Book Review: Do It Anyway by Courtney E. Martin

Author: Courtney E. Martin
Title: Do it anyway : the next generation of activists
Publication Info: Boston : Beacon Press, c2010.
ISBN:

Summary/Review:

Martin (who I didn’t discover until after reading the book is an editor for one of my favorite blogs Feministing.com) interviews and tells the stories of 8 people under the age of 35 who are contributing to their communities as activists.  Martin takes the approach that this generation has been told from generation that they need to “save the world” but are often criticized for being aloof and narcissistic.  Through these essays Martin shows that while they can’t “save the world” there are in fact many young people who are far from self-centered.

These include:

• Rachel Corrie, a peace activist killed by a bulldozer as she attempted to prevent the Israelis  from destroying a Palestinian home.  Martin goes beyond the sensationalist headlines to tell the story of Corrie’s hopes for transformation through peace.
• Raul Diaz, a  social worker who helps young men reenter society after prison sentence as part of his work with Homeboy Industries.  Diaz lives a life shattered by gang violence and persists despite the deaths of many friends and mentees.
• Maricela Guzman is an activist for veterans and against the military culture that contributed to her being raped by an officer and failing to get the support she needed after the attack.  A highlight of this chapter is when Martin brings together Diaz and Guzman together to share common experiences of trauma and violence.
• Emily Abt who found her voice as an activist through making documentary and dramatic films through Pureland Pictures.
• Nia Martin-Robinson, an environmental justice advocate, who carries on her family’s activist tradition by fighting pollution’s inordinate damage on communities of poor and people of color (as well as giving a minority voice often shunned by the green movement).
• Tyrone Boucher, who chose to establish a philanthropy to give away his trust fund and fight for social justice outside the confines of the capitalist system.
• Rosario Dawson, an actress who dedicates much of her time away from the set to various charities and social causes.
• Dena Simmons, a teacher who grew up in the Bronx and remains as an inspirational teacher to her middle school students.

These are all inspiring stories of people doing good in their communities tied together by their common respect for humanity, perseverance, and big dreams with strategic visions.  This is a good book to read if you want to read something positive about people in our world today.

Recommended books: Respect: An Exploration by Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot and From the pews in the back : young women and Catholicism by Kate Dugan.
Rating:

Book Review: Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson

Author: Walter Isaacson
Title: Benjamin Franklin: An American Life
Publication Info:  RecordedBooks (2003), Audio CD
ISBN: 1402592957

Summary/Review:  I’ve been learning more about this early American leader for my BBF walking tour and I find him increasingly fascinating the more I learn about him.  Isaacson writes a lively narrative with a good balance between historical accuracy and popular history as well as warts & all without sensationalism.

I won’t go into a detailed summary of the book but here are a few elements that stand out for me:

• Isaacson goes beyond simple biographical details and makes a good attempt at an intellectual history of Franklin, especially in the earlier parts of the book.
• Franklin, for all his virtues, was not above getting dirty in politics.  It’s interesting to compare to the recent book I read about Aaron Burr and how differently their posthumous reputations have been adjudged when they were both very much men of their times.  Then there’s the  idolatrous manner in which the Founding Fathers are revered in comparison to today’s “corrupt politicians” which just isn’t realistic.
• Franklin had an interesting habit of forming a surrogate family around him when he was away from home for extended periods, acting in an avuncular role for bright young women and his own grandsons.  Yet he was often distant from his own children and spent many, many years separated from his wife.
• Another interesting contrast:  Franklin has been called “the first American” and famously wore frontier-style clothing when visiting the French court, yet he seemed to jump at any opportunity to go to Europe and lived abroad in London and Paris for extended portions of his life.

All in all this is a great introduction to a fascinating and hard to understand man.

Recommended books: The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin
Rating: ****

Book Review: Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr by Nancy Isenberg

Author: Nancy Isenberg
Title: Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr
Publication Info: Penguin Audio (2007), Edition: Unabridged, Audio CD
ISBN: 0143142283

Summary/Review:

This biography attempts to make up for two-centuries of scholarship on Aaron Burr that’s been informed by myth and fiction.  Isenberg makes Burr’s case – while not ignoring his mistakes and flaws – as one of the important leaders of the early United States republic, albeit one whose career ended in failure.  Not only that, but since his posterity has had no supporters, much of what is taught about Burr comes from the writings of his political rivals Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson.  Isenberg also makes it clear that Burr had many positive qualities that have been overlooked:  a war hero in the Revolution, an excellent lawyer, an intellectual, a feminist, an innovative political campaigner and someone who often refused to play the game of sycophancy nor venomously maligning his political rivals.  These last traits though honest would hurt him in both his military and political careers as less noble figures would claw their way past him.

