The South Side: A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation - Natalie Y. Moore

For eight years we lived in Chicago, I was an avid WBEZ listener. I am well acquainted with Natalie Moore's reporting. I appreciate that she unapologetically covered issues important to Chicago's South Side during her time as a reporter there.

I have to admit, at the time, I sometimes wondered why she so fervently spent time covering the South Side. Living on the North Side as we did for eight years, you can lose track of the vastness that is Chicago. The vibrancy of the neighborhoods. It really is a City of neighborhoods where each enclave exists unto itself. So places that have problems, like portions of the South and West sides, get ignored or put to the side. You can focus on Chicago as a whole and claim that its problems are confined to a few neighborhoods and leave it at that. I've done that.

What this book, The Southside, does, brilliantly, is tie all those things together. It talks about the genesis of the South Side, its decline, and the reasons for that. It also details the efforts of community organizers and citizens who rather than leave their troubled neighborhoods, commit to making it better. For everyone. No one is going in to save the South Side. Should it get more help and resources? Absolutely. Will it? History says no. So the people have determined they must work for themselves.

Moore discusses health, housing, violence, and education issues all affecting the South Side. It really was an illuminating look at something I hadn't devoted enough time to as a citizen of the city (full disclosure - we lived in Evanston, just over the city line, but I worked and went to school in the city). This is a great read for anyone who wants to learn more about what really goes on in Chicago. It challenges a lot of assumptions and laziness on the part of pundits who like to say things about Chicago without any context from the people living and working in the City. 

4/5 Stars. 

Red, White & Royal Blue - Casey McQuiston

I had this book wait-listed for a while at the library but can honestly say it was worth the wait. Red, White and Royal Blue is most shocking in the alternative 2019-2020 it presents. After Ellen Clermont is elected the first female president in 2016 (no one cares about a private e-mail server, says one of the characters, tongue-in-cheek - I could cry but I digress), her family occupies the white house in all their modern splendor. Ellen is divorced from Senator Oscar Diaz, and their two dazzling brilliant and beautiful children, 23 year old June and 21 year old Alex, work together with the daughter of the vice president to create The White House Trio.

What could be more wonderful than these PYTs? Well enter the devestatingly handsome second son of England's Princess and her James Bond movie star husband and voila, you have Henry. And, as it turns out, Henry and Alex get involved in a little enemies to lovers story and this could be trope-y and boring and saccharine. But it's NOT!! It's hilarious, and perfectly paced and just the right amount of schmaltz and edge.

I really fell for Henry and Alex. I liked watching their relationship turn a corner. I thought McQuiston dealt with the sexuality angle perfectly. There was quite a lot of detail regarding US and British politics and it was really all around perfect. I suddenly wanted to be 25 again and have that youthful energy and spirit. And I desperately wanted to live in a 2020 that had a Wimbledon and a DNC and international love scandal between the FSOTUS and a Prince, because the alternative, this current 2020, is just shit in comparison.

4 Stars. 

Becoming - Michelle Obama

"... sameness breeds more sameness, until you make a thoughtful effort to counteract it."

What can I possibly say about Michelle Obama that hasn't been said before? Becoming is the telling of her story - well known to those who care to know it. She grew up on the lower end of middle class on Chicago's south side, in a neighborhood on a downward slide amid white flight to the suburbs. She was supported by two loving parents who pushed hard for her education and was accepted at the Whitney Young Magnet School in downtown Chicago. From there she went to Princeton, a school at which high school counselor had told her she did not belong. Then she continued on to Harvard Law School, accepted off the wait list. From there she was hired as an associate at Sidley Austin, a large law firm in Chicago and where she met summer associate, Barack Obama, serving as his advisor at the firm. 

Michelle grew tired of the law firm grind, wanting to do more with her life. She left there for a job at the City, working with Valerie Jarrett. Then on to a non-profit creating mentoring programs for young underprivileged people - connecting young people with promise, but not opportunity - with non-profits in need of talent and tenacity. By the time her husband was a United States Senator, Michelle was working as an executive at the University of Chicago Medical Center. Her mission? Helping the Medical Center and University make an impact in the south side neighborhood where it provided little opportunity and no tax base for the surrounding citizens. 

I'm aware of the things that are said about Michelle. That she only cares about money. If that was the case she could have stayed as a high-powered Sidley attorney making a hefty mid-six figure summary. That she hates America. Which in itself is a ridiculous thing to throw at someone, but in any case, would a person who hates this country give so much back to it? Focus signature programs and dedicate her professional life prior to becoming a public figure to bettering America's most needy communities? 

This well-educated, eloquent, smart, funny, deep, and thoughtful human being made her signature policy in the White House a focus on the growing childhood obesity epidemic and ways to combat that through exercise and nutrition. That's right. She asked parents, schools, restaurants, manufacturers, and corporations to make better decisions for children's health.

