Thursday, September 9, 2010
Monday, June 21, 2010
Downtown, My Manhatten, By Pete Hamill
Pete Hamill is one of my favorite non-fiction writers, books or articles. I am a political person and a history buff in addition to mysteries. This book is a history of New York from Native American time to almost this minute.
Hamill begins with his love of New York city and specifically Manhattan. and what it was like growing up there. This excellent journalist includes all of the boroughs of this city. Starting where he it begins at the shores where the ships brought in the first immigrants.
He interjects this with official history of the people who went before him including who constructed the buildings. He includes their history, architecture history, official history of what was going on in the country, the community.
Then he expands from his beginnings in New York to New York's beginnings. He takes us on a walk as he narrates this walk with the story of both New York and his own family arriving in New York as an immigrant and the struggles they had in learning to live and love in this new home.
He tells of the church where George Washington worshiped when New York was the temporary capitol of an emerging country. Hamill talks of war and peace; robber barons and the struggle and strength of the early settlers in his beloved city. He recalls his own seven decades of walks in those streets of the people he met and still meets and gives an exciting commentary of buildings long destroyed to make room for more buildings that he describes with equal love and wonder.
The writer leaves you gasping for breath at the greatness and wonder of this one city New York at the same time wanting to visit, to absorb it as he has. And to learn and study more about all the different people who lived here then and now. He provides almost the taste of the food they ate and created. The boroughs, where they are, why and how they changed. He tells tales of folks from different countries and places to the music they wrote, listened to and played. Hamill describes for you the reasons they arrived here with nothing but hope; the struggle, the will to survive here. The need to provide for their families and the toll it took on them balanced against the freedom they obtained.
You are wrapped in a cocoon of love about this city, our country and the sense of place that we must have of our own home town, wherever it is that is still inside us. Love and wonder of how whole country. It sometimes makes you ashamed to whine and cry when things go bad or wrong in this county. Sort of "don't cry for yourself" America, just work harder, smarter to make this country better.
This book makes US history come alive in the true sense of culture and struggles to survive. If you read or saw "Gangs of New York", this is the back ground, the companion book for them and every history text you have ever read.
Hamill begins with his love of New York city and specifically Manhattan. and what it was like growing up there. This excellent journalist includes all of the boroughs of this city. Starting where he it begins at the shores where the ships brought in the first immigrants.
He interjects this with official history of the people who went before him including who constructed the buildings. He includes their history, architecture history, official history of what was going on in the country, the community.
Then he expands from his beginnings in New York to New York's beginnings. He takes us on a walk as he narrates this walk with the story of both New York and his own family arriving in New York as an immigrant and the struggles they had in learning to live and love in this new home.
He tells of the church where George Washington worshiped when New York was the temporary capitol of an emerging country. Hamill talks of war and peace; robber barons and the struggle and strength of the early settlers in his beloved city. He recalls his own seven decades of walks in those streets of the people he met and still meets and gives an exciting commentary of buildings long destroyed to make room for more buildings that he describes with equal love and wonder.
The writer leaves you gasping for breath at the greatness and wonder of this one city New York at the same time wanting to visit, to absorb it as he has. And to learn and study more about all the different people who lived here then and now. He provides almost the taste of the food they ate and created. The boroughs, where they are, why and how they changed. He tells tales of folks from different countries and places to the music they wrote, listened to and played. Hamill describes for you the reasons they arrived here with nothing but hope; the struggle, the will to survive here. The need to provide for their families and the toll it took on them balanced against the freedom they obtained.
You are wrapped in a cocoon of love about this city, our country and the sense of place that we must have of our own home town, wherever it is that is still inside us. Love and wonder of how whole country. It sometimes makes you ashamed to whine and cry when things go bad or wrong in this county. Sort of "don't cry for yourself" America, just work harder, smarter to make this country better.
