Nevermore: Immobile Empire, Daughters of Yalta, Humans, Forgotten Country

 

Nevermore June 7, 2022

 

Reported by Garry

 

The Immobile Empire by Alain Peyrefitte is a detailed look at the disastrous attempt by the British Empire to open up China to trade with the West in 1793. Both cultures viewed the other with derision and were convinced of their own superiority. Egos clashed and the results have echoed around the globe for generations. Peryefitte draws on the diaries of those involved on both sides to paint a fascinating picture of distrust, hubris, and etiquette. This exhaustively researched book clocks in at a hefty 630 pages, but the length of it neither put off nor bored our reader who says that this is a very interesting book for any history buff.  FC

 

The Daughters of Yalta: The Churchills, Roosevelts, and Harrimans: A Story of Love and War by Catherine Grace Katz is the meticulously researched tale of the daughters of three of the most powerful men in history: Sarah Churchill (Winston’s daughter), Anna Roosevelt (Franklin’s only daughter), and Kathleen Harriman (daughter of Averell Harriman, the US Ambassador to the Soviet Union). These three daughters accompanied their fathers to a world-altering meeting at Yalta during the waning days of the Second World War. Seamlessly combining the politics of the day with the interpersonal relationships of the three daughters and their fathers, this book fascinated our reader, who found it hard to put down.  CD

 

Humans: A Brief History of How We F*cked It All Up by Tom Phillips is an irreverent look at how we humans manage to mangle nearly everything we get our hands on. How we are still here is a bit of a mystery when you look at all the ways that we have messed things up. Our reader says this breezy book has equal amounts of history and humor and was a delight to read, and she found herself laughing out loud many times.  PP

 

Forgotten Country by Catherine Chung is one of the most beautiful books that our book club member has ever read. Weaving Korean folklore into a decades-spanning story of immigration and the search for identity, this story focuses on Janie, a Korean-born, American-raised immigrant, and her family. Janie’s elder sister disappeared and cut all ties with her family. The family moves back to Korea and Janie is tasked with finding her sister before their father dies – a task that Janie both feels compelled to do, but bitterly resentful about. This debut novel takes a deep and emotional look at not only the immigrant experience but the ties that bind (and sometimes chafe) amongst family members.  AH

 

Also mentioned:

Same Place, Same Things by Tim Gautreaux

The Resting Place by Camilla Sten

The American Women’s Almanac: 500 Years of Making History by Deborah G. Felder

Sudden Sea: The Great Hurricane of 1938 by R. A. Scotti

The Memoirs of A Survivor by Doris Lessing

The Book Woman’s Daughter by Kim Michele Richardson

Travels with George: In Search of Washington and His Legacy by Nathaniel Philbrick

Chocolat by Joanne Harris

Death of a Gossip by M.C. Beaton

LGBTQ Fiction and Poetry from Appalachia edited by Jeff Mann and Julia Watts

Love is the Cure: On Life, Loss and the End of AIDS by Elton John

Fools Crow by James Welch

His Name Is George Floyd: One Man's Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice by Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa

Unmasked: My Life Solving America’s Cold Cases by Paul Holes

The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures: A True Tale of Obsession, Murder, and the Movies by Paul Fischer

Yinka, Where is Your Husband? By Lizzie Damilola Blackburn

Eight Faces at Three by Craig Rice

The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet by John Green

Nevermore Notes were not available this week.  Instead, we offer Kristin's review.

Reviewed by Kristin

It seems strange to be reviewing a book of reviews, but John Green has much to say on a few dozen topics ranging over the “Anthropocene,” (a term for the current geological age, usually thought to begin with the Industrial Revolution as humans began to have a larger impact upon the planet.) Rating each subject on a five star scale, he goes from deeply researched articles to deeply personal thoughts.

Green’s writing project started as a podcast, as he began examining the contradiction of human power.

“We are at once far too powerful and not nearly powerful enough. We are powerful enough to radically reshape Earth’s climate and biodiversity, but not powerful enough to choose how we reshape them. We are so powerful that we have escaped our planet’s atmosphere. But we are not powerful enough to save those we love from suffering.”

Faced with the worldwide pandemic of COVID-19 in early 2020, Green began to write in earnest as he shared his thoughts on a multitude of human inventions, human discoveries, and human deficiencies. Brutally honest about his sometimes debilitating anxiety and depression, Green shows us what it is like to live in the modern world as a thinker, but one aware of his own abilities and limitations.

Green takes on a variety of subjects. From examining the creation of the modern self-serve grocery store (Piggly Wiggly) to the eons long practice of tracing our own hands as an art form (part of the Lascaux cave paintings,) Green gathers his own insightful and sometimes funny musings as part of this essay collection. The Indianapolis 500 and Super Mario Kart make appearances too, as well as the invention of air conditioning (Thank you, Willis Carrier!)

Canadian geese, Hiroyuki Doi’s circle art, velociraptors, the internet, diet Dr Pepper, scratch ‘n’ sniff stickers, staphylococcus aureus:  Green has star rating for all of these, and a thoughtful reasoning behind all the scores. He even gives the “wintry mix” weather of Indianapolis 4 stars. It’s not all about the weather, but sometimes who you are beside as you drive through the cold and slippery precipitation to a poetry reading.

Green is better known as the author of several young adult fiction books, including The Fault in Our Stars and Turtles All the Way Down. He and his brother Hank also created a YouTube video series called Crash Course, covering subjects like World History, Chemistry, English Literature, World Mythology, Physics, and so many more. With humor and speed-talking, the Green brothers tackle academic subjects and summarize them well. Personally, I can vouch for Crash Course as excellent supplementary material for homeschooling a teenager.

I give The Anthropocene Reviewed four and a half stars.