Definetely a Florida Story!

Pitman, Craig.  Cat Tale: The Wild, Weird Battle to Save the Florida Panther.  Toronto: Hanover
          Square Press, 2020.  ISBN: 978-1-335-93880-0

Cougar, mountain lion, catamount, puma, and panther - different names for basically the same beast - an agile, wily, ambush hunter who roams where he or she wants.  Or at least that used to be the case until humans built homes, stores, farms, and especially roads in the panther territory.  And kept on building until panthers were squeezed into swamps, and few remained alive.  That was the situation at the beginning of Cat Tale, but the book tells the rest of the panther's story.

Craig Pittman brings the reader along on a ride through the recent history of the Florida panther, its downfall, almost extinction, and finally its rebirth.  This being Florida, of course weirdness comes along for the ride.  The Skunk Ape makes an appearance, greedy land developers play a part, noble hunters, intense scientists, whistle blowers who expose phony science, and then of course the panthers themselves.  Not all the villains are nasty and not all the heroes are true, but they all can be entertaining in their own way.

So if you want to read a tale of fortitude (on the part of the panthers and some humans), dastardly deeds done in the name of science, and a roaring good tale, pick up Cat Tale, sit back, and enjoy reading a true tale of how the Florida panthers not only survived but are now thriving and spreading!

Music Trivia

Dever, Tamara.  I Like Big Books and I Cannot Lie: Old-School Rock-and-Roll Like You've Never   
          Read Before!  Austin, TX: Narrow Gate Books, 2020.

So you like music!  And you like books?  What happens if someone molded/mashed/melted everything together in a book?  Would you buy it?  Well here is your chance with I Like Big Books and I Cannot Lie.

Tamara Dever takes her love of 1970s and 1980s rock-and-roll music and combines that with her love of literature (small l) to create a fun book filled with trivia, quizzes, brainteasers, crossword puzzles, and more things to fill up your time.  And the fun thing is that you can do this on your own or you can invite friends over to help your memory along.  For example, did you know that Billy Joel's song "We Didn't Start the Fire" mentions ten book titles or author's names?  Plus you have the opportunity to sing new lyrics to familiar songs.  Here is a link that has sample pages - https://tlcbookdesign.com/i-like-big-books/ . 

So if you have time to fill or to kill, why not invest that time in I Like Big Books and I Cannot Lie!  See you in the stacks!

Mystery Writers' Mysteries!

Zackhelm, Victoria.  Private Investigations: Mystery Writers on the Secrets, Riddles, and Wonders
         in Their Lives.  New York: Seal, 2020.

Mystery writers writing about their own personal mysteries, how meta can you get?  Victoria Zackhelm set out to find out just that by recruiting twenty authors (some well-known, some not so well-known) to write about mysteries in their own lives, i.e. what intrigues, baffles, dismays, and intrigues them.  Each author brings their own take on what makes a mystery, so be prepared to ricochet about this concept!

Sulari Gentill writes about her discovery of an unknown relative.  Hallie Ephron dives into ghosts and mediums.  Jeffrey Deaver brings the reader along on his quest to be a writer.  For Cara Black, the mystery is Paris. Connie May Fowler riffs on motherhood.  Martin Limon contemplates the U. S. Army and Korea.  William Kent Krueger whispers about mothers and expectations.  Asuma Zehanat Khan reminisces about origins.  Kristen Lepionka is startled with a haunted apartment in Columbus (OH).  Lynn Cahoon explores the mysteries of love and relationships.  Rhys Bowen conflates World War II and her writings.  Rachel Howzell Hall wanders through the surprises her body has for her.  Steph Cha encounters stalkers!  Jacqueline Winspear remembers war and her family.  Tasha Alexander philosophizes on what attracts readers to mysteries.  Carole Nelson Douglas winds cat smuggling and Nancy Drew into a career.  Caroline Leavitt has the case of the missing voice.  Charles Todd immerses himself in the milieu of the Great War.  Robert Dugoni muses on how to reach the reader's heart.  Anne Perry closes the book with why she wishes to be a writer.

So what does the reader get out of these varied essays?  A small sense of what makes these particular writers put pen to paper and write!

A Few Monsters, Martians, and Weird Things in Flyover Country

Hollars, B. J.  Midwestern Strange: Hunting Monsters, Martians, and the Weird in Flyover
         Country.  Lincoln, NE: U of Nebraska Press, 2019.  ISBN: 978-1-4962-1560-4

Do you enjoy hunting for "The Truth [that] is out there?"  Or maybe you watched Haunted Indiana on PBS like I did in the 1980s.  Or maybe you read Chariots of the Gods and others of that ilk growing up.  If so, you would likely be interested in Midwestern Strange where beasts roam, saucers fly, and the "weird" wanders about.

