Tender at the Bone

Reichel, Ruth Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table. New York : Random House 2010. Print.

First Sentences:

This is a true story. Imagine a New York City apartment at six in the morning. It is a modest apartment in Greenwich Village. Coffee is bubbling in an electric percolator. On the table is a basket of rye bread, an entire coffee cake, a few cheeses, a platter of cold cuts. My mother has been making breakfast -- a major meal in our house, one where we sit down to fresh orange juice every morning, clink our glasses as if they held wine, and toast each other with "Cheerio. Have a nice day."

Description:

I seem to be in a bit of "immersion reading" recently regarding memoirs of chefs and all things food (e.g., Kitchen Confidential and Mostly True). The latest interesting, fun, and insightful food memoir I just finished is Ruth Reichel's Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table.

Reishel recounts her early childhood before college in a home where her mother served anything that was in the fridge, odd items on expired sale at the market, and anything else that just plain old looked intriguing. These quirky choices came with a fringe benefit for Reichel:

I was the first person in my class to taste mussels, cactus fruit, sea urchins, and lychee nuts.

Her mother had no idea how to combine these various elements, once the mold was scraped off or the expiration dates rationalized away. Reichel took to standing in front of her mother's buffet table during frequent parties to warn people away from most of the "food" that was being offered.

 

Fortunately, her mother did not cook that frequently, a task which fell to young Ruth who had learned her cooking skills from their live-in maid, Mrs. Peavy. She taught Ruth how to make every dish possible, including her father's favorite wiener schnitzel, and let her know to make extra pastry when serving beef Wellington in case (as actually happened) the original dish was dropped just steps from the serving table. In that instance, Ruth and Mrs. Peavy simply retired to the kitchen, patched up the broken course, and returned it to the family.

 

As a child, Ruth once mentioned to her mother that it would be fun to learn French. Very soon after, at age 13 and speaking not a word of French, Ruth was shipped off to a five-month French immersion boarding school in Paris. A lonely, sad experience faced her until, left alone in the school on weekends, she discovered she could sneak out to visit local bakeries and shops. She soon made friends with several ambassadors' daughters who had joined her in her escapades. These friends eventually started taking her home on other weekends to their fabulously wealthy homes whee she sampled other unknown and delicious meals. 

 

During her college years, she lived in communal house with several Eco-conscious friends, cooking for them and random droppers-by before later waitressing at a fine dining restaurant. There she learned the deliciousness and importance of high-end food and elegant service. She became chef at the Swallow restaurant, a co-op healthy dining establishment where every worker was an part owner, taking on all duties from mopping floors to waiting tables to making decisions as a group on the menu, hiring help, and service...a disorderly but somehow successful process.

 

And on she goes, learning more cooking styles, traveling to France to learn about fine wines, (an important skill since as a restaurant critic she knew nothing about wine beyond cheap stuff she could afford). Recipes for each dish mentioned in the chapters are presented in full, a new concept in food memoir writing at the time which has since become the standard format for cooking memoirs. And, boy, they all sound mouth-watering.

• Pork and tomato stew
• Lemon souffle
• Show-off salad
• Clarita's fried chicken
• Coconut bread
• ....and on and on and on, each recipe sounding better than the last. 

In the postscript to this book, Reichel refers to this concept which led to the creation of this unique memoir style:

...food memoirs [at the time this book's writing] were not part of the general landscape....the genre did not exist. As I was trying to think about telling my story through food, it occurred to me that the recipes could function the way photographs did in other people's books. I wanted readers to get to know the characters through the food they cooked and ate, to be able to taste the time. 

It's fascinating, humorous, and intelligently written, recounting stories about the variety of people, places, and learning that contributed to her successful career. Even non-foodies like me will enjoy her experiences in this book. 

 [If this book interests you, be sure to check out:]

 O'Neill, Molly. Mostly True: A Memoir of Family, Food, and Baseball

Really insightful, funny memoir from the author who learned to cook and become a world-famous chef and food author, as she grows up in a family with five athletic brothers. (Previously reviewed here.)

