American Prison: A Reporter's Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment

I picked up Shane Bauer's American Prison: A Reporter's Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment at Book Expo last year, because, while it's not my primary research and advocacy focus, the prison system is a deep and important area of interest for me. It's intricately connected to education, and I can't help but care about the business of prison. 

Bauer is a journalist for Mother Jones magazine, and several years ago he decided to go undercover at a Louisiana prison to repent his experiences as a corrections officer there at a for-profit prison. His year-long experiment was quickly shortened — he lasted only a few months. However, it was enough to shape him and leaving him questioning everything he thought he knew about himself. 

He’s first hired over the phone, sight unseen. The for-profit prison system pays CO’s less than minimum wage, and they are hurting for employees. In fact, before finishing training, Bauer’s cohort is whittled down quite a bit. His whole training experience is enough to turn your stomach; beginning from the moment he walks in the door, not a single inmate at the Winn Correctional Center is seen as human. They are animals, and the COs’ jobs are to treat them as such. 

There is so much packed in this book, including a concise history of the for-profit prison industry, and it’s hard to know where to begin. The overall trajectory Bauer presents of himself — of a man seeking justice through journalism to a man who begins to see the inmates of Winn as the animals he is trained to view them as — was the most startling albeit the most predictable to anyone who has taken Psych 101. It’s the Stanford Prison Experiment writ large. It also feeds into a long-term research plan of mine related to education, but that’s neither here nor for this particular post. I wasn’t surprised at all at Bauer’s transformation, but wow, was it fast. Only a matter of months. It’s shocking how quickly the human brain will transform into full-scale survival mode. 

Winn, as many for-profit prisons, was facing a CO shortage. Who wants to do that job for less than most cities pay in minimum wage? And then, for those who do, who feels as though they are respected enough by their managers that they then respect the men they are tasked with supervising? It’s a recipe for disaster. My favorite parts of this book quickly became the footnotes, which usually invoked the mentioning of Winn’s denial that any events Bauer discusses aren’t true or that they have no record of them. It’s laughable, really. Anyone who has simply read an article online from anyone who has ever walked into a prison knows that Bauer’s experiences are the norm. 

I highly recommend this book for several reasons: Bauer’s persons journey, his interactions with the incarcerated men on his watch, the history of the for-profit prison system, and the final chapters in which Bauer shows the aftermath of his experiences and his reporting. It is well worth the time to ingest this book and sit with it for a time. 

Getting Life: An Innocent Man's 25-Year Journey from Prison to Peace

I have been familiar with Michael Morton's story -- and the egregiousness of Texas's gross misuse of the justice system to put away men for crimes they didn't commit -- for a while. I picked up his memoir, Getting Life: An Innocent Man's 25-Year Journey from Prison to Peace recently on my library-book binge of true crime. 

Michael Morton was married with a small son when he left for work as usual one morning outside of Austin, Texas. His son wasn’t at day care that afternoon when Michael went to pick him up, and when he arrived home, it was cordoned off with crime scene tape. His wife had been brutally beaten to death in her bed with her toddler home to witness it. As if that wasn’t horrific enough, a few weeks after Michael becomes a prime suspect regardless of the evidence of his innocence, including an alibi and his son’s statements. Within a short time Michael is convicted of the murder and sentenced to life in prison, losing his son and his freedom in a matter of minutes. Decades later his case is taken on by the Innocence Project and Michael is exonerated. 

One of the lines that stuck out to me the clearest from his trial preparation was his lawyer telling him that truly innocent people are the hardest to defend in a murder trial. It dawned on me that this statement must be one of the truest I have heard, particularly in light of the hundreds of men and women exonerated in the last decade and a half due to DNA evidence. It’s heartbreaking to know that these mean and women have been sitting in prison for no reason other than hard-headedness and stubbornness on the part of prosecutors, who often have sole discretion on charges, plea deals, and sentencing requests. I found myself livid when I read about Michael’s case having evidence withheld because the prosecutor just simply didn’t call the lead investigator— he called a minor one in order to not have the lead ha d over his notes into discovery. There was information that, presented in court, may very well have exonerated the defendant. 

Micheal’s story, along with that of so many others, makes clear that our prosecutorial system must change. People are losing their lives — decades in prison, and many put to death — over crimes they did not commit. It should make you angry. Michael speaks candidly about the pain he endured over losing his child. His in-laws were granted custody, in part because Michael was strategically kept out of court the day of the custody hearing. They believed deep down that Michael was guilty of killing their loved one, and because of that they only put up with the required visitation, keeping his son away from him for most of his childhood. This caused a huge rift between father and son, one that could only be recotified later in life post-exoneration. 

The thing that makes me the most angry of all the issues surrounding prosecutorial misconduct is that the obsession with pegging crimes on certain people regardless of evidence to the contrary is that the true perpetrators go free and often kill again. This happened with the Morton killer, and it’s happened in several other cases. The dogged insistence of prosecuting someone around whom there is, at a minimum, reasonable doubt (notwithstanding true innocence) put the rest of us at grave risk. It allows the bad guys to strike again, and prosecutors who have put away innocent men and woman are complicit in this. 

Michael’s book is well worth the read if you are just now dipping your toe into the world of faulty convictions. If this is your first go-round, wait until you hear about fade confessions. It will knock your socks off! 

The Skeleton Crew: How Amateur Sleuths are Solving America's Coldest Cases

The Skeleton Crew: How Amateur Sleuths are Solving America's Coldest Cases by Deborah Halber fascinated me, particularly after all of the Golden State Killer brouhaha. I was pleasantly surprised to find out while reading this that it wasn’t necessarily about solving murders, but much more about connecting I identified remains with missing persons cold cases.

All over America, tens of thousands — perhaps even hundreds of thousands — remains of unidentified human remains sit in morgue lockers or buried in Potter’s fields, unconnected to their identifies for a cmvarietu of reasons. It’s been only recently that the government has been able to grasp the magnitude of the problem; poor record keeping, lack of reporting, and coroner change over in smaller cities and towns has kept the information under wraps. It turns out that the problem is much bigger than anyone could imagine. So big, in fact, it’s almost impossible to find employees who can work these cases in addition to their jobs. Enter The Skeleton Crew. 

