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A Tramp Abroad

by Mark Twain, 1880

Delightful tramp through Germany, Switzerland, and Italy with Mark Twain and his mysterious agent, Mr. Harris, in the late 1800’s; funny, beautiful, and educational. The landscapes in Germany and Switzerland are beautiful, except there seem to be some villages in Switzerland that are full of manure (walking through “fertilizer juice.” His descriptions of the countryside make me long to see Europe, but before cars, planes, industrialism, and terrible wars. He is hilarious! He comes up with preposterous scientific theories that he tries to get real scientists to publish. He boils a thermometer and comes up with elevations of 200,000 feet. He sees that the moon never rises above a certain mountain so proposes the moon never goes higher than 12,000 feet. He describes mountain climbing attempts; one by telescope and another, which I think is a simple walk of less than a day, but with him it’s a huge undertaking involving about 17 guides, 22 bartenders, 18 chaplains, miles of rope, ladders, umbrellas, mules, and on and on. They get lost almost immediately and it takes them 7 days to get to the hotel, with many a mishap/disaster along the way. He learns that glaciers move so decides to go back down a mountain on a glacier, and waits, and waits, and waits, checking the time-tables, etc.

Throughout the book, he retells legends and stories from old and he includes illustrations on almost every page. A few of the drawings are his and they are hilarious. At the end, he talks about wanting to eat American food again and drink American coffee. Sounds like European food and coffee were awful back in the 1800’s. He makes a list of the meal he has requested once he arrives in New York City and it includes EVERY food and drink he’s missed. I LOVED this book, and I LOVE Mark Twain.

(more…) “A Tramp Abroad”

Rogue Male

by Geoffrey Household, 1939

Enthralling short novel about a talented spy who gets caught seeing if it would be possible for him to assassinate an evil dictator. He escapes after a fall from a cliff, and the suspense begins. He is badly injured but makes his way out of this country, which may be Poland, and into the English countryside with his adversary hot on his heels. A very entertaining novel. We do not know his name but the spy is very likable, ingenious, talented, smart; it’s captivating to be with him as he escapes, hides, escapes again, and eventually conquers his foe. It was a recommendation from the ‘book-a-day’ calendar Christie gave me. Here are just a few of the quotes I liked:

(more…) “Rogue Male”

Journeys of a Lifetime

500 of the World’s Greatest Trips, National Geographic, Second Edition, 2018

Beautiful “coffee-table” book describing 500 trips by water, road, rail, foot, culture, gourmet, action, flight, or following historical footsteps. I liked the following:

  • Utah: Driving Route 12 from Bryce Canyon to Capitol Reef, highlight is hiking slot canyons and below red rock spires on the 1.3 mile Navajo Trail in Bryce Canyon. It’s 140 miles and takes about 5 hours to drive this route.
  • California: Driving Pacific Coast Highway 1 through Big Sur. Best to go from south to north, starting at San Simeon and the Hearst Castle north to Carmel-by-the-Sea and Monterrey. Highlights are picnic at Ragged Point overlook, 15 miles north of San Simeon – the view has been called “the most breathtaking coastal vista in America.” Also, highlights include hiking Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park and strolling the beach at Carmel.
  • Colonial Virginia: Williamsburg and Jamestowne
  • Illinois: Frank Lloyd Wright in Oak Park bicycle tour–tour by bike as many as 27 houses and 60 other architecturally significant buildings. Website: flwright.org/wrightplus
  • Pennsylvania Amish Country
  • England’s Gardens – “Come in June and smell the roses.” Highlights include a maze in Hampton Court; Polesden Lacey’s walled rose garden at Great Bookham, near Dorking; Sheffield Park; the gardens at Sissinghurst; and Hever Castle.

The page describing Belize’s barrier reef warns of the dangerous depths involved in diving the Blue Hole, but they mistakenly call it ‘Blue Lagoon.’ Makes me wonder how many other typos there might be in the book. It’s a fun book, though.

