Rise of the Black Quarterback: What It Means for America by Jason Reid

Rise of the Black Quarterback: What is Means for America by Jason Reid

288 pages

Published August 2022 by Andscape

Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher, through TLC Book Tours, in exchange for an honest review

Publisher's Summary: 

In September 2019, ESPN's The Undefeated website (now Andscape) began a season-long series of articles on the emergence of Black quarterbacks in the NFL. The first article in the series was Jason Reid's enormously popular, "Welcome to the Year of the Black Quarterback." The series culminated with an hour-long television program in February 2020, hosted by Reid himself. The Rise of the Black Quarterback: What It Means for America will expand on Reid's piece—as well as the entire series—and chronicle the shameful history of the treatment of Black players in the NFL and the breakout careers of a thrilling new generation of Black quarterbacks. Intimate portraits of Colin Kaepernick, Patrick Mahomes, Lamar Jackson, and Kyler Murray feature prominently in the book, as well as the careers and legacy of beloved NFL players such as Doug Williams and trailblazing pioneers Marlin Briscoe and Eldridge Dickey. Reid delves deeply into the culture war ignited by Kaepernick's peaceful protest that shone a light on systemic oppression and police brutality. Fascinating and timely, this page-turning account will rivet fans of sports, cultural commentary, and Black history in America.

My Thoughts: 

You all know how much I love football. Every year, at the start of the season, I vow to myself that I'll read a book about it. I mean, I already own a couple, so it shouldn't have taken TLC Book Tours offering one up to me for me to get around to it. But it did. And then I missed my review date. <Insert emoji of shaking head> 

Fritz Pollard one of the first black players and became the first black coach of a professional football team; two years later, he became the first black quarterback. It took sixty-eight years for their to be another black coach. 

Pollard is only one of the black pioneers in professional football who Reid profiles. He also touches on George Taliaferro and Marlin Briscoe, who was pulled in as quarterback in 1968 when the Denver Bronco's quarterback was injured. He started five games and did well...then was let go at the end of the season. 

Reid also profiles black quarterbacks from historically black colleges including James Harris and Doug Williams who both went on to have illustrious careers in the NFL. Williams was the first black quarterback to start in a Super Bowl game. 

Reid moves on to look at today's group of superstar black quarterbacks, including Patrick Mahomes, Kyler Murray, Russell Wilson, and Lamar Jackson, four of the best currently playing. Even so, there remains a paucity of black quarterbacks in a league with 32 teams, especially when you take into account the percentage of black players, overall, in the NFL. Those that play still face racism, both overt and more subtle. Reid says that the unwillingness of teams to hire black quarterbacks sends a message that black men are not as intelligent, not inspiring, or not good leaders. 

Reid is a good writer (he is after all, a professional sports writer) and gives a good overall accounting of what it has taken to get to the point where the young black quarterbacks can get the respect...and money...they deserve (well, insofar as any player deserves the amount of money NFL players make). It's a good read, especially this time of year, and a fine lead in to looking deeper into the racist history of my favorite sport. 

Thanks to TLC Book Tours for including me on this tour (and my deep apologies for not getting this posted on time!). 

Maiden Voyages: Magnificent Ocean Liners and the Women Who Traveled and Worked Aboard Them by Sian Evans

Maiden Voyages: Magnificent Ocean Liners and the Women Who Traveled and Worked Aboard Them by Sian Evans

Published August 2021 by St. Martin's Press

Publisher's Summary:

During the early twentieth century, transatlantic travel was the province of the great ocean liners. It was an extraordinary undertaking made by many women, whose lives were changed forever by their journeys between the Old World and the New. Some traveled for leisure, some for work; others to reinvent themselves or find new opportunities. They were celebrities, migrants and millionaires, refugees, aristocrats and crew members whose stories have mostly remained untold—until now.

Maiden Voyages is a fascinating portrait of these women as they crossed the Atlantic. The ocean liner was a microcosm of contemporary society, divided by class: from the luxury of the upper deck, playground for the rich and famous, to the cramped conditions of steerage or third class travel. In first class you’ll meet A-listers like Marlene Dietrich, Wallis Simpson, and Josephine Baker; the second class carried a new generation of professional and independent women, like pioneering interior designer Sibyl Colefax. Down in steerage, you’ll follow the journey of émigré Maria Riffelmacher as she escapes poverty in Europe. Bustling between decks is a crew of female workers, including Violet “The Unsinkable Stewardess” Jessop, who survived the Titanic disaster.