The dawn of the internet has seen thousands of couch sleuths come out of the woodwork, be it morbid curiosity or a love of puzzles, to solve these cold cases. Halber highlights several of these cases, both successful and not, in this book. I was pleasantly surprised at how taken I was by this story. Halber is a strong writer who weaves in a clear narrative into her larger work (featuring two cases: Tent Girl and Lady of the Dunes), and her writing style kept me hooked. I found myself wanting to get back to the book, not to finish it but rather to find out more about what she had to tell me. 

I did see parallels to MacNamara’s I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, published three years after this. The websites devoted to solving cold cases, the people on the other end of those computers for reasons that are all their own. Some are trying to escape, some are trying to find themselves. Each is looking for someone — a perpetrator or a victim. I love true crime myself, and solving puzzles, and I could easily see myself getting sucked into this work. I’m amazed at the devotion of those not just in the higher ranks of these websites, but the gumshoes as well. 

I took some time to poke through one of the sites, the Doe Network, and before I knew it two hours had passed by. So yes, I can see how easily one who loves this stuff gets taken in. I’m also curious as to how, four years after this book was published, public DNA databases are changing the face of missing persons cases and the connection to unidentified remains. I would love to see Halber do a follow up on this connection. I loved this book, and I thoroughly enjoyed having my world opened to a new, not-so-dark corner. 

No Regrets and Other True Cases: Ann Rule's Crime Files Vol. 11

Ann Rule's 11th volume in her Crime Files Series is No Regrets and Other True Cases. I picked it up over winter break and indulged in some murder and mayhem.

The main story is called “The Sea Captain,” and its about a man named Rolf Neslund, a brilliant ship captain and easily manipulated dupe. He was in love with one woman — he even had two sons with her — but then found himself forced to marry Ruth, a woman who was significantly less attractive and widely known to be unkind and cruel to everyone, specifically her husband. They grow old together — although not without their raging arguments known all over town — until one day Rolf disappears. To Norway, Ruth claims. But there is no evidence of that. Detectives search for Rolf, finding that the truth is far more disturbing than they can imagine. 

I found this to be the most interesting story in the book, and not just because it was the longest. Rule pulled out her usual charms of describing her characters and made Ruth come alive on the page through the descriptions of friends and family. It was hard not to hurt for Rolf and his not-quite-bride, but my sympathies lies more with the woman than with Rolf. He came across as an idiot and quite a sucker. Why would you move another into your home when you have the love of your life and the mother of your children there? Do you think that’s going to go over well? Keep your tiny man in your pants and take care of your family. Otherwise, you will absolutely get conned into marrying someone like Ruth — ugly on both the outside and the inside. 

Some of the smaller stories I found more disturbing than usual, and I can’t quite figure out if it’s me or if it’s the stories. One is about a woman abducted from her workplace and held hostage, another story is about a family that is murdered by their father right at Christmas. The story of the abduction and attempted murder by pimps was interesting, and not just because the story had merit. Rule made her disdain for pimps — and the Academy Award-winning song, “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp.” The song must have just been released when this book was being put together, as she spends a not-unreasonable portion of this story expressing her disgust for it. 

The actual most interesting story of the smaller ones was the story of the bank robber, Sam Jesse. It had some twists and turns that were of interest to me as a reader, and not just because of the cold-hearted murder of a bank manager. The investigation was quite intriguing, and the story was laid out well. Otherwise, I think I could have skipped some of these shorter stories and just stuck with the main one. 

Murder in the Stacks: Penn State, Betsy Aardsma, and the Killer Who Got Away

How I got to this book is interesting in and of itself. It started with one of those articles that lists books you would love if you love true crime, and when I saw that this one occurred at Penn State, I was excited because a dear friend of mine works there. This is David DeKok’s Murder in the Stacks: Penn State, Betsy Aardsma, and the Killer Who Got Away. 

1969 was quite a year across the United States, and Pennsylvania State University was not to be left out. It was in between some students who fought for more rights and against a government sending their friends off to war, and a state university in the middle of a tiny, conservative town that wanted everything to stay the same. In the middle of all of this, a beautiful, young graduate student is murdered in the library the day after Thanksgiving. No one knows it’s a murder for hours; it appeared as though she fainted. The crime scene was destroyed, and it would take years to identify all of the witnesses. 

But most interesting is who on earth would want to murder the young woman whom everyone says was wonderful? While the murderer would be pinpointed within a few years, he would never be brought to justice. Her close-knit family, her friends, and her fiancé would be forever broken hearted after losing the light of their lives. This book, however, gives Betsy life in a way that had been missing for decades. DeKok gives readers this woman who had so much promise — she wanted to enter into the Peace Corps, but instead commuted to being a physician’s wife, which at that time meant hosting and supporting and philanthropizing. However, she was lost to a violent act that could — and should — have been stopped. 

You can (and should) read about the man that we all accept as her killer in this book. It never ceases to amaze me how many people are willing to cover up horrible acts by people in order to save their own reputations or belief systems. For example, and quite related to this book, is the current sexual abuse scandals coming out about the Southern Baptist church, which mimics that of the Catholic Church. This was done to protect an institution, which protected individuals’ reputations and belief systems, not to mention keeping systems of power in place. This reminded me of this book, in that the man responsible for Betsy’s murder was an established pedophile who was let go by police and the community time and time again. 

There are many points in this book that are dry and tedious, and I tried to think of how they could have been edited or cut to make the story flow better. However, after much thought, I realize that this story called for these details. It’s not a whodunnit — at least not the whole book — but rather a full bodied portrait of a murder and a system that allowed her perpetrator to get away. It’s Betsy’s story, but it’s also a treatise on what happens when we don’t hold our fellow citizens to account for their egregious acts. It’s the story of a small town with politics owning every move the police force makes, and it’s the story of what happened, not what might have been. It’s detailed for sure, but it captures the entirety of the story, not just the juicy bits. And that is what makes the book well worth the time you will spend with it. 

Race to Incarcerate: A Graphic Retelling

In the fall I attended a weekend-long workshop in Philadelphia, and the Airbnb we used was across the street from the Eastern State Penitentiary, the first major prison in the United States. Thankfully my mom is a big ol' nerd like myself and was stoked to tour it. It was absolutely fascinating, and I picked up Race to Incarcerate: A Graphic Retelling by Sabrina Jones and Marc Mauer in the gift shop. I like supporting cultural institutions, and since I haven't yet read Mauer's original book, I thought this would be a good addition to my bookshelf.

