2024 Favorite Books

 

 My most interesting 2024 reads.

 

Non-fiction

Virginia’s Lost Appalachian Trail, Mills Kelly (2023)

Mills Kelly recounts the major relocation of the Appalachian Trail in southwest Virginia in the early 1950s and retraces the remnants and memories in the abandoned Trail corridor. Kelly’s narrative follows the original route and documents the people and decisions that established that route in the AT’s early years. Original correspondence, journals, local memories of the trail’s initial years and the hiker accounts add a depth to the description that demonstrates the trail’s attractions and how people saw and understood the trail. In Kelly’s words, the abandoned trail remains alive, even if largely forgotten by the larger trail community whose AT experience now lies miles to the north and many years past the days when the AT crossed what remains a wild and unique part of Virginia.

Silent Cavalry: How Union Soldiers from Alabama Helped Sherman Burn Atlanta and Then Got Written Our of History, Howell Raines (2023)

Howell Raines traces his family history back to northern Alabama during the Civil War and anti-secessionist sentiment in that region in those years. In the process he discovers a largely unknown US cavalry unit composed of Alabama Unionists who accompanied William Sherman on his capture of Atlanta and subsequent March to the Sea. He also documents the 1^st Alabama Cavalry, USA contributions to those operations and the complete lack of any record of their service among Alabama’s official records. Following up on that omission, Raines shows how official Alabama and Confederate apologists in academia conspired to erase that history by creating the myth of the Lost Cause that exonerated enslavers from their crime and changed the way America came to assess the Civil War, a distortion that has only recently come under rigorous scrutiny.

Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America, Heather Cox Richardson (2023)

History professor Richardson examines America’s present in terms of its past, laying out the contradictions built in to the nation’s social, economic and political system and the always present aspirations of those originally excluded from the system’s opportunities. Her analysis is a hopeful one, demonstrating that America has always been a work in progress and has weathered threats to its democracy in the past. Today’s inequality and dominance by an entrenched minority is little different from the slavocracy that controlled the federal government in support of the South’s “peculiar institution” leading up to the Civil War or the monopoly economy of the late 19^th /early 20^th century that preceded the Great Depression. In both instances the majority of Americans overcame that dominance. Same same with the excluded. Step by step, they demanded and worked for inclusion. In the end they rejected the argument that allowing more to participate in government that levied taxes to provide public benefits was socialism. Although Cox is hopeful, she cautions that fulfilling that hope required vigilance and determination.

Walk, Ride, Paddle: A Life Outdoors, Tim Kaine (2024)

Following his 2016 defeat for Vice-President, two years into the Donald Trump administration and turning 60 Virginia Senator Tim Kaine needed some “away time” for his soul. His solution was a multi-year Virginia outdoor triathlon consisting of hiking all 559 Appalachian Trail miles through the state, cycling the over 300 Virginia miles of the Blue Ridge Parkway and Skyline Drive, and canoeing the length of the James River from its source in Virginia’s western mountains to the Chesapeake bay. He did each leg in succeeding years, 2019 through 2021. He did all this during breaks in Senate sessions. The hike and canoe sections of his odyssey were the most interesting sections. Each took about 40 days to complete and provided ample opportunity for Kaine to marvel at the opportunity to be out in nature, experience nature in its many incarnations and reflect on his life, career and good fortune in his family and friends. In contrast, his bicycle trip lasted only eight days and required far less logistical planning (since he hired a guide/outfitter to support that effort). And although the hike and canoe trip were sandwiched between Senate sessions, Kaine’s account has all the character of a long-distance trip. Kaine’s frustrations, anxieties and weariness on the trail are very familiar to this AT thru-hiker. So are the moments of wonder and sheer joy of immersing oneself in nature.

Whiskey Tender, Deborah Jackson Taffa (2024)

A gritty memoir of a childhood navigating among the many challenges of growing up as a mixed-race member of a tribe with limited cultural history in a family where the parents are strongly focused on the children developing the knowledge and skills to function in the dominant white society. An added challenge is the family’s relocation to Farmington, NM adjacent to the Navajo Nation with its very strong cultural and traditional values. Deborah is a smart kid but, along with the normal childhood uncertainties, she often feels alienated from the many surrounding and often conflicting, influences in her life: parents, tribal identification, discrimination, and the sense that she is never good enough. Her alienation becomes especially acute as she seeks to understand and embrace her Native American roots, especially against her parents’ resistance. Despite all of the challenges, the author manages to graduate from high school which largely ends the narrative. A brief epilogue describes a career that begins working as a maid in Yellowstone National Park and continues through to a writing and academic success while becoming fully aware of and comfortable in her Native traditions as well as white society.

