September Not Fiction Book Discussions

Last month we read The Tiger, a book about the confrontation between humans and Amur tigers in Russia's Far East. It's author, John Vaillant, says his writing explores "collisions between human ambition and the natural world." That phrase could also describe the relationship between giant rogue waves and the meteorologists, oceanographers, physicists, ship insurers, ship salvagers, and surfers who study them, work with their results, and, in the case of surfers, actively seek them out. To write The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks, and Giants of the Ocean, journalist Susan Casey followed these brave and, some would say, crazy people around the globe to learn about unpredictable waves that swallow ships, destroy coastal communities, and entice extreme athletes to take the ride of their lives.

Casey notes that until very recently, scientifically recorded evidence for these waves was not available, and the waves were part of the lore of the sea along with mermaids, with very few survivors left to tell the tales. Casey cites a statistic from 2000 that an average of two large ships sink every week in the world's oceans, some disappearing without a trace. She also notes that these waves are possibly connected to climate change, particularly global warming, with serious implications for the heavily populated communities that live along the world's coasts. But especially intriguing to Casey, herself a competitive swimmer in college and beyond and author of a book about great white sharks, a woman who said in an interview with Esquire, "The ocean is my church," are the elite surfers who ride these waves. Casey asks, "What kind of person drops in on Mother Nature's biggest tantrums for fun? What drives him? And since he has gone into that dark heart of the ocean and felt its beat in a way that sets him apart, what does he know about this place that the rest of us don't?"

With thrilling prose and dramatic narrative events, Casey evokes the beauty, power, terror, and mystery of the sea and helps readers understand that "waves are the original primordial force." A reviewer for The Globe and Mail says The Wave is "a powerful, articulate ride into a world you never knew existed but that you will never, never forget." We hope you will join our discussion: Tuesday, September 6, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, September 22, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

Want to see a giant wave in action but don't want to get too close? Go to YouTube and type "giant waves" in the search box!

August Not Fiction Book Discussions

In our reading and discussion this year, we have been exploring our understanding of our world, the uses we make of it, our wanderings across it, our settlements on it, our confrontations with the elements and animals that inhabit it, and our confrontations with each other. Our next two books explore what John Vaillant calls the "collisions between human ambition and the natural world."

The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival by John Vaillant takes readers to the vast, snowy taiga of Russia's Far East, where an Amur tiger is stalking humans, bent on revenge against poachers, while a team of trackers searches for the tiger before it can strike again . . . Vaillant has written a suspenseful narrative that is interwoven with beautifully written and deeply informative descriptions of the unique "boreal jungle" in which Amur tigers live, the people who have harmoniously coexisted with these tigers for thousands of years, and the complex political and economic events that have placed them in conflict with one another. According to Library Journal, "What spirits this adventure narrative from compelling to brilliant is Vaillant's use of the tiger hunt as an allegorical lens through which to understand the cultural, economic, and environmental devastation of post-Communist Russia." Most fascinating of all, Vaillant helps readers to understand not only the power and beauty of the Amur tiger, but also what the world must be like from its point of view.

Vaillant says his book was inspired by a documentary about the events in his book, Conflict Tiger, directed by Sasha Snow and shot on location in Russia's Far East in the winter of 2004. Snow is now working on a documentary based on Vaillant's first book, The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed, about logging in British Columbia and the felling of a golden spruce sacred to the Haida Indians, that also dramatizes the "collisions between human ambition and the natural world." Visit the Conflict Tiger website to view a clip of the film.

Visit Vaillant's website, http://www.thetigerbook.com/, for links to articles about the Amur tiger and websites of organizations working to prevent poaching and trafficking in Amur tigers.

Simon Winchester suggests we "read this fine, true book in the warmth, beside the flicker of firelight. Read it and be afraid. Be very afraid." We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, August 2, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, August 18, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

July Not Fiction Book Discussions

We will continue our consideration of "what it has meant to be an American" (Karen R. Long, in a review of Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynne in The Plain Dealer) with a reading and discussion of The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson. Wilkerson tells the story of America's Great Migration, the emigration of nearly 6 million black citizens from the rural South to the cities of the North and West, over half of the 20th century, in search of a better life.

Herself the daughter of people who had been part of this migration, Wilkerson interviewed over 1,200 individuals, visiting senior centers and churches across the country to preserve memories of this truly epic movement across the country. She chose three people to represent this collective experience of leaving one world and adapting to another, Ida Mae Gladney, George Starling, and Robert Foster. Wilkerson said in an interview on NPR's Tell Me More that in writing the book, "one of the goals was to try to get people to be able to imagine themselves doing the kinds of things that they did, and to try to picture: What would you do if you were in that circumstance. And beyond that, my goal was to restore the migration to its proper place in history. And then finally, it would be that all of us recognize that we have so much more in common than we've been led to believe, so much more in common. All of us have someone in our background who wanted something better and acted on it. And that's why we're here."

