Book Review

The questions that make up the outline of Jill Lepore’s The Mansion of Happiness are really what we might consider the Big Three Questions About Being Humans: How does life begin? What does it mean? What happens when we die? To explore these big questions and how our answers to them have changed over time, Lepore — a professor of American history at Harvard University and staff writer at the New Yorker — does what most great nonfiction writers do: narrows down the big picture through a series of very specific topics.

In an effort to maybe, perhaps, hopefully get caught up on all the books I haven’t reviewed, I’m planning to start doing mini-reviews every couple of weeks for books that I read but didn’t have much to say about. If you have more specific questions about any of this week’s titles, leave them in the comments! This post includes Rebecca, The Long Shot, and Catch-22.

Victoria Jones grew up in the foster care system. Prickly, angry, and difficult, she never really found a family connect with. When she is emancipated from the system at 18, she has nowhere to go and no one to turn to for help. Her only real skill is her deep understanding of the Victorian language of flowers, where each bloom can be used to convey feelings. Victoria is plucked from the streets when a local florist discovers her talent with flowers, but in order to grab on to this lifeline, Victoria needs to confront her past and learn to love and be loved.

A Sense of Direction is a book moving forward along two paths. The first is an introspective story about Lewis-Kraus’ experience of walking the three pilgrimages and the lessons he learns along the way. That’s a rather simplified explanation of the journey, which explores his relationships with friends and family and the lessons he gleans from his time performing “exercises in pointless austere motion.”

Our July topic for the BAND comes from a new host, Marilyn (Me, You and Books). Marilyn asks,
When is an author’s subjective response to a subject not a bias but a legitimate perspective? What nonfiction have you read where an author’s feelings enhance your understanding?
I think this is a fascinating topic, especially as more and more authors of new nonfiction have started to play more with incorporating their own voices and stories into their books. These types of nonfiction accounts aren’t really memoirs, even though the author will often write in the first person and incorporate their experience of reporting and researching a book into the account.

One Sentence Summary: Born an obscure German princess, Catherine the Great became one of Russia’s greatest monarchs through sheer determination (and the love of those close to her).

One Sentence Review: Massie’s epic biography succeeds by showing the personal side of history, infusing even the most dry parts of history with emotion and importance.

Review:  It seems like in the weeks before I picked up The World Without You, I’d been reading a bunch of sprawling, multi-generation family epics (Butterfly’s Child and The Chaperone come to mind). The World Without You condenses all of the tension and love and complexity of a big family story into a single long weekend staged in the most difficult circumstances.

On July 4, 2005, three generations of the Frankel family are returning home to their summer home in the Berkshires, perhaps for the last time, for a memorial. One year before, the youngest sibling of the family, journalist Leo, was killed while on assignment in Iraq. As Leo’s three siblings, parents, widow and three-year-old son, slowly converge on their holiday home, tension rises as old family feuds and new personal challenges threaten to overshadow plans to honor Leo’s life with their community.

Given that quirky history is basically my bread and butter, I think it’s no surprise that I was totally into The Ball by John Fox. The Ball begins with a question from Fox’s seven-year-old son, one of those deceptively complicated questions that can only lead down a super-awesome rabbit hole of research: Why do we play ball?

To answer the question, Fox digs into the history of many of today’s most popular sports — baseball, tennis, soccer, football, rugby and others — and the plaything they have in common. In his quest, he looks into the evolutionary purpose of play and, more specifically, the evolutionary purpose of playing with a ball, and then goes off to try early inspirations for some of today’s sports.

Review: Folk wisdom tells us that money can’t buy happiness. But what does science say? As one might expect, the research on happiness suggests a more nuanced look at the role money can have on our day-to-day emotional state and overall satisfaction.

In All the Money in the World, author Laura Vanderkam takes on many of the assumptions we have about money and happiness and suggests a new way to consider our finances. Instead of thinking about money as a resource (that most of us don’t have enough of), Vanderkam suggests looking at money as a tool that, when used creatively, can help build a better life. By taking a careful look at what makes us happy — rather than the things experts and society suggest will make us feel fulfilled — Vanderkam suggests each of us can improve our happiness by learning to spend and earn more strategically.