Book Review: Lab Girl by Hope Jahren

Lab Girl

Author: Hope Jahren

Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Date of Publication: April 5, 2016

Pages: 304

      Lab Girl is part memoir, part discussion of earth sciences and paleobiology and part discourse on women in male dominated (specifically scientific) fields.  The book is informative, entertaining and humorous, often all at once.  It is extremely well written and thought provoking.

     The author relates her early life growing up with a physicist father and often accompanying him to his laboratory.  She naturally becomes interested in studying the sciences which was relatively unusual for young women in the 1970s.   While in college she worked as a pharmacy technician and became enamored with working in a hospital.  She had this to say about that experience:

"Working in the hospital teaches you that there are only two kinds of people in the world: the sick and the not-sick.  If you are not sick, shut up and help.  Twenty-five years later, I still cannot reject this as an inaccurate worldview."

     Dr. Jahren graduated cum laude from the University of Minnesota and instead of pursuing medicine, obtained a PhD. from the University of California, Berkeley.  Her field of interest is soil science.  She has developed innovative methods of studying fossil forests during a distinguished academic career at Georgia Tech, Johns Hopkins and now at the University of Hawaii.

    In  Lab Girl the author spends alternating chapters illuminating areas of her scientific expertise with how these studies have shaped her life story.  It is intriguing the way that she counterposes chapters describing some area of her plant study with incidents from her personal history which follow the same path.  For example she expounds upon plant habitats:

"A cactus doesn't live in the desert because it likes the desert;  it lives there because the desert hasn't killed it yet.  Any plant that you find growing in the desert will grow a lot better if you take it out of the desert.  The desert is like a lot of lousy neighborhoods:  nobody living there can afford to move."

She also describes living in downtown Baltimore in a reclaimed neighborhood in much the same fashion.  The author finishes her description of desert plant life by describing resurrection plants - small plants which wither and turn brown during drought conditions but rapidly re-hydrate during rain.  She follow up this discussion with a chapter describing her own experience with mania, comparing the human sensations of heightened energy and sensitivity to the to the biologic over activity of the desert resurrection plant during a storm.

     In Lab Girl Dr. Jahren makes her points about women in traditionally male roles without turning the book into a feminist screed.  At one point she notes: "In my own small experience, sexism  has been something very simple: the cumulative weight of constantly being told that you can't possibly be what you are."

     Lab Girl is memoir at its finest.  It was the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography, a "New York Times" 2016 Notable Book and an Amazon Top 20 book of 2016.  The author is boldly honest as revealed in these quotes:

"My early career had all the makings of a long, slow academic train wreck."   

"I am a female scientist, nobody knows what the hell I am, and it has given me the delicious freedom to make it up as I go along."

"Our world is falling apart quietly.  Human civilization has reduced the plant, a four-hundred-million-year-old life form, into three things: food, medicine, and wood.   In our relentless and ever-intensifying obsession with obtaining a higher volume, potency, and variety of these three things, we have devastated plant ecology to an extend that millions of years of natural disaster could not."

Read Lab Girl.  You will be glad that you did.

Book Review (2017 Edgar Nominee): The Ex by Alafair Burke

The Ex

Author: Alafair Burke

Publisher: HarperCollins 

Date of Publication: January 16, 2016

Pages: 304

     This is a topsy-turvy roller coaster ride of a book which keeps you guessing until the last pages.  Olivia Randall is an experienced criminal defense lawyer in New York City who is hired by her ex-husband.  Jack Harrison, the "Ex", is now a widower and single Dad.  His second wife Molly was tragically killed in a mass shooting three years prior.  Three seemingly random people are murdered in a park in Manhattan and Jack is first a "person of interest" and then is charged with the murders.   Jack has motive:  one of the murder victims is the father of his wife's shooter.  Jack was also in the area of the shooting and physical evidence links him to the shooting.  Jack's explanation for being nearby is a shaky story about a woman he met on the internet inviting him to meet there.   The police see this as a slam-dunk conviction.  Olivia sees this as a set-up.

     Olivia culls miles of surveillance tapes, boxes of phone records and internet data to ferret out the details of a complex hoax.  The police, on the other hand, use the same data to build a more formidable case against Jack.