In this book Hamilton comes across as the Fox News pundit of the Federal period willing to wield his poison pen to bear false witness against his political rival.  Jefferson on the other hand is intent on building a Virginia dynasty and while willing to have Burr get him votes from New York did not want to lose power to the Northern Democratic-Republican Party.   Isenberg explores all the famed events of Burr’s life – the contested election of 1800, the duel with Hamilton, and the western filibuster – and Burr comes out looking pretty good in all of them, at least on a relative scale.  For if Burr is ever immoral, corrupt, or dishonest he is no more so (and often less so) than his contemporaries who have much better historical reputations.

Isenberg’s final paragraph sums it best:

These were our founders: imperfect me in a less than perfect nation, grasping at opportunities.  That they did good for our country is understood, and worth our celebration; that they were also jealous, resentful, self-protective and covetous politicians should be no less a part of their collective biography.  What seperates history from myth is that history takes in the whole picture, whereas myth averts our eyes from the truth when it turns men into heroes and gods.

Recommended books: Duel: Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and the Future of America by Thomas Fleming, Aaron Burr by Milton Lomask, Ordeal of Ambition: Jefferson, Hamilton and Burr by Jonathan Daniels and Jefferson and Civil Liberties: The Darker Side by Leonard W. Levy
Rating: ****

Book Review: Angels and Ages by Adam Gopnik

Author: Adam Gopnik
Title: Angels and Ages: A Short Book About Darwin, Lincoln, and Modern Life
Publication Info: Knopf (2009), Edition
ISBN: 0307270785

Summary/Review:

My annual Lincoln/Darwin Day reading is a short book published for the bicentennial of their birth. This book is an extended rumination on the lives of two men born on the same day who helped create the modern world.  Gopnik sees both Lincoln and Darwin as men of words, Lincoln with speech and rhetoric and Darwin with his novelistic prose.  The title and a major issue upon which Gopnik builds his narrative is the debate of Edward Stanton’s eulogy for Lincoln, whether he said “Now he belongs to the angels” or “Now he belongs to the ages.”  This book is an interesting but not essential addition to the literature about these two fascinating men.

Favorite Passages:

“The thesis is that literary eloquence is essential to liberal civilization; our heroes should be men and women possessed by the urgency of utterance, obsessed by the need to see for themselves and to speak for us all.  Authoritarian societies can rely on an educated elite; mere mass society, on shared dumb show.  Liberal cities can’t.  A commitment to persuasion is in itself a central liberal principle.  New ways of thinking demand new kinds of eloquence.  Our world rests on science and democracy, on seeing and saying; it rests on thinking new thoughts and getting them heard by a lot of people.” p. 22

“The attempt to make Lincoln into just one more racist is part of the now common attempt to introduce a noxious equilibrium between  minds and parties: liberals who struggle with their own prejudices are somehow equal in prejudice to those who never took the trouble to make the struggle.  Imperfect effort at being just is no different from perfect indifference to it.” -p. 49

“… for the first time, and despite much conventional religious piety — there’s a nascent sence throughout the liberal world that the deaths of young men in war will never be justified in the eyes of a good God, and never compensated for by a meeting in another world.  Their deaths can be made meaningful only through a vague idea of Providence and through the persistence of a living ideal.” – p. 120

Recommended books: Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression by Jacques Derrida, The Reluctant Mr. Darwin: An Intimate Portrait of Charles Darwin and the Making of His Theory of Evolution by David Quammen, and Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America by Garry Wills.
Rating: ***

Previously:

• Lincoln at Gettysburg by Gary Wills
• The Radical and the Republican by James Oakes
• Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin

Book Reviews: Massachusetts Troublemakers by Paul Della Vale

Author: Paul Della Valle
Title: Massachusetts Troublemakers: Rebels, Reformers, and Radicals from the Bay State
Publication Info: Globe Pequot (2009)
ISBN: 0762748508

