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. 

Dear Mr. M: A Novel

On a list somewhere, Dear Mr. M by Herman Koch came up as a book to read if you loved another one. Can’t remember the details, but I did remember to get this from the library. Since I was a fan of The Dinner, I ran to get this from the library. It came out in 2016, but it’s new to me! 

I’m not even sure how to begin to describe this story in terms of blurb-ing it. The narrator is an older man now, but he was once I high school student madly in love with the most gorgeous girl. That girl had an affair with her teacher who suddenly went missing one snowy day when he went to visit the couple at her parents’ vacation home. A famous author wrote a novel based on these events, and now our narrator has found himself inserted in the author’s world. Who tells our truths, and what is the author’s role in a story? Is it to tell the truth, or is it to tell the most compelling story he can? 

This book was mind-bogglingly good. It was a slow burn; there wasn’t anything about it that made me rush through the pages. Instead, I was captivated by the detail of the story and who the characters were. Koch is the most interesting writer; he has this way of writing thrillers that don’t have you biting your nails, but rather furrowing your brow and changing your plans so you can keep poring over his words. The devil is quite in the detail in his work, and you keep pushing through because the end will be worth it. In this case, that was absolutely true. The book ends on such a quiet note that it’s explosive in the brain. 

I absolutely hated M, the writer. (Koch does this thing where very few people have names and instead are called by the first initial of their last name.) I recognize that this was Koch’s point; he’s not supposed to be likeable. It makes the last half of the story go down smoother. But I absolutely hated him. He was a heinous person both in and out, and it made me question the character is his much younger wife. She wasn’t the focus of the story though, so I could let that go. However, I say this as a testament to Koch’s character development, because if I hate a character that much, he must be written very well. I also wanted to hate the narrator — even as a boy he is not presented in a good light — and I just couldn’t. Try as I might, I couldn’t hate him. Koch has developed these characters within an inch of their fictitious lives, and it’s a glorious read. 

This is a book you must commit to. It isn’t a beach read, wherein you can whip through it in a matter of hours. I described it earlier as a “slow burn,” and that’s exactly what it is. But once you are in, you will be hooked. Koch has a lot in store for you, and you won’t like everyone you meet on your journey. You won’t even know who is writing, “Dear Mr. M” until the very end. But it will hurt so good, as it were. Promise promise. 

His Favorites: A Novel

I read a blurb about Kate Walbert's His Favorites on a "Best of 2018" list somewhere, so I picked up an e-book version from the library. 

The blurbs were right — this is a bewitching story that weaves two huge events together. The beauty of this book is not in a climactic punch, but rather in its intense prose and weaving together if the narrative. Jo is a young, carefree girl until the death of her best friend which will haunt her for years to come. She can’t go back to school — it’s too much to bear. She is lucky to be accepted to Hawthorne, a boarding school, so late after the start of the year. Her isolation, however, makes her a target of Master, the notorious teacher who gloms onto the beautiful young things he grooms through his modernist seminar. These two seemingly disparate events shape Jo into adulthood. 

This book was such a whirlwind that taking a step back to think on my thoughts about it knocks the wind out of me. It’s such a beautiful book that I felt like a lobster in a cool pot of water; it wasn’t until the book ended that I realized the water was boiling and I wouldn’t make it out alive. Jo was at times sympathetic and at others quite not so, as it’s hard to tell her that she shouldn’t blame herself for her best friend’s death. However, the most beautiful part of Jo is when she explains her confusion with the public reaction to Stephanie, her best friend, after she dies. Suddenly, in the newspaper articles and funerals notices, it’s a new girl. While everything these reports say is true, they capture an angel and not the true person Stephanie was on a Tuesday evening. This description was apt and quite affecting, as it’s something I’ve ruminated on for sometime, how we take people in death and make them into someone they weren’t in life. Or at a minimum a better version. Walbert wrote it better than I could. 

This book was just glorious, and it was quite a meditation on who we become when we live our lives. Every little event affects us, and shapes our souls. Walbert’s prose brings this through the paper and to the surface of our consciousness. And what a beautiful ride it is. 

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. 

Dry: A Novel

Dry, a new young adult novel by Neal and Jarrod Shusterman, needs warning before you pick it up. It’s incredible, but also a little hard to swallow right now (pun completely intended) if you are aware of the effect of climate change on the Earth’s current water situation. It was so realistic it was painful at times. 

The Tap-Out, as it will be known for generations to come, was not entirely unexpected, but they were never really sure that it would actually come. After all, water has always seemed to be an unlimited resource. But the day the taps ran dry was the day that their worlds changed, and Alyssa was front and center to witness it all. She and her parents and little brother are just a little too late to the warehouse club to buy up water -- after all, how long could this really last? When her parents go to collect some from the desalination machines, they don't return. Alyssa, along with her brother and their survivalist neighbor (who just happens to be madly in love with Alyssa) have to get out of town before neighbors start killing each other. Their journey might take their lives, but they won't stop until they at least try to save them. 