I wasn’t aware that this was a graphic retelling of Marc Mauer’s Race to Incarcerate, which in full disclosure I haven’t read but need to purchase and dig into, so I was quite pleasantly surprised to find this was quite literally a retelling. From start to finish this retelling was clear, concise, and easy to read. I was able to follow the history from the dawn of prisons and the modern penitentiary to our current day obsession with incarceration. I am thankful that my mom was so interested in visiting Eastern State when we went, because I learned a great deal that, when combined with this retelling, opened my eyes to a new angle in understanding incarceration in the United States. 

What we know of present-day prisons began in earnest in the 1970’s. Our prison population as grown exponentially in the past four decades to the point where the population is equivaent to a small state. While this book doesn’t go into detail regarding financial statistics, this costs a great deal of money. If you have been paying any attention at all lately to the concerns regarding the privatization of prisons, you know that you have cause for concern. Prisons are big business, and we have our obsession with punishment to blame beginning with everyone’s favorite conservative icon, President Reagan. Not a single political leader in the upper echelon of our government has sought radical prison reform. 

One thing that I have been meditating on that came up in this book is the role of prisons. Obviously this book is connected with The New Jim Crow — Michelle Alexander even wrote the introduction — and so these thoughts are nothing new to me. However, I’ve come to a conclusion about prison. You have one of two beliefs about the role of imprisonment: you either believe that it serves to punish or that it serves to support penitence. You might be able to tell from this where I stand.

(Side note: I do believe that there will be incarcerated persons who will never be interested in repentance as it were. That is why things like life sentences exist for what are supposed to be the most egregious crimes. At that point, I do see that punishment becomes the only option. However, shouldn’t punishment be a consequence of a lack of repentance rather than never having the option to become a productive member of society?)

You can see what people believe in the ramifications of post-prison life, including the lack of standardized services helping newly released men and women get on their feet, the box that one must check stating they’ve been convicted of a felony, and disenfranchisement of formerly incarcerated persons, to name just a few. We get to make a decision as the generation in power regarding what we want to do with the humanity we’ve been given. There’s much more on this subject than this little blog post — seek it out, dive into it, and think about the information that may not match what you think you know and believe. 

Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive

I picked up Stephanie Land's Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive at BookExpo last year as it was touted at the Adult Book Buzz panel as one of the hottest releases of the year. 

Stephanie is like many in America, but in ways that you might be uncomfortable speaking about. She grew up in poverty, and in early adulthood, she was working service jobs when she meets Jamie, who will become the father of her child. They agreed that their romance would be a fling — Stephanie had dreams of college in Missoula. When she becomes pregnant, she wants to give Jamie the chance to be a father, but instead she finds herself in a domestic violence situation with nowhere to turn. When she finally gets away, she finds herself dependent upon government assistance for everything from rent and electric to childcare — this while working long hours doing manual labor. Even while keeping her head up and trying to stay afloat, she deals with people remarking, “You’re welcome,” to her while she checks out in the grocery store with her EBT card. Her story is one that is repeated all across America — an entire swath of our population lives on less than $2 a day. 

Land is a profound writer who hits the shapest notes of strength and pride while still baring her soul for her readers. This book is no pity party; rather, it’s the story of a woman of tremendous strength who wants her reader to understand that when you live in poverty, there is never any getting ahead. The moment you do, you find yourself knocked down again — something as simple as a car not starting wreaks havoc for months on the loves of those living on an hourly minimum wage. Savings is a pipe dream. Land weaved her tale for us in a tight knit that made me empathize with her plight and angry at her circumstances. While you may feel there’s not much you can do, this is inaccurate. 

You can’t hate social programs and then say we can’t, as one of the wealthiest countries in the world, gauantee a living minimum wage for workers in every sector. Welfare is dead, and it has been for years. If you are paying attention, you know this to be true. Land goes into tedious detail explaining what life is like when you are on assistance — it’s almost a full-time job just to get what you need to be able to work. It’s a different application for everything (occasionally you get lucky and some applications double up), and each visit to each office takes hours on end. This is assuming that you never get sick and don’t need to take off work to go to a doctor. These minor inconveniences to people with salaried jobs are major catastrophies for people — mostly women, mostly single mothers — who fear losing what difficult-to-find work they had in the first place. 

That’s if you are lucky enough to have a regular work schedule, which Land finds when she begins working for a cleaning company. My heart broke for her when she entered into a relationship destined to fail — when it finally ended I was hopeful that she could make it on her own. I was angry when the doctors called her a bad mother for her living conditions — we are all trying to do our best with the circumstances we have. I  rode for her when her car went out of commission, the circumstances of which you will need to read for yourself. Land is an outstanding writer, and she brings us along on the journey that starts when her daughter takes her first steps in a homeless shelter. 

I’m always amazed when I listen to how some people speak of those on government assistance, and the coded language they use to describe those they feel are below them. Little do they know that the summer I lost my job, I sought out SNAP to help ease my financial burden. I qualified, but the process of obtaining them was so time consuming that I wouldn’t have been able to work what jobs I could find babysitting. It was an eye-opening moment for me, as was my visit to the unemployment office for a mandated job-training course. We were all treated like absolute morons. It was sobering to be sure. 

This isn’t a plea for empathy so much as it is a call to give Land’s book an open-minded read. Live in her world for a few hours, and imagine yourself in her shoes. 

Act Natural: A Cultural History of Misadventures in Parenting

You know I love a good parenting book, so when I read the blurb about Jennifer Traig's Act Natural: A Cultural History of Misadventures in Parenting I was completely sold. 

One peice of advice you get as a new parent — and arguably one of the most well-intentioned yet completely useless — is to trust your instincts. After all, parenting is natural. Everyone knows how to do it! Except...

You should be a little more familiar with history. It turns out, there is nothing even remotely natural about parenting. Humans have spent centuries making absolutely stupid decisions about their children. There is a reason people have been horrible forever — it’s because they are products of their environment and child-rearing. As I like to tell everyone, when we know better, we do better. However, it’s also fair to point out that since the late ‘70’s, the Western world has taken the very new concept of “parenting” and run with it. The pendulum has swung in the opposite direction and humans still generally suck. 

