You Won't Believe It's Salt-Free!

Nonfiction 

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Forty days without a saltshaker


YOU WON'T BELIEVE IT'S SALT-FREE!
By Robyn Webb
178 pp. DaCapo

Reviewed by Dennis C. Rizzo

Lent is a time when the people in my family spend forty days fasting - or at least give up something for forty days in a nod to fasting. The last two years I have given up adding salt to my food.

Recently, the time came to break the fast and the whole family went out to eat at a decent roadhouse. I ordered the caramelized onion burger and a side of poutine (look it up). I added some salt to the burger. After dinner I noticed I was flushed and hyper. I am old enough that this was a bit disconcerting.

At about the same time, I had been going through Robyn Webb's newest cookbook, You Won't Believe It's Salt-Free! In it she notes that North Americans consume far more salt than we require.

Although sodium is one of the many minerals we must consume on a daily basis to keep our body's basic functions operating, we typically consume significantly more than we need. -- Our body requires anywhere from 250 to 500 milligrams of sodium a day to keep nerves and muscles working.... Meanwhile, the average American takes in anywhere from 3,400 to 3,700 milligrams of sodium per day! That certainly helps explain why 65 million Americans currently live with hypertension (high blood pressure), while another 45 million walk around with prehypertension. We are even starting to see children as young as three years old with hypertension....

Bosh. -- Had been my usual reply.

Then I went through the aforementioned pre-Easter fasting. I realized that my red-faced reaction to the restaurant meal was because my body was no longer accustomed to the massive quantities of salt I had been consuming, almost unconsciously. Indeed, it would seem that claims by health food “nuts” that the food industry is plying us with salt and fat might actually bear attention.

In my case, I was certain that cutting out salt was critical to my long-term wellbeing. But how to do this without sacrificing taste? I love to cook, and the typical recipe requires dosing with salt and pepper. Fortunately, this is not generally the problem in the home-cooked diet. Rather, it is the liberal application of the saltshaker that raises intake levels to unholy proportions.

Robyn to the rescue.

You Won't Believe It's Salt-Free! doesn't preach. I like that. I usually don't listen to preachers.

Instead, Robyn Webb has researched and kitchen-tested alternatives to salt that coax out flavors in food without adding sodium. I could compare it to quitting smoking. Once we get past the notion that food will taste bland or pasty without salt, we learn that extra salt, in fact, hides the natural flavors and tastes.

One of the easiest ways to cut down or eliminate the saltshaker is to use salt-free herb and spice blends. [These] serve as an excellent introduction to no/low-sodium cooking.

Now, using pre-mixed spices seemed somewhat sacrilegious to me. A good cook works with spices and combines them to achieve the desired effect. But, in reading through the book's recipes I realized an unfortunate fact of modern life. Many, many people have no clue how to cook from scratch.

Robyn to the rescue. Again.

Her book leads the reader through descriptions and explanations of the various spices that can be used to enhance food flavor and eliminate or reduce that knee-jerk salting of our food. Robyn spent considerable time researching the available commercial spice blends and recommends the Mrs. Dash brand (though any mix you prefer will work). She also provides details on how to purchase fresh herbs, store them, and make your own blends.

She then provides recipes for everything from Asian-style meatloaf to Zuppa di Ceci. The recipes are easy to follow, use ingredients easily found at your local grocer, and provide step-by-step instructions.  This means that the recipes offer the tested combination of ingredients of interest to seasoned (no pun) cooks who want to try new dishes and provides easy directions to help the kitchen novices among us.

I tried a few. They work. And I did not feel a need to add additional salt. From a former salt-a-holic, this is inspiring.

Whether you need to cut down or eliminate salt intake, or simply are conscious of the need to reduce sodium in your diet, You Won't Believe It's Salt-Free! makes sense. It works. After my forty day fast I learned that using the saltshaker actually makes my food unpalatable; that consuming foods prepared in the typical manner at restaurants can result in excessive sodium intake.

I learned to use a Louisiana spice blend while fasting from salt. Robyn Webb provides a wide range of other, tasty alternatives for the salt-conscious among us. And the recipes are pretty good, too.

Inside Hitler's Greece

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Nonfiction 
Irony lives

INSIDE HITLER'S GREECE:
The Experience of Occupation, 1941-1944 
By Mark Mazower
462 pp. Yale University Press

By Nick Catalano

Irony runs rampant throughout history. The Christian religion obliterated the classical rationalism of Greece and Rome in the dark ages but secularized itself sufficiently after a thousand years and actually led the renewal of thought and creativity during the renaissance. Emperor Nero martyred thousands of Christians, but later Emperor Constantine needed them to galvanize his politics and so made Christianity the official religion of the empire. A young George Washington helped win the French-Indian war for his country England. Later, he helped defeat England in the American Revolution.

More recently, Texas congressman Charlie Wilson maneuvered U. S. government millions to fund a covert war against Russia in Afghanistan. He actually made allies of Israel and Pakistan, who joined him in the effort to defeat the Soviets. When the Russians finally admitted defeat and left the country, the Afghans lauded the greatness of the American effort. A few short years later, Afghanistan became a base for a terrorist-led jihad against the U.S., and more recently thousands of Americans have died there fighting the terrorists.

The theme of irony weaves it way through the millennia but in the 20th century achieves a horrific apotheosis.

