Deborah Mason

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When three stones are thrown from different directions into the same lake, the impact of each stone will create a wave. Their ripples will travel over the water’s surface until they meet, combine for an instant and then flow on. In The Rope: A True Story of Murder, Heroism, and the Dawn of the NAACP, the three stones are the hideous lynching of a Black man in Memphis in 1892, the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and the 1874 establishment of Asbury Park, New Jersey, a town founded on the contradictory principles of redemption and white supremacy. At their confluence is the fate of Tom Williams, an African American man accused in 1910 of the brutal murder of a young white girl in Asbury Park.

Author Alex Tresniowski weaves together the stories of two people who never met but who would have a tremendous impact on Williams: Ida B. Wells, an African American journalist, and Raymond Schindler, probably the most famous private detective in 20th-century America. Tresniowski traces how Wells was impelled by the brutal murder of a dear friend to evolve from a reporter into an anti-lynching activist of extraordinary courage, determination and effectiveness. Her work eventually results in the NAACP’s intervention in Williams’ case. Schindler’s involvement in the Williams case is more direct, as he is hired to find the true killer. Rejecting the racist assumptions of the Asbury Park police, Schindler relentlessly employs psychological insight and intellect to solve the crime. Wells and Schindler are utterly dissimilar people except that they shared a firm belief in the value of every human—and the courage to act on that belief.

Tresniowski draws upon his experience as a true crime author and former human interest writer for Time and People magazine as he recounts this tale. The Rope is full of rich historical detail, forensic insight and, most especially, a keen understanding of human motivations. It is also a timely reminder that justice is best served when it is compassionate and unbiased.

Alex Tresniowski draws upon his experience as a true crime author and former human interest writer for Time and People magazine as he recounts this tale.
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In Chinua Achebe’s poem “Vultures,” the image of a concentration camp commandant buying chocolate for a beloved son raises the thorny issue of whether a monster’s capacity to love is sufficient to redeem him. In The Ratline: The Exalted Life and Mysterious Death of a Nazi Fugitive, U.K. human rights lawyer Philippe Sands uses the opposite image to ask an equally thorny question: Is a son’s love sufficient to redeem a monstrous father?

Otto Wächter was a loving (if not always faithful) husband, a doting (if not always present) father and the SS Governor of Krakow and Lemberg (known in Ukrainian as Lviv) after the Nazi invasion of Poland and Ukraine. To Sands, Wächter was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Jews, Poles and Ukrainians—including Sands' grandfather’s entire family. But to Charlotte and Horst, Wächter’s wife and son, he was too loving and too humane to be guilty of these crimes. Indeed, in Horst’s eyes, Wächter was almost as much of a victim as the Polish prisoners he ordered to be shot in a hideous reprisal action.

Charlotte is now long deceased, but using her diaries, tapes and letters to and from Wächter, along with extensive interviews with Horst, Sands creates an intimate and intricate portrait of Wächter that is quite jarring when set against the historical record. But despite Horst’s hopes, what emerges from this juxtaposition isn’t redemption but the ragged edges of a soul that has torn itself apart. Wächter’s acts of love do not outweigh his cruelty; they make his crimes even more horrific. They reveal that he is not an utterly depraved monster but someone who could, if he so desired, commit acts of love and courage. And that is the most terrifying aspect of this book. Anyone, it seems—even someone as loving, intelligent and normal as Otto Wächter—could, given the right (or wrong) circumstances, become a monster.

Fascinating and haunting, The Ratline is a disquieting book that raises more questions than Sands could possibly answer. It is a book that should be read and pondered again and again.

In The Ratline: The Exalted Life and Mysterious Death of a Nazi Fugitive, Philippe Sands asks a thorny question: Is a son’s love sufficient to redeem a monstrous father?

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Chances are, if asked about life in the Middle Ages, one might describe a landscape from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, with mud-covered peasants throwing not-quite-dead relatives into plague carts. And if asked about medieval science, one might simply ask, “What’s that?” However, in The Light Ages: The Surprising Story of Medieval Science, Cambridge historian and lecturer Seb Falk reveals how far from reality these perceptions are.

