REVIEW | H is for Hawk by Helen McDonald

H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald

Publication Year: 2014

Genre: Non-fiction, Natural History and Memoir
Series: NA

Awards: None
Format: Audio (from Audible)

Narrator: Helen Macdonald

WHY?: For a myriad of reasons.  I love natural history, I have experienced loss and grief, The Once and Future King is one of my favorite books and finally the book had so many great recommendations.

SYNOPSIS: Helen Macdonald's life becomes rudderless after her father suddenly dies.  In part to deal with her grief, she throws herself into training one of the most ornery of falconry birds, the Goshawk.  The process also drives her into a contemplation of T. H. White's book The Goshawk which she had been disdainful of as a child.  Reading it at this time in her life leads her to a new understanding of White which ultimately helps her to address her grief and the new world she lives in without her father.

THOUGHTS:

This book really spoke to me on a number of different levels but I have to admit it may not do so for everyone. It's an odd book really. Part memoir, part nature essay, part biography of T.H. White.  The connections between these topics aren't obvious but they are woven together in Macdonald's grief stricken brain and that is what ultimately makes them work as a whole. The T.H. White portions are the pieces that seem the most separate but for Macdonald, his book The Goshawk and his life gained new meaning in her time of grief.  

Macdonald is a falconer and has been obsessed with birds, particularly raptors since she was a child.  The Goshawk, a big vicious brute of a predator, is acknowledged as one of the hardest falconry birds to train and "domesticate".  While she's never really had much of an affinity with Goshawk's before, when Macdonald's father dies, suddenly and unexpectedly, she feels an urge to throw herself into the challenge of training this wildest of raptors.  And throw herself she does, almost losing herself in the hours upon hours of solitary time working with and developing a relationship with her new Goshawk.  It's fascinating and beautiful and it is where her gorgeous prose shines the brightest in my opinion, especially when describing the hawk and its natural behaviors, its wildness.  

“I stalked around the edge of the wood, crouching low, holding my breath. My attention was microscopically fierce. I'd become a thing of eyes and will alone. Mabel held her wings out from her sides, her head snaking, reptilian, eyes glowing. It felt like I was holding the bastard offspring of a flaming torch and an assault rifle.” 

“A short scuffle, and then out into the gloom, her grey crest raised and her barred chest feathers puffed up into a meringue of aggression and fear, came a huge old female goshawk. Old because her feet were gnarled and dusty, her eyes a deep, fiery orange, and she was beautiful. Beautiful like a granite cliff or a thunder-cloud. She completely filled the room. She had a massive back of sun-bleached grey feathers, was as muscled as a pit bull, and intimidating as hell, even to staff who spent their days tending eagles.” 

She completely captures the essence of these magnificent birds.  I work with a pair of biologists whose expertise is birds, particularly raptors and I continually wanted to shove this book at them even though I'm not sure the introspective grief management and T.H. White portions of the book would work for them.  Honestly though, even if they didn't, the bits about natural history would be worth it.

“Of all the lessons I’ve learned in my months with Mabel this is the greatest of all: that there is a world of things out there – rocks and trees and stones and grass and all the things that crawl and run and fly. They are all things in themselves, but we make them sensible to us by giving them meanings that shore up our own views of the world. In my time with Mabel I’ve learned how you feel more human once you have known, even in your imagination, what it is like to be not. And I have learned, too, the danger that comes in mistaking the wildness we give a thing for the wildness that animates it. Goshawks are things of death and blood and gore, but they are not excuses for atrocities. Their inhumanity is to be treasured because what they do has nothing to do with us at all.” 

It is a book that dwells on the past while ultimately deciding that it is best to move and look forward - a rather unconventional view for a historian;)(Macdonald's vocation).  Her father's death, training the Goshawk, T.H. White's troubled life all point her towards a new understanding of the world and it's really beautiful.   We venerate the past  - in world history and in our own personal lives and it does a disservice to our world and to ourselves.  It's important to look at and study history but focus on how it moved us forward.

“Old England is an imaginary place, a landscape built from words, woodcuts, films, paintings, picturesque engravings. It is a place imagined by people, and people do not live very long or look very hard. We are very bad at scale. The things that live in the soil are too small to care about; climate change too large to imagine. We are bad at time too. We cannot remember what lived here before we did; we cannot love what is not. Nor can we imagine what will be different when we are dead. We live out our three score and ten, and tie our knots and lines only to ourselves. We take solace in pictures, and we wipe the hills of history.”

I can't give the book 5 stars because I do think the portions of the book focused on T.H. White, while interesting, didn't quite flow but it is a really highly recommended 4 stars especially if Natural History is your jam. 
  The author narrates the book which is sometimes cause for alarm but in this case it works great.  Her words and the way she reads them are powerful and she also brings out the subtle humor with which she writes and which may not have been as apparent when reading the text.  