But don’t worry! Just trust your instincts. It’s natural. 

I loved this book as a cultural history of parenting. I’ve railed in previous posts about how parenting has become a verb and it’s done some damage to adults’ self-worth and beliefs about themselves. Here, Traig has selected a few big topics and has given us a concise yet very full history of parenting advice from as far back as it was written. Some of it is horrifying, some of it is funny, and some of it is absurd. Occasionally you will find advice that is on-point. She takes  us through birth to feeding and toddlerhood to adolescence. You would be surprised at some of the recommendations that you should maybe still think about today. 

However, humans have been offering unsolicited and stupid advice for generations upon generations. Traig pulls it out in this book and presents it to you as-is with a side of self-depricating humor. She’s not interested in giving you parenting advice; she’s just telling you about the absurdity that lies in the history of men telling women how to parent. Because if we are really going to get down to brass tacks, that’s the history of child-reading advice. (The best is when the men either didn’t have children of their own or gave them away to be raised somewhere else.)

It took me a hot second to adjust to Traig’s asides in her writing, but once I did I thoroughly appreciated her jabs at history and her willingness to own her parenting choices. This is not a holier-than-thou retelling, and she’s strait forward in making sure you know that she’s just trying to get by. However, she knows that you are too even if you present yourself as a perfect family on social media. (I’m also calling out you all who like to throw in a “what a crazy day!” post every once in a while. We know you. We see you. We know you are full of shit.) It turns out parenting has been hard across history for different reasons, and at the end of the day, this book just celebrates us all getting by in whatever way we can. 

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

I had a Great on Kindle credit and didn't want for much, but at the moment Marie Kondo's The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing was on sale and caught my eye. My mom and several friends swore by it, so I gave it a go. 

For those of you who missed the craze, Kondo built the KonMari method. You hold an object in your hands and ask yourself if it brings you joy. If it does, you keep it. If it doesn’t, you toss it. That’s the long and short of it although there is definitely more to it in the fine details. Kondo hates organization tools; she feels it creates a false sense of tidyiness rather than actual tidyness. She has a point there. While some stuff I could get behind, others made me cock my head in wonder. 

Here is an Instagram post I put up a couple of months ago, toward the end of 2018. 

I came to the KonMari method late — both in book time (this book came out a few years ago) and in cleaning time (see the above post). I read it after my big year-long purge, so it was interesting to read the book and compare methods. (Disclaimer: my way was in no way a method. I just have a small child who gets into everything and I don’t have the luxury of doing my whole house in a week anyway.) There were some things that I preemptively followed to the letter — I didn’t lose a lot of sleep about getting rid of things, and I didn’t keep things that didn’t bring me joy — and there were some things that made me curious. I don’t openly thank objects myself; maybe it’s my American puritanical upbringing, but I have a hard time thanking objects. (Although, now that I think about it, I’ve definitely said goodbye to objects.) 

One other things that was important to me in my great purge that Kondo doesn’t address is that it was, and still is, very important to me to get rid of things “ethically.” I can’t just throw things away — in case you haven’t heard, the world has a trash problem — and just dropping things off at a Goodwill means they will likely end up in the trash. So I have a nice amount of things still waiting to leave my apartment for a clothing swap in February and another in June, and a bag of shoes to go with it. 

I appreciated that Kondo doesn’t preach about buying less so much as only keeping what makes you happy. She actually recognizes that you will buy more things, but the hope in the tidying process is that you will recognize what brings you joy. One point of note she makes about clothes is that most of her clients it rid of pieces that others gave her. I’ve noticed that too. I got rid of a lot of beautiful pieces that just don’t fit my postpartum body, but I also got rid of pieces that just weren’t me. Interestingly enough, many of those were gifts.   

There are things I’ve taken from this book. With what’s left over, specifically around my own clothes, I’m evaluating piece by piece which I want to keep. I wear work clothes to work and when I look in the mirror, if I don’t feel 100% confident in how I look, I put the piece in the clothing swap pile as soon as I get home. I commented to my husband just yesterday how much more empty our closet feels — I’ve never had so many empty hangers. I’m also much more picky about what I buy. I subscribed to a clothing rental service (Gwynnie Bee), and I’m super happy with it. It’s rentals, but if you like you can buy. I get to wear something once or twice and see how it wears. I’ve bought a lot of basics through this — black pants and dresses, a top I LOVE — and I’ve been able to change up my wardrobe through new dresses weekly. 

I still have more to do. I haven’t tackled my office in full yet, although I did start yesterday. I feel as though I spend less time picking up on a daily basis now that I’ve gotten rid of things. I also took advantage of Kondo’s suggestion of small box organizers in my drawers and it’s made a world of difference in my calmness while food prepping. All in all, the book was worth the read even if I didn’t, and wouldn’t, follow everything to the letter. Let’s all try to live tidier lives. 

The Wonder Weeks

This book was given to us by a friend of my husband's, and she touted it as lifesaving to her. I was sold because both authors are academics, and you know I dislike anything that isn't evidenced-based. Apparently The Wonder Weeks by Hetty van de Rijt and Frans Plooij is quite the hit among the mommy set, of which I am not one of their traditional members. 

Becoming a new parent is one of the strangest experiences, and I tell people all the time that no one was more prepared to be a parent than I was. A sample of my credentials included approximately 25 years of child care varrying in ages from newborn to high school, approximately 14 years of teaching ages toddler to graduate level, two Master’s degrees and a doctoral candidacy in Educational Psychology in which one of my foci was human development. I know my stuff. 

So when I tell you that becoming the parent of what basically amounts to a potted plant was one of the strangest and difficult things I’ve ever done, I can’t imagine how bad it must be for people who have never even held an infant. When we checked out of the hospital, the discharge nurse was talking to me about diapers when I cut her off and said that I have decades worth of childcare experience and I can change a diaper. I need guidance on how to turn a baby into a bigger human without losing my mind. She didn’t have an answer to that but was clearly happy that I knew how to fasten a Pamper. 

