Non-Fiction Reviews – Page 5 – Books, Brews & Banter

Rise: How a House Built a Family, by Cara Brookins

Rise advertises itself as a memoir – and that’s largely what it is. It is Cara Brookins’ story of her ridiculously huge decision that affected her whole family. It is an absorbing story of a year in the life of a family as they undertook what would seem to be the impossible, and maybe thoroughly crazy, job of building their own house. Not a simple one-story house on a level piece of ground. No. A two-story, five bedroom house on sloping property.

The story of the publication of this book tells its own tale. Brookins tried initially to tell just the story of the building of the house – largely by herself with her children. The children were 16-year-old Hope, 15-year-old Drew, 12-year-old Jada, and 2-year-old Roman. Did they know anything about how to build a house? No. But YouTube can show you how! And that’s how they learned. It sounds like an okay story.

But here was the problem. Brookins tried to tell that story without telling the back story. Why? Why would anyone want to do this? Publishers told her she had to add that part to the story. And there’s no question, this was a difficult task because it involved baring her soul and her continued guilt for the choices that she made that put her children at risk.

We discover that back story in flashbacks all throughout the book. She was married to Adam, who over the course of her marriage sank ever deeper into schizophrenia, at one and the same time promising to protect her and the children and threatening to kill them all. She escaped from that marriage, only to marry another man, Matt, who turned abusive as he began to drink heavily and abuse drugs. She and her children were frightened and broken, keeping secrets from one another in a vain effort to protect each other.

Cara’s decision to build a house was based on two equally important and urgent facets of her own mind and personality. The first was her optimism and boundless conviction that she could do anything. We discover that this trait was bred into her by parents who, among other things, dug and built a full-size swimming pool themselves – with shovels! The second was a vision that she had of a house that would provide sanctuary. Listen as she describes how the idea came about:

The house stands sturdy and straight. To us—my four children and me—it is a marvel, as surreal and unlikely as an ancient colossus. It is our home, in the truest sense. We built it. Every nail, every two-by-four, every three-inch slice of hardwood flooring has passed through our hands. Most pieces slid across our fingers multiple times as we moved material from one spot to another, installed it, ripped it out, and then tried again. Often the concrete and wood scraped flesh or hair, snagging physical evidence and vaulting it into the walls. Sometimes bits of wood or slivers of metal poked under our skin. I have shavings of house DNA permanently embedded inside my palm and dimpled forever in my left shin. The house wove us all together in this painful and intimate union, until we were a vital part of one another.

The idea of building our own home was not born out of boredom, but rose as the only possible way to rebuild my shattered family while we worked through the shock waves of domestic violence and mental illness. The dangers of our past were more difficult to leave behind than we ever imagined.

How she did it, how she kept going against a looming bank deadline and some “professionals” who failed to show up when promised and turned out to be high most of their waking hours when they did show up, is a fascinating story.

The book includes a number of photographs of Cara and her kids in construction mode and a picture of the family in front of their completed house. Pretty amazing!

Our book group enjoyed reading this book and think you might enjoy it as well. If you do, check out the YouTube video of Cara and her kids as they were interviewed by the Clinton Foundation. Seeing them in person and hearing their voices just adds to the enjoyment!

–Jeanie Smith

Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention — and How to Think Deeply Again, by Johann Hari

In Stolen Focus, Johann Hari argues that elements of our existing culture are eroding our ability to concentrate and stealing our ability to truly enjoy life. Hari makes clear that this is not a self help book with an easy recipe for personal improvement. To be sure, there are practices that we all can take up to battle this assault on our focus. However, much of the challenges we face are societal and need a society-wide movement to address them.

Hari explores his own recognition that his focus was being stolen. In an attempt to reclaim it, Hari took a personal months long screen-free technology detox in Provincetown. While somewhat successful in helping Hari reclaim the ability to read books, creatively write, daydream, and sleep again, the effects did not last long past the end of the detox. Hari also recognizes that such an exorcise is not feasible for most of us, and it does not address the root causes of our focus being stolen.

