Non-Fiction Reviews – Page 22 – Books, Brews & Banter

Hillbilly Elegy, by J.D. Vance

This book, subtitled A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, is exactly that, a memoir. Hard to think of a memoir written by someone who was only 31 years old when he wrote it! Vance himself confesses the absurdity of this in his introduction where he writes, “I didn’t write this book because I’ve accomplished something extraordinary. I wrote this book because I’ve achieved something quite ordinary, which doesn’t happen to most kids who grow up like me. You see, I grew up poor, in the Rust Belt, in an Ohio steel town that has been hemorrhaging jobs and hope for as long as I can remember.”

And so Vance begins to tell his story. What makes this story compelling is that, while it tells of all the ways in which the decline of manufacturing jobs in the United States has left people behind, he is unflinchingly honest about the ways in which many of his people, whom he calls “hillbillies,” have brought about their own demise and their own lack of hope – their lack of care for their children, their sinking into the drug culture, their laziness and lack of any self-awareness.

Vance’s own family has had its difficulties. As he writes, “I have, to put it mildly, a complex relationship with my parents, one of whom has struggled with addiction for nearly my entire life.” He himself came close to flunking out of high school: “Whatever talents I have, I almost squandered until a handful of loving people rescued me. That is the real story of my life, and that is why I wrote this book. I want people to know what it feels like to nearly give up on yourself and why you might do it. I want people to understand what happens in the lives of the poor and the psychological impact that spiritual and material poverty has on their children. I want people to understand the American Dream as my family and I encountered it. I want people to understand how upward mobility really feels. And I want people to understand something I learned only recently: that for those of us lucky enough to live the American Dream, the demons of the life we left behind continue to chase us.”

Vance clearly has a great love for the people about whom he writes, particularly his crazy grandmother and grandfather – and “crazy” is his word, not mine. This love comes shining through the book even when he sees clearly how the ways in which they act have negative effects on everyone around them.

— Jeanie Smith

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, by Michelle Alexander

This book is an important, but tough, read. Important because we need to know the extent of our massive prison population and how it got that way. Important because we need to understand that mass incarceration, in the name of the war on drugs and “law and order,” has been applied discriminatorily against our black and brown youth, particularly boys and young men. Important because mass incarceration is the new face of a very, very old attempt to keep black and brown people from being full members of society. Important because those of us who are part of the white majority need to see the face of our society from the perspective of those who are not white.

The book is tough because the conclusions are inescapable. It’s tough because well-meaning Christian white Americans have let this happen under our eyes. It’s tough because our response, if it is to combat this problem at its root, must be far more than simply revising our mandatory minimum sentencing laws.

Michelle Alexander brings incredible research to these points, carefully laying out facts and figures from her experiences as the director of ACLU’s Racial Justice Project inNorthern California and as a law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun and as a professor of law at Ohio State University.

She argues that, contrary to what most of us want to believe, “colorblindness” is part of the problem and not part of the solution. In her final chapter, entitled “The Fire This Time,” she challenges us to rethink denial, to talk openly about race, and to adopt an “all of us or none” attitude toward justice.

Like most of our societal problems today, this one is complex. Solutions will not be based on 30-second sound bites, but on systemic work to rid ourselves and our institutions of implicit bias.

Not an easy read. Yes, a tough one. But one that’s necessary.—Jeanie Smith

THE PATH BETWEEN THE SEAS, by David McCullough

At the outset, I have to admit that I’m biased, as McCullough is probably my favorite author, and I recommended reading the book to our Books, Brew and Banter Club. That said, The Path Between the Seas won the National Book Award and several other awards, so I feel confident that it would be next to impossible for me to oversell his work.

The book is a first-rate drama of the bold engineering feat that was filled with both tragedy and triumph. It is the story of the men who fought against all odds to fulfill a four-century dream of constructing a passageway between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, which includes astonishing engineering undertakings, tremendous medical accomplishments, political power plays, tragic failures and heroic successes.

When Europeans first started to explore the possibilities of creating a link between the oceans, cutting off the long and dangerous journey round the southern tip of South America at Cape Horn, Panama was a remote part of Columbia. That changed when, in 1848, prospectors struck gold in California, creating an urgent need for quicker passage for California-bound ships. Thus, the United States built the Panama Railroad to serve that traffic and soon became the highest-priced stock on the New York Exchange.

Initially, building the canal appeared to be an easy matter, but the construction project eventually came to involve the efforts of thousands of workers from many nations, taking over four decades to complete.

In the beginning, French entrepreneur Ferdinand de Lesseps, secured capital to begin work on the canal, based on his recent success in constructing the Suez Canal between the Mediterranean and Red Seas. However, at the time, he had not set foot in Panama and had only a vague idea of the topographical setting, nor did he believe that the heat, humidity, insects, and snakes were a large problem. In less than a decade, however, the scheme had collapsed, and his company went into receivership with only a third of the canal having been excavated. Over 25,000 people died, including 5,000 Frenchmen, mostly succumbing to malaria, yellow fever, poisonous snakes and industrial accidents.

After a quarter century, President Theodore Roosevelt began a campaign of intervention, and negotiated a treaty to access to the Isthmus of Panama, allowing the US to buy-out the French interests. However, the Americans led a bloodless revolt after Columbia objected to the treaty, allowing for the creation of the Republic of Panama. Americans then set work along the French route using their equipment and the Panama Railroad, before shipping in more modern equipment to move billions of cubic yards of dirt and rock, to harness savage rivers, and to initiate an unprecedented lock system, that has lasted over a century, only recently being remodeled and opened again to larger ships.

Aside from President Roosevelt, two other Americans were heroes in this process. Dr. William Gorgas found that mosquitos were the carrier of malaria and yellow fever and led efforts to destroy their breeding grounds, substantially reducing deaths from disease. Engineer John Stevens took charge of the canal project and quickly understood the French inability to remove rock and dirt was not a problem with digging, but transportation. So he led efforts to rebuild the Panama Railroad to transport not only people, but equipment and materials, and recruited the greatest engineering minds of the period to tackle the tremendous challenges.

Completing the canal was an impressive trial, but it got done. Eventually, the canal opened to traffic ahead of schedule and under budget, and became the useful waterway of commerce envisioned for centuries.

This comprehensive and captivating story is a must-read for anyone interested in American history, the history of engineering technology, international intrigue, advance of medicine and human drama. Clearly, McCullough wrote a story you won’t want to put down.

—Ken Johnson