2018 Year in Books

2018 was a very good year in books. I read thirty, but two stood above all others. In fact, I liked them both so much, for the first time, I am picking co-books of the year. Emmy Favilla’s A World Without Whom and Kassia St. Clair’s The Secret Lives of Color do the two things books I enjoy do best - they inform and entertain. But more than that, both authors write with wit and élan, cheeky good humor and just the right amount of bawdiness (at least for me). Click on the links to read my full reviews.

My honorable mentions are several. Erin Carlson’s I’ll Have What She’s Having was not just an homage to the brilliant Nora Ephron, but a meditation on modern romance and how it is portrayed in movies. Marve Emre’s The Personality Brokers was a beautifully written and extensively researched history of the Myers-Briggs Personality Test and how it became ubiquitous in society while also lacking any scientific grounding. For immersive experiences, Miles Unger’s Picasso and the Painting that Shocked the World, read like the first part of a multi-part biography of the 20th century’s unquestioned grand master. While the book is ostensibly about the creation of the proto-cubist masterpiece Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, it is much more than that. It is the story of a prodigy who, before he turned thirty, had moved through three distinct phases (Blue Period, Rose Period, and Cubism) that have influenced modern art ever since. Finally, Rebecca Traistor’s Good and Mad is a rip-roaring polemic against the patriarchy and encourages women to stop apologizing for wanting to exercise their power. I am here for it. All of it.

Other good reads included Hope Never Dies, a fanfic imagination of Joe Biden in his post-Obama Administration years becoming an amateur gumshoe, The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen, Age 83 1/4, a fictional account of an elderly man’s life in an assisted living facility that captures the poignancy, small joys and absurdity when the final grains are passing through the hourglass, and Broadway, a historical journey of the great Broad Way that has defined New York City for more than 400 years. 

Follow me on Twitter - @scarylawyerguy 

Prior years-in-review:

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

Book Review - The Lion in the Living Room

As a proud cat dad to two strays who have executed a bloodless coup and take over of my home, I eagerly started Abigail Tucker’s The Lion in the Living Room looking forward to a greater understanding and affection for these fuzzy little four-legged creatures. Surprisingly, and to my great disappointment, what I got instead was what mostly read like an anti-cat screed made all the more curious considering Tucker is herself a cat owner. I must admit, she sure has a funny way of showing her affection.

Most of The Lion reads as a polemic against cats generally and cat ownership specifically. We are given chapters that focus on a cat-specific parasite that has been tied to schizophrenia in humans, researchers who deem cats an invasive species responsible for wiping out prey within an ecosystem, and a description of cats as indifferent loners who essentially train humans (who they could take or leave) with behavioral modifications that suit their needs when we lock cats away in our homes, denying them their rightful place as predators in the outside world. Tucker is even dubious of the cats' long-held reputation for rodent eradication. She posits that in many cities, cats and mice have come to a détente because there are more than enough scraps and garbage for all to consume, while in and around the house, pesticides and exterminators have done the job we once relied on our four-legged friends to do.

It is all very dispiriting, from stories of the kill shelters that pile cat carcasses up to the skepticism of “trap, neuter, release” as an effective means of controlling the feline population. For someone who professes so much love for cats, Tucker finds little redeeming about them to write about. Her interviewees muse on how cat anxiety can be lowered by separating cats from humans and that cat owners are actually less likely to survive a year after a heart attack than dog owners (or members of the general public). 

So much of the book reads like the equivalent of attending a wedding of two people you know are ill-suited for one another yet go through with the marriage anyway. Unlike dogs, that have adapted and evolved into companions for humans, Tucker indicates that cats have not gone through a similar metamorphosis and retain key characteristics that have resulted in a deserved reputation for aloofness.  

Ultimately, Tucker’s conclusion is that notwithstanding all of these contra-indicators, cats and humans have gone through with this arrangement anyway, even though the relationship does not appear to benefit either party. I have to say my experience has been precisely the opposite of much of what Tucker writes about and observes. Not only do my two little ones show great affection, I do not particularly care if they modulate their meows to get some food or may have an ulterior motive tied to the crazy-eights they do around my legs. I love my cats whether or not their purrs are a life hack they know will get them a crunchy treat or they have subtly trained me to bring home overpriced toys. 

Tucker would have us believe we are aiding in our cats’ unhappiness because we are denying them their genetic coding as apex predators. Maybe so, but when my sweet Pumpkin almost died earlier this year because of a bite wound that got infected, I was not worried about whether or not she would recover and be able to hunt down neighborhood birds, I spent thousands of dollars in medical bills because I love her and had she died, I would have been devastated. If Pumpkin’s now entirely-indoor lifestyle expands her life expectancy at the price of her not being able to fulfill her mission as a killer of squirrels and mice, I am more than okay with that. 

