Why are Cities Abandonded?

 Newitz, Annalee.  Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age.  New York: W. W. Norton, 

          2021.  ISBN: 9780393652666

What does the phrase "lost cities" conjure in your mind?  Does Indian Jones hacking through the jungle only to stumble upon a vine covered ruin come to mind?  Or does careful excavation of mounds of dirt in the Middle East trigger your interest?  In Four Lost Cities, the reader gets to travel to three continents and participate in examining four urban centers and try to figure out what was going on before people walked away from these hubs of civilization.

Annalee Newitz opens with Catalhoyuk (Turkey), one of the earliest urban centers in the world.  After about a thousand years, the city was abandoned, gradually.  Her next stop is Pompeii (Italy) where a volcanic eruption put an end to a city in the midst of urban renewal.  The third stop is Angkor Wat (Cambodia) where expansionism and poor engineering led to the dwindling of the city into villages.  The final stop is Cahokia (United States) where the Mississippian culture flourished, built pyramids, and then pulled up stakes and left.  While visiting each city, Newitz concentrates on how the typical city dweller lived in each city.  Another of her focuses is on what attracted folk to the city and what eventually led them away.

Four Lost Cities is a bit of a misnomer as Newitz points out in her introduction.  People living around each of these cities knew about them even if the European elites did not.  Then there is "a secret history" phrase in the subtitle!  Newitz is using this term to stoke interest in looking not at the monuments found in these locations, but rather at the ordinary lives of the citizens.  If you enjoy learning about ancient civilizations, you are likely to enjoy this title.

An Assembly of Short-Lived Realms

 Defoe, Gideon.  An Atlas of Extinct Countries.  New York: Europa Editions, 2021.  ISBN: 

          9781609456801

Do you enjoy trivia?  How about collecting minutia for the sake of knowing strange facts?  Or do you just have some time to fill?  If so you are in luck!  Gideon Defoe offers the reader "the remarkable (and occasionally ridiculous) stories of 48 nations that fell off the map."  Mind you, some were pushed.

After offering an explanation for writing this book, Gideon Defoe delves into the tales.  For each country he offers a name, date, population figure, capital, languages, currency, and cause of death along with a map of the country.  He divides the countries into Chancers & Crackpots (examples - The Islands of Refreshment, The Kingdom of Bavaria, and The State of Muskogee), Mistakes & Micronations (examples - The Republic of Cospaia, The Tangier International Zone, and The Soviet Republic of Soldiers & Fortress Builders of Naissaar), Lies & Lost Kingdoms (examples - The Great Republic of Rough & Ready, The Kingdom of Axum, and The Golden Kingdom of Silla), and Puppets & Political Footballs (examples - The Republic of Formosa, Ruthenia, and The Republic of West Florida - the original Lone Star State!).  He finishes the book with some information on flags, national anthems, and a select bibliography of sources.

An Atlas of Extinct Countries is a great browsing book.  You do not want to sit and read it all at once; you would get information overload.  Rather this is a book to dip into, read a country or two, finish your business and replace besides your other trivia books for the next time you need a break from your "serious" reading.  You will be entertained and may even learn a bit of history. 

How to Create an Industry and Loose your Business!

Peterson, Jon.  Game Wizards: The Epic Battle for Dungeons & Dragons.  Cambridge, MA: The 

        MIT Press, 2021.  ISBN: 9780262542951

Dungeons & Dragons!  If you grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, you just knew about D&D, especially if you were a nerd, a geek, or just into playing games.  Between college students disappearing into steam tunnels, D&D being banned from school campuses, and claims of devil worship, pop culture was rife with stories about the game.  But what is the real story of how D&D came to be, who created it, and what happened next?  Jon Peterson provides a documented  version of the behind the scenes story in the pages of Game Wizards!