From processed food to environmental pollutants to a lack of unsupervised play, Hari takes us on a tour of factors impacting our attention. In particular, Hari takes a long look at how social media actively uses subconscious techniques to covertly keep us engaged online. Such online engagement is used to feed the profits of the existing “surveillance capitalism” business model. Silicon Valley designers use various tools such as building virtual “voodoo doll” models of individuals to predict our future behavior. Likewise, they use “negativity bias” to keep us engaged by feeding us increasingly negative or fringy content. However, many of these Silicon Valley designers have come to regret their long term impact on society.

“One day, James Williams–the former Google strategist I met–addressed an audience of hundreds of leading tech designers and asked them a simple question: “How many of you want to live in the world you are designing?” There was a silence in the room. People looked around them. Nobody put up their hand.”

But, if this is not the world we want to live in, then what can we do about it? One of the interesting concepts discussed in the book is “cruel optimism.” In our society, we have a tendency to lean on rugged individualism to face problems. While such self-reliance may be admirable in some circumstances, it can be “cruel” when faced with challenges that have deeply rooted societal causes. Such deeply rooted societal causes often go beyond the ability for us to address on an individual-by-individual basis. With our focus, it is tempting to believe that we are completely in control of our own fate, but Hari argues that there are tremendous societal forces acting against us that need society wide solutions.

— Jim Lynch

Can We Talk About Israel? by Daniel Sokatch

Can We Talk About Israel?: A Guide for the Curious, Confused, and Conflicted was written by Daniel Sokatch, an American Jewish activist and CEO of the New Israel Fund since 2009. His aim with this book, as he states in the first chapter, is to break down the conflict between Israel and Palestine into a thorough but understandable narrative so that the average uninvolved (but interested) person can understand it enough to participate in discussion to some degree.

Based on the fact that our group had several interesting discussions about it, I think he achieved that goal.

The first half of the book starts at the very beginning – God telling Abraham of Canaan – and steps through the full history of the conflict, highlighting the major incidents, competing interests and philosophies, milestone events, and most notable leaders on both sides to the present day. Though it was definitely engaging, this part was so full of facts that it was hard to stay focused and keep the details straight. Overall, it left us with a better understanding of the motivations and emotions behind both sides.

The second half went into greater detail about the “current” state of the conflict, such as it was in 2021 when the book was published. Sokatch stated that he endeavored to present it in a balanced way, and we felt that he achieved this also (or as our Bill Smith said, as even-handed a resource as we’re likely to find). We learned about the carved-up and walled-off map of the territory, the political climate and living conditions of the major hubs, the bond between America and Israel, the creeping Israeli Settlements, the debates around apartheid and BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel), what constitutes antisemitism versus fair criticism of Israel, and so much more. None of it told us how to feel, which is not a comfortable place for Americans who are used to being able to claim one position or another for every issue.

Much has happened since the book was published, most notably the attack on Israel by Hamas on October 7^th, 2023, which is still a full-scale conflict at this moment. Sokatch continues to weigh in on the subject on the website for The New Israel Fund, an organization which was established in 1979 and “designed to expand the work that the United Jewish Appeal was then doing … to protect Israel’s strength by protecting democracy, human rights, justice, and equality for all Israelis – Jews and Arabs” (from jewishvirtuallibrary.org). His latest post can be found here: https://www.nif.org/blog/finding-light-in-the-darkness/. In it, he makes a statement that I find to be somewhat more hopeful than the last chapter of the book, which was titled “The Case for Hope.”

President Biden has offered us a light in this darkness. But there is another light, one that shines today in the darkness in Israel: Activists in Israeli civil society—regular Israelis, Arab and Jews, seeking a better, shared future—are leading the way towards a different path—especially grantees like Standing Together, Combatants for Peace, Bereaved Parents—Families Forum, Breaking the Silence, and Yesh Din—who either are co-led by Arabs and Jews or have worked hand in hand with Palestinians for years.

They know that Israelis share the responsibility for envisioning a horizon where tomorrow is better than today—for everyone.

On December 20, 2023, my daughter came home from college on Christmas break and we didn’t get through one full day before the issue of Israel/Palestine came up at the dinner table. I was glad to be able to understand her fervent opinion and offer thoughts of my own, which I would not have been comfortable doing if not for this book. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who is interested in learning more.

— Julie Feirer