Instead of smothering science, Falk argues, the church actually nurtured it during the Middle Ages. Observance of daily devotions and holy days required accurate methods for measuring time, which required sophisticated mathematical skills and precise astronomical observation. Astrolabes and other beautiful scientific instruments originally developed to tell time were found to be useful in other fields as well, triggering advances in optics, navigation and medicine. Friars, monks and priests went to universities, where, in addition to theology, they learned about scientific and mathematical advances developed by Islamic scholars. The medieval scholar was a member of an international society devoted to the precise understanding of creation, not a benighted isolationist.

In The Light Ages, Falk uses the story of John Westwyk, a 14th-century monk-mathematician-astronomer-warrior, to explore the scientific explosion that occurred well before the Renaissance. Westwyk, an almost anonymous brother in the Benedictine abbey of St. Albans, serves as the reader’s guide to the intellectual world of medieval Europe. This ordinary monk shows up in the most extraordinary places: the University of Oxford, Chaucer’s London and even the middle of a doomed crusade. A talented mathematician and astronomer, Westwyk refined the measurements necessary to locate exactly where a planet was on any given day in its revolution around the earth. Ironically, this increased precision necessitated evermore elaborate and unlikely explanations for the glaring discrepancies between the geocentric theory of the universe and observed reality.

The work of these early scientists revealed that the universe couldn’t revolve around the earth. Without their work, Copernicus’ calculations would have been neither possible nor necessary. In this magisterial and informative book, Falk makes a convincing argument that The Light Ages gave birth to our own age.

Chances are, if asked about life in the Middle Ages, one might describe a landscape from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, with mud-covered peasants throwing not-quite-dead relatives into plague carts. And if asked about medieval science, one might simply ask, “What’s that?” However, in The Light Ages: The Surprising Story of Medieval Science, Cambridge […]
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Urbane and bustling, New York City is often considered the epitome of “Northern-ness.” However, in the decades before the Civil War, the city’s interests were very much in line with those of Southern cotton farmers. Through its finance, insurance and shipping industries, New York probably profited from slave labor more than any other city in the country. The city would do almost anything to appease the Southern states, even if it meant sending its own citizens into slavery.

The Kidnapping Club: Wall Street, Slavery, and Resistance on the Eve of the Civil War by Jonathan Daniel Wells is an eye-opening history of antebellum New York. Wells, a professor of history at the University of Michigan, meticulously details two of New York City’s dirtiest secrets: the city’s illicit backing of the illegal transatlantic slave trade and the Kidnapping Club that helped reinforce it. From the 1830s until the start of the Civil War, and with the support of the city’s judiciary, vigilantes in the Kidnapping Club as well as the police abducted Black New Yorkers on the pretext that they were escaped slaves. With little or no due process, hundreds of men, women and even children were snatched, jailed and then sent south. The broader effects of New York’s illegal slave trade were even more horrific, resulting in the abduction, enslavement and frequently death of hundreds of thousands of West Africans.

There are many villains in this thoroughly researched and fascinating history, including police officers Tobias Boudinot and Daniel Nash, Judge Richard Riker and Mayor Fernando Woods. Yet The Kidnapping Club is more than a story of villainy. It’s also a history of heroes, including David Ruggles, a Black abolitionist who put his body between the victims and their snatchers; Elizabeth Jenkins, who fought against segregated transportation over a century before Rosa Parks; and James McCune Smith, an abolitionist and the first African American to hold a medical degree.

Most important of all, The Kidnapping Club restores the names of the abducted: Ben, Hester Jane Carr, Isaac Wright, Frances Shields, John Dickerson and countless others whose lives were destroyed and humanity erased— until now.

Urbane and bustling, New York City is often considered the epitome of “Northern-ness.” However, in the decades before the Civil War, the city’s interests were very much in line with those of Southern cotton farmers. Through its finance, insurance and shipping industries, New York probably profited from slave labor more than any other city in […]
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You might be forgiven for thinking that a book about a firebrand who pushes a centrist politician to take a more just position on race was written about current events. However, The Zealot and the Emancipator by H.W. Brands examines the relationship between two men who never met but played pivotal roles in 19th-century American history: John Brown (the zealot) and Abraham Lincoln (the emancipator).

