BOOKS THREAD

Just finished This Cold Heaven by Gretel Erlich. It's about Greenland—part travelogue, part history, and I found it completely amazing. The best book I've read ia a few years.

And even though it's not at all an "inspirational" book, I found I coped much better with stuff while reading it. As in, "If these subsistence hunters can go days without food while traveling through sub-zero temperatures and sleeping on their sleds while looking for the next seal to eat, I can go out and walk by dog for twenty minutes when it's 19 degrees out, no problem."

 

I’ve been on a binge of books dealing with the years 1946-1952. I had a dream where I was interviewing Robert Taft the other night, and I think that means I’ve gone too far down the rabbit hole.

 

I’ve something similar by devouring a number of A J Liebling’s books, mostly dealing with the fascinating boxing scene in NYC. Interesting to read how boxing shaped neighbourhoods and was a slice of society as well in New York. A way out of the ‘hood was to fight your way out. You got the prettiest women, respect from everyone and usually set up in a pretty good job even if you didn’t go very far at all in the boxing world. Everyone knew who you were. Not too dissimilar, I imagine, as basketball in the modern era.

 

LOL! I'm with you, Hermes. Watched an interview with Douglas Brinkley last night. He talked a bit about his books on Dean Acheson and James Forrestal.

Brinkley comes across as a pretty down-to-earth guy.

 

I just finished the last of the Travis McGee series, 21 books written by John D. MacDonald between 1964 and 1984.
McGee is the blueprint for every piece of "guy fiction" written to this day. I love the books.
It's taken me more than a couple of years to read them all. The best part is, because there are so many, I can go back and re-read the entire series and it be fresh.

 

I returned from the library with a book about zeppelins (Alexander Rose’s “Empires of the Sky”… It’s good! if some of the writing isn’t clichéd) and my wife texted me this the next morning:

 

I read this over the last week or so. It's the story behind the song Strange Fruit, which was Billie Holiday's signature tune. She sometimes would sing it during performances, if she felt like the audience deserved it, and sometimes she wouldn't. I'm glad I read it, partly because the topic of lynching - which is the subject of the song - came up in one of my classes this week, so I was able to share a little something something about the song.

Joe Bob says check it out.

 

Wow.

Southern trees bear a strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees

Pastoral scene of the gallant South
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth
Scent of magnolia, sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh

Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck
For the sun to rot, for the tree to drop
Here is a strange and bitter crop

 

Fierce Patriot, a short but illuminating biography of William Tecumseh Sherman, by Robert L. O'Connell. Very good.

A Spy Among Friends about Kim Philby. Ben Mcintire does a tremendous job. One of the best nonfiction books I've read in a while. This tale of Russian duplicity and treason couldn't be more timely.

 

Lost Honor (1982), John Dean's second book.

Dean recounts, at times, trying to find his inner-self. Part of that was dabbling in journalism as Jann Wenner gave him an assignment to cover the 1976 Republican National Convention for Rolling Stone. A post-convention flight home was where Dean (who was visiting with Pat Boone) coaxed, with little effort, Earl Butz to utter his infamous racist quote.

What I enjoyed the most was Dean's pursuit of Deep Throat's identity, which included making notes on index cards from re-readings of All the President's Men. Dean developed two sources at the Washington Post he used as a composite Dean refers to as Deep Thought. Ultimately, he erroneously settled on Al Haig but Mark Felt was on a short-list until Dean eliminated as candidates members of the FBI.

While Dean is, in general, respectful of Woodward and Bernstein's reporting, he does draw distinctions between what appeared in Post articles and then in the book. As far as The Final Days is concerned, its publication led Dean to become more skeptical of All the President's Men due, in part, to Nixon speechwriter Raymond Price's criticism of the follow-up book.

"The old-fashioned respect for literal truth has been subsumed by the new fashion of reaching for 'intrinsic' or 'symbolic' truth," Price said. "Woodward and Bernstein's The Final Days is breathlessly hailed as true by those who want to believe it true. Its authors invent thoughts which they place in people's heads, words they place in people's mouths; they boast of interviewing 394 people, and maintain that every word of their book is true because they include nothing unless confirmed by at least two 'sources.' What this means is that if two people have heard the same rumor, they weave a story around it, wrap it in manufactured detail and sprinkle it with quotation marks and present the story as fact."

At least one of Dean's Deep Thought sources was skeptical of Woodstein's reporting.

"Do you think we should be proud of the fact that our reporters used tactics that we would have lambasted the White House for, like harassing people, pulling their telephone records illegally and invading the Watergate grand jury?" the source asked Dean. "It's a goddamn lie in All the President's Men that we had two or three sources for every story. Often we went with one. You can't run any newspaper in the world on a two-source basis."

As it is, Lost Honor was a fun trip down memory lane.

 

I just read Garrett Graff's new Watergate book and overall it is strong. A few unfortunate chronological mistakes (always bad, but particularly so in this type of story). He is pretty critical of the All the President's Men book and there is a section on how a few people guessed Felt was Deep Throat.