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Edward Morris

NonfictionSocial ScienceAging

Respect your elders

Review by Edward Morris

In 2015, John Leland wrote a series of articles for the New York Times that examined the conditions and outlooks of three men and three women who, at that time, were between the ages of 87 and 92. He’s now chronicled that experience in Happiness Is a Choice You Make.

The common denominator of old age, Leland found, is a more or less graceful acceptance of the inevitable, not just of escalating physical limitations but of the awareness that each day may be one’s last and, thus, should be savored for what it has to offer. Even those who complained they were tired of living were not in despair. They had their days and moments of joy: Fred reveled in memories of his times as a sharp-dressed man-about-town. Helen, after losing her husband, discovered a second love and a reason to go on in Howie, a wheelchair-bound fellow resident in her nursing home. John, nearly blind and bereft of his longtime lover, listened to opera for inspiration or squinted at a video of his favorite musical, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.

“[O]ld age is a concept largely defined by the people who have never lived it,” Leland observes. “We do ourselves a big favor not to be scared of growing old, but to embrace the mixed bag that the years have to offer, however severe the losses.”

 

This article was originally published in the February 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

In 2015, John Leland wrote a series of articles for the New York Times that examined the conditions and outlooks of three men and three women who, at that time, were between the ages of 87 and 92. He’s now chronicled that experience in Happiness Is a Choice You Make.

NonfictionMemoir

Sacrifice and sanctuary

Review by Edward Morris

Pietro Bartolo runs the sole medical clinic in his homeland of Lampedusa, a tiny Italian island 70 miles off the coast of Tunisia that has become the gateway—and graveyard—for an unending stream of refugees trying to escape the varied horrors confronting them in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Bartolo’s Tears of Salt, written with Italian journalist Lidia Tilotta, is equal parts memoir, celebration of his birthplace and report from the front. Above all, though, it is a plea for compassion.

Bartolo begins his narrative by describing how, at age 16, he nearly drowned in the icy Mediterranean after falling unnoticed from his father’s fishing boat. The sensation of going under, gasping for breath and feeling left behind, provided him with a template for understanding the terror of countless others who have suffered the same fate—but without the happy ending of survival. Now he treats the living and anatomizes the dead who reach Lampedusa’s shore. By his count, he and his medical team have treated nearly 300,000 refugees over the past 25 years.

But it’s not the massive numbers that give Bartolo’s account its emotional impact—it’s the attention he focuses on individual survivors, such as the teenage brothers Mohammed and Hassan. Because Mohammed, the eldest, is paralyzed, Hassan carries him on his back all the way from their native Somalia to Libya and then vigilantly guards him against further injury throughout the perilous ocean passage. Once ashore, he fiercely resumes his burden. Bartolo tells many such stories of courage and sacrifice.

“Whenever I see images of migrants being callously deported in their thousands, forced to return to the hell they have escaped, I am outraged,” Bartolo writes. “What kind of person has the nerve to seal the destiny of all these people with a mere signature on a piece of paper, then smile about it to the cameraman and pose for photographs?”

 

This article was originally published in the January 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Pietro Bartolo runs the sole medical clinic in his homeland of Lampedusa, a tiny Italian island 70 miles off the coast of Tunisia that has become the gateway—and graveyard—for an unending stream of refugees trying to escape the varied horrors confronting them in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Bartolo’s Tears of Salt, written with Italian journalist Lidia Tilotta, is equal parts memoir, celebration of his birthplace and report from the front. Above all, though, it is a plea for compassion.

NonfictionHistory

A city at the dawn of the modern age

Review by Edward Morris

Unlike most histories of 16th-century England, which concentrate on the machinations and religious convulsions of the Tudor monarchy, London’s Triumph concerns itself with the capital city’s merchant class and what it did to launch the explorations and conquests that would ultimately result in the world-girdling British empire of the 19th century.

Founded by the Romans around 43 A.D., by 1500. London had grown into a city of about 50,000 residents. It bustled with the activities of “cloth workers, drapers, goldsmiths, skinners, tallow chandlers, vintners, butchers and so on,” but it still took a very distant backseat as a trading center to Antwerp. But by 1600, London had its own thriving financial hub, a reputation for opening new markets (Russia chief among them), merchant companies dedicated to sending trading expeditions into still-unmapped regions of the globe and a population of 200,000.

