NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity

NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity
by Steve Silberman
Penguin Random House, 2015.  534 pgs.  Nonfiction

     In NeuroTribes, Steve Silberman has created an encyclopedic history of autism from its first designation by Hans Asperger to contemporary efforts to understand those on the autism spectrum as a normal part of a neurally diverse society. Silberman's account is filled with kindness (Dr. Asperger) and wrongheadedness (Dr. Leo Kanner - who blamed "refrigerator moms"), with helpful therapies and brutal ones, and with enlightening explanations for autistic needs and expressions like "stimming [e.g., rocking and hand-flapping], avoidance of touch, focus on one subject to the exclusion of all others, and extraordinary gifts in mathematics, memory, physics, music, etc.  The contributions of Temple Gradin, Oliver Sacks, and Dustin Hoffman portraying the "Rain Man," to a more general understanding of the nature of autism are discussed here. Silberman provides and evenhanded assessment of the wrong-headed, self-serving attempts by various homeopathic practitioners and Dr. Andrew Wakefield (sample size: 12, with "doctored" results) to blame autism on vaccinations, and demonstrates that the recent upsurge in autism cases was predicted and can be explained by the expansion of the autistic spectrum and by better diagnostic techniques. Perhaps most importantly, Silberman has obviously listened very carefully to autistic people themselves, and he speaks very eloquently for them here, extolling the "virtues of atypical minds," and powerfully acknowledging that "people with cognitive differences could make contributions to society that so-called normal people are incapable of making." A profoundly important book.

The Promise

The Promise
by Robert Crais
G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2015.  402 pgs. Mystery

I am not sure what a police procedural is called when it is private detectives proceeding rather than officers of the law, but this book is a crackerjack of the genre. Fans of Robert Crais will already know Elvis Cole and his mysterious sidekick, Joe Pike. Add to this mix, former Marine Scott James and his K-9 partner Maggie and we're ready to roll. Cole has been hired by an anxious employer to find a missing chemist - an unexceptional looking woman whose son was recently killed in a terrorist bombing. Amy Breslyn knows how to make explosives of all kinds and she has recently met with a "Mr. Rollins," a worse than shady character who may or may not be an arms dealer. A murder and an encounter at the crime scene put Scott and Maggie on Mr. Rollins' hit list, and Cole and Pike join forces with Scott and Maggie (against regulations) as they try to find Amy before she does something rash, or something worse is done to her. The heroes of Crais's fiction are nuanced and appealing, his dialogue and setting spot on, and his action crackling and suspenseful. A great read when it's cold out and warm inside by the fire.

LW

Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad

Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad
by M.T. Anderson
Candlewick, 2015.  456 pgs.  Nonfiction

      Three percent of the world's population died in World War II, and thirteen percent of Russia's population died in the same war. Eight hundred thousand to a million of those people died in the siege of Leningrad, when Hitler decided that rather than waste troops and armaments on taking the city, he would just surround it and let the population surrender or starve.  They starved. Dmitri Shostakovich was born in Leningrad and was considered a hero of the Russian Revolution musically. It was not long into Stalin's tenure when Shostakovich and many other Russian artists realized that the Revolution had devolved into brutal totalitarianism and if they expressed their true feelings in their music, or writing, or art, they would be exiled or killed. By framing the story of Leningrad in the Second World War with Shostakovich's life, M.T. Anderson has created a powerful, heartbreaking narrative of human endurance and determination. Those most likely to die in Leningrad were those who tried to live by saving their strength; those who lived kept going to work, kept sharing and cultivating their gifts and talents, and kept creating. A staging of "The Three Musketeers" was completed with only two of the musketeers standing. One had died on stage. Shostakovich's Leningrad Symphony was performed while the city was still under siege, by a skeletal orchestra whose conductor could barely lift his hands to lead them. Symphony for the City of the Dead is an extraordinary story of unbelievable suffering and determination. Written for young people, it speaks to all ages and, indeed, might best be reserved for the later grades of high school and on up. The story of Russian suffering between Hitler and Stalin has not been as well told as many of the other horrors of World War II.  This books makes a good start towards redressing that imbalance.

