Review of Mr. Ferris and His Wheel, by Kathryn Gibbs Davis

mr_ferris_and_his_wheel_largeMr. Ferris and His Wheel

written by Kathryn Gibbs Davis
illustrated by Gilbert Ford

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014. 40 pages.
Starred Review

I love this kind of nonfiction for kids – It’s engaging and simply told, with plenty of facts, but written to be read and enjoyed, not to use as reference for a report.

This is a picture book, and the illustrations are beautiful, evoking the time of the Chicago World’s Fair, when Mr. Ferris built his wheel.

The author tells the tale as a suspenseful story, with supporting facts alongside. Here’s an example page:

Now it was America’s turn to impress the world at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. But what could outshine the famous French tower? And who would build it? A nationwide contest was announced.

Here’s the sidebar on that two-page spread, in a corner and printed in a smaller font:

Before TV and the Internet, people from around the globe gathered at World’s Fairs to share their different ways of life and new technologies. Tasty inventions such as hamburgers and Cracker Jack first appeared there!

It goes on to dramatize George Ferris getting the idea, submitting his plans, and the large technological challenges they faced. One of the pages during the construction phase shows spectators who are critical and skeptical that the thing will stay up, let alone actually work.

The author and illustrator dramatize the completion, and the very first ride, giving us a feeling of the majestic spectacle the wheel made, as well as the sweeping view of Chicago.

All summer, visitors from around the world traveled to the Chicago World’s Fair. It didn’t matter whether one was a senator, a farmer, a boy or girl. Everyone wanted to take a spin on the magnificent wheel. Adventurous couples asked to get married on it! On hot, steamy days, the wheel was the perfect place to escape up, up, up into the cooling breezes. All you needed was fifty cents.

[Sidebar:] During the nineteen weeks the wheel was in operation, 1.5 million passengers rode it. It revolved more than 10,000 times, withstood gale-force winds and storms, and did not need one repair.

Let’s hear it for a book that highlights the heroism and accomplishments of an engineer! This book tells a good story, but it will also capture kids’ imaginations. A page at the back supplies further reading and websites. Who knows? This book may inspire future engineers.

gibbsdavis.com
gilbertford.com
hmhco.com

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Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of As You Wish, by Cary Elwes

as_you_wish_largeAs You Wish

Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride

by Cary Elwes
with Joe Layden
foreword by Rob Reiner

A Touchstone Book, Simon & Schuster, 2014. 259 pages.
Starred Review

Reading this book was wonderful! Fans of The Princess Bride will love it! And if you’re not a fan of The Princess Bride? How on earth are you not? That very idea is inconceivable to me – and I know what the word means.

What’s in the book? Cary Elwes, who, of course, starred as Westley in the movie, tells stories about making the movie. The book is also peppered with reminiscences by the other actors and actresses. They do all work together to convince the reader that making that movie was almost as extraordinary an experience as the final film turned out to be extraordinary.

I loved it that Cary Elwes had read and loved William Goldman’s book The Princess Bride when he was thirteen years old. What are the chances?

A huge part of making The Princess Bride was the actors learning to swordfight. I have a completely new appreciation for the Greatest Swordfight in Modern Times.

”Don’t worry,” Rob insisted. “You’ll be training with the best. It’ll be fun!”

Training, with the best!

It always sounds fun in conversation. But the practical reality is something quite different. More like, “Don’t worry, you’ll be training with the best Sherpa to help you climb Everest!” or “Don’t worry, you’ll be training with the greatest human cannonball before we fire you out of the cannon.” I’d long admired serious athletes, and I always try to treat a challenge as an opportunity. And then I began to think, Wait a minute! How hard could it really be? I’d seen plenty of Errol Flynn and Douglas Fairbanks movies. My developing, inane theory was that if they could do it, so could I. It didn’t seem all that difficult. A few quick thrusts, some fancy footwork. More like dancing than combat.

I could handle it, I thought. No problem.

I was, of course, somewhat deluded….

And then we went to work. The first day was devoted to the most basic body mechanics, starting with the proper stance. Mastery wasn’t really the goal – there wasn’t enough time for that. Rather, it would have to be the illusion of mastery, and that could only be achieved by adhering to the fundamentals of fencing: how to stand, where to place your arms and feet. How to hold your free hand, not clenched but relaxed (something I had a hard time perfecting). A professional fencer, they explained, could watch a sword-fighting sequence on film and tell immediately if the actors involved were complete amateurs. The easiest to spot were when the actors or stuntmen could be seen just hitting the swords back and forth, over and over in the same manner, the way kids do with sticks.

