Category: Non Fiction

Non Fiction

Otherlands by Thomas Halliday

Patricia McDonald Uttaro

Publisher Description

The past is past, but it does leave clues, and Thomas Halliday has used cutting-edge science to decipher them more completely than ever before. In Otherlands, Halliday makes sixteen fossil sites burst to life on the page.

This book is an exploration of the Earth as it used to exist, the changes that have occurred during its history, and the ways that life has found to adapt―or not. It takes us from the savannahs of Pliocene Kenya to watch a python chase a group of australopithecines into an acacia tree; to a cliff overlooking the salt pans of the empty basin of what will be the Mediterranean Sea just as water from the Miocene Atlantic Ocean spills in; into the tropical forests of Eocene Antarctica; and under the shallow pools of Ediacaran Australia, where we glimpse the first microbial life. 

Otherlands also offers us a vast perspective on the current state of the planet. The thought that something as vast as the Great Barrier Reef, for example, with all its vibrant diversity, might one day soon be gone sounds improbable. But the fossil record shows us that this sort of wholesale change is not only possible but has repeatedly happened throughout Earth history.

Even as he operates on this broad canvas, Halliday brings us up close to the intricate relationships that defined these lost worlds. In novelistic prose that belies the breadth of his research, he illustrates how ecosystems are formed; how species die out and are replaced; and how species migrate, adapt, and collaborate. It is a breathtaking achievement: a surprisingly emotional narrative about the persistence of life, the fragility of seemingly permanent ecosystems, and the scope of deep time, all of which have something to tell us about our current crisis.

My Thoughts

Goodreads “Want To Read” #1

I am not what one would term a “science nerd” but I am fascinated by the intersection of science and history and thought this book sounded fascinating.

I was not disappointed.

The author has provided a very accessible, readable explanation of the fossil record and periods of extinction and done so using storytelling at its finest. There is a good amount of information that will require greater knowledge or significant research to fully appreciate and understand, but on the whole, this is a book that will teach some new things and possibly change your understanding and perspective about the history of our planet.

As a kid who grew up on National Geographic, Otherlands delivered serious research in a similar but more complex way that kept my attention and made me want to read more. It’s a book that requires some attention and commitment, but it’s worth the effort.

Publication Date: February 14, 2023
Published By: Penguin Random House
Thanks to the Greece Public Library for the book

Historical, Non Fiction

Four Lost Cities by Annalee Newitz

Patricia McDonald Uttaro

Publisher Description

In Four Lost Cities, acclaimed science journalist Annalee Newitz takes readers on an entertaining and mind-bending adventure into the deep history of urban life. Investigating across the centuries and around the world, Newitz explores the rise and fall of four ancient cities, each the center of a sophisticated civilization: the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Central Turkey, the Roman vacation town of Pompeii on Italy’s southern coast, the medieval megacity of Angkor in Cambodia, and the indigenous metropolis Cahokia, which stood beside the Mississippi River where East St. Louis is today.

Newitz travels to all four sites and investigates the cutting-edge research in archaeology, revealing the mix of environmental changes and political turmoil that doomed these ancient settlements. Tracing the early development of urban planning, Newitz also introduces us to the often anonymous workers–slaves, women, immigrants, and manual laborers–who built these cities and created monuments that lasted millennia.

Four Lost Cities is a journey into the forgotten past, but, foreseeing a future in which the majority of people on Earth will be living in cities, it may also reveal something of our own fate.

My Thoughts

This is a bit of a departure in my typical reading, but I picked this up after an enthusiastic recommendation from Stephanie Cole Adams, someone whose opinion I greatly respect. I found an accessible, thought-provoking, and sometimes irritating look at ancient urban development and why it failed at four specific sites.

The format of the book – essentially four long sections each devoted to one city – makes this a comfortable read and easy to start and stop. However, I often found it hard to stop reading.

Netwitz explores each city in person and through scientific experts, which lends a familiarity to the narrative. For the non-scientific reader, it feels like an enthusiastic friend touring you through a new city sharing interesting bits of information. I understand that for the scientific reader this is an irritating approach, but for me it was just right.

A number of reviews mention the author’s interjection of their personal belief system and exposition of conjecture as fact as a major issue here. I suppose that’s true, but that’s how connections are made for many readers. I found their personal reactions and use of imagination entertaining and thought-provoking, and something that I believe is often missing in the cold, hard facts of scientific research. I *want* to imagine the daily life of the inhabitants of these cities, and Newitz does a good job of humanizing the people who lived, farmed, labored, and died in each location.

