Countdown to readers’ favs of 2019 – Happy 2020!

Here’s the finale – the most read posts of 2019 – beginning with the runner-up, first published March 26, 2019:

Where the boys are – oh, those elusive young male readers

My mission the North Texas Teen Book Festival last weekend was to find books my adolescent grandsons would read. From tots who demanded nightly story readings and elementary schoolers who insisted on taking their chapter books to bed with them, they had grown into preteens (now early teenagers) who preferred to spend their spare time watching Youtube and playing video games.

Were they doomed to join the demographic of males who seldom (maybe never!) crack open a book outside of academic required reading? Where were the books aimed at teen boys that I remembered from my own and my daughter’s growing up years?

With that in mind – and temporarily ignoring that many women have written books for boys – I underlined every discussion that included male authors in my copy of the Teen Book Festival’s program and set out for the Irving Convention Center on a rainy Saturday morning.

image: Pixabay

Top of the list was the “New Kids on the Block” panel, where four out of the five debut writers were guys. I also came prepared with extensive knowledge of my boys’ favorite topics. They’re avid drawers who create their own comic books (and loved meeting personal idol Dav Pilkey) at last year’s festival. The boys had also loved the magical school stories of the Harry Potter and Rick Riordan’s demigods series. Relationships with girls, however, were still iffy – they’d been aghast that one of their male classmates had gone on a (gasp!) date. With a girl.

I crossed anything resembling romances off the festival’s offerings but added its “Getting Schooled,” “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Read Them,” and “Getting Graphic,” all with multiple male authors – to my list of must-sees.

I was a little surprised – but shouldn’t have been – when teacher (and debut author) Alicia D. Williams of the “New Kids on the Block” panel mentioned that even boys enjoyed reading her girl-coming-of-age story Genesis Begins Again. After all, girls have a long history of reading stories written for boys, even stories written by women. It was the Black Stallion series for me, The Outsiders (by female author S.E. Hinton) for my daughter. And of course, for my grandkids’ generation, the Harry Potter books written by Joanne, (now better known as J.K.) Rowling. 

Still more surprisingly, Williams and the other debut authors (Ben Guterson, Matt Mendez, Ben Philippe, and Justin A. Reynolds) didn’t recommend specific books. Rather, they said, I should to take my grandsons to a library or bookstore, let them browse the shelves for themselves, and ask librarians and store employees what books kids with their interests actually read. 

(Probably not surprisingly, librarians and audience members at the panel had some suggestions for 13-year-old boys: Shannon Messenger’s Keepers of the Lost Cities series, Ghost Boy, and Gary Paulsen’s Hatchet (“or really, anything by Paulsen”). (Check for these at Richardson & Dallas libraries.)

The “Getting Schooled” panel introduced me to the likes of Max Brallier, Jen Calonita, Jerry Craft, Stuart Gibbs, Sarah Mlynowski, and Raina Tegemeier, with plenty of possibilities for readers negotiating the tricky halls of junior high schools. (Brallier, Craft, and Tegemeier, along with Terri Libenson, also appeared on the “Getting Graphic” panel of writers and illustrators of graphic novels.)

And the “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Read Them” panelists – David Bowles, Alexandra Bracken, Adam Gidwitz, Yoon Ha Lee, Lisa McMann, and Christina Soontornvat – made me recall my grandsons’ fascination with the phenomenon of “cryptids” and monsters.

Given that I didn’t hit the festival’s bookstore until after the last panel ended, some of the books I sought had already sold out. Still, my take-home bookbag included A Field Guide to the North American Teenager by Ben Philippe; Winterhouse by Ben Guterson; The Last Kids on Earth by Max Brallier; New Kid by Jerry Craft; The Chupacabras of the Rio Grande by David Bowles and Adam Gidwitz; and Spy School by Stuart Gibbs. I hesitated before adding Justin A. Reynolds’ Opposite of Always (which he described as a rom-com with time travel) to the bag, promising to read it for myself. Or maybe I’ll let the boys see it when they’re old enough not to be appalled by the idea of dating. . . .

***

And finally, the winner, the most-read post of 2019, one of my few reviews for the year. This post was first published January 11, 2019, for a book I find still eerily relevant for 2020:

When only Hitler could kill Hitler

Review of: The Plots Against Hitler

Author: Danny Orbach

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Grade: A

Source: Dallas Public Library

Considering that, according to Wikipedia, at least 42 assassination plots against Adolf Hitler have been documented – and who knows how many remain undocumented – why didn’t any of them succeed? Historian Danny Orbach attempts to answer that question – and debunk myths surrounding the most famous attempt, Operation Valkyrie, with his well-researched 2016 volume, The Plots Against Hitler. 