They explained that they had requested that the fighting sequences be filmed late in the production, allowing us a few weeks of intense daily training in prep, followed by a few months of training while on location. Bob then pointed out that although it wasn’t possible for either of us to become an Olympic-caliber fencer in that amount of time, maybe with the help and guidance of both himself and Peter, we might just be capable of fooling all but the most discerning of viewers. Their reputations were at stake as well, after all, he pointed out.

Cary had nothing but praise for Robin Wright as Buttercup. He pointed out something I hadn’t noticed:

Buttercup falls in love, loses her love, gets kidnapped, is forced into an arranged marriage, reconnects with her one true love, and then lets him go in order to save his life. It really requires a great deal of emotional range. What it doesn’t require – or at least doesn’t display – is the comedic talent for which The Princess Bride is so well known. Goldman wrote a screenplay that we now know is filled with great, classic funny lines. Unfortunately, few, if any, of those lines are given to Buttercup. Robin is not merely the victim in the film; she is also the straight man (or, in this case, the straight woman). And even though Westley is not exactly a comedian, he does have some funny lines, and is involved in some rather broad physical comedy. Robin’s character is permitted no such relief. From start to finish, she had to play it straight, exactly as the role demanded.

Of course, I had to watch The Princess Bride again (for the I-have-no-idea-how-many-th time) after reading this book. I watched for evidence of Cary Elwes’ broken toe, and totally saw it. But mostly, the book just gave me added appreciation for a film I already love with all my heart.

This book celebrates a film that was done right, from start to finish.

AsYouWishBook.com
SimonandSchuster.com

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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of Struck by Genius, by Jason Padgett and Maureen Ann Seaberg

struck_by_genius_largeStruck by Genius

How a Brain Injury Made Me a Mathematical Marvel

by Jason Padgett and Maureen Ann Seaberg
performed by Jeff Cummings and Kate Rudd

Brilliance Audio, 2014. 7 hours, 29 minutes, on 8 compact discs, including one bonus disc with illustrations by the author.

The subtitle of this book explains what happened. Jason Padgett suffered traumatic brain injury in a mugging — and immediately started seeing the world differently. It turned out that he had Acquired Synesthesia and Acquired Savantism. And his life changed dramatically.

Before the attack, he was interested in nothing more than partying and having a good time. Afterward, he spent years inside his house, thinking about the nature of the cosmos. He had a sudden interest in math and the geometry underlying all things. He figured out how to draw what he saw naturally.

This book tells the story of his life and the dramatic changes. It tells about the process he went through to find out what had happened to him and trying to make sense of it all.

Jason’s case is unique. There aren’t many synesthetes who acquire it as an adult, and the same is true for savants. So his case gives fascinating insights into the brain and consciousness. As well, his visions of the geometry underlying the world may also bear fruit in math and physics.

Now, I have to say that the book felt repetitive, and I got tired of hearing about Jason’s excitement every step of the way. Some name-dropping went on, too. Mostly, he didn’t need to tell us every time he got super excited — we could figure it out from the extraordinary things that happened to him. I think the book could have been cut down to about a third of the length.

However, I was listening to it on my commute, and it was more interesting than just sitting in traffic. If it was repetitive? Well, I never felt like I’d forgotten what went before.

Above all, Jason’s story is fascinating. Do we all have those kinds of amazing abilities covered up by our other brain functions? How did a brain injury enable him to think more clearly on certain topics? Why did it change his whole personality? There’s plenty of food for thought in Jason’s story.

The audiobook included a CD with images Jason had drawn, and they are indeed amazing. The only catch to listening to the book was not having those images alongside, so I made sure to look at them afterward. There are even more images now available on fineartamerica, so you can take a look before reading the book. The crucial and amazing point you need to know is that all the images were drawn by hand.

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Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of Hey, America, Your Roots Are Showing, by Megan Smolenyak

hey_america_largeHey, America, Your Roots Are Showing

Adventures in Discovering
News-Making Connections, Unexpected Ancestors, Long-Hidden Secrets, and Solving Historical Puzzles

by Megan Smolenyak

Citadel Press, 2012. 256 pages.
Starred Review
2014 Sonderbooks Stand-out, #8 Nonfiction

I’ve gotten the genealogy bug since I came to work at City of Fairfax Regional Library, where I get to substitute fairly frequently at the information desk in the Virginia Room. I think it’s fascinating to find out about my ancestors, about where they lived and what they did and which fought in wars and when they came to America.

Megan Smolenyak takes genealogy so much further than all that. She shows its tremendous scope. The subtitle begins to give you an idea, but even with those hints, I wasn’t prepared for the wide variety of stories she tells in this book.

I’m going to quote at length from her Introduction, because it gives you a good idea of what you’ll find in this book:

I’m one of those obnoxious people you hear about from time to time who has the privilege of making a living doing what she loves. As a real-life history detective, I wake up excited every day about what I’m going to tackle and what I might uncover.

