Columbus: His Enterprise--Exploding the Myth by Hans Koning

 

(pb; 1976, 1991: nonfiction)

From the back cover

“Most of us been taught to think of Christopher Columbus as a single-minded, courageous visionary whose navigational skills led him to ‘discover’ the Americas. In this . .  revisionist biography accessible to people of all ages, Koning gives us the true history of Columbus’s life and voyages.

 

“Koning describes how Columbus’s consuming drive to send ‘mountains of gold’ back to Spain shaped his life, beginning the story with his childhood in Genoa and ending after his return from his fourth and final voyage, an old man in disgrace. He shows how Columbus’s ‘discovery’ led to the enrichment of the conquerors through the plunder and murder of the native peoples of the Americas.

“In an afterword for teachers, Bill Bigelow—a high school social studies teacher and the author of several curricula—shows how the book can be imaginatively used in the classroom to teach students to read history skeptically.”

 

Review

The “From the back cover” description pretty much sums up what I’d write as a review for this compelling, disturbing, necessary, cut-to-it and more honest portrayal of Columbus and the world he inhabited and exploited. It’s a simply stated, stunning and smart nonfiction book that I will keep—I usually give away or sell books when I’m done reading them—and plan to read again, sometime in the distant future. Worth owning, and one of my favorite reads of 2025.

Too Much and Never Enough by Mary L. Trump, Ph.D.

 

(hb; 2020: nonfiction)

From the inside flap

“Mary Trump spent much of her childhood in her grandparents’ large, imposing house in the heart of Queens, New York, where Donald and his four siblings grew up. She describes a nightmare of traumas, destructive relationships, and a tragic combination of neglect and trauma. She explains how specific events and general family patterns created the damaged man and general family patterns created the damaged man who currently occupies the Oval Office, including the strange and harmful relationship between Fred Trump and his two oldest sons, Fred Jr. and Donald.

“A firsthand witness to countless holiday meals and family interactions, Mary brings an incisive wit and unexpected humor to sometimes grim, often confounding excess. She recounts in unsparing detail everything from her uncle Donald’s place in the family spotlight and Ivana’s penchant for regifting to her grandmother’s frequent injuries and illnesses and the appalling way Donald, Fred’s Trump’s favorite son, dismissed and derided him when he began to succumb to Alzheimer’s.”

Review

Too Much is a great, perfect nonfiction book in that its author is clear in her writing, her pacing never lags, she tells you enough to be informative and interesting with no wasted words, and if she makes a claim or says something it is backed up with credible facts. I cannot say I enjoyed its subject matter─the cruelty, abuse and twisted dysfunction that defines four generations of Trumps makes for a sad, depressing, infuriating if excellent read. If you’re a 45 fan, of course, you’ll probably hate this. Otherwise, it might prove to be an interesting book.

Scoundrel Time by Lillian Hellman

(pb; 1976: nonfiction. “Introduction” by Garry Willis)

From the back cover

“‘I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions.’

“In 1952, Lillian Hellman refused to name other people─although she offered to talk about herself─before the House Un-American Activities Committee. For this singular act of moral courage she paid dearly. Blacklisted, forced to sell her home, she watched as others sacrificed friends to save their careers. Now Lillian Hellman names names as she writes her most intimate, painful and moving memoir─her personal history of an unfortunate era.”

Review

Scoundrel is an excellent, smart, succinct, often quotable, and timely read about the abuse of power, shady political operators and those they victimize (as well as those who let themselves be victimized). Dashiell Hammett fans may also appreciate this further glimpse of Hammett, Hellman and their decades-spanning friendship. Worth owning, this.

Before the Chop IV (and After): LA Weekly Writing (and More), 2012—2018 by Henry Rollins

(pb; 2018: nonfiction/media column collection)

Review

Chop IV continues in the thematic vein of its first three volumes, with Rollins writing about his love of listening to vinyl, travel and learning, as well as the joys and downfalls of spoken word gigs. He also, of course, geeks out about his favorite bands and friends (e.g., Iggy Pop) and shares blunt, smart observations about getting older in a society that does not value aging, nor the its (hopefully) attendant wisdom.

Of the four volumes, this is the least joyous and fun, but that is not Rollins’s fault, nor is it a reflection of the quality of his writing. It reflects, rather, the times: like so many things in the now, it is tainted with our current US President and his effect on─it seems─everything. This a minor caveat, at worst, for those of us seeking a respite from the daily toxicity oozing from the White House. Or, to put it another way: Chop IV is worth owning despite its inevitable reflections on our current societal climate.

Then They Came For Me: A Family's Story of Love, Captivity and Survival, by Maziar Bahari with Aimee Molloy

(hb; 2011: political nonfiction)


From the inside flap:

"When Maziar Bahari left London in June 2009 to cover Iran's presidential election, he assured his pregnant fiancée, Paola, that he'd be back in just a few days, a week at most.  Little did he know, as he kissed her good-bye, that he would spend the next three months in Iran's most notorious prison, enduring brutal interrogation sessions at the hands he knew only by his smell: Rosewater.

"For the Bahari family, wars, coups and revolutions are not distant concepts but intimate realities they have suffered for generations: Maziar's father was imprisoned by the shah in the 1950s, and his sister by the Ayatollah Khomeini in the 1980s.  Alone in his cell at Evin Prison, fearing the worst, Maziar draws strength from his memories of the courage his father and sister in the face of torture, and hears the voices speaking to him across the years.  He dreams of being with Paola in London, and imagines all that she and his rambunctious, resilient eighty-four year-old mother must be doing  to campaign for his release.  During the worst of his encounters with Rosewater, he silently repeats the names of his loved ones, calling on their love and strength to protect him and praying he will be released in time for the birth of his first child."


