Empire of the Summer Moon is not for everyone. It’s an elegiac paean to frontier America and the doomed struggle of Comanche Indians to maintain their way of life in the face of an unrelenting onslaught of white encroachment. It broadly encompasses the rugged bravado of American pioneers trying to fulfill their Manifest Destiny and the individual horrors of trying to eek out a life in a hostile world. It walks the delicate line between explaining how these disparate and dichotomous worlds clashed and parsing […]
All the things I didn’t know I needed to know about Ruth Bader Ginsburg
As a lawyer and a woman, you’d assume I would know more about the women on the Supreme Court than I do. Although I probably knew more about Ruth Bader Ginsburg than Sotomayor and Kagan, it was really only vague knowledge. I knew I liked Ginsburg’s opinions, and I agreed with her politics. I’d also heard something about cancer and falling asleep at some inappropriate place. Unfortunately, that’s about it. I can’t remember where I first saw Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth […]
A Book for the BBC Movie At Home Set
This book has been reviewed several times for the Cannonball Read and that is how it ended up on my radar at all (which is how oh so many books end up in front of me). I am a history nerd so a rundown of thirteen historical relationships that did not end well sounded great to me. I have to tell you, I slammed through this book in two sittings. Quick review: a witty, friendly, informally written but well informed gathering of information that you […]
A little piece of American history that is too often overlooked
I’ve been interested in learning more about the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II for a while now. After reading The Japanese Lover earlier this year, my interest was piqued, and then I heard about The Buddha in the Attic (2011) by Julie Otsuka, Julie Otsuka tells the stories of Japanese picture brides immigrating to America in the early 1900’s. What makes this book unique but also challenging is that she writes in first person plural. The viewpoint is from an unknown number of various […]
Brides for Indians
This book had an interesting concept and a strong protagonist, but ultimately couldn’t overcome an uneven, poorly paced plot. “That’s exactly the good thing about the Injun life–you don’t have to stop and think about whether or not you’re ‘happy’–which in my opinion is a highly overrated human condition invented by white folks” In 1875, a Cheyenne chief demanded 1,000 white women from the United States government. They wanted to marry them, have children with them, and solidify their relationship to the U.S. government. In reality, Ulysses […]
The girl with the red cloak and the boy with the silver hands – double Cannonball!
3.5 stars From Goodreads, because I’m lazy and it’s mostly a pretty good summary (I will point out the ways in which is it not afterwards): When Rachelle was fifteen, she was good – apprenticed to her aunt and in training to protect her village from dark magic. But she was also reckless – straying from the forest path in search of a way to free her world from the threat of eternal darkness. After an illicit meeting goes dreadfully wrong, Rachelle is forced to […]
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