This book makes US history come alive in the true sense of culture and struggles to survive. If you read or saw "Gangs of New York", this is the back ground, the companion book for them and every history text you have ever read.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Fire Sale by Sara Paretsky
Sara Paretsky's mystery book about V.I.Warshawaki is in paperback. Not her latest. But somehow I missed reading it. Now sweet reader if you have not read Paretsky and do not know who V.J. is, thee is in for a treat for a first time read. Her name is above the title and bigger. A good sign she is a great writer. Fans who like the adventures of this tough woman P.I. be happy with this book. I couldn't put it down. But I am a die hard fan. This is maybe the second in her books that push the button on social issues, morals, jobs and bossiness in the big Midwestern city of Chicago.
She asked by a worker in a small job shop to find out who is sabotaging the workplace. Nothing big, nothing bad yet. At the same time her old high school girls basketball coach has cancer and needs her to coach the team.
She has to juggle two jobs, both freebies and both in the old neighborhood of working poor and non-working poor, union and non-union and shady deals all over the place that result in murder, fires, cheating the workers, fear tactics and big money.
These new jobs are non-paying, but sometime truth and justice always is. However, to keep gas in her car, dog food in the bowl, the mini-meals she manages to consume and pay expenses, like rent and things. She has to keep working on her other cases. She loses a lot a sleep, has more aches and pains that she thought possible since she works out all the time.
Chain stores that try to control the market, who buy and sell people with the same lack of principles as they buy and sell products. She begins driving her car in the mean streets of the windy city, something she is not happy doing again. Weaving it back and forth from the rich part of town where the money begins to her old neighborhood where money is scarce unless you make some shady deals. Intrigue rides with her as she navigates the good, bad and very strange.
She balances people trying to make a living, girls trying to play basketball with no equipment and no immediate needs of anyone contributing to help either cause. There is a small kernel of truth that leads her the secret, scares her almost to death, unveils a murderer, bad, bad business and puts the American system under the microscope. Her life as usual is in the cross hairs of the bad guys, who shoot to kill, hit to bruise or maim. Her police friends don't like her crossing into their domain; politicians don't want her messing with folks who make big donations to the party. All of which just makes her fight harder to solve the crimes. V.I. never likes to be told what to do or not do.
It's a story about what happens in every town and government in the world. She makes us wonder about right and wrong.Where is the line between legal crimes and moral crimes? Who solves those and what is the punishment and the outcome of good versus evil? V. I. takes on social issues in this book as in Blacklist. You are left wondering about the difference between right and wrong.
She asked by a worker in a small job shop to find out who is sabotaging the workplace. Nothing big, nothing bad yet. At the same time her old high school girls basketball coach has cancer and needs her to coach the team.
She has to juggle two jobs, both freebies and both in the old neighborhood of working poor and non-working poor, union and non-union and shady deals all over the place that result in murder, fires, cheating the workers, fear tactics and big money.
These new jobs are non-paying, but sometime truth and justice always is. However, to keep gas in her car, dog food in the bowl, the mini-meals she manages to consume and pay expenses, like rent and things. She has to keep working on her other cases. She loses a lot a sleep, has more aches and pains that she thought possible since she works out all the time.
Chain stores that try to control the market, who buy and sell people with the same lack of principles as they buy and sell products. She begins driving her car in the mean streets of the windy city, something she is not happy doing again. Weaving it back and forth from the rich part of town where the money begins to her old neighborhood where money is scarce unless you make some shady deals. Intrigue rides with her as she navigates the good, bad and very strange.
She balances people trying to make a living, girls trying to play basketball with no equipment and no immediate needs of anyone contributing to help either cause. There is a small kernel of truth that leads her the secret, scares her almost to death, unveils a murderer, bad, bad business and puts the American system under the microscope. Her life as usual is in the cross hairs of the bad guys, who shoot to kill, hit to bruise or maim. Her police friends don't like her crossing into their domain; politicians don't want her messing with folks who make big donations to the party. All of which just makes her fight harder to solve the crimes. V.I. never likes to be told what to do or not do.
It's a story about what happens in every town and government in the world. She makes us wonder about right and wrong.Where is the line between legal crimes and moral crimes? Who solves those and what is the punishment and the outcome of good versus evil? V. I. takes on social issues in this book as in Blacklist. You are left wondering about the difference between right and wrong.
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