With a single notable exception, Orbach’s narrative concentrates on the resistance effort of the German military toward Hitler, and examines three key timelines of that resistance, from 1938 to 1944. He also asks – and attempts to answer – what motives persuaded these conspirators to overcome their own cultural and moral qualms about the killing of a leader to whom many of them had sworn personal allegiance.

Some of their motives, such as a hope of securing favorable peace terms with the Allies, no longer strike modern readers as morally acceptable, Orbach notes. Were patriotism and morality synonymous? More to the point for 21^st century readers, can the two motives still be equated? And how are we to make moral judgments today about conspirators as flawed as those Orbach details – sometimes womanizers, anti-Semites, at best “antidemocratic reactionaries” in the words of another writer, at worst, active participants in mass murder? What kind of morality would enable even such a vehement anti-Nazi as theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, for example, to join Germany’s military intelligence organization? Should even those who attempted to stop Hitler tarred with the same guilt as their target?

“(T)he story of the German resistance has a crucial moral component. After all, the Nazi era is still viewed around the world, and most of all in Germany itself, through the lens of collective guilt, historical responsibility, and the burden of National Socialist crimes. . . (but) gradually, I came to believe that one must transcend the current moralistic debate, redraw its terms, and reframe it altogether,” Orbach states.

Lest readers fear being overwhelmed by moralistic arguments, the book, even knowing how the story ends, reads like a thriller, with such elements as nocturnal meetings in frozen fields; the elaborate drama of military conspiracies; bombs hidden in briefcases and liqueur bottles; and the dramatic day of July 20, 1944, with its abortive assassination and final, desperate attempt at a coup d’état.

And often it reads like a tragi-comedy of errors. A bomb hidden in a bottle smuggled aboard Hitler’s plane inexplicably fails to explode. Hitler’s penchant for altering his schedule without notice foils still other plots. And all too often, it seems that the sheer multitude of conspiring assassins and their conflicting motives and agendas collide. 

One of the most nearly successful assassination attempts was the simplest – the lone-wolf effort of barely-educated carpenter turned watchmaker Georg Elser, whose 1939 bomb in a Munich beer hall missed Hitler but killed eight others. (Captured soon afterward and ultimately executed, Elser was reportedly devastated by the death of the innocent bystanders.)

So, what was the point of all the conspiratorial misfires, most of them resulting in little more than the gruesome deaths of the conspirators? Yes, some of their attempts saved hundreds of Jews from death in Nazi concentration camps, and may have limited the numbers of Poles, Soviets, and other Eastern Europeans massacred. But ultimately, millions more died. World War II was not shortened, hundreds of thousands of Germans, both soldiers and civilians, died. In the end, following Hitler’s own suicide, Germany as the conspirators knew it, disappeared. Were the conspirators heroes or the ultimate failures?

“Terms like heroes and heroism tend to make contemporary historians suspicious,” Orbach writes. “(But) once we have understood that (heroes’) armor is not shining but rather tarnished and scratched, we can see ‘heroes’ for what they are in the real world: people able, perhaps only briefly, to transcend ideology and selfishness and even existential dangers for the sake of a greater good.” 

And what would we do if we found ourselves in similar circumstances, Orbach asks. “If these questions make you ponder, then I have done the job I set out to do.”

***

Still to come: I sink my teeth into 2020 with a calendar full of winter-into-spring literary events – and writing contests!

Review: When only Hitler could kill Hitler

Review of: The Plots Against Hitler

Author: Danny Orbach

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Grade: A

Source: Dallas Public Library

Considering that, according to Wikipedia, at least 42 assassination plots against Adolf Hitler have been documented – and who knows how many remain undocumented – why didn’t any of them succeed? Historian Danny Orbach attempts to answer that question – and debunk myths surrounding the most famous attempt, Operation Valkyrie, with his well-researched 2016 volume, The Plots Against Hitler. 

With a single notable exception, Orbach’s narrative concentrates on the resistance effort of the German military toward Hitler, and examines three key timelines of that resistance, from 1938 to 1944. He also asks – and attempts to answer – what motives persuaded these conspirators to overcome their own cultural and moral qualms about the killing of a leader to whom many of them had sworn personal allegiance.

