Westerns (collected 2018) By Elmore Leonard

One of my summer reads was the collected Westerns of Elmore Leonard published by the Library of America.  It includes four books and eight short stories written in the 1950s and 60s by Leonard, before he switched to writing crime novels, for which he became better known (Get Shorty).  His Westerns though include some of the classics of the genre: Hombre, Valdez is Coming, and Three Ten to Yuma, all set in the Arizona Territory.  While I don’t consider myself a western aficionado, I rather enjoyed these.  

It would have been rather difficult to avoid Westerns when I was a child, they were an ever present cultural phenomena.  As kids my brother Randy and I could only stay up “past bedtime” if our father stayed up too.  Many a Friday and Saturday nights were spent sprawled on the floor in front of the family’s first color television watching Westerns on the late show – and if my father fell asleep on the couch, we’d sneak in the late-late show too.

And speaking of a by-gone era, most of these works were originally published in their whole, or serialized, in Argosy or Dime Westerns, staples of a magazine culture that has also gone the way of the dinosaur.  Leonard’s writing is flawless, and his story telling is perfectly structured (honed by magazine editors who bought stories based on the word count), and which may account for why so many of his works have been made into movies, some good, most not so good.

Trailer for Hombre starring Paul Newman

Trailer for Valdez is Coming starring Burt Lancaster

There is some difficulty reading books in 2018 that were written in the 50s and 60s.  The acceptable vernacular of the time, grates when read today, never more so than in Forty Lashes Less One, a prison story where two of the main characters are an African American and an AZ-born Mexican-Native American.  By the end of the novel, they will be known as “the Zulu” and “the Apache” though even that wasn’t where the conversation began.  Both are imprisoned for murder.  They are set up against each other by the “civilized” white men who control the prison, then “saved” (sort of) by a minister, eventually becoming allies.  Spoiler: they will get the last laugh.

Valdez is Coming is my favorite of the collected books.  The star of it is a town constable who, based on bad intel, shoots an innocent man and then tries to take up a collection of $200 for the guy’s “woman.”

The full-length novels included in the collection are: Last Stand at Saber River, Hombre, Valdez is Coming, and Forty Lashes Less One.  The short stories are:  Trail of the Apache, The Rustlers, Three Ten to Yuma, Blood Money, The Captives, The Nagual, The Kid, and The Tonto Woman.

Recommendation:  Great “bedtime” reads, especially for those who no longer stay up to watch the late show.

Slow Ball Cartoonist: The Extraordinary Life of Indiana Native and Pulitzer Prize Winner John T. McCutcheon of the Chicago Tribune (2016) By Tony Garel-Frantzen

The pages of the Tribune have produced some of the greats of journalism, not the least of whom is John T. McCutcheon an editorial cartoonist for the paper from 1903 through the end of World War II.  McCutcheon won the paper its first Pulitzer Prize in 1931 with his drawing of a victim of a depression-era bank failure.  His body of work is extensive and includes the paper’s legendary annual Thanksgiving post Injun Summer.

This week (June 10, 2018) saw the departure of the Chicago Tribune’s editorial and business offices from the Tribune Tower, a gothic architectural masterpiece that is an integral part of both the city’s skyline and its history.  While all things must change, this bit of “progress” strikes close to home, both as a lifelong Tribune reader, and as a former employee – I worked on the eighth floor of the Tribune from 1972 through 1978.  As legions of others can attest, walking through the lobby of the Tower every morning is a heady experience, particularly when you are only 21, and new in the big city.  It just seems wrong for the paper to no longer be at the Tower.

Last year, I read/reviewed a biography of another staple of Chicago journalism, George Ade, a columnist, author and playwright.  Ade and McCutcheon were both natives of Indiana and attended Purdue University.  They were friends at Purdue, roommates early in their careers, and remained life-long friends.   

Reading Tony Garel-Frantzen’s biography of McCutcheon, Slow Ball Cartoonist, was for me like a history lesson of my neighborhood. When McCutcheon and Ade first began their journalism careers in Chicago they shared a studio apartment near 8^th & Wabash, around the corner from where I live at 9^th & State.  Their frequent train rides always routed them through Dearborn Station a building which is now a protected architectural landmark that is out my back door, its clocktower is the centerpiece of my skyline view.  When McCutcheon’s career progressed a little, he moved his work space into the Fine Arts Building a couple of blocks away on Michigan Avenue next to the Auditorium Theater & Roosevelt University, each of which are architectural landmarks from a bygone era.

