THE SEINE :: Elaine Sciolino

A version of this review previously appeared in Shelf Awareness and is republished here with permission.

Elaine Sciolino was seduced by the Seine at age 28. Sent to Paris in 1978 as a foreign correspondent for Newsweek, she arrived with no friends or contacts. She was alone and ill-prepared, yet found two sources of sustenance: an elderly tutor and the river Seine.

The Seine flows through almost 500 miles of France, bubbling to the surface at Source-Seine and carrying the country's ancient history through Burgundy and cities such as Paris and Rouen (symbolized by Joan of Arc) before emptying into the English Channel and onto the beaches of Normandy. Its path is lined with such famous sights as Notre-Dame, the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre. "The most romantic river in the world" has inspired artists of every medium to create countless popular works. The Seine also floods regularly, almost as if it cannot hold so much rich history within its banks and surges as a reminder of its power over France. In The Seine, Sciolino details the enthralling life and times of the river.

Sciolino, Paris bureau chief for the New York Times and one of the only American members of Femmes Forum, a private club of the leading women of France, writes about the Seine passionately yet with a reporter's eye. She brings the waterway to vivid life through surrounding sights and sounds (church bells and multilingual commentaries), yet facts are paramount. In ways big and small--the history of commerce, contamination and cleanups, lighting, origination of the daguerreotype, the officers of the River Brigade and the fascinating role of the "Unknown Woman"--she makes the stories of The Seine undeniably captivating.

STREET SENSE: Elaine Sciolino turns her reporter's eye on the force of nature that is the river Seine, bringing it to life. Fun for historians, Francophiles, and the world-curious.

COVER NERD SAYS:  This cover didn't do much for me. The font feels too casual for the subject matter, though I did appreciate the use of the French flag palette. The photo sneaks some well known structures in, but really fails to highlight the river itself. I have to think there were more iconic photos of the Seine, but perhaps there's a story behind this one I don't know. It simply didn't lure me to the cover, regardless.

THREE SECONDS IN MUNICH :: David A.F. Sweet

A version of this review previously appeared in Shelf Awareness and is republished here with permission.

"They're all gone." These enduring words of sportscaster Jim McKay announced the murder of 11 Israeli Olympians by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Games. Three Seconds in Munich adeptly scrutinizes the infamous basketball tournament between the U.S. and the Soviet Union that took place at the same Games, and sportswriter David A.F. Sweet (Lamar Hunt) strikes a perfect balance in discussing both events.

Sweet takes the gracious risk of losing his audience to anguish by leading with the hostage crisis and not paying mere lip service to the horror. In doing so, he gains crucial trust in a story calling out collusion and game-fixing at one of the highest levels of sport.

Mere days after the massacre, following an undefeated 36-year Olympic streak spanning a "borderline-ridiculous sixty-two games," the U.S. lost to the Soviets 51-50 in the gold medal game. But officials twice added three seconds back on the clock--once after time had expired and the U.S. had won the gold.

Three Seconds is painstakingly researched. While Sweet exposes conspiracy and wrongdoing, he does not discount other elements working against the U.S. team, including coaching style, politics and a dearth of players due to rules prohibiting professional athletes (seemingly overlooked on the Soviet front).

Sweet does a stellar job of pulling emotional strings and revealing how "encountering the evil of terrorism and suffering an excruciating, unjust" loss in only a four-day span continues to affect the players.

STREET SENSE: I remember this Olympics vividly. Where I was (vacationing in Santa Cruz) and who I was with (my family and old family friends). The Olympics were always a special time. I wasn't even 10, but I remember the hostage-taking. I remember zero about the basketball tournament. I felt those old emotions come out as Sweet discussed the tragedy of those Games. This is a recommended work for anyone curious about the Games, athletics and politics, and sports in general.

COVER NERD SAYS:  This cover makes the content clear and the photo captures some of the ranging emotions and reactions to it. The title and subtitle are both smart (one dramatic, the other clarifies). There is nothing earth-shattering here, but any effort to be overly dramatic would be an affront to the content, I think. Overall, well done.

THINK BLACK :: Clyde W. Ford

A version of this review previously appeared in Shelf Awareness and is republished here with permission.

Clyde W. Ford struts to his first day at IBM with "a ballooned Afro, pork chop sideburns, [and] a blue zoot suit with red pinstripes," knowing only shades of the legacy he carries. In 1971, more than two decades after his father's hiring as IBM's first black systems engineer, Clyde, 19, is told he "doesn't get it"--"it" being the IBM way of a dark suit and tie, button-down shirt and matching attitude. 