Some of their motives, such as a hope of securing favorable peace terms with the Allies, no longer strike modern readers as morally acceptable, Orbach notes. Were patriotism and morality synonymous? More to the point for 21^st century readers, can the two motives still be equated? And how are we to make moral judgments today about conspirators as flawed as those Orbach details – sometimes womanizers, anti-Semites, at best “antidemocratic reactionaries” in the words of another writer, at worst, active participants in mass murder? What kind of morality would enable even such a vehement anti-Nazi as theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, for example, to join Germany’s military intelligence organization? Should even those who attempted to stop Hitler tarred with the same guilt as their target?

“(T)he story of the German resistance has a crucial moral component. After all, the Nazi era is still viewed around the world, and most of all in Germany itself, through the lens of collective guilt, historical responsibility, and the burden of National Socialist crimes. . . (but) gradually, I came to believe that one must transcend the current moralistic debate, redraw its terms, and reframe it altogether,” Orbach states.

Lest readers fear being overwhelmed by moralistic arguments, the book, even knowing how the story ends, reads like a thriller, with such elements as “nocturnal meetings in frozen fields; the elaborate drama of military conspiracies; bombs hidden in briefcases and liqueur bottles; and the dramatic day of July 20, 1944, with its abortive assassination and final, desperate attempt at a coup d’état.”

And often it reads like a tragi-comedy of errors. A bomb hidden in a bottle smuggled aboard Hitler’s plane inexplicably fails to explode. Hitler’s penchant for altering his schedule without notice foils still other plots. And all too often, it seems that the sheer multitude of conspiring assassins, although with their conflicting motives and agendas collide. 

One of the most nearly successful assassination attempts was the simplest – the lone-wolf effort of barely-educated carpenter turned watchmaker Georg Elser, whose 1939 bomb in a Munich beer hall missed Hitler but killed eight others. (Captured soon afterward and ultimately executed, Elser was reportedly devastated by the death of the innocent bystanders.)

So, what was the point of all the conspiratorial misfires, most of them resulting in little more than the gruesome deaths of the conspirators? Yes, some of their attempts saved hundreds of Jews from death in Nazi concentration camps, and may have limited the numbers of Poles, Soviets, and other Eastern Europeans massacred. But ultimately, millions more died. World War II was not shortened, hundreds of thousands of Germans, both soldiers and civilians, died. In the end, following Hitler’s own suicide, Germany as the conspirators knew it, disappeared. Were the conspirators heroes or the ultimate failures?

“Terms like heroes and heroism tend to make contemporary historians suspicious,” Orbach writes. “(But) once we have understood that (heroes’) armor is not shining but rather tarnished and scratched, we can see ‘heroes’ for what they are in the real world: people able, perhaps only briefly, to transcend ideology and selfishness and even existential dangers for the sake of a greater good.” 

And what would we do if we found ourselves in similar circumstances, Orbach asks. “If these questions make you ponder, then I have done the job I set out to do.”

Review: Fairy-tale love affair of a Kennedy and English peer

Review of: Kick Kennedy: The Charmed Life and Tragic Death of the Favorite Kennedy Daughter

Author: Barbara Leaming

Publisher: St. Martin’s Press

Source: Dallas Public Library

Grade: B

Will we ever get enough of the Kennedys? In today’s political scene filled with the dull, the dusty, and the dastardly, the élan of the Kennedys, their too-many tragic deaths, their power, even their larger than life failings, still fascinate. Add to that a fairy-tale romance between a sprightly American commoner and the handsome heir to one of the wealthiest dukedoms in Great Britain, and we’ve got the stuff gossip writers dream of, brought to life by biographer Barbara Leaming in Kick Kennedy: The Charmed Life and Tragic Death of the Favorite Kennedy Daughter.

Kathleen Kennedy was the second daughter (and fourth child) of Joseph P. and Rose Kennedy, whose family would become America’s own version of royalty. Kathleen – early nicknamed “Kick” for her irrepressible vitality – was the brighter mirror image of her older sister Rosemary, the developmentally-disabled daughter the Kennedys hid for decades. Her father’s favorite, she still yearned for the approval her mother Rose would ever withhold from her children. 

It was at first startling to find a biography that begins when the main character is in her late teens (and will end little more than 10 years later). But wedged between her tough-minded older brothers, Joe Jr. and Jack, and a press of younger siblings, Kick remained, like a true Cinderella (minus the cinders), for the most part unremarkable publicly until the appointment of her father, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., as U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom.