Stephen Alford’s descriptions of London and its growth are vivid. Tracing the footsteps of such larger-than-life personalities as the navigator Sebastian Cabot and the geographer Richard Hakluyt, he walks the reader down colorfully named streets and alleys, strides through the deafening clamor of trading stalls and peers curiously into the chapels and tombs of ancient churches. He also witnesses the city’s agonies as it is wrenched by plague, famine and an immigration crisis.

Of course, London wasn’t all about exploration and economic boil. Whether Catholic or Protestant, the rich, lavishly costumed merchants dutifully provided alms to the poor, worried that their business dealings might cross the line into usury and convinced themselves that bringing Christianity to distant lands was the fulfillment of God’s will. As the century came to a close, many were casting their missionary eyes on the alluring shores of America.

Unlike most histories of 16th-century England, which concentrate on the machinations and religious convulsions of the Tudor monarchy, London’s Triumph concerns itself with the capital city’s merchant class and what it did to launch the explorations and conquests that would ultimately result in the world-girdling British empire of the 19th century.

NonfictionMemoir

Fruit of the vine

Review by Edward Morris

Clifton Fadiman had two paramount passions: savoring the best wines and obliterating his Jewishness. He wasn’t what is commonly called a “self-hating Jew.” It was more pragmatic than that. Like so many other first-generation American Jews, he saw his cultural heritage as an impediment—even a reproach—to the refined, upper-class WASP life he aspired to. Although clearly a doting daughter, Anne Fadiman is not an uncritical one as she examines her relationship with her father in The Wine Lover’s Daughter.

Born in Brooklyn in 1904 to Russian parents, Clifton Fadiman worked his way through Columbia University and achieved a sterling academic record. He might have joined the English department there had he not been told, “We have room for only one Jew, and we have chosen Mr. [Lionel] Trilling.” Thus rebuffed by academia, he used his formidable literary knowledge to become a public intellectual. By the time he was 28, he was editor-in-chief at Simon & Schuster and a year later the book critic for The New Yorker. At 34, he began hosting the popular radio quiz show “Information Please.” From that point on, he was a bona-fide celebrity, one who would extend his genial wit and wisdom well into the burgeoning television age.

Anne Fadiman points out in great detail her father’s sexism and snobbery and marvels at the fact that—even when he was 80—he still asked her not to mention he was a Jew in the profile she wrote on him for Life magazine. Much of her chronicle is given over to her father’s informed obsession with wines and her attempts—ultimately unsuccessful—to become a wine enthusiast herself. Clifton Fadiman died at 95 in 1999, no doubt comforted in the fact that his children had gone to Harvard—which had been off limits to him—and that his daughter married a WASP.

Clifton Fadiman had two paramount passions: savoring the best wines and obliterating his Jewishness. He wasn’t what is commonly called a “self-hating Jew.” It was more pragmatic than that. Like so many other first-generation American Jews, he saw his cultural heritage as an impediment—even a reproach—to the refined, upper-class WASP life he aspired to. Although clearly a doting daughter, Anne Fadiman is not an uncritical one as she examines her relationship with her father in The Wine Lover’s Daughter.

NonfictionFamily & Relationships

Maintaining monogamy

Review by Edward Morris

Without infidelity as a theme, there would be a precipitous decline in the number of novels and movies produced, not to mention the utter destruction of country music and much of the legal profession. Whether or not one has personally been unfaithful to a romantic partner, one almost certainly knows people who have been.

As a practicing therapist for more than 30 years, Esther Perel’s goal in The State of Affairs is to go beyond the standard victim-versus-victimizer model of adultery and explore its infinite complexities—the better to salvage something even slightly worthwhile from the experience, preferably for both partners.

One reason infidelity is so catastrophic, Perel says, is that we are culturally groomed to believe marriage should provide us everything we need emotionally, including sex, offspring, friendship, stability, inspiration and refuge. When it falls short, as it almost always does for at least one of the partners, it can open the door to straying. “Not only can an affair destroy a marriage,” Perel writes, “it has the power to unravel an entire social fabric.”

