The Third Pole (CBR15 #29)

Many moons ago I read Into Thin Air and it sparked a Mt. Everest fascination in me. I can’t say that before 2015 I thought overmuch about the highest peak in the world, and I’m someone who enjoys a good walk but has zero intention of ever tackling anything like mountain climbing. But… I have been devouring content about the mountain and other thirteen 8,000-meter peaks ever since. So, when I spotted reviews of Mark Synnott’s The Third Pole I added it to my list and zoomed it to the top to get it to cover the Asia square in this year’s bingo (although that didn’t work out).  

I enjoyed my time with The Third Pole greatly. Whenever someone asked me what I was reading I was happy to answer, explaining how the author, Mark Synnott who had no intention of ever climbing Everest, gets told the story of the missing camera that Sandy Irvine and George Mallory had with them on their ill-fated 1924 push to the peak. Mallory’s body had been found in 1999, with no camera, and nearly 20 years later some sleuths thought they had a location for Irvine’s with the tantalizing possibility that the camera might be with him. And if they could find the camera, they could possibly determine if the pair had made it to the peak before meeting their end. A team gets put together including Synnott and they get funding to attempt the expedition for the 2019 climbing season – when Everest infamously “broke”. 

Synnott weaves together the history of the 1924 expedition, of the push to conquer the ‘third pole’ after successful expeditions to the north and south poles, the state of Everest climbing today, the 2019 season, and his personal experiences on the mountain. It isn’t evenly balanced, but Synnott does what I love best about these stories he tells us a universal truth by shedding light on the details.  

From the Cradle to the Stage (CBR15 #5)

I wanted to love From the Cradle to the Stage, but alas I did not.

Back in December I stumbled across the television documentary series based on this book on Paramount + from 2021. The show featured author Virginia Hanlon Grohl and her son Dave visiting a musician and their mothers to investigate the  experience of raising and parenting a professional musician. I thought the show was great and requested the book through my library’s interlibrary loan system before I finished watching all the episodes and then promptly ignored it for over a month.

From the Cradle to the Stage: Stories from the Mothers Who Rocked and Raised Rock Stars captures the two-year journey in which Virginia Grohl interviewed Verna Griffin, Dr. Dre’s mother; Marianne Stipe, Michael Stipe of REM’s mother; Janis Winehouse, Amy Winehouse’s mother; Donna Haim, mother of the Haim sisters; Hester Diamond, Mike D of The Beastie Boys’ mother and others as well as sharing some stores from Grohl about raising her own musician, and the ways his fame has impacted her life.

I had anticipated that the book would be the same as the show – focusing on conversations between Virginia Grohl and the various mothers digging into their lives and their approaches to parenthood. Throwing in some fun anecdotes about these famous children and this should be a winner… but that’s not exactly how the book works, although it is laid out that way. But the way the chapters come together is much more Grohl telling her subjects’ story in an abbreviated way without allowing the details to enrich the narrative and largely without sharing their voices. Instead, go watch the six episodes which cover Dan Reynolds from Imagine Dragons and his mom Christene, Pharell Williams and his mom Dr. Carolyn Williams, Miranda Lambert and her mom Bev, Brandi Carlile and her mom Teresa, Tom Morello and his mom Mary (she’s freaking awesome), and Geddy Lee and his mom Mary Weinrib.

History, Disrupted (CBR14 #74)

In November I attended the American Association for State and Local History Virtual Conference. On each day (there were three) it opened with a plenary, and day two featured Jason Steinhauer author of History Disrupted: How Social Media and the World Wide Web Have Changed the Past. His presentation focused on the many, many ways these aspects of the internet have changed how the public thinks about history, how historians communicate (or don’t), and the implications for those of us in the public history sphere and those of us not.

Before the end of his presentation, I had already requested his book through interlibrary loan. Steinhauer’s presentation was a distillation of the book, and he shared his insights into the opportunities and challenges facing public historians as we communicate with public audiences across a growing array of media and social media channels. A very big part of me wishes I had left well enough alone and focused solely on his 90-minute presentation and the resources he laid out in it, because I found the book difficult to get through and while it does flesh out the research that went into crafting his points as well as expand on them, it felt oddly clinical.

