffering from kidney-related ailments.
For more on news and current affairs from around the world, please visit Indiatimes News.
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