All of this to say that at first I relied on this book like it was the Bible. I mean, not entirely, but I did use it and appreciated its presence in my life to create a bit of predictability and stability in an otherwise chaotic and unpredictable moment in our lives. Those first few leaps that the authors discuss were not just important but were also markers that we were surviving and watching our boy grow. I didn’t follow their advice for games and activities and such because it just wasn’t necessary for me, but I was thankful to see them in there for parents who genuinely have no idea what to do with their babies. These leaps happened fast and furiously for the first nine months or so, so having this guide was vital for our sanity. 

As my son has gotten older and the leaps have gotten longer and farther between, we haven’t really needed the guidance as much. Once he hit six months or so he enetered my wheelhouse of knowledge and I was able

To better understand where he was and where he was going. But man, were those first few months something. I’m grateful that we had this on hand to serve as a guidebook for an otherwise confusing and fraught experience that comes with absolutely no instructions. And even when you find some, most are crap. Not this though. 

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI

David Grann's Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI has been on my to-read list for a while, but with so many physical books actually on my shelf, it has been relegated to the wish list. This summer, while at the beach, my best friend handed me her copy and told me I had to read it. I was ecstatic.

In the early 1920’s members of the Osage tribe in Oklahoma began dying off, some suspiciously and others through outright murder. At the time, most white settlers could not care less, as they viewed the Indians as less than human and despised the Osage for their shrewd maneuvering of the oil system to claim headrights to the liquid gold underneath their reservation, making them all wealthy beyond belief. The headrights, however, were the key to this mystery, as they could only be obtained through inheritance — no Osage could sell their rights. Could there really be a cold-blooded plot to murder dozens of men and women simply for their fortunes? As Hoover’s FBI is in its infancy and the feds as we know them were just starting to take shape, this case, known by the Osage as the Reign of Terror, would become the cornerstone of the bourgeoning agency and would remain a  source of devastation to the descendants of a people who deserved so much better. 

I found this story, and this book about it, to be absolutely fascinating. I didn’t want to put it down, and I was thrown by the calculated, cold-bloodedness if it all. Interestingly, the mastermind of a large amount of the murders comes out mid-way through the story, and it’s almost unbelievable because you’ve come to know the man as someone doing good. I found it odd that as much as I love murder and mayhem, and as much true crime as I read, that wi would be flabbergasted by the white man’s lack of limits for wealth. To look at a group of people as genuinely inhuman and as lacking the same humanity that you have is just something I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around. It’s not that I don’t believe it — after all, we have all seen how cruel humanity can be — it’s just that when confronted when something this diabolical and cruel, it’s difficult for someone like me to grasp it. I wouldn’t even begin to imagine a plot like this, so it’s not a surprise that I have a hard time wrapping my head around it. 

Grann’s writing is wonderful and easy to read without being pedantic, and I appreciate the adaptability of the journalist to reach a lay audience. I loved the weaving of the Osage murder plot with the beginnings of the FBI, and he was wonderful at combining the information that we needed to know about the FBI and which would enhance our understanding of the Osage murders without burdening us with minutiae. I can see why this book was a bestseller and why it was consistently rated as one of the top non-fiction titles of the year it was published. 

It’s a strong and important retelling if a piece of hurtful history in Osage history and, frankly, in American history. Our country’s treatment of the Natives in so many ways was beyond cruel, and then to read it as personalized as Grann has made it here slaps you in the face. It only started with displacement and genocide and then it continued on with guardianships of the Osage fortunes, declaring Natives as incompetent and essentially forcing them to marry white man and women, and then turning a blind eye to their systematic murders for greed. When we say that as Americans we are “better than this,” we can pick up a book that extols the history of our dehumanization of the people who owned our land before we did and we can hopefully recognize that no, we aren’t — but that we can learn from history and choose to be better from here on out. 

Bringing Adam Home: The Abduction that Changed America

Les Standiford's Bringing Adam Home: The Abduction that Changed America was one of the novels I chose to "check out" from Amazon, along with a bunch of children's books and a book on the history of Budweiser. (What can I say? I have eclectic taste.)

This book is incredibly in-depth, closely examining the Walsh case from start to finish. In the event you haven’t heard of it, Adam Walsh was a six-year-old boy in Florida who disappeared from a Sears store while his mother was just in the next department. This was the late ‘70’s/eary ‘80’s when everyone was a bit more trusting and severely less fearful than we are in 2018/19. He wanted to play with a video game console, and there was no reason for his mother to say no. His head was found a couple of weeks later several miles away, and his body was never found. It would take almost three decades to name his killer even though it only took months to identify him. 

Standiford’s book bookended a long, sordid tale of Otis Toole, the killer of Adam and many others, with the Walshes. That was, to me, the most interesting piece. I ended up skimming over a lot of the middle of the book because I found Toole to be egregiously disgusting and I didn’t care to hear the details of his crime. I was much more interested in the details of the day that Adam disappeared and the aftermath of that. The relationship between the Walshes and Matthews, the investigator that ultimately solved and closed the case for them, intrigued me more than the sordid and pained life of someone like Toole. 

Going even deeper than that, I was horrified by the police work done in the case. Toole confesses mere months after Adam’s killing, spontaneously even, and because it didn’t fit the narrative the investigators had about the crime, they ignored the confession or brushed it aside as false when challenged. It angered me to no end, as the Walshes could have had some sense of closure early on if the man had been identified and at a minimum had charges brought against him. These two people, Adam’s parents, had to spend almost 30 years wondering exactly what happened, as the police delay told them nothing. Even as John Walsh featured his son’s case on America’s Most Wanted and the tips came in, the police went to great effort to cover up their mistakes. If I had any faith left in criminal investigators, this shook that deeply. Unfortunately, it appears the doggedness based in their biases was much more common than we want to know. 

Ultimately, this was an interesting book about the Adam Walsh kidnapping and murder, and its detail and clarity was well worth the read for the true crime nut. It was one of the two cases that I really feel shaped our understanding of child abductions by strangers (the other being Etan Patz) and changed how Americans view the right to a carefree childhood. In fact, there is a direct connection to Small Animals, which I reviewed last fall. We were never the same, and we can never go back. 

Touchpoints: The Essential Reference for Your Child's Emotional and Behavioral Development

My husband has been working at a downtown theater these past few months, so when we head down to meet him for dinner I will often swing by The Strand and see what used books look interesting. I've reviewed books by Dr. T. Berry Brazelton before, and I happen to be a fan of his work from a professional standpoint as well as a personal one. I found Touchpoints: The Essential Reference for Your Child's Emotional and Behavioral Development and I picked it up for a dollar to use with my early childhood development classes.