I found the section on Pompeii especially interesting as I had the most knowledge about this city prior to reading the book, but I learned something new about each city. Pompeii, though, seemed like the Las Vegas of Ancient Rome, something I didn’t really understand before reading this book.

I’d recommend this for the casual non-fiction reader with an interest in urban development and ancient history.

Publication Date: February 2021
Published By: W.W. Norton & Company
Thanks to the Monroe County Library System for the book

Biography, General, Lists, Makes You Think, Non Fiction

The Heirloomist by Shana Novak

Patricia McDonald Uttaro

Description

A warm, inviting celebration of beloved keepsakes and the stories they hold.

A set of old apartment keys, a pair of worn running shoes, a declaration of love scribbled on a restaurant receipt. Beautiful stories that celebrate the power an object can hold are at the heart of The Heirloomist by photographer Shana Novak, creator of the project of the same name dedicated to documenting keepsakes and transforming them into uniquely meaningful works of art. The 100 objects featured here range from the everyday to the extraordinary. Treasured heirlooms to their owners, ordinary folks and cultural figures alike, they hold remarkable stories such as:

  • Nora McInerny on the fork that began her relationship with her late husband.
  • The sculpture that inspired Christy Turlington to fight for maternal healthcare.
  • The charm bracelet Nate Berkus gifted his daughter in stylish family tradition.
  • Rosanne Cash’s love for her children represented by baby shoes.
  • Andrew Zimmern’s inherited steel carving set that began a storied career in food.

Big or small, expensive or humble, we all have meaningful items with powerful messages behind them. Celebratory, sentimental, and bursting with heart, The Heirloomist offers a glimpse into the treasures we hold dear and how they inform the stories of our lives.

My Thoughts

The concept of heirlooms is something that has been top of mind for me in the last few years as my family has coped with multiple losses of our elders and kin. My home is currently filled with things that connect me to those who have gone before me, all of them keeping a story that is a thread of my past. Reading this incredibly tender and joyous work by Shana Novak has given me some ideas on how to share those stories with the younger generations in my family. While I understand that some of the things that have special meaning for me will not evoke the same memories for my children or nieces & nephews, many items hold the key to wonderful family stories.

Novak has carefully selected heirlooms and stories that reveal everything from secrets to prosaic moments in the past that shaped those featured in each section. This is a book to be savored and shared, and will undoubtedly get the reader to take stock of the memories and history they have shoved into the back of a long-forgotten closet. If anything, this book made me want to pull out my grandmother’s old silver, polish it up and place it in my every-day utensil drawer.

Highly recommended.

Publication Date: April 30, 2024
Published By: Chronicle Books
Thanks to Netgalley for the review copy

Food & Drink, Historical, Non Fiction

Eating with the Tudors by Brigitte Webster

Patricia McDonald Uttaro

Description

Eating with the Tudors is an extensive collection of authentic Tudor recipes that tell the story of a dramatically changing world in sixteenth-century England. This book highlights how religion, reformation and politics influenced what was served on a Tudor’s dining table from the very beginning of Henry VII’s reign to the final days of Elizabeth I’s rule.

Discover interesting little food snippets from Tudor society, carefully researched from household account books, manuscripts, letters, wills, diaries and varied works by Tudor physicians, herbalists and chronologists. Find out about the Tudor’s obsession with food and uncover which key ingredients were the most popular choice. Rediscover old Tudor favourites that once again are being celebrated in trendy restaurants and learn about the new, exotic food that excited and those foods that failed to meet the Elizabethan expectations.

Eating with the Tudors explains the whole concept of what a healthy balanced meal meant to the people of Tudor England and the significance and symbology of certain food and its availability throughout the year. Gain an insight into the world of Tudor food, its role to establish class, belonging and status and be tempted to re-create some iconic Tudor flavours and experience for yourself the many varied and delicious seasonal tastes that Tudor dishes have to offer. Spice up your culinary habits and step back in time to recreate a true Tudor feast by impressing your guests the Tudor way or prepare a New Year’s culinary gift fit for a Tudor monarch.

My Thoughts

Serious foodie historians will adore this engaging and well-written history of food in Tudor times. There’s an interesting overlay with 20th/21st century nutrition with Tudor food preparation and consumption, paired with a fascinating look at who ate what and when. It’s fascinating to read about how cooks and people in general were trying to understand the properties of food and how different foods affected different people. There was a lot of superstition associated with food preparation and consumption, which adds another layer of interest to the narrative.