As Clyde digs into his father's experience, he gains fuller understanding of John Ford's path and the burdens of treading it. In Think Black, Ford winds through their lives and the corporate behemoth that influenced them. Being first carries risks, and John felt the pressures of representing his race in the face of racial codes, false diversity, sabotage and working harder for less pay. He brought change to IBM at a cost, deepening his "wound of color."

Ford illuminates the profound interaction between technology and race. A progression of machines and coding (Ford learned at a young age from his father--"For a ten-year-old, deriving 1,008 decimals from 1760 octal is no easy feat") parallels IBM's sinister history in the service of racial purity and oppression.

The Fords did not take the same path in answer to the question of who they were as black men in a society that resents their very being. In Think Black, Ford shares a peace his father never found, and food for thought for a country that hasn't come nearly as far as they did.

STREET SENSE: IBM was a huge force during my childhood in Silicon Valley, but I learned so much from this book I had no idea about. A fantastic relationship story as much as a corporate history lesson, I did glaze over at much of the tech-talk. Dude, Clyde would have kicked my ass by the time he was 5. The first description of him won me over entirely.

COVER NERD SAYS: Cover images don't come much better than this one. So cool (though I would love to see a color photo of Clyde as described in the opening). I also love the interplay of the title and the IBM logo. Sneaky smart.

SAY NOTHING :: Patrick Radden Keefe

A version of this review previously appeared in Shelf Awareness and is republished here with permission.

Say Nothing ticks all the boxes of a remarkable work of nonfiction. This particular story of the political and nationalist conflict in Ireland (the Troubles) highlights a handful of spellbinding individuals whose actions changed the course of Irish history. Through meticulous reporting captivatingly relayed by investigative journalist Patrick Radden Keefe, Say Nothing offers a thrilling history lesson told through the lens of an unsolved mystery.

Murders were part and parcel of the Troubles, with more than 3,500 killed between the late 1960s and '90s. But only 16 were "disappeared"--abducted, murdered and secretly buried. Among them was Jean McConville, a 38-year-old mother of 10 when a gang of masked intruders took her from her home in Belfast in 1972. It took 30 years to recover Jean's remains.

The hows and whys of her death are spun through decades of violence, jailbreaks, movie star romance, former-felon politicians, hunger strikes, and double- and triple-agents of the IRA and British police. Most incredibly, a secret cache of IRA confessionals lies waiting in the special Treasure Room enclosure of a Boston College library. Truth is undoubtedly stranger than fiction.

Any retelling of the Troubles worth its salt is necessarily lengthy and complex. By sandwiching it between arcs on the Treasure Room, the mystery of Jean McConville and how all the secrets came unraveled, Keefe breathes new life into history. As evidenced by the nearly 100 pages of notes and secondary sources, this was no small feat. Keefe's work is both anguishing and triumphant.

STREET SENSE: The mystery of Jean McConville and how it unraveled was spellbinding. The middle was a little too detailed for my particular tastes and I lost my gumption a tiny bit. As noted above, however, it's tough to tell a down and dirty story that is so intertwined with the history of the Troubles and its various factions and participants. Understanding that, Keefe did a great job, it just resulted in a little speed-reading now and again. For those of you who love getting lost in the details, it will probably feel spot-on.

COVER NERD SAYS: I hate to admit this, but I was lured into this one by a PR statement from Gillian Flynn. I am not generally a fan of blurbs and usually ignore them, but (1) I don't see Flynn's name tossed around promoting many books and (2) it wasn't technically a blurb. This cover probably would have caught my eye regardless, minimalist lover of all things dark that I am. If anything, this cover might go a bit too stark and has a hint of the DIY look, but there's no contesting the image is compelling and makes up for what the font or spacing take away.

ASSASSINATION VACATION :: Sarah Vowell

Sarah Vowell is a wacky genius and I adore her. Perhaps others voluntarily vacation on road trips of Presidential death, but I'm betting no one does it with the humor and erudition of Ms. Vowell. In her capable hands, assassination isn't just educational, it's downright entertaining. I would pay good money to be her road trip sidekick.

Assassination Vacation takes readers with Vowell as she (and various trouper friends and family members) takes a fascinating and morbid trip through our country's assassinated and their assassins - Lincoln and Booth, Garfield and Guiteau, McKinley and Czolgosz. While we all likely know much of the Lincoln/Booth story, I (somewhat shamefully) admit I have not read or remembered anything of our other two leaders and their respective endings since high school. (I feel a little better when Vowell herself proclaims, "The most famous thing ever said about President James A. Garfield is about how nobody has any idea who the hell he was.") No matter how well you think you know any of these presidents and/or their deaths, I'm betting you'll learn something new on this trip.