Review:

Then They Came For Me is a worthwhile, interesting and emotionally involving nonfiction read highlighted with Iranian political history and strange/dark humor.  Check this book out.

#

Jon Stewart is directing the renamed film version, Rosewater.  The film, which Stewart also scripted, is scheduled for 2014 stateside/theatrical release. 

Gael Garcia Bernal plays Maziar Bahari.  Haluk Balginer plays Baba Akbar.  (I'll update this as soon as more information becomes available.)

Drift, by Rachel Maddow

(hb; 2012: nonfiction)


From the inside flaps:

" 'One of my favorite ideas is, never to keep an unnecessary soldier,' Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1792.  Neither Jefferson nor the other founding fathers could ever have envisioned the modern national security state, with its tens of thousands of 'privateers'; its bloated Department of Homeland Security; its rusting nuclear weapons, ill-maintained and difficult to dismantle; and its strange fascination with an overproven counterinsurgency doctrine.

". . . Drift argues that we've drifted away from America's original ideals and become a nation weirdly at peace with perpetual war, with all the financial and human costs that entails.  To understand how we've arrived at such a dangerous place, Maddow takes us from the Vietnam War to today's war in Afghanistan, along the way exploring the disturbing ise of executive authority, the gradual outsourcing of our war-making capabilities to private companies, the plummeting percentage of American families whose children fight our constant wars for us, and even the changing fortunes of G.I. Joe.  She offers up a fresh, unsparing appraisal of Reagan's radical presidency.  Ultimately, she shows us just how much we stand to lose by allowing the priorities of the national security state to overpower our political discourse."


Review:

Sometimes humorous, often disturbing and provocative, yet logic-based/non-alarmist and streamlined read that I found near-impossible to set down (eventually, drowsiness, born of a long working day compelled me to do so). 

If you're interested in the state of our military, past and/or present, this is a must-read.  Even if you disagree with Maddow's reasoning and take on her meticulously researched facts, you should check this out - Drift is that great.

Not only is this book worth owning, it's worth re-reading (which I intend to - hope to - do in the next year or so).

Jackal by John Follain

(hb; 1998: biography) From the inside flap: “On an August night in 1994 French counterespionage officers seized the world's most-wanted terrorist from a villa in the Sudan. After more than two decades on the run, Carlos 'the Jackal' had finally been caged. For years he had murdered and bombed his way to notoriety, evading capture thanks to powerful backers and the blunders of Western secret services. Jackal is the definitive biography of this self-proclaimed 'professional revolutionary,' ladies' man, and cold-blooded killer. Setting his story against the larger political picture of the time, it exposes how the Soviet bloc and certain Arab regimes sponsored terrorist actions for their own ends during the Cold War. The tale of Carlos's exploits, including his most daring coup – the kidnapping of eleven OPEC oil ministers in Vienna in 1975 – crackles with suspense, deception, and violence to rival the best-selling fiction of Le Carre and Forsyth. Tracing Carlos's evolution from his childhood in Venezuela to London, Moscow, Paris, East Berlin, and the Middle East, Jackal uses previously untapped sources, including the archives of the East German secret police and the files of France's judicial investigations into Carlos's crimes, to tell his fully story for the first time. “Jackal reveals the web of intrigue, blackmail, and fear that guaranteed Carlos's survival, the helping hand of Colonel Qadhafi, and the true nature of the 'Kremlin Connections.' John Follain shows how the CIA and French intelligence issues their agents a license to kill in their efforts to stop Carlos; how his bravado, combined with events leading up to the fall of the Berlin Wall, forced him out of the Communist fold; and how betrayal and revenge sealed in a secret pact between France and his masters brought about his downfall...” Review: Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, born October 12, 1949, in Caracas, Venezuela, became famous in 1975 when a reporter, investigating a Rue Toullier apartment (where Sanchez had lived, and later shot three cops, killing two, wounding the third), noticed one of the novels sitting on a bookshelf: Frederick Forsyth's 1971 thriller, The Day of the Jackal. Sanchez had already been using the nom de guerre Carlos, as suggested by one of Palestinian employers, since 1970, but it wasn't until that 1975 attack that Ramirez became known to international security services, and the public as “Carlos the Jackal,” as he was named by that sharp reporter. Carlos's career as a “revolutionary” officially began in December 1973, when he bungled the ordered assassination of Joseph Edward Sieff, a prominent London Jewish businessman – Sieff was wounded, but survived. Prior to that, Carlos, son of a revolution-minded father and an intensely Catholic mother, had spent a year or two in Palestinian training camps, learning how to build bombs, use various guns, and utilize psychological terror. Follain's succinct yet descriptive writing and characterizations of the events and players in Carlos's life keeps the true-life tale moving along briskly. Near the end, the pace slows a bit as the author reveals details about Carlos's trial (which focused on the infamous 1975 Rue Toullier shootings), but it's still semi-interesting. Worthwhile read, especially if you're fans of Robert Ludlum's Bourne trilogy (Ludlum's Carlos, though notably fictionalized, still bears a faint thematic resemblance to the real-life Carlos), or Frederick Forsyth's The Day of the Jackal.