This young adult novel was heavy, for sure. There were times when I felt my chest grow heavy and panic start to set in. I am quite concerned about the water issue; there is plenty of evidence leading to the conclusion that we, as an industrialized society, are running out of water. The conflicts in the middle east can be traced back to scarce water resources. After all, humans can't survive without it. It's incredibly frightening to me, and this book did not quell those fears. In fact, the Shustermans' story felt remarkably realistic, and that's what makes the book so outstanding yet so frightening. 

Researchers have a good understanding of why humans believe the crazy things that they do. We know, for example, that humans living in the Western world tend to overemphasize events that are statistically unlikely (especially if they are man-made) -- think stranger abductions. However, humans tend to ignore or underemphasize events that are statistically likely and dangerous -- think building homes in hurricane territory and staying even when warned to evacuate. It's cognitive bias at work. It's also a matter of ignoring things we can't control and overemphasizing things we can.

All of this to say that it's no surprise that many people don't take this seriously. All of the estimations that scientists have made about population growth, demographics, resource scarcity, and climate change have all changed drastically in the past decade -- and they are speeding up, not slowing down. Things will change much more quickly than we think. The Shustermans have captured this in their story. Kelton, Alyssa's neighbor, has grown up in a survivalist family, seems a little nutty at the beginning of the book, but boy was I grateful for him (and his regimented, authoritarian, conspiracy-nut father) by the end. The boy was prepared to n-th degree, and I'm not going to lie when I say that I am contemplating following suit.

Everything about this book -- the desperation of the neighbors, friends turning on each other, new alliances being formed, the government not doing anything to help while leading the people to think that they are -- every last thing felt true-to-life, and it left me shook. It was an outstanding book, and I can't recommend it more highly. Now I'm going to go build my home off the grid and I hope you have a nice day.

The Faithful Spy: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Plot to Kill Hitler

John Hendrix's The Faithful Spy: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Plot to Kill Hitler was a book that I picked up because it not only looked interesting, but it was also something that I know I will one day want my son to read.

This graphic depiction of a story I had never heard about before was just amazing. I was blown away by the representations of some difficult material, including Hitler and the underpinnings of the Holocaust. Hitler was portrayed as a wolf, so his actual human representation was only presented once. This is important, as any other consisted picture of him might have served to humanize him; rather, seeing him as a wolf in sheep's clothing created a metaphorical yet arresting picture of a man whose need for power destroyed millions of lives. I also found the explanation of the rise of the Nazi party to be incredibly well-done and very clear. It's hard for even those with high level reading skills to grasp onto all of the nuances and details of that point in history, and I felt that this book did a wonderful job making clear what happened along with the timeline. Hendrix put a small box on the corner of the page when he was discussing the military exercises that contained a map showing the areas that the Nazi's had already conquered and that which they were moving into. Not only was this a great story of standing up for your beliefs -- and we will get to that momentarily -- it was also a history book.

I was never aware of the story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a man of God who believed it was his moral imperative to kill Hitler. Spending time in America and seeing legal racial discrimination, even among his fellow Christians, shapes who Bonhoeffer is and what his faith means. When he returns to his home country of Germany at the beginning of the era we know well from our history books, he wants to bring the active faith he discovered in America. As Germany begins to see its takeover by the Nazi party, he finds himself involved in anti-Nazi activism that puts him on the enemy list, and he briefly escapes to America before realizing that to truly live his faith, he must be in the middle of the storm. He returns to Germany and joins the resistance. He struggles with his belief in the Bible and what he knows needs to happen to save Germany -- and the world -- from a tyrant who was seeking to end the lives of millions of minorities. The question he faces -- is it justified to kill a person to save millions of others -- shapes his activism, and Bonhoeffer becomes central to the plot to kill Hitler.

This is an absolutely incredible story, and one that I want my son to read one day. I want him to know that people don't just oppose hate with their words, but also with their actions even if they seem extreme at the time. We can't prove what would have happened if Hitler had been stopped earlier; it could have been a Medusa situation, or it could have helped good people realize that they were turning into bad ones. Maybe those who sought power would have still pushed forward because this was the way they were taking it. Who knows? But we do know now who Dietrich Bonhoeffer was and why we should be grateful to him. My son will know, too. 

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. 

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. 

Ohio: A Novel

The premise of Stephen Markley's novel Ohio was so compelling that I fought tooth and nail to get an advanced copy. 

One hot, muggy night in The Cane a few years bah, four classmates converge on their hometown (New Canaan, but really, who calls it that?) on a series of missions that are inextricably bound even if they don’t realize it. Bill is running an errand for an old friend, muling something he doesn’t know but would love to find out because the drugs he’s taking are nuts. Stacey has been asked to meet with her nemesis, the mother of her high school lover who has run away and wants it to stay that way. Dan is a veteran of three tours who is back to visit his folks and catch up with the only woman he has ever loved. Tina seeks a reckoning for choices others made for her that have steered her life since high school. Tonight will change the trajectory of so many lives, leaving the wreckage of the baggage of the past out and open for all to see. 