But infidelity, she points out, is not all that easy to define. Depending on the aggrieved partner’s standards, it can range from flirtation or viewing pornography to maintaining a furtive, long-term romantic relationship. To illustrate how varied the “cheating” scene is, she explores the stories of dozens of couples she has counseled.

Among the conclusions she reaches are that you can’t adultery-proof a marriage, that complete honesty in trying to mend the ravages of adultery can sometimes do more harm than good, and that infidelity isn’t always caused by marital dissatisfaction. Sometimes it just happens.

 

This article was originally published in the October 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Whether or not one has personally been unfaithful to a romantic partner, one almost certainly knows people who have been. As a practicing therapist for more than 30 years, Esther Perel’s goal in The State of Affairs is to go beyond the standard victim-versus-victimizer model of adultery.

NonfictionScience

A doctor’s diagnosis

Review by Edward Morris

The “hacking” Dr. Lustig refers to in The Hacking of the American Mind has nothing to do with sinister forces invading and taking over our computers. Rather, he believes that the processed food and pharmaceutical industries and their lackeys in government are doing the hacking of our bodies and minds. He also casts a wary eye on the addictive properties of technology, which, he says, is more likely to amuse than fulfill us.

A professor of pediatrics, Lustig fired his first salvo at sugar, the most pernicious ingredient in processed foods, in his 2012 bestseller, Fat Chance. He persists in his battle here against sugar here. However, Lustig’s overarching goal in The Hacking of the American Mind is to delineate the differences between mere pleasure, which is episodic and a doorway to addiction, and the more enduring state of happiness. In doing so, he begins with a discussion of the brain—its designs, functions and defenses against injury. Despite his breezy, conversational style, this early part of the book is fairly slow going.

But the remainder of his text is plainspoken observation, analysis and advice. America is suffering from a health crisis, Lustig says, principally because corporations have taken over virtually every aspect of our lives—from offering mindless entertainment, to feeding us bad food, to selling us medical insurance and supposedly life-enhancing drugs—always for private profit, never for public good. Lustig explains how Lewis Powell Jr., first as a pro-business lawyer, then as a Supreme Court justice, was instrumental in helping destroy government checks against corporate abuses, and subsequent Court decisions have continued to erode these safeguards.

The upshot, Lustig concludes, is that we are basically on our own when it comes to constructing sane and safe lives. To that end, he suggests we hold technology at arm’s length, get more sleep, do more home cooking, be more altruistic and find comfort in mindfulness and in the congenial company of others. And always avoid sugar.

The “hacking” Dr. Lustig refers to in The Hacking of the American Mind has nothing to do with sinister forces invading and taking over our computers. Rather, he believes that the processed food and pharmaceutical industries and their lackeys in government are doing the hacking of our bodies and minds. He also casts a wary eye on the addictive properties of technology, which, he says, is more likely to amuse than fulfill us.

Business & Finance

A legal odyssey

Review by Edward Morris

Ready yourself for emotional whiplash as Ghost of the Innocent Man: A True Story of Trial and Redemption, Benjamin Rachlin’s account of a man wrongly convicted of rape, seesaws from scenes of judicial haste, incompetence and indifference to episodes of sublime compassion and legal professionalism. In 1987 near Hickory, North Carolina, a 69-year-old, white widow answered a knock at her door. A black man she didn’t recognize rushed in and raped her twice before leisurely helping himself to some fruit from her kitchen and walking away. Through police negligence and mishandling of evidence, 41-year-old Willie Grimes was convicted of the crime and sentenced to life plus nine years. Although the victim identified Grimes as her attacker, her identification was contradictory, and there were no physical markers linking him to the crime.

But just when the reader is prepared to write off North Carolina as a legal snake pit, Rachlin shifts his narrative to a group of lawyers, law professors, judges and prosecutors who, on their own time, form a committee aimed at making trials fairer and freeing the innocent. They are led by Christine Mumma, who put herself through law school and has the instincts and resourcefulness of a street fighter. Together they create the Innocence Inquiry Commission, which is eventually recognized and funded by the state.