The Road to Little Dribbling

by Bill Bryson, 2015

This book is a hilarious trip through England with the funniest writer alive, Bill Bryson. What a joy! What a great escape! It’s laugh-out-loud funny on every page. I didn’t realize that Wayne would be interested in reading this book, but he was. And what’s more, he’d like to spend a month in England. We’ll go when Jojo dies and drown our sorrows walking about the English countryside. That is what Bill Bryson does; he takes lots of long, long walks, describing the people and places he sees along the way, his likes and dislikes. Often times, he complains – mostly about how much litter there is and how the government’s austerity measures are ruining England – but mostly he describes the beauty of the countryside, the warmth of the pubs, the quaintness of the villages. There is one part, however, where he lost Wayne’s respect; he describes seeing a little boy fall in the river while standing on a bridge above him. He shouts from the bridge above and this alerts the boy’s mother who then saves him in the nick of time. He tells someone the story at lunch and the person credited the miracle to God. Bill Bryson ends the story with this:

I nodded and didn’t say anything, but thought: “Then why did He push him in?”

from page 354

That’s the line that lost Wayne. Wayne says, “Atheism is the spiritual affliction of intellectuals.”

(more…) “The Road to Little Dribbling”

100 Dives of a Lifetime

National Geographic, 2019

Beautiful “coffee table” book listing the 100 best dives in the world. Definitely for scuba diving, not snorkeling–deep and full of sharks. The book is divided into dives for beginners, intermediate, and advanced & all-levels. Here are notable dives that maybe we could do?

  1. South Water Caye in Belize
  2. Something Special in Bonaire
  3. Cuba – Los Jardines de la Reina (if you can get there, this is diving as the Caribbean used to be)
  4. Fiji – Great Astrolabe Reef
  5. Greece – Chios Island (under the radar Greek Island)
  6. Honduras – Mary’s Place
  7. Mexico – Afuera (whale sharks)
  8. Kona,Hawaii (they talk about diving at night with the manta rays)

At the end, they have a section called “Diver Conservation” which has 7 steps we can take to help conserve the ocean:

  1. Vote
  2. Support science
  3. Watch what you eat
  4. Use sunscreen smarts. “Every year, about 14,00 tons of sunscreen find its way into the sea. (Even if you aren’t swimming, the toxins still go down the drain.)”
  5. Let your tourism dollars do the talking.
  6. Look but don’t touch.
  7. Remember that plastic is not so fantastic.

Their Eyes Were Watching God

by Zora Neale Hurston, 1937

This book was our last book selection for the Old Town Library Book Club for 2019-2020. Mandy selected it because it was one of the Great American Read 100 best books. It’s a short book and wasn’t about what I thought it was going to be about. It’s about a beautiful black woman (Janie) in early 1900s Florida who finally finds the love of her life (Tea Cake) after being unhappily married twice. She is about 10 years older than Tea Cake but they love each other madly. They work hard, love hard, and play hard mostly in the Everglades by Lake Okeechobee. When a hurricane hits, they have to outrun the lake. When they are resting, Janie spies a piece of roofing that she decides would protect Tea Cake. She lifts it up and the wind carries her into the water where a mad dog is about to bite her. Tea Cake saves her but is bitten on the cheek by the mad dog in the process. Three weeks later, they are back at home and Tea Cake is starting to act strangely. Janie calls the doctor. The doctor says it’s too late, they could have given him serum and saved him three weeks ago but now it’s too late. He advises Janie to stay away from him and protect herself. Janie ends up having to shoot him in self-defense when he tries to kill her. She is put on trial for murder and all the black folks from the area are against her. She tells her story and the judge and jury proclaim her innocence. She had to kill the love of her life in self-defense. What an interesting book! The dialect is hard to read but it is authentic. Here’s an example: ‘”Ah’d rather be dead than for Jody tuh think Ah’d hurt him,” she sobbed to Pheoby.’