     This is a very contemporary murder mystery - well written with characters who are very believable, if not all that likable.  The conclusion was a surprise to me and wrapped up all of the numerous loose ends in a complex plot.  All in all, this was an entertaining read which kept me guessing until the very end.  The plot was a bit convoluted but made sense in the end.  This is a very worthy nominee for the Edgar Award.

  

Book Review: The Last Good Girl by Allison Leotta

The Last Good Girl

Author: Allison Leotta

Publisher: Touchstone

Date of Publication: May 3, 2016

Pages: 304

     Allison Leotta is a former federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C. and for 12 years litigated cases involving sex crimes, domestic violence and crimes against children.  She utilizes all of this experience to bring an incredible plausibility to this well written novel.  This is the fifth in a series featuring fictional prosecutor Anna Curtis.  This is the first of this author's books which I have read (but it won't be the last).  

     Putting the spotlight on the issue of campus rape, Leotta tells the story of Emily Shapiro,  a freshman at a fictional large state university ("Tower University") in Michigan.  Emily's father happens to be the President of Tower U.  She disappears shortly after running into Dylan Brooks, an upperclassman whom she had accused of rape earlier in the school year.  Emily and Dylan have a heated exchange of words outside of an off-campus night spot which is captured by a surveillance camera.  This is the last time Emily was seen.  When her purse and cell phone are found at a nearby construction site, the police investigation is on.

     The author utilizes flashbacks to fill in the Emily-Dylan backstory, including transcripts of a "vlog" (video blog) which Emily kept for an English class.  This clever mechanism allows the author to explore Emily's thought processes while she is missing.

    This book has many strengths.  The characters are all interesting and most are sympathetic.  You can't help but dislike Dylan, but every story needs a villain.  The action is fast paced and keeps you turning the pages.  I found the sub-plot of Anna's former and present romantic interests a bit distracting, but it did blend in a bit more tension.  The author has effectively used this novel to very thoroughly explore the problem of sexual assault on college campuses.  The propensity for universities to cover up these incidents is examined on many levels.  The administrators (in this case, the father of the victim) must play the politics of balancing Title IX compliance with the truth as well as insuring student safety while presenting a rosy picture to alumni and deep pocket donors.

     I highly recommend this book and look forward to exploring the author's catalogue further. 

Book Review: Sam Phillips, The Man Who Invented Rock 'n' Roll by Peter Guralnick

Sam Phillips

The Man Who Invented Rock 'n' Roll

Author: Peter Guralnick

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Date of Publication: November 10, 2015

Pages: 784

   

     If you have even a passing interest in rock and roll music then you owe it to yourself to read this book.  It is just as entertaining as it is informative.  Sam Phillips was a young man from Alabama who grew up in the 1930s hearing African-Americans singing spiritual music.  He became fascinated with radio and began a career in broadcasting.  This eventually led to a job offer in Memphis, broadcasting big band shows from the Peabody Hotel.  He started the Memphis Recording Service at 706 Union Avenue, initially specializing in recording special events and weddings.  He then began recording black musicians who were coming to Memphis to perform on Beale Street.  These recordings were sold to Chess Records in Chicago and other distributors.  Eventually Sam started his own record label: Sun Records.

     Peter Guralnick is a music critic, screenwriter and author who has also written The Last Train to Memphis, the definitive biography of Elvis Presley.  He had a long-time friendship with Sam Phillips and that is clearly evident in the details he includes in this biography.  The story really picks up its pace when the author shows how Phillips used the Memphis Recording Service to record black artists from Mississippi who no one else would record.  What is generally regarded as the first rock and roll record, "Rocket 88" by Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats was recorded by Sam in 1951.  Phillips went on to record Howlin' Wolf, Little Milton, Ike Turner, B. B. King and many other African-American artists.  Sam Phillips also made a social statement by recording The Prisonaires - four black inmates in a Tennessee penitentiary.  This was all done before the Supreme Court ruled against segregated schools and decades before any integration would happen in Memphis.

