Book Review: The Devil in the White City

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Two men, two stories, one great World’s Fair. It’s the 1890s, and the city of Chicago has just been given the honor of hosting the next World’s Fair.

Daniel Burnham was the lead architect of the Chicago World’s Fair, and H.H. Holmes was a serial killer who lived in Chicago at that time. Larson narrates these two stories in alternating chapters. Like most readers, I assumed the two stories would connect at some point, but they never do. Nonetheless, I found both stories intriguing and incredibly well researched.

The story Daniel Burnham of the creation of the “White City”—the World’s Fair Park—was interesting but not exactly riveting. While the minutia of all the ups and downs of building the fair got tiresome, I did get a fantastic history lesson. Also, I loved the appearances of famous people like Buffalo Billy, Annie Oakley, Theodore Dreiser, and Helen Keller at the fair.

Of course, the serial killer is always going to be the more compelling story. H.H. Holmes was known as a handsome, outgoing man— literally a ladykiller. While construction of the fair was going on at an incredible pace, Holmes was also working at a fast pace: collecting women, loving them, and then killing them in his specially constructed death building right in the center of town.

Again, the stories really have little to do with each other, but Burnham and Holmes might be consider polar opposites representing man’s capacity for good and his potential for evil. On one side, Burnham is creating this perfect, white Heaven-like city, yet nearby, Holmes has created his own hellish torture chamber. What lies beneath the veneer of whitewash?

All in all, this was a fascinating book, although I was, frankly, bored in some of the Burnham chapters. Photographs or drawings would have greatly enhanced these chapters. Sometimes I skimmed through the Burnham chapters just to get to the serial killer chapters—I’m not sure what that says about me as a reader or as a person, although I suspect that’s not uncommon.



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Book Review: Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity

Garbage, disease, hopelessness, corruption: Katherine Boo's nonfiction account of life in one of India's slums is definitely not a feel-good beach read. It's a grueling look into how the have-nots struggle to survive in the midst of staggering poverty.

We're first introduced into the Annawadi slum through Abdul, a boy who supports his large family by collecting and selling garbage. This garbage, of course, he must store in their tiny part of a shack so that other scavengers don't steal it. The rats feast nightly, both on garbage and on the children. Annawadi is a world in which corruption runs rampant (the police are constantly looking to be paid off), education is almost nonexistent, and the daily goal is just to survive—and maybe make a little money.

A cast of other characters appear in Boo's account, ranging from a one-legged crazy woman to a young girl who hopes to be the first in Annawadi to get a college degree. Critics call this a hopeful, redeeming book, but I can't say I found it at all hopeful. In the end, everyone is living in the slum still, hoping to figure out how they can get rich.

While I didn't find it hopeful, it was extremely enlightening. As a middle-class American, no matter how many hungry, homeless Americans I've seen, I can't even slightly conceive of the kind of poverty that is described in this book. It all feels so hopeless and heartbreaking—and yet we must know—and car about— the desperation that is rampant in the world.

While I didn't love the book—who could?—I did find it to be a valuable read and one that is important for shaping a global perspective.

Book Review: Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America

Barbara Ehrenreich— highly educated, financially comfortable— goes undercover to see what life would be like as a minimum-wage worker in America. How can someone survive on $6-7/hour?

Ehrenreich, a journalist by trade, spent a month in each of three locations—Florida, Maine, and Minnesota— as a waitress, hotel housekeeper, maid, and Walmart worker. (She did not inform her co-workers or bosses of her "real" life until her last day at each place of employment.) Her goal was to live like her co-workers (although with the benefit of three important tools: a car, a laptop, and $1000 in start-up funds).

Her life quickly became extraordinarily difficult. Affordable housing in all cases turned out to be barely habitable trailers, hotel rooms, tiny apartments. Her jobs were emotionally demeaning and physically hard. I'm sure that it was terribly hard for her that people didn't recognize her intelligence, although she never says this. I get the feeling that she often wanted to cry out, "You can't treat me like this: I have a PhD!"