And while I thoroughly enjoyed the Chicago settings in this biography, what I really loved was McCutcheon’s non-stop world travels.  As a war correspondent he covered the Spanish-American War from Manila, and San Juan Hill, and was one of hordes of journalists in Paris in1919 for the Peace Talks which ended the “Great War” and divided up the world.  He used his fame as a prominent newspaperman to literally badger his way into early aviation, including over enemy lines in World War I.

As a friend and confidant of his boss Col. Robert McCormick, the Tribune’s politically powerful editor and publisher, he was someone every politician in the country wanted to befriend – he was selective, a friend and fan of Teddy Roosevelt, and an acquaintance and non-fan of William McKinley. 

Recommendation:  For nostalgia, for Chicago history, for journalism 101, and for just plain pleasure reading, it can’t be beat.

Shanghai: The Rise and Fall of a Decadent City (2000) By Stella Dong

Chinese history is complex no matter what century or dynasty you look at.  Breaking it down into manageable parts helps … somewhat.  Stella Dong’s excellent nonfiction book Shanghai: The Rise and Fall of a Decadent City looks at the country’s commercial capital from 1842 until 1949 when the Communists finally consolidated their control of the mainland.   Then, and now, Shanghai is to China, what New York City is to the United States.

As the book begins, Shanghai is a Treaty Port – a port city where foreign merchants (British, French, Americans, and many others) are not answerable to Chinese law and do not pay Chinese taxes.  As an international port city chock full of sailors, immigrants, refuges, capitalists, criminals and rapidly alternating pockets of Chinese political activists, it’s wide open.  Romanticists will call it the Paris of the East, others will compare it (repeatedly) with Chicago’s Al Capone era, and each can provide a mountain of evidence to support their view. The Al Capone comparison relates to China’s attempt to wipe out the (domestic) opium trade, and the impact of Prohibition in the US, and their respective roles on the development of organized crime.  It is a compelling argument.

During World War II, there was an unholy alliance between the Communist insurgency led by Moa Tse Tung, and the forces of the post-dynasty Republic, to battle Japan, the common foe.  When the Japanese retreat at the war’s conclusion however these two groups will resume their delayed civil war.  In 1949, Chiang Kai-shek (the western-backed leader of the Republic) was forced to flee to the island of Formosa/Taiwan, taking with him the Bank of China’s gold deposits. The western powers, now denied the unbridled spoils of the Treaty Ports, would spend much of the next few decades in denial of the permanency of the Communist victory.

Shanghai, The Bund, circa 1930

But national history is just an extension of Dong’s book, the primary focus is on Shanghai itself and how it became one of the most cosmopolitan places in the world … as seen through western eyes. In the “glory day” if you will of the Treaty Port era, the Bund, the main riverfront street of the city, was an avenue of banks, hongs (import/export trade companies) and luxury hotels.  They were bankrolled by immense trade revenues, not the least of which were from opium.  Collectively these commercial enterprises built an economy that could support a limitless market for “sin” in the city: drug use, prostitution, and gambling. 

That the commercial success of Shanghai was built on a structured inequality, seemed lost to those who could never understand the political appeal of the Communist insurgency.  There are many, many “what-ifs” in this history, Stella Dong wisely leaves them to the reader to pose and answer.

One interesting sub-story in the book concerns the (then) status of Shanghai as an open port, meaning no visa was required.  This allowed countless refuges to access the city, not the least among these groups were “stateless” Jews escaping Nazi-era Germany, some 30,000 of whom made it to Shanghai establishing a new home in the Hongkew neighborhood.  Significantly, when the Japanese military occupied the city, Jews were either restricted to Hongkew ghetto, or like all allied-Europeans and Americans, interned in prisoner of war camps.  The Japanese however did not implement the “final solution” their German allies requested. While the reason is unknown, the Japanese failure to do so was likely not humanitarian in nature, more likely they just couldn’t be bothered.  After the war and the declaration of an independent Israel, most Jews living in Shanghai immigrated.

Recommendation:  Yes, for history buffs.