I expected another book describing the evils of racism and Jim Crow but there wasn’t any of that until almost the very end and that only a mild taste – some white men forcing Tea Cake to help bury the dead after the hurricane. There are almost no white people at all in the book and those that are presented are good and kind. The town Janie and her 2nd husband, Jody, lived in, called Eatonville, is an ‘incorporated black town’ in Florida, inhabited and run solely by African Americans. This is a real town and, in fact, the town in which Zora Neale grew up. Very interesting, slice-of-life, romance.

(more…) “Their Eyes Were Watching God”

The Lake House

by Kate Morton, 2015

Loved this book! Suggested by Christie. Set in Cornwall, England, in WWI, WWII, and modern days (2003). Wonderful setting – a beautiful lake house in Cornwall, near the sea. Interesting characters: a spinster mystery writer and her sisters and mother and father, and a precious baby brother who disappears and is never found. After 70 years, a young detective, Sadie Sparrow, reopens the case and by doing so, dark secrets are divulged which end up being simple misunderstandings and many, many questions are answered and healing and happiness in the end. Love the setting – I want to go to Cornwall! Love the characters-at first I thought there would be so many that I wouldn’t be able to remember who is who, but you end up knowing each character deeply! Loved the mystery-so many possibilities but it ends up being the best one. Loved the ending – Everyone lives happily ever after. Great book!

Also touches on shell shock and its aftermath.

I liked this line near the beginning of the book: “Her father had once said that the poor might suffer poverty, but the rich had to contend with uselessness, and there was nothing like idleness to eat away at a person’s soul.”

And along those same lines: “‘My father, Mrs. deShiel, has seen, as have I, what becomes of bored, privileged men who’ve been spared the effort of wage earning. I don’t plan to spend my days sitting around looking for ways to fill the stretch of time. I want to help people. I intend to be useful.”

The Complete Guide to Fasting

by Jason Fung, MD, with Jimmy Moore

Adam and Danette recommended a documentary about fasting that was by the same author. We weren’t able to get it from the library but the book was available, so that is why I read it. It is causing a paradigm shift for me because I always thought going on a “starvation” diet would cause your metabolism to drop and set you up for a lifetime of gaining weight despite hardly eating anything. Well, it turns out low-calorie diets do just that – but fasting actually raises your metabolism. Fasting also lowers your blood sugar and prevents Type 2 diabetes, it cleans out dead or sick cells (autophagy) and could prevent cancer and Alzheimer’s. Learned so much from this book! Thanks, Adam and Danette! What I’ve decided:

  1. I need to do a 12-hour fast every day, which means no more snacking after dinner;
  2. We need to try and eat our biggest meal at noon rather than evening. There was a study done comparing women who ate 1400 calories/day but one group ate their big meal at noon and another group ate it at night. The group who ate it at night lost very little weight. The group that ate their big meal at noon lost a lot of weight.
  3. Eat only at the table. Stop eating in front of the TV after dinner.
(more…) “The Complete Guide to Fasting”

Just Mercy

by Bryan Stevenson, 2014

Excellent book! I’m not sure where I heard about it but I’m so glad I read it. Bryan Stevenson is a lawyer who started the Equal Justice Initiative. We needed him and, unfortunately, we still do. He works tirelessly to free innocent men from death row, to end the death penalty for children, and for fair sentencing. The main story in this book is the story of Walter McMillian, who was an innocent, hard-working black man, who was wrongly accused of murdering a white woman in Monroeville, Alabama, by a corrupt white sheriff and detectives completely fabricated a story just to get a conviction and bribed people to lie in court, and sentenced him to death. He was on death row for 6 years. It took 6 years for Bryan to clear his name, even after the main witness swore in a new trial that everything he said in the first trial was a lie. Unbelievable how these southern white men can be so dishonest, despicable, hateful, racist, and feel no qualms about condemning a black man for a crime he didn’t commit.