    The Sam Phillips story really got exciting when a recent high school graduate came in to record a song for his mother.  That young fellow was Elvis Presley.   Sam was not initially sold on Elvis until he recorded Elvis letting loose with the late Scotty Moore and Bill Black on "That's All Right (Mama)" which became the first Elvis single released ("Blue Moon of Kentucky" was the B side).  The sections of the book dealing with Presley and subsequent white artists such as Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash and Roy Orbison are fascinating.  Rock and roll music was born and Sam Phillips was there to capture it.  He invented recording techniques as he went along, often by necessity.  Once, when Ike Turner's guitar amplifier fell off of his truck and the speaker broke, Sam crammed newspaper into the housing, creating a distorted but very unique sound.  Sam was also instrumental in getting his artists air play on the radio, often traveling thousands of miles to promote his artists to local disk jockeys.

     The author devotes many pages to Sam's personal life, particularly the women in his life.  Although he maintained a long-term marriage to his wife Becky, with whom he had two sons, Sam at various times also lived with other women.  He also had mental health issues, even being hospitalized in 1951 for a "nervous breakdown" and undergoing electroconvulsive therapy.  The last half of the book is mostly about Sam's later ups and downs in the music business and his relationship with his two sons.

     Towards the end of this exhaustive biography, the author relates an anecdote which occurred during the filming of an A & E television special being produced about and with the help of Sam himself.  The videographer stopped the cameras when some dump trucks rolled by the group,  Sam couldn't understand why he did that and chastised the fellow for missing the opportunity to record something real. The author then relates why Sam Phillips felt that way:

      "He loved perfect imperfection, he insisted.  And he cited his recordings to prove it - the inspired accident was what you were always looking for, so long as it didn't drown out what you were trying to get across."  He quotes Sam further (this time while watching the high school marching band in his home town of Florence, Alabama): 'Music is something that you will always remember as long as you live.  Don't cheat yourself by not getting everything you can out of music - but in  the meantime... HAVE A HELLUVA LOT OF FUN DOING IT.'"

     Sam Phillips was indeed a very unique, inventive and pioneering man in the fledgling field of music recording.  He started before there were any real rules and helped shape an industry.  One aspect of all of this which is particularly striking is how color blind Sam Phillips was.  He was looking for sound and for style and didn't care what race the performer was. This is a truly remarkable aspect of this brilliant but flawed man.

     There were several recordings I bought while reading this which helped bring this story to life.  These include "Sun Records: The Definitive Hits"  Volumes 1 and 2 and "Sun Records: Ultimate Blues Collection".  These CDs are actually fun to listen to even if you pass on the book!  This book has been optioned for a movie starring Leonardo Dicaprio as Sam Phillips.  I hope that they keep the essence of the portrait that Peter Guralnick painted in this wonderful biography.

    If you are ever in Memphis, I highly recommend the tour of the old Sun Studios on Union Avenue.  The studio is basically the same as it was in the 1950s with many of the old instruments still there.  After seeing that it is hard to believe the number and magnitude of artists that recorded there.

Sun Studios
With one of the original RCA microphones used by Sun artists.  The "X"on the floor is where Elvis Presley was standing while recording "That's All Right"

Book Review: Old Records Never Die by Eric Spitznagel

Old Records Never Die: One Man's Quest for His Vinyl and His Past

Author: Eric Spitznagel

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group

Date of Publication: April 12, 2016

Pages: 288

     I have five packing boxes of LPs from the 1960s and 70s in my basement.  These are always on the top of my wife's list of items to dispose of, but I just can't bring myself to do it.  Keep in mind that I haven't had a turntable hooked to my sound system since about 1992.  Why keep them?  This book helps to answer that question.  Old Records Never Die is beyond a nostalgia-fest, over and above a memoir and more than entertaining.  This book is for those of us who grew up flipping through the record racks at our local record shops.  This book is for those of us for whom music played a formative role in our adolescence and young adult lives.  This book is for those of us hooked on the "Classic Vinyl" channel on Sirius radio.  It is fitting that the book cover features "Let It Bleed" by the Rolling Stones.  That record along with The Beatles' "Abbey Road" and The Who's "Tommy" formed the soundtrack of my senior year in high school (1969).