Klan War: Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle to Save Reconstruction, Fergus M. Bordewich (2023)

Although the South lost the Civil War, ex-Confederates were not willing to accept the new reality of newly freed slaves taking their place as full citizens. Form 1865 to 1869 hey had a sympathetic president in Andrew Johnson whose administration sparred with Radical Republicans in Congress over the terms of Reconstruction did little to protect Black Americans eager to pursue their rights, often at great personal risk. Any Black who sought to participate in civil life or even private economic endeavors, along with their white supporters were often subject to violence by vigilante groups largely organized under the banner of the Ku Klux Klan and similar white supremacist groups Following the election of 1868, the Grant administration was more willing to challenge the Klan its allies using a variety of laws that expanded federal authority to prosecute the perpetrators when state and local authorities (many of whom participated in the violence). The result was an effective reduction of the violence. In the end, however, the effort was undermined by national indifference to the plight of the former enslaved persons and white supremacy became the norm in the South following the end of Reconstruction in 1877.

Trail of the Lost: The Relentless Search to Bring Home the Missing Hikers of the Pacific Crest Trail, Andrea Lankford (2023)

Former National Park Service ranger describes effort she and other volunteers made over several years trying to figure out what happened to three PCT thru-hikers who went missing in 2015-17. The narrative provides a lot of background on search and rescue operations and the emotional ties among the searchers and victims’ families. Also included are the experiences of the on-line communities that are helpful in finding volunteers and soliciting information but also attract trolls and other unhelpful individuals. Most difficult is knowing when and how to accept that missing persons, like the subjects of Lankford’s efforts, will likely never never be found. A very sobering book.

The Great River: The Making and Unmaking of the Mississippi, Boyce Upholt (2024)

Boyce Upholt documents and explains the history of North America’s largest river from pre-history to the present with a clear understanding of humans have lived with and tried to manage the Mississippi for their own purposes. Lots of hydrology and engineering is involved but throughout, Upholt is aware that economic and social goals are not always compatible with a river that moves according to its own imperatives and climatic conditions that affect its behavior. Upholt also brings a many local voices to the discussion, clearly illustrating the conflicts among human interests that must also contend with the natural forces inherent in a river that drains much of a continent. Despite the complexity of the forces and tasks involved in attempting to control such a fundamental force of nature, The Great River is easily readable and, in many respects, a metaphor for mankind’s relation to our home planet.

The Stalin Affair: The Impossible Alliance That Won the War, Giles Milton (2002)

Based on extensive primary and secondary sources The Stalin Affair offers a detailed and fascinating look into the diplomacy, both official and personal, that allowed the United States and Britain to successfully co-operate with Josef Stalin’s Russia after that nation was invaded by Nazi Germany. Much of the narrative centers on US diplomat Averell Harriman, his daughter Kathy, and British diplomat Archie Clark Kerr. Winston Churchill and Stalin also figure prominently since they had more opportunity to meet personally, Franklin Roosevelt is more removed but his influence is always present. The most revealing aspect is the extent to which Harriman and Kerr forged a deep personal relationship with Stalin that not only convinced him of his allies’ trustworthiness but also revealed his far less familiar charming side, an engaging, well-informed individual. Also interesting are the descriptions of the public events, gala dinners in wartime Moscow that somehow seem unreal. Giles Milton presents this all in an easily readable narrative.

Holding the Line: Women and the Great Arizona Copper Strike of 1982, Barbara Kingsolver (1989)

Before she became a best-selling novelist Barbara Kingsolver was a freelance journalist assigned to cover a strike in the small Arizona mining towns of Clifton, Morenci and Ajo. The strike against Phelps Dodge, a pillar of the state’s economy, began in 1983 and lasted 18 months during a difficult times nationwide for organized labor. When the striking miners were barred by injunction from picketing, their wives came out in their place. Kingsolver got to know the women and the changes that overtook them as they took on new responsibilities during the strike. She learned about life in a company town and the cultural traditions that sustained workers and their families. She watched with the women as the governor sent in National Guard and state police to protect the “replacement workers” and authorities harassed the women with bogus claims of violence and trumped up charges. The writing is lively—much of it in the women’s own words—highlighting the their strength and resilience while providing lots of local detail and enough economics and labor history to help the reader understand the strike’s importance.

