wahistorian's Reviews (506)

I’d be curious to know if anyone else sees in Sawyer Grimes a contemporary Holden Caulfield (in west Texas, with murders and superheroes). Jones puts the reader at the heart of teen logic, which has more to do with Sawyer’s need to redeem himself than with saving all his friends’ families from the golem Manny that he and his friends have unleashed. Read the acknowledgments, too.

David Quammen published this fascinating, terrifying book a decade ago when the world had already fairly recently grappled with AIDS, Hong Kong flu, SARS, H1N1, Legionnaire’s diseases, Ebola, and Marburg, among others. All these viruses were zoonotic—that is, they emerged from animals into humans—and Quammen’s book sets out to distill the best scientific thought on how these little buggers adapt and change to successfully use the human body as a place to grow and mutate to sustain their survival. Quammen traces the biological detective work conducted on the part of epidemiologists and others to identify these zoonoses and understand the ways in which they jump from bats or rodents or chimps into humans. Parts of the book are like a disease-based travelogue, in which he visits the world’s scariest bat caves and gorilla nests to follow the science. He has an admirable knack of making complex science intelligible and even interesting. He wrote this book long before the current coronavirus, but he predicted there would be more. He speculates that human beings themselves constitute an outbreak, having doubled our population since 1969 and adding 1B every year since then (496). The sheer size of the human population means we are pushing into formerly unspoiled areas, coming into more and more intense contact with the animals that live there, changing the climate, and exhausting resources. But his goal is not to frighten the reader, but to point out that only human behavior can defend against the next mindless pandemic. “Individual effort, individual discernment, individual choice can have huge effects in averting the catastrophes that might otherwise sweep through a herd,” he writes (519). Our miserable bungling of the COVID-19 crisis, however, points to the ways in which self-preservation can fail. As I write this, since the start of the pandemic in early 2020, 96M cases have been diagnosed globally, with 1M dead (and those are the reported cases and deaths).

Three stars mostly because others have turned this into a pretty good scary movie. This account of the Lutz family’s 28 days in the Long Island murder house is oddly matter-of-fact and sometimes even unintentionally funny, despite giant pig “friends” with glowing eyes, hooded figures, a room full of winter flies, inexplicable illnesses, and windows that open and close by themselves. Father Mancuso, a family friend and reluctant exorcist, provides the comedy by his constant avoidance of the Lutzes in their hour of need. Anson really doesn’t provide any easy answers for the reader and in the end the book sort of becomes one damned thing after another. The end.

Another matter-of-fact apocalyptic novel from John Wyndham. I didn’t enjoy this nearly as much as some of his others, partly because of the assumption that in a mass catastrophe everyone immediately looks out for him- or herself.

I can’t argue with anything Crispin writes here about the damage men inflict; it’s her lack of solutions that made me put the book down. No more other-izing people without getting to the heart of the matter, which is that damaged people usually cause more harm to others.

Agatha Christie has given in to conspiracy theories in ‘The Big Four,’ pitting Hercule Poirot against a cabal of four evil geniuses out to control the world. “These four are banded together to destroy the existing social order,” Poirot deduces, “and to replace it with an anarchy in which they would reign as dictators” (160). The brilliant French physicist has developed a world-busting weapon, thanks to the American’s unlimited wealth. The stereotypical “Chinamen” contributes his criminal mind. And Number Four? He is a master of disguises who can be anywhere without anyone noticing. The only obstacle to their world domination is the little Belgian. The first half of the book consists of numerous confusing plots designed to get him out of the way, all of which fail, of course. When Poirot proactively takes matters into his own hands, the book finally comes together. Poor Hastings is always a step behind Poirot’s little grey cells, and he ends up in perils as dire as Pauline’s, from which his partner always rescues him. There are several criminal lairs, many devious Chinese, and one Russian noblewoman duped by the Four. Nevertheless, Hastings remains ever-skeptical of the detective’s abilities: “Poirot’s vanity was of the case-hardened variety that could withstand all attacks,” he observes. “But I might have known it was impossible to diminish Hercule Poirot’s enthusiasm for his own methods” (189). Wade through the first half to get to the more cohesive and fun second half.

‘Chinatown’ started with a passion for Hollywood, but also a true desire to uncover its roots in corruption and the despoiling of a landscape never meant to support the paradise we imposed on it. Scriptwriter Robert Towne obsessively researched Los Angeles to create this legendary movie; the result was a tangle of interlocking storylines—the politics of water, agriculture, incest, scheming land barons and their victims—that it took Director Roman Polanski to tame. Sam Wasson has done an extraordinary job making sense of his own set of messy stories behind the film, managing to convey the miracle that movie-making is sometimes. He explores the strong friendships among the men behind the movie: Robert Towne, Robert Evans, Jack Nicholson, and (sometimes) Roman Polanski. He doesn’t shy away from their excesses and abuses—neither condoning nor decrying them—but at the same time their real affection for one another and for the work still comes through. Pity the women around them, however; in describing the name-calling, harassment, divorces, infidelity, pedophilia (in Polanski’s case), Wasson makes it clear that women in Hollywood were at a distinct disadvantage. A fascinating look at one important film of the 1970s and the fraught creative process that produced it.

A quick read, but full of insight into Elizabeth II, her reign, her family, and the context in which she reigned. Full of rich insight and revealing stories, Lacey’s book conveys an insider’s sense of what made the Queen unique, without turning to hagiography. I was fascinated by the knowledge that one photo of baby Elizabeth in yellow on the cover of ‘Time’ magazine convinced parents all around the world that yellow is an acceptable color for infants (3). Lacey covers the highs and lows, and does not hesitate to gently criticize Elizabeth’s more ornery actions. An excellent short intro to the recently ended reign of Elizabeth II.

What an expert writer P. D. James was! Her books are often a challenge in the beginning, with so many characters to keep straight, all seemingly tangentially connected to the crime. But then she slowly weaves everything together under Adam Dalgleish’s painstaking gaze and, in the end, he has prepared the way for justice. In this case, the setting is Hoggatt’s, the premier forensic laboratory outside London, with its many highly educated and intense doctors, biologists, and other specialists and their many peccadilloes. When one of their number is murdered, there are as many reasons to hate him as there are staff members, and Dalgleish and his assistant Massingham have to separate truth from lies and what the lies are covering up. James’s clever idea to set a murder inside a forensic laboratory gives her plenty of opportunity to write about biological evidence, and she does a nice job of exploring where science fits in detection. Aspiring scientist Brenda Pridmore explained what she learned from lab director Dr. Howarth: If scientists’ experiment fail, he explained, “the scientists have to find another theory to fit the facts… With science, there’s this exciting paradox, that disillusionment needn’t be defeat” (223). But in the end it is intuition and careful induction on Dalgleish’s part that reveal the crime.