I found this book to be a great reference for new parents and those who may be skittish about whether their kids are "on the right track." Funny enough, last night I had a childless friend over along with a parent friend, and CF said that just about everyone she knows with a child is worried about whether they are developing correctly except me. She said this laughingly, but it's true. A big part of that is my work; I teach human development and understand it intimately, and I also understand that resilience is the norm. I don't freak out easily, and I would like to urge others to as well.

That's where Touchpoints comes in. I found most of the information to be reassuring to the general public, and the thrust of the book is a noble one: that there are certain times where you will see your pediatrician and you will wonder if what you are doing as a parent is correct. (Short answer: most of the time it is, so chill out.) The first section of this book goes over 13 touchpoints starting in pregnancy and ending at three years. Each of these touchpoints talks about what Dr. Brazelton expects to see when you walk into his office and how most of what he sees is normal. Emotional and behavioral development are just as important as physical development, and they are also the most nerve-racking to find a balance with new parents.

The second section covers challenges to development such as allergies, divorce, illness, and school readiness. The last section discusses allies to development such as grandparents and your doctor. Overall I found this book to be a helpful one, although it did contain some inaccurate information regarding cognitive development. Some of this can be chalked up to this book being published in 1992 (26 years ago for those of you whom have trouble with math) and it's more than fair to say that understanding of cognitive development especially in children has grown and changed tremendously in that time. The rest of it can be attributed to the difference between medical doctors and psychologists. There is a difference in what people learn and why, and just like I would never purport to know about the inner workings of a baby's body, it's fair to say that sometimes pediatricians aren't up to date on the latest research outside of their field.

One thing that I like to make sure all parents know is related to chapter titled, "Lying, Stealing, and Cheating." Actually, it came up in conversation last night, too. Lying in children under four is a sign of appropriate cognitive development. This doesn't mean that you don't correct them according to your values, morals, and ethics, but it's important to remember that children are not small adults. They have a developmental trajectory and cognitive map that is different that what we have as grown ups, and that should be respected. We often assign motives to children's actions when really, they are just in a constant state of learning and absorbing. Appreciate that all of it is a part of development, and it's your job as a parent or caregiver to shape the clay but understand that clay is malleable and fragile. Children are constantly learning and growing into adults, not as adults. 

Sick: A Memoir

Porochista Khakpour's Sick: A Memoir was a popular new release, so I jumped on the bandwagon as soon as it came out. I was unfamiliar with her previous work, and much to my shame. She is a beautiful, compelling writer who drew me in with her prose and her tale-weaving. 

Most likely but as a child, Porochista has never known a time when she wasn’t sick. Things had always felt off for her, and when as a young woman at college in New York she finds herself spiraling down into a series of health breaks, she can’t quite put her finger on why. Although several people mention the possibility of Lyme over the next few years, it’s not until a definitive diagnosis almost a decade later that she can find any sort of short-lives relief. Her work and wanderlust takes her all over the word, but her illness continues to bring her back. 

Porochista’s story is fascinating, and well worth a read. She has many in her life who don’t believe her, and through her story I did a great deal of reckoning with myself over people I have known who have suffered from similar ailments. Was I a non-believer? Did I hurt anyone I loved because of an illness that was hard to diagnose? Quite possibly. I also had to reckon with my own ailments. I have been suffering from extreme exhaustion on and off for four years. It got better with pregnancy and post-partum, but it’s recently started to read its ugly head again. No doctor has taken me seriously, and so I soldier on, grateful that I have the ability to work from home on days when I just have difficulty moving. 

Following Porochista’s journey from childhood to adulthood and colored by this mysterious illness that has lent a cloud cover to her development was fascinating. Her timelining her illness with her relationships was something we can all easily relate to, even though by the time her illness became so bad that she had to leave Germany, I wanted to smack her and tell her to let herself heal emotionally as well as physically. For once, a character listened to me! For a bit, anyway, so by the time she found a relationship after making her way back to NYC I was cheering for her. 

I appreciate that she ended the book with the recognition that her journey is far from over. She talks about the book that she pitched which is not the book that she ended up with due to an unexpected relapse. Her open heart that she lays bare on her pages makes me feel as though she is my friend, and her words strung together on the page have made me think more deeply and honestly about capital-H Health. 

My Body Belongs to Me!

Amazon Prime Day is a beautiful thing. I didn't intend to buy anything more than what we absolutely needed, but when I saw this My Body Belongs to Me! by profamilia and illustrated by Dagmar Geisler, I knew we absolutely needed it.

Clara is a young girl who understands that from being a baby to being a small girl, her body has changed and she is becoming different as she grows. She also knows that sometimes it's nice to touch other people, like sitting close to a friend, hugging her family, and sitting on her grandmother's lap. But Clara most importantly knows that she is the only one who gets to decide who touches her and when they do. She has the right to tell others to not touch her, and to decline when others offer and she does not want it, even if it is someone she knows well, like her parents. And if she tells someone no and they don't listen, she can always go get an adult she trusts, because she gets to choose when and how someone touches her.

One thing that is very important to us in our household is that our child does not have to touch anyone he doesn't want to. I ask him to give high fives, hugs, or kisses to people we know and love, and sometimes he just doesn't want to. It's not a problem; in fact, quite the opposite. Sometimes he doesn't feel like it, even at 16 months old. It's his right, and we want to encourage bodily autonomy with him. I ordered this book for exactly that reason; I wanted a resource that we could read to him that says this very thing.

Over 90% of children who experience sexual abuse and assault know their victimizer. All of this brouhaha over the last few years about transgender men and women using the bathroom of their choice because it puts kids in danger is a bullshit, and not just because of the primary reason that we should respect people's choices with their own bodily autonomy (and, frankly, if you are going to look over my stall to see my genitalia, I am absolutely going to call the cops and report you for sexually inappropriate behavior). The statistic at the start of this paragraph should alarm you, because it's NOT a stranger in the parking lot, but someone your child -- and YOU -- knows. It's someone you might very well trust.

