Category Archives: Non-Fiction

02.18.16
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IN A DIFFERNT KEY/THE STORY OF AUTISM

It matters little whether you must know, need to know or simply want to know, IN A DIFFERENT KEY, The Story of Autism ( Crown Publishing 2016) is a remarkably well written and absorbing narrative of  autism. John Donvan and Caren Zucker miss little in brilliantly telling the autism story in a fashion that is uniquely understandable for the layman. It is rare that such a complicated, medical and scientific iteration can be accomplished in a compelling story that reads as a page turning work of non-fiction.

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This is a book of real people, ordinary families that face progress, reversals both good and tragic outcomes. There are heroes and heroines. The work also sheds light on the darker side of mental illness. Even in light of  epic personal tragedy, IN A DIFFERENT KEY  remains hopeful.

Understanding of autism has evolved in light years since the early 20th Century. The “refrigerator mom ” has been debunked. You will read about the remarkable Temple Grandin. The 1988 Academy Award winning movie Rain Man starring Dustin Hoffman that did much to bring autism  into the realm  of greater empathy and general knowledge.  But even the movie had no happy Hollywood ending. There were no miracles and there still are none. When Rain Man ends Raymond still has autism.  Quoting IN A DIFFERENT KEY, It was an ending that spoke a real truth about autism, one that resonated for parents and people with autism: that autism is for always.

A review copy of IN A DIFFERENT KEY, The Story of Autism was provided to me by Blogging for Books.

John Donvan and Caren Zucker are journalists for ABC News.

Visit InADifferentKey.com

02.07.16
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IN A DIFFERENT KEY–The Story of Autism

If you are following me on this post read on, or catch up with Friday’s post here at gordonsgoodreads

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His name was Bernie Rimland, PhD. He had something to say about the terrible misconceptions concerning autism. In 1956 his wife gave birth to an autistic child and Rimland embarked on a mission to disprove the popular concept blaming Mom.  “Rimland’s goal was to produce a document that would examine the refrigerator-mother theory as scientifically as possible.”

” It was not even a close call . As soon as Rimland began testing out a few basic facts about the world’s known population of autistic children, the mother blaming concept completely collapsed. ”

Your heart will break as you read of autistic children institutionalized, some for life. You also read of ordinary mother and father heroes who refused the status-quo.

Blogging for Books  provided gordonsgoodreads with a review copy.

Visit InADifferentkey.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

02.05.16
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They Blamed Mom! The Shame of Early Autism Diagnosis

I am reading IN A DIFFERENT KEY -The Story of Autism by John Donvan and Caren Zucker, Crown Publishing, 2016.

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If you have a family member with Autism or know of cases within your community please get this book now and read along with me. Post your thoughts along the way.  You will need an outlet for some of the shocking things you will learn on your journey through this well written and researched narrative.

An example:

” The verdict: autism was caused by mothers not loving their children enough. ”

I relish reading ensuing pages that bring enlightenment and sunlight to the darkness of the early years of diagnosis.

Look for future posts and of course a summary.  But don’t wait. If you are vested in this subject or simply wish to be among the informed, get this book today!

I received this book from Blogging for Books for review

 

 

 

 

 

 

01.20.16
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DESTINY and POWER/ GEORGE H.W. BUSH/ MASTERFULLY MEACHAM

With high advance praise from historians David McCullough, Doris Kearns Goodwin and Michael  Beschloss one need not say much more in recommending this masterful work by  Jon Meacham.

imgres-2 Destiny and Power,The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush captures the man brilliantly and fairly and secures him a permanent place in American Presidential history.  George Herbert Walker Bush may indeed be  A last of his kind, and Meacham relates clearly and concisely  the depth of that appellation.  More than a biography, Meacham details a period in American and world history through the portal of the Bush Oval Office. The research is impeccable and the access provided Meacham by a very private president and his family is remarkable.

A must read, now even more meaningful with another Bush running for President.

I also recommend  Meacham’s Franklin and Winston an Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship. Search gordonsgoodreads for details.

10.16.15
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WILL BIDEN RUN? / WHAT IT TAKES/RICHARD BEN CRAMER

It is late in the game to suggest you pick up a fine print 1050 page book on American presidential politics. If you do you will read what is likely the best ever written on the subject and you will get a good look into  Joe Biden’s thought process. Richard Ben Cramer’s book What it Takes was published in 1992  and is considered by many the most insightful look at presidential politics ever written.  Cramer recounts the frenzied course of the 1988 Presidential race. His insight into the psyche of Joe Biden is remarkable and his research into Biden’s ascent into the political world is beyond comparison.

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” He was a Biden, he  could do anything….He learned to game it out…..to see himself in the situation to come….to think what he would say…how he would sound…. ( Chapter 19, What It Takes).

If  Richard Ben Cramer were alive today he would be the best  equipped to answer the question, will Biden Run? You see,  Cramer was a journalist not a pundit.  It took 1050 pages to do justice to the subject. He was willing to do the work, not express an opinion. Richard Ben Cramer died in January 2013.  Search gordonsgoodreads for my initial overview of the book.