All the racists need to die, and if they raised their children to be racist, they need to die also. But Bryan Stevenson is not an angry black man; he is so calm, so loving, so respectful, so hopeful, so humble. At the end of the book, he thanks those he helped: “I want to thank the hundreds of accused, convicted, and imprisoned men, women, and children with whom I have worked and who have taught me so much about hope, justice, and mercy.”

Loved this book and love this man. God bless him richly. He is doing God’s work in an extremely dark part of our world.

(more…) “Just Mercy”

The Devil in the White City

by Erik Larson, 2003

Heard this book mentioned by Karen, our Old Town Library Book Club leader. True story about the building of the World’s Columbian Exposition, a world’s fair, in Chicago in 1893, and a psychopathic serial killer, H. H. Holmes. The fair is completed against all odds: Architects not completing their designs on time; Extreme cold, snow, wind, rain; Labor unrest; Deaths and illness, etc. The fair opens and is awe-inspiring. It included the first Ferris Wheel, designed by George W. G. Ferris in an attempt to “out-Eiffel” the Eiffel Tower of the Paris World’s Fair. His design was approved, finally, after his third submission of the idea: “…this wheel would carry thirty-six cars, each about the size of a Pullman, each holding sixty people and equipped with its own lunch counter, and how when filled to capacity the wheel would propel 2,160 people at a time three hundred feet into the sky over Jackson Park, a bit higher than the crown of the now six-year-old statue of Liberty.” Miraculously, it was built and it worked and was safe and withstood extremely high winds. The entire fair was built in an amazingly short period of time. The main architect and leader, Daniel Hudson Burnham, should be given most of the credit. He was the one who led the charge and coordinated all of the thousands of details to pull off the building of this amazing world’s fair. The story of how he accomplished this is expertly told by Erik Larson.

At the same time, an extremely evil man, Herman Webster Mudgett, begins his grisly murders. He charms young women into trusting him, falling in love with him, and then they disappear. He is a doctor by training and goes by the name of H. H. Holmes. He builds an ugly hotel near the World’s Fair, full of gas pipes, a vault, and strange rooms. He only allows single women to stay there. Many disappear without a trace. No investigations are ever conducted. He lies convincingly about everything. He never paid the workers who built the hotel. He just fired them and hired new ones, so no one ever got the full drift of what he was doing. It isn’t until Fidelity Mutual Life Insurance Company investigates the suspicious death of a policy holder, along with the talented detective-work of Frank Geyer, that this monster is finally brought to justice and executed in May of 1896. They don’t know how many people he murdered; it could number in the hundreds. When they investigated the cellar of the hotel in Chicago, they found:

…a vat of acid with eight ribs and part of a skull settled at the bottom; mounds of quicklime; a large kiln; a dissection table stained with what seemed to be blood. They found surgical tools and charred high-heeled shoes.

And more bones:

Eighteen ribs from the torso of a child.

Several vertebrae.

A bone from a foot.

One shoulder blade.

One hip socket.

Articles of clothing emerged from walls and from pits of ash and quicklime, including a girl’s dress and bloodstained overalls. Human hair clotted a stovepipe. The searchers unearthed two buried vaults full of quicklime and human remains.

When he is hung and then buried, they filled his coffin with cement and then inserted his coffin in a double grave filled with cement. His disorder is called antisocial personality disorder.

Very interesting book about urban life in the late 1800s. Loved the details about the building of the fair. Loved the architects and their personal stories. The murderer’s story was shocking; that someone so evil could exist and could get away with murder for so long.

Long Bright River

by Liz Moore, 2020

Page-turner! So readable! Enthralling characters: 2 sisters; one a cop with a 4-year old son, the other a heroin addict. Set in Philadelphia. The sisters’ mother was a heroin addict, too, and died of an overdose. The mystery: Who is murdering young heroin addicts? Micky (the cop sister) hasn’t seen Kacey (the heroin addict) in a month and is deathly afraid she is a victim of murder.