In this book, I’d like to take you into my world and essentially perch you on my shoulder to see how it’s done. How did I figure out who would be king of America today if George Washington had been king instead of president? How did I come to work with the FBI and NCIS on cold cases and with coroners’ offices to find relatives of unclaimed people? How did I unravel the mystery of a Hebrew-inscribed tombstone found on the streets of Manhattan? How did I successfully trace Michelle Obama’s roots when others had tried but gotten roadblocked early on? How did I research Hoda Kotb’s Egyptian heritage in no time flat for a Today show appearance? How did I use DNA to learn that the Haley family of Roots fame is Scottish?

This book includes more than twenty of my favorite investigatory romps, all of which extended my understanding of our history in some way. Following the path of a Bible that traded hands during the Civil War gave me a fresh perspective from both the Confederate and Union viewpoints. My first case with the FBI was an in-your-face education about the civil rights movement. And pursuing the real Annie Moore, first to arrive at Ellis Island (whose place had been usurped by an imposter), informed my understanding of the tenement life so many of our immigrant ancestors endured.

Given my proclivity for resurrecting the historically neglected, it’s no accident that many of the chapters in this book feature women and African Americans – both harder to research, but all the more rewarding because of it. So I’ll introduce you to everyone from Mabel Cavin Sills Leish Whitworth Davis, a partially paralyzed prostitute (yes, you read that right) who taught me about the realities of life in a Western mining community, to Philip Reed, the slave behind the installment of the Freedom statue on top of the Capitol dome.

Along the way, you’ll also find a healthy dose of my opinions, so consider yourself forewarned if you still believe your name was changed at Ellis Island!

It is my hope that by the end of this book, you will find yourself looking at some aspect of our history a little differently than you did at the outset – and better yet, feel compelled to reach into the past and contribute a few pixels yourself. It’s high time for all of us to let our roots show!

Who knew that a book on genealogy would read so much like a book of detective stories? I was amazed by how entertaining Megan Smolenyak made these stories, as well as the wide scope of them. She talks about identifying remains of missing soldiers in Vietnam, finding serial centenarians in a family, showing how all of us have some famous cousins, and tracing Barack O’Bama’s Irish roots, besides all the stories she hints at in the Introduction.

I took a long time to read this book, because it is like a book of short stories. But I was entertained and enchanted with each story, and indeed all the more curious about the past of my own family.

megansmolenyak.com
kensingtonbooks.com

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Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of Call the Midwife, by Jennifer Worth

call_the_midwife_largeCall the Midwife

A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times

by Jennifer Worth
read by Nicola Barber

HighBridge Audio, 2012. Book originally published in 2002. 12 hours on 11 CDs.
Starred Review
2014 Sonderbooks Stand-out, #9 Nonfiction

I’ve been watching the BBC series Call the Midwife on DVDs from the library. When I watched the special features after the second season, they mentioned how the producer had loved the book when she read it, and decided then and there to make it into a series. That was enough recommendation for me!

Indeed, I found the book just as charming as the television series. Mind you, they romanticized some things in the series. I was a little disappointed not to hear about any romance with Jimmy. And if Chummy has a romance with the police officer she ran down on the bike, it hasn’t happened yet. But in some ways, it’s more interesting, because it’s all true.

Jennifer Worth was a midwife in the East End of London in the 1950s. It was the beginning of the National Health Service, and in the past, pregnant women were dealt with by amateurs and charlatans, with a lot of deaths. As it is there’s plenty of poverty and eye-opening situations, and they make riveting listening.

There’s the family with 24 children, whose mother does not speak English. There’s the young immigrant girl from Ireland who got tricked into prostitution. And especially lovely are the nuns whom Jennifer works with. (I liked being able to picture them from the TV series. The reader did a great job with their different voices.)

Mind you, this is not family listening. The part where she describes the past of the young prostitute is particularly graphic. However, it also includes more about the restoration of Jennifer’s faith than the series does. The author clearly had a deep love for the people of the East End and communicates that love to the listener. I was happy to see that my library owns two more volumes on audio CD.

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Source: This review is based on a library audiobook from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of A Fighting Chance, by Elizabeth Warren

fighting_chance_largeA Fighting Chance

by Elizabeth Warren

Metropolitan Books (Henry Holt), 2014. 365 pages.
Starred Review

I checked out this book on a whim, knowing almost nothing about Elizabeth Warren; now having read her book, I am her total fan. She’s someone who’s gotten into politics not because she has a desire for personal power, but because she wants to help people. And I so respect that.