And people hate her for it.

I don't know how she could have put up with it. I don't know why anyone would want to. But she did. And she opened the White House up to vast numbers of "regular" Americans. She visited wounded service members at Walter Reed Medical Center. She gave commencement speeches at universities and high schools who could hardly believe their fortune in snagging such a high profile speaker. 

She cared about all Americans. Black Americans. Brown Americans. Poor Americans. Veterans. Groups that are marginalized and overlooked. She noted where our country, through policy, negligence, malice, or ignorance, failed these groups.

And people hate her for it. 

So yeah, I know she doesn't need my defense. Because Michelle is doing just fine on her own. But sometimes I look at the headlines and the vitriol spewed in the comments section of social media (I know, I know, I need to not read them) and I think about whether I am doing enough to reflect the country as I think it is or could be. And in that I feel a real kinship with Michelle Obama and the causes she's committed her life to and the way she's chosen to live her life. 

The question is: “Do we settle for the world as it is, or do we work for the world as it should be?”

5/5 Stars. 

The Audacity of Hope - Barack Obama

I know wading into anything political these days is foolish. It's one of the reasons I left Facebook behind. A place where even close friends or family can rip each other to shreds through the glowing warmth of their computer screens. And I'm particularly nostalgic these days for the measured and considered way in which President Obama seemed to discuss things. I wanted to see if that was merely rose-colored glasses hindsight or if I was remembering correctly.

The Audacity of Hope was written when Barack Obama was a newly minted Senator. And the book centers around various issues and problems facing our country. It was startling just how much the problems he discusses facing 2006 America sound shockingly similar to the problems facing 2018 America. But the part that shines through the brightest is President Obama's pragmatic and realistic approaches to problems. He may not come up with the same solutions as his conservative critics, but his thought process in getting to the solutions are evidence based and practical. There's no hysteria or lectern thumping in this book. Just conversational discussion of income and racial inequality that still exists in our country. 

His fundamental question throughout the book is what do we value? A few gems on values that really struck a chord with me:

"Where do you put your time, energy, and money? Those are your values."

"Values are faithfully applied to the facts before it. Ideology overrides whatever facts call theory into question." 

The book was a refreshing step back from the increasingly hostile political culture we find ourselves in today. Disagree with him, sure, but let's forego a Facebook flame-out.

4/5 Stars

The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera

I'm such an a-hole. The only thing I can think to say at the beginning of this review is that as much as The Unbearable Lightness of Being is a widely acclaimed literary think piece I just didn't "get it." And that's not really true. I did get it. I got it in about the first 50 pages and then after I got it I thought, okay why is the author making me try to re-get it over and over and over again.

Have I become accustomed to smooth plot lines and robust character development? Maybe. Or do I just enjoy using the character and story to draw my own ideas of themes and lessons from the literature? Yes probably that too.

Listen ULB has no true structure. The character and the plot serve as devices for Kundera to wax philosophical on the lessons he has learned from his own life. And I really appreciate his point of view and what he has to say, but it's almost like getting stuck talking to someone at a dinner party where by the time you get to dessert, you've heard about their complete philosophy on life and you are just hungry for a new topic. 

The book only has four characters, Thomas and Theresa, Sabina, and Franz. The plot jumps between and among them and back and forth in time to visit and re-visit points in their lives which tell us more about the author's own philosophies. This is a freshman literature student's dream, all the lessons the author wants you to get from the book are spelled out again and again. You don't have to interpret or internalize anything. It's all write there. That term paper practically writes itself. 

Listen, I did get it but I just got bored. I feel like I've let my pseudo-intellectual self down but this one was just not for me.

2/5 Stars. 

Notorious RBG - Irin Carmon, Shana Knizhnik

Let’s be clear, Ruth Bader Ginsburg (RBG) gets all the stars. I hope I’m 1/4 as smart and 1/2 as fun as she is. This book only gets 4 stars because it could have been so much deeper. 

Ostensibly written by two millennial super fans of RBG, the book riffs on the memes that have developed on Tumblr and elsewhere to acknowledge RBG’s capturing of the cultural imagination. This book explores RBG’s life from a starting point of the zeitgeist rather than the law. Having gone to law school and read her writings from time to time to time to time, I would have liked a little more legal-nerd gratification. 

She’s a very fascinating person who somehow managed to have a really loving and balanced marriage to boot. I passed “impressed” as a reaction we’ll within the first chapter. As the Supreme Court nominations get increasingly political and polarized, I’m saddened to think such great legal minds may not get a chance to sit on the court.

4/5 Stars. 