So, I’m dead. I was so utterly, completely destroyed by this novel that I can’t even see strait. This was such an outstanding piece of work that I honestly thought I might never read anything else ever again. This absolutely killed me. I felt myself slowly creeping back to the book after I put it down, wanting to be back in the world of these kids who were just that — kids — as they watched their world change so drastically. These characters are a little younger than me, and I understand their zeitgeist because it is my own. I know what it is like to live without war, without the prison industrial complex, and without the full invasion of addicting, homemade drugs. The landscape of their lives has shifted dramatically in small-town post-industrial America that it’s no wonder those who get out can, and they never return. Those who stay end up barely living if they remain alive. 

I could see some of the twists and turns coming, but I did not see the biggest one, the undercurrent of the reason they all are back. This history, this Eason, draws them all like a magnet back to their center and holds on to them as if their lives depended on it. No matter how far these four have come, they will never be separate from their inner core. Stacey wrestles with her demons and the loss of the first person she truly, whole-heartedly loved. Bill’s demons are all in his head, and he must wrestle with himself in order to breathe. Dan is truly heartbreaking — a man who gave up everything to serve and lost so much, except loyalty. Tina — man, I rooted for Tina once I figured out what she was up to. I wanted her to find a solution so badly. 

This novel was incredibly affecting, so much so that my heart hurt after I closed the final page. It was truly a gift to read in every way, and I’m so grateful it came into my life. 

Dave Eggers' What Can a Citizen Do?

I love Dave Eggers, and when I saw he was releasing a children's book, What Can a Citizen Do?, illustrated by Shawn Harris, at Book Expo, I absolutely stood in line for his autograph. He made it out to my son, so that he will know that he is a citizen and there are so many things that he can do.

He can do so many things -- join causes, write letters, build things, stand up for beliefs, do kind things for others. The key is that a citizen must be engaged and they must be part of their society. Do things to help others regardless of who they are and what they need. After all, we never know the battles that others are fighting. Being a part of something is bigger than me and you -- we are citizens.

Where to start with this lovely piece of work that I love so much that I might not let my son touch it before his 18th birthday? Or, you know what, since his prefrontal cortex doesn't finish developing until he's in his mid-20's, he can't touch it until then which is fine because I wasn't about to let him out of the house anyway. But since I want him to be a good citizen, maybe I should take everything in this paragraph back and send him out into the world.

I love the sentiment of this book, and the poem itself is just wonderful and lovely. That the thrust of the book is to be a good citizen, which means recognizing that there is injustice in the world and that it is your job to fix it, is not just a sweet and ambitious idea, but it's the reality of our current circumstances. I have heard for years from parents of small children then they can do their part by teaching their children to love everyone, and the reality of that idea is that it's privileged, uninspired, and missing what is required to be an active, meaningful citizen. In order to teach our children to be citizens we must make explicit for them how to be good citizens -- caring for others, finding the helpers (thanks, Mr. Rogers!), being the helpers, giving of your time and your talents in any way that you can, and standing up for what is right. It is not enough just to love others -- oh sure, it's sweet -- but we must also teach our children to be active.

That is what is at the heart of this gorgeously illustrated, deeply worded book for young people. May my son always know that he must be a citizen.

The Mars Room: A Novel

I read about Rachel Kushner's The Mars Room as a highly-anticipated summer read, so I immediately hopped on the library request train for it.

Romy Hall is on her way to her permanent prison assignment to begin the first of her two life sentences. She has left behind her young boy in the care of her mother, with whom she's never had a great relationship. As she reflects back on the events that brought her there, starting with her work at the strip club The Mars Room, we visit her scrappy life on the fringes of society, her choices and her independence, and the unfair way that systemic issues put her away. She moves forward in her life in prison, creating a life for herself with no hope of getting out, forming alliances and friendships and aching for her baby boy. When there is no hope of seeing the outside again, how do you hold on to what you love the most?

I originally wanted to find out what the life sentences were for -- of course it was murder, but what's the story there? -- and while you find out early on, it takes the whole book to put the pieces together, ending with a flash-bang punch in the gut when you realize that even though every story has two sides, it's only because there are two perspectives. It's not necessarily because both people are right. I think I was oblique enough in that description for those who don't want spoilers, but I'll go in detail in the paragraph below. Skip to the following if you don't want to know some details.

We find out very early on that Romy killed her stalker when he showed up at her new home in a new city, the one she moved to in order to get away from him. This seems fairly cut and dry, because of course she felt threatened. Even though I stick by that throughout my next statements, Kushner did a ram-bam-thank-you-ma'am treatment on the stalker when we hear his story in the final few chapters. In his mind, he was in love with her and only wanted to make sure she was OK by following her around. Now, we know that this would have escalated -- it almost always does -- and I still feel the protagonist was in the right for defending herself. The issue here is the mind of the stalker. It's not a malicious series of events in his mind, even if you and I would agree that his actions were creepy and inappropriate. This is what makes Kushner so remarkable; she doesn't aim to make things black and white and she has an incredible ability to whack you over the head with empathetic story telling.