 Happy reading.

Fred

[P.S. Click here to browse over 500 more book recommendations by subject or title and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader.] 

 

Kitchen Confidential

Bourdain, Anthony. Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly. New York : Bloomsbury 2000. Print.

First Sentences:

The first indication that food was something other than a substance one stuffed in one's face when hungry -- like filing up at a gas station -- came after fourth-grade elementary school. It was on a family vacation to Europe, on the Queen Mary, in the cabin-class dining room...It wa sou. It was cold. This was something oif a discovery for a curious fourth-grader whose entire experience of soup to this point had consisted of Campbell's crteam of tomato and chicken noodle.

Description:

I am someone who knows virtually nothing about cooking. My wife is a great cook, my son a professional baker of breads, but me ... not a clue. While I love eating the beautiful food both of them prepare as well as the mouth-watering offerings from friends, family, and the restaurants we go to, I in no way understand the massive amount of planning, shopping, specialized cooking, timing, plating, garnishing, and serving that goes into each food serving. While I have no desire to emulate their skills, I still have tremendous admiration for the efforts and techniques they employ to put delicious food in front of me.

 

But after watching the movie Tony recently, I gained new insight into the depths of professional cooking. The demands for speed, quality, cleanliness, consistency, and personal reliability are constantly hanging over the heads of chefs, line cooks, and dishwashers alike. I realized the trials our son has had in his 15 years of experience in professional kitchens, the abuse and demands he endured, and the knowledge he gathered from each location. It is sobering picture of dedication, one many would-be food providers do not survive.

 

Anthony Bourdain, renown chef and the subject of Tony is also the author of Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, where he details his earliest life in the kitchens of very modest restaurants. Starting as a cocky college student on vacation in Provincetown, Rhode Island and in need of money, he works as a dishwasher in a fried seafood dive. From the first day on, he learns that he actually knows nothing about food preparation, the workings of a kitchen, and the raucous, drug-abusing, highly-sexed people who work there and mercilessly bully him for his cockiness and lack of practical skills.

 

Humiliated by the veteran crew, he enrolls in the Culinary Institute of America for two years, resolving to gain enough skills to return to the same restaurant in Provincetown and show those mocking cooks a thing or two. A few months after being re-hired there, he and a fellow worker leave the restaurant and set up a high end catering business for wealthy party planners and business people. And thus begins his career into the world of food preparation. 

 

He is sometimes successful, sometimes a failure in doomed restaurants, and always working with delusional owners, rowdy kitchen staff, and drugs galore. He admits he spent half his career pursuing money and drugs rather than gathering information from quality chefs and restaurant operations to perfect his skills and management techniques.

 

Working at the Rainbow Room at the top of Rockefeller Center, he used to sit on the windowsill, dangling his feet 65 stories above the skating rink, and help the baker toss rolls down to hit the skaters below.

Bourdain shares some of his philosophies, born from years of experience in New York City restaurants, to share with readers:

• Ultimately, I want a salute and a "Yes Sir!" If I want an opinion from my line cooks, I'll provide one. 

• In most kitchens, one's freakish personal proclivities matter little if at all. Can you keep up? Are you ready for service? Can I count on you to show up at work tomorrow, to not let the side down? 

• Vegetarians...are a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn. To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi-glace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living. Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human species, an affront to all I stand for: the pure enjoyment of food.

• Weekend diners are universally viewed with suspicion, even contempt, by both cooks and waiters alike; they're the slackjaws, the rubes, the out-of-towners, the well-done-eating,undertipping, bridge-and-tunnel pre-theatre hordes, in to see Cats or Les Miz and never to return; 

A powerful, well-written memoir of the life, struggles, and triumphs of an ordinary man who decides to pursue a life in the culinary world. He's a passionate, open writer whose style I enjoyed immensely. Highly recommended for a peek into  this unique world of food preparation and the variety of people who inhabit it.