My background is that my ex-husband and I started out our life together plummeting into debt. We dared to try to live in California and have one and a half jobs between us so that we didn’t have to put our son in day care. (He came along only a year after we got married.) When my husband enlisted in the military, it only made things worse. They told us what he’d be making after he joined the Air Force. They didn’t tell us it would be significantly less while he was in Basic Training, and we were still paying California rent, for another few thousand dollars of debt. And I still needed to find a job when we moved to New Jersey.

All that is to say that I gained appreciation, years ago, for the fact that all people embroiled in credit card debt are not lazy freeloaders who want a hand-out. We were eventually able to pay off our debts – but then I got into a whole new pile of debt when my husband left me, and of course I lost my job since we had to leave Germany and then the divorce cost me thousands of dollars. This is not to grumble – I will eventually pay it off. But I can’t help but wonder how people in my situation cope if they don’t have my education level, and like me never thought they’d have to work full-time, and maybe have trouble finding a full-time job, and maybe have younger kids who need daycare. I just don’t have it in my heart to look down on people who find themselves in the position of filing for bankruptcy.

So when I found out how Elizabeth Warren got started in what led to her political career, it was with a big cheer. Finally someone is saying what I have believed for years and years!

She was teaching a class on bankruptcy law. She discovered that “experts” believed “that the people who filed were mostly day laborers and housemaids who lived at the economic margins and always would.”

Ms Warren kept thinking about this:

As I dug deeper into my study of bankruptcy and the new law, I kept bumping into the same question over and over: Why were people going bankrupt? I couldn’t find solid answers anywhere. In those days, almost all young law professors specialized in theory. They wrote articles and books about the theory of this and the philosophy of that. But theory wouldn’t provide answers that anyone could count on, answers that would explain what had gone wrong. I clung to the idea that the people in bankruptcy were different and everyone else would be safe. I might not have said so at the time, but I think I was on the lookout for cheaters and deadbeats as a way to explain who was filing for bankruptcy.

She did a study on bankruptcy and why it happens. She visited bankruptcy court in San Antonio and saw, not down and out deadbeats, but people who looked just like her and her students.

Later, our data would confirm what I had seen in San Antonio that day. The people seeking the judge’s decree were once solidly middle-class. They had gone to college, found good jobs, gotten married, and bought homes. Now they were flat busted, standing in front of that judge and all the world, ready to give up nearly everything they owned just to get some relief from the bill collectors.

As the data continued to come in, the story got scarier. San Antonio was no exception: all around the country, the overwhelming majority of people filing for bankruptcy were regular families who had hit hard times. Over time, we learned that nearly 90 percent were declaring bankruptcy for one of three reasons: a job loss, a medical problem, or a family breakup (typically divorce, sometimes the death of a husband or wife). By the time these families arrived in the bankruptcy court, they had pretty much run out of options. Dad had lost his job or Mom had gotten cancer, and they had been battling for financial survival for a year or longer. They had no savings, no pension plan, and no homes or cars that weren’t already smothered by mortgages. Many owed at least a full year’s income in credit card debt alone. They owed so much that even if they never bought another thing – even if Dad got his job back tomorrow and Mom had a miraculous recovery – the mountain of debt would keep growing on its own, fueled by penalties and compounding interest rates that doubled their debts every few years. By the time they came before a bankruptcy judge, they were so deep in debt that being flat broke – owning nothing, but free from debt – looked like a huge step up and worth deep personal embarrassment.

Worse yet, the number of bankrupt families was climbing. In the early 1980s, when my partners and I first started collecting data, the number of families annually filing for bankruptcy topped a quarter of a million. True, a recession had hobbled the nation’s economy and squeezed a lot of families, but as the 1980s wore on and the economy recovered, the number of bankruptcies unexpectedly doubled. Suddenly, there was a lot of talk about how Americans had lost their sense of right and wrong, how people were buying piles of stuff they didn’t actually need and then running away when the bills came due. Banks complained loudly about unpaid credit card bills. The word deadbeat got tossed around a lot. It seemed that people filing for bankruptcy weren’t just financial failures – they had also committed an unforgivable sin.

Part of me still wanted to buy the deadbeat story because it was so comforting. But somewhere along the way, while collecting all those bits of data, I came to know who these people were.

I have never filed for bankruptcy. But it’s so easy to see how I could have ended up in that situation. I like that Elizabeth Warren sees that, too.

I ran my fingers over one of the papers, thinking about a woman who had tried to explain how her life had become such a disaster. A turn here, a turn there, and her life might have been very different.

Divorce, an unhappy second marriage, a serious illness, no job. A turn here, a turn there, and my life might have been very different, too.

She still wasn’t in politics, but she continued to teach bankruptcy law.

I kept teaching bankruptcy, but the world outside my classroom was changing, too. The numbers of people going bankrupt kept climbing, in good times and bad. By 1990, more than seven hundred thousand families filed for bankruptcy in a single year – the number had more than doubled in the decade since I had started teaching. That shocked me….