There are four male cops that add to the mystery. One is a former boyfriend and the father of Micky’s 4-year old son (by her sister, Kacey!) One is Micky’s former partner, Truman, who seems like a truly good guy, but is he? (Yes, it turns out, he is, thank God!) One is a sergeant and you just don’t know if he’s good or bad. The last one, and the one who ends up the murderer, is a rookie cop who was Micky’s partner for a very short time.

The characters, the setting, the mystery, the writing – all very good. Not too dark as it could have been. Ends very hopeful, too. Also provides what I hope is true info about babies born addicted–that they are not permanently damaged, but they have a rough start, for sure.

I like the way she writes dialogue: there are no quotation marks:

–All right, Truman, I say. All right, you’re smarter than I am. I get it.

Then Truman turns serious.

–Have you reported her missing yet? says Truman.

–No, I say.

–Why not?

from page 128

The Warmth of Other Suns

by Isabel Wilkerson, 2010

Fantastic book! Heard about it from Karen, the leader of the Old Town Library Book Club, during our discussion of American Prison. It’s long (550 pages) but gripping and eye-opening. We learn about ‘America’s great migration’ through the true stories of 3 black people who left (really, escaped) the South (Ida Mae from Mississipi in the 1930s, George from Florida in the 1940s, and Robert from Louisiana in the 1950s) and made it to Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles respectively. Their reasons for leaving the South were mainly to get away from the oppressive Jim Crow laws and the threat of death, brutality, oppression everywhere they turned. She describes the injustices they went through and it paints a despicable picture of the American South. From 1870 to 1970 they re-enslaved the African-American and the violence and evil they perpetrated against them is deplorable. God have mercy on us and forgive us.

Unfortunately, what they found after they managed to get out of the South was not much better – although they could sit anywhere and there were no blatant segregation laws, they were kept at the very bottom by discrimination in employment, housing, education, etc. It wasn’t until President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964 that things slowly began to change. We’re still needing to change, though, as seen lately by what happened to George Floyd. What a terrible thing we’ve wrought with our evilness.

This book is so well-written, it reads like a novel, as she takes you along with Ida Mae, George, and Bob and tells their life stories. Loved this book!

(more…) “The Warmth of Other Suns”

Golf’s Sacred Journey

Seven Days at the Links of Utopia

by David L. Cook, PhD, 2006

Adam recommended the movie, “Links of Utopia,” as being very, very good. I ordered it via Prospector at the Library but didn’t pick it up before they closed for Covid-19. Then, when they reopened the Library, again I didn’t pick it up in time and they returned it to the other library from which it came – no more “Prospector” items due to the virus. So, I got the book instead and read it. It is set in the Hill Country of Texas and is based on a real place called Utopia where there is a little golf course. A down and out young golfer ends up there and encounters Johnny, the owner of the golf course. Johnny says he can change his life in 7 days. He does. The young man goes from being depressed, anxious, miserable, overwrought, stressed to calm, peaceful, giving, loving, powerful. All through coming to Christ and realizing how much he is loved – he has the security and significance he needs and is freed to live in the peace and strength that comes from knowing that.

I would really like to see the movie. The way he described the town of Utopia, the Hill Country of Texas, and “the cypress-lined Sabinal River” sound beautiful. Maybe someday Wayne and I can take a road trip there.

(more…) “Golf’s Sacred Journey”

Becoming

by Michelle Obama, 2018

Wonderful book by and about Michelle Obama, her growing up years in the South Side of Chicago, her college years at Princeton and Harvard Law School, her meeting and falling in love with Barack Obama when he was a summer intern at the law firm where she worked, her marriage to him in October of 1992, their difficulty conceiving and finally having 2 precious girls via IVF (Malia in 1998 and Sasha in 2001), Barack’s desire to run for Illinois State Senate, then U.S. Senate, then President – she never wanted him to have a life in politics but he wanted to change the world and did; then their 8 years in the White House, and lastly, the traumatic and painful 2016 election and turning over the White House to Donald Trump. A very personal and intimate journey into the life of an extraordinary woman. Thank you, Michelle Obama, for writing this book.