Summary/Review:

This book was an award given to guides at the end of the 2009 Boston By Foot tour season and made for a fun, interesting read.  The title is a bit misleading as almost every figure mentioned in this book worked for the betterment of society but  as they all veered in some way from societal norms, they were seen as “trouble”.  There are some familiar names in this book such as Samuel Adams, Henry David Thoreau and Robert Gould Shaw.  I also enjoyed learning more about characters familiar to BBF guides if not the general public such as Anne Hutchinson, Isaiah Thomas, and James Michael Curley.  But it was most fascinating to read about people I’d never heard of before such as:

• Thomas Morton, an early settler who was not at all Puritanical – drinking, carousing and (worst of all) trading with the Indians
• Deborah Samson, who disguised herself as a man to fight in the Revolution
• Joseph Palmer, who wore a beard at a time when men were clean-shaven, was persecuted for it, and ended up involved in the transcendentalist and abolitionist movements
• Margaret Fuller, an extremely talented journalist, activist, and feminist.

The short biographies don’t do justice to these fascinating figures of Bay State history, so fortunately there’s a great list of further reading at the back of the book.

Rating: ***

Book Review: Time Traveller by Dr. Ronald L. Mallett

Author: Dr. Ronald L. Mallett
Title: Time Traveller: A Scientist’s Personal Mission To Make Time Travel A Reality
Publication Info:  New York : Thunder’s Mouth Press, c2006.
ISBN: 9781560258698

Summary/Review:

Young Ronald Mallett was devastated when he was a ten-year old having to deal with his beloved father’s death.  Discovering the concept of time travel in science fiction and later in scientific works dealing with general relativity, Mallett commits himself to learning mathematics and physics so that he can invent a time machine and go back in time to prevent his father’s early demise.  This motivation carries Mallett through school, military service, teaching and research until at last his theories are being tested in research lab.  Sadly, there’s no time machine yet.  Mallett’s story is all the more interesting that as an African-American he had to face racial discrimination in his quest as well as being the only black man in the room at many gatherings of physicists. Mallett writes an engaging autobiography and is also good at explaining scientific concepts in layman’s language.

Related Works: Feynman’s Rainbow: A Search for Beauty in Physics and in Life by Leonard Mlodinow

Rating: ***

Book Review: Reason For Hope by Jane Goodall

Author: Jane Goodall with Phillip Berman
Title: Reason For Hope: A Spiritual Journey
Publication Info: New York, NY : Warner Books, 1999.
ISBN:  0446522252

Previously Read By Same Author: Through a Window by Jane Goodall

Summary/Review:

Goodall’s autobiography focuses on her life and her faith journey and why she finds reasons for hope even in a world full of cruelty, violence, and environmental destruction.  The first part of the book tells her life story and is a good compliment to Dale Peterson’s biography as it is both more intimate and less detailed.  In the latter chapters Goodall comments on various issues such as animals in medical research, the environment, and remarkable people she’s met through her work.  These parts can get didactic and cliched but overall this is a good book by a remarkable woman.  Through a Window is better if you wish to learn more about Goodall and the chimpanzees of Gombe.

Recommended books: Jane Goodall: The Woman Who Redefined Man by Dale Peterson and Quarks Chaos & Christianity: Questions to Science and Religion by John Polkinghorne.
Rating: ***1/2

Book Review: The Protest Singer by Alec Wilkinson

Author: Alec Wilkinson
Title: The Protest Singer : an intimate portrait of Pete Seeger
Publication Info:  New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2009.
ISBN: 9780307269959

Summary/Review:

This is a short and easy read that summarizes Seeger’s life & career succinctly but still captures why he’s in important.  Seeger himself who never wants much attention focused on him wanted a book that someone could read in one sitting.  Much of the book is based on interviews between Wilkinson and Seeger and takes on a conversational tone.  The book jumps around between events in Seeger’s life similar to the way that one memory can prompt another only tangentially related.  It’s also good for seeing what Seeger finds memorable and important from his own past.  While are more thorough books on Seeger out there, I recommend that anyone interested in learning about this remarkable man start with this book and then check out his albums and a concert if possible.  Then start to make your own music.