 

 

 

 

10.14.15
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THE WRIGHT BROTHERS/ DAVID McCULLOUGH

The Wright Brothers narrative is so brilliantly written by historian David McCullough that the reader can imagine sitting in his library listening to his melodious voice tell a wonderful American story. McCullough never disappoints as he brings to life Wilbur and Orville, their sister Katherine and their father Bishop Wright and their early endeavor as builders of bicycles in Dayton, Ohio.  The book is much more than the story of the invention of the airplane, although McCullough misses no detail in that pursuit.

imgres-2 I am an ardent fan of McCullough but must admit I thought, why bother with this book, I know the story of the Wright brothers.  Never doubt McCullough’s ability to tell the whole story, including the U.S. Army Department’s ” flat turn down ” of a request by the Wright Brothers for government support for further testing of their heavier than air Flyer.  They supplied documentation of 105 successful flights made in 1904, but to no avail in moving the American Military bureaucracy. Ironically, the Secretary of War at the time was Ohioan William Howard Taft. The British and the French were excited to consider the Wright’s requests.   So the Wright Brothers and sister Katherine were off to Paris and LeMans astonishing Kings, Queens and cheering throngs with their accomplishment. Their reception was comparable to that afforded conquering heroes with private funding made immediately available.

In 1909, William Howard Taft, now President of the United States presented the Wright brothers gold medals. “I esteem it a great honor and opportunity to present these medals to you as evidence to what you have done. I am so glad-perhaps at a delayed hour-to show that in America it is not true that “a prophet is not without honor save in his own country.”  A touch of irony indeed.

Enjoy!

 

 

 

08.24.15
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THE GUNS OF LAST LIGHT/ THE TRAGIC REALITY OF 1944-1945

The final installment of Rick Atkinson’s WWII trilogy, THE GUNS  OF LAST LIGHT, offers prodigious unsettling detail of the final push to defeat Hitler during the winter of 1944 and the spring of 1945.  The book begins with D-Day  continues through the Normandy hedgerows, the liberation of Paris, Operation Market Garden and the Battle of the Bulge.

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Atkinson’s narrative spares no detail  and his criticisms  of Allied leadership are jaw dropping. In his epic account  of the final months of the war, Atkinson creates no heroes.  His depth of research renders judgement on the good and bad.

American deaths in the winter of 1944 at the Bulge alone totaled 19,276.  In the final year of the  campaign of 135, 576 American soldiers  were killed on the Western Front while military bureaucrats meticulously planned the  up coming  Yalta conference between Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill. Millions of dollars  and endless hours of planning and logistics were spent on caviar, wild game, wines of every description, imported silver, cigars,  china and furniture. Little was accomplished  at Yalta, increasing speculation on how Germany would later  be  carved up among  the victors.

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This is a book for students of WWII history and the reader will be well rewarded by the depth of its six hundred plus pages. Atkinson’s work qualifies for my Every Word Counts honor. The two other volumes equally worthy of accolades are An Army at Dawn, the North Africa Campaign, (search gordonsgoodreads), The  Day of Battle, the war in Italy.

I can not resist sharing this quotation from the book.  Patricia O’ Malley was  a one year old when her father, Major Richard James O’Malley  was killed by a sniper at Normandy. Later as an adult she  wrote this following a visit to  her father’s  grave at the cemetery at Collerville above Omaha Beach. I cried for the joy of being there and the sadness of my father’s death. I cried for all the times I needed a  father and never had one. I cried for all the words I wanted to say and wanted to hear but had not.  I cried and cried.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

06.17.15
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LUSITANIA-DEAD WAKE

Erick Larson’s best seller Dead Wake, The Last Crossing of the Lusitania, to this reader raises as many questions about the 100-year-old story as it answers.  That in itself gives weight to this great mystery and the continued interest in this often explored maritime and political disaster.

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Larson’s  writing begs for answers to the biggest question of all. Were the British through lack of communication and direct intervention complicit in the sinking of the great ship?  Was the sinking of the Lusitania necessary to bring America to the aid of the British in World War I?

Dead Wake is deep in detail of the broad cross-section of the Lusitania’s passengers which at times in the narrative overshadows the disaster itself. The author’s portrayal of Woodrow Wilson’s courtship of Edith Galt places his ardent pursuit of her within his tortured indecisiveness to bring America into the War.

 

On Friday, May 7, 1915 at 2:10 P.M. the Lusitania was struck by a single torpedo fired by German Submarine U-20. The great liner sank in 18 minutes. Over 1200  souls perished in a chaotic scene so inhuman that German U-Boat 20 Captain Schwieger lowered his periscope unable to view the calamity he had caused.

On April 17, 1917, two years after the sinking of the Lusitania and three additional American ships, Wilson asked a joint session of congress to declare War on Germany. The carnage at sea, however, may  not have been Wilson’s tipping point.  Larson walks the reader through the Zimmerman telegram, intercepted by British code-breakers, seeking to bring Mexico into the War with the promise to bring back to that nation its former lands in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.