I also had no idea the Church controlled so much of what, when, and how people ate. The restrictions associated with all the holy days were just mind-boggling!

Recommended for large library collections, serious foodies, and anyone who prepares food at the Renaissance Festival!

Publication Date: July 30, 2023
Published By: Pen & Sword
Thanks to Netgalley for the review copy

General, Makes You Think, Mystery, Non Fiction

The Art Thief by Michael Finkel

Patricia McDonald Uttaro

Description

NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • One of the most remarkable true-crime narratives of the twenty-first century: the story of the world’s most prolific art thief, Stéphane Breitwieser. • “The Art Thief, like its title character, has confidence, élan, and a great sense of timing.”—The New Yorker

“Enthralling.” —The Wall Street Journal

In this spellbinding portrait of obsession and flawed genius, the best-selling author of The Stranger in the Woods brings us into Breitwieser’s strange world—unlike most thieves, he never stole for money, keeping all his treasures in a single room where he could admire them.

For centuries, works of art have been stolen in countless ways from all over the world, but no one has been quite as successful at it as the master thief Stéphane Breitwieser. Carrying out more than two hundred heists over nearly eight years—in museums and cathedrals all over Europe—Breitwieser, along with his girlfriend who worked as his lookout, stole more than three hundred objects, until it all fell apart in spectacular fashion.

In The Art Thief, Michael Finkel brings us into Breitwieser’s strange and fascinating world. Unlike most thieves, Breitwieser never stole for money. Instead, he displayed all his treasures in a pair of secret rooms where he could admire them to his heart’s content. Possessed of a remarkable athleticism and an innate ability to circumvent practically any security system, Breitwieser managed to pull off a breathtaking number of audacious thefts. Yet these strange talents bred a growing disregard for risk and an addict’s need to score, leading Breitwieser to ignore his girlfriend’s pleas to stop—until one final act of hubris brought everything crashing down.

This is a riveting story of art, crime, love, and an insatiable hunger to possess beauty at any cost.

My Thoughts

An art thief who steals for the beauty and not the profit? And one who has standards regarding when and how the theft will occur? This is such an odd but utterly engrossing story that features one man who is so enamored of beauty that he amassed an unmatched collection of stolen art just to see the beauty every day.

This reminded me a bit of Art & Craft, the documentary about Mark Landis, a prolific art forger. The psychological aspect of what both these men accomplished through their theft has to be the stuff of legends.

The writing is engaging and a bit bombastic, but the incredible truth to this story sucks you in and keeps you reading to the last page. True crime fans will surely eat this up.

Publication Date: June 27, 2023
Published By: Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage & Anchor
Thanks to Netgalley for the review copy

Cookbooks, Non Fiction

National Dish by Anya von Bremzen

Patricia McDonald Uttaro

Description

In this engrossing and timely journey to the crossroads of food and identity award-winning writer Anya von Bremzen explores six of the world’s most fascinating and iconic culinary cultures—France, Italy, Japan, Spain, Mexico, and Turkey—brilliantly weaving cuisine, history, and politics into a work of scintillating connoisseurship and charm

We all have an idea in our heads about what French food is—or Italian, or Japanese, or Mexican, or . . .  But where did those ideas come from? Who decides what makes a national food canon? Recipient of three James Beard awards, Anya von Bremzen has written definitive cookbooks on Russian, Spanish, and Latin American cuisines, as well as her internationally acclaimed memoir Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking. Now in National Dish, she sets out to investigate the truth behind the eternal cliché—“we are what we eat”—traveling to six storied food capitals, going high and low, from world-famous chefs to scholars to strangers in bars, in search of how cuisine became connected to place and identity.

Paris is where the whole idea of food as national heritage was first invented, and so it is where Anya must begin. With an inquisitive eye and unmistakable wit, she ponders the codification of French food and the current tension between locavorism and globalization. From France, she’s off to Naples, to probe the myth and reality of pizza, pasta, and Italian-ness. Next up, Tokyo, where Anya and her partner Barry explore ramen, rice, and the distance between Japan’s future and its past. From there they move to Seville, to search for the community-based essence of Spain’s tapas traditions, and then Oaxaca, where debates over postcolonial cultural integration find expression in maize and mole. In Istanbul, a traditional Ottoman potluck becomes a lens on how a former multicultural empire defines its food heritage. Finally, they land back in their beloved home in Queens, for a dinner centered on Ukrainian borsch, a meal that has never felt more loaded, or more precious and poignant.