Romy is a character that I grew to love and I looked back on her life with in hopes that I could fix the things that went wrong. Not her choices, but the things that happened to her that stacked up against her. It's easy to say that her choices led her to those moments, but it's far more complicated than that. She chose to move, she chose a life with a man who could give her just what she needed at that moment, she created a community in her odd little world, but it couldn't spare her the fate that she faced. Reading her tale of her trial was painful because it's the story of so many indigent accused. Whether or not they deserve to serve a life sentence isn't the way of the justice system -- it's about the counsel you can afford. Unfortunately for a large swath of the population in the US, that's an overworked and underpaid public defender. Just listening (well...reading) to Romy's conversation with hers when she calls from prison asking about her son is infuriating. While I understood her anger and despair, I also understood that the public defender couldn't give his all to everyone when they were no longer on his docket.

Kushner's book is a wonder, and it's hard to put down even as you despair over its contents. This is an incredible piece of writing that repulsed me at times, broke my heart at other times, and made me desperate for the survival of the women she writes about. All of this was done because she has an ability to pull her readers in with her prose, her characters, and her story arc. It's incredible, and well worth the time to stick your nose in its pages. 

Small Animals: Parenthood In the Age of Fear

The second I heard I heard about Kim Brooks' Small Animals: Parenthood In the Age of Fear, I knew I had to get it. It's not just because I am a new parent (well, kind of new), but also because I have strongly felt for some time that in our current time we parent through fear rather than through a desire to lead out kids to be self-determined. (See The Self-Driven Child, if you will.)

Just a couple of years ago, Kim Brooks ran a five minute errand into Target in a suburb of Virginia and left her four year old son in the car. It was a mild to cool day, she could see the car from the store, and he didn’t even notice how long she was gone since he was engrossed in his iPad. That one choice would lead to a years-long fight with the court and child welfare  systems from several states away that ended in Kim not being prosecuted but serving many hours in parenting classes. All because a “Good Samaritan” watched her, filmed her, and phoned the police over an action that is not, in fact, against the law. 

This begs bigger questions in our society about fear-based parenting, the motherhood competition, and how we now view parenting as a cross between a competitive sport and a job. In the first chapter, Kim lays out her story. In the second, she explores deeper questions of why we live in a parenting culture of fear, beginning in pregnancy. It is a fear that grips mostly women, and this theme travels into the third chapter which focuses on the history of that fear and how it primarily affects mothers. The rest of the book explores these themes in more depth as well as the outcome of her own case, including the second-to-last chapter in which Brooks comes to the conclusion that all of this fear-based parenting is creating a generation of guinea pigs -- we don't know how people will turn out when a generation of helicopter parenting has prevented them from ever taking risks. (I can hypothesize on this, and it's not pretty.)

This book is so very important reading for every single person in this society, be you a parent or not. I have been flabbergasted since long before I became a mother how fear-based we truly are as a society. The statistics of stranger danger are sobering because so few children are absucted by strangers. As Brooks repeats throughout this book, the probability isn’t nil, which means that it is absolutely a possibility, but we find ourselves more worried about things that aren’t much of a problem to avoid being worried about things that are. This reflects the research; I recently read a paper that clearly found that humans in the western world tend to worry about things that have a small probability of happening but are in control of humans, such as kidnapping and terrorist attacks, but tend to not think often of things that are more likely to happen through chance and the environment, such as hurricanes and fires. The things I find myself most concerned about for my own child are choking, lead, and subway crashes. (I admit the last one is a bit less probable than I think, but it IS the MTA.) 

I find myself in Brooks’ camp. On one hand, we know better so we do better — with things like car seat safety, SIDS, early allergen exposure. But that doesn't apply to everything. Brooks discusses the child abduction craze of the 1980’s, which I not only remember well, but has had shape my own fears and anxieties. Because it was brought so publicly to the forefront, we tend to over-rationalize stranger abduction and ignore more important statistics such as according to RAINN, 92% of minors who are sexually abused know their abuser. This is convenient to forget when it’s someone we know and trust. We also underestimate actual risks, such as car accidents. People are so afraid of things that are plausible but not likely and less concerned about the fact that over 1600 children each year die in car accidents and another 2.35 million are injured or disabled. You are far more likely to be in this situation than someone taking your child from a parked vehicle. However, everyone has an anecdote, now, don't they?

I find it so interesting how my husband and I have described our parenting with all of these adjectives: lazy, ignorant, hands-off. When you put it in the context of the over-vigilance that is expected in 2018, where our children are never supposed to be left alone and they need to be monitored so that they never get hurt at the expense of exploration and adventure, it’s downright neglectful. But we are far from it. We just expect that our child will be independent, playful, adventurous, and brave. So far, so good. 

However, when I explain this to people who are around us, including my own parents, what they say and what they do are different. Thy say, “That’s so great,” and what they do is helicopter my kid. They say they love our attitude, but then they say, “Watch his head!” Or, “He’s stuck!” Or, “Can he do that?” In theory they like the idea of my child learning for himself, but in practice we have become an overbearing, controlling society regarding children. I find myself more frustrated with the need to control my child's every move than I am with the fact that my child is stuck in the first place. We call it hands-off parenting, and it really, really, really bothers most people.

This book is so very important for everyone to read, and I will add it to my arsenal of books that I send off to my new-parent (and hell, maybe even my old-parent) friends. Along with The Gardener and the Carpenter, The Scientist in the Crib, The Importance of Being Little, and The Self-Driven Child, this is one of the best books on parenting I can recommend. If you want your child to be smarter, put down the books that claim to make them so -- they are bullshit. What will make your child smarter is allowing them to explore, create, and just be.