Grimes remained in various state prisons for 24 years, refusing to confess to the crime even though doing so would have led to his early release. Rachlin recounts in heartbreaking detail the physical and psychological agonies Grimes suffered before finding a measure of relief in becoming a Jehovah’s Witness. Finally, with Mumma acting as his attorney, Grimes was exonerated of all charges. Rachlin fits the North Carolina reforms into the national thrust to free the wrongly convicted, especially with the advent of DNA testing.

 

This article was originally published in the August 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Ready yourself for emotional whiplash as Ghost of the Innocent Man: A True Story of Trial and Redemption, Benjamin Rachlin’s account of a man wrongly convicted of rape.

NonfictionHistoryBlack HistoryAmerican History

Heroism, bravery and rebellion

Review by Edward Morris

In the early morning of May 13, 1862, the side-wheel steamboat Planter left its dock in the Charleston, South Carolina, harbor and eased past an array of heavily armed Confederate fortifications toward the open sea. The Planter was a local vessel that regularly plied those waters. The only thing that made this morning’s passage remarkable was that the runaway slave Robert Smalls was piloting the boat. His “cargo” consisted of 15 other slaves, among them his wife and children.

It was a daring escape, minutely planned and flawlessly executed. And it was the beginning of Smalls’ life as a free man. After surrendering his craft to the Union navy, along with crucial military intelligence, he continued to serve the Union cause as a pilot and as a spokesman for black equality. Endlessly imaginative and resourceful, Smalls was able, within less than two years of his escape, to buy the “master’s house” in which he and his mother had recently been slaves. (To compound this irony, years after the war ended, he invited members of his former master’s family to his home—once theirs—for a prolonged visit. They accepted but refused to eat at the same table with his family.)

Smalls, who learned to read relatively late in life, did not leave voluminous written records behind. But in Be Free or Die, Cate Lineberry has pieced together a coherent arc of Smalls’ story through contemporary newspaper accounts—he was heralded as a hero throughout the North—military and government records and biographies of those who worked with Smalls and knew him well. Lineberry sets these collected, fascinating details into a larger narrative about how the Civil War played out in the Union-occupied coastal areas of South Carolina.

 

This article was originally published in the July 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

In the early morning of May 13, 1862, the side-wheel steamboat Planter left its dock in the Charleston, South Carolina, harbor and eased past an array of heavily armed Confederate fortifications toward the open sea. The Planter was a local vessel that regularly plied those waters. The only thing that made this morning’s passage remarkable was that the runaway slave Robert Smalls was piloting the boat. His “cargo” consisted of 15 other slaves, among them his wife and children.

Nonfiction

Laws of attraction

Review by Edward Morris

Who knew that being a dweeb in high school could have such long-lasting influence on how we see the world and how it sees us? Ultimately, how well or how badly we fit in with others, Mitch Prinstein argues in his book Popular, is the dominant factor in what we become both professionally and personally. Now a professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Prinstein confesses to having been a social outsider himself as a teenager—and one who, like most of us, strove mightily to achieve peer acceptance. The drive to be popular is part of our evolutionary engine, he maintains.

But popularity comes in different guises. It may arise from status (dominant personality, wealth, athletic prowess, physical beauty, extraordinary intelligence, etc.) or from simple likability (characterized by openness, friendliness, an interest in others, a willingness to share or following the rules). Of these two types, Prinstein says, “likability continues to be relevant to us throughout our lives and has been shown to be the most powerful kind of popularity there is.” Status is a shakier foundation on which to build. Indeed, he worries that the lure of status—especially the kind of easy but ephemeral visibility conferred through social media—may compromise “our ability to distinguish between good and bad.”

Obviously, we don’t begin life knowing all this. So from infancy onward, we may find ourselves socially marginalized by our physical appearance, aggressiveness, defensiveness, inability to interpret social cues or kindred forms of maladjustments. While these flaws are by no means fatal to our future success, Prinstein concludes that they will almost certainly take a toll on our health, happiness and often our professional advancement. The good news, he says, is that once we realize the negative impact these traits are exerting on us, we have ample opportunities to change how we react and, thus, make course corrections toward a sunnier horizon.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a Q&A with Mitch Prinstein for Popular.