Sex education begins young. It begins when babies are teeny tiny. It's a constant education, not just a single sex talk. It starts with making sure that children know that their bodies belong to them, and they have a right to say no and to be listened to when they say it. I love this book, and the culture of consent that it reinforces.

There is an introduction from the International Center for Assault Prevention recommending this book and providing information as to how to use it with your children to discuss bodily boundaries. There is also a list of resources at the end for parents if they need them. I would also like to point you to RAINN, another great resource if you are in need of help or other resources.

When Breath Becomes Air

Recently in my apartment building, someone started a book table where they leave books and others can take them. I am not interested in most of the titles, but occasionally one pops out that I have wanted to read. This was the case with Paul Kalanithi's When Breath Becomes Air.

This book is mostly a memoir, but it is a beautiful and arresting treatise on life and love. How do we live to our fullest? Kalanithi tells us, because he did it. Beginning as a child with a deep love of literature instilled in him by his mother, he was encouraged by his parents to delve deep into his curiosity and to learn. In college he continued to immerse himself in his beloved literature as well as indulge his curiosity in how the mind works through biology and the beginning inklings of neuroscience. He then went off to find himself, continuing his studies at Cambridge before moving on to medical school and eventually becoming one of the most sought-after neurosurgeons and neuroscientists in the nation. He married Lucy, the love of his life whom he first met in medical school, and together they had a child when they knew his life was near its end. Other than dying at a young age -- 37 -- he had it all.

But the thing that Paul teaches us in this book that dying is merely the end, but it's not the definition of who we are the lives that we have led. The measure of our worth as humans are the things we have accomplished in between birth and death -- knowledge, love, kindness, and the depth of our souls. In this short memoir, he puts that all to words in the most eloquent, moving, and thoughtful prose I have ever read. His words seared my heart in a reminder of how important it is to reflect on our lives through the lens of thankfulness when we have been given so much. Paul is one of the most gifted motivational writers that has ever existed (and yes, I am not exaggerating), and just a few hours with his gifted mind feels like it was a gift meant for me. It is clear why he would have been incredibly successful as a writer, and his self-education in literature is apparent in his writing.

There are so many beautiful moments in this book to touch on, but I want you to read them for yourself. When Paul is diagnosed with metastatic lung cancer in his 30's, at the height of his career, when he is being pursued by some of the most elite medical institutions, he has to reexamine his life plan. Practicing medicine for the next 20 years and spending the following 20 as a writer isn't possible anymore. He just won't live that long. He has to make a decision to live the last of his days and months to their fullest. He finishes out his residency, he begins this book, and he and Lucy decide to have a baby. This is where I am broken.

Paul's final words in his final chapter broke me as a human. His final paragraph, written to his infant daughter, is the most meaningful work I have ever written. It's simplicity belies the depth of his words and the meaning of life and love for another human. Even if the rest of the book wasn't worth the read -- and it very much is worth every second you will give to it -- those last few words will wreck you.

But you aren't done -- you need to read Lucy's afterword. Reading her bear her raw soul in telling us about her last few moments with her husband was so real that I had to read it in one-paragraph chunks. It was too much to bear in one setting without openly breaking down.

This book as a whole is one of the all time greatest memoirs ever written. 

The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog and Other Stories From a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook

The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog and Other Stories From a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook: What Traumatized Children Can Teach Us About Loss, Love, and Healing by Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D. and Maia Szalavitz came across my radar a while ago, but an old childhood friend recommended it to me recently, so I got it from the library. I was shocked that I had not read it earlier, but it has been indispensable for my work in teacher training. 

Trauma is far more prevalent than we ever could have imagined. Dr. Bruce Perry, a psychiatrist by training, fell into the work of treating trauma in children by accident. From there though, he has built a movement that seeks to give children the space and time they need to process through their pain and experience to learn how to cope in their world. He tells some of his bigger, more memorable stories in this book: his work with the children released from the Branch Davidian compound during the siege; a young girl who witnessed her mother’s murder; children raised in a home of cyclical sexual abuse; and many more. He uses these stories to build a history of what he learned and how it shaped him as a practitioner. He also updates each chapter with the most recent research in order to place each anecdote and subsequent explanation into the most current context possible. 

This book has spurred me to do so much more reading into the recent research on trauma and its effects on children and adults, including health ailments such as autoimmune disorders, mental illness such as Oppositional Defiant Disorder and anxiety, and attachment issues. The roots of this run deep, and the relationship between trauma and human outcomes is staggering. The stories in this book are extreme, and I caution anyone with trauma triggers to proceed with extreme caution. However, it’s important to note that trauma is on a continuum, and it’s not always witnessing a murder or being held in a cage. The common denominator is a lack of need fulfillment from caregivers — and those needs include (per Maslow’s Heirarchy of Needs) food, water, shelter, and safety. Love? Sure, that’s important, but it’s not a buffering factor if you don’t feel safe, physically or emotionally. It’s why a parent who physically abuses you can show you love when they aren’t hurting you, but it doesn’t mitigate the lack of safety you feel in not knowing when they will lash out. 

All of this to say that you shouldn’t fear traumatizing your children if you provide for their needs, including safety. I had a conversation with a friend just last night about this, and her concern that she was traumatizing her young child because he gets upset when saying goodbye to the people he leaves. That’s normal, and not trauma. Having your parent spit at you when you are crying is not normal, as an example. 

Now for the importance of this book. This is an absolute must-read for anyone who wants to do any work with children. You will run across the long-term affects of trauma, although most likely not as extreme as the surviving Branch Davidian children, for example. However, the sexual and/or emotional abuse of children is far more common that we could ever imagine, and its effects last long into adolescence.  Knowing how this affects your students is vital to being a caring educator and seeing past just simply placing the blame on students for behavior that very well may be out of their control. 

I would LOVE to do Dr. Perry’s training in trauma treatment, but it’s a bit out of my financial reach for something that just fascinated me but is y directly part of my practice. However, what a gift this man is to the children being served not just by him, but by the practitioners who have learned from him. I’m so thankful for this book — I even purchased it as a reference piece. I can’t recommend it more highly. 

Kid Scientists: True Tales of Childhood From Science Superstars

I knew the second I saw Kid Scientists: True Tales of Childhood From Science Superstars by David Stabler and Anoosha Syed that I had to have it on my son's bookshelf. When David signed the book, he remarked that it was to David, from David. I swooned.

