Miscallaneous Nonfiction Part 2
Top Secret Files: The Old West, by Stephanie Bearce
So apparently this is a kids' series? I am just now discovering this from Goodreads. Really I should've known it from the cover. Anyway, it's a pretty neat series, as near as I can tell from this one example.
The full title is Top Secret Files: The Wild West: Secrets, Strange Tales, and Hidden Facts about the Wild West, and it really does live up to the title, insofar as books aimed at children usually are. There were even a few stories I hadn't heard, like the one about Rattlesnake Dick's lost fortune (though I admit to giggling for a few minutes at the gentleman's moniker; in some ways I am not more than twelve). Then there's stories like the camels in Arizona and the Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine, stories adults might know but kids don't.
The book also pauses between its pseudo-chapters to suggest activities for readers that connect with whatever it was just talking about. For example, the activity after the Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine has to do with making treasure maps. They feel kinda... misaimed? Like they seem a bit simple for the ages the book seems to be aimed at. So I downgraded it a bit for those. Still, it seems like a fun book that kids might enjoy, particularly if they're not big history buffs.
Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief, by Lawrence Wright
Boy howdy is this a scary book to read (or listen to; I had it on audiobook). I mean. Damn.
Going Clear is the story of the development of Scientology and its connection to Hollywood, told via the lives of its founder L. Ron Hubbard and its current head David Miscavige, who are the actual creepiest people in the world, especially Miscavige, I mean yeeeesh. It's also framed by the story of Paul Haggis, an early Hollywood adapter who very publicly left the church over its support of Prop 8 in California (Haggis has at least two queer daughters). It's detailed and calm and determinedly even-handed in its portrayal-- Wright scrupulously footnotes every claim with the church's denials-- but even then, even through his desperate determination to be fair, you can see and hear Wright's anger and how appalled he is by the history of Scientology's abuses.
This may be the clearest and most detailed history of L. Ron Hubbard and the Church of Scientology. It's a bit long-winded, and I think it could do with being shorter, but then I worry that it would sacrifice some of the detailed proof Wright has built up, so... I don't know if I could recommend that. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more about the church and its horrifying abuse, physical, emotional, and financial, of its followers. But be warned: it's a pretty damn scary book. It is all, to the best of Wright's knowledge and research, true. And that just makes it worse.
Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell
Malcolm Gladwell has a really distinctive style. His full-length books are almost collections of essays written on the same topic, gathered into a loose throughline that nevertheless really ties together at the end. Still, it almost seems, uh, shallow? Surface? It's hard to say.
Blink is basically in same style as Gladwell's other full-length books, just on a different topic. This time, it's about subconscious thinking, the way our brains perform incredible amounts of calculations in split seconds, before we even consciously notice it. This can be a great strength-- people who can spot forgeries, for example, or Paul Ekman, the man Lie to Me is based off-- or it can lead to horrible mistakes, like the shooting of Amadou Diallo, or the election of Warren Harding to the presidency. It's an intriguing thesis, and I do want to give Gladwell props for emphasizing that thinking without thinking can lead to really awful things, but I wish he'd talked more about how to apply this in real life, or how to balance thinking without thinking with actually thinking.
In short, interesting idea, execution falls just a little short.
The Dead Duke, His Secret Wife, and the Missing Corpse, by Piu Marie Eatwell
WELL THIS IS BONKERS.
I mean. Look at that title. That title promises bonkers nonsense going on, right? THE BOOK LIVES UP TO IT. There is so much weirdness occurring in this book, and the most bonkers thing of all of it is that it all really happened. And that there is still unexplained weirdness.
Okay. So. This book is about a court case in the last years of the nineteenth century that argued that the 5th Duke of Portland, he of the massive underground complex at his country home and the severe reclusiveness bordering on total isolation, was also, in his secret life, a shopkeeper named TC Druce, and that he had apparently faked his death in 1864 to go back to being the Duke of Portland. Yeah. This court case dragged on for nearly a decade, with descendants of Druce popping out of the woodwork every couple of years to claim that they were owed the dukedom of Portland. There was the original claimant, Anna Maria Druce in her son Sidney's name, then a couple of guys from Australia, then a couple more guys who popped up between the two who ended up doing something completely different. Druce had some unexplainable things in his life, such as where he came from and why he completely dropped his first family in favor of his second, and so did the Duke of Portland (almost everything in his life, being honest). And all of this weirdness was dredged up during and after the trial. Just. So much weirdness.
The book is written in a very accessible, chatty style, which for me bordered on too chatty at times, but it's certainly not that stuffy academic style that blocks people out, and it does really bring home just how deeply weird every single fact of this case is. And it is so. Weird. Recommended because holy crap, guys. Everything about this is bonkers and must be read.
One caveat: there is a bit toward the end of the book where the reader is suddenly confronted with a picture of a rotting corpse in a coffin. There's no warning and it's a pretty grody picture. Please be aware of this and ben careful as you draw nearer to the end.
This entry is crossposted at http://bookblather.dreamwidth.org/418006.html. Please comment over there if possible.