The Senator's Wife - Sue Miller

Listen, Sue Miller is a master craftsman when it comes to character development and setting the stage for how her characters got to be the way they are. The Senator's Wife is no exception. But there was something that didn't click throughout the story for me that culminated in an ending that made me abruptly squeamish and awkward. I didn't want to keep reading, but there were only 10 pages left.

The Senator's Wife is about a newly married 30-something Meri, who moves into a duplex next to Delia, the wife of former Senator Tom Naughton. Senator Naughton was apparently a big deal in the 60s and 70s. A bootstrap kind of politician who was liberal in the mold of John Kennedy - in more ways than one. Turns out the esteemed gentleman from Connecticut has a problem with keeping his hands off women.

Delia attempts to navigate an unconventional relationship with Tom, whom she still loves and Meri attempts to navigate an pregnancy which leaves her body feeling alien and unknown to her. Are these women supposed to be friends? Will they be able to develop a good relationship? It's all very hard to do across a generational divide. Meri is looking to be mothered, and Delia has already done all that. So she's nice, but very cold too. I just didn't really get this part. Their stories alone were interesting and eventually intertwined to give us the story's climax, but otherwise these two women together just did not work for me. Ultimately earning this tale a 3-star rating.

3 Stars.

Between the World and Me - Ta-Nehisi Coates

“You must resist the common urge toward the comforting narrative of divine law, toward fairy tales that imply some irrepressible justice. The enslaved were not bricks in your road, and their lives were not chapters in your redemptive history. They were people turned to fuel for the American machine. Enslavement was not destined to end, and it is wrong to claim our present circumstance—no matter how improved—as the redemption for the lives of people who never asked for the posthumous, untouchable glory of dying for their children. Our triumphs can never compensate for this.”

In February, I try to focus my reading on black authors and black history. Between the World and Me has been on my list for quite some time. I've seen Ta-Nehisi Coates in videos and on the daily show, and I've always appreciated his perspective on issues and the way in which he presents them. 

A letter from a father to a son. A letter from a black man to a black teen. A letter from a black man to white America. A letter from the soul of a person, to the unending silence that answers us in return whenever we share something so deep that no response is adequate.

This is a very moving and illuminating look at race and racism in America. In the way that the belief in American exceptionalism requires an ignorance of the policies and practices which have propelled the American experience for centuries. 

“And they are torturing Muslims, and their drones are bombing wedding parties (by accident!), and the Dreamers are quoting Martin Luther King and exulting nonviolence for the weak and the biggest guns for the strong.”

It would be wrong to say Ta-Nehisi Coates is the only voice discussing race, politics, and intersectionality in America. He is however, one of the most powerful voices to recently take up the conversation. It would also be wrong to assume that his view is representative of all African Americans. Or that he can speak for black women who have not gained the name-recognition, but still have powerful and illuminating stories all their own. But anytime we take a step outside ourselves and our known world to try to really hear and understand the experience of someone else, without judgment - whenever we are really open to listening with our ears and mind open, then the collective experience of being American is all the better. All the better that this audio version was narrated by Coates himself. 

I was moved by this book, truly moved. And humbled. And thankful.

5/5 Stars. 

Best Kept Secret - Jeffrey Archer (Clifton Chronicles #3)

I initially purchased the first three Clifton Chronicles during a crazy Kindle deal. I think the idea was to give away the first three and then get people hooked enough they'd have to purchase the follow-ons. However, if I hadn't gotten the first three together, it's unlikely I would have read past the first uneven installment. (You can read my review of the first book here). 

Best Kept Secret was another disappointment. The story is at least better written than the first book, but the plot meanders and the point of view conveniently and sporadically bounces around to the point where I didn't really care about any of the characters anymore. Additionally, the author leaves each book with a major cliffhanger which is irritating and a blatant trick to get someone to read the next installment. 

At the beginning of this book, we are left with the solution to the last book's cliffhanger, namely, would Giles Barrington or Harry Clifton be named the rightful heir to the Barrington name, lands, and title. Turns out it's Giles who is granted all that stuff (which is the best way to preserve everyone's happiness in the book). And Harry and Emma, although not sure if they are actually half-siblings, get married anyway and decide not to have any more children. They set out to adopt Emma's other half-sister, the baby who showed up at the end of the second book to wreak havoc and an early demise to Emma and Giles' father. 

So Emma and Harry move on to get married and raise their slightly ill-behaved child, Sebastian. Eventually Sebastian becomes a teenager who gets in trouble at boarding school and tries to escape punishment by agreeing to travel to Argentina on an errand for his friend's father. 

In the midst of this, Giles marries a terrible woman then divorces her after his mother leaves them nothing in her will due to the wife's terribleness. There is a will contest and everyone is sad, but it's all glossed over so much there's no real tension there. A villainy villain named Major Alex Fisher is thrown in the mix to try to take down Barrington's shipping company from the inside. 