Favorite Passages:

After consulting with his lawyer, Seeger said, “I decline to discuss, under compulsion, where I have sung, and who has sung my songs, and who else has sung with me, and the people I have known.  I love my country very dearly, and I greatly resent this implication that some of the places that I have sung and some of the people that I have known, and some of my opinions, whether they are religious or philosophical, or I might be a vegetarian, make me any less of an American.  I will tell you about my songs, but I am not interested in telling you who wrote them, and I will tell you about my songs, and I am  not interested in who listened to them.” – p. 81

Recommended books: Where Have All The Flowers Gone by Pete Seeger, How Can I Keep From Singing? by David King Dunaway, and Bound For Glory by Woody Guthrie.
Rating: ****

Book Review: Becoming Manny by Jean Rhodes and Shawn Boburg

When Manny Ramirez played in Boston, I enjoyed watching him play and always thought he got a raw deal from the Red Sox fans & media who accused him of being selfish, lazy, and disruptive (among other things I can’t print here).  I always got the sense that Manny was shy and just wanted to play baseball well and not deal with the stresses of public scrutiny, which I can find understandable.  Becoming Manny: Inside the Life of Baseball’s Most Enigmatic Slugger (2009) by Jean Rhodes and Shawn Boburg confirms my understanding of Manny, although my esteem for him has fallen since he tested positive for performance enhancing drugs (ill-timed for the release of this book as well).

Still this is a well-written and informative biography, especially the parts about Manny’s early years before he reached the major leagues.  Rhodes is a psychologists and offers some great insights through he lens of Manny Ramirez of children of immigrants, the extremes of poverty and strong community in inner-city neighborhoods, and the life of youth athletes.  There is a special emphasis on coaches teachers, and friends who mentor young athletes.  In Manny’s case there are older and wiser men to guide him through most of his life, most importantly Carlos “Macaco” Ferreira a Little League coach and lifelong friend.

Manny-lovers and more importantly Manny-haters should check this book out.  It’s an excellent example of baseball biography at it’s best.

Becoming Manny : inside the life of baseball’s most enigmatic slugger / Jean Rhodes and Shawn Boburg.
Publisher: New York : Scribner, 2009.
ISBN: 9781416577065
1416577068
Description:304 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.
Edition: 1st Scribner hardcover ed.

Book Review: The Lodger: Shakespeare on Silver Street by Charles Nicholl

Long ago when I was in high school I read and enjoyed Shakespeare of London by Marchette Chute, an attempt to reconstruct William Shakespeare’s life and times as a celebrated dramatist.  Thus I was attracted to this similarly themed book The Lodger: Shakespeare on Silver Street by Charles Nicholl.  This book is built upon one scrap of the public record which includes a rare instance of Shakespeare’s signature which is upon a deposition in a court case regarding a bride’s dowry.  That dowry is unpaid by Christopher Mountjoy who with his wife Mary are French immigrants living in London and manufacturing head-dresses for women.  Mountjoy also rents out rooms in his home and thus is Shakespeare’s landlord as Shakespeare takes a room to live in while working in the theaters of London.

From this court record, Nicholl extrapolates details about Shakespeare’s life in London around the time that he turned forty.  He builds his case on public records, written experiences of Shakespeare’s contemporaries, the plays and poems of Shakespeare himself and lots and lots of speculation.  It is at times fascinating, tantalizing, and just down right irritating, but mostly fascinating.  We learn a lot about what houses were like in the Mountjoy’s Cripplegate neighborhood, the trade of “tire-making”, 17th-century marriage practices, the immigrant experience, and the solitary and bawdy aspects of working in the the theater.  Nicholls also speculates about Shakespeare’s atypical positive view of foriegners in his plays as well as the attention to detail in apparrell that may have been influenced by Shakespeare’s association with the Mountjoys.

If you’re interested in learning about the life of Shakespeare you’re probably going to be disappointed by this book, but on the other hand you will get a healthy dose of “his times” which is not a bad thing.  Nicholls is both detailed and imaginative and always lively in his writing even at the times where the details may grow tedious.

Author Nicholl, Charles.
Title The lodger Shakespeare [sound recording] : his life on Silver Street / Charles Nicholl.
Publication Info. Old Saybrook, CT : Tantor Audio, 2008.
Edition Unabridged.
Description 8 sound discs (9 hrs.) : digital ; 4 3/4 in.