Will I be a free range parent? You betcha. 

Vox: A Novel

Vox by Christina Dalcher was a hot "get" at Book Expo this year, and while I'm hot and cold on dystopia, I thought I would give it a shot. And whoooooaaa -- am I ever glad I did.

"Gripping" is the best word I can think to describe this book. Jean is a cognitive neurolinguist -- or, at least, she was before. Before the Pure Movement, which seeks to silence women and go back to the good ol' days of yore when women worked in the home caring for their families and the men made the money. In order to achieve full submission, women not only had to leave their jobs, but they must also wear counters on their wrists that count the number of alloted words they use per day, typically 100. After that, they are shocked at increasingly high rates a la Milgram. Go ahead and insert your shudder here.

As I'm sure you can imagine, this doesn't go over well with everyone (although you won't be surprised to hear that it works perfectly with many women who love the idea of a docile and obedient life -- unfortunately, I know some of those in real life). Jean is one of those. However, when she is approached by the leader of the movement to go back to work in order to find a cure for the president's brother whose issue falls squarely into Jean's research, she ends up using it to her advantage to fight back. It may cost her everything she holds dear, but what is the point of freedom if you can't taste it?

I ate this book in almost one sitting. I started reading it on a plane ride, and I couldn't put it down when we got to our destination. It's not dystopia really, because it takes place in present day, but it is dystopia in the strict definition. I was full-on captivated by everything, from the first-person narrator, Jean, and her Italian fire and her both love and hate for her docile husband and her asshole teenage son who is swept up in the movement. She was a gripping character and one that I absolutely adored. Her story was one that was frightening but realistic, and it reminded me of The Handmaid's Tale in it's sense of male governance over the female body. She was everything that I love in a female protagonist, and so my hat is off to Dalcher in her ability to craft truly incredible characters.

Now onto the story. Holy moly, this was something. I always hope that these things are far-fetched, but the underlying current of feelings towards women is alive and well. There is a moment where Jean is driving home from work and a man in the car next to her tries to get her attention. When she rolls down her window, he spits into her car. Something similar happened to me more than a decade ago. I was driving down the road when a man whipped out a turn in front of me from a shopping center. I hit the horn while I slammed on my brakes, and this caused the man to lose it. He worked his car until he was next to me and, even with my windows close, he called me cunt and a whore over and over and over again, saying he was going to kill me. Isn't it odd how nothing has really changed? That toxic masculinity has not gone away, and this novel exemplifies it.

I was blown away by this book and I cannot recommend it enough. It is well worth you devouring the story and ripping into it from beginning to end this summer. It will anger you, devastate you, and give you hope in the resistance. You never know who is fighting back within their means. 

God: A Human History

Reza Aslan's Zealot was high on my "enjoyed" list, and I learned quite a bit from it. Looking back on that post, I wish I had written more in-depth about my thoughts on it and how the book effected me. So I decided to pick up God: A Human History when I saw it available for advanced review. 

I have been a fan of Allan since reading Zealot, and I find him to be an accomplished scholar who does outstanding historical research. This should come as no surprise seeing as how this is literally his job. I need to spell that out early on, though, so that we can be clear in explanation that the dude has got a point. You don’t have to be an atheist to find his work to be incredibly deep and explanatory. However, if you don’t like exploring knowledge that may contradict your faith, you should look for another work. That being said, I would encourage you to explore historical facts that you believe might not support what you have faith in — you might find some insight into why you believe what you believe. 

So now that my disclaimer is out there, let’s get to the meat of the book. I have a teensy background in religious history just through reading my beloved non-fiction religious scholars, but I had never explored the origins of the human belief in God. It’s funny now that I think about it, particularly as cognitive psych-oriented I am, that I have never spent time mulling over this. Hence my fascination with Aslan’s latest work. 

Where does God come from? Not in terms of physical origin, but in our own thoughts and minds. Who is he, and what is he like? Since no one on this earth actually knows (not even you), we as hominids with complex cognitive reasoning skills have created a likeness in our image because it’s what we can understand. How can we possibly imagine a being that isn’t something within our cognitive framework already? (This starts to get complicated on my end in terms of psych concepts, so as simply as I can explain it: we can’t know more than we know, so the conception of God is super complicated.) 

So ancient relatives of ours created God in their own image. Religion helped settle hominids and, Aslan argues, pushed us from a hunter-gatherer culture to an agricultural one. We created many gods pan-culturally with similar backstories based on historical events, and those gods had the ability to do specific things that humans could relate to. They were an explanation for a species who are primarily meaning-makers. (Now you are getting a part of my human development class mixed in with Aslan!) 

Then comes in Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. I could go into it all here, but you should read the book yourself because it is an awesome (in the most literal sense of the word) intellectual exploration of humans and deities and how we got to here. 

Aslan discusses some important-to-me topics in here such as theory of mind and ancient Hellenic culture, and I was amazed at my ability to synthesize it all. I was fascinated and humbled by the research presented and the depth of Aslan’s understanding of from whence we come. I only read one chapter at a time so I could ruminate on his words and the string of his narrative in relation to my own history and conception of the divine. 