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:]

 O'Neill, Molly. Mostly True: A Memoir of Family, Food, and Baseball

Really insightful, funny memoir from the author who learned to cook and become a world-famous chef and food author, as she grows up in a family with five athletic brothers. (Previously reviewed here.)

 Happy reading.

Fred

[P.S. Click here to browse over 500 more book recommendations by subject or title and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader.]

 

Underfoot in Show Business

Hanff, Helene. Underfoot in Show Business. New York : Little, Brown & Co, 1960. Print.

First Sentences:

We'll begin with the law that governs the life of every one of the 999 from the day he or she first arrives in New York, which was first explained to me by a stage manager named Bill Flanagan. Flanagan's law of the theatre is:

               "No matter what happens to you, it's unexpected."

Description:

Helene Hanff, author of Underfoot in Show Business, is probably best known as the author and main character of her book, 84 Charing Cross Road.  But prior to this memoir of books and correspondence with a rare book dealer in London post-World War II, Hanff was an aspiring playwright in New York City. Her day-to-day hopes, meetings with producers and agents, struggles to find money to live, and interacting with friends in similarly tenacious circumstances in the theater world now are all wonderfully recollected in this delightful memoir.

Hanff entered a play-writing contest sponsored by the Bureau of New Plays with three submissions. She was later contacted by Terry Helburn of The Theatre Guild, a high-end group that produced new plays. Helburn told Hanff at their first meeting that "Your plays are terrible....Just terrible!....Never mind. You have talent." She had picked Hanff's plays out of the contest submissions (which Hanff did not win) and decided to help Hanff rework those plays so the Guild might produce them. 

So Hanff was enrolled in the Guild's seminar for new playwrights, which once included Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller. But the four current Guild-produced plays, including one by Lee Strasberg, all flopped, so Hanff's pieces never saw the stage. But she now had an in and was off and running.

Thus begins a world of Hanff where she took any sort of job that left time for writing (waitress, secretary, and play-reader who recommends works for production). These jobs leave time for daily visits to agents who send her scripts to producers. These producers in turn express interest in her new work, then, after weeks of inquiries from Hanff, reveal to her they had promptly forgotten about them. There's even a chapter explaining this process called, "If They Take You to Lunch, They don't Want Your Play."

Meanwhile, Hanff and her struggling actress friend Maxine learn to explore New York with little or no money. She explains how they sneak into every movie or play. For plays, they waited outside in the cold for the intermission, then mixed in and followed the real theater-goers inside, locating vacant seats to enjoy the second half. Sneaking into movies involved attending to the last showing and then walking in after the box office and ticket takers had closed for the night. One time, they even paid full price...with US mail stamps stolen from Hanff's office. Maxine came up with these plans due to her "unflagging imagination and the nerve of Naploeon."

One of Hanff's jobs entailed stuffing envelopes and mailing 10,000 publicity notices for the new American Folk Opera, "Away We Go." The title was changed at the last minute to..."Oklahoma."

It sounds fine to you: you're used to it. But do me a favor and imagine you're working in a theatre and somebody tell you your new musical is to be called "New Jersey." Or "Maine."

Then, after folding and stuffing several hundred press releases publicizing this play with its new title, it was decided that "Oklahoma" need an exclamation point. Since the title "Oklahoma" appeared three times in each press release, Hanff had to add 30,000 exclamation points by hand to the new releases.

She loved being an outside reader in 1947 where she read and summarized a play or novel every day and two on the weekend, receiving $6 per each summary. She explains how she can read (i.e., "skim") works to allow time for her own writing. One book, which appeared in three volumes, allowed her to double her usual fee:

What I read during that nightmare weekend--taking notes of all place names, characters' names and events therein--was fifteen hundred stupefying pages of the sticky mythology of J.R.R. Tolkien....and phoning several friends to say good-bye because suicide seemed so obviously preferable to five hundred more pages.