The Kennedy children had already moved within circles of political, economic, and artistic aristocracy as the patriarch Joe Sr. worked his way up the social ladder from nouveau-riche Irish to advisor to President Franklin Roosevelt. With their arrival in England in 1938, just in time for the London social season, they would mingle with old-school aristocrats.

The “season” was the round of social events during the spring and early summer during which “debutantes were brought out in the matrimonial market designed to secure them suitable husbands,” Leaming writes. Not that the Kennedys were in search of husband for their daughters there. The aristocratic young men on display were Protestant, the Kennedys staunch Catholics. Never, Joe Sr. and Rose would have vowed (if they had even thought it necessary) would any of their children marry a Protestant.

But American-born Lady Astor had a soft heart for fellow Americans. The pretty daughter of the new American ambassador, she intended, would be accepted into London society.

“For Kick Kennedy,” Leaming writes, “England was but the latest ‘gift’ in a long series of treated presented to her by her adoring father. She had come to England. . . because of Joe Kennedy. And she assumed that, precisely for that reason” the visit would be a happy experience. 

It would be both happier and more heartbreaking than Kick or any of her family could imagine as Kick sets her heart on William (aka Billy), the tall and handsome heir to the Duke of Devonshire, one of the oldest and richest dukedoms in the kingdom. And he sets his heart on her.

As the world descends into war, will Billy break with his family to marry a Catholic? She Kick break with hers? Is there a happy ever after in their future or only heartbreak?

One of the perils of a biographer is how to retain readers’ interest even when the final outcome is known. But Leaming, who has written biographies of the likes of Marilyn Monroe and Rita Hayworth, keeps the intrigue going. The story, admittedly, falters near the end. Was Kick truly in love with her handsome Billy or with the storybook life she imagined with him? Would their families ever be reconciled to their children’s differences?

Kick was no intellectual or political match for other members of her family, but a flawed, loving, and loveable human being. Leaming wisely leaves readers to draw their own conclusions about her, and sigh over the unattainable possibilities.

Rejebian series: laidback and cool, book reviews and more

If you’re in Dallas and hear the name “Rejebian,” you think, oh, those are the book clubs where you don’t have to read the books. Or maybe you think of oriental rugs, which have been the Rejebian family business since Ermance Rejebian and her husband Vahram landed in Dallas more than 80 years ago as members of the Armenian diaspora. And since the entertaining book reviews and lectures Ermance gave made her a favorite speaker for the ladies who lunch bunch.

Don’t hold entertainment against her. Or against the Rejebian Summer Series of book reviews and lectures her family has established at Highland Park United Methodist Church. After all, it’s summertime, and the living ought to be easy. Although, very often, you’ll really, really want to read the book, as was the case last Wednesday night as author Sally Mott Freeman discussed her debut book, The Jersey Brothers: A Missing Naval Officer in the Pacific and His Family’s Quest to Bring Him Home.

Ordinarily, divorce might be expected to tear a family apart. Especially a divorce like that of Freeman’s grandmother Helen in the 1920’s when divorce wasn’t something “nice people” commonly did. Wouldn’t Benny and Bill Mott, Helen’s sons from her first marriage, resent her second husband?

And still more resent the status of Helen’s son from that later marriage, Barton Cross, “a spoiled child for whom no indulgence was too great,” as Freeman, daughter of Bill Mott and niece of Barton, told her audience.

Instead, the older brothers took him under their wing. Possibly it was the age gap – the Mott brothers were seven and 10 years older than their half-brother – Freeman guessed, that made sibling rivalry less intense than would have been the case if they had been closer in age.

And although he didn't do well initially in the schools his family tried, in what they considered attempts to improve his character, the older Mott brothers urged him to follow their own example, and attend the U.S. Naval Academy. But if Helen and the rest of her family hoped the Naval Academy would toughen Barton up, it didn't. He left after two years. Still, the family refused to give up on him.

The start of World War II saw one brother as a naval officer preparing to ship out to the Philippines, another soon to become a naval intelligence officer. But what was to become of Barton, now that a mandatory draft was looming? Why not a commission with the Navy’s Supply Corps?

The Mott brothers, not to mention their mother, must have breathed a collective sigh of relief at getting Barton in what seemed a relatively safe position.

Except that "safe position" put Barton in Philippines in early December 1941, just in time to be wounded when his ship was fired on by Japanese bombers. And as General MacArthur evacuated his personnel. All except a hospital ship of Navy patients and their doctors.