The most moving piece of his book was the conclusion when Aslan opens up about his own journey to believe in what he does. He leaves the journey up to each of us, but indeed I identify with his short but profound words about his own beliefs, because I share them. He says in the last chapter that to reach this point in your beliefs, you have to come to it willingly and deliberately, and this struck such a strong cord with me. He’s right. I, too, have come here willingly and deliberately. What a beautiful thing it is. 

B. F. Skinner's About Behaviorism

I can't even remember where I acquired a copy of B. F. Skinner's About Behaviorism, but I do remember that I picked it up as a work book. In a basic ed psych course I teach a primer on behaviorism, and while I understand the basics of operant conditioning I felt it would be good to read it from the horse's mouth.

The history of paychology is fascinating to me, even if it is the story of a long line of White dudes. Human beings are complex, irrational beings who think they are logical and objective and who are anything but. Skinner, however, decides that he doesn’t agree with cognition as a concept and instead becomes the father of radical behaviorism, coining the concept of operant conditioning and changing how we as a people see our relationship with the environment. He says that cognition has too much weight placed upon it in understanding human behavior, and that instead we are at the mercy of our environment and our direct responses to external stimuli. 

(Watch me pull up my pants and stretch my arms, because we are about to get into this, kids.)

The first, and most important, thing I have to say is that Skinner has a point. (Go ahead and pick your jaw up off the floor if you haven’t been a student of mine and haven’t heard my point in Behaviorism as a whole.) It is vital that we as scholars understand where we came from, because even if the theory doesn’t explain everything (and no theory does, FYI), there are pieces of every psychological theory that have merit and have allowed researchers to build off of it. Skinner’s explication of operant conditioning is quite accurate, but he was rigid in his determination to convince everyone that it was the only and primary explanation. 

On the chapter entitled, "Thinking," Skinner was lucky that I didn't throw my out-of-print copy in a dumpster fire while cursing his name. His big thing is the "so-called thinking processes," because he doesn't believe that cognitive processes are a part of decision making, as it's really a reliance on behavioristic decision-making that is either approach or avoidance goal-based. (While he didn't use the "approach/avoidance" terminology, that's essentially what he's getting at.) I rolled my eyes so hard I almost saw my brain in the back of my head. 

There is no reason the operant conditioning can’t exist in tandem with cognitive processing. I don’t believe in throwing the baby out with the bath water. Just because his theory isn’t the be-all-end-all doesn’t mean it doesn’t have merit. Maybe he could just slow down on the definite statements. 

The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and Recovery

Right up my alley and fascinating to boot, Barbara K. Lipska's The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and Recovery was a read that I couldn't put down. 

Barbara was a prolific researcher on the neuro-origins of mental illness and the director of the brain bank at the National Institute of Mental Health. Her life's work served as the greatest irony when she began losing her mind in the prime of her life. At first she loses sight in the corners of her eye, and she knows -- it's a tumor. Her breast cancer metastasized to her brain, which was the ultimate cruelty. She has it treated and has confidence in her recovery, but she slowly changes from the loving, caring mother and wife that she has always been to someone she doesn't even understand. Her work can't save her. 

You know me and brain stuff -- I love it. Can't keep my hands off of it, except for maybe when I read murder and mayhem. I was fascinated by Lipska's journey from researcher to the researched, and I found myself overwhelmed by her experience. I love that she opened the book with a particular point in her journey, when she found herself dying her hair and then going for a run, but not realizing she still had dye in her hair and then losing her place in her neighborhood. None of it phased her as she didn't even realize what was happening. It was fascinating to read, and then to jump into her journey from her beginnings in Poland and her journey to the United States. Her research was profound and an incredibly important contribution to the mental health field, and her description of her work at NIMH was amazing.

Then the worst happens, which is the growth of metastatic tumors on her brain. I felt her panic as she realized that she couldn't see out the side of her vision, and her I understood her denial of what was happening even as I was screaming to her that she needed to get to the doctor now. The devastation she felt at having to put her life on hold was acute to me, and her journey was arduous and palpable. I will say that her writing felt a bit stilted, but I chalk that up to a background in academic writing which doesn't particularly lend itself to writing for the masses. (I know this well, as I can be pedantic myself if I don't watch it. See? I just used the word pedantic unironically.) However, her story was so fascinating that I was willing to look past the sometimes awkward narrative voice to dig deep into the heart of the story. 

The Harm in Asking: My Clumsy Encounters with the Human Race

I picked up Sara Barron's The Harm in Asking: My Clumsy Encounters with the Human Race forever and a day ago, and I finally dove into it while nursing this past summer, and it fit the bill better than any other book I read during that time. I was up at all hours of the night and found that I could only read comedic work. Voila!

This collection of essays explores Barron's world all the way from her childhood and high school experience as a mall worker and hopeful lesbian-wannabe to a college student who cannot handle alcohol but still wants to be a druggie to an adult who desperately wants to adult but still ends up being asked to give business advice on being an escort to her dream man on what she thought was a date. Barron's crazy life is our essay-reading pleasure.