Or maybe I'm projecting. I've worked minimum wage jobs as a college graduate. I've been that waitress in a polyester uniform, silently fuming because the boss was treating me like everyone else. Did he not recognize my ability to write A+ papers?

Yes, we are the privileged middle class, and the truth is, that while Ehrenreich's book is interesting and enlightening, she can't possibly present a picture of minimum-wage America with three short months in just three random cities. She needed to add in issues of health-care (when she got a rash from her work as a maid, she called her personal dermatologist and got a prescription) and family (as a single woman, she didn't have to face issues of childcare, etc.). She needed to give up her life for a year, not just a few months, and stay in one place—without a car and an emergency fund.

Ehrenreich tries, though, to present to her readers, presumably the privileged middle class, the life of millions of minimum-wage workers across America. It's hard. It's unthinkable to many of us that one could spend one's entire life working a couple of different jobs, 60-70 hours/week, on $7 an hour. Most people I know have worked in minimum-wage jobs at some point in their lives, but we all knew that we are working there temporarily—until we were done with college or graduate school, for the most part. Even working in those jobs for a set amount of time—with that light at the end of the tunnel—can be terribly depressing and demoralizing.

The author is condescending at times and often downright snarky, but I still think this is an important read. She doesn't offer any solutions, but she does raise a lot of questions and shed light on the plight of the poor.

Book Review: The Geography of Bliss

Subtitled "One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World," this book is exactly that: Eric Weiner (pronounced "whiner," he points out) decides to find the "wheres" of happiness. Why do happiness experts proclaim that places like Holland, Switzerland, Bhutan, Qatar, Iceland, Thailand and India house the happiest people in the world?

Weiner travels to each of those countries—as well as Moldova, the unhappiest country—to try to make sense of happiness. He comes up with all sorts of possibilities:

• "Happiness is low expectations."
• "Maybe we can't really be happy without first coming to terms with our mortality."
• "Trust is a prerequisite for happiness."
• "The greatest source of happiness is other people."
• "People who are too busy are happier than those who are not busy enough."
• "Happiness is not the absence of suffering but the presence of something."

His experiences in each country were fascinating. I thoroughly loved Weiner as a narrator. He was just self-deprecating enough but not so much as to be annoying, and he was never arrogant. I laughed a lot. I found his descriptions of the people in these countries to be terribly enlightening, although at times he did drag on some. But still, the book is an excellent cultural journey.

He comes back to the United States in the end, and I loved the way he wrapped up the book with a return to his roots. (The U.S., by the way, is ranked 23rd among countries on the happiness sacle.) What makes Americans happy, he wonders? Not surprisingly, the number 1 answer was money. But in spite of our blatant materialism, we think about happiness and celebrate happiness more than any other country, says Weiner.

In the end, he says, he had some "nagging doubts" about his journey. Is happiness really the most important thing anyway? Is "are you happy" even the right question?

My only gripe with this book is that Weiner totally leaves out religion. The closest he comes to a discussion of the effects of religion on happiness is when he is in India. For me this was the elephant in the room, and I can't quite grasp how Weiner could have completely ignored this. Or why.

Nonetheless, I highly recommend the book. I hope Weiner finds more than "50/50" happiness in his own life—or is that even possible for a self-proclaimed grump? Hmm.

Other Reviews of The Geography of Bliss
The Book Kitten
Sophisticated Dorkiness
Lotus Reads
Regular Rumination

Book Review: The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

This book by Anne Fadiman has been on my TBR list for a couple of years, so when I saw it on my son's required reading list for college, I knew I'd have to snag it first. Fortunately, I finished it before he leaves tomorrow!

"The spirit catches you and you fall down" is how Lia Lee's mother describes an epileptic seizure—and Lia has many of them. Lia is the 13th child born to Hmong immigrants Foua and Nao Kao Lee and the first born in the United States. Her first seizure comes at age 3 months, when an older sister slams a door. (Her parents will remain convinced that this caused Lia's soul to flee and the mother continued to blame the older sister.) Lia's next seven years are documented here as a perplexing, frustrating, defeating mixture of cultural and language barriers, spiritual vs. medical, parent vs. doctor.