Toni Morrison describes this work, destined to become a classic of American history, sociology, and biography, as "profound, necessary, and an absolute delight to read." We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, July 5, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, July 21, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

Visit Wilkerson's website to see pictures of Ida Mae Gladney, George Starling, and Robert Foster.

View an interactive slide show of artist Jacob Lawrence's Migration Series created by The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. Experience Lawrence's vivid paintings of his community, explore his world, and journey with the migrants.

June Not Fiction Book Discussions

Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History by S. C. Gwynne takes readers back to a time before "The Middle" of America was settled, before railroads, farms, and towns. Gwynne tells two interconnected stories. The first is of Cynthia Ann Parker, who was kidnapped by Comanches at the age of nine, and her mixed-blood son, Quanah Parker, who became the last great chief of the Comanches. The second is of the Comanche nation's forty-year war with the United States Government over the vast Great Plains and their resources. The Comanches, a nomadic and martial nation that depended upon the buffalo for its way of life and physical survival, effectively delayed the development of the center of the American nation and challenged the American sense of Manifest Destiny.

Both Cynthia Ann Parker and Quanah Parker are interesting case studies of cultural assimilation. Cynthia Ann adapted quickly to life with the Comanches, but she was unable to reassimilate to white culture when she was recaptured by American troops. Her "rescuers" could not understand her love of native life and desire to remain among the Comanche. Quanah adapted easily to his second life on the reservation after his eventual surrender, taking on a leadership role in both the white and native communities. Unfortunately, most members of his nation were, like Cynthia Ann, unable to accommodate themselves to the new dominant culture. Why are some people able to accept and adjust to new world views while others are not?

Gwynne's book also prompts questions about how history would have been different if the Spanish and French had been more successful in fighting the Comanches in previous centuries. Would America be the country it is today? And what if the Comanches had not been defeated by the United States Government? Would they have been forced to give up their way of life because of their inability and unwillingness to adapt to the increasingly technological and industrial world around them? As Karen R. Long, writing for The Plain Dealer, says, "Empire of the Summer Moon expands our sense of what it has meant to be an American."

Most of all, Empire of the Summer Moon is a compelling, epic story of our past, one that may keep you up reading by the light of the Comanche Moon. As Bruce Barcott, writing for the New York Times, says, Gwynne "pulls his readers through an American frontier roiling with extreme violence, political intrigue, bravery, anguish, corruption, love, knives, rifles and arrows. Lots and lots of arrows. This book will leave dust and blood on your jeans."

Listen to an NPR Fresh Air interview with Gwynne and read an excerpt from the book.

We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, June 7, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, June 23, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

May Not Fiction Book Discussions

Henry Ford's nostalgic vision of small American towns populated by people who work at local factories where they earn enough money to purchase the products they create and enough leisure time to enjoy a pastoral life has given way to the sad reality of contemporary American life depicted in Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town by Nick Reding. Yet it is a reality we as a nation are either unaware of or unwilling to face.

Journalist and native Midwesterner Reding spent four years in the small town of Oelwein, Ohio, learning how the illegal production of methamphetamine has become one of the town's principal businesses. He notes that "The idea that a drug could take root in Oelwein . . . was . . . counterintuitive, challenging notions central to the American sense of identity." With compelling and compassionate reporting, Reding shows the devastating effects of meth production, distribution, and consumption on individuals and the community. He makes a strong argument for the case that the meth epidemic is the direct result of the industrial capitalism Henry Ford helped to create. The consolidation of the agricultural industry, the movement offshore of manufacturing, the out-migration of people from small towns, the growth of the powerful pharmaceutical lobby--all are part of the story of meth, and "the real story is as much about the death of a way of life as it is about the birth of a drug. If ever there was a chance to see the place of the small American town in the era of the global economy, the meth epidemic is it." Just like Henry Ford, we as a culture still harbor a nostalgic world view of American pastoralism and the Puritan work ethic, even as our world is rapidly changing.

While Methland is sobering, it is also hopeful. Reding introduces his readers to the mayor, Larry Murphy; the doctor, Clay Hallberg; and the county prosecutor, Nathan Lein, who fight to save their town--with surprising success. Reding visited the town in 2009, shortly after Methland's publication, to address a large crowd of Oelwein's citizens at the public library. Many of them were uphappy with the way Reding portrayed their town, refusing to believe the meth problem in Oelwein was as bad as he had made it out to be. Reding ends his book with a cautionary question that stands in response: " . . . what Oelwein's very exceptionalism makes clear is how badly rural America continues to hurt, and that we seem to have no plan for reversing--or even slowing the fundamental changes that have gripped small-town life for nearly four decades. How long can we ask Murphy, Clay, and Nathan to fight if we insist on overlooking both their difficulties and their triumphs?"