From 1941-1944, Germany conducted an “occupation” of Greece resulting in the death of 300,000 civilians from starvation alone. In addition, through systematic acts of terrorism the Nazis executed countless thousands in cities, towns and villages all over the Greek mainland and throughout the islands. And in further irony, when the remainder of Italian occupying forces in Greece surrendered their arms in 1943, Germany turned its weapons on them slaughtering thousands of their Axis allies as well. Greek Jews didn't escape the Nazi wrath with some 50,000 of them transported from Thessaloniki to die in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

In September 2012, the Greek Finance Ministry set up a working group to try to determine how much Germany might owe Greece for war reparations. Estimates run to as much as 70 billion euros. This despite proclamations from Germany's parliament that it owes nothing in civilian reparations.

A month later in October 2012, when Angela Merkel came to Athens to “persuade” then Prime Minister Samaras to force sterner austerity measures on the Greek people, the citizens rioted. Realizing that it was their old enemy Germany who was mainly responsible for efforts to once again inject misery into their lives, the Greeks rose up in protest. Over 7000 police were needed to quell the crowds in Syntagma Square where weeks before a destitute Greek pensioner had committed suicide to protest German oppression. Thus, the elements of the aforementioned historical irony are at work again.

Even though the German atrocities in Greece occurred less than 70 years ago, many contemporaries are unaware of this horrific chapter in recent European history. To the informational rescue comes Mark Mazower and his book Inside Hitler's Greece. Although published awhile ago, this brilliantly researched tome comes to the fore again providing important backlighting to the current German-led austerity crisis in Greece. Throughout its copiously footnoted pages, the book carefully documents the German WWll occupation while inserting its own theme of wartime irony.

An eminently objective historian, Mazower precisely chronicles the genocidal horrors at Komeno, Distomo and Haidari but includes letters written home by Wehrmacht soldiers tormented by the terrorist policies of their superiors in Berlin. He records the gratitude of Greek resistance fighters when the British Military mission arrives, but later notes the “tensions” that arose not only between Brits and Greeks but among the Brits themselves. The accounts of the heroic feats of the Greek soldiers are counterbalanced by disturbing stories of self-serving resistance leaders such as Napoleon Zervas who used his power to aggrandize his own agenda.

In contrast to the misery of Athens where countless amputees go begging for food in streets littered with the bodies of children who starved to death, we see many shrewd Athenians lining their pockets from black market dealings.

The activity of German officials is well known, but the irony of their fates perhaps less so. Two examples will suffice here: Kurt Waldheim and Walter Blume.

In a chapter subtitled “The Language of Brutality” Mazower shows how Lieutenant Waldheim mastered the art of “the big lie” through the use of euphemisms in his reports. Thus civilians who had been randomly shot by the Wehrmacht became “bandits.” Innocent villagers who were wantonly murdered were reported as having been “shot in flight.” Villages where there were no guerrillas disappeared due to mysterious “ammunition explosions” because they were “suspicious.”

We recoil in horror at the insidious evil of SS officer Walter Blume who was responsible for thousands of civilian random shootings and herding of Jews for transportation to the gas chambers. He had a doctorate in law and actually proposed an exit strategy from Greece dubbed “Chaos Thesis.” In this scenario the retreating Germans would blow up “factories, docks and other installations” while arresting and executing “the entire political leadership of Greece- leaving the country in a state of total anarchy.” This madness was thwarted by Hermann Neubacher - a commander who, realizing that Germany was defeated, managed to curb these and other excesses.

After the war Walter Blume, although sentenced to death at the Nuremberg trials, served only three years in prison, remarried and became a respectable businessman in the Ruhr. He died a natural death in 1977. Kurt Waldheim fared even better. He rose to become Secretary-General of the United Nations and President of Austria.

Like any astute chronicler, Mazower layers his narrative with an objectivity which carefully includes instance after instance of historical irony. Inside Hitler's Greece has acquired a new dimension in Greek consciousness as the country grapples with the policy of its old wartime enemy.

The Best Things You Can Eat

Nonfiction 

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Watch out for the shocker foods

THE BEST THINGS YOU CAN EAT 
By David Grotto, RD, LDN
314 pp. Da Capo

Reviewed by Dennis C. Rizzo

The overall best source of vitamin A is moose liver?

Living in Ontario as I do, that is not so farfetched an idea as one might think. However, as David Grotto acknowledges in The Best Things You Can Eat, you don't have to develop hunting skills or become familiar with an Inuit to get great sources of this vitamin in its natural state. A serving of calves' liver done up with red wine and shallots would be my choice.

In preparing this book, David has spent considerable time reviewing the USDA food and nutrition requirements and medical literature about how we do (and should) eat. The result is much more than the usual litany of “eat your greens,” take Omega 3 oils, or watch out for foods high in saturated fat. He takes us through the food maze in a logical and often humorous manner.

For example, the USDA actually says that a good source of choline is “a slice of cake.” David counters with beef liver (okay, not a favorite), Braunschweiger (smoked liverwurst), or (ta da!) eggs. Perhaps it is the eggs in the cake that prompted the USDA to add it to a list of nutritional items. But in David's assessment, cakes come with too much sugar and other undesirable elements to take the recommendation seriously. It is this attention to alternatives that is the centerpiece of the book.

The point-counterpoint of food and nutrition makes the book both readable and eminently useful. Whether you need a specialized diabetic diet, are looking to improve heart health, or have some questions about improving your lifestyle overall, David has suggestions. After going through the sources of vitamins and nutrients, he spends several chapters looking at specific ailments and what foods have been found (in ancient times as well as present day) to assist in reducing or managing those ailments.

Artichokes: Along with being nutritious and a good source of fiber, artichoke leaves contain plant nutrients that have been found to be beneficial in short and long-term dyspepsia and gastritis.

Chocolate: One or two squares of dark cocoa chocolate (rich in flavonol) raises your HDL and curbs the oxidation of LDL cholesterol.