B. J. Hollars, an English professor at a Midwestern university, took a year to explore his childhood desire to understand Bigfoot and other creatures of myths and wonders.  As a result of his odyssey around the Midwest, he compiled this  book of nine cases divided in "Monsters," Martians," and "The Weird."  Monsters include The Beast of Bray Road (Elkhorn, WI), Oscar the Turtle (Churubusco, IN), and The Mothman (Point Plesant, WV).  Martians include Joe Simonton's Space Pancakes (Eagle River, WI), The Minot Air Force Base Sightings (Minot, ND), and The Val Johnson Incident (Marshall County, MN).  The Weird includes The Hodag (Rhinelander, WI), Project ELF (Clam Lake, WI), and The Kensington Runestone (Kensington, MN).

B.J. Hollars makes no claims on solving any of these mysteries, instead he seeks to document each case to the best of his ability with the sources (interviews, documents, radar images, etc.) he has.  And he is willing to live with the fact that these mysteries are unsolved, are you?  Read Midwestern Strange and decide for your self.

A German and Soviet Visit to Poland - 1939

Forczyk, Robert.  Case White: The Invasion of Poland, 1939.  Oxford, UK: Osprey Publishing,
         2019.  ISBN: 9781472834959

 How much of a buff are you on World War II?  Can you quote the minutia of tank, ship and plane statistics?  Do you know which country had the 4th largest army in Europe in 1939?  Can you describe the opening battles of World War II?  Evening if you can do all that, you still can learn a lot from Robert Forczyk's Case White: The Invasion of Poland, 1939.

Robert Forczyk provides a revisionist history of the standard story of the Polish invasion by diving into Polish history and telling the story from the Polish viewpoint as much as possible.  He spends the first four chapters on laying the groundwork of the formation of the 2nd Polish Republic, its enemies, its preparation for survival, its arms race with its neighbors, and the bad hand it was dealt by the Western Allies.  Then comes the war.  And this is not the brief tale of German victories over hapless Poles.  Rather this is a tale of inept leadership, bad planning, lack of support, and that was just on the German side!  The Poles fought hard, but also suffered from inept leadership, lack of resources, lack of support from the West, and the dagger stuck in their back by the Soviet Union.

So if you are looking for a scholarly, readable study of the 1939 Polish Campaign replete with notes, maps, and bibliography that has a strong viewpoint, Case White could be that book!

Scandals! Juicy Scandals!

MacNabb, Matt.  Hollywood's Dark History: Silver Screen Scandals.  Yorkshire, Great Britain: Pen
          and Sword History, 2019.  ISBN: 978-1-52674-074-8

Do you enjoy movies?  Do you read People or Entertainment Weekly or similar stories on the web?  Do you enjoy learning the stories of the "real" people who appear larger than life on the silver screen?  And the most important question - do you want to know secrets Hollywood would rather not acknowledge?  If you answered "Yes" to any of these questions, then this book may be for you!

Matt MacNabb in thirteen short chapters and an introduction provides a flashlight on the dark history of thirteen actors and actresses.  In each chapter, the reader gets a brief synopsis of the actor/actress's early life and then NacNabb dives into the various scandals that marks their career, and then finishes with another brief synopsis of the rest of their life and if they have a star.  The book opens with Evelyn Nesbit and closes with Clara Bow.  The chapters in between cover Jean Harlow, Charlie Chaplin, Errol Flynn, Thelma Todd, Mae West, Lana Turner, William Desmond Taylor, Barbara LaMarr, Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, and Mabel Normand.

Hollywood's Dark History is a scandal snack book.  The book has a brief bibliography of sources and a few photos, but does not really dig into the scandals.  So if you are looking for a quick read to bring you up to speed on some of the more famous scandals of early Hollywood history, this title would be a decent starting place.

Comic Book Propaganda!

Goodnow, Trischa, and James J. Kimble, ed.  The 10 Cent War: Comic Books, Propaganda, and 
          World War II.  Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2016.  ISBN: 978-1-4968-1030-4

During the lead up to World War II, comic books were a growing phenomenon.  In the United States, many comic book artists considered their mission not just to entertain, but also to influence the public and later to support the war effort.  In The 10 Cent War, Goodnow and Kimble bring together a number of essays that dive into the variety of intersections between comic books and propaganda during WWII.

The opening essay considers how women were portrayed in the military and elsewhere in the war effort.  The next essay looks at comics portraying the Flying Tigers and Chinese allies. The Boy Commandos and various super-hero sidekicks such as Bucky are examined in separate essays.  Superman is considered as an allegory for isolationist/interventionist United States with Lois Lane as Europe.  Captain America and Wonder Woman each merit their own essay.  Then there is True Comic - using non-fiction as counter propaganda!  Finally there are a quartet of essays  looking at ordinary kids doing their bit for the war.

Propaganda during World War II and comic books is an interesting combination.  The 10 Cent War provides a diverse and decent set of essays that explore numerous facets of this topic.