At school, I heard from secretaries and cafeteria workers. I heard from other professors whose children or old friends were in trouble. Sometimes someone would stop me in the mailroom or while I was waiting in line for a sandwich. Most people didn’t ask for help. They just seemed to want me to know. I think they hoped to hear me say, “There are a lot of good people who end up bankrupt.” At least, that’s what I believed, so that’s what I always said.

And then, in the early 1990s, the big banks began pushing for tougher bankruptcy laws.

At this point, the book briefly explains the history behind the explosion of both bankruptcies and bank profits.

With usury laws and the 1930s banking regulations as a backdrop, banks played a really important role in helping America’s economy grow. They lent the money for families to buy homes, and those monthly payments became a sort of giant savings plan, so that by the time people retired, they owned a valuable asset – and a place where they could live without paying rent. Over time, banks financed cars and college educations. They helped small businesses get a start. A handful of larger banks served the biggest corporate clients, giving them access to the money they needed to expand and create jobs. Banking was all about evaluating customers, making sure that they would be able to repay loans, and keeping interest rates competitive with the bank across the street.

It all worked pretty well. Until the 1980s, that is.

At that point, with scant notice and very little public discussion, a momentous event occurred: thanks to a Supreme Court ruling about a century-old banking law and an amendment quietly passed by Congress, the cap on interest rates was effectively eliminated. Suddenly, banking was changed forever. The usury ban for large American banks disappeared, and deregulation became the new watchword. The bigger banks were now unleashed, and they started loading up credit cards with fees and escalating interest rates – tactics that would have been illegal just a few years earlier. Once the banks began to figure out just how lucrative these cards could be, they started juicing their profits by lending money at super-high interest rates to people who were a lot less likely to repay all those loans. By the 1990s, they were targeting people who were barely hanging on – those with modest or erratic income, those who had lost their jobs and were scrambling. In other words, the banks were targeting people just like the folks who ended up in the bankruptcy courts….

Why would the big banks do this? Here was the trick: Even with the bankruptcy losses, the banks could make more money if they kept giving credit to people who were in trouble. Yes, the banks had to absorb bigger losses when people went bankrupt. But in the meantime, they could make a lot more money from all those people on the edge who didn’t file for bankruptcy protection, or at least didn’t file for another year or so. Interest rates and fees were so high that, in the end, the banks came out ahead – way ahead.

Even with profits breaking records every year, the banks weren’t satisfied. They thought of more fees to tack on, more ways to escalate interest rates, and more aggressive ways to market their cards. Credit card vendors started showing up on college campuses, targeting kids with promises that there would be no credit checks and no need for their parents to sign. Children were preapproved. And occasionally even a dog would get his fifteen minutes of fame, when a local newspaper heard about some cute little pooch who had just been offered a credit card.

To pump up their returns even more, the banks tried a new tactic: What if they could persuade the government to limit bankruptcy protections? Sure, a lot of families were broke, but maybe some of them could be pressed to pay just a little more. If they couldn’t file for bankruptcy, maybe more families would decide to move in with their in-laws, or borrow from their neighbors, or hock their wedding rings, or cancel their health insurance – who knows? If several hundred thousand families a year could be squeezed just a little harder, maybe the banks could add yet more profit to their bottom lines.

The bankers might not have said it in so many words, but gradually their strategy emerged: Target families who were already in a little trouble, lend them more money, get them entangled in high fees and astronomical interest rates, and then block the doors to the bankruptcy exit if they really got in over their heads.

If you knew anything about bankruptcy law – and by now I knew a lot – you could see exactly what the big banks were up to. I was just a law school professor, so I didn’t have the power to change anything, but the deep cynicism behind these new tactics infuriated me. For the banks, a change in the bankruptcy laws was just one more opportunity to try to boost profits. For the families – the moms, dads, kids, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins – who would lose their last chance to recover from the financial blow of a layoff or a frightening medical diagnosis, the pain could never be measured.

So that was what motivated Elizabeth Warren to step into politics. First, she was offered a position at Harvard, which she knew would enable her voice to be heard more clearly. Then she was asked to serve on the National Bankruptcy Review Commission.

I told him no. I was deep in my research, and I thought the way I could make a difference was by writing books and doing more research about who was filing for bankruptcy and what had gone wrong in their lives. I didn’t know anything about Washington, but the bits I picked up from the press made it sound pretty awful.

But her friend was persistent, and said if she’d join the commission, he would ask her to supply three good changes in the bankruptcy laws.