He also includes many sidebars with what he terms “shocker foods.”

Shocker Food: A dinner of six to eight medium-sized breaded and fried shrimp contains 1,875 mg of sodium - that's without the fries or cocktail sauce!

Shocker Food: Did you know that 3 ounces of polar bear liver delivers nearly 3 million IU of vitamin A? This is so strong that it could kill you! Even in Eskimo culture, eating polar bear liver is forbidden!

Who knew? I'll have to remember that on my next trip to Churchill, Manitoba.

In all seriousness, David's presentation is careful to remind the reader to check with a physician or health caretaker for answers to many medical questions. The information in the book is presented to assist you in making inquiries about your own health needs and in refining your lifestyle around healthier choices. With the understanding that this book is not a substitute for medical care, The Best Things You Can Eat provides an extensive discussion of foods and how to get our needs met with properly prepared real food.

David Grotto does this without assaulting our pride. It's a worthwhile addition to your library.

Lucy Parsons

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Nonfiction 
Not yet a household word

LUCY PARSONS:

An American Revolutionary

By Carolyn Ashbaugh

288 pp. Haymarket Books

Reviewed by Marty Carlock

In 1872 Lucy Gathings, a black woman, and Albert Parsons, a white Confederate army veteran, left Texas together for Chicago. Within 15 years Albert would be hanged on a trumped-up murder charge and Lucy labeled the most dangerous woman in America.

For reasons this biographer doesn't reveal (or apparently doesn't know), Albert after the war had radically turned his coat and become a Radical Republican and an advocate of rights for black people. He was shot in the leg, thrown downstairs and threatened with lynching for trying to register black voters.

Miscegenation laws impeded the marriage of Lucy and Albert. They claimed they were legally wed, but no records have been found. The couple insisted that Lucy was Indian and Spanish, not black. “Lucy was stunningly beautiful. Her dark skin and her vibrant personality radiated with the Texas sun…Her skin was golden brown, that of a mulatto or quadroon. One might believe her piercing black eyes shot sparks when she was angry. She had soft sensuous lips, a broad nose, curly black hair, and the high cheekbones of her Indian ancestors.”

As for Albert, “his charm and good looks and his brother's political connections had made him welcome in the state's high society, but he had given that up for a life-long commitment to advance the poor and downtrodden.”

The pair arrived to find Chicago in a state of unrest. Funds meant for relief of unemployed workers - it was the depression of 1873 - had been misappropriated by industrialists. Thousands of men tramped the roads, coining a new word, “tramps.” Albert, a printer, joined the typographical union and then the Social Democrat Party and the Knights of Labor. But unemployment, wage cuts and union busting decimated these nascent movements, and in 1877 the greatest mass strike in U.S. history stalled the railroads, textile mills and coal mining.

This was an era in which the average daily wage for men was $2 (for a ten-plus hour day); for women it was $1.11, for children 70 cents. On average, industrial workers had a job only about 37 weeks a year. Employees, especially women, were fined part of their wages for talking, laughing, singing, coming in late, or looking cross-eyed at the boss.

Newspapers of the day employed invective that makes Fox News look like a Sunday school pamphlet. The Chicago Tribune wrote: “When a tramp asks you for bread, put strychnine or arsenic on it and he will not trouble you any more, and others will keep out of the neighborhood.” Echoing it, the Chicago Times said, “Hand grenades should be thrown among these union sailors, who are striving to obtain higher wages and less hours.”

Burdened by detailed research, the narrative plods. I gave up trying to follow the permutations and organizational name changes, not to mention the changing ideologies of the characters. Turmoil persisted within these high-minded reform groups. Some favored working for change through political means; others wanted a quicker method: armed struggle. Thanks to the heavy-handed actions of the establishment, from the police on up, Lucy advocated the simpler solution: “The voice of dynamite is the voice of force, the only voice tyranny has ever been able to understand.”

Although a frequent public speaker (“rabble-rouser” might be more accurate), Lucy Parsons kept a low personal profile, maintaining the mantra that the movement was more important than the person. “As early as 1879 Lucy Parsons maintained that the life of the reformer is totally insignificant… She refused to talk about herself.” For a biographer, this is not good news.

But there is a story here, a tragic one. At a labor rally in Haymarket Square in May 1886, an explosive was thrown into the ranks of the police. Chicago's finest went berserk, firing into the crowd and sometimes into their own ranks. Albert, Lucy and their children had left the gathering - the kids were tired and cold. But, known as an agitator, Albert was among seven men accused of murder by the bombing and condemned to hang.

Despite all evidence of his innocence - nothing could be proved against any of the accused - Albert was executed. After a period of uncharacteristic hysteria, Lucy pulled herself together and began campaigning for posthumous exoneration for her husband.

Nothing would have pleased her more than to become a martyr herself. She continued urging violence when necessary. Under whatever banner she marched, she spoke for the underclass, the underpaid, unemployed and hungry. Her stance attracted many followers and caused a schism in the labor movement. Lucy Parsons' vision was of a society in which workers made their own rules, enforced them, and controlled the making and distribution of the goods they produced. As time went on she espoused Communism and professed herself dissatisfied with the gains the labor movement had made.

Lucy was denied her wish for martyrdom. She died in 1942 at almost 90, blind but cantankerous as ever, in a house fire. Lucy Parsons is indeed a crucial but forgotten figure in the American story, but she is going to need a better biography before she becomes a household word.