Entertaining and informative, Maiden Voyages captures the golden age of ocean liners through the stories of the women whose transatlantic journeys changed the shape of society on both sides of the globe.

Cunard's RMS Aquitania

My Thoughts:

I made a mistake when I began reading this book. I took it to be a story primarily about the women who worked and traveled on the ocean liners that ferried people back and forth between the New World and the Old. I was expecting it to the be stories of particular women, especially those who worked on the ships, and about the ocean liners as well. 

Cunard's RMS Laconia

That's some of what I got. I got a lot of information about ships. So much information that I began to wonder if Evans was padding the book due to a lack of information about the women. Eventually, I understood that to be background to set up the period between the wars. I also got a lot of history. About World Wars and prohibition and the ways the shipping industry helped change the lives of women, from taking them across the ocean for new opportunities to providing them jobs they'd never been eligible for before during wartime. On those floating microcosms of society, we learn about the various roles the female employees of the ship lines served. In first class, one woman might work as a secretary or dresser for a single customer. In third class, there might be only one woman to ensure the welfare of all of the people desperately looking for a new beginning. One woman was so desperate that she hid in one of the ballast containers, burying herself under a layer of gravel to avoid detection during inspection and staying in that container until she estimated that the ship was more than half way to America, too far to turn back.

Marlene Dietrich

The book is loaded with who's who of famous women of the area and we learn about how hard the liners worked to make these women feel comfortable and safe, outfitting the ships to feel more like hotels than ships. Those are the kinds of stories, of course, that make readers see a summary and decide to read a book. But it's the stories of the women in third class and the women who worked tirelessly on these ship, all in a bid for a better life, such as Violet Jessop who served as a stewardess, who really caught my attention. 

Violet Jessop, who survived the Titanic

Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women by Harriet Reisin

Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women by Harriet Reisen

Published October 2009 by Henry Holt and Co.

Source: checked out from my local library

Publisher's Summary:

Louisa May Alcott portrays a writer as worthy of interest in her own right as her most famous character, Jo March, and addresses all aspects of Alcott’s life: the effect of her father’s self-indulgent utopian schemes; her family’s chronic economic difficulties and frequent uprootings; her experience as a nurse in the Civil War; the loss of her health and frequent recourse to opiates in search of relief from migraines, insomnia, and symptomatic pain. Stories and details culled from Alcott’s journals; her equally rich letters to family, friends, publishers, and admiring readers; and the correspondence, journals, and recollections of her family, friends, and famous contemporaries provide the basis for this lively account of the author’s classic rags-to-riches tale. 

Alcott would become the equivalent of a multimillionaire in her lifetime based on the astounding sales of her books, leaving contemporaries like Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Henry James in the dust. This biography explores Alcott’s life in the context of her works, all of which are to some extent autobiographical. A fresh, modern take on this remarkable and prolific writer, who secretly authored pulp fiction, harbored radical abolitionist views, and completed heroic service as a Civil War nurse, Louisa May Alcott is in the end also the story of how the all-time beloved American classic Little Women came to be. This revelatory portrait will present the popular author as she was and as she has never been seen before.

My Thoughts:

I'm pretty sure that I've told you before that I received a copy of Alcott's Little Women when I was eight years old. It is one of my treasures and no amount of the truth behind the book will ever change that. When I read Geraldine Brooks' March, the truth about Bronson Alcott began to be clear, as it did in Kelly O'Connor McNees' The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott. Still, I'm sure I was hoping that Alcott's real life hadn't been so very terrible as those ladies portrayed in their fiction. 

The truth was much worse. Bronson Alcott was a terrible selfish, single-minded man who had no real idea how to handle his headstrong second daughter and didn't seem to notice the burden he placed on his wife. Myth of Father March completely busted. What was new here was finding out that my beloved Marmee (Alcott's portrayal of her mother in Little Women) was not the saint she was made out to be, either. She followed her husband from place to place as he pursued his vision, despite the hardship to herself and her children and seems to have felt as if it were her family's and their friends' duties to support the family when times were hard (which was pretty much always). 