Along with the primary story of Lia's medical condition and the cultural clash, Fadiman provides a sturdy backdrop of the Hmong experience both historically and in the context of the U.S. today. The struggles that permeate Lia's story make sense when we have even a rudimentary understanding of the culture, spiritual beliefs, and ethical code of the Hmong.

Fadiman is an amazing writer. She manages to treat every person involved in this story with grace and respect. I came away from this with a huge respect for the doctors involved in this case, not because they did a great job (they didn't) but because (for the most part), they were willing and eager to learn from their mistakes. And one can't help but be in awe of the Lee family for many reasons, including the outcome of the book. But at the same time we wonder what might have happened if they had administered Lia's medicine correctly—or if she had never been treated at all.

I highly recommend this book. It's a fascinating and enlightening look into the immigrant experience in America today and the clash of two wildly different cultures.

Other Reviews:
Book Addiction: "This book utterly and completely fascinated me."
Sophisticated Dorkiness: "Anyone with even a passing interest in cultural differences, literary journalism, or stories that truly tug at your heart while still making you think should read this."
Book Nut: "what this book is, more than either of those things, is a testament to what happens when good intentions go bad because of cultural differences."
Tulip Girl: "thought-provoking and emotionally rewarding."
Dogear Diary: "Fadiman has written a fantastic book about the clash between two cultures met in the arena of medicine."

Book Review: Mountains Beyond Mountains

As I mentioned in this post, I chose to read Tracy Kidder's Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World because it's this year's selection for the Life of the Mind freshman reading program at the University of Tennessee, where Dr. H. teaches.

I really wanted to love this book. I totally support programs like UT's Life of the Mind. I think it is an awesome way to get students and faculty moving together.

But I am puzzled as to why this book was chosen. The premise is fascinating. I was excited to read this story about Dr. Paul Farmer, a specialist in infectious diseases, who makes it his life's quest to bring health to Haiti, one person at a time. I loved reading about Paul Farmer and his experiences in Haiti. He is an obviously brilliant man with a compassionate heart beyond comprehension. I believe in him and believe that he and his team at Partners in Health are making incredible things happen around the world. The stories of his experiences in Haiti, Peru, and Russia are absorbing and compelling for the most part.

The problem for me was that the book was disjointed. Am I allowed to say that about a book written by a Pulitzer Prize-winning author? The first half of the book mainly focused on Farmer and was extremely well done and engaging. But the second half became an odd combination of random conversations and medical jargon. People came in and out, and I lost track of who they were. Pages at a time seemed superfluous to the narrative; I found myself skimming dialogue that appeared out of nowhere and was disconnected.

I have read dozens of reviews about this book, and everyone seems to give it a 5-star rating. I understand that U.T. chose this book largely because of the Haitian crisis. I think it's fantastic that exhibits, lectures and movies will continue on with this theme throughout the school year. I love that the university is embracing a global perspective, taking students (and faculty) out of their self-absorbed years and encouraging them to consider personal responsibility in this world. I'm just afraid that this particular book wasn't the best choice.

That, of course, made me wonder what other books about Haiti might have been picked. I quick amazon.com search brought up lots of titles, including several by Dr. Paul Farmer, like The Uses of Haiti and Partner to the Poor. I have a feeling I might like Dr. Farmer's writing voice more than I liked Kidder's filter. I'm going to be adding some of these titles to my TBR list.

Book Review: The Secret to True Happiness

Cheesy title, I know. I would probably never read a book with this title except that I received this signed copy to review—and I always read review copies. But hopefully the title of Joyce Meyer's newest book will attract readers less persnickety than I, because it is well worth it.

I do not usually read books "like this." I don't read self-help and I rarely read "Christian living" books, unless I'm reading specifically for a Bible study. I so dislike books fluffy best-sellers like The Prayer of Jabez and Don't Sweat the Small Stuff that I have built up an aversion to the genre in general. I've heard great things about Joyce Meyers for years now, but this is my first encounter with her—and I applaud her.