In the Dark Places

In the Dark Places
by Peter Robinson
HarperCollins, 2015.  326 pgs. Mystery

When an expensive tractor goes missing, no one in Inspector Banks' squad is excited about investigating a penny-ante crime in the countryside. But what begins as a mere theft blows up into something much worse when two young men from the neighborhood go missing, and a Afghanistan veteran's dog discovers a pool of human blood in an abandoned hangar. The two cases begin to converge after a gruesome discovery is made when a van goes off a cliff in a hailstorm, and Inspector Banks' team must try to find and stop a butcher (both meanings of the word) before he strikes again. Very few write police procedurals as well as Peter Robinson, and this 22nd entry in his Inspector Alan Banks series is filled with nuanced characterizations, a relentlessly swerving plot, and mayhem aplenty. You may not be a vegetarian when you begin this books, but you may convert by the end. Well done, but plenty gruesome.

Orbiting Jupiter

Orbiting Jupiter
by Gary D. Schmidt
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015. 183 pgs. Young Adult

There are several improbabilities in Gary Schmidt's latest novel for teens, but they are all swallowed up by the tender profundity of this story of a very young man who has become a father, but who has never seen his daughter and does not know where she is. Released from a juvenile detention center into the foster care of the Hurd family, Joseph takes a long time to warm up, but he does, to 12-year old Jack, Jack's patient and loving parents, and to Rosie the cow, who loves him instantly. But Joseph cannot be happy until he knows where his daughter Jupiter is, and sees her for himself. In the meantime, he is treated unkindly as school by teachers and students, but embraced by other teachers who discover his skill in mathematics, encourage his thoughtful choice of reading matter, and who give him responsibility for helping younger students. Joseph warms to his new home and family, resists the demands of his brutal father, but leaves when he gets a lead on his daughter's whereabouts. Gary Schmidt once explained that what interests him in his writing is that point when a boy decides either to become a man, or to stay a child forever. Orbiting Jupiter explores precisely that moment in two boys' lives: Joseph's and Jack's. The ending is bitter, but also sweet. Joseph's story can be read in about an hour, but it will stay with you for years to come.

The Art of Memoir

The Art of Memoir
by Mary Karr
HarperCollins, 2015. 229 pgs. Nonfiction

Award-winning memoirist Mary Karr knows whereof she speaks in this book about how to successfully tell one's own story. But the examples she uses and the advice she gives go well beyond getting the facts down on the page in chronological order. Quoting generously from masters of the genre, her close analysis of passages from Michael Herr's "Dispatches," Maxine Hong Kingston's "The Woman Warrior," and many others explain to her readers how to show instead of tell, and how to get the courage to tell as best anyone may, the truth of a life. "The Art of Memoir" is a fascinating story about stories. Karr's is a funny, precise, occasionally profane voice, and her piercing intelligence lays bare the things we need to tell about ourselves and the ways we need to do it.

LW

Last Words

Last Words
by Michael Koryta
Little, Brown and Company, 2015. 420 pgs. Mystery

Mark Novak is devastated when his wife is murdered, and even more so because his last words to her had been "don't embarrass me . . . ." His work at a death row defense firm where he and his wife had been working a case together has tanked, particularly when he seeks information about her murdered by extralegal means. A trip to Indiana to check out a cold case of a girl murdered in a mine is his last chance. The weird thing is, the guy suspected of the killing is the one asking for an investigation. Hostile townspeople, things altogether not being what they at first seem, and a seriously weird suspect, Ridley Barnes, lead Novak and the reader on wild goose chases, profoundly dangerous encounters, and into the black of the cave itself. Koryta is master of both horror and detective genres and his latest will keep you guessing until the end.