       In Old Records Never Die Eric Spitznagel relates his quest to find his lost record collection.  He doesn't want to just replace the records of his youth, he wants to find his actual records!  He wants his Bon Jovi record which has an old girlfriend's phone number scrawled on the album cover.   He wants his copy of Kiss' "Alive II" which he listened to repeatedly with his younger brother.  He wants his records because he remembers where the skips and pops are on every one.  A pristine new version or, even worse, a digital version just wouldn't be the same.  The author takes the reader on a tour of used record stores, flea markets and discount stores in the Chicago area.  We share his disappointments when he finds albums that might have been his but turn out to have been somebody elses.  The reader also shares the author's excitement when he discovers a former used record store owner who has his old inventory in storage.  

     Eric Spitznagel is an executive writer for Men's Health magazine and has written essays in many other popular magazines.  He has also written six books and is a contributing editor for "The Believer" magazine.  He is a very humorous writer and combines irony with funny anecdotes, both from his past as well as from his current quest to find his records.  Author David Eggers writes on the book jacket: "When he searches for the records he lost and sold, Spitznagel is trying to return to a tangible past, and he details that process with great sensitivity and impact."

     So why go to all of this trouble?  This music is now available through the magic of the internet with just a few clicks on the computer and a credit card.   Charles Fernyhough writes in his book Pieces of Light that certain sensory stimuli can evoke very strong memories (or "involuntary memories").  Spitznagel tells how each of these records he is searching for brings back memories of certain formative experiences for him.

    So, I went down to my basement and opened one of my boxes of  records.  I randomly pulled out a copy of "Crosby, Stills and Nash" and immediately recalled their epic show (with Neil Young) at the old Capital Centre in August of 1974.  This was three days after Richard Nixon resigned (and about two days before I started medical school).  I found a forgotten copy of "Welcome to Fat City" by Bill Danhoff and Taffy Nivert, two Georgetown students who co-wrote "Take Me Home, Country Roads" with John Denver after a show at the old Cellar Door at 34th and M Streets in Georgetown.  They went on to form the Starland Vocal Band (one hit wonders with "Afternoon Delight"), an album which must be in another box.  The "Fat City" album has a picture of the two singers sitting in front of a mirror in a bar called Tamminy Hall on Pennsylvania Avenue in D.C.  I hadn't thought of the Cellar Door or other D.C. nightspots in a very long time.  So , Eric Spitznagel and Charles Fernyhough are right!  These old record albums do evoke some pretty strong memories.  Lucky for me all I need to do is go down to my basement (until they finally go to the dumpster or Goodwill).

Photo from "Welcome to Fat City" Album Cover

 

Book Review: The Power of Parable by John Dominic Crossan

The Power of Parable

Author: John Dominic Crossan

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

Date of Publication: February 5, 2013 (REPRINT)

Pages: 259

      John Dominic Crossan is a Professor Emeritus at Depaul University's Department of Religious Studies.  He is a former Roman Catholic priest and was Co-Chair of the Jesus Seminar from 1985-1996.  The Jesus Seminar met twice yearly to debate the historical authenticity of the story of Jesus as presented in the Gospels.  The Power of Parable is one of twenty seven books he has written on the topic of the historical Jesus.

     Crossan begins the prologue with a definition of a parable: a fictional story invented for moral or theological purposes.  He goes on to describe his personal epiphany regarding parables which occurred after his graduate studies.  He was attending the Oberammagau Passion Play when he realized that the parabolic stories BY Jesus seemed remarkably similar to the resurrection stories ABOUT Jesus.  He asks questions: Are some, many, or most of the recorded events of Jesus' last week parable rather than history, or, parabolic history or historical parable?  Where does factual history end and fictional parable begin?

   The first three chapters of The Power of Parable define riddle, example and challenge parables.  Riddle parables are linguistic contests with potentially profound consequences.  This type of parable existed in the ancient world (Example: Sophocles’ Oedipus the King – 429 B.C.).  Examples of riddle parables also exist in the Old Testament (Judges 13-16).  The Parable of the Sower in Mark 4 is seen as a riddle parable.  Example parables are moral models or ethical stories that consciously and deliberately point metaphorically beyond themselves.  The author feels that Luke interpreted (or misinterpreted) Jesus’ parables as example parables.  Example parables in Luke include the Parables of the Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin.  The author contends that challenge parables are the best category of parables within which to understand the intention and purpose of Jesus’ stories.  These parables challenge us to think, to discuss, to argue and to decide about meaning.  The best examples of challenge parables are the Parables of the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan.  