And that’s what I thought about, all the way home. My office was stacked with piles of questionnaires from people in bankruptcy, and many of them told personal stories about what had gone wrong in their lives and described the sense of defeat that they carried to the bankruptcy court. I thought about the family that finally got a shot at their lifelong dream to launch a new restaurant – and it went belly-up. The young and very tired woman who described how she finally managed to leave her abusive ex-husband, but now she was alone with a pack of small children and a pile of bills. The elderly couple who had cashed out everything they owned and then went into debt to bail out their son and put him through rehab again and again.

So she joined the commission, and joined what turned out to be a long drawn-out battle with the big banks and their lobbyists. And eventually, they lost the battle.

On good days, I reminded myself that our fight to protect America’s middle class had held off the banking industry for nearly a decade. From the day President Clinton appointed Mike Synar to launch the National Bankruptcy Review Commission to the final passage of the bill, millions of families had gotten some relief from their debts. On bad days, I admitted that right from the beginning, the game was so rigged that working families never had a fighting chance. The big banks would eventually win. They simply had too much power….

David really did get the slingshot shoved down his throat sideways. It hurt then, and it still hurts now.

The bankruptcy wars changed me forever. Even before this grinding battle, I had begun to understand the terrible squeeze on the middle class. But it was this fight that showed me how badly the playing field was tilted and taught me that the squeeze wasn’t accidental.

We had lost the bankruptcy battle, but this war wasn’t over. People were getting pounded, debts were mounting, and the squeeze was getting more intense than ever.

Then came the mortgage crisis. To give you a hint on how Elizabeth Warren feels about the bank bailout, she names that chapter “Bailing Out the Wrong People.” During that time, she served on a Congressional Oversight Panel, though it was a panel without a lot of power. She summarizes it this way:

Our oversight of the bailout wasn’t perfect, not by any stretch. But I saw what was possible. We took an obscure little panel that could have disappeared without a trace and worked hard to become the eyes and ears and voice for a lot of people who had been cut out of the system. And every now and again we landed a blow for the people who were getting pounded by the economic crash.

That felt good. It felt really good.

Next came the battle to establish a Consumer Protection Agency. She won this battle, though she made enough banking enemies that she could not be confirmed as its permanent director.

And she doesn’t boast about the win:

But in the end, I think most of the credit for this win goes to the American people. Sometimes they were organized – through nonprofit groups and unions and coalitions. Sometimes they were a little disorganized, as single voices burst forth in funny videos and online blogs and old-fashioned letters to the editor. But organized or not, the people made themselves heard.

In the chapter about getting the Consumer Protection Agency off the ground, she also speaks up for the dedicated government workers she encountered and the wonderful people who wanted to do their bit.

America has faced difficult problems before – and we’ve solved them together. We passed laws to get children out of factories. We set up a system that allowed aging workers to retire with dignity. We built schools so that every child would have a chance for a better life, and we created a network of highway and mass transit systems so people could get to work. We built an astonishingly tough military, superb police forces, and squadrons of first-class professional firefighters.

No, the market didn’t build those things: Americans built them. Working through our government, we built them together. And as a consequence, we are all better off.

We can’t bury our heads in the sand and pretend that if “big government” disappears, so will society’s toughest problems. That’s just magical thinking – and it’s also dangerous thinking. Our problems are getting bigger by the day, and we need to develop some hardheaded, realistic responses. Instead of trying to starve government or drown it in the bathtub, we need to tackle our problems head-on, and that will require better government.

After the Consumer Protection Agency was established, she was going to simply go back to teaching at Harvard. But people – ordinary people – asked her to run for the U.S. Senate, asked her to fight for them.

And, against all odds, she won. She has this to say about her victory:

This victory wasn’t mine. That’s not some kind of fake modesty talk – no, that statement is deep-down truth. This victory belonged to all the families who have been chipped away at, squeezed, and hammered. This time, they fought together and won. And now they were sending me to Washington to fight for them and for every hardworking family who just wants a fighting chance to live the American dream.

I’ve quoted extensively from the book, but there’s a lot more if you actually read the book. Elizabeth Warren’s personality comes through, and I find myself just liking this woman. She’s smart, she’s done her research, and, bottom line, she cares about people and got into politics to serve.

warren.senate.gov

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of Argo, by Antonio Mendez and Matt Baglio

Argo

How the CIA and Hollywood Pulled off the Most Audacious Rescue in History

by Antonio Mendez and Matt Baglio
read by Dylan Baker

Blackstone Audio, 2012. 9 ½ hours on 8 compact discs.

I haven’t seen the movie Argo, but was looking for an audiobook, and this one looked interesting. The beginning wasn’t promising, with the author talking about his hobby of painting, before we knew or cared who he was. My son, who’d seen the movie, said it had a much more gripping beginning, with the Iranian embassy being stormed.

However, the story got much better from there. Yes, there was some repetition. Yes, there were some unnecessary descriptions of cool spy things the author got to do in his work with the CIA. But the main story was exciting and gripping, and you were in suspense, even though you knew he must have pulled it off.