Laugh out loud, snortingly funny. That's how I felt about this book approximately halfway through. I found Barron's wry sense of humor to be absolutely amazing, and I was so grateful for these stories when they came into my world. Barron doesn't take herself too seriously (except for when she does, to our comedic reading pleasure), and her willingness to just simply be herself is a gold mine for us. The time that she strutted down a NYC street feeling like she was the shit while farting is amazing. Her desperate desire to be a lesbian for the cache is wonderfully hilarious. Her dating life sounded suspiciously like mine for the majority of my adulthood.

All of this to say, it felt like I had a spirit animal in Sara Barron. My stories are definitely not as good as hers, but I felt a kinship of epic proportions through her writing. As a younger version of herself she wanted to be something, even if she didn't know what that thing specifically was. She is so easy to relate to if you have ever been young, single, and making mistakes as you find yourself. She is also easy to relate to as someone who just wants to find herself and bases those searches on what she thinks she needs to be rather than who she is. I get that, and I got this book. It was hilarious, and I regret nothing. (Except maybe those fake glasses in fifth grade.)

The Self-Driven Child: The Science and Sense of Giving Your Kids More Control Over Their Lives

I saw a segment on The Self-Driven Child: The Science and Sense of Giving Your Kids More Control Over Their Lives by William Stixrud, Ph.D. and Ned Johnson a couple of months ago when it came out. I was thrilled to then get approved for a review copy, and I'm purchasing a paperback to take notes in. I love it when my work and my child-rearing intersect. 

We live in a world that is very different from that in which our parents were raised, and you can see it every day in every way. I sure do. I often explain to people that my parenting style is laissez faire so that no one will be surprised when I don't follow my toddler around like a helicopter. In general I receive praise, then I watch the person who just praised me worry over my child as the helicopter parent that I work hard to avoid being. It's absolutely fascinating to me that the same people who will start their sentences with, "When I was coming up/raising kids, we didn't [insert whichever obnoxious phrase one wants to utter here]," are the very same ones who will start pointing fingers and screaming, "BUT WHERE ARE THE PARENTS" and "IT ALL BEGINS AT HOME."

I should take a moment and describe what I mean by laissez faire parenting before you think I let my kid juggle knives. We are with our son constantly, and if we aren't, we have a babysitter or grandparent with him. He is, after, all, almost a year old and not quite able to turn on the stove yet to make himself dinner. He still needs supervision. But I don't say no very often -- unless it's dangerous, which electrical outlets are, and I made him cry the other day by yelling at him -- because when I say no, it's dangerous, I want him to understand that I'm being serious. I let him explore and yes, I even let him tumble, never in a serious way, but so that he will learn his own limits without me imposing them on him. He gets to make choices about what he does most of the day, and as long as it isn't going to kill him, I let my controlling nature take a backseat. This is because I want my child to be self-driven. (See where this is going now?)

So reading this book wasn't exactly eye-opening for me -- after all, I teach child development and am intimately familiar with the research on developmental psychology -- but it was confirmatory in that I have made the right decisions both in my teaching and in my parenting. One of my best friends said to me as a warning that it's very hard to let your children become who they are without controlling them. I knew then, and I stand by it now, that it's not as hard for me as it is for most people. It may be if you want them to turn out a specific way, instead of who they are meant to be. (On this note, I also highly recommend Alison Gopnik's The Gardner and the Carpenter.)

It is mind-blowing to me that parents have such a difficult time allowing their children to just be, but it is also so easy to understand. The desire for control is a part of us, whether it's hard-wired or socialized. This trickles (or maybe flows like rapids) into parenting, much swifter than even the best parent would like. I have seen it in my friends, my partner, myself. I just happen to be much better at taking a backseat with my son than most people I know, and I'm thankful for my training and my work to teach me how to do this.

I want every single one of my friends with kids to read this. I want every single one of my teacher education students to read this. I want everyone in the world to read this, because these men tell you how to get results. This is backed up with research, and it's backed up by experience. I am so thankful that my parents raised me to be self-driven, as much as my mother would have loved to control so much about me. I was never paid (or otherwise reinforced) for my grades, and at first I was jealous that my friends received cash for A's and I didn't. Then again, I never had much of a desire to make A's. I was a solid B student with an occasional A and a more-than-occasional C. My parents never cared, or at least they never told me they did. My mom would ask, "Are you proud of these grades?" If my response was affirmative, she was fine with it. If my response was negative, she told me to fix it then, because they were my grades and I was the only one responsible for them.

Wow. Radical, huh?

But it worked. I realized very young that the power of learning is so much stronger than the power of numbers. I didn't go to an Ivy League school, and thank goodness for that. I am a product of the public education system, including college and two Master's degree (and one day I will finish my damned PhD), and I'm damned good at my job. I love what I do, and it turns out I'm happy. Happier than someone with an Ivy League diploma and $200k in student loans? Who am I to say?