Perhaps this was a problem of hopes and expectations. I wanted a book that could be used as a plan for making the changes Steinhauer’s study of the social media ecosystem and history’s place within the sheer amount of content being created each day dictate our field needs to be doing, because the social web is not going to wait for professional historians (notoriously a expert-centric, intellectual pursuit and relies on intrinsic value whereas the social web is user-centric, data driven commercial enterprise that is instantly gratifying and privileges extrinsic value) to get comfortable. In some probably important ways, we’re already dreadfully behind, perhaps too far. But this wasn’t that, or if it was, I didn’t manage to hang on long enough to find out.

It Came from the Closet (CBR14 #63)

When I saw that It Came from the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror came out this month I headed immediately to my library catalog to request it and then proceeded to consume it over three evenings. By and large this is an excellent collection of essays featuring queer authors of many stripes taking a movie, sometimes two, and either pulling them apart to discuss representation, or explain why they became fixated on a certain film, or how a film can help them process part of their lived experience. The movies featured run the gamut of quality (is my understanding) and cover most types of popular horror. It Came from the Closet features twenty-five original essays explore the relationship the authors have with horror, both empowering and oppressive.

I should not be the audience for this book – I don’t really partake in horror movies or books. But… I love hearing people talk about their personal experiences with art, and horror movies are excellent, it seems, at getting people to think about what they’re feeling. I blame Screen Drafts becoming Scream Drafts each October for my growing interest in listening to people talk about movies I will never watch, and it is also through the guests on that podcast that I’ve been keyed into the idea that horror movies in particular hold a complicated space in the hearts of the queer community (it was something I was vaguely aware of, but this isn’t my genre). While historically horror movies can be misogynist, and often both homophobic and transphobic, they can also be inadvertently feminist and like so much other art open to subversive readings. It’s through these readings that common tropes can spark moments of familiarity and affective connection but often it remains with the viewer to read themselves into these films, seeking out things that speak to the ways their own queerness encounters the world.

I’ve already suggested this one to a friend who I think will enjoy it, and I hope it makes its way into lots of people’s hands – whether they think they like horror or not. I’m proof that you can read and enjoy this book without having seen most of the movies discussed. As long as you don’t mind spoilers.

Canyon of Dreams (CBR13 #32)

It is obvious from the get-go that Harvey Kubernik, a veteran music journalist who hails from Laurel Canyon, loves his subject. The problem is that love, and the love of his version of the Canyon, may have artificially narrowed his view of his subject. This is no small book, while its dimensions don’t quite fit the definition of ‘coffee-table book,’ it is a large and difficult book to hold that is chockfull of photos which make it a good choice to casually peruse at a table. In fact, I would suggest reading this book that way, as opposed to reading it cover to cover because there is no real sustained narrative here. At times I felt as though I was reading the begats section of the Bible (this musician led to that musician led to this other musician…).

And, alas, this book really isn’t an examination of the Magic and Music of Laurel Canyon as the subtitle promises. It is instead a nostalgic reminiscence with surprisingly varied points of view. Kubernik conducted interviews with figures from the Canyon, including members of The Seeds, The Byrds, Little Feat, Three Dog Night, The Doors, John Mayall, Rodney Bingenheimer, Steve Cropper, Andrew Loog Oldham, Slash, and dozens of others which simultaneously works at uncovering the myths of the area but provides precious little substantial insight into this coveted area outside Hollywood. And, given the return of the Laurel Canyon sound, precious little space is given to its contemporary status.

The book itself is beautifully produced. What I appreciated most was that Kubernik takes us back to the origins of the neighborhood as it began in 1927 with the Garden of Alla (later Allah) apartment complex, at the canyon’s entrance through its time as home to experimental architectural design all before the musicians started arriving in force. But I think if you’re interested in the Laurel Canyon sound you’re better off with the documentary, Echo in the Canyon.