There are many reasons to herald Assassination Vacation (as borne out by the 100+ highlights in my copy), so I'll share just a few that made it a top-notch read for me. The first is that Vowell does not paint the assassins as mere cardboard cutouts of a villain. Instead, she takes us through the killers' journeys, both before and after the assassinations, and even offers some basis for empathy:

Of course talking about the murders of previous presidents is going to open the door to discussing the current president. That’s what I like to call him, “the current president.” I find it difficult to say or type his name, George W. Bush. I like to call him “the current president” because it’s a hopeful phrase, implying that his administration is only temporary...So if I can summon this much bitterness toward a presidential human being, I can sort of, kind of see how this amount of bile or more, teaming up with disappointment, unemployment, delusions of grandeur and mental illness, could prompt a crazier narcissistic creep to buy one of this country’s widely available handguns. Not that I, I repeat, condone that. Like Lincoln, I would like to believe the ballot is stronger than the bullet. Then again, he said that before he got shot. 

Second, Vowell is exhaustive in her travels and knowledge, so we get unusual nuggets of information, told with the enthusiasm of someone who obviously adores her subject matter. The assassinations are discussed, for the most part, in separate sections, and Vowell visits major and tangential locations relevant to the lives of the presidents, their killers, and individuals in their respective peripheries who impacted them during or near the time of the assassinations. Places of death, former residences, getaway routes and locations, travels of the presidential bodies (dead and undead by a hair), monuments big and small, and museums containing various body parts and other "memorabilia," are all stops on the way. I was amazed by some of the creepy things people saved from these "occasions," including pieces of presidential pate (which is a great band name; you're welcome, feel free to use it).

Third, Vowell's own fears, strengths, and fantastically warped humor are infused into the story, and some of best entries are her own thoughts on a topic, or interactions with the interesting and like-minded folk who work at or curate the locations she visits. At times almost painfully shy, Vowell comes alive in these instances:

But when I’m around strangers, I turn into a conversational Mount St. Helens. I’m dormant, dormant, quiet, quiet, old-guy loners build log cabins on the slopes of my silence and then, boom, it’s 1980. Once I erupt, they’ll be wiping my verbal ashes off their windshields as far away as North Dakota.

Lest you fear Vowell's humor is inappropriate for tales of murder, never fear. While she  can find humor in any topic, however morbid, she also takes her work quite seriously, as evidenced by her retort to an "annoyingly upbeat" tourist who exclaims "Cheer up, everybody, we're part of history!":

'Sir,' I said, 'except for the people who were there that one day they discovered the polio vaccine, being part of history is rarely a good idea. History is one war after another with a bunch of murders and natural disasters in between.' 

So true. But if my choices are to laugh or cry, I choose to laugh along with Sarah Vowell.

STREET SENSE: I highly recommend Assassination Vacation to anyone who loves history, murder, laugh-out-loud reading, and fascinating nuggets of information perfect for an upcoming cocktail party. For example, I had no idea there was a bizarre (coincidental?) connection between Robert Todd Lincoln, Abe's son, and all three assassins/assassinations, as well as Booth's brother. I didn't spoil that story here, but the book is worth the read for that tidbit alone.

A FAVORITE PASSAGE:  Please. I actually giggle when he tries to steel me for seeing the re-created 1920s embalming room, as if I’m not wearing Bela Lugosi hair clips; as if I didn’t just buy a book for my nephew called Frankenstein and Dracula Are Friends; as if I was never nicknamed Wednesday (as in Addams); as if in eighth-grade English class, assigned to act out a scene from a biography, when all the other girls had chosen Queen Elizabeth or Anne Frank, I hadn’t picked Al Capone and staged the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre with toy machine guns and wadded-up red construction paper thrown everywhere to signify blood; as if I’m not here to see the replica of Abraham Lincoln’s casket; as if I’m not the kind of person who would visit the freaking Museum of Funeral Customs in the first place. (Did I mention I love Sarah Vowell?)

COVER NERD SAYS:  The covers of Vowell's books are all of the same theme and look like creepy little dioramas. That being said, there's something about the photographic method employed, small figurines against a relevant, soft-focused background, that is aesthetically pleasing (though still a little creepy).  I've actually grown to really appreciate them, maybe because Vowell is tiny herself and I can't help but picture her barging into the diorama to ask questions and share her humorous insights.