Larson allows Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill  the last word. ” What he ( Wilson) did in April 1917, could have been done in May, 1915.  And if done then, what abridgment of the slaughter; what sparing of the agony; what ruin, what catastrophes would have been prevented; in how many million homes would an empty chair be occupied today.” I can imagine Churchill, 35 years later, reiterating the same words to FDR as they sat in the White House on the eve of America’s entry into World War II.

To delve further into the sinking of the Lusitania you may wish to read Lusitania, An Epic Tragedy, by Diana Preston.

Another writing of great merit by Erik Larson is In The Garden of Beasts.  For more detail on this book search gordonsgoodreads.com

 

 

01.17.15
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SHORT NIGHTS OF THE SHADOW CATCHER

Author Timothy Egan in his book Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher  crafts a splendid and enjoyable biography of  world-renowned  American Indian anthropologist, photographer  and chronicler  Edward Curtis.

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Egan captures the epic story of Curtis’s extraordinary creation of the 20-volume The North American Indian, an incomparable photographic and narrative now considered a work of art, documenting the complex and tragic story of the vanishing Native Americans. Egan writes in extensive detail of the thirty years during which Curtis became a slave to the completion of the work, capturing the personal sacrifices and near death adventures necessary for the narrative to be “preciously”  Edward Curtis. “This was a place like no other he had seen through three decades of portrait foraging, ”  writes Egan.  ” Think of it,”  Curtis wrote in his diary, ” At last, and for the first time in all my thirty years work with the natives, I have found a place where no  missionary has worked.”

Edward Curtis

Edward Curtis

At the Little Big Horn  battlefield and only after extensively interviewing Sioux who were present  that day, Edward Curtis uncovers a very different story of what actually happened at Custer’s Last Stand. ” Let them fight, there will be plenty of fighting left for us to do.”  George Armstrong Custer as told to Curtis by Crow Scout White Man Runs Him overlooking the  battlefield where General Marcus’s troops were slaughtered.

The reader will meet those who inspired Curtis to pursue his dream including Teddy Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot, J.P. Morgan, George Bird Grinnell , Chief Joseph and Geronimo. Egan’s portrait of Curtis is explicit in that it would be impossible to find another American who sacrificed  to the extent of Edward  Curtis to pursue the documentation and preservation of the vanishing way of life of the first Americans.

More than a biography, Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher shares with the reader Curtis’s depth of knowledge and understanding of the widely different cultures, rituals, and beliefs of the various American Indian tribes.  It is also a wonderfully crafted story of how the creative work of those who possess incomparable talent and vision are often  lost in their own time only to attain rightful acclaim by future generations.

Before The Storm--Apache 1906--Edward Curtis

Before The Storm–Apache 1906–Edward Curtis

I commend Short Nights Of The Shadow Catcher to all who have interest in poignant literature surrounding our first Americans.

Other books I have posted on gordonsgoodreads by Timothy Egan include The Worst Hard Time and The Big Burn.  Utilize the search tab found here.

11.06.14
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AN ARMY AT DAWN-NORTH AFRICA-DRESS REHEARSAL FOR EUROPEAN INVASION

Rick Atkinson’s  first volume of his World War II Trilogy An Army At Dawn is an extraordinarily candid appraisal of the performance of the U.S. Military during its initial foray into the Second World War in North Africa.

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This excellent historical work portrays the North Africa Campaign of 1942-1943 as a painful dress rehearsal for a green U.S. Command and Army, embarking on its first and often catastrophic combat missions since the First World War.  ” A great sorting out was underway: the competent from the incompetent, the courageous from the fearful, the lucky from the unlucky.”   Atkinson spares no one in his  harsh analysis of both the American and British forces and their leadership.  The takeaway is that if the Allies had invaded across the channel in 1942 as originally envisioned, D-Day would have been a disaster only rivaled by Dunkirk.  A move up the boot of Italy or into southern France according to Atkinson’s read would have also been doomed from the outset.

The North Africa Campaign learning curve was critical to the final Allied victory in Europe. ” Eisenhower had been naive, sycophantic,  unsure of his judgement, insufficiently vigorous and more a titular than actual commander.” Atkinson is blunt in his appraisal that North Africa taught the American Infantryman the necessity of  ” ruthless killer instinct”  in battle.”  ” A soldier is not effective until he has learned to hate. When he lives for one thing, to kill the enemy, he becomes of value. ”  The collaboration in the North Africa Campaign with the British under Montgomery  foretold difficulties to come in the invasion of Europe.

Eisenhower, Patton, Bradley, Montgomery, Rommel, all portrayed  by historian Atkinson at their very worst and very best. The book is scholarly in its approach and yet very readable, filled with humanity, heroism,  and battlefield reality. After months of failure with enormous and often needless casualties,  American forces finally morphed into fighting form and marched through the Kasserine Pass and on to the sea at Tunis.

An Army at Dawn was written in 2002. The remaining volumes in Atkinson’s trilogy are The Day of Battle, the war in  Sicily and Italy ( 2007 ),  from 1943-1944 and The Guns at Last Light, (2012),  the war in Western Europe, 1944-1945. Atkinson also authored The Long Grey Line and Crusade.