Follow me on Twitter - @scarylawyerguy 

Book Review - American Heiress

The 1970s were not America’s finest hour. From Watergate to the Iran, stagflation to gas rationing, we suffered a decade-long humiliation where interest rates topped out at 20 percent, New York City nearly went bankrupt, and Sixties idealism curdled into nihilism and random acts of domestic terrorism. The cultural touchstones are familiar - the mood ring. Polyester leisure suits. Disco. The people, however, are a bit cloudy in our collective remembrance. Comes now Jeffrey Toobin, fresh off the success of FX’s adaptation of his book about the O.J. Simpson trial, with American Heiress, a gripping and wonderfully written account of the kidnapping of Patricia Heart, the then twenty-year-old heir to a fortune accumulated in newspapers and real estate. 

For those of a certain age, the broad strokes will quickly be remembered. Hearst was taken by a group called the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) and famously captured in an iconic photo with a machine gun at the ready and the SLA’s seven-headed hydra symbol behind her. After most of her comrades were killed in a standoff with police a few months later, Hearst and the remaining members of the group went underground for more than a year, zig zagging the country before being captured in September 1975. At trial for a bank robbery committed shortly after her kidnapping, the then-famous trial lawyer F. Lee Bailey unsuccessfully attempted to argue that Hearst had been brainwashed by the SLA and thus not culpable for her acts. 

Toobin chose his subject well. He has a jeweler’s eye for the fine details as well as the big picture, zooming in to explore the wide range of characters who are part of the tale while also pulling the lens back to put the kidnapping in the broader context of unrest at the time. While many consider the 1960s as a time when the country nearly unraveled in protest over Vietnam, the following decade is largely forgotten in its extensive incidents of domestic terrorism. This may be because many bombings (which were the preferred method of fear mongering) resulted in injury to property as opposed to person, but as Toobin points out, attacks became so commonplace in California, they ceased making news. 

In Toobin’s telling, the SLA is more myth than reality. The entire group was small enough to be transported in a modern-day SUV and while they did commit an egregious murder (of the Superintendent of the Oakland School District), the bank robbery that made Hearst infamous netted less than $10,000 and five of the eight members, including its leader, died shortly thereafter. The SLA’s outsized impact was largely due to Hearst’s presence, but it was only one of a number of groups that fancied themselves as guerrilla warriors fighting against the government. 

As the story picks up speed with Hearst’s conversion to the SLA cause, the standoff that results in most of the group perishing in an inferno, and Hearst and the two remaining members’ months on the run, it is impossible to read Heiress and not sit in surprise that it took the FBI so long to catch them. Toobin digs into all of it with zeal, introducing bit players and off-hand connections (a cameo by Bill Walton is particularly interesting) to illustrate how Hearst and her two comrades eluded capture. A second crime spree that included a bank robbery where a bystander was murdered highlighted the group’s return to the West Coast, but by then, the three SLA castoffs and a couple of their confederates were less revolutionary and more petty criminal. Whatever political message they were asserting had long since lost its thread. 

It is possible Hearst could have remained at-large for far longer were it not for a tip given to law enforcement by the brother of one of those who helped her while she was on the run. Once a few dots were connected, the walls quickly closed in. Ironically, when she was captured, Hearst had settled into a sort of bizarro version of her previous life - living with a boyfriend in suburban quiet, except instead of home making and going to college classes, she was reading feminist tracts and stashing guns and money in her home.

The final section of the book, which examines Hearst’s trial, conviction, and post-incarceration life is its most frustrating. Not because of any fault of Toobin’s, but rather, the shameful way Hearst and her family manipulated their wealth and good name to game the system. Hearst renounced her comrades, perjured herself (an affidavit she admitted was false along with testimony Toobin makes clear was also fabricated), then flipped against them to garner even greater leniency. She was found guilty of the first bank robbery but had her sentence commuted by President Jimmy Carter, getting her out of prison five months before she was eligible for parole. Toobin makes clear that the Hearsts had successfully whitewashed Patty’s eighteen month journey with the SLA as one that was coercive and not complicit, even though all facts were to the contrary. As if this was not extraordinary enough, Hearst received executive clemency from President Bill Clinton on his last day in office. The grant, largely symbolic at that point, made Hearst the first person in American history to receive leniency from two different Presidents. 