I see how this manifests itself in my teaching. As the years go on and I find that I am "blamed" for students not doing well, I have emphasized in my classes that I don't give grades, you earn them. It's a radical notion that many young people still have a hard time understanding, but it's true. I have also had to add a syllabus clause stating that "OK does not mean A," and I go on to say that if you request to leave my class early, come late, or miss the whole class, I will always say, "OK," because you are an adult who can make the decision for yourself. You are not a hostage in my classroom. However, choices have consequences and you must abide by those. Have you heard the phrase, "For every syllabus clause there is an awkward story behind it"? Yeah. It's true. Most of these are because we have to remind young people that they are self-driven, and we are not their keepers.

This past semester, I had a student I will call Jenny, who has a four-year-old son. She was telling me about the fights she would have with him over homework, so I asked her what homework was doing for him. She spouted off what we all believe -- that we need to learn to do our assignments so we can succeed in school. I asked her, "What if I told you that the research shows no correlation between homework and academic success?" She was shocked. I asked her what the penalty would be if her son didn't do homework. She looked dumbfounded when she said probably nothing, because it's preschool. No one had ever told her that before. I explained that she needed to tell her son, "I love you too much to fight with you about your homework." It's a phrase I've been using for a while that figures prominently in this book. I explained that even at 4 years old, her son could make choices and then deal with the consequences. The following week she came to class and I asked her how the week went. She lit up and said, "Oh my god, it was AMAZING." She explained that she took my advice on Monday night, and her son went to bed without doing his homework. The next morning he woke up and insisted on doing it to make his teacher happy, and they hadn't fought another day that week.

The point of this book is to help you help your children become self-driven. They are more than a number, and they are more than their accomplishments. They are people who are being driven into stress levels that are unprecedented in teens. Teach them to take care of themselves, and work with them to set limits. Whether it's homework, technology, extracurricular activities, or college prep -- all of which are covered in this book -- CTFO. Chill the &%#$ out. Success isn't a high GPA or a certain seal on a diploma. It's being a person who feels confident, competent, and autonomous. I love how strongly Ryan & Deci's self-determination theory figured into this book. It's my jam, and now definitely my favorite book. 

Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch

My secret of the week is that I've actually had this book for about five years; I got it as part of a horrible internship experience at a literary-themed location and I have had it on my TBR shelf ever since. After wrapping up the second season of Netflix's The Crown, I decided that this would be a good read over the winter break.

I am unsure where to begin describing a biography on Her Royal Highness Queen Elizabeth II. It feels like we all at a minimum know who she is, and depending on your birth cohort, you may or may not know very much about her. The basics, however, are very straightforward. Her father, King George VI, died when she was in her mid-twenties, and she is the longest reigning monarch in the history of England. beating even Queens Elizabeth I and Victoria, her great-great-grandmother. She assumed the throne when she was a young wife and mother, and has grown up in the spotlight. She has dealt with a great deal of crises, from experiencing World War II as a child in England to the current wars in the Middle East, she has taken on a great deal and has been the Queen we all never knew we were always looking for.

This book was published in 2012, as the monarchy was just past the Golden Jubilee, celebrating Elizabeth's 50 years on the throne. That year was actually Elizabeth's Diamond Jubilee, which marked 60 years on the throne. This book enumerates the many events -- both celebratory and crises -- that the Queen dealt with in her first 50 years. The recounting of her relationship with Winston Churchill was particularly interesting, and well worth reading, and I very much enjoyed the connection between the Netflix series and the history I was reading about. I actually found that I retained quite a bit of information from the show, which I felt this book augmented well. That being said, once we were out of the narrative of the second season, where the show currently is, I started to find the political writing to be pedantic. My eyes glazed over, and I put this book down for a couple of weeks. I finally accepted that I could skip over the boring parts and just read the interesting ones. My one issue with this book is that it felt "sanctioned," as if they monarchy approved of everything in it and very little interesting tidbits were contained within its pages. I wanted more scintillating stories as opposed to a recounting of Elizabeth's relationships with her Prime Ministers. It is what it is, though, and I did find the majority of this book to be interesting, especially once we hit the last half.

I really, really wanted to get 1980 and the hear what Bedell Smith had to say about the relationship between the Queen and Diana. This is where I thought the meat of the book existed, even though the author tampers down what I think is really lying within the folds of that relationship. I very much appreciate Bedell Smith's honesty about Diana, as it was a side of her I didn't know. This is because I was born in the very early 1980's in America and I was only familiar with "The People's Princess" side of her, not the side that contained her insecurities, her mood swings, and her devious nature. I was always under the impression that Prince Charles was in the wrong, and I come to find out that this was public relations at its finest. It appears that's not why Diana got into the marriage, but it's clear that is what she wanted everyone to believe when she got out of it. I have a newfound appreciation for Prince Charles, and I see his relationship with Camilla in a different light. I had no clue that the infidelities started with Diana, and I felt that Bedell Smith gave a clear and strait story about the relationship that didn't rely on gossip (see -- it came in handy for some of the book's content!) but was just simply the facts as we know them.

The Queen elicited a great deal of sympathy from me after reading this biography. I can't even imagine growing up in the spotlight in that way, and having a set of living that you have done all of your life only to have to adapt and change based on a whole country's -- commonwealth's, really -- opinion of you and your job. Although really, it's more than a job, as it's something you are born to and brought to power by fate and luck alone. I am looking forward to moving forward in The Crown and I highly recommend this biography as a companion piece.