Her approach is straightforward. If you want true happiness, stop whining and start enjoying. Stop comparing yourself to other people, stop being self-focused, stop being so dramatic, and start enjoying your everyday life. The root of unhappiness, she says, is self-centeredness.

When we are self-centered, we expect people around us to exist for our benefit. We think they should work to keep us happy, do what we want, and put us first. And by all means, they should never do anything to irritate us, frustrate us, or inconvenience us. … The overwhelming majority of the unhappiness, upset, and frustration we feel comes from not having things we want or from having to deal with situations we don't want. When our personal desires are not being met, we fall into discontent—and this is selfish.

This isn't an earth-shattering book. There aren't any magic tricks; it's just good, common sense laid out in a practical way with suggestions for getting over yourself and choosing, each day, to be happy.

I'd love to give this book away to someone. It's even signed by Joyce Meyer. ;-) If you would like a chance at winning this book, just leave me a comment and tell me something happy in your life.

**Addendum: Congrats to 1incollege1indiapers for winning this book! Hope you enjoy it!

Book Review: Shattered Dreams

Irene Spencer's memoir, subtitled My Life as a Polygamist's Wife, was both fascinating and frustrating, and, when finally finished, I was glad it was over.

Irene's story is interesting for the most part. Raised in a fundamentalist polygamous Mormon community, Irene vacillated between her love for an outsider and her firm conviction that God commanded her to live in a plural marriage. Although her mother, who had left her plural marriage, tried to convince her otherwise, Irene ends up becoming the second wife of her brother-in-law, Verlan LeBaron. Life with Verlan and his wife (her half-sister) Charlotte is tough from the beginning.Verlan appears to be an egomaniacal jerk from a crazy family. In the first year of marriage, the threesome moves to Mexico to live in total poverty, and Irene's first baby dies. In the next 28 years, Verlan takes seven more wives and fathers a total of 56 children, 13 of whom belong to Irene.

Irene's life is one continuous battle. She continuously fought with all the other wives, competing for time with Verlan. She battled total poverty and constant danger for nearly three decades. She battled depression, poor health, low self-esteem, and sheer exhaustion from managing Verlan's obscenely large household. Strangely, one of Irene's primary concerns in this memoir seems to be her lack of a satisfying physical relationship with her husband. Verlan is obviously a selfish creep, and yet Irene laments having to share him in page after endless page.

The reader, obviously, wants Irene just to leave Verlan. She had a large non-polygamous support system and could have left at any time. Even when she does finally leave, when at least half of her children are already grown, she ends up going back to him. I understand that I can't understand her state of mind. I understand that she was completely indoctrinated from birth to believe that plural marriage was mandatory in the eyes of God. Still, you can't help but wish, by midway through the book, that she would stop whining and just leave him. Again, I know that I can't possibly relate to the psychological bondage under which Irene lived, but several other wives did leave Verlan. Irene seemed to feel a tremendous need to be, ultimately, Verlan's favorite wife.

I also wondered how, if indeed Verlan and his wives lived in such total poverty, how Verlan was always buying new houses, flying on airplanes, and even taking Irene to Europe. Some parts of the story didn't quite fit. And some stories seemed completely extraneous and repetitive in this narrative. I think Irene's memoir could have benefited from more careful editing.

That said, this really is a fascinating look at a practice that continues today among those who call themselves the fundamentalist Mormons. I'd recommend reading this in combination with Under the Banner of Heaven, John Krakauer's amazing look into this strange world of polygamy in America.

Other reviews of Shattered Dreams*
Natasha at Maw Books here
Hava at Nonfiction Lover here (Hava has also reviewed His Favorite Wife, by another of Verlan's wives)

* If you've reviewed Shattered Dreams, please leave a comment so I can add your review!

Book Review: A Million Little Pieces

As I've said a few times before, I love memoirs. But how should I feel about what is apparently an over-embellished memoir, with some episodes that just plain didn't happen?