Killers of the Flower Moon (CBR12 #51)

American History is chock full of tales of terrible people doing terrible things protected by terrible governmental structures or terrible public servants. One of the benefits (drawbacks?) of my History degree and work in History museums is that I am not often surprised anymore with how terrible it truly all is, and I’ve got at least a passing familiarity with many of the darker chapters in our history. A few years ago when reviews of Killers of the Flower Moon started showing up on Cannonball Read I realized that it covered a corner of history I knew nothing about, something that had seemingly been completely erased from our national history based on whose story it was, so I added it to my to read list.

Killers of the Flower Moon chronicles the story of the murders that stunned the Osage nation in Oklahoma in the 1920s, right as the oil boom led to the discovery of vast oil fields under the Osage reservation. While the Osage were forced onto land parcels it in turn allowed them to lease rights for mining which made the Osage people extraordinarily rich. But, the Osage were under the maddening policies of the Dawes Act which forced assimilation tactics and custodianships that complicated the story further and made them targets of those that would abuse the system.

And then the murders started. Grann tracks the murders starting within one family and expanding into the community. Almost anyone who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered. As the death toll surpassed more than twenty-four Osage (and possibly over a hundred before all is said and done), the newly created F.B.I. took over the case, one of the organization’s first major homicide investigations. But the bureau was then notoriously corrupt and initially bungled the case. Eventually former Texas Ranger Tom White puts together an undercover team, including one of the only Native American agents in the bureau. Together with the Osage they began to expose one of the most sinister conspiracies in American history.

It’s a heavy topic and David Grann does a good job of giving the facts and the narrative context to keep the events from being sensationalized but it never stops being an engaging read.

Damnation Island (CBR12 #32)

Damnation Island was a book I pulled off my shelves when quarantining and social distancing began back in March. I had read Ten Days a Madwoman in February and I decided an adult non-fiction trip to Blackwell Island was needed to balance and expand the accounting in Noyes’s book. I was right, there is much important history here – particularly pertinent to our times as we reexamine and revisit the functioning of corrections, and how we as a society care for those around us. Often as I read I was shaking my head – both at how far we’ve come and how much farther there is to go before we can be said to be treating our fellows humanely, and with care.  

From Goodreads: “On a two-mile stretch of land in New York’s East River, a 19th-century horror story was unfolding. Today we call it Roosevelt Island. Then, it was Blackwell’s, site of a lunatic asylum, two prisons, an almshouse, and a number of hospitals. Conceived as the most modern, humane incarceration facility the world ever seen, Blackwell’s Island quickly became, in the words of a visiting Charles Dickens, ‘a lounging, listless madhouse.’ In the first contemporary investigative account of Blackwell’s, Stacy Horn tells this chilling narrative through the gripping voices of the island’s inhabitants, as well as the period’s officials, reformers, and journalists, including the celebrated Nellie Bly. Digging through city records, newspaper articles, and archival reports, Horn brings this forgotten history alive: there was terrible overcrowding; prisoners were enlisted to care for the insane; punishment was harsh and unfair; and treatment was nonexistent. Throughout the book, we return to the extraordinary Reverend William Glenney French as he ministers to Blackwell’s residents, battles the bureaucratic mazes of the Department of Correction and a corrupt City Hall, testifies at salacious trials, and in his diary wonders about man’s inhumanity to man.” 

On the whole, this is a good book. Horn does an impeccable job researching her topic – the Source Notes at the back of the book could make a course curriculum all their own. Damnation Island tells its story through the people who lived and worked and suffered on Blackwell’s in the 19^th century and Horn is a talented writer in bringing these real people to life on the page. Unfortunately, the book was also slow. Horn is telling us so much in the narrative that it takes awhile to process, to completely follow what is on the page. Structurally all her decisions work, following a few main characters throughout and introducing specific ones to tell specific tales, breaking the history of the Island up by the different facilities, but it still remains a bit flat, at times a bit clinical.

But, this is still a good important book, but be prepared to have to work at it a bit.