FINAL VERDICT:  A beautifully written and engaging memoir that I think will appeal to natural historians, book geeks and folks who have experienced loss.  4 out of 5 Stars

OTHER OPINIONS ARE AVAILABLE: Cornell Lab of Ornithology | A Little Blog of Books

REVIEW | Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy by Karen Abbott

Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War 
by Karen Abbott

Publication Year: 2014

Genre: Non-fiction, History
Series: NA 

Awards: None
Format: Audio (from Library)

Narrator: Karen White

WHY?:  Just look at that title! How could I not read it?

SYNOPSIS: A non-fiction account of the American Civil War through the lens of four women who played surprising and dangerous roles in the war, two for the Union and two for the Confederacy.  

I don't particularly enjoy non-fictional accounts of war.  The books I've tried to read in the past have seemed to be a litany of battle strategies and names and frankly that bores me to tears.  What I am interested in is the human story and that is exactly what Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy provides.  It personalizes the war by focusing on the experiences of these four very different and remarkable women and illuminating how their stories were interwoven with the events of the war.  The women are:

• Emma Edmonds aka Frank Thompson: Emma was a Canadian/Michigan woman who even before the war impersonated a man, Frank Thompson, as a response to an abusive father and an unwanted engagement.  When the war started, she enrolled as a Union soldier and was eventually recruited as a spy.  
• Rose Greenhow: Rose was a Washington society matron who sympathized with the South once war broke out and ended up using her connections to become a notorious spy for the confederacy. She even ends up serving as an ambassador to England and France, on behalf of the Confederacy, once her treachery is known and she is banished from the North.
• Belle Boyd:  Belle was a teenage girl living in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia who was vain and attention seeking and this led her to become a brave and eventually famous spy for the confederacy.
• Elizabeth Van Lew: Was a wealthy spinster lady and member of a prominent Richmond, VA family (My home town!). She was an ardent abolitionist and created an underground Union spy ring in the Capitol of the confederacy.

Emma Edmonds aka Frank Thompson

Each of these women's stories were so incredibly remarkable that it was hard at times to remember that this was non-fiction.  Emma Edmonds, who was living as a man, at one point is required to dress as a woman in order to infiltrate enemy territory so she was a woman, dressed as a man, dressed as a woman.  She manages to stay undetected as a woman for most of the war.  

Belle Boyd

Belle Boyd takes a dangerous midnight ride through enemy lines to deliver a message to confederate command and frequently outsmarts federal pickets using code words and deception.

Rose Greenhow and her daughter went to prison with her

Rose managed to evade suspicion for quite a while and when she was finally taken to jail, held her own in arguing her case with the judge and Army General trying her.

Elizabeth was probably my favorite, though her story is the least flashy.  She believed so strongly in what was right that she took incredible risks forming a wide net of contacts sympathetic to the Union cause right in the heart of the Confederacy.  She housed escaping Union prisoners in the top floor of her house but despite numerous searches she is never caught during the war.  After the war ends and it is clear where her loyalties lay, she is shunned in society and ends up dying destitute and reviled.  It's very sad.  

Abbott does a really good job balancing all of their stories and also keeping up with the events in the war, putting everything in context.  It's smart that she stays focused essentially on Virginia - all four women live and act in and around this area - and it helps the book from getting bogged down with too many stats and battles.  It's well paced and well constructed.  

I listened to the audio which was very good and I highly recommend.  Karen White did a great job giving each of the women a unique voice.

FINAL VERDICT:  Narrative non-fictions at its finest which will appeal to people who usually enjoy reading fiction about wars but not non-fiction.  4 out of 5 stars.

Other Opinions are Available: Smart Bitches, Trashy Books | New Republic*

* The New Republic article is a little bit review but is also calling out a review in The Washington Post where the reviewer called the writing in the book "akin to a women's magazine" and not in a complimentary manner.  Grrr.... Snotty, Sexist and all around craptastic.

REVIEW | Unfinished Business: Women, Men, Work, Family by Anne-Marie Slaughter

Unfinished Business: Women, Men, Work, Family by Anne-Marie Slaughter
Publication Year: 2015 (September 29th)
Genre: Non-fiction, Work Culture
Series: NA
Awards: None
Format: Advanced Reader Copy from Penguin Random House.  Receiving the book for free does not impact my review.
Narrator: NA

WHY?: Work-Life balance and modern feminism are both topics that interest me.

At first glance, I am an unlikely reader of this book.  I am unmarried and have no children.   However, even with fewer obligations in my personal life, I still struggle with the desire to live a fulfilling, well-rounded life that does not wholly revolve around my job.  If you are a working person with a family at home, Unfinished Business will be a very interesting and perhaps even important read for you but even if you do not have care obligations but are flummoxed by America's very intense work culture you will find the ideas presented in this book worthwhile.