This article was originally published in the June 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Who knew that being a dweeb in high school could have such long-lasting influence on how we see the world and how it sees us? Ultimately, how well or how badly we fit in with others, Mitch Prinstein argues in his book Popular, is the dominant factor in what we become both professionally and personally.

NonfictionMilitary HistoryHistoryAmerican History

The origin story of the American military

Review by Edward Morris

America has such a long history of military readiness (some would say dominance) that it’s hard to conceive of a time when the country had no standing army at all and little public or political will to create one. That’s the period William Hogeland examines in this account of two crucial battles between American and American Indian forces, both of which took place in what is now the state of Ohio. The first was the 1791 massacre of American troops, commonly known as St. Clair’s Defeat, by a confederacy of American Indians; the second was the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794, during which a trained army under General “Mad” Anthony Wayne so soundly routed the Indians that it effectively opened up the Northwest Territory to untrammeled settlement.

Resistance to the idea of building a standing army under presidential control came from members of Congress who feared concentrating that much power at the top would sow the seeds of a new form of tyranny. Better, they argued, to divide that power among the individual state militias. Wayne’s victory essentially put an end to that argument.

The story bristles with larger-than-life characters, chief among them George Washington, not just as a general and politician but as a self-interested land speculator who needed his investments protected; the relentless American Indian military leaders Little Turtle and Blue Jacket; a scheming and power-hungry Alexander Hamilton; and Mad Anthony, who finally succeeded at war after having failed at virtually everything else.

Hogeland correctly points out that St. Clair’s Defeat had far more impact on America’s development—and three times more casualties—than Sitting Bull’s victory over General Custer at the Little Big Horn. History, it appears, belongs to the best publicist.

America has such a long history of military readiness (some would say dominance) that it’s hard to conceive of a time when the country had no standing army at all and little public or political will to create one. That’s the period William Hogeland examines in this account of two crucial battles between American and American Indian forces, both of which took place in what is now the state of Ohio.

NonfictionHistoryAmerican History

A sweeping view of a forgotten American war

Review by Edward Morris

The Nez Perce War of 1877 was fought over a four-month period between the U.S. Army and various bands of Nez Perce Indians along a zigzagging, 1,200-mile course through Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming and into Montana almost to the Canadian border. Neither side wanted the war, but both were relentless in its prosecution and equally given to committing atrocities. Ironically, the conflict's leaders—General Oliver Otis Howard and Chief Joseph—would, in the years afterward, become close, if wary, acquaintances and crucial to the heightening of each other's national reputation.

Sharfstein, a professor of law and history at Vanderbilt, begins his panoramic narrative with Howard losing his right arm to Confederate gunfire in the early days of the Civil War. Still, Howard continued to lead his troops and achieve rank. After the war, he was appointed head of the Freedmen's Bureau and charged with integrating the newly freed slaves into full citizenship. In that capacity, he established the university that still bears his name. But the resistance of white Southerners and their political allies stifled his most ambitious aims and contributed to his growing tendency to rationalize his failures, both bureaucratically and on the battle field.

Chief Joseph, as Sharfstein explains, was less a war leader than a diplomat. Long before and after the 1877 war, he argued incessantly for his tribe to be allowed to occupy its Oregon homeland rather than be harried to a reservation. However, the waves of settlers seeking to open up the resource-rich Northwest simply washed over him. Sharfstein paints his pictures of this beautiful and terrifying region on a canvas that stretches from daunting inland mountains to bustling seacoast towns.

Deftly woven into the story are portraits of such fascinating figures as Charles Erskine Scott Wood, who served as Howard's aide and later became a political radical, and the fierce warrior Yellow Wolf, whose remembered accounts of battle provide Sharfstein with some of his most chilling descriptions.

The Nez Perce War of 1877 was fought over a four-month period between the U.S. Army and various bands of Nez Perce Indians along a zigzagging, 1,200-mile course through Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming and into Montana almost to the Canadian border. Neither side wanted the war, but both were relentless in its prosecution and equally given to committing atrocities.

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