Pulitzer Prize finalist Brands is a master storyteller whose previous books have covered topics as diverse as Andrew Jackson, the Gilded Age and post-World War II America. In The Zealot and the Emancipator, Brands uses his lucid writing to explore the rich ironies that surrounded Lincoln and Brown. Brown, a lifelong abolitionist who hated slavery more than he loved his life, raided the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in an ill-fated attempt to spark a revolt among enslaved people. Lincoln, a cautious lawyer who loved the Union more than he hated slavery, ignited a civil war two years after Brown was hanged for treason.

Brown, who had little time for politics or politicians, gave the new antislavery Republican party the energy it needed to defeat the proslavery Democratic party in the 1860 election. Lincoln, who would have happily given up on the idea of abolition if it would have saved the Union, became the Great Emancipator and the main proponent of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery. In the greatest irony of all, the very thing that Lincoln feared would destroy the country—the recognition that slavery was at the crux of the war and must be abolished—actually gave the North the impetus it needed to defeat the Confederacy and reestablish the Union.

Brands uses original sources and narrative flair to illuminate how Brown’s fierce moral clarity eventually forced Lincoln to confront the sins of slavery. The result is an informative, absorbing and heartbreaking American story, the reverberations of which are still felt today.

You might be forgiven for thinking that a book about a firebrand who pushes a centrist politician to take a more just position on race was written about current events. However, The Zealot and the Emancipator by H.W. Brands examines the relationship between two men who never met but played pivotal roles in 19th-century American […]
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Deborah Tannen, professor of linguistics at Georgetown University, is an expert on how we use words to both reveal and hide ourselves from the people who mean the most to us. Her work grows from a love of words that came from her father, Eli Tannen. While her mother, Dorothy, was difficult and often manipulative, Tannen’s father was witty, intellectual and loving. Yet despite (or maybe because of) their close relationship, there were frustrating gaps in his story, which Tannen wanted to fill. Finding My Father: His Century-Long Journey From World War I Warsaw and My Quest to Follow is her account of not only his extraordinary life but also her search for the truth behind his family, his work and his marriage.

Eli’s greatest joy was found in words. Raised in a Hasidic family in Warsaw, Poland, he arrived in America in 1920 at the age of 12 with little or no English. Within three years, he was fluent and had become a voracious reader. Upon his death at the age of 97, he bequeathed his daughter a tsunami of letters, journals, poems, interviews and handmade cards, all filled with his words. With all this source material, one would be forgiven for thinking that all Dr. Tannen had to do was transcribe it and arrange it in chronological order. However, instead of a neat road map, these relics were like pieces from different puzzles. Tannen had to evaluate and organize them in order to create meaning out of them.

As a result, Finding My Father is a beautifully constructed patchwork that Tannen has pieced together from her father’s words. A pattern emerges that reveals not one Eli but several frequently contradictory Elis: Eli the son, Eli the lover, Eli the husband, Eli the father, Eli the activist, Eli the friend. Somehow, all of these Elis add up to the singular and extraordinary Eli Tannen. Finding this Eli allows Tannen to see herself, her family and most especially her mother in a new and conciliatory light. Memory doesn’t only reconstruct the past, Tannen reminds us; it can also forge a new present.

Deborah Tannen, professor of linguistics at Georgetown University, is an expert on how we use words to both reveal and hide ourselves from the people who mean the most to us. Her work grows from a love of words that came from her father, Eli Tannen. While her mother, Dorothy, was difficult and often manipulative, […]
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True crime fans have never had it so good. Between podcasts, binge-worthy Netflix extravaganzas and blockbuster books, we are spoiled for choice. But even while we Google “Joe Exotic” or “Jeffrey Dahmer” for more details to enhance our viewing and reading experiences, most true crime enthusiasts tend not to explore the issues of why we are attracted to these tales, what they say about us or how our society determines who is a criminal and who is a victim.

In Unspeakable Acts: True Tales of Crime, Murder, Deceit, and Obsession, editor and author Sarah Weinman has curated an excellent anthology of 13 of the best articles and essays on true crime. These stories are all great reads—they have enough detail, human interest and forensic insight to delight even the most discriminating true crime connoisseur—but Weinman has done more than create entertainment. By organizing the essays thematically, she challenges the reader to use true crime as a lens to explore the world around us.