On the other hand, who might Louisa May Alcott have been if she had not been introduced to Ralph Also Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathanial Hawthorne, and a host of well-known abolitionists? In that regard, her father served her well in drawing the family into those circles. 

I couldn't help but wonder what Louisa might have become if writing weren't the only way she could reliably make money, money that her family desperately needed. And what might she have written if she had not felt obliged to write so much of what she wrote simply because she knew that kind of story would make money. Still, Alcott turned out a mountain of writing in her lifetime, in a lot of different genres, including poetry. Reisen certainly has me wanting to scout out more of Alcott's writing than simply the works for young people which I'm so familiar with. 

Reisin was able to obtain some interviews never before published which add a lot of new information to Lousia's adult life. It wasn't an easy life, despite eventually becoming well off, able to support her family and be very generous with others. Alcott became sick nursing soldiers during the Civil War and never completely recovered; in fact, Reisen theorizes (as did Alcott) that Louisa eventually died of mercury poisoning from the calomel given to her in the hospital to treat typhoid pneumonia. She used morphine, opium, and hashish to ease her chronic pain; never married; lost two of her younger sisters; and became of the caretake of her mother and, to some extent, her father. Top all of that off with the fact that she didn't much enjoy her popularity; Reisen even called her "curmudgeonly." 

Louisa May Alcott lived an incredibly interesting life but one that, sadly, lacked the happily-ever-afters found in her most popular books. If you're a fan of Alcott's, I definitely recommend this book, as well as the documentary of the same name. 

The Splendid and The Vile by Erik Larson

The Splendid and The Vile by Erik Larson
Read by John Lee
Published February 2020 by Crown Publishing Group
Source: audiobook checked out from my local library

Publisher's Summary: 
On Winston Churchill’s first day as prime minister, Adolf Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next twelve months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons. It was up to Churchill to hold his country together and persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally—and willing to fight to the end.

In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson shows, in cinematic detail, how Churchill taught the British people “the art of being fearless.” It is a story of political brinkmanship, but it’s also an intimate domestic drama, set against the backdrop of Churchill’s prime-ministerial country home, Chequers; his wartime retreat, Ditchley, where he and his entourage go when the moon is brightest and the bombing threat is highest; and of course 10 Downing Street in London. Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports—some released only recently—Larson provides a new lens on London’s darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his family: his wife, Clementine; their youngest daughter, Mary, who chafes against her parents’ wartime protectiveness; their son, Randolph, and his beautiful, unhappy wife, Pamela; Pamela’s illicit lover, a dashing American emissary; and the advisers in Churchill’s “Secret Circle,” to whom he turns in the hardest moments.

The Splendid and the Vile takes readers out of today’s political dysfunction and back to a time of true leadership, when, in the face of unrelenting horror, Churchill’s eloquence, courage, and perseverance bound a country, and a family, together.


My Thoughts: 
This is essentially the story of Winston Churchill's first year as Great Britain's prime minister, just as World War II really began to take off and Hitler set his sites on England. In a normal life, at a normal time, one year might not amount to much. But this was not, obviously, a normal time. It's no surprise to find, in listening to this book, that Winston Churchill was the right man for Great Britain in a time of war. Despite almost certain destruction (and let's be honest, if the United States had not gotten into the war, Great Britain would almost certainly have fallen), Churchill managed to keep his nation's spirits high. He did it in no small part by being astonishingly calm throughout the bombing of London, often refusing to leave 10 Downing Street during bombing raids. Churchill also seemed to have had an uncanny knowledge of how to get Franklin Roosevelt to step up and help, working behind the scenes to get what he needed long before the U. S. finally came to England's aid.

The Splendid and The Vile is not just a book about Churchill but also those who surrounded him, his family, his aids, the people who helped save England and also, to an extent, the German leaders. It being written by Larson, the book is exceedingly well researched and the stories of everyone involved are woven together so that readers can see the full picture of what Churchill was going through both as Prime Minister and husband and father. Larson does a tremendous job of making readers feel what it must have been like to have lived in England during the bombing and he doesn't spare readers the brutality those bombs wrought. It's not an easy read.

