I finished this book this month shortly before the passing of Katherine Johnson who lived a long and distinguished life and is a real American hero. My daughter has a children's book about Katherine that she loves to read.
Hidden Figures is an impeccably researched book that follows the lives of the first black Computers at NACA (later NASA). These brilliant minds like Dorothy Vaughn, Katherine Johnson and Mary Jackson worked their way up through a system that was stacked against them to gain success and respect. The fact that Katherine Johnson was brilliant enough to probably be a head at NASA is not lost on the reader, but in the 1950s-1970s, that was just not going to happen for a black woman and it's truly NASA's loss.I loved the strong supportive community Shetterly describes among the women of West Computing. That Dorothy and Mary both made choices to boost up others around them for opportunities and deserved accolades at the expense of their own career trajectories.The scope of the book was enormous. Beginning in the late years of WWII through the hey day of the space program, Hidden Figures sheds light on the contributions of black women and some men to the programs that shaped our imaginations and air superiority. I loved the extra details about Nichelle Nichols and how Martin Luther King Jr. himself convinced her to stick with Star Wars to show that science and the future was multi-racial and multi-gender.While this book can get a little tedious when the science meets the page, it's the enduring spirit of Dorothy, Mary, and Katherine that keep bringing the reader back to the text.
4/5 Stars.
This series continues to be a delight for me and I'm surprised it's been so long since I finished book 3, Lords of the North. You see, I listened to the first three books on audio and although I've never seen the man, I have a complete voice crush on the narrator of the first three books. So when Sword Song was not available in audio I thought I'd wait and see if my library got it in. It didn't. So then I finally got around to requesting the kindle version of the book, and it popped into my queue so here we are.I had forgotten a lot of the plot from Lords of the North, but thankfully my review of that book (read it here) was uncharacteristically detailed regarding the plot. Sword Song picks up with Uhtred manning his burh at Coccham. It's part of a series of defensive cities designed by Alfred to protect Wessex. And Uhtred is doing a good job because when it's military related, everyone knows that Uhtred knows his stuff. He's living happily with his wife Gisela, the daughter of the Viking king of Northumberland. They have two children and all is well. Which means that things for Uhtred are about to get a little bit worse. A report arrives that the Thurgilson brothers have taken the city of Lundene (London) and along with Haesten (a thoroughly unthankful a-hole who Uhtred would have been better off to let die) they intend to make a play for all of Mercia and Wessex. Alfred is smart but he's also kind of an a-hole so he marries his sweet daughter, Aethelflaed, off to Uhtred's butt kissing insecure cousin Aethelred, who somehow accepts that being less than the King of Mercia is an okay trade for being Alfred's man in Mercia. Alfred is trying to strengthen his position, but in order to do so, he extracts a promise from Uhtred that Uhtred will deliver Lundene as a wedding present to his cousin and Alfred's daughter. Oh Uhtred, he's always making these crazy promises.In the meantime, the brothers, Sigefrid and Erik, along with Haesten, conspire to convince Uhtred that HE could be King in Mercia, if he only joins forces with them and convinces Ragnar to come down from Northumbria to join them. Uhtred considers because honestly he gets not respect, but ultimately Uhtred is more loyal than Alfred or anyone else give him credit.So Uhtred comes up with a plan to take Lundene and in the meantime Aethelred takes out his insecurities on his incredibly young wife by beating her for perceived indiscretions with other men. Uhtred is NOT having that. He may be very violent and understand pillage and rape in the context of war, but hitting your wife is not acceptable behavior to Uhtred. So it's no surprise that Aethelred's insecurities lead to Aetheflaed being in the wrong place at the wrong time and being kidnapped by Sigefrid. Uhtred has to come up with a plan to rescue her or all of Wessex, Mercia, East Anglia, etc it's all royally F'd. And I'll just stop there.The thing about these stories is that it's basically non-stop action and I really like the writing. And Uhtred is just a great character, but so is Father Pyrlig. So there's so much to like about these books. I even read it to myself in the narrators voice. So all was not lost. And now I can get the 5th book (also not in audio format from my library :()
4/5 Stars
I really loved this book! I'm recommending it to everyone because it's so well done. The Last Days of Night chronicles the "current war" of the 1880s between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse. No, A/C D/C is not just a band, they are the two types of current in which electricity flows. Thomas Edison was a proponent of direct current. George Westinghouse was accused of infringing on Edison's light bulb patent and so Edison sued him for $1B dollars. That's a lot of cheddar. In order to get around the bulb issue, Westinghouse adopted Nikola Tesla's alternating current (it didn't work for his lawsuit defense). The two men at times shamelessly worked against each other to promote their own system of electrifying the country, including a smear campaign aimed at alternating current which led to the invention of the electric chair. The first execution was terribly botched and actually proved alternating current was too safe to be used for murdering people. This book has it all, an upstart attorney, Paul Cravath (who would go on to develop the system of associate to partner track attorneys that now exists at law firms all over the world) a singing soprano with a past, a wiley inventor who answers to no one, and two industry barons trying to outdo each other. Yes Graham Moore took some liberties with the timeline and dialogue, but overall it's such great history that it's hard to believe it all isn't fiction.
Addition: And OMG this is going to be a movie with Benedict Cumberbatch. Click Here.
4.5/5 Stars.
Sunil Malhotra again beautifully narrates a tale of brothers living separate but irrevocably entwined lives in Jhumpa Lahiri's novel, The Lowland. (Malhotra also narrated Cutting for Stone - you can read that review here).
Raised in Calcutta (Kolkata), Subhash and Udayan are inquisitive about the place in which they live and the social hierarchies endemic both of the Indian culture, and the British imperialist relic. It is Udayan who becomes critical of the disparity in wealth and stature which the nearby Tally Club represents, an exclusive golf club for members only.
Udayan's passion leads him to communist thinkers such as Che, Mao, Marx, Castro. He looks at the world and is impatient with his inability to make a difference, to rise to the level of notoriety achieved by other communist leaders. He becomes more active in the communist party in India, and for it, he pays the ultimate price.
Udayan's misplaced idealism has a chain reaction of negative consequences - his parent's withdrawal and overwhelming sorrow, Subhash's assimilation of the life Udayan was living including marrying Goudi, Udayan's pregnant widow and taking her to Rhode Island where he plans to continue his studies, Goudi's inability to find contentment and love with Subhash and her daughter Bela, Goudi's eventual abandonment of them both to pursue her own academic interests.
All of the above is told in Lahiri's beautifully woven prose. While some of the characters fail to fully emerge from the page, even as they become the narrators of their story, overall The Lowland delivers a story of one person's destructive effect on generations up and down the familial tree and how those individuals work or not, to overcome the pain and destruction caused.
4/5 Stars.