Dante's Wood

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Fiction 
Blind fear, caustic wit

DANTE'S WOOD
A Mark Angelotti Novel
By Lynne Raimondo
350 pp. Seventh Street Books

Reviewed by Eric Petersen

Lawyer turned novelist Lynne Raimondo, a new voice in mystery fiction, makes her debut with this taut psychological suspense thriller featuring an unlikely and unforgettable sleuth. Middle-aged psychiatrist Dr. Mark Angelotti had been working for a prestigious Chicago law firm, performing psychological evaluations of and for clients, when his life changed forever.

Suddenly struck with a genetic disease of the optic nerves and rendered almost completely blind, Angelotti struggles to adapt to his new disability, hiding his fear, bitterness, and self-pity behind his trademark sardonic personality and caustic wit.

Nevertheless, he teaches himself how to navigate with a cane, read Braille, and make use of screen readers and other technology for the visually impaired - while hating every bit of it. Though he's made excellent progress, Angelotti can't face the prospect of going back to work. Then his boss, Septimus Brennan, prods him to end his leave of absence and meet with a new client.

Eighteen-year-old Charlie Dickerson is a strikingly handsome young man with the mind and personality of a little boy. His overprotective mother, Judith, comes from one of the richest and most powerful families in Chicago. She suspects that her moderately retarded son has been molested by a young female teacher at the adult daycare center he attends.

Dr. Angelotti's psychological examination of Charlie yields no evidence of molestation. He was simply confused by and afraid of his adult body's natural biological impulses and reactions. His mother refused to allow him to attend sex education classes for people with special needs.

Angelotti recommends that Charlie either be allowed to attend the classes or taught how to relieve himself sexually, which angers his mother. Considering the case closed, Angelotti hears no more from the Dickersons - until Charlie is arrested for murder. His alleged victim? Shannon Sparrow, the teacher his mother had suspected of molesting him.

Charlie was found crying beside Shannon's mutilated corpse, his clothes spattered with her blood, and the police extracted a confession. Despite Angelotti's expert testimony that Charlie couldn't have possibly killed Shannon given his level of retardation, an overzealous prosecutor convinces the judge to hold Charlie without bail when the autopsy reveals that his alleged victim was pregnant with his child.

As Angelotti feared, a terrified Charlie is nearly gang-raped on his first day in jail. To make matters worse, if the prosecutor can convict him of Shannon's murder, he'll try to pin more crimes on Charlie - a series of gruesome murders committed by a serial killer whom the media calls The Surgeon.

The prosecutor has no physical evidence to tie Charlie to the scenes of The Surgeon's crimes, only thin circumstantial evidence - Charlie's alleged victim was knifed in a similar manner. But that won't stop him from trying.

Meanwhile, Charlie's furious mother has charged Angelotti with malpractice, citing the pregnancy as proof that her son had been molested. Instead of fighting the charge, Angelotti asks his boss to suspend him indefinitely so he can solve the murder of Shannon Sparrow and save Charlie's life.

As he begins his investigation, Mark Angelotti is forced to deal with old wounds and face new challenges. A teenage wild child, he was more interested in getting high and getting laid than in getting good grades. His father always told him that he wouldn't amount to anything.

So, he set out to prove the old man wrong, first becoming a medical doctor, then a psychiatrist. His obsessive determination to make something of himself led him to marry a shallow, self-centered society woman - a relationship that was doomed from the start.

One fateful night, while Angelotti was seeing his mistress, his baby son was home sick with a fever. When the baby's temperature skyrocketed, his wife never thought to call 911 or take him to the hospital when she couldn't reach her husband on his cell phone. The baby died needlessly from meningitis.

After the bitter divorce, a guilt-ridden Angelotti vowed he'd never have anything to do with women again. He kept that vow. At the time they split up, his wife was pregnant with Louis, the son he's never seen.

Angelotti could have saved his firstborn son. Now he has an opportunity to save another innocent boy's life. Using his cleverness and assuming the guise of a harmless blind man, he approaches the family of Charlie's alleged victim, Shannon Sparrow.

Shannon's own sister paints a disturbing picture of her - she was a calculating, narcissistic sociopath despised by her siblings. Unable to feel much for others, her main goal in life was to snare a rich trophy husband. There was no way she'd willingly have sex with a retarded man, no matter how handsome he may be.

When Angelotti meets with Alice Lowe, the sweet-natured blind girl who runs the adult daycare center that Charlie attended, he finds the strength to cope with his own disability. He also finds himself falling in love with her.

As the clock ticks and the plot thickens, Angelotti finds himself caught in a twisted web of infidelity, blackmail, and murder - including an attempt on his own life. A killer is closing in on him, and he may be too blind to see what's coming next.

One big plot point, which I can't reveal, is left unresolved.  Since this is the first in a series of Mark Angelotti novels, I suspect that it will be resolved in a later novel. I hope so.

This is a real corker of a suspense thriller featuring a charismatic protagonist and a taut, compelling story. Mystery fans, especially fans of Jonathan Kellerman's Alex Delaware novels, will love it. Highly recommended!

Brain on Fire

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Nonfiction 
Descent into hell


BRAIN ON FIRE:
My Month of Madness
By Susannah Cahalan
274 pp. Free Press

Reviewed by David E. Hoekenga, MD

Twenty-year-old Susannah was suddenly seizing, hallucinating, and abusing strangers as she was misdiagnosed by twelve doctors. She had been told she had alcoholism, schizoaffective disorder, Ekbom's syndrome, Capgras syndrome, epilepsy, paraneoplastic syndrome, and bipolar personality. In a short period Susannah had gone from being a smart, vivacious cub reporter for a venerable New York newspaper to a babbling, raging, spitting Frankenstein. Finally, Dr. Souhel Najjar, a neurologist, epileptologist, and neuropathologist said, “Her brain is on fire.” 