The question begged is whether Hearst’s tale of brainwashing is true. We cannot be inside her head; however, Toobin makes a compelling case that she was a willing participant in much of what the SLA and their successors engaged in. Hearst had ample opportunity to escape or turn herself in, yet over and over, she did not do so. At the time of her capture, there was no one monitoring her comings and goings and she could have surrendered at any time. She did not. She was, if nothing else, a chameleon, adapting herself to her surroundings. She fell for an SLA guerrilla just as easily as she did a San Francisco police officer hired to protect her while out on bail. When she was arrested, she reported her occupation as “urban guerrilla” but was back to being a proper heiress, complete with hair, make up and wardrobe by the time of her trial. Ultimately, like many rich people who commit crimes, Hearst successfully leveraged her fame and money to obtain breaks unavailable to her co-conspirators, many of whom ended up doing far more time for the same crimes.

Follow me on Twitter - @scarylawyerguy 

Book Review - Seinfeldia

For a show about nothing, Seinfeld left a huge mark on television and popular culture. Its most memorable lines have been woven into our lexicon, the show’s sarcastic worldview is now omnipresent, and reruns continue airing more than eighteen years since the series finale. The only surprising part of Seinfeldia, Jennifer Keishin Armstrong’s love letter to Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer is that it took so long for someone to write a book about what remains one of television’s defining comedies. Armstrong writes with the passion of a super fan and the granularity of a Talmudic scholar. The book is littered with nuggets of trivia and an insider’s description of how television shows are made.

What began as Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David’s meditation on the daily annoyances we experience and the quirks and idiosyncrasies we all share blossomed into a cultural juggernaut. The show’s brilliance goes without saying and any fan will smile inwardly as Armstrong tees up descriptions of beloved characters or episodes. But at the same time, the darker underbelly is also exposed. Writers were mined for personal stories that were turned into plot points only to be jettisoned at the end of each season like discarded pods from The Matrix, the production schedule was grueling and oftentimes chaotic, and, as the show grew in popularity, the coziness it began with gave way to a more corporate feel. 

David’s departure after the show’s seventh season left Seinfeld and a room full of twenty-something graduates of Harvard’s Lampoon to fill out the show’s last two seasons with uneven material. In its waning days, Seinfeld suffered controversy from a ham-handed plot line involving the Puerto Rican Day Parade in New York City and contract disputes that made cast members look rapacious or saintly (depending on your point of view). David returned to pen the show’s finale, but it was widely mocked, even though it hewed closely to the characters’ venality and the show’s mantra of “no hugging, no learning.” 

But in its zeal to cover the forest and the trees, Seinfeldia suffers from editorial drift. While it is interesting to note the cottage industry that has sprung up in the show’s aftermath, be it in the autograph/photo appearances still being made by bit players or the where-are-they-know types like the actress who posed as Rochelle for an eponymous movie poster, that type of ephemera is not what separates Seinfeld from other parts of our culture. After all, from Comic-Con to Lebowski Fest, passionate fan bases blend the fictional worlds of beloved characters with their real-time experiences. Far more could have been said about David’s brilliantly conceived Seinfeld reunion within the context of his own show Curb Your Enthusiasm, but instead, that decision is given about the same amount of book space as a wholly uninteresting anecdote about a beef between the purveyors of dueling Seinfeld parody Twitter accounts.

As befits a show obsessed with comic books, Seinfeldia is at its strongest when telling the show’s origin story. There, a mix of luck, fate, and talent turned an idea hatched in a New York City diner into one of the defining television shows of its era. And while we now think of the iconic “Fab Four,” Seinfeld had its own Pete Best, the drummer before The Beatles hit it big. That would be Lee Garlington, originally cast as the lead female character, but written out in favor of Julia Louis-Dreyfus when the show got a miniscule four-episode order. Actors playing both Jerry and George’s fathers were replaced as well and the real Kramer signed away the rights to use his name for practically nothing. The show also benefitted from being shepherded through the development process in NBC’s late night/specials division, which was free from many of the constraints of the prime-time programming shop. And had NBC canceled the show in its early days (executives fretted it was “too Jewish”), Fox stood ready to swoop in and pick it up. As Armstrong notes, a great what if of TV history – Seinfeld and The Simpsons could have incubated together under the Fox banner.

Armstrong’s passion for her subject is clear and she gives a wonderful behind the velvet rope peek into the show and its stars, but ultimately, Seinfeldia does not know what it wants to be. Is it a straight-forward chronology and history of the show or a meditation on its impact on popular culture? It succeeds as the former, but falls short as the latter. To take one example, Dylanologists is a book Seinfeldia aspires to be – focusing on the passion of Bob Dylan fans. It is a book in full that allows the author to stretch and weave together Dylan’s story with those of his most ardent loyalists. Here, we only get a Cliff Notes version of that phenomenon.