Jon Peterson provides a inside the company history of TSR, the sort-of club that formed to publish a set of cribbed together rules.  It all started in the early 1970s, with Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson collaborating with friends.  They had a bit of success, so they formed a company to distribute the rules for what became D&D and other games.  But bad blood, bad dealings, and questions of ownership and authorship soured the deal early on.  The fallout from early authorship issues haunted TSR for a long time, especially when TSR seemed to be raking in the money.  But inventors seldom make good businessmen, and Gygax, Arneson, and the Blumes (Brian and Kevin) definitely were not.  So on October 22, 1986, Gary Gygax was maneuvered out of his own company in order to save the company.  Under new management, TSR lasted another 10 years until another crisis ended with a sale to Wizards of the Coast.

As a person who played D&D and various other role-playing games during the 1970s and 1980s, this book brought back a lot of memories and cleared up some cloudy areas for me.  So if you are interested in TSR history, D&D history, or how not to run a company, pick up a copy of Game Wizards and enjoy!

Daffy, Bugs, and the Looney Tunes Gang

 Weinman, Jaime.  Anvils, Mallets, & Dynamite: The Unauthorized Biography of Looney Tunes.  

         Toronto: Sutherland House, 2021.  ISBN: 9781989555460

The Looney Tunes!  If you grew up before the Cartoon Network and cable ruined Saturday mornings, you would have seen the Looney Tunes gang in action.  Bugs, Daffy, Foghorn Leghorn, Pepe LePew, Taz, Tweety, Elmer Fudd, Porky Pig, Roadrunner, Coyote, and the rest all ran wild on Saturday mornings for decades!  But as Jaime Weinman explains, they did not start out on the small screen, instead they were big screen stars!

In fourteen enjoyable chapters and a very interesting epilogue, Jaime Weiman walks the reader through the history of the Looney Tunes and Warner Brothers studio beginning with their search for a star to compete with The Mouse.  Bosko did not quite work, Daffy, well, he was a bit over the top.  Elmer Fudd and Porky Pig work better as straight men, so when Bugs Bunny was created, the Looney Tunes system really began to shine.  The Warner Bros. Studio had Chuck Jones, Fritz Freeling, Tex Avery and many others.  But another person was needed - Mel Blanc, the voice of so many Looney Tune characters.  Weinman spends time analyzing the gags used in the cartoons, the switch from writing for movie screens to television screens, the rebooting and rebooting of the franchise along with the search for movie stardom with Space Jam, and spinoffs.  Weinman also spends time discussing stereotyping and racism in the cartoons.  Weinman then concludes the book with an in-depth look at "Racketeer Rabbit" - looking at the characters, the atmosphere, the lighting, and the gags.

If you enjoy the Looney Tunes, you should pick up this book and find out the history behind your favorite characters and episodes!  You will not be disappointed!

A Long Walk Home

 Strauss, Gwen.  The Nine: The True Story of a Band of Women Who Survived the Worst of Nazi 

         Germany.  New York: St. Martin's Press, 2021.  ISBN: 9781250239297

Are you looking for a true adventure tale of female Resistance fighters in World War II?  Then you are in the right book!  Gwen Strauss recounts the trek that her great-aunt Helene Podliasky and eight other Resistance fighters made across Germany at the end of World War II. 

Helene Podliasky, Suzanne, Maudet, Nicole Clarence, Madelon Verstijnen, Guillemette Daendels, Renee Lebon Chatenay, Josephine Bordanava, Jacqueline Aubery du Boulley, and Yvonne Le Guillou were the nine Resistance fighters who had been captured by the Germans in France and transported to Ravensbruck concentration camp, then to a Liepzig work camp where they manufactured panzerfausts for the German army.  They did what they could to sabotage the shells by under-heating them.  In April 1945, the women were marched out of Liepzig heading west away from the oncoming Russian army.  The nine escaped from the column several days into the trip when the guards failed to keep everyone together.  They made their way west by hook, by foot, and by luck.  Some folks they encountered were helpful, some were hateful, but nothing stopped the women from finally reaching the American lines on April 21st and were taken to Colditz.  They later made their way back to Paris and worked on resuming their lives.  

Gwen Strauss manages to incorporate the lives of each women into the flow of the story in a way that embellishes rather than distracts from the narrative flow.  She hooks the reader by opening with the escape and then switches to discussing her great-aunt.  Each chapter moves the narrative along while highlighting another of the nine women.  She concludes the book by providing information on their lives after the return to France.  