The author's descent into hell began after a few days of nonspecific symptoms--numbness in her hands, paranoia (characterized by snooping in her boyfriend's last girlfriend's love letters), and emotional outbursts followed by

My arms suddenly whipped straight out in front of me, like a mummy, as my eyes rolled back and my body stiffened. I was gasping for air.  My body continued to stiffen as I inhaled repeatedly, with no exhale.  Blood and foam began to spurt out of my mouth through clenched teeth.  Terrified Stephen (her boyfriend) stifled a panicked cry and for a second he stared, frozen, at my shaking body.

This was the first of many grand mal seizures she endured. Susannah Cahalan had the world's 217^th reported case of anti-NMDA receptor autoimmune encephalitis. NMDA is N-methyl-D-aspartate acid, a brain receptor vital to learning, memory and behavior, and a “main staple” of our brain chemistry. As she writes,

To the untrained eye anti-NMDA receptor autoimmune encephalitis can certainly appear malevolent.  Afflicted sons and daughters become possessed, demonic, like creatures out of our most appalling nightmares. Imagine a young girl who, after several days of full-bodied convulsions that sent her flying into the air and off her bed--and after speaking in a strange, deep baritone--contorted her body and crab-walked down the staircase (sic), hissing like a snake and spewing blood. This chilling scene is, of course, from the unedited version of the Exorcist, and though fictionalized, it depicts many of the same behaviors that children suffering from anti-NMDA-receptor autoimmune encephalitis do.

As she began an excruciatingly slow recovery, she wondered if she would ever write again. She was asked to write about Facebook etiquette for her newspaper The Post, “After I sat in front of that blank screen for nearly an hour, though, the words started to come, slowly at first, and then like a fountain. The writing was rough and needed a lot of editing, but I had put fingers to keyboard, and nothing in the world felt better than that.”

In the end, Dr. Najjar gave her the two most important gifts a doctor can bestow on a patient--first, a correct diagnosis and then a promise, “I will always be there for you.” 

I recommend this well-written book. The author tells a complicated story well and is great at explaining arcane medical fine points in easily understandable terms.

Calling Me Home

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Nonfiction
An atypical biography

CALLING ME HOME:
Gram Parsons and the Roots of Country Rock 
By Bob Kealing 
245 pp. University Press of Florida

Reviewed by Diane Diekman

Calling Me Home: Gram Parsons and the Roots of Country Rock is not a typical biography. It's the story of author Bob Kealing's search, four decades after the singer's death, for information and interviews. Thus, this book includes primary source material not available in the five previous biographies on Parsons: how Gram attracted a Life magazine shoot when still a teen-ager, a major revelation about Gram's family, quotes from the memoir of his sister Avis, a Jim Stafford interview on advising Gram to “go country.”

Often called “the father of country rock,” Parsons played with the International Submarine Band, the Byrds, and the Flying Burrito Brothers. He gave Emmylou Harris her start, was a friend of Keith Richards, and served as an inspiration to musicians such as Tom Petty, Dwight Yoakam, Patty Griffin, and Elvis Costello. Tribute albums and concerts have honored him over the years.

Gram spent his childhood as Ingram “Gram” Cecil Connor III in Waycross, Georgia. Then, in 1958, when he was twelve, his father committed suicide. His alcoholic mother moved him and his younger sister to her family home in Winter Haven, Florida. The author says, “With all the ups and downs at home, the one constant in Gram's life was his love of music.”

Gram Connor became Gram Parsons when his new stepfather adopted the two children. By then a teenager, Gram was playing in several local bands. From a sad childhood, he became a self-serving adult who seemed to care only about himself and his music. “His critics have said Gram was capable of dropping associates,” Kealing writes, “as soon as he felt he no longer had a use for them.”

When Gram left the International Submarine Band in 1968 to join the Byrds, with whom he shared a business manager, the move caused a rift between Gram and bandmate Lee Hazelwood. Gram spearheaded the transition of the Byrds to country rock. He brought country songs into the group, and was influential in making the Byrds the first rock act to record in Nashville and the first to appear on the Grand Ole Opry. Gram then dumped the Byrds while on tour in England, apparently preferring to party with Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones.

Back in Los Angeles, Gram helped form the Flying Burrito Brothers. “The beginning of the end for Gram came when the Rolling Stones returned to Los Angeles,” Kealing writes about the events of 1969. “Parsons was on his way to becoming the lost Burrito Brother, more likely to be found hanging around at the Stones' recording sessions than fulfilling his own obligations with the Burritos or advancing his Cosmic American vision.”

In 1972, Gram met an unknown singer named Emmylou Harris, and she toured the following year with Gram's new band, the Fallen Angels. She would later write “The Road,” a song in which she states, “So I took what you left to me and put it to some use, when looking for an answer, with those three chords and the truth.” When inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2008, she acknowledged Gram as one of her musical influences.

Gram's alcoholic excesses and drug use caught up with him at a motel in Joshua Tree, California, on September 19, 1973. “Gram had been drinking all day even before he decided to take a second hit of morphine,” Kealing writes. “Gram had ingested a lethal cocktail of drugs and alcohol.” He was 26 years old.

Although the format of the two-layer story in Calling Me Home remained uniform, I found it disruptive. Every new chapter jerked me out of Gram's life and back to the present, as Kealing moved on to his next geographic description and his next interview. Some material was repeated. For example, the appearance of Gram and the Byrds on the Opry sounded familiar, so I went back several pages and found the author discussing the dated photo with his interview subjects.

The timeline was hard to follow because dates were seldom mentioned. I couldn't determine when Gram's adoption occurred, and I had to go to another source for Emmylou Harris's Country Music Hall of Fame induction date.