(more…) “Becoming”

The Story of More

by Hope Jahren, 2020

Book about climate change by the author of Lab Girl. Excellent! No BS, just the facts, but she’s funny and honest, and ‘hope’-ful. Love this scientist-author. She’s a gift. Her thesis is that the developed countries use more than they need of everything, resulting in carbon dioxide output that is causing most of the problem. If we’d stop using so much of everything, and wasting so much of it, we’d find our world in a lot better shape, and we’d be happier, too.

(more…) “The Story of More”

Nine Coaches Waiting

by Mary Stewart, 1958

Wonderful book! Suspense, mystery, interesting characters and setting. Loved it! Set in the forest of France near Geneva, Switzerland, and involving a very wealthy family, the Valmy’s, and their beautiful chateau. A young English girl comes to live there and be the governess of 9 year-old Philippe, the rightful heir to the estate. But soon after her arrival, accidents start to happen that threaten the life of Philippe: a shot in the woods that barely misses him, a loose post on the balcony where he could have fallen to his death. She ends up rescuing Philippe. They escape in the middle of the night and flee through the forest, a mountain hut, a cave, a secluded meadow, and finally the boathouse of a villa in the town of Thonon. All turns out right in the end: The bad guy (Philippe’s crippled uncle Leon who wanted Chateau Valmy for his own) shoots himself; Linda (the governess) gets to marry Raoul, with whom she has fallen head over heels in love; and Raoul ends up being a good guy, not a bad guy. Fun, fun book full of descriptions of beautiful countryside, charming villages, beautiful gardens and villas and chateaus, and sumptuous food and interiors, along with a very suspenseful story. A great escape! Thank you, Mary Stewart!

American Prison

by Shane Bauer, 2018

This was one of the books for our Old Town Library Book Club. We are going to discuss it tonight via Zoom. Shane Bauer is a reporter for Mother Jones and goes undercover as a guard in a for-profit prison in Louisiana for 4 months in 2014. The company that runs the prison, Correction Corporation of America (CCA) is in the prison business to make money so they only pay their guards $9 an hour to start – this was in 2014. There were some guards that had been there for decades and still only made $9 an hour. They were also always short-staffed so any rehabilitation programs, medical programs, counseling programs were cut completely or virtually non-existent.

I did not like reading this book – this prison was a very dark place. It is filled with drugs, sex, anger, violence, racism, injustice. He recounts many of the conversations word-for-word because he hid a recording device and a camera on himself each day. So, every other chapter is a blow-by-blow of conversations and activities in the prison between himself and inmates, guards, etc. and they make for disgusting reading, especially the sexually threatening conversations.

Every other chapter goes into the history of prisons and they have always been horrible places in America – mainly a way to keep slavery going and get free, mainly black labor, to pick cotton, farm, build roads and railroads. The working conditions were even worse than slavery, if that is possible. Many black men were arrested on trumped up charges just to get them into prison and put them to work. Another example among so many of the horrible injustices brought on by racism and greed in this country.

I hope no one I love is ever in prison. I hope no one I love ever has to work in a prison. My sister worked in our local jail. I now see how awful that must have been. They are the dark, violent places where the ugly side of humanity is front and center.

I believe he wrote this book to close down the for-profit prisons but when Trump was elected, Trump gave them new life. I am not sure what the answer is. I don’t know if public prisons are any better. But I think there must be more done to educate and rehabilitate inmates, giving them job skills and hope for a better life. One of the most depressing parts of this book is about one of the inmates, “Corner Store,” who is released after 20 years. After a year out, he is arrested and sent back to prison for sexually propositioning a 10-year old girl. Just depressing and hopeless. Larry and Dan brought Community Bible Study into the Sterling Prison, or they did until COVID-19. They talked with us once and they shared only good things. They shared how a few of the prisoners started a church and lead the Bible studies and inmates learn how to control their anger. They did share how hard it was for inmates to find quiet time in which to do their lessons. I wonder what Larry and Dan would say after reading this book.