DisneyWar (CBR12 #29)

A few weeks ago I went bouncing through Disney+ looking for a documentary to watch (as I’ve mentioned before, my brain is really happy with non-fiction right now) and came across The Imagineering Story which is six episodes telling the (slightly biased*) story of the creatives behind the physical creation of the theme parks, and its link to the animation and other departments throughout Disney. I have a special place in my heart for all things Disney, but the Imagineers might be my favorite group – the thing I would have liked to do if my skills were more aligned with the artistic.

*it is a story about a Disney group on a Disney service produced by the granddaughter of one of Walt Disney’s most trusted inner circle, Ub Iwerks, so there’s an expected amount of bias. But it handles much of the contentious relationships accurately and steers away from being company propaganda. Do recommend.

By the back half of the documentary series the Imagineer story becomes linked with the Michael Eisner story, including his ouster in 2005. It was fascinating to se from the inside perspective, but it still was only from one section of the company – but I was reminded that I have a book on my shelf all about the Eisner years (1984-2005) at Disney which I figured would have a much broader look at the troubled years 1994-2004, which lead my to picking up the nearly 600 page DisneyWar by James B. Stewart.

Stewart was an author in the right place at the right time. He had an agreement to work on a book about Eisner and Disney before the main events that bring about the end of Eisner’s time with Disney take place – putting his in a position of having access to the people and events from a near insider perspective. He is also a journalist with a law and financial background, which is the perfect set of knowledge banks to take on the layers of this story. Stewart gets to the bottom of mysteries that enveloped Disney for years: What really caused the rupture with studio chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg leading to his departure from Disney and creation of DreamWorks? What caused the break between Eisner and Pixar chairman Steve Jobs that caused Jobs to announce Pixar would not work with Disney again until Eisner was gone? Why did Eisner so mistrust Roy Disney that he assigned Disney company executives to spy on him? How did Eisner control the Disney board for so long? How did Bob Iger become the heir apparent?

This book is incredibly dense – it took me over a week to get through because there are so many people doing so many things and eventually there are so many components of the company that it all becomes too much to track. But it is also all very interesting to a certain set of people – me. The book has weaknesses, an overreliance on the reader’s memory of the literally hundreds of people involved, some sloppy copyediting that allowed references to the wrong year or occasionally the wrong person to sneak through. Also, it was published in 2005 when Miramax belonged under the Disney corporate umbrella and the Weinstein brothers were still employed there, so it was very jarring to see Harvey Weinstein presented in a mostly positive light given what we know now about his personal behavior in those years.

Would I recommend this one? Only if you are extremely interested in this era of Disney history or the politics of an enormous corporation. Otherwise, you can find the gist of the story elsewhere.

What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia (CBR11 #60)

I definitely only picked this up because I was a recommended selection for Read Women challenge task 4 – read a book about or set in Appalachia. I was hoping to find something fictional, but here we are. Elizabeth Catte’s What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia is written as a rebuttal to J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy, a book I have not read and have no intention of reading. Watching from the cheap seats I’ve seen Elegy get pulled apart as Vance’s inconsistencies and frankly racist sources get exposed. While it is certainly a memoir, it isn’t a reliable history.

Which brings me to my only major detraction when it comes to What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia, Catte wrote this riled up in the immediate aftermath of her home territory getting labelled “Trump Country”. Catte refutes Vance and his warped picture of Appalachia (which it should be noted is not a new warped view, it’s the same old same old that was used to get affluent whites to care about poverty in the 1930s and later and edges into eugenics) by bringing in a more well rounded account of modern Appalachia. But that doesn’t prevent her from running over to polemic instead of social history on occasion. Catte doesn’t pretend that the negative parts of Appalachia don’t exist, she instead unpacks all the ways that those negative aspects have been oversold and used to erase the other more multicultural and middle-class stories that exist.

This is a good, dense, read and the bibliography alone is worth a look. The U.S. is a big, complex place and the overarching narratives of our regions need to be unpacked and this book certainly does that.