We hope you will join our discussion of this powerful work of eye-opening journalism, winner of the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize and the Hillman Prize for Book Journalism: Tuesday, May 3, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, May 19, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

April Not Fiction Book Discussions

Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City by Greg Grandin explores what happens when one person or society attempts to impose its world view on another society. In 1927, automobile magnate Henry Ford bought 2.5 million acres in the Brazilian Amazon with the intention to grow rubber trees to supply his factories with latex and to establish a settlement to manage the plantation, called Fordlandia, that would replicate the small-town American culture his automobiles were effectively destroying in the United States. Grandin suggests that Fordlandia was "quintessentially American" because "frustrated idealism was built into its conception" (15). He notes that "Ford's frustrations with domestic politics and culture were legion: war, unions, Wall Street, energy monopolies, Jews, modern dance, cow's milk, the Roosevelts, cigarettes, alcohol, and creeping government intervention. Yet churning beheath all these annoyances was the fact that the force of industrial capitalism he helped unleash was undermining the world he hoped to restore" (16). Ford hoped to bring a nostalgic version of small-town American life to the Amazon, including the streets and houses, the movie theaters and ice cream parlors, and, of course, the values, especially the value placed on working in order to purchase goods.

Ford's belief in the value of paying workers high wages so that they could, in turn, become consumers of the products they created came to be known as "Fordism," and by the 1920s, "Fordism" and "Americanism" became interchangeable terms. Grandin notes that the Washington Post cynically but presciently defined the term in 1922 as "Ford efforts conceived in disregard or ignorance of Ford limitations" (73n). Grandin animates what Time calls a "quintessentially American fable" with colorful characters and well-paced misadventures, ultimately offering readers a comparison between the ruins of Fordlandia in the heart of the Amazonian jungle and the ruins of Iron Mountain and Detroit in the heart of the American Midwest to highlight the complexities of industrialism, consumerism, environmentalism, and globalism we still face today.

Fordlandia was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was chosen by multiple media sources for their "best of" lists in 2009. We hope you will join our conversation: Tuesday, April 5, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, April 21, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

March Not Fiction Book Discussions

In The First Tycoon, T.J. Stiles notes that Cornelius Vanderbilt's great career as head of steamship and railroad corporations was an "act of the imagination": "In this age of the corporation's infancy, [Vanderbilt and his] conspiritors created a world of the mind, a world that would last into the twenty-first century. At a time when even many businessmen could not see beyond the physical, the tangible, they embraced abstractions never known before in daily life. They saw that a group of men sitting around a table could conjure 'an artificial being, invisible, intangible,' that could outlive them all. They saw how stocks could be driven up or dropped in value, how they could be played like a flute to command more capital than the incorporators could muster on their own. They saw that everything in the economy could be further abstracted into a substanceless something that might be bought or sold, that a banknote or promissory note or the right to buy a share of stock at a certain price could all be traded at prices that varied from day to day" (168-69). The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis explores a similar act of the imagination, one that predicted and contributed to the economic crisis of 2008. In this humorous, character-driven narrative, Lewis introduces readers to the few farsighted if ethically questionable financial professionals who saw that the subprime mortgage industry, securities based on repackaged home loans, was poised to fall, and made their fortune betting, against the market, that the housing bubble would burst.


Cornelius Vanderbilt's comments about the younger generation of stock market speculators active during the late 1800s seem also to apply to 2008's subprime mortgage crisis, to both those homebuyers who bought houses beyond their means on credit, and to those financial professionals who could not see that the speculation based on the loans would surely aggravate the coming crisis: "I'll tell you what's the matter--people undertake to do about four times as much business as they can legitimately undertake. . . . There are a great many worthless railroads started in this country without any means to carry them through. Respectable banking houses in New York, so called, make themselves agents for sale of the bonds of the railroads in question and give a kind of moral guarantee of their genuineness. The bonds soon reach Europe and the markets of their commercial centres, from the character of the endorsers, are soon flooded with them. . . . When I have some money I buy railroad stock or something else, but I don't buy on credit. I pay for what I get. People who live too much on credit generally get brought up with a round turn in the long run. The Wall street averages ruin many a man there, and is like faro" (Stiles 536-37). In The Big Short, Lewis reveals how comfortable we are today with financial abstraction as well as person, corporate, and national debt. He notes that one of the most important consequences of turning Wall Street partnerships, based on the model of real value products and responsibility to a customer base, into public corporations, in which the stock holders bear the risk, is that "[it] turned them into objects of speculation. It was no longer the social and economic relevance of a bank that rendered it too big to fail, but the number of side bets that had been made upon it" (263).


Steve Pearlstein of the Washington Post says, "If you read only one book about the cause of the recent financial crisis, let it be . . . Michael Lewis' The Big Short . . . [which] manages to give us the truest picture yet of what went wrong on Wall Street--and why." We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, March 1, at 7:00 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, March 17, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; or here on the blog.