The Tracker

by Tom Brown, Jr. as told to William Jon Watkins, 1978

Adam’s book about Tom Brown, Jr. and how he became the tracker he is. He grew up near the Pine Barrens in New Jersey. He was taught how to track by his best friend’s grandfather, Stalking Wolf. From the age of 6 to 18, he and Rick learn just about everything there is to learn about survival, camping, and stalking and tracking.

Some of the things that stand out:

(more…) “The Tracker”

The Glass Palace

by Amitav Ghosh, 2000

Historical fiction about Burma and India in the late 1800s through mid-1900s. Learn about the royal family of Burma and their ousting by the British, learn about teak harvesting in Burma and rubber plantations in Malaysia. Learn about colonialism through the eyes of those colonized (Indians). Also learn that many Indians left India and its caste system and found much wealth and success in other countries such as Burma where they were free to be whatever their talent, ambition and hard work allowed. I liked this book. I liked how he described Burma pre-British. It sounded so beautiful. The Burmese royal family was sent into exile to Ratnagiri, India, and I like how he described that, too. I guess it has changed, though, because one of the characters in the book travels there later in the 1900s and it is no longer quite so beautiful.

(more…) “The Glass Palace”

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid

by Bill Bryson, 2006

What a hilarious book. I laughed out loud on almost every page. He was born in 1951 in Des Moines, Iowa, and this is a story about growing up there in the 1950s. I LOVED his description of his mom, her horrible cooking, her forgetfulness and spaciness. His dad was the best sports writer in the country, although because he refused to move the family to the east or west coasts, he never became famous. I loved his descriptions of his favorite restaurants, the grand movie theaters, the department stores, candy stores, toys, and his friends. He does not shy away from the ugliness of the 1950s and 1960s, however, and two of the chapters are serious and heartbreaking: Chapter 7, Boom!, in which he details the horrific things we did testing nuclear bombs, especially in the Marshall Islands on March 1, 1954, on the Bikini Atoll, “(a place so delightful that we named a lady’s swimsuit after it).” And our fear of communism and the ugliness that created. He ends that with the story of Guatemala in 1950. They’d finally elected a good man, Jacobo Arbenz, who was going to help the people but United Fruit, an American company who owned most of the farmland in Guatemala, got the American government to underwrite a coup and forced him to flee in 1954. Then the CIA gave the new dictator a list of 70,000 “teachers, doctors, government employees, union organizers, priests–who had supported the reforms in the belief that democracy in Guatemala was a good thing. Thousands of them were never seen again.” So heartbreaking the things we have done throughout history – the injustice, the greed, the pure evil we have done. This chapter was not very funny. You can tell he was and still is angry and disgusted over it.

Another chapter that wasn’t too funny was Chapter 13, The Pubic Years, in which he describes the racism of the 1950s and 1960s. He talks about incidents in Mississippi where white people killed black men for voting and for trying to go to college. And he tells the horrible story of what happened to Emmett Till, a 14 year old black child who was brutally beaten, shot, and dumped in the Tallahatchie River for whistling at a white woman. The men who did this were found not guilty by an all white jury. “The next year, knowing that they could never be retried, the two accused men happily admitted in an interview in Look magazine that they had indeed beaten and killed young Till.” I have so much respect for Mr. Bryson for including this darkness in this otherwise lighthearted and funny, funny book. He touches on the rise of greed, consumerism, and the destruction of the environment and beautiful old buildings. He does not shy away from the ugliness of the 1950s and 1960s. This book is a masterpiece. Thank you, Bill Bryson, for writing it. Thank you for all the laughs but also for not covering up or glossing over the ugliness. You are a genius!