All of the essays are thought provoking. For example, Sarah Marshall’s essay “The End of Evil” considers whether Ted Bundy was an inhuman evil genius or an utterly human product of his environment and his mental illness. In “What Bullets Do to Bodies,” Jason Fagone reminds us that true crime is a daily occurrence in our cities, where real human bodies are shattered by real bullets, and real trauma surgeons like Dr. Amy Goldberg heroically strive to stitch them back together. And in “ ‘I Am a Girl Now,’ Sage Smith Wrote. And Then She Went Missing,” Emma Copley Eisenberg uses the investigation into the disappearance and probable murder of a young Black trans woman in Charlottesville, Virginia, to demonstrate how implicit biases deny equal justice to those who do not fit within preconceived notions of victims.

Unspeakable Acts invites readers to consider true crime not only as a literary genre but also as a gateway to understanding our society and ourselves. It is an invitation well worth accepting

True crime fans have never had it so good. Between podcasts, binge-worthy Netflix extravaganzas and blockbuster books, we are spoiled for choice. But even while we Google “Joe Exotic” or “Jeffrey Dahmer” for more details to enhance our viewing and reading experiences, most true crime enthusiasts tend not to explore the issues of why we […]
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Family trauma—even inherited trauma—can take a tremendous toll on children. But as Bakari Sellers makes plain in My Vanishing Country, family trauma can also be a source of strength.

Sellers’ story is remarkable. When he was 22, he unseated a 26-year incumbent to become the youngest legislator in South Carolina. In that role, he championed policies addressing rural poverty, including access to health care and improved educational opportunities. He became a CNN political analyst in the wake of the mass shooting at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, and today he is a successful attorney. These accomplishments required persistence and resilience.

In My Vanishing Country, Sellers beautifully evokes the South Carolina low country, the haunted landscape of his childhood, to explain how its backbreaking poverty and history of relentless racism molded him. But the greatest influence on his life was an event that occurred years before he was born, when his father, Cleveland Sellers, was imprisoned on trumped-up charges for his role in the Orangeburg Massacre.

The fact that many people have not heard of the Orangeburg Massacre is in itself an excellent reason to read My Vanishing Country. Sellers meticulously recounts how and why eight South Carolina highway patrol officers fired upon a crowd of black student protesters at South Carolina State University, killing three students and wounding 27 others. The massacre affected every member of the Sellers family, including the yet-unborn Bakari. Though they each still bear the painful effects of that event, their trauma has also become a source of power—the power to endure tragedy and achieve their goals.

My Vanishing Country is more than a memoir. It’s a loving celebration of a father’s gift of fortitude and determination to his son.

Family trauma—even inherited trauma—can take a tremendous toll on children. But as Bakari Sellers makes plain in My Vanishing Country, family trauma can also be a source of strength. Sellers’ story is remarkable. When he was 22, he unseated a 26-year incumbent to become the youngest legislator in South Carolina. In that role, he championed […]
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According to a 2015 Pew Research Center survey, 72% of Americans believe in heaven, a place where “good people are eternally rewarded.” A sizable majority (58%) also believes in hell, the place “where people who have led bad lives and die without being sorry are eternally punished.” These rates are even higher among Christians. If these beliefs truly guide the actions of their adherents, then it’s arguable that heaven and hell are the two most influential pieces of real estate in American society. It was therefore fascinating to learn from Bart D. Ehrman’s Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife that this concept of the afterlife is nowhere to be found in the Bible. 

Ehrman’s subtitle is a bit misleading, since it’s not an actual history of these places. He is not rewriting Paradise Lost. Instead, he details the development of our ideas about heaven and hell. Starting with Mesopotamia, Ehrman carefully traces how ancient ideas of death as an “eternal sleep” developed into our current conception of death as a place of retribution or reward. Ehrman argues that, far from being set in stone, our views of heaven and hell have evolved in response to crises confronting the societies that ultimately created modern Christianity. Our view of the afterlife, it turns out, owes more to Greek mythology, Plato and Greek theologians of the first millennium than it does to the Old Testament or even Jesus’ words and actions. 