Once the reader accepts the above format, Calling Me Home is a book anyone interested in Gram Parsons or his musical era will want to read.  It describes the Florida garage band culture of the 1960s. It addresses the rise of Gram's musical counterparts--Bobby Braddock, Tom Petty, Jim Stafford, the Allman Brothers, John Anderson. It explains why Gram's friends stole his body and set his coffin afire in the desert. Kealing's search for interviews and material will excite both biographers and Gram Parsons fans.

The Gringo

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Nonfiction 
Lightning in the man parts

THE GRINGO: A Memoir  
By J. Grigsby Crawford
225 pp. Wild Elephant Press

Reviewed by Jack Shakely

In the more than 50 years since the Peace Corps came into existence, there has been only a handful of really good books written by returned volunteers. The Gringo isn't one of them.

Poor disgruntled loner Grigsby Crawford is the Rodney Dangerfield of Peace Corps volunteers. Bad things just keep happening, or almost happening, to him, and it's never his fault. First he's met by the predictably indifferent bureaucrats working for the Peace Corps who treat him like a piece of meat and whose constant, straitlaced and incomprehensible rule changes form the back story for Crawford's insubordination and confusion. Then he gets to Ecuador and things really go bad.

All the players in Crawford's Ecuador are ugly, conniving, dangerous litter bugs. Dogs bite him; old women cheat him and threaten him with brooms; fat, middle-aged women “parade half-naked” in front of him, making him nauseous; a neighbor shouts “I kill Gringos,” every time they meet and he may be the target of kidnappers. By the middle of the book even his own sexual organs have turned against him and the indifferent Peace Corps doctor tells him to dip his testicles in warm water “like a tea bag.” Like everything else in Crawford's Ecuadorian experience, this doesn't work. This may be just as well, because Crawford is constantly being browbeaten by the men in his village to go to the whorehouse, and when he refuses, they call him a faggot. 

He's not a faggot; it's just too hot and dusty and icky and rainy and those lightning bolts going off in his “man parts” sap the energy right out of him.

Why in the hell Crawford wants to continue volunteering in Ecuador is a mystery, even to his own unexamined self. Staying the course seems to be paramount. His opinion of the people runs from demeaning to cruel. He finds them ignorant and arrogant, and although they pepper him with questions, they don't wait for the answer or think he is lying. He also has absolutely nothing to do. He blames his Ecuadorian counterpart, Juan of the bulbous nose and monstrous hands, for not having any job for him, while at the same time he derides his fellow volunteers who are working at well-functioning nonprofits as indentured servants.

The Peace Corps experience is difficult and challenging. I know because I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Costa Rica. But if the only reason you join is to see if you can endure perceived hardships, join the Marines. The accompanying press release of The Gringo calls it “the book the Peace Corps doesn't want you to read.” Sorry, Mister Crawford. The Peace Corps doesn't give a damn whether people read your sophomoric screed or not.

If you are looking for a well-written, sensitive book about the Peace Corps volunteer experience, I urge you to read Thomas Scanlon's Waiting for the Snow, about his experience in an Andean village in Chile. Scanlon's village has no electricity, no running water and no iPhones, but unlike Crawford, Scanlon has respect for place and people. It makes a difference.

Connecticut in the American Civil War

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Nonfiction 
Horrific and heroic 

CONNECTICUT IN THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR:
Slavery, Sacrifice and Survival
By Matthew Warshauer
328 pp. Wesleyan University Press

Reviewed by Dennis C. Rizzo

A number of publishers have produced material in response to the 150^th anniversary of the American Civil War. Some are focused on the tourist dollar, some provide colorful indices of major events, and some address and analyze assumptions Americans have had about the period and the players. Matthew Warshauer does the latter.

Connecticut in the American Civil War looks at the 'Nutmeg State', its volatile, divided response to the election of Abe Lincoln and the socio-political factors affecting its contribution of soldiers and material to the war effort. It provides many images of the war and the home front, some well-known, others unique to this book.

Warshauer quickly disposes of any notion that the war was one of emancipation for this state's citizens. Far from being a bastion of abolition, as one would expect from a New England state, Connecticut possessed a decidedly racist and pro-slavery society. White people in Connecticut, for the most part, wanted to distance themselves from any support for black freedom. The author writes:

The outbreak of the Civil War did little to change Connecticut's racial sensibilities. The war did not usher in any widespread acceptance of blacks. Few of the state's some 55,000 men who marched to war did so with the goal of black freedom, and though many in Connecticut came around to supporting Lincoln's 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, they did so primarily as a war measure that confiscated the South's main labor force.                                                                                                                                                                      

Blacks in Connecticut (and elsewhere in the North) were viewed as competition for jobs and a troublesome population requiring strict legal sanctions. The salvation of the Union was the primary genesis of patriotism, not the abolitionist movement. The eventual acceptance of emancipation as a goal of the war never really took hold in this state.

On the other hand, Connecticut's industry provided significant support for the war effort, and it sent a greater share of its citizens than many other states. The profitable firearms industry and shipbuilding brought jobs and wealth from their war effort, and Connecticut volunteers brought blood to the battlefield with theirs. Warshauer does justice to the histories and actions of the various Connecticut regiments:

For Connecticut regiments, Gettysburg was both horrific and heroic. The six units that were involved in the battle ... sustained significant losses but fought valiantly. The 14^th, in particular, which had suffered so grievously at earlier battles, played an important part in fending off Pickett's charge.

Interspersed with descriptions of events on the battlefield, the book presents the conundrum of governing a state that was, in modern terms, bipolar. Republicans (the party of Lincoln) retained power only by massaging the demands of the Democratic opposition. Warshauer provides detailed evidence and writes with the practiced hand of the consummate historian.