A unique and magical cook’s tour of the world, National Dish brings us to a deep appreciation of how the country makes the food, and the food the country.

My Thoughts

It’s not often you run across a book about cooking and food that is truly a non-fiction exploration of food history, mores, and national identity. National Dish is all that and more.

Anya von Bremzen brings to the table her own form of sarcastic, witty, and irreverent assessment of the foods considered part of the identity of certain countries. She begins in Paris, a city she really, really dislikes (and she let’s you know it), where she chases down the meaning and national importance of pot-au-feu by talking to giants in the French food industry and then by making her own.

This format continues through five other cities where she explores dishes intrinsic to the city, nation, and culture of those particular locations. I learned quite a bit about those cities/countries and their foods.

Serious foodies and those in the industry will enjoy this, but the average reader like me, who has an interest in food but not a deep knowledge of world cuisine, will end up skimming a lot of the text or will alternate between the text and the internet looking up names, dates, and dishes.

This is less of a cookbook and more of a non-fiction dive into the food that makes a culture a culture, and that makes for fascinating reading.

Publication Date: June 20, 2023
Published By: Penguin Group; The Penguin Press
Thanks to Netgalley for the review copy

Detective, Mystery, Non Fiction

The Life of Crime by Martin Edwards

Patricia McDonald Uttaro

Description

In the first major history of crime fiction in fifty years, The Life of Crime: Detecting the History of Mysteries and their Creators traces the evolution of the genre from the eighteenth century to the present, offering brand-new perspective on the world’s most popular form of fiction.

The Life of Crime is the result of a lifetime of reading and enjoying all types of crime fiction, old and new, from around the world. In what will surely be regarded as his magnum opus, Martin Edwards has thrown himself undaunted into the breadth and complexity of the genre to write an authoritative – and readable – study of its development and evolution. With crime fiction being read more widely than ever around the world, and with individual authors increasingly the subject of extensive academic study, his expert distillation of more than two centuries of extraordinary books and authors – from the tales of E.T.A. Hoffmann to the novels of Patricia Cornwell – into one coherent history is an extraordinary feat and makes for compelling reading.

My Thoughts

This is a crime-lover’s dream – a comprehensive treatment of crime fiction by a master of the genre, presented in a readable and fascinating way. It took me awhile to finish this as this is the kind of book I dip in and out of, reading a chapter here and there. And reading a chapter isn’t as easy as it sounds, because I found I had to keep a notebook handy to write down all the authors and books I haven’t read, but which Edwards presents in various forms.

This will appeal to readers of crime fiction and probably not many others, so it’s a niche buy. I’d recommend for large library collections.

Letters, Makes You Think, Non Fiction

Letters of Note: Mothers by Shaun Usher

Patricia McDonald Uttaro

Description

A fascinating new volume of messages about motherhood, from the author of the bestselling Letters of Note collections. In Letters of Note: Mothers, Shaun Usher gathers together exceptional missives by and about mothers, celebrating the joy and grief, humour and frustration, wisdom and sacrifice the role brings to both parent and child.

A young Egyptian girl mourns her mother’s death in the fourth century AD. Melissa Rivers lovingly chides her mother, Joan, for treating her house like a hotel and taking her thirteen-year-old son to see Last Tango in Paris. Anne Sexton gives her daughter the advice to live life to the hilt, and be your own woman. In a letter to her teenage daughter, Caitlin Moran explains that some boys are as evil as vampires, and you must drive stakes through their hearts. The film Ladybird inspires journalist Hannah Woodhead to write an emotional letter to her mother. While at seminary, Martin Luther King Jr. writes that he has “the best mother in the world.” These thirty letters capture the endless range of feelings that comes with being or having a mother. Includes letters from E.B. White, George Bernard Shaw, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Sylvia Plath, Laura Dern, Baya Hocine, Louisa May Alcott, Wallac Stegner, and more.

Mothers have been on my mind so I was attracted to this new entry in Usher’s “Letters of Note” series. In the middle of all the uprising and strife worldwide in the past year, there is one thing we all have in common – we all made someone a mother by our very existence.

Usher captures great joy, fear, anger, heartbreak, disappointment, love and hate in these letters, which include mothers and children from all over the globe. There is darkness here to be true, but there is even more light and hope.