None of this should take away from a person’s enjoyment of this book and reliving the Junior Mint episode, Sue Ellen Mischke (the braless wonder), or the Little Kicks. Of course, if you set your DVR, you can also just watch them for yourself.

Follow me on Twitter - @scarylawyerguy

Book Review - We Were Feminists Once

If there is one thing I have learned in my 45 years, it is that I do not understand women very well. So I came to Andi Zeisler’s We Were Feminists Once openly, objectively, and with interest in understanding more about a concept (feminism) with which I am barely familiar. I really enjoyed this book even though I realized how much I take for granted. I grew up around strong, independent women, and was taught, mentored, and supervised by them too. In college and law school, women were well-represented, and I have worked with and for women my entire professional career. I even live in one of the few states that offers paid family leave. I never sat in a Women’s Studies class or considered my role in the patriarchy, so I took for granted much of what Zeisler writes about.

Her thesis is that feminism, a concept that centers around actual equality – in wages, treatment, respect, and representation in business, politics, and culture – has largely been appropriated by consumerism. That flashing shiny objects of female empowerment through the lens of marketing, advertising, and celebrity worship has distracted women (and men, but more on us later) from the harder, less sexy work of securing reproductive rights, health care, equal pay and much more. When the battles being waged in popular culture focus on pubic hair, panty lines, and periods the battle has already been lost.

To those who study or came to this book with foreknowledge, I suppose much of what is contained between its covers is axiomatic. Marketing campaigns by brands like Dove and Cover Girl encourage women to love themselves for who they are while selling them products to hide, mask, or minimize the physical imperfections society tells them to. Listicles on the Internet whittle down “feminism” into lowest common denominator chunks while legislatures across the country restrict access to abortion or refuse to close yawning pay gaps. Celebrities are recruited into campaigns that encourage women to know their value, but the conferences and events held to promote this message are typically warmed over networking opportunities whose cost prices out the very people they want to help. And of course, the ever present existence of social media bombards women with ideas about who and what they should be – invariably, an ideal that all but the most accomplished and self-assured fall short of.  

It is a damning (and depressing) indictment. While it is not unique for movements to be appropriated for commercial gains (surely, sales of flannel shirts spiked in the early 1990s and the hippie movement in Haight-Ashbury was quickly co-opted to sell Volkswagens), Zeisler’s frustration comes through loud and clear because the stakes are so high. It is not just societal norms that feminism struggles against, it is the backlash from other women that invariably crops up as each wave of feminism crests against that stubborn wall of cultural resistance. In this way, feminism gets muddied up in battles between stay-at-home and working mothers, the back-and-forth on Facebook that defends or attacks choices women make where the most heated debate is among women themselves, and right-wing voices that long for a simpler time when women knew their role (servile, subservient, and silent).   

Of course, this does not even take into account the insult to injury suffered by women outside traditional cultural messaging. To be a Latina, African-American, queer, or bisexual woman, is to often suffer a double dose of marginalization. Whether it is being erased out of what society defines as normative or having your race or sexual orientation be treated as a point of derision or hatred, the challenges are even greater for these women.

The one group missing from much of this discussion is men. While we make a few cameo appearances in predictable places like how pornography has warped the male view of intimacy and the disgraceful treatment of Anita Hill, to dismiss the ability of men to be partners and champions for feminism seems like a lost opportunity, particularly if you are interested, as Zeisler appears to be, in making meaningful public policy changes.

Zeisler is remarkably well-read and her book is heavy with references to books, essays, and writers who have shaped feminism for nearly fifty years. She comes to her subject with honesty and a conversational writing style that easily moves the reader along. I would suggest Zeisler have a chat with her fact checker though, because there were two whoppers I noticed (political in nature, naturally). The first identified Bob Dole and not George H.W. Bush as Bill Clinton’s opponent in the 1992 Presidential race (p. 173) and the other lopped off a term of office for Barbara Boxer, who won a fourth term to the U.S. Senate in 2010, not a third (p. 213).  

To be sure, it will be interesting to see how Zeisler’s critique holds up. At the same time popular culture is pressing forward with the type of marketed feminism she disdains (the female-led reboot of the iconic Ghostbusters franchise, the ascendency of female characters on Game of Thrones) we also stand on the brink of electing our first female President. Time will tell whether having a President Hillary Clinton will result in some of the changes Zeisler desires, but it is surely more consequential than whether Danaerys takes over the Seven Kingdoms.

Follow me on Twitter - @scarylawyerguy