LW

The Scribe

The Scribe
by Matthew Guinn
W.W. Norton, 2015.  292 pgs.  Mystery

Post Civil War Atlanta is trying to rise above the ashes and establish itself as a world-class trade hub by hosting an International Cotton Exhibition where all are welcome from home and abroad (even General Sherman is invited). But the success of the exhibition is threatened by a serial killer whose barbarously murdered victims (faint of heart and stomach should exit here) are successful black men and women who are making a name for themselves. Each victim so far has had a letter carved into his or her forehead:  M - A - L . . . so far. Vernon Thompson, Atlanta chief of police, is worried someone in his squad might be involved so he asks a former detective, Thomas Canby to come back into the city to help out. Canby and his partner, Cyrus Underwood, the first black policeman on Atlanta's force, race through an authentic post-bellum Atlanta to try to stop the killings but seem always one step behind an intelligent, taunting murderer. A fine period piece which is also a a suspenseful, even frightening thriller, The Scribe is hopefully not the last of Thomas Canby and Cyrus Underwood's adventures.

LW

The Upstairs Wife: An Intimate History of Pakistan

The Upstairs Wife: An Intimate History of Pakistan
by Rafia Zakaria
Beacon Press, 2014.  251 pgs. Non-fiction.

Zakaria works a melancholy magic in this family history which she weaves into the history of her country.  Zachary's family left a comfortable living and good home in India not too long after partition because they were nervous about being Muslim in an almost entirely Hindu society. Karachi gave them opportunities they had not previously enjoyed, but a dark sorrow came over the family when Rafia's Aunt Amina's husband took a second wife without, as required by Islamic law, receiving her permission first. Moved to an upstairs apartment, lived in my her husband every other week, Aunt Amina becomes embittered and possessive, sorrowful in a way that cannot be cured. Such, as well, was the fate of Pakistan, as the bright future predicted there devolved into infighting, Islamist rule, and terrorism. Zakaria is a fine writer, whose nuanced and descriptive narrative introduces the reader to a land a people we maybe thought we knew, but didn't have a clue.

LW

Badlands

Badlands

by C. J. Box

Minotaur, 2014. 278 pgs. Mystery

Cassie Dewell is thirty-six years old and a bit on the fleshy side (as my grandmother used to say), but she is a crackerjack of a detective and is looking forward to exercising the full scope of her gifts in a new job as deputy sheriff in Grimstad, North Dakota, an oil boomtown much in need of additional policing. Just before she arrives, young Kyle Westergaard, riding his paper route in the early morning hours, sees a man killed in a rollover accident caused by another car and a policeman arriving at the scene who does not tell the whole story. In the meantime, Kyle discovers a duffel bag full of money and white powder in baggies, which he carries away on his bike. Cassie's job is to smoke out the members of a drug cartel newly arrived in town who are butchering people hither and yon trying to find their product. Tense, brutal, and frigid (Box describes a North Dakota winter very well), Badlands is a quick, well-written, suspenseful book by the author of the Joe Pickett series.

LW

The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

The Billion Dollar Spy:  A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal
by David E. Hoffman
Doubleday, 2015.  312 pgs.  Biography.

In February of 1978, Adolf Tolkachev, a design engineer for the Soviet military, stood outside the gates of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow waiting for a car to come out. When the section chief of the CIA emerged, Tolkachev tapped on his window and delivered an envelope filled with a startling array of secret Soviet military plans. Through succeeding years different operatives at the Moscow station worked with Tolkachev to convey information worth billions of dollars to the United States' military as they were able to spend their money to counter only those things which the Soviet Union was actually developing. Tolkachev, whose wife's parents had been killed in the Stalinist purges, was deeply disaffected with his country's repressive politics, and though he asked for money for the materials he was sharing, it was mainly to gauge their value, and he mostly requested rock and roll albums for his son, and Western books about Russia for himself. Taking extraordinary risks, Tolkachev reliably delivered state secrets for years until his downfall, not because he was caught by his own people, but because of treachery from an unlikely source in the West. The Billion Dollar Spy is a compulsively readable book about a brave, good man who acted upon his principles to change the course of the Cold War and of U.S.-Soviet history.