When I pick up a book by Larson, I know I'm going to learn things that you won't find in your history books unless you're a scholar of that time and place. For example, I had no idea that Rudolph Hess had flown a plane to England, believing he might be able to bring England to the negotiating table and thus avoid war on two fronts.

The book includes an epilogue detailing what became of most of the main players in the book. The audiobook also includes, as a bonus, a Christmas speech Churchill gave after the war. I imagine the print book includes photos and I do love photos in history books. But if I'd picked it up in print, I would have missed John Lee's remarkable reading of the book.

National Geographic History At A Glance

National Geographic History At A Glance
Published November 2019 by National Geographic
Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher, through TLC Book Tours, in exchange for an honest review

Publisher's Summary:
Beautifully illustrated, this penetrating book offers a sweeping view of humanity from prehistory to the modern day, presented in a unique time-line format.

Sweeping but succinct, this comprehensive reference presents all of world history in a browsable format featuring more than three dozen maps, along with hundreds of photographs and illustrations. From the dawn of humankind to today’s global complexities, this book provides a compelling reminder that history is unfolding all around us.

The epic story of humanity on all seven continents is explored through a unique design that combines concise essays with expansive time lines that invite deeper reading on milestone moments, explained within the broader context of the era. The final chapter highlights such recent events as SpaceX’s heavy rocket launch, the restoration of U.S./Cuba relations, and the historical trends that were the precursors to the state of our world today.

Informative and richly illustrated, this authoritative take on world history will be a compelling reference you’ll turn to again and again.


My Thoughts:
It's that time of year - time for big, dramatic books to appear in the bookstores. We love to give books but it can be hard to make sure you're choosing a book that the person you're shopping for rather than a book that just appeals to you. Here is a book that's going to solve that problem. My boys would have loved this book when they were in grade school. My husband is stealing this book as soon as I write this review. My dad, who is always picking up books to learn, would find plenty to love.

What makes it such a great book for so many people?

Well, it's National Geographic so you already know that it's filled with beautiful photography and that's it's well researched. The chapters are divided into eras so it's easy to find a specific time period you're interested in learning more about; each chapter has an overview of that time period and a "World At A Glance" map showing the key events throughout the world in the time period. Each chapter is further broken down into shorter periods of time with additional maps, breakout boxes on specific events or landmarks, and essays.

Our favorite thing about this book, though, is the time line that runs through all of the chapters. The time line gives the history of four regions: The Americas, Europe, Middle East and Africa, and Asia and Oceania and allows readers to see what was going on in each region at any given time compared to the other regions. The time line compares Politics and Power, Geography and Environment, Culture and Religion, Science and Technology, and People and Society. For example, on the time line  for 1545-1560, we can see that in Europe, Mary became Queen of England at about the same time as the Tutsi established the kingdom of Rwanda and the Mongols crossed the Great Wall and laid siege to Beijing.

I think this would make a great reference book to have in your home for almost all school-aged children. It is so easy to access information, particularly when you're look to compare what was happening in the various regions of the word at any given time, that I doubt you could find the information faster on the internet. I know that my husband is going to insist that it stay handy for him to be able to pick it up at any time and peruse different time periods or topics. We've only had the book for a few days so I clearly have not read all of it but in just a few hours I've not just brushed up on my world history but I've learned quite a bit as well.

Thanks to the ladies at TLC Book Tours for including me on this tour. For other opinions, check out the full tour.

Purchase Links

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound

The Library Book by Susan Orlean

The Library Book by Susan Orlean
Published October 2018 by Simon & Schuster
Source: my ecopy courtesy of the publisher, via Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review

Publisher's Summary:
On the morning of April 29, 1986, a fire alarm sounded in the Los Angeles Public Library. As the moments passed, the patrons and staff who had been cleared out of the building realized this was not the usual false alarm. As one fireman recounted later, “Once that first stack got going, it was Goodbye, Charlie.” The fire was disastrous: It reached 2,000 degrees and burned for more than seven hours. By the time it was extinguished, it had consumed 400,000 books and damaged 700,000 more. Investigators descended on the scene, but over thirty years later, the mystery remains: Did someone purposefully set fire to the library—and if so, who?

