Animal Patrol!

 Roach, Mary.  Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law.  New York, W. W. Norton, 2021.  ISBN: 

          9781324001935

Do you have a problem with bears rummaging in your garbage?  Elephants tramping over your garden?  Gulls dive bombing your noggin?   Or mice infiltrating your domicile?  If so, then you have had animals that broke the law!  While modern society does not put animals on trial today (see The Advocate starring Colin Firth for when they did), animals are still punished for lawbreaking - not a law of Nature, but human law.  Fuzz will help you understand what is going on and why.

Mary Roach delves into animal lawbreakers with glee and gusto.  She attended WHART (Wildlife-Human Attack Response Training) to learn how to tell who or what killed the human lying on the ground.  She patrols the back alleys of Aspen (CO) to see the bears feasting on garbage cans not properly bear-proofed.  She visits India for the roaming elephants, the man-eating leopards and the breaking-and-entering monkeys.  Back in the US of A, cougars, mountain lions, and panthers are on the agenda in regard to where they roam and what they eat.  Then a trip to Canada for some killer trees and their crime and punishment.   Mary takes a walk around our gardens filled with poisonous plants and visits farmers and other victims (which includes The Pope!) of pillaging and harassing birds. The last few chapters deal less with the animal offenders and more on how humans try to discourage animal "misbehavior" and keep houses, work places, and food stores pest free.  

Mary Roach manages to find another off-beat topic to entertain and inform her readers in Fuzz.  Even if you do not get her quirky sense of humor, you will enjoy this book.

Is Speech Free?

 Rosenberg, Ian.  Free Speech Handbook: A Practical Framework for Understanding Our Free 

          Speech Protections.  Art by Mike Cavallaro.  New York: First Second, 2021.  ISBN:     

          9781250619754 

How much do you know about free speech?  The First Amendment?  What speech is actually free and what is not?  In 2021, Ian Rosenberg wrote The Fight for Free Speech: Ten Cases That Define Our First Amendment Freedoms which as been adapted into a graphic format by First Second Books as the first volume in a series about the US Constitution.

 

In both The Fight for Free Speech and Free Speech Handbook, Ian Rosenberg takes up current events to use as a lens on particular aspects of free speech.  Chapter one opens with the Women's March of 2017 and focuses on the marketplace of ideas.  Chapter two takes kneeling during the Pledge of Allegiance and the history of the Pledge of Allegiance in First Amendment case law.  Chapter three covers the concept of libel vs actual malice and the role this played in the Civil Rights Movement.  Chapter four walks out of school with student speech from the Vietnam War until now.  Chapter five talks Stormy Daniels, prior restraint and the Pentagon Papers.  Chapter six has a flipped-off President and the Draft.  Chapter seven brings up the role of the FCC with Samantha Bee, seven dirty words, and indecency.  Chapter eight powers up parody, Saturday Night Live, and Hustler.  Chapter nine listens to speakers we dislike or hate, the freedom of assembly, and funeral protests.  Chapter ten dives into social media, public parks, and "the Vast Democratic Forums of the Internet."  

 

In these ten chapters, the Afterword, and list of sources, Ian Rosenberg provides a very understandable summary of First Amendment right that we all, I hope, hold dear.  Take a look, pay attention, and practice your free speech rights! 

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.