     Challenge parables existed in the Biblical tradition before Jesus.  In Chapter Four the author explores the books of Ruth, Jonah, and Job to show that book-length challenge parables existed in the Old Testament before the time of Jesus.  Were challenges intended in all of Jesus’ original parables?  The author uses the Parables of the Tax Collector as well as Lazarus and the Rich Man, as well as the Good Samaritan to show that Jesus was attempting to raise consciousness in an oral situation of audience interaction.  These would be an enticement to debate:  i.e., challenge parables.  The author concludes the first section of the book by asking yet another question:  Why did Jesus choose this third category for his parabolic vision of the Kingdom of God?  The author describes Jesus as “a master paradigm shifter, a supreme tradition troubler, and, for some, a divine outlier.”  The author goes on to say: “Jesus’ challenge parables are not only profoundly appropriate, but even rhetorically necessary as a collaborative invitation for a participatory kingdom of God.”

     All of this prepares us for PART 2 of the book, “where we move finally from challenge parables by to challenge parables about Jesus and, indeed, to Jesus as the Christian God’s great challenge parable to the world.” 

     The remaining four chapters examine the thee synoptic Gospels (Mark, Matthew and Luke/Acts) and the Gospel of John.  The author is quick to point out that there is but one "Gospel" and that each of these versions should be read as "The Gospel According to Mark, Matthew, etc..."  They are four different tellings of the same story, albeit with different intent, audience and emphasis.  Crossan also introduces yet another type of parable: the attack parable.  He notes that "every attack is a challenge, but not every challenge is an attack."  If the story "calls names, doubts honesty, impugns integrity, or even negates and dismisses what it challenges, it has moved beyond nonviolent challenge to violent attack."  The author contends that Mark  "presented Jesus through a challenge megaparable, but in Matthew the presentation morphed into an attack megaparable.  Next, Luke/Acts and John both, but in divergent ways, combined challenge parable with attack parable."

     This book is not for the casual reader.  It seems more of an academic treatise or dissertation than a book intended for the general public.  Some of the concepts, especially in the second half of the book will disturb many.  We used this book in an adult Sunday school class at our church (First Presbyterian, Lynchburg, Virginia) and the discussion it generated was at times intense.  It's hard to look at the Gospels, which have been ingrained as dogma, as stories which are almost certainly historically inaccurate if not, at least in part, fabricated or greatly embellished.  The Power of Parable is a book which I am glad that I have read.  It does give the reader great new insight into the parables of Jesus.  The historical part of this I will leave to the historians and Biblical scholars.    

Book Review: Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler

Vinegar Girl

Author: Anne Tyler

Publisher: Crown/Archetype

Date of Publication: June 21, 2016

Pages: 240

     Any new work by Anne Tyler is a cause for celebration.  The appearance of Vinegar Girl is especially sweet since her last novel, A Spool of Blue Thread  was supposed to be her last.  This effort is a part of the Hogarth Shakespeare series which features Shakespeare's works reinterpreted by today's best-selling and acclaimed novelists.  Vinegar Girl is this author's reworking of the classic comedy The Taming of the Shrew.

     The main character is Kate Battista, a millenial who is a square peg constantly finding herself tryng to fit into a round hole.  She lives at home with her widowed father who is a medical research scientist at Johns Hopkins Medical School.  She works as a teaching assistant in a pre-kindergarten class even though she has little patience for children.  Kate's younger sister Bunny is the exact opposite of Kate.  Bunny is a attractive, socially adept and fun-loving and finds herself in chronic conflict with Kate.   Dr. Battista introduces a wild card into this strange milieu.  He brings home his highly regarded graduate assistant who is in America on an expiring visa and suggests that he and Kate marry so that his research can continue.

     Anne Tyler spins this story to a very satisfying and humorous conclusion as only she could.  The characters, like characters in all of her books, seem like old friends or neighbors by the time the story winds up.  This author is also a master at description of settings which adds another dimension to this novel.  Little details set the tone for entire episodes.  The author's familiarity with Baltimore adds to the richness of her descriptions.

     This is a short novel (less than 200 pages) which is the only disappointment here.  I wish it could have gone on for several hundred more!