LW

The Speechwriter: A Brief Education in Politics

The Speechwriter: A Brief Education in Politics
by Barton Swaim
Simon and Schuster, 2015.  204 pgs. Nonfiction

Barton Swaim worked for nearly four years as a speechwriter for former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford  (best-known for his disappearance several years ago when he claimed to be hiking the Appalachian Trail alone but was really in Argentina with his mistress). Swaim, with a doctorate in English, couldn't get a better job than sticking call numbers on the backs of books at the library (not that there's anything wrong with that), and was thrilled to get a slightly better paying job with the governor. He learned early on that it was not his responsibility to produce well-written talks, but to figure out what the governor wanted to say, as the governor would say it. Swaim got yelled at a lot for sometimes failing to do that, even though the governor could not articulate exactly how he wanted things written either. Governor Sanford was not a restful man to work with, but, refreshingly, Swaim's memoir is neither vindictive nor vengeful. He and his coworkers in the Communications Department of the statehouse do their level best to support their boss, but it is how they support each other that makes The Speechwriter such a funny, perceptive, and knowledgeable read about politics, in a season when politics weight heavily upon us.

LW

Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery

Do No Harm:  Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery
by Henry Marsh
New York: St. Martin's, 2014. 276 pgs.

Henry Marsh is a British neurosurgeon who uses this book to describe, by way of various cases throughout his career, how incredibly difficult brain surgery is, and how terrible the consequences of mistakes and bad luck. Although his tone and manner suggest that he has the ego necessary for someone taking on such a profession, he rats himself out plenty. Stories of a young woman who was paralyzed on her right side for no apparent reason, after his surgery or of a former patient he sees curled in a fetal position at a nursing home a number of years after an unsuccessful surgery haunt him. When he is chosen to be interviewed for a television show he tells so many stories of sorrows and disasters in the prep interviews that the producers finally ask him for something more cheerful, which he is able to provide an account of a young pregnant woman who was going blind from a tumor pressing against her optic nerve. Her baby was delivered Caesarean before the operation began, and the delicate operation was performed with such precision that she regained her sight completely. Though Dr. Marsh was very detailed in his explanations, I sometimes wished for something more - when the liquid has to be siphoned from around the brain to make room for the surgeon's instruments, how is it reconstituted, for example? Poignant stories of his own son's brain tumor, and his mother's death from cancer are deeply felt sections of Marsh's text. I really liked this book and learned a lot from it. It is sometimes heartening, and often sad; the controlling principle of the book seems to be that one must make mistakes to learn from them and to become better, but that mistakes in Dr. Marsh's business can have harrowing consequences. Dr. Marsh also takes sometimes humorous, often maddened exception to Britain's National Health Service stupidities.  An excellent read.

LW

An Ember in the Ashes

An Ember in the Ashes
by Sabaa Tahir
Penguin Random House, 2015.  446 pgs. Young Adult

     Laia and what remains of her family are Scholars, subjects of the conquering Martial Empire, who stay out of trouble by trying to go about their business unnoticed. But when Laia's brother Darin is arrested on charges of treason, and her grandparents killed, she becomes a slave to the extraordinarily cruel commandant of the Blackcliff Military Academy, hoping to discover secrets she can trade to the Resistance in the hope that they will rescue Darin. In alternating chapters, Laia and Elias, the commandant's son who hates his life as a Mask in training, tell their stories of their desires and efforts to be free of the Martial Empire and to save the people they love. An Ember in the Ashes is a thrilling, violent story of a seemingly hopeless fight for freedom and justice. The Augurs pressure Elias into a path he does not wish to take, arguing that it is only by achieving his destiny that he will truly be free, while Laia overcomes her terrible fears, only to be betrayed by those she has relied on. A bit of romance lightens the terror, but even that is not straightforward: Elias thinks of Helene as his best friend, but she wants something more; Laia and Elias are attracted to each other, but Keenan, Laia's Resistance "handler," is also in the mix. The story is slightly marred by the fact that Elias's voice is more compelling than Laia's. Also, Helene emerges as the most nuanced and unpredictable of Tahir's characters. Still, the story is thrilling and though-provoking, and the reader will greatly hope for at least one sequel, if not for a whole string of them.