The Round House (2012) By Louise Erdrich

The story told in The Round House by Louise Erdrich is constructed on a plot involving the rape of a Native American woman living on a reservation in North Dakota.  People who shy away from picking up this book fearing the topic will be unbearable will be missing a brilliantly written work that while it contains a great deal of hurt, also entails a great deal of humanity. 

The main characters of the book are the woman, her husband, and their son.  How each of them deals with the brutal attack and its aftermath could be stand-alone novels yet Erdrich has skillfully woven them together. 

The father is a tribal judge, though the legal system on the reservation is as defined and imposed by treaty, and obstructs justice as often as it finds the truth.  It is important to note that as recently as 2009  86% of the rapes of Native Americans were perpetrated by non-Native Americans, and prosecution is rare, with a success rate that is even rarer.

The mother's story is critical, her silence is not merely reaction, it becomes a important part of the plot.

The son is your typical 13-year old, until he is not – the rape and its impact become an all-encompassing subplot in his coming of age story.  I won’t go into detail about how this story unfolds, because doing so would require a spoiler alert. Let’s just say, the book goes where it needs to go.

Writing about “Rez Life” has become a significant genre in literature. Louise Erdrich, with her lineage as a Chippewa, is one of several authors from this genre I have read.  Others include what could be categorized as the Rez “pop culture writer" Sherman Alexie author of SmokeSignals and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, who grew up on the Spokane reservation; and David Treuer, an Ojibwe raised on the Leech Lake reservation in Northern Minnesota, whose novel titled Prudence details the lasting impact of reservation life well beyond the days of the American Indian wars.

Recommendation:  Yes, excellent book, do not be afraid of the topic.

The Nature Fix (2017) By Florence Williams; The Blue Zones (2012) By Dan Buettner

I’m not sure if this applies to everyone my age, but pending retirement is dramatically changing my perspective on living.  I’ve stopped thinking about the manic need to “get ahead” or even to “survive until I can get out.” I now find myself dwelling almost exclusively on quality of life issues.  For my retirement, I’m way more interested in having less stress, enjoying what I like to do, and hopefully doing so in relatively good health.  The “next phase” of my life is mine to design, and it’s an important decision because it’s likely to be my last major one.

Topping the list of quality of life issues occupying my mind has been the “where” aspect of retirement – most particularly the urban vs small town vs rural choice (unfortunately all three isn’t a financially viable option).  I’ve touched on this dilemma in an earlier book review: Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac.

Two recent reads have added many new points for me to ponder.

Florence Williams’ The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Heathier, and More Creative is a thought provoking book that views one’s relationship to the outdoors in measurable medical and mental health terms – ranging from its impact on stress & blood pressure, to its therapeutic impact on veterans suffering with PTSD, and on “troubled” children.  As a big fan of Frederick Olmsted, William’s does not automatically disqualify urban environments as unhealthy – though as someone who lives on the edge of Chicago’s “front yard,” a.k.a. Grant Park, I would find the neighborhood less stressful with more trees and fewer drunken/drugged concert goers, and don't get me started on the subjects of car alarms and endless sirens.  However, where Chicago will always score high is in the devotion of its residents to its beautiful lakefront and refusal to let “philanthropists” with big ego’s and connections to City Hall further desecrate it. 

William’s “ultrasimple” coda:

Go outside, often, sometimes in wild places.

Bring friends or not. Breathe.

And speaking of Grant Park, when I first moved to the city Dutch Elm Disease was devastating hundreds of trees in the park (since replaced with hardier stock).  Williams devotes a lot of time to documenting the positive impact of, in fact the necessity of, trees to the health of the environment, justifying the sentiment behind “tree-hugging” -- we should hug them, they do good work!  My one and only complaint with The Nature Fix is the standard placement of the Epilogue which contains a brief recap of Tim Beatley’s (Biophilie Cities Project at theUniversity of Virginia) “nature pyramid.”  This discussion would have made an excellent opening chapter, before heading into the case studies.

While what we see, breathe and experience in Nature plays an outsized role in the quality of life, so too does what we eat and how we live.  Dan Buettner’s New York Times Bestseller The Blue Zones is a treatise on demographic pockets from around the world where people have a life expectancy well above the norm.  While I’m not particularly interested in living to 100, I am interested in what might help one maintain a healthier life in retirement.