The story is set during the 1979 Iranian Hostage Crisis. It tells all about those events, but also about six Americans who escaped the embassy, but couldn’t get out of Iran. They took refuge in the homes of Canadian diplomats, but were in danger all the time of being discovered. The CIA took on the task of trying to get them out.

Antonio Mendez was the one who figured out a plan to get them out safely. In fact, he came up with three possible plans, so that the Americans could decide which one they thought they could most easily pull off. All along, he was hoping they’d choose the Hollywood option.

With the help of Hollywood insiders (who helped the CIA with make-up), Mendez set up a film company, complete with an office and receptionist. They put ads for the fake film they were going to make, “Argo,” in industry newsletters, and even had a script and concept art. Then the job was to go to Iran, brief the six Americans, and bring them out as a team scouting locations for the film.

The story is fascinating, full of details about spy work that you might not have guessed were important. There’s plenty of suspense, even though you can guess that the ending will be happy.

Definitely a good choice for getting my mind off traffic.

BlackstoneAudio.com

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Source: This review is based on a library audiobook from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of Humans of New York, by Brandon Stanton

Humans of New York

by Brandon Stanton

St. Martin’s Press, New York, 2013.
Starred Review

This book is completely fascinating and delightful. I sat down to just glance through it — and ended up reading the whole thing.

Brandon Stanton explains the process that got him started writing the blog, Humans of New York. He lost his job as a bond trader, and I like his explanation of why he turned to photography:

I lost my trading job that July and immediately decided I wanted to be a photographer. I had enjoyed my time as a trader. The job was challenging and stimulating. And I’d obsessed over markets in the same way that I’d later obsess over photography. But the end goal of trading was always money. Two years of my life were spent obsessing over money, and in the end I had nothing to show for it. I wanted to spend the next phase of my life doing work that I valued as much as the reward. Photography seemed like an obvious choice. Like I said, it felt like a treasure hunt. And that seemed like a pretty good way to spend my time.

He began taking photos in Chicago and Pittsburgh. His plan was to do a photo tour through several major American cities. Here’s how things developed:

I repeated the process in Philadelphia. I spent my days combing the streets for interesting photographs, and each night I deposited the photos in a Facebook album. I named this album “Bricks and Flags.” My photos remained similar to those I’d taken in Chicago and Pittsburgh, but with one notable exception. I was starting to take more and more pictures of people. I’d begun to move beyond candid shots, and was actually stopping strangers on the street. The resulting portraits seemed to be the most compelling of my photographs, so I focused more energy on seeking them out.

I arrived in New York in early August. I planned to spend a week in the city before hopping on a plane for the West Coast, but I ended up staying for the rest of the summer. I remember the moment my bus emerged from the Lincoln Tunnel and I saw the city for the first time. The sidewalks were covered with people. The buildings were impressive, but what struck me most were the people. There were tons of them. And they all seemed to be in a hurry. That night, I created a photo album for my New York photos. I called it “Humans of New York.”

This book is full of those photos, from three years of work on the streets of New York. They are wonderful and amazing. Some just say where they were taken, but at least half have captions from what the person said. These add so much. And the people! Flamboyant, quiet, old, young, the eye of Brandon Stanton’s camera shows you that people are beautiful.

A few of the captions that made me smile:

“I look like God. Don’t I?”

(This picture is of an old man in a wheelchair whose face looks exactly like the face of God as painted on the Sistine Chapel.)

I love the one of a man with three dogs on leashes smiling at a boy on a leash, which is held by his father. The caption reads, “I saw them walking on two opposite ends of the plaza, and started praying that they’d end up in the same place.”

Another one is a side view of two boys with Mohawks. One boy is taller, and has a bigger Mohawk. The caption says, “One day you will grow to be like me.”

But the one that made me laugh out loud and show my son was a picture of a man facing away from the camera with a giant costume head of Elmo slung over his shoulder in a net bag, with more parts of the costume coming out the top. The caption says, “Something horrible has happened to Elmo.”

Those are some of the funny and clever ones. The majority, though are simply beautiful. Beautiful, striking, and fundamentally human.

This book takes less than an hour to read, but you will think about it for much, much longer.

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of Paris, My Sweet, by Amy Thomas

Paris, My Sweet

A Year in the City of Light (and Dark Chocolate)

by Amy Thomas

Sourcebooks, 2012. 280 pages.
Starred Review

In 2008, Amy Thomas had a wonderful week’s vacation in Paris. Little did she know that would lead to bigger things.