Such was my state of mind when I began reading James Frey's controverisal 2003 A Million Little Pieces. I knew going into this that Frey went from Oprah's reading list (and thus, The New York Times Bestseller List) to The Smoking Gun's hit list in a matter of months. Apparently, a whole lot of James Frey's memoir didn't really happen the way he said it did.

But I liked it anyway. OK, this is not really a book you like. This is a hard book to read. Frey's mantra is: "I am an alcoholic, a drug addict, and a criminal." According to Frey, his drinking started at age 7, when he drank the dregs of wine glasses at his parents' parties, and escalated to pretty much constant alcohol and drug use by age 14. When the memoir begins he is 23 and about a day away from death, and on his way to an expensive rehab facility.

This is an ugly book because the subject matter is ugly. Even if Frey made up half the things in the book, he still lived a horrible existence. It is unfortunate that he felt the need to spice up his already hideous life by fabricating certain details; he really didn't have to do that. His writing is powerful, lyrical in its candid simplicity:

I want a drink. I want fifty drinks. I want a bottle of the purest, strongest, most destructive, most poisonous alcohol on Earth. I want fifty bottles of it. I want crack, dirty and yellow and filled with formaldehyde. I want a pile of powder meth, five hundred hits of acid, a garbage bag filled with mushrooms, a tube of glue bigger than a truck, a pool of gas large enough to drown in. I want something anything whatever however as much as I can.

I'm sorry that Frey didn't have the confidence and foresight to be totally honest in his writing. I hope he keeps writing, and I hope he has learned that he has enough talent himself without resorting to tale twisting.

I think I would recommend this book. It is not a pretty book in any form or fashion; in fact, the reader should be prepared for several graphic scenes and endless bad language. You certainly won't feel uplifted and happy after reading the book, but still: the raw emotions in Frey's writing maybe balance out the rest.

Book Review: The Serpent Handlers

And these signs shall follow them that believe: In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues. They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.
~Mark 16:17-18

Earlier this summer, our local library advertised that authors Fred Brown and Jeanne McDonald would be speaking about their book, The Serpent Handlers. I wasn't able to go to the seminar, but I did find several copies of the book at the library the next week. I have a weird fascination with religious fringe groups, like the fundamentalist LDS movement as described in John Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven.

Brown and McDonald introduce three serpent-handling families: the Brown family very near us in Parrottsville, TN; the Coots family of Kentucky; and the Elkins family of West Virginia. All three families have long histories of being involved in "taking up serpents"; all three have suffered several deaths in their families and congregations from snake bites.

The authors handle the lives of the snake-handlers gracefully and graciously. While it would be easy to mock the handlers for making Mark 16 a literal and vital part of their faith, Brown and McDonald recount their beliefs without bias and then allow the individuals themselves to tell their own stories. It's up to the reader to come to his or her own conclusions about this faith tradition.

Living in East Tennessee, I've long been aware of that snake-handling is not a thing of the past, but I didn't know much about it. (I've been told that there is at least one church just 10 minutes away, but the churches don't exactly advertise widely.) It's easy to smirk at what seems like such bunk, but after reading the testimonies of the handlers in this book, I do have a much greater understanding of these believers also known as Signs Followers. (Other signs are followed are handling fire, healing, drinking strychnine and other poisions, and casting out demons. Not all members follow all the signs.) I think what was made especially clear is that the signs are not the primary focus of the church members, but rather an element of worship. Also emphasized is that snake-handling and other signs-followings are not attempts to prove faith but are done to confirm the Word of God.

But honestly, while I do have more of an understanding, I still find it all bizarre and, frankly, taken out of context.

Interestingly, two articles in our local newspaper in the past few months reference snake-handling. This one most recently reports that Gregory Coots, one of the handlers featured in this book, was arrested by wildlife officers in a crackdown of the venomous snake trade. And this article details how the curator of the herpetology department at the Knoxville Zoo went out in the fields to collect snakes with a local snake-handling preacher.

If you're curious about life in Appalachia or in religious traditions, I'd highly recommend this book. The writing is excellent and purely unbiased and the personal narratives are fascinating.