In his book, Buettner examines the diets and lifestyles of people in: Sardinia, in the Mediterranean Sea; Okinawa, Japan; Loma Linda, California; Hojancha, Costa Rica; and Ikaria, Greece.  Shared by these very different communities is not only a longer life, but a healthier one.  What he found was not a common denominator “miracle” food, but a combination of diet plus other important influences, including social and genetic – call it a holistic approach.  

Since the publication of his (two) books on the subject, numerous communities around the world have begun work at emulating them.  One of those communities is Paducah, Kentucky, which is high on my retirement list for multiple other reasons.  

Recommendation:  If you are prepping for retirement, or just looking for a way to lead a less stressful, healthier life, you should find both of these books interesting.

The Shores of Tripoli: Lieutenant Putnam and the Barbary Pirates (2016) By James L. Haley

Unless you have a degree in American History hanging on your wall, the period between the Revolution and the Civil War is likely to be a blur – covered in a chapter, maybe three, in any history class you were required to take – although, you might know about Dolly Madison taking the portrait of George Washington out of the White House as the British arsonists closed in.  Author James Haley has taken on the task of filling in part of that blank space with a two-volume work of historical fiction, the first of which covers the war against the Barbary Pirates, the war that gave the U.S. Marine Corps hymn the line “to the Shores of Tripoli.”

Haley has created the character Bliven Putman, a young farmer living in Massachusetts who joins the fledging U.S. Navy in 1801, at the time a rag tag group of ships barely able to put boats to sea as training boats, rather on mount a war in the Mediterranean Sea.  His career in the Navy is an adventure story that gives us an understandable and exciting how-to (and how not-to) lesson on building and staffing a Navy.  Plus, he’ll participate in sea battles and also the legendary, though aborted, desert march on Tripoli, Libya, providing him (and us) a bitter lesson in the workings of international diplomacy, as shaped by domestic politics.

The book touches on many topics – the budding abolitionist movement, political battles between Madison and Jefferson, religious puritanism and antisemitism at home.

A second major character in the book is Sam Bandy, also a new recruit – while Putnam is the representation of the northern states, Bandy, a plantation owner’s son is the stand in for the South. Their respective reactions to meeting a black man named Jonah, who serves as the chamberlain to the dey (Ottoman Regent) of Algiers, are interesting, busting multiple stereotypes.  Jonah, once a slave on a plantation in Virginia, speaks fluent English & Arabic, and is obviously better educated than either of them.

 

Throughout the war with the Barbary Pirates, the U.S. Navy is constantly bumping into elements of the much larger and stronger British Navy, which display arrogance and commit acts that are just short of belligerent.  Detailing these interactions is the lead-in to the next volume of this “Bliven Putnam Adventure” series, which will cover the War of 1812, a book now on my reading list.

Recommendation:  Yes.  It's a totally fun adventure book with a dose of American history thrown in. 

Slade House (2016) By David Mitchell

The first book I wrote about when I started my TEDrake Book Blog several years ago was David Mitchell’s The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, a historical novel about a young Dutch merchant stationed in Nagasaki, Japan in the early 1800’s, the only port open to foreign traders at the time.  Based on that memory, I recently picked up Mitchell’s Slade House, a book that turned out to be as far from what I was expecting as one could imagine, though by no means a disappointment.

While Thousand Autumns is an epic, Slade House is a gothic novel, set in England. It is also a page-turner. The only commonality between the two books is that the writing is superb in both.

Slade House is a place, well more accurately was a place, in the English countryside. Once every nine years, exactly, it can be accessed through a small iron door in a brick wall along an alley.  You visit Slade House by invitation, and then you are never seen again. That’s really about all I can say without giving away the book.

Mitchell’s novel runs the spectrum of the Gothic genre.  It has the House (consider the houses in the book-based black and white horror film classics like The House of Seven Gables, or House of Usher, or even Rose Cottage in Dark Shadows). It has the villagers, who know something is going on, but don’t know what it is (think: Frankenstein or Dracula).  Perhaps most important, it has empathy for the “bad” guys, in this case a brother-sister duo wronged by the world and just trying to make their way.  If you’ve read and felt the angst of Anne Rice’s characters, you will recognize these two.

Recommendation:  Great, short (238 pages), read.