This is a complex history, and it could easily become confusing or, worse, boring. But Ehrman has avoided both pitfalls. As the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Ehrman has the expertise necessary to make this difficult subject comprehensible. Even better, his witty, self-deprecatory style makes Heaven and Hell an enjoyable read. Most importantly, this is an optimistic book. Professor Ehrman invites us to revisit a “truth” that most of us hold almost instinctively and, in the process, to lose the fear of the afterlife that can prevent us from fully living our present lives.

According to a 2015 Pew Research Center survey, 72% of Americans believe in heaven, a place where “good people are eternally rewarded.” A sizable majority (58%) also believes in hell, the place “where people who have led bad lives and die without being sorry are eternally punished.” These rates are even higher among Christians. If […]
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America has become more unequal since the 1960s. The middle class has shrunk, schools are more segregated, and mass incarceration has devastated African American and Latinx communities. Meanwhile, wealthy individuals and corporations have an outsize say in elections, resulting in lower taxes, more favorable legislation and preferential treatment from government agencies. What is not well known, however, is the role the Supreme Court has played in creating these inequities.

The Supreme Court is often seen as the defender of the underdog. Cases like Brown v. Board of Education and Miranda v. Arizona seemed to guarantee all Americans equal rights and due process under the law. However, as Adam Cohen meticulously documents in Supreme Inequality, certain justices on the Supreme Court have worked to not only erode the rights of the poor and middle class but also to extend the interests of the rich. In many ways, Cohen argues, the court is the author of the increased inequality in American society, and of that inequality’s many consequences.

Cohen is uniquely qualified to write this book. After graduating from Harvard Law, where he was the editor of the Harvard Law Review, he worked at the Southern Poverty Law Center and the ACLU. He then pursued a career in journalism, eventually joining the editorial board of the New York Times. Cohen’s lucid writing makes even the most difficult court cases understandable as he expertly details the evolution of the law in areas as diverse as the workplace, criminal law, campaign contributions and the corporate boardroom. Cohen’s greatest strength, however, is his ability to explain clearly and urgently how the court, supposedly the least political of the three branches of the government, has relentlessly pursued a political agenda that has made Americans less equal and less secure.

If nothing else, Supreme Inequality reveals the extensive role the court plays in everyday American life. More importantly, it is a sobering history of how the court has disregarded precedent, statutory law and common sense to achieve its political agenda. The only question that remains is if it’s too late to do anything about it.

America has become more unequal since the 1960s. The middle class has shrunk, schools are more segregated, and mass incarceration has devastated African American and Latinx communities. Meanwhile, wealthy individuals and corporations have an outsize say in elections, resulting in lower taxes, more favorable legislation and preferential treatment from government agencies. What is not well […]
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Games can be deadly serious—ask any soccer parent—but we generally see them as child’s play. It is therefore surprising that in war, where the stakes are the absolute highest, games play an essential role. War games allow armies to test officers’ strategies and decision-making in a risk-free environment, and lessons learned on the game board are frequently transferred to the battlefield. One man who thoroughly grasped this idea was Captain Gilbert Roberts, who, along with his team of eight officers from the Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS, popularly known as the Wrens), devised a game that arguably changed the course of World War II. In A Game of Birds and Wolves, Simon Parkin tells this remarkable and little-known story.

In 1941, Great Britain was in danger of being starved of food and supplies by U-boat attacks. Roberts realized that, by simulating the conditions of war as closely as possible on an auditorium-sized game board, he could devise countermeasures to the tactics used by U-boat captains. He could also train submarine hunters without the risk of failure. Ultimately, the men who played the game used their knowledge to defeat the U-boat fleet in the decisive Battle of Birds and Wolves. Without the Wrens, who not only ran the games but also helped design new scenarios and countermeasures, none of this would have happened.

Like a well-designed game, A Game of Birds and Wolves is fun, informative and intense. Parkin naturally focuses much of his attention on Roberts, whose story of triumph over adversity and skepticism is a great read. But the book really shines when Parkin reclaims the history of the Wrens. Although women played a vital role in the war, their work was often undervalued, and much of this history was lost or destroyed. The Wrens, working with Roberts, were instrumental to an Allied victory, but few among us know what we owe to them. 