Connecticut in the American Civil War is a substantial study of the period and the politics of this New England state. However, it is not easy reading, even for someone with an extensive library on the Civil War, such as this reviewer.

It feels more like a textbook than an armchair history, and perhaps that is its forte. The oft-repeated minutiae and delivery of multiple levels of evidence for the same topic might be explained by the fact that Warshauer is a professor of history. The facts are well documented and the bibliography, alone, is worth reviewing, but the reading is not for the casual history buff.

Though not a purely pedantic delivery of dates and facts, the evidential presentation tends to be overdone and Warshauer focuses largely on the issue of race as a motivator/detractor within both camps. Initially, this is fascinating; eventually it clutters the deeper discussion of the military and industrial contribution of the state to the war effort. Nevertheless, Connecticut in the American Civil War stands well as documentation of this brief, though significant, period in the history of Connecticut. It remains an important contribution to the field.

Some of My Lives

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Nonfiction 
A whirlwind of names

SOME OF MY LIVES:
A Scrapbook Memoir 
By Rosamond Bernier
292 pp. Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Reviewed by David E. Hoekenga, MD

In this slight book, Bernier drops hundreds of names. She encountered composers, writers, painters and fashion moguls by the boatload. In one brief chapter selected at random, she mentions twenty-eight names, in many cases without further comment. In other instances she writes at length about people such as Aaron Copland, with whom she had a long and affectionate friendship. Of him she writes, “I always thought Aaron looked more like a scientist than a musician. He was tall, gangling, engagingly toothy. He gazed out at the world…with an expression of benevolent curiosity.” They were friends for over thirty years. He orchestrated her favorite song, The Second Hurricane, for her wedding.

Through Copland, Bernier also met Leonard Bernstein, “a young whirlwind with a shock of black hair and a strong nose.” She went to Majorca with Bernstein and her sister. Bernier managed to get a piano sent out from Palma, the capital, to a “little shack across the road from their hotel,” Bernstein called it, “a mansion grand in a foreign land.” Bernier dutifully reports the “romantic friendship” between her two beloved composer friends.

Rosamond Bernier was born Rosamond Rosenbaum in 1916, lived in Mexico, then in Paris for twenty years where she was a feature editor for Vogue. She founded the art magazine L'Oeil in 1955. Returning to America in 1971, she became the doyenne of art lecturers. In 1999 she was named for life to the International Best-Dressed List.

If the very first part of the book focused on composers, the next section could be characterized as a poet's corner. In this section Rosamund writes of encounters with Stephen Spender, T. S. Eliot and Dylan Thomas.

After moving from Mexico to Paris Bernier inhabits the center of the book with her encounters with the artists of the day. One of her favorites was Henri Matisse. She wrote about his move to Vence to design a chapel called Sainte Marie du Rosaire. He designed fifteen-foot tall stained glass windows. “They will be made of pure color shapes, very brilliant. No figures. Just the pattern of the shapes. Imagine when the sun pours through the glass--it will show throw colored reflections on the white floor and walls. A whole orchestra of color!” He was clearly one of Rosamund's favorites even though the first time they met he demanded she pay him thirty-eight dollars.

The first time she met Pablo Picasso, “he finally came in wearing an old brown dressing gown. The first thing you notice was the extraordinary intensity of those remarkable eyes--the mirada fuerte (a strong gaze that can penetrate objects). Bernier reports that “Picasso's habit was to cram a place where he worked to the bursting point, then turn the key and move on….Picasso's black moods could be annihilating. He enjoyed torturing his worshippers, keeping them waiting endlessly or not opening the door to them when a rendezvous had been arranged.”

She devotes chapters to Fernand Léger and Alberto Giacometti, whose studio was bleak with “a single very bright lightbulb hung from the ceiling.” She was much closer to Joan Miró, whom she visited off Las Ramblas in his home city of Barcelona, where the tiny man was virtually unknown.  At the National Museum of Catalan Art, “He pointed out a seraphim with wings covered with eyes.  'I never forgot those eyes,' Miró said.”  Bernier reports that in his work eyes appear mysteriously on a tree trunk, in the sky, or even mingled with the stars.

The reader may as well stop reading this book at page 255. The last thirty or so pages are a paean to Rosamond's second husband John (apparently a wonderful man) and “civilized writer,” but not much fun to read about. Then Bernier reprints four forewords/chapters she had previously published. The subjects--such as Richard Avedon--are interesting, but the writing is dated.

The name-dropping gets tedious. Perhaps it marks a new genre, the moniker dropper.  

Vengeance

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Fiction 
Blood and venom

VENGEANCE
By Benjamin Black 
320 pp. Henry Holt and Company

Reviewed by Katherine Highcove

On a fine Dublin morning, two men board a boat, hoist its sails, and then skim away toward the horizon. Victor Delehaye sits at the tiller, guiding his craft with a practiced hand. Davy Clancy, the grown son of his junior business partner, is his passenger. At dinner party the night before, Victor had unexpectedly invited Davy to accompany him on this excursion. Young Clancy dislikes sailing, but is reluctant to refuse the powerful man's request. And so, on a sunny June day, Davy finds himself sitting uneasily in Victor's boat, watching dry land become a dark streak in the distance.

As they cut through the waves, Victor inexplicably relates to Davy an unhappy childhood experience. When his story is finished, he asks Davy to hold the tiller, then rises and briskly lowers the sails. The becalmed boat now bobs like a cork on the choppy waves, increasing Davy's physical and emotional discomfort. But he gamely continues to keep his sweaty hand on the tiller, as he was told.