[Orlean] investigates the legendary Los Angeles Public Library fire to showcase the larger, crucial role that libraries play in our lives. To truly understand what happens behind the stacks, Orlean visits the different departments of the LAPL, encountering an engaging cast of employees and patrons and experiencing alongside them the victories and struggles they face in today’s climate. She also delves into the evolution of libraries across the country and around the world, from a metropolitan charitable initiative to a cornerstone of national identity. She reflects on her childhood experiences in libraries; studies arson and the long history of library fires; attempts to burn a copy of a book herself; and she re-examines the case of Harry Peak, the blond-haired actor long suspected of setting fire to the library over thirty years ago. Along the way, she reveals how these buildings provide much more than just books—and that they are needed now more than ever.

My Thoughts:
In April, Entertainment Weekly said “Susan Orlean’s next book will be a passionate love letter to libraries.” Indeed it is.

Orlean grew up with a love of her mother and her weekly trips to the library.

"Together we waited for the librarian at the counter to pull the date card out and stamp it with the checkout machine - that loud chunk-chunk, like a giant fist of time thumping the card, printing a crooked due date underneath a score of previous crooked due dates that belonged to other people, other times.
Our visits to the library were never long enough for me. The place was so bountiful. I loved wandering around the bookshelves, scanning the spines until something happened to catch my eye. Those visits were dreamy, frictionless interludes that promised I would leave richer than I arrived."

But, like so many of us, as she got older, she stopped going to the library. She had a burning (no pun intended) desire to own books, not just read them and give them back. "I wanted to have my books around me, forming a totem pole of narratives I'd visited." When her son was young, though, she found herself rediscovering libraries when she began taking him to them; and when she learned about the fire at Los Angeles' Central Library her love of libraries and her investigative journalism career made the perfect match.

I would imagine my husband is very happy that I’m finished reading this book, given the number of times a day I interrupted whatever he was doing to read him passages. I read to him about Ray Bradbury, who never got a college education but read his way through the Central Library. I read to him about the number of books and libraries destroyed during World War II, including the German group which was tasked with burning dangerous books and which inspired Bradbury. I read to him about some of the real characters who have headed the Los Angeles library, including Charles Lummis who walked from Ohio to Los Angeles when he accepted the job. And I read to him about Bertram Goodhue, who designed both the Central Library and the Nebraska State Capital, a building we both love. Being so familiar with the Capital building gave me a good idea of what the Central Library building looked like even before I looked up pictures.

There is nothing dull or dry about this book. Orlean's writing is vivid, bringing history to life.

"Usually, a fire is red and orange and yellow and black. The fire in the library was colorless. You could look right through it, as if it were a sheet of glass. Where the flame had any color, it was pale blue. It was so hot that it appeared icy."

"In the building, the air began to quiver with radiant heat. Crews trying to make their way into the stacks felt like they were hitting a barricade, as if the heat had become solid. "We could only stand it for ten, fifteen seconds," one of them told me...The temperature reached 2000 degrees. Then it rose to 2500. The firefighters began to worry about a flashover, a dreaded situation during a fire in which everything in a closed space - even smoke - becomes so hot that it reaches a point of spontaneous ignition, causing a complete and consuming eruption of fire from every service."

Did you know that fire could be colorless, that it could become so hot it cause spontaneous ignition, and have you heard of a stoichiometric condition (when a fire achieves the perfect burning ratio of oxygen to fuel)? I'm sure I would not have believed I could be so interested in reading about fire.

Although, The Library Book is never heavy handed, Orleans touches on the ways libraries have had to deal with homelessness, immigration, and politics in order to remain relevant and to achieve their missions. Reading this book is about learning about so much more than just one fire in one library. Through it all, though, books remain at the heart of any library and their value is beyond measure.

"Book are a sort of cultural DNA, the code for who, as a society, we are, and what we know. All the wonders and failures, all the champions and villains, all the legends and ideas and revelations of a culture last forever in its books. Destroying those books is a way of saying that the culture itself no longer exists; its history has disappeared; the continuity between it's past and its future is ruptured."

This book makes me happy that I'm again a card carrying library patron.