Neil Degrasse Tyson. Jane Goodall. Rachel Carson. Benjamin Franklin. Katherine Johnson. Temple Grandin. Sally Ride. What do all of these very different people have in common? They are all scientists, but more importantly, they were all kids once. The grown ups in their lives encouraged (and sometimes discouraged!) their curiosity about the world around them, all of which gave them the encouragement and support to make the discoveries that shaped our world as we know it. These stories were each a perfect length with large font, allowing my son and I to read the stories together and having them move fairly quickly. We read one every night before bed, and I fell madly in love with this book chapter after chapter.

I was really blown away by this book and the focus on famous scientists' childhoods. Their accomplishments later in life did come up at the end of their stories, but the focus was really on their early lives and how their futures were shaped by their childhoods. Some faced great adversity while others had great privilege. All of them had in common, though, a curiosity that ran deep. This was a huge reminder that it is absolutely vital that we allow kids to feed their curiosity and dig into whatever they are interested in and want to investigate. Not everyone is destined to become a scientist, but every child has a scientist within them. We are so quick to beat out curiosity in our kids in favor of being able to do well on assessments, and we lose sight of the forest for the trees. I would always rather have a curious kid than one who scores well on a silly exam.

This book made such an impression on me that I am going to purchase some of the other books in the series, including Kid Artists, Kid Presidents, and Kid Authors.

The Real Lolita: The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel that Scandalized the World

One of the top five adult buzz books at BookExpo this year was Sarah Weinman's The Real Lolita: The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel that Scandalized the World. I nabbed myself a copy and was hooked as soon as I started reading. Sally Horner was a young girl -- not even twelve years old, who was coerced into running away with a man four times her age. A simple act of youthful rebellion -- stealing something from the dime store -- set off a series of events that removed her from her family for two years and pushed her into a nightmare that would define her life.

It might seem odd to many of us that a young girl could be "kidnapped" but not picked up and hauled off. She went with Frank La Salle (a name among many he used) willingly because he told her that he was an FBI agent who required her to come with him on a road trip to avoid being arrested and telling her mother for the petty theft. We as a society underestimate the fear and the power that adults have over children, and how likely it is that children feel obligated to those in power will do what they say, even if they get a creepy gut feeling that they shouldn't. (I will put a plug in here to say that teaching children compliance as opposed to autonomy contributes greatly to being picked as a victim by predators -- they know to look out for this type of child who willingly goes along and fears getting in trouble for "telling.") Ten years ago I would have not believed that Sally went along so willingly with a convicted child molester; a decade, some degrees, and a lot of reading later I understand how easy it was for La Salle to take her and convince her poor mother that he was the father of a classmate.

Sally's time with Frank is only known somewhat, although there are details from witnesses who knew them in the neighborhoods in which they lived. The long-term effects of her ordeal, though, were not to be seen, as she died young in a tragic car accident. Her experience didn't just affect her, however. It affected her mother and sister, and her friends that she had both before the experience and after. However, the most wide-ranging impact Sally's kidnapping had was on the public at large, as she served as an inspiration for Vladmir Nabakov's Lolita. While he would deny it until the day he died, Weinman's detailed and painstaking research shows that he was quite familiar with the story, even weaving details too small for the public to recognize into his narratives.

This book was gripping and I couldn't put it down. Weinman is an outstanding narrative non-fiction writer and she tells a tale that is winding and confusing in as close to a linear manner as she can, while still keeping us totally involved in the story. It reads like a novel until  Weinman brings you back out of Sally's story and reminds you that Nabakov was living a parallel life at the time. It is the best way to tell Sally's story; otherwise, it's incredibly difficult. She was sexually assaulted the entire time she was gone, and she was captive to a man who worshiped her in the creepiest way you can imagine. Weinman has crafted a gorgeous retelling of a time in a young girl's life that was horrific, yet iconic. It's well worth sinking your teeth into and getting to know the other side of a book you may know, whether you like it or not.

I need to read Lolita now, as I have never read it. I never had a desire to, but reading Weinman's take on the book and her deep connections to Sally's story makes me intrigued as to what my take of the book would be. Will it be a sordid tale that makes me shiver, or will I despise Humbert Humbert in the way that Nabakov possibly intended his audience to feel toward a man who is clearly a sexual predator? I love a good unreliable narrator, so I will look out for it soon on my next few jaunts to the used bookstore.

The Library Book

Susan Orlean's latest book, The Library Book, was a hot ticket at Book Expo this year. I didn't get a hard copy, which was a bummer, but I was approved for an electronic copy so I jumped for joy. And what a joy this book was. 

One spring morning in 1986, a fire broke out at the main Los Angeles Public Library. It was so intense, so all-consuming that 30 years later, residents remember it well. No one knows exactly how or where it started, only that it was arson. A suspect began to emerge — a man named Harry Peak, an aspiring actor and a generally confusing man who lived to spin tall tales. Orlean, a recent Los Angeles transplant, hears about the story after re-finding her childhood love of libraries at the venerable Los Angeles institution. Part narrative non-fiction, part historical record of the Los Angeles Public Library, and part love letter to libraries everywhere, this book focuses in on a place we all know and love yet rarely dig deep into: the oublic library. 

I wanted to read this book, but I can also say from looking into the rear view mirror that I wasn’t quite expecting what I got with this book. It was so much more than I was expecting, which was an historical account of this fire that destroyed millions of books and brought out the best in Los Angelenos. Orlean has put together a beautiful book that closely examines the history of libraries in general and the LAPL in terms of its origins, it’s sexist history, and the current societal position it holds as a welcome mat for the masses regardless of race, color, creed, gender, or even itinerancy. The library is open to all who can get through their doors while they are open. Orlean focuses on this and breathes life into a building that is so much more than that, as it is the lifeblood of the city to so many. 

The trips that Orlean takes with the staff of the LAPL, to other branches both closed and in use; into meetings about how to better serve their constituencies; and to library conferences where staff from all over the world seek ways to improve what they do in a changing world all serve to elevate the story of the fire and give us, the readers, a full-bodied and overt understanding of why we need public libraries. This was an absolutely fascinating read, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. And if you aren’t already a partron of your local public library, make it a point to go before the month is out. See the good these places do for all of our communities, no matter where we are in the United States.