That trip was the first time I was in Paris during the summer, and it was absolutely amazing. I loved that it was light out until after 10:00 p.m., giving me several extra hours to roam back-alley streets and sit by the Seine. I was excited to discover new neighborhoods like Bercy and Canal Saint-Martin and new “bistronomy” restaurants like Le Verre Volé and Le Comptoir du Relais. I got sucked into the semi-annual sales, les soldes, and hooked on Vélib’s, the public bike-sharing system.

And then there were all the chocolatiers.

By that time, I was just as obsessed with sweets as I was Paris. I had a column in Metro newspaper called “Sweet Freak” and a blog by the same name. I knew every bakery, dessert bar, gelateria, tea salon, and chocolatier in New York City. When I traveled, I built my itinerary around a town’s must-visit sweet spots.

So naturally during that week in Paris, I researched the city’s best chocolatiers, mapped out a circuit, and then Vélib’ed between eight of them. It was exhilarating and exhausting, not to mention decadent. It was a chocoholic’s dream ride. I wrote about my Tour du Chocolat for the New York Times, and it went on to become a top-ten travel story for the year. As I was secretly plotting a way to spend more time eating chocolate in Paris, the in-house recruiter of the ad agency where I worked casually walked into my office one day and asked if I wanted to move to Paris. I was getting transferred to write copy for the iconic fashion label Louis Vuitton. It all happened so suddenly, and seemed so magical, that I had to ask: was Paris my destiny or sheer force of will?

I guess it goes to show that you just never know where life will take you. You search for answers. You wonder what it all means. You stumble, and you soar. And, if you’re lucky, you make it to Paris for a while. Here’s what happened when I did.

Now, I love Paris. And I still remember exactly the taste of the caramels we bought at a chocolate shop there. So I was predisposed to love this book, and I did.

Amy Thomas took a sweet-lovers approach to Paris and to writing this book. Each chapter focuses on a different delicious concoction that can be found in Paris. She ends up each chapter telling where you can get them in Paris, but also where you can get something similar in New York City. She uses her knowledge of sweets in New York City to good effect, and then discovers the places in Paris.

Readers of this book now have a fabulous excuse to go back to Paris. I’ve got to try some of these! One thing’s for sure. The next time I go to Paris or New York City, I’m going to bring this book — or at least the addresses from it.

godiloveparis.blogspot.com
sourcebooks.com

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Source: This review is based on my own copy, which I got at an ALA conference and had signed by the author.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of The Nazi Hunters, by Neal Bascomb

The Nazi Hunters

How a Team of Spies and Survivors Captured the World’s Most Notorious Nazi

by Neal Bascomb

Arthur A. Levine Books (Scholastic), 2013. 242 pages.
Starred Review
2014 YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award Winner

Here’s a work of nonfiction that reads like a thriller. I didn’t realize until I read the note about the author at the back that this book was based on the author’s book for adults, Hunting Eichmann. It doesn’t read like an abridgement.

Because of the nature of the material, this is a book for teens and preteens, rather than children. But anyone who enjoys a good spy novel will enjoy this true-life tale.

The book sets the stage with what happened in World War II. It looks at the particular, focusing on the story of a young man, Zeev Sapir, in Hungary. Zeev later testified at Eichmann’s trial. The book explains the four phases of Eichmann’s plan: Isolate the Jews, secure Jewish wealth, move the Jews to ghettos, and finally, transport them to camps. His job was to get them to the camps, and he didn’t claim responsibility for what happened to them there.

The first chapter briefly explains Eichmann’s rise to power and his escape from Germany at the end of the war. The rest of the book focuses on how he was discovered in Argentina by Israeli Secret Service, and the elaborate plan they needed to be able to abduct him, bring him to Israel, and put him on trial.

I was struck by the sheer number of those involved who had lost family members in the Holocaust. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but the details as mentioned in this book brought it home to me.

I like the way the book explains the importance of the trial of Adolf Eichmann:

The Eichmann trial was almost more important in the field of education than in that of justice. David Ben-Gurion achieved his ambition: The trial educated the Israeli public, particularly the young, about the true nature of the Holocaust. And, after sixteen years of silence, it allowed survivors to openly share their experiences.

In the rest of the world, the intense media coverage and the wave of Eichmann biographies and fantastic accounts of his capture rooted the Holocaust in the collective cultural consciousness. The Shoah, as it was also known, was not to be forgotten, and an outpouring of survivor memoirs, scholarly works, plays, novels, documentaries, paintings, museum exhibits, and films followed in the wake of the trial and still continues today. This consciousness, in Israel and throughout the world, is the enduring legacy of the operation to capture Adolf Eichmann.

The book is full of photographs all along the way, including pictures of important documents, such as the captain’s logbook for the El Al flight out of Argentina and Eichmann’s Red Cross passport. This reminds the reader, all the way through, that these exciting events actually took place.

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on an advance review copy I got at an ALA conference.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.