The Presidents and the People: Five Leaders Who Threatened Democracy and the Citizens Who Fought to Defend It, Corey Bretschneider (2024)

Ben Franklin said “a republic, if you can keep it” and America’s history demonstrates that keeping that republic is an ongoing task. Corey Bretschneider chronicles John Adams attempts to stifle free speech, James Buchanan’s support for expanding slavery, Andrew Johnson’s attempt to re-establish white supremacy after the Civil War, Woodrow Wilson’s promotion of racial segregation and Richard Nixon’s claim for presidential immunity above the law. In each instance presidential assertions were challenged by an emerging opposition that offered its own Constitutional arguments against those presidents. Sometimes success was achieved quickly—think Jefferson’s victory over Adams—but lasting success occurred only after continuing effort to cement those gains. It’s that latter effort that is essential and Bretschneider points out that that follow up was sidetracked by Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon, which left the door open for Donald Trump to lead his own assault on American democracy.

A Man of Two Faces, Viet Thanh Nguyen (2023)

Viet Thanh Nguyen’s memoir ranges from the highly personal experiences of his refugee background and struggle to understand his place in his adopted society and his Vietnamese heritage to America’s unspoken history of genocide, colonialism and exploitation. He wrestles with his family’s own history and how new life in the US separates him from that history and his parents. He fully respects their work ethic and the sacrifices they made for him while he becomes more American, less Vietnamese and very different from his parents. He casts a cold eye on what he calls AMERICA^TM and the impossibility of a non-white immigrant to fully participate in that dream no matter how hard they try. Written with dramatic breaks in the format that hurl the reader into the prose and with occasional irony and humor, A Man of Two Faces is as much a critique of Nguyen ‘s adopted country and colonialism/capitalism as the story of his life.

 

Fiction

 

The Nickel Boys, Colson Whitehead (2019)

In early 1960s Florida Elwood Curtis is both inspired by the emerging Civil Rights movement and on a trajectory to higher education when when he is detained as a passenger in a stolen car while hitchhiking. Sentenced to the Nickel Academy, a juvenile reformatory that is largely an institution of abuse, neglect and, in Jim Crow Florida, strictly segregated. Elwood soon experiences the horrors of a system that considers him and those like him to be disposable. Colson Whitehead vividly describes that system: its rules rituals, frequent midnight beatings and occasional disappearances in a compelling narrative that also illustrates consequences that linger long after Nickel Boys leave the “Academy”. 

 

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, James McBride (2024)

Pottstown, Pennsylvania in the mid-1930s is experiencing changing demographics; immigrants from eastern Europe and Blacks from the American South are increasing their numbers. Although most of the newcomers are largely confined to enclaves like Chicken Hill, older, longstanding residents regard them as an unwelcome change to their community. Moshe and Chona Ludlow straddle this divide ; he operates the town’s only integrated dance hall and Chona manages their Heaven and Earth Grocery Store in Chicken Hill where, unlike many of their their fellow Jews, they continue to live above the grocery store rather than move to nicer parts of town. Their continued presence in Chicken Hill creates a natural link between Blacks and Jews that offer mutual support against discrimination and the hostility of longstanding residents. It’s an engaging story with twists and turns and peopled by lively characters prone to human failings but also determined to assert their person-hood in the face of hostility.

James, Percival Everett (2024)

James is a retell of Huckleberry Finn from a different point of view. In this telling the enslaved person, Jim, is the protagonist and Huck is the companion. The story follows much of the original narrative but Jim has agency. Like the original, Jim is a runaway slave and Huck is escaping his abusive father. Both characters are fully developed and exercise agency but the action is driven by James’ efforts to escape bondage and find the funds to buy his wife and daughter from slavery. The story is engaging and makes for a compelling read.

Burma Sahib, Paul Theroux (2024)

Before he was George Orwell, Eric Arthur Blair was a 19 year-old junior officer serving in the British colonial police force in Burma. Taking the position to please his father, a retired official of the Raj (deputy opium sub agent or something like that), Blair is uncertain about his new career and how he fits into it. His uncertainties continue throughout the novel and are compounded by his growing realization that the whole idea of “benevolent colonialism “ is little more than a cover for white privilege and economic exploitation. The author does not provide any detail on his sources other than acknowledge excerpts from George Orwell’s Burmese Days but the story feels genuine and conveys Blair’s struggles with his own insecurities, cultural clashes, a growing self-loathing before finally escaping after five years to pursue his own path as a writer. It’s a fascinating book that conveys both the brutality and exploitation of British colonialism and a young man finding his way through a difficult passage.