The Clifton Chronicle villains are all bad all the time with no redeeming qualities and the heroes always triumph. It may be entertaining, but it's not great reading.

2.5/5 Stars. 

The Lowland - Jhumpa Lahiri

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. 

In the Garden of Beasts - Erik Larson

In Greek mythology, Cassandra of Troy was given the gift of prophecy but was cursed by Apollo so that when she spoke her prophecies, no one would believe her. Cassandra see the future destruction of Troy and despite her warnings of the Greeks hiding within the gifted Trojan Horse, she is not believed. The city is sacked, Cassandra herself is captured, raped, and becomes a concubine to King Agamemnon before she is killed by Agamemnon's wife and her lover. The Greeks really have some uplifting stories, no? 

All this is to say is that sometimes life is unkind to figures of prophecy, or those that are able to discern outcomes before a wider populace can see them. William Dodd, Ambassador to Germany from 1933 to 1937 was one such figure. A quiet college professor, Dodd was Roosevelt's eighth or ninth choice to serve as ambassador to Nazi Germany. It seems other men weren't interested in risking their diplomatic careers by stepping into such a politically sensitive arena. But that didn't mean that those same men weren't eager to criticize Dodd for the job he was doing. 

Not fitting the typical mold of an ambassador, Dodd tried to live within his ambassador's salary and clung to principle over traditional trappings of statesmanship. He refused to attend the large Nazi rallies at Nuremberg. He gave a rousing speech of the dangers of autocratic leadership. He cultivated relationships with moderate elements of the Nazi party. All this while receiving the scorn and derision of the State Department officials in Washington who were intent on ignoring Dodd's warnings of potential calamity in Germany and insisting that Dodd remain vigilant in attempts to secure American debt owed from the previous World War. 

William Dodd 1869-1940

Dodd was way ahead of everyone in understanding Hitler's intentions. And Larson spends 90% of the book engaged in Dodd's first 18 months as Ambassador where Dodd's own hopes and optimism for a moderating force within Germany are diminished and then extinguished as Hitler wraps himself in greater layers of power. That a hundred or more (counts vary by historian) members of the party were killed in one evening at Hitler's command without trial or conviction was an event that shocked Dodd and should by all accounts have shocked and angered the world. But Hitler saw that he was able to get away with this action and so was able to more steadily increase his own ambitions while the world sat idly by. That Dodd was scorned by the State Department "leadership" for this is embarrassing and some part of me hopes those gentlemen felt their own comeuppance at being so terribly wrong. 

Larson does a good job creating a sense of foreboding and generally building tension as Dodd would have felt it. The last chapters seemed rushed, as I would have liked more analysis of Dodd's actions following the full outbreak of the war. I think some of the earlier material could have been trimmed down in order to address these aspects as well. But overall this book was highly informative, impeccably researched, and readable.

4/5 Stars

Two Paths: America Divided or United - John Kasich

I was excited to vote for John Kasich in Tennessee's primary in 2016. By then it was mostly clear that Donald Trump had built a momentum which was tipping toward winning. But I'd heard Kasich's message in fits and starts during the debates and tuned into to Facebook Live feeds of his town halls. 

The reason he ended up getting my support is well flushed out in this book. A reiteration of his refusal to "take the low road to the highest office." And his insistence that nothing gets accomplished without buy in from both sides - a factor I think was crushed by GOP leadership (McConnell) during Obama's eight years as president - was something I've always thought about politics. Even politics in Washington. 

As new media sources have become more and more partisan (even delving into outright lies) it seems impossible to have rational discourse these days. And the problem seems to have gotten worse over the general election and now through the first months of Donald Trump's presidency. But these pages, this book reiterates what we already know. It doesn't have to be this way. Nuance and open mindedness take effort and time. But isn't our country worth it? 

I know after the general election I took a hard look at where I was receiving my news sources and tried to take an extra second to let my initial reaction to news headlines become tempered by a second or third run through to see if the meat of the article really jibed with the headline. You'd be surprised (or maybe not surprised) to learn that a lot of times it doesn't. 

I was struck by Kasich's recounting of a townhall where a gentleman asked Kasich what he intended to do to fix the opioid epidemic, and Kasich turned that right back and asked the man what he was doing to fix it. It's an honest question. On November 8, I had a tear filled conversation with a good friend about how I clearly wasn't doing enough to make my world, heck my neighborhood, into the place I wanted to live. 

While sometimes, most of the time, I live at the base level described by Kasich in this book, in those moments where I go higher I try to keep my November 8 lessons in mind. What am I doing to make my community better? And that usually involves putting down the smart phone and really trying to connect with people, even to smile and say hello, thank you and please. Connecting to people, just like Kasich did on the campaign trail. 

Thanks John Kasich for such a thoughtful analysis and a good example.

4/5 Stars.