Victor rummages around in a deck compartment and produces a heavy black revolver. “Whoa!” exclaims Davy. Victor asks an astonished Davy a couple of inane questions, and then points the gun at his own chest and fires. Horrified, Davy watches Victor slowly die, as his thick red blood pools in the bottom of the boat.

So begins Vengeance, the latest adventure of pathologist Dr. Quirke and his partner in sleuthing, Inspector Hackett. Author Benjamin Black, an alias for acclaimed author John Banville, has added another riveting adventure to his Irish mystery series set in Ireland of the 1950s. Vengeance joins these prior Quirke adventures: Christine Falls, The Silver Swan, Elegy for April, and A Death in Summer.

The suicide of Victor Delahaye shocks all who know him: his widow Mona, his twin sons Jonas and James, his spinster sister Maggie, and Jack Clancy, his junior partner. Jack is badly shaken by Victor's death, and doubly dismayed to learn that his son Davy, rescued by local fishermen, was the sole passenger and is regarded as a “person of interest” by the Dublin detectives.

Everyone wants answers: the press, the police, Victor's family, the Delahayes' friends, and Quirke, the pathologist whose lab performed Victor's autopsy. Quirke has determined that Victor was not murdered by Davy. The man definitely committed suicide, he advises Inspector Hackett. But, why? Quirke thinks. Why would the wealthy businessman, a widower who recently married sexy young Mona, kill himself? Nothing appears askew in Victor's life, yet he chose to kill himself in a highly dramatic way, as if to infer what he couldn't say aloud. As if to demand vengeance for whatever or whoever caused his drastic actions.

Within a short time, another murder shocks Dubliners. And this death seems to have strong connections to Victor's suicide. Dr. Quirke's pathology department performs the second autopsy and quickly determines that the second man was murdered. But again, why? the pathologist asks himself. And why does the murder have an aura of payback for Victor's suicide? Dr. Quirke likes order, and the scientist in him needs answers. In the name of justice, and for his own peace of mind, he agrees to help Inspector Hackett find Victor's avengers.

And so Quirke finds himself drawn into another maze of murder, motives and mayhem. Once more, Quirke and Hackett combine their sleuthing talents and follow the trail of blood and venom. Vengeance is a story of family intrigue, infighting, and clan loyalty. And a satisfying read for any mystery fan.

Part Wild

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Nonfiction 
A heart-stopping romp, a terrible mistake


PART WILD:
Caught Between the Worlds of Wolves and Dogs 
By Ceiridwen Terrill
280 pp. Scribner

Reviewed by Sue Ellis

There's a telling quote at the beginning of the book:

You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.
--Antoine de Saint Exupery, 'The Little Prince'

Part Wild is the true story of Ceiridwen Terrill's fascination with wolfdogs and her subsequent decision to own one. She was wooed by the romance of the idea, but also motivated by a wish for protection. Emerging from a physically abusive relationship, she hoped that a wolfdog, raised from a pup, would possess characteristics of its fierce wolf heritage while exhibiting the loyalty and gentleness that domesticated dogs are known for.

What followed is a heart-stopping, exhilarating and exhausting romp that lasted almost four years. At one point Terrill admitted that she bought her clothes by the pound from Goodwill, accepting that Inyo was going to rip them to shreds. He loved laundry--particularly underpants. And things didn't get any calmer after she adopted more dogs as companions for Inyo.

At about the same time Terrill brought Inyo home, she became involved with a man she mistook for her soul mate. She worked so hard at making the relationships work, with both man and dog, that I had to admire her determination and spunk. There was no enclosure that could hold the dog, no amount of patience that could change an irresponsible man into a reliable partner. She wrote eloquently on both subjects, baring her soul in a way that demonstrated her naivete.

An outdoorswoman and scientist at heart, Terrill began to research the subject of wolfdogs as a means of understanding and coping with the problems she was experiencing with Inyo. I liked the educational aspect of the book, learning more about wolves than I had thought I cared to know.

The outdoor adventures Terrill described in the book are heartwarming--the way she threw a week's supply of necessities into her old van and escaped into the back country for badly needed space. Inyo was in her element, then, and it is where Terrill seemed most happy; they were the rare times when she felt she was giving the wolfdog what it needed.

What comes through the most clearly is the author's stubborn resilience, her optimism, and her ability to write her bittersweet story with such emotion and clarity. And I loved Inyo. Certainly not as a pet, but as a joyous, wild misfit who worked tirelessly to free herself. The author was so effective in sequencing the events of her life with the wolfdog that I felt each disappointment with her--suffered the same gradual, sick realization that everything she had to give was not going to be enough to keep the dog safe, let alone the people and animals Inyo came into contact with.

In the last section of the book titled 'After Wild', she writes:

I wake up with a broken heart every day. That may sound melodramatic, but it's just the truth. I'm haunted by Inyo's death but also by the deaths and injuries of other animals--Panzer, Harley, and the goats. Yes, I made a terrible mistake getting a wolfdog, and no, Inyo didn't have much of a chance in this world. But I'm thankful for her grace and her bravery. She taught me to appreciate wildness and to leave it alone.

She taught me that humans must stop loading their fantasies and frailties on the backs of wolves and other wild creatures. The results are evident in numbers alone: There are more wolves and wolfdogs in captivity than there are wild wolves in all of North America, testimony to our thoughtless desire to possess a bit of the wild and even turn it into a commodity for sale.

Part Wild isn't just another animal story, but a lesson in commitment, loyalty, and in making the best of what is left to us after we've failed at something. I hope that anyone who is considering owning a wolfdog will read Terrill's touching and educational memoir.