Parkin’s respect and affection for these women is apparent on every page, and his extensive research and excellent storytelling go a long way toward paying that debt.

Games can be deadly serious—ask any soccer parent—but we generally see them as child’s play. It is therefore surprising that in war, where the stakes are the absolute highest, games play an essential role. War games allow armies to test officers’ strategies and decision-making in a risk-free environment, and lessons learned on the game board […]
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Like many Europeans who lived through World War II, Françoise Frenkel led an eventful life. A Polish Jewish woman born in 1889, she studied literature in Paris. In 1921, she opened a French bookstore in Berlin. She returned to Paris in 1939, fleeing the Nazis. She made several attempts to escape to Switzerland and eventually succeeded. But if Frenkel hadn’t written a memoir, she would likely be completely unknown. Rien où poser sa tête (No Place to Lay One’s Head) was published in Switzerland in 1945, sold a few copies and quickly sank into collective forgetfulness. Then a copy was found in 2010 at a sale for a French charity, and it’s now republished as A Bookshop in Berlin.

It’s interesting the way a title can affect a reader’s perception of a book. The title No Place to Lay One’s Head draws attention to Frenkel’s personal hardships, to the terror and cruelty she encountered. There is plenty of suspense as Frenkel describes her brushes with disaster—but the title A Bookshop in Berlin instead emphasizes her improbable bookstore, illuminating a deeper truth about Frenkel’s experiences.

Like a bookstore, Frenkel’s memoir contains not one story but many. There is, of course, her own odyssey to safety—but there’s also the heroic tale of M. and Mme. Marius, Frenkel’s friends and saviors; the comedy of the glamorous refugee who hoodwinked the Germans into saving her son; the tragedy of the young man accused of murdering his wife; the melodrama of hardened prison guards; and ultimately, a story of liberation and redemption. 

Like many Europeans who lived through World War II, Françoise Frenkel led an eventful life. A Polish Jewish woman born in 1889, she studied literature in Paris. In 1921, she opened a French bookstore in Berlin. She returned to Paris in 1939, fleeing the Nazis. She made several attempts to escape to Switzerland and eventually succeeded. […]
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Everyone knows that millions of people lost their homes when the housing bubble burst. Belief in the continued increase in housing prices spurred millions to grab the American dream of homeownership, enticed by wildly lenient mortgages that encouraged them to purchase homes beyond their means. Banks bundled these risky mortgages together and sold them on Wall Street. Everything was great—until it wasn’t.

When the housing market slowed down, things spiraled out of control, bringing the stock market to its greatest decline since 1929. Some of the most prestigious banking houses went out of business, while others teetered on the edge of collapse, saved only by billions of tax dollars.

What many people don’t know, though, is how much money was made as the result of the housing crisis. In Homewreckers, Pulitzer Prize finalist Aaron Glantz untangles how a group of Wall Street bankers and hedge fund partners (including future Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross) transformed a national crisis into a financial bonanza for themselves. Even more important, however, Glantz demonstrates how their gain came at our country’s cost through decreased homeownership, diminished wealth for low- and middle-income Americans and the destruction of whole communities.

Glantz does an excellent job explaining the financial complexities of the housing crisis and its fallout. But the real strength of his book comes from the personal stories he weaves in to illustrate his points. The stories of Sandra Jolley, Beulah Butler and Shawn Pruett bring home the real pain experienced by American families as a result of the homewreckers’ actions. Yet, the most surprising stories are those of the homewreckers themselves. These men are not sadists. Instead, their actions stem from an insatiable need to acquire more: more money, more homes, more wives. Glantz makes it clear that they are not monsters but mere humans who have done monstrous things—and, if left unchecked, are likely to do them again.

Everyone knows that millions of people lost their homes when the housing bubble burst. Belief in the continued increase in housing prices spurred millions to grab the American dream of homeownership, enticed by wildly lenient mortgages that encouraged them to purchase homes beyond their means. Banks bundled these risky mortgages together and sold them on […]

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