Captured by the Japanese, with all communications between the U.S. and the Philippines blacked out, Barton disappeared along with the rest of the Navy's sick and wounded. His family never heard from him again. His fate became the subject of endless and agonizing discussion by his family, a mystery until his niece, Sally Mott Freeman, made it her job to track him down. The result: nothing that any of Barton’s family had ever imagined.

It was a job, she said, that cost her 10 years of research and writing, producing a manuscript whose first draft was 700 pages long. Readers may be relieved to hear that the final version clocks in at only a little more than 500 pages, although her list of reference materials, including the Veterans History Project available through the Library of Congress may inspire readers to find their own stories as well.

The Rejebian Summer Series repeats Wednesdays through July 26, 7-8 p.m. in Wesley Hall of Highland Park United Methodist Church, 3300 Mockingbird Lane, Dallas. (Best parking is in the Meadows Museum parking garage on Bishop Avenue. The series is free, but see the site for details

and optional dinner reservations.

Wordcraft -- Books and a life in review

Among the many joys of books are reading them and talking about them. Both, however, require some mental effort. And despite recent rain, the dog days of summer are not the easiest time to exert mental effort. Fortunately, for days when it’s too hot to do anything book related, there’s the wonderful Texas tradition of listening to other people review books they’ve read. It’s a tradition especially wonderful when the reviewers are both knowledgeable and entertaining.

I’m referring especially to The Rejebian Summer Series, sponsored on Wednesdays in June and July by Highland Park United Methodist Church in Dallas. Last week I attended the series for the first time, to hear University of Texas at Dallas professor Clay Reynolds discuss two recent books about President Eisenhower, Jean Edward Smith’s Eisenhower: In War and Peace, and Evan Thomas’s Ike’s Bluff: President Eisenhower’s Secret Battle to Save the World.

That’s Dwight D. Eisenhower, the seldom mentioned Republican president of “I Like Ike” fame. A man with the kind of slogan that would be sneered at nowadays, with no blame, no finger pointing, not even an obvious political agenda.

Who was this man? “A shape shifter” who deliberately chose to appear older than his age, deliberately chose to appear befuddled, Reynolds said, to deflect attention from his agendas.

Without having ever belonged to a political party, Eisenhower won the presidency as a Republican, then killed the hundreds of bills initiated by fellow Republicans to dismantle the New Deal programs of his Democratic predecessor, Franklin Roosevelt. Without ever having fired a rifle in combat, Eisenhower became one of America’s greatest war heroes but “not one (uniformed) American died in combat during the eight years he was president,” Reynolds said.

Ike’s accomplishments included the interstate highway system (after realizing the military implications of Germany’s autobahn), presiding over the racial integration of schools, and enforcing pre-existing laws about integration of the U.S. military, despite his personal disagreement with such laws.

His failures included his inability to establish a public health care system and obtain the détente with the Soviet Union he desperately wanted.

And in Eisenhower’s personal life, he failed to secure a future with the woman he was willing to divorce his wife for, his wartime driver Kay Summersby. In a bizarre twist, Eisenhower refused a request from Harry Truman to run for president as a Democrat -- but not because he hated Democrats. Instead, Reynolds said, his falling out with Truman occurred at least partly because he believed Truman had a copy of a letter sent to Eisenhower by George C. Marshall. The letter from Marshall, the man who had mentored Eisenhower, threatened him with court martial if he divorced his wife to marry Summersby. (The revelation that Eisenhower was ready to destroy his long-term marriage was a revelation that drew some “say it ain’t so” gasps and questions from Reynolds’ audience.)

Eisenhower was also “an inveterate gambler who had to quit playing poker because he was winning all the money of his subordinates.” He turned instead to bridge.
But his biggest bluff wasn’t with cards. The big bluff, the one that inspired the title of one of his biographies, was that of the ultimate weapon he wielded: “If you have the power to destroy the world, you have to know if you’d do it,” Reynolds said. But it’s a decision that can never be shared. Not even with those closest and dearest.

#

If not for a continuing schedule conflict, I’d have written sooner about the Rejebian Summer Series, inspired by the book clubs of Armenian-American reviewer (and longtime Dallas resident) Ermance Rejebian. The series continues through July 31. It’s free, with free parking at the church and in the parking garage of the neighboring Meadows Museum. For information, see www.hpumc.org/rejebian/.

The books Reynolds mentioned are available in the Dallas Public Library system. For more about Reynolds and his work, see www.clayreynolds.info/.