Armada

Armada
by Ernest Cline
Crown, 2015.  349 pgs. Science Fiction

     Ernest Cline begins his newest gaming novel thrill ride with a quote from Eugene Jarvis: "The only legitimate use of a computer is to play games." In this book, it's a lucky thing that a significant number of the earth's population feels this way, when they discover that what they thought was a worldwide slacker-fest playing games called Terra Firma and Armada was actually a secret government training exercise to prepare thousands of gamers to defend the planet against enemy aliens from a swastika-emblazoned Europa. Our hero in this fight is Zack Lightman, a high school kid with a bad temper who lives with his single mother and who is not really good at anything except video games. His recruitment into the Earth Defense Alliance, and the surprising discoveries he makes as his real drones battle enemy forces, lead into a fast and fun gamer tale. Just like on the glowing screens where virtual reality plays out, Armada skips quickly over the sad bits which good escape fiction should do. Cline's multiple references to classic sci-fi films and themes, and his use of them in his story, serve as both tribute and substance of this fun summertime read. Well-suited for older teen readers, though their is a fair amount of swearing.

LW

Medicine Walk

Medicine Walk
by Richard Wagamese
Milkweed Editions, 2015. 246 pgs. Fiction

     Medicine Walk is the beautifully well written story of a young Indian man, called upon by his neglectful and disreputable father to accompany him on his last journey to find a burial place. The old man Franklin Starlight has lived with most of his life thinks he ought not to go, but "he's my dad" is reason enough for Franklin to put up with his father's drunken shiftlessness one more time. On their journey through the mountains where Eldon wishes for a warrior's burial he does not deserve, he finally explains to his son how and why he ruined his own life and left the boy to be raised by another. Wagamese's understated yet lyrical descriptions of the Canadian mountain country, his nuanced character development, and the deep melancholy of his storytelling make this a gem of a story in the tradition of Louise Erdrich and Frank Waters.

The Great Fire: One American's Mission to Rescue Victims of the 20th Century's First Genocide

The Great Fire: One American's Mission to Rescue Victims of the 20th Century's First Genocide
by Lou Ureneck
HarperCollins, 2015.  488 pgs. Nonfiction

In recognition of the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide, Lou Ureneck has written a fascinating book about an extraordinary man. The Reverend Asa K. Jennings didn't have the look or demeanor of a hero. Just over five feet tall, he had barely survived tuberculosis, and walked with a limp. Sent to Smyrna, one of the great cities of the Ottoman Empire, he was largely shunned or ignored by those who should have helped him in his assignment to administer the YMCA there. Shortly after he arrived, Jennings found himself, literally and figuratively, in the midst of a great conflagration. Turkey had overcome Greece in their nationalist battles, and as Greek soldiers, Armenians, and other Christians fled to the harbor at Smyrna, no one seemed willing or able to help them escape the slaughter that was to come. The senior U.S. naval officer in the region liked the Turks and despised the Greeks, so ignored reports of the calamity at Smyrna, so it fell to a makeshift rescue committee, Reverend Jennings, and Lieutenant Commander Halsey Powell of the U.S. Navy to engineer the removal of thousands of refugees, mostly women and children, from certain death at Smyrna. Jennings established safe houses in the city and took as many people who would fit, and then some, negotiated to purchase as much food as he could, and when these measures were about to fail, he tirelessly negotiated with Greek merchants, British military officers, andTurkish administrators to get the refugees to safety. He had often to rely on bribes, half-truths, and Halsey Powell (who risked his career to help) because of the relentless courage, determination, and charity of a short, gimpy, plain-spoken man wearing a straw boater. Ureneck's descriptions of the massacre of Greeks, Armenians, and Christians at Smyrna are graphic and distressing, but provide a memorable picture of the savage times that would change our world forever.