Last year, my daughter gave me a subscription to Storyworth, a service that provides a weekly writing prompt which results in a book at the end of the year. The prompts include questions about important events, people, and experiences in your life. In reading over the prompts and my responses, I noted that I mention my mother or my grandmother in nearly every one. My children never had the chance to know either my mother or grandmother, so they only have my stories. These two women, Arline and Helen, shaped me and still whisper guidance in my ear. They taught me how to strive to be a good person and I know I have been blessed to have had them in my life.

My mother’s wake was held on Mother’s Day 1984, so the holiday has never been a favored one in my family. This year, I will remember these stories and tell them again to my children so they can know, in a small way, the wisdom and love I received from my mother and grandmother.

I was not familiar with this series by the author, but enjoyed this one so much I’m going to find the others. Recommended.

Non Fiction, Psychological

Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker

Patricia McDonald Uttaro

cover175758-mediumThe heartrending story of a mid-century American family with twelve children, six of them diagnosed with schizophrenia, that became science’s great hope in the quest to understand the disease.

Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream. After World War II, Don’s work with the Air Force brought them to Colorado, where their twelve children perfectly spanned the baby boom: the oldest born in 1945, the youngest in 1965. In those years, there was an established script for a family like the Galvins–aspiration, hard work, upward mobility, domestic harmony–and they worked hard to play their parts. But behind the scenes was a different story: psychological breakdown, sudden shocking violence, hidden abuse.

By the mid-1970s, six of the ten Galvin boys, one after another, were diagnosed as schizophrenic. How could all this happen to one family?

What took place inside the house on Hidden Valley Road was so extraordinary that the Galvins became one of the first families to be studied by the National Institute of Mental Health. Their story offers a shadow history of the science of schizophrenia, from the era of institutionalization, lobotomy, and the schizophrenogenic mother to the search for genetic markers for the disease, always amid profound disagreements about the nature of the illness itself.

Unbeknownst to the Galvins, samples of their DNA informed decades of genetic research that continues today, offering paths to treatment, prediction, and even eradication of the disease for future generations.

With clarity and compassion, bestselling and award-winning author Robert Kolker uncovers one family’s unforgettable legacy of suffering, love, and hope.

Hidden Valley Road is one of the most fascinating books I’ve read in a very long time. The story of the Galvin family is heartbreaking and horrifying at the same time. The schizophrenia that afflicted 6 of the 12 Galvin children caused so much suffering and trauma to one family that it is remarkable any of them survived.

Kolker takes the clinical history of the Galvins and weaves it into a cohesive story that spans decades and concludes with a sliver of hope for the next generations of the family. It can be difficult to take a clinical history, especially one involving mental illness, and convert it into a readable, suspenseful story that conveys the humanity of the subjects in a non-exploitative way. Kolker does a fine job of storytelling here, on par with Bugliosi’s Helter Skelter and, more recently, Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

Absolutely one of the best of the year.

Publication Date: April 7, 2020
Published By: Doubleday Books
Thanks to Netgalley for the review copy

Historical, Non Fiction

Dangerous Shallows by Eric Takakjian

Patricia McDonald Uttaro

cover176712-mediumDangerous Shallows tells the story of a quest to solve maritime cold-cases. The odyssey takes the reader along for a moment-by-moment look at the events surrounding the loss of more than twenty different ships, and includes the stories of discovering their wrecks and learning about the final hours of each of these ships.

Author Eric Takakjian reminisces about devouring the National Geographic issue that featured the recovery of The Atocha, which sets the stage for this very chatty book on wreck diving. I, too, read that NatGeo issue over and over again, poring over the pictures and reading about the divers and their work, so I was right at home with Dangerous Shallows.

Writing in the first person, Takakjian draws you with his stories until you feel as though you’re ready to brave unpredictable currents, errant fishing nets, and sharks just to experience the thrill of standing on a wreck that hasn’t seen the light of day in a century. Takakjian’s storytelling style hooks you right away, and his enthusiasm keeps you enthralled through wreck after wreck.

Takakjian blends history, research and imagination to create plausible if somewhat dramatic recountings of how dozens of ships were sunk, then concludes those often sad stories with exciting tales of his dives on those wrecks.

This will appeal to armchair divers who are fascinated with wrecks and treasure. I expect Takakjian would be a marvelous speaker and hope he gets the chance to go on tour with this book.

Publication Date: February 1, 2020
Published By: Rowman & Littlefield
Thanks to Netgalley for the review copy