The Nine is more than just another tale of heroism, but rather a reminder of all the unsung heroines of the French Resistance that do not get the credit for their hard work, their sacrifice, and their suffering.  Read this tale to have your views on the French Resistance change.

Can you handle the truth?

 Sabar, Ariel.  Veritas: A Harvard Professor, a Con Man, and the Gospel of Jesus's Wife.  New 

         York: Doubleday, 2020.  ISBN: 9780385542586 

On September 18, 2012, in Rome near the Vatican, Prof. Karen King of the Harvard University Divinity School proclaimed the finding of a scrap of parchment that she dubbed, just for "reference purposes," the Gospel of Jesus's Wife.  Veritas explores what led up to this presentation and the fallout afterwards.

Ariel Sabar covered the Rome conference for Smithsonian Magazine in 2012.  He later wrote an article on the results of physical examination of the parchment in The Atlantic in 2016.  He has continued to dig into this story resulting in Veritas which walks the reader though the story in five acts.  Act I is Discovery with the presentation and early reception of the parchment.  Act II is Doubt where people outside Karen King's group raise questions on the dating of the manuscript and what she claims it means.  Act III is Proofs, proof of forgery in regard to an accompanying parchment and then proof in regard to the Gospel of Jesus's Wife.  Act IV is The Stranger, an investigation into Walter Fritz who provided Prof. King the parchment.  Sabar investigates Fritz's background, history, and possible motives for the forgery.  Act V is The Downturned Book of Revelations which is an inquiry into why Prof. King was so eager to proclaim the forgery as genuine. 

In Veritas, Ariel Sabar provides a detailed investigation of the whole Gospel of Jesus's Wife controversy from the beginning until now.  If you have an interest in early Biblical texts, forgery, and/or academic dishonesty, Veritas would be a good read for you.

The Limping Spy of Lyon

 Demetrios, Heather.  Code Name Badass: The True Story of Virginia Hall.  New York: Atheneum 

           Books for Young Readers, 2021.  ISBN: 9781534431874

Who was the "Limping Lady of Lyon?" "The most dangerous Allied spy in France?"  That would be Virginia Hall, a member of both the British SOE and the American OSS, not to mention being a volunteer in the French Army, and later the CIA.  So who is Virginia Hall?  Read Code Name Badass to find out.

Heather Demetrios was wandering around the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C. when she came upon a display of Virginia Hall memorabilia and was intrigued when she learned that Virgina Hall had made the Gestapo's most wanted list while operating with an artificial leg!  This was a story worth writing in grand style!

Demetrios opens Code Name Badass with Virginia "Dindy" Hall in context, i.e. providing information on her early life, her love of the outdoors, and her cheese-making skills not to mention her language skills.  She attended Harvard for a year, then transferred to Barnard College, and then studied abroad in Paris and Vienna.  After college, Dindy got a job with the Foreign Service as a clerk in Warsaw, Izmar (in Turkey where she had a hunting accident that cost her a leg), and later in Venice and Estonia.  In 1939, she left the State Department and moved to Paris.  With the beginning of WWII, she joined the French Army as an ambulance driver.  After the fall of France, Dindy made a strategic withdrawal to England, There she ended up in the Special Operations Executive and was back in France as an agent in Lyon.  That lasted until 1942 when Vichy France was occupied by the Germans and she dashed over the Pyrenees on her artificial leg. In 1944, Dindy left the SOE and joined the Office of Strategic Services as an agent in France where her cheese making skills provided her cover while she recruited, organized, and armed Resistance forces.  When the war ended, she was planning on infiltrating into Austria.  After the war, Dindy joined the the Central Intelligence Agency in the covert action arm.  She finally retired in 1966 and returned to the Maryland farm of her childhood with her husband whom she had met during her service in France.  She died in 1982.

 

In Code Name Badass, Heather Demetrios provides an interesting take on Virginia Hall and the role women played in the French Resistance during World War II.  She documents the facts, provides the juicy details and worships how Dindy succeeded in fulfilling her missions despite all odds.  Do not let the publisher fool you, this is a tale for all ages to enjoy!