LW

Nobody Walks

Nobody Walks
by Mick Herron
Soho Crime, 2015.  296 pgs.  Mystery

Nobody Walks is as well written a thriller--or book of any kind--that I have read in a long time, and one of the most painful. Tom Bettany has fled his past in England to work anonymously in a meat-packing plant in France, but when he learns of the accidental death of his estranged son Liam, he comes home to investigate. Liam, who fell from a balcony while smoking marijuana, may well have died by accident, or maybe he was pushed. As Tom calls upon all his old skills from his clandestine service days, he runs afoul of some formidable foes and former colleagues and must call upon all his wit and skill to arrive at the surprising discovery of what happened to Liam. I can't tell any more about this fine novel without giving too much away, but be aware that it arrives at difficult conclusions, not that least of which is that Lord Acton was right:  Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

LW

Tigerman

Tigerman
by Nick Harkaway
Alfred A. Knopf, 2014.  337 pgs. Fiction

Lester Ferris is a British soldier assigned, after terrible tours in Afghanistan, to the former British colony of Mancreu, which has recently been given a death sentence due to a large pool of biologically poisonous magma below its surface, which occasionally erupts in the form of noxious gas clouds. Ferris is told to mind his own business and turn a blind eye to troubles on the island, and to the menacing presence of the Black Fleet, a collection of ships in the harbor where businesses ranging from espionage to off the records tortures are conducted. But Lester is drawn into the island's business when he befriends a young comics-obsessed boy whom he comes to care for enough the he hopes to adopt him - if he is indeed an orphan. When one of Lester's best friends is killed in front of him and the boy, and then the boy is casually beaten and his comic books destroyed by a Ukrainian smuggler, Lester becomes Tigerman, dressed in decorated body armor and a gas mask, to scare and shame the Ukrainian. But soon Tigerman becomes much more, a totem of the islanders, and a shadowy figure who nevertheless stands reluctantly but firmly against the considerable forces of evil in a land about to die. Any description of this book will fall short of truly conveying its tension, good humor, deep sorrow, the depth and richness of its characters and setting. It is a tour-de-force, whatever that means and you should not miss it unless you want to avoid some sexual references and a fair amount of swearing. It is the kind of book one regrets having finished because then it is over; the book you don't want to take back to the library even though you have already read it.

LW

Swan Song 1945: A Collective Diary of the Last Days of the Third Reich

Swan Song 1945: A Collective Diary of the Last Days of the Third Reich
by Walter Kempowski
W. W. Norton, 2015.  479 pgs. History

Walter Kempowski has here assembled an extraordinary collection of first-hand accounts of the end of World War II in Europe, as told by eyewitnesses in Germany. Prison camp detainees, Russian soldiers, German civilians, Hitler himself, are all represented here in letters, diaries, published accounts, speeches, and war councils. Dispatches and speeches of the famous are interesting - Hitler assuring his confederates that he will still be able to lead them out of this mess, that he is the only man who can do it; Goring demanding that Hitler yield command to him since he is second in line and Hitler is no longer able. But the most fascinating accounts come from previously unknown civilians, such as Olga Gindina who thanks her soldier husband for arranging for someone to come fix her stove, or an American soldier describing the initial awkwardness of the American and Russian meeting which soon gave way to smiles, handshakes, and pats on the back. The fear of the German people and their disgust with their leaders is palpable, as many flee from East to West, hoping to be captured by the Americans rather than the Russians. Swan Song is an instantly indispensable piece of World War II history. For a similar account from the other side of the pond and more civilian oriented, read Studs Terkel's The Good War.

LW