I Cheerfully Refuse, Lief Enger (2024)

Set in a not entirely post-apocalyptic but definitely fractured not too distant America, I Cheerfully Refuse is a story of desperate resistance to forces beyond individual control. The story takes place along Lake Superior’s Minnesota and Canadian shoreline and on the lake’s ocean-like waters. The main character, Rainier (“Rainy” for short) and his wife Lark have managed to carve out a tolerable life in a small community near Duluth. He is a bass player in a local band and she operates a small bookshop. A traveling stranger with a somewhat mysterious past and even present rents a room from them and becomes part of their life before abruptly disappearing. Not long after their life is dramatically overturned..Lark is murdered and Rainy becomes a fugitive on a sailboat seeking refuge on Lake Superior. The plot is complex but convincingly plausible with a great deal of information about sailing and the unique conditions of this inland ocean. Lots of unusual odd and a few dangerous characters appear as Rainy looks for refuge in a very ominous and uncertain time.

Devil Makes Three, Ben Fountain (2023)

Fiction. Matt Amaker is just about to begin breaking even running a a scuba diving business in newly democratic Haiti under the popularly elected President Jean Bertrand Aristide. Alix Variel, a member of Haiti's upper class, had convinced Matt that Haiti offered excellent dive opportunities and an emerging market for a dive enterprise and after considerable effort, Matt thinks that the business is likely to succeed. That confidence is shattered when Aristide is overthrown by a military coup. In short order, military forces seize the business a and evict Matt who finds refuge with Alix’s family. At the same time a US-led embargo shuts down Alix’s factory which leads him and Matt to pursue an opportunity to salvage cannons from a colonial-era wreck in partnership with US treasure-hunters. That enterprise attracts the military’s attention and Matt and Alex are detained, first in an absolute hell-hole and then followed by less onerous conditions. The plot also includes a US embassy attache/CIA agent who doesn’t quite go entirely native but does take a deep dive into Haitian culture. Alix is released for medical reasons but Matt’s detention continues as he becomes as reluctant dive master/consultant to the ruling Army chief. It’s a great tale that offers a compelling view of life in a country where the class and economic divisions are extreme and the political environment is unstable and deadly. Ben Fountain weaves together the international intrigue, Haitian politics and culture and characters just trying to survive it all.

North Woods, Daniel Mason (2023)

Two lovers escape from Puritan restrictions into western Massachusetts and build a rustic cabin. Years later French and Indian War veteran Charles Osgood turns to horticulture in search of the perfect apple which he discovers on that same plot of land, builds a house and begins cultivating an orchard. Duty calls again in 1776 and Osgood goes back to war and never returns. The property falls to his orphan twin daughters who manage the orchard until a romantic tryst leads to their death by murder and suicide. The property becomes the setting for a progression of seekers, entrepreneurs and descendants, most of whom fail at best or die at worst. The circumstances of their various fates are never fully spelled out, leaving the reader to conclude that the worst occurred. The occasional presence of some predecessors’ spirits strongly suggests that the site has otherworldly properties. The story is a litany of hopes and cruel reality playing out over two centuries. None of the characters carry through the entire saga but where they do appear they are fully realized and believable, even when they return as fleeting apparitions. A fascinating and interesting read .

Maude Horton’s Glorious Revenge, Lizzie Pook (2024)

Maude Horton’s Glorious Revenge begins and ends with a public hanging in mid-19th century London. Immediately following the first, the reader finds Maude Horton storming the British Admiralty demanding information about the death of her sister Constance, who disguised herself as a young man to serve as a cabin boy on the HMS Makepeace on a mission to locate the missing explorer, Sir John Frdanklin, lost while seeking a Northwest Passage through the Arctic Ocean. Rebuffed by the Admiralty, Maude continues her quest aided by Constance’s diary provided by a disgruntled Admiralty subordinate. The plot moves back and forth between diary entries describing Constance’s experiences in the Arctic and the many ways she kept her sex hidden from the Makepeace’s crew. Back in Britain Maude’s quest leads her to a likely suspect and a very neat climax punctuated by the final hanging. Along the way the reader is treated to lively and well-researched accounts of British naval operations in the Arctic, the grim realities of Victorian London and a few other public hangings in addition to the the two that bookend the story.