The Map that Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology, by Simon Winchester

Few branches of science are so closely attributable to a single originator as geology.  Simon Winchester gives us a brisk walk through the life of William Smith as his observations of the English countryside grew from surveying for coal mining, canal building and agricultural drainage to a full mapping of its surface and subsurface geologic structures. 

The life story includes Smith’s humble beginnings and emphasizes how his lack of social standing, despite his competence in his surveying work, hindered acceptance of his scientific work.  He tried to offset this status by living above his means, with consequent times of financial failure and debtors prison. 

Recognition of his scientific work follows a similar arc.  Smith came to a sweeping understanding of the sedimentary layers of coal, limestone, chalk, and other soil and mineral formations that he observed in regular bands across England.  This understanding was enhanced by the correlation of fossils associated with different layers.  The consistent tilt of these layers also allowed him to predict their appearance underground.  This understanding was of obvious commercial value to the mining industry at that time and since to petroleum and other industries.  Smith finally compiled his observations in his “Map of the Strata of England and Wales,” which sold well, though Smith’s lack of social standing meant that the economic value of his work went largely to others.  Intellectual recognition of the originality of Smith’s work, and its importance to understanding the formation of the earth and the evolution of life, was contested for years.  Eventual recognition of Smith’s creative role in forming the science of geology came later in his life, giving a happy ending to the story.

Winchester’s telling of the story is quintessentially British in style.  He wields arcane vocabulary and scientific terminology in intricate sentences that are at times charming and at sometimes just dense.  Winchester makes scientific concepts understandable to readers willing to do some work, or skippable without losing the flow.  There are a number of helpful illustrations, but a shortage of maps of Smith’s whirlwind travels throughout England that would orient readers who don’t know that geography.  This book opened a new area of knowledge for most of our group, though some of us had touched bits of its subject matter.  It provided wonderful discussion material for our group.  We explored imprisonment for debt, how Smith avoided conflict with literal interpretations of biblical creation stories, the shift of thought during the unfolding of the age of reason and the industrial revolution and the individual genius of finding unique significance from observations seen by millions. 

— Bill Smith

The Great Believers, by Rebecca Makkai

“We were the great believers.
I have never cared for any men as much as for these who felt the first springs when I did, and saw death ahead, and were reprieved—and who now walk the long stormy summer.”
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, “My Generation”

Rebecca Makkai’s great believers are those who faced the trauma of the AIDS epidemic in Chicago in the mid-1980s, part of a lost generation of men who were the first to be affected by the deadly disease that decimated the gay community. With gentle honesty, she shows us these men — their lives, and their dreams of love, a family, a home of their own. They faced the cruelty and stigmatism of a mysterious disease that brought loss after loss of loved ones, with no hope of a cure.

The main character, Yale, has a rewarding career as an art curator, but his life is thrown into chaos after a brief encounter with a young man and a major betrayal by his partner. Then he meets Nora, an elderly woman who was part of the art world in Paris in the 1920s, who offers a valuable trove of original art that could make Yale a major player in the 1980s art world.  

If he can pull it off.

If he survives to pull it off.

A second story line follows Nora’s great niece Fiona into middle age and is a conduit for the stories of another lost generation, the survivors of World War I. Fiona is also the sister of the first man to die of AIDS in the novel and is the figurative little sister of his entire group of friends. In Paris, she reconnects with other survivors of that Chicago group while she searchers for evidence of Nora’s history as a muse, model, and artist. She uncovers the stories of the men who died in the war, or who survived mentally and physically damaged. She’s also there searching for her daughter, who had joined a cult, but escaped and then disappeared.

That’s a lot of stories for a reader to digest.

Makkai says her initial goal was to write a book about Nora looking back at her own history, but the 1980s section took on a life of its own. Ultimately the AIDS story line became the book’s primary focus, but Makkai didn’t want to give up on Nora. The result, though, is a novel that goes in so many directions with so many characters the reader sometimes loses the narrative.

Still, Makkai did remarkable research and her writing is so strong we feel the 1980’s characters’ trauma, appreciating the horror they faced in a way we might not have done in real time. Makkai gives AIDS a staggering humanity.

She says the book is in many ways a war novel. As one character in 1980s Chicago notes, “This is a war, it is. It’s like you’ve been in the trenches for seven years. And no one’s gonna understand that. No one’s gonna give you a Purple Heart.”

— Pat Prijatel

Take This Bread, by Sara Miles

Books about the mystery of the Eucharist are rarely page turners. Exception: Take this Bread—Sara Miles’s spiritual memoir of food and faith.

Her story covers a big colorful canvas of time and place and is populated with a large cast of fascinating mixed-bag characters (rich, old, destitute, schizophrenic, young, trans, gay, stuffy, edgy, old) who are colorful, imperfect, and sympathetic. Miles makes us feel their hunger to be fed and their hunger to feed—to see the divine on the face of the grubby and smelly, the rich and corporate.

There’s really no way to explain the magic she finds in “eating Jesus.” It can only be shown. And Miles shows it over and over in compelling and convincing ways as she struggles with faith in a messed-up world.

“Wait,” Paul said. “You’ve got to taste this.” He wiped his hands on a dishrag and went over to the refrigerator. “Open your mouth.”

“Oh, my God,” I said swallowing. It was grainy and cold and melting and milky and rich and sweet. “Oh, my God, what is that?”

Paul tried to keep a straight face. “Just a light little something,” he said. “Tres leches: you separate the eggs, make a cake, soak it in heavy cream, sweetened condensed milk, evaporated milk . . .”

“Wow,” I said. “That’s like, I don’t know, being breast-fed by the Wisdom of God.”

Paul raised his hand and bowed his head. “All glory.”

What better way to show us everyday glory than by pressing together the images of dirty hands; a mouthful of grainy, cold, rich stuff; a face breaking with laughter; and the sort of shocking notion of being breast-fed by the Wisdom God. Then throw in a playful allusion to the Trinity in that tres leches cake and Voila! We get it. Easy as cake.

By narrating her unique faith journey so engagingly, she prompts us to think about our own journey. How have hunger and the urge to feed others affected our choices?  She helps readers understand that our failures and doubts are vital to our faith. That paradoxes are ever present. That hypocrisy lurks in the shadows. Yet the magic of the Eucharist is always happening, all around us.

Near the end of the memoir, when Miles’s old friend Millie is dying of cancer, Millie’s son visits. He does not believe in God, but admits:

“. . . sometimes when I’m up in the mountains above tree line, it’s like whoa, you know: There’s a big, big love.”

“I know,” I said.

Christianity wasn’t an argument I could win, or even resolve. It wasn’t a thesis. It was a mystery that I was finally willing to swallow.

I was loved by a big love. In the midst of suffering, of hunger, even of death. Alleluia. What was, finally, so hard about accepting that?

As we swallow the bread, we swallow the mystery. Why is that so hard to understand?

— Sharelle Moranville