"I began to wonder why success as a woman, or indeed as a man, meant privileging career achievement above all else."

Anne-Marie Slaughter is an ambitious and successful career woman.  Trained as a lawyer and having an expertise in foreign policy, she has taught at Ivy League universities and served as Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University before leaving to become the first woman Director of Policy Planning under Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State.  Her position on Clinton's staff required her to move away from her husband and two sons only commuting back on weekends.  After serving for two years, Slaughter decided that she needed to be back in Princeton for her family and while she got a very nice send off, the overall sentiment was that she had somehow failed by "giving up" this prestigious position for reasons of family.  In response, she wrote an article for The Atlantic entitled "Why Women Still Can't Have it All" which created an enormous response.  The questions and challenges she received in response to this article is what prompted this book, which is a more detailed exploration of the current state of feminism and the issues with America's work culture.

"Advice on how to achieve a sane work-life balance has become a cottage industry. Numerous books on the subject have been published...But they are all aimed at workers, overwhelmingly women, who are presumed to have the responsibility of stretching the twenty-four hours in a day to cover and impossible and never-ending list of things to get done.  Why not tackle this issue from another angle? Perhaps the problem is not with women but with work."

Slaughter approaches the issue in a very organized fashion.  She clearly states and explores the problem, with statistics, research and anecdote, and then methodically lays out the causes and proposes possible solutions.  Her writing style is engaging and easy to get into and never gets too repetitive or if she does repeat herself it is in a sufficiently different way that it serves to elucidate rather than annoy.  She makes very clear that she is writing from her own experience, that of a professional, upper middle class woman, and that is where the bulk of the narrative is spent but she does make a point of recognizing and including others in her solutions.  Many of the responses she received in response to her original article forced her to examine the larger problems that exist.

"In the process of writing this book, responding to reflections, questions, and critiques from many different people from many different backgrounds, I have realized time and again just how much my own experiences inevitably shape my assumptions about how others think and feel.  As I have tried to put myself in others' shoes, I have confronted again and again the obvious but too often overlooked of just how much money matters."

And those larger problems?  One of her biggest points is that they are not just women's problems.  The real issue she defines is a conflict between career and care-giving where care-giving is extremely undervalued.  This goes for women and men and is exemplified by the low pay, training and status of professional care-givers. She points out that while women have made some strides towards equality in the workplace, men still face huge biases and stigma for wanting to play an equal or full time part in care-giving of their children and household.  And that stigma is not just from workplace managers; but from spouses.  She points out that many women assume that they know what's best in running the household and caring for the children and don't trust their husbands to care for the children "the right way".  This whole topic was enough for me to want hand this book out to every married-with-children woman I work with, because every single one of them has this bias at home. I'm not criticizing - I would be the same way - but just as men have to be willing to relinquish control of how work is done, women must relinquish some control in the home for true equality to be a reality.  

"...our assumption that wanting "work-life balance"  - or even just wanting a life outside of work - signals a lack of commitment to that work.  That assumption reflects a mindset that promotes men with full-time wives and no life."

"That is the lens that same-sex couples offer the rest of us.  It is no longer possible to assume, even at the subconscious level, that one member of the couple will be better at raising children and running a household and the other will excel at earning income and climbing a career ladder."

"To counter these assumptions and carefully prescribed roles, men need a movement of their own. Most of the pervasive gender inequalities in our society - for both men and women - cannot be fixed unless men have the same range of choices with respect to mixing care-giving and breadwinning that women do."

Slaughter ends the book by suggesting a number of possible solutions from the personal - having frank discussions with your partner early on about the willingness to sacrifice career for care-giving during points of their career - to the professional - convincing businesses to consider the unique talents of a late forty-something coming back into a profession after dialing down to raise a family.  The point is that there must be a fundamental shift in American work culture from the bottom to the top where care-giving is valued and where the complete subsuming of life to work is not necessary.  The system must change.

"We have re-defined feminism as women's right to be owned by the system, to be owned as much as men have been owned."

"Valuing care also offers a compass to a new set of workplace and national policies.  Challenging employers, politicians, and ordinary citizens to explain why, exactly, it is more important and valuable to compete with one another than to care for one another."

This book works so well because Slaughter is clearly not immune to current society's messaging about success and the proper way to do business - she is fighting her own biases.  She confronts them and is constantly checking herself and trying to expand the ideas out and make them relevant for all without letting the book get too overwhelming.  This is not a book that is all about how women have been wronged, it is about how we are all hurting under the weight of a work culture that is still stuck in the past and a society that values work too much at the expense of the personal.  If you have any interest in any of this, I think you will find it an incredibly satisfying, validating or at the very least interesting read.

FINAL VERDICT:  This is a wonderfully succinct and thoughtful book for anybody interested in feminism, work-life balance or America's work culture.  Five out of Five Stars.