Of course, things eventually improve for Hanff but not in the theater world. Rather, she begins writing scripts for the new medium, television. Maxine got a job as the Blue Cheer detergent girl and convinced Hanff to take a job writing weekly Ellery Queen mystery stories at $200 a show. The difficulty was each show could only have five characters: Ellery Queen and his father, the murdered character, and two suspects, as well as two "five-liners" who could only speak five lines.

As you might guess, I loved immersing myself into the theater world of the 40's and 50s and beyond. Hanff is a exquisite tongue-in-cheek writer who clearly views her life and those around her with a clever, caustic, and very humorous eye. If you enjoy great writing, intimate look into the world of struggling playwrights and theater production, as well as life in New York City for struggling artists, then Underfoot in Show Business is definitely for you.

  

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:]

 Hanff, Helene. 84 Charing Cross Road

Hanff, a struggling, poor writer, wants to buy classic rare books unavailable in the United States, so contacts a used book dealer in London. Their witty, intelligent, and personal correspondence is delightful to read. 

 Happy reading.

Fred

[P.S. Click here to browse over 500 more book recommendations by subject or title and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader.]

 

The Man Who Listens to Horses

Roberts, Monty. The Man Who Listens to Horses: The Story of a Real-Life Horse Whisperer. New York: Random House 1996. Print.

First Sentences:

It all dates from those summers alone in the high desert, me lying on my belly and watching wild horses with my binoculars for hours at a time. Straining to see in the moonlight, striving to fathom mustang ways, I knew instinctively I had chanced upon something important but could not know that it would shape my life. In 1948 I was a boy of thirteen learning the language of horses.

Description:

It's not often you read about someone who observes conditions, comes up with a theory of how to improve the situation, and then successfully puts those techniques into practice. It is even more rare when the discoverer is a thirteen-year-old boy who patiently learns a secret and then successfully employs his new-found idea into practice in thousands of cases over the next decades, even demonstrating itin front of the Queen of England.   

 

Such a tale belongs to Monty Roberts and his fascinating work understanding the training of wild mustang horses as detailed in his autobiography, The Man Who Listens to Horses: The Story of a Real-Life Horse Whisperer. He was a horseman almost from birth, growing up on a ranch where his father was a nationally-acclaimed horse trainer. Monty won his first riding trophy at age four and gathered in more throughout his childhood, culminating with two national championships with his Cal Poly San Luis Obispo College rodeo team. He appeared in hundreds of movies as a stunt double starting at age four, later riding as Roddy McDowell, Mickey Rooney and Elizabeth Taylor (in National Velvet), Charleton Heston, Tab Hunter, and a "city-slicker" named James Dean. Monty was hired to train Dean to resemble a cowboy and they became great friends and business partners, so close that Dean's agent made his first call to Monty from the car wreck that claimed the actor's life).

 

What started Monty's career in horse-training centered on two situationss. First, he daily observed his father use age-old techniques of dominating and beating wild horses to "break" them and make them manageable. Monty felt there could be a more humane way of accomplishing this conditioning of wild, independent mustangs.

 

Second, at age thirteen he volunteered to round up several hundred wild horses for use in a local rodeo where contestants try to saddle and ride untamed animals. (These "untameable" horses afterwards were sold cheaply for slaughter at a meatpacking establishment.) Monty used his horse-gathering trip to learn how wild mustangs, a notably silent creature who rarely made noises in the wild, communicated with each other to keep order and unify their herd. This grouping of numbers was vital to the horses to protect themselves from predators, something a lone horse could not hope to accomplish alone on his own.

 

Monty watched while the dominant herd female dealt with a young troublemaking horse by making disapproving, direct eye contact, ear position, and turning her body away from him as a shield. This forced the recalcitrant animal to retreat yards away from the herd. The lead female maintained eye contact and body position for hours and even days, warning the other horse not to rejoin the herd until it was submissive. Submission was shown by the chastised animal lowering his head, making chewing motions, and sticking its tongue out.

 

Employing these mannerisms of disapproving eye contact, body position, and gentleness, Monty developed a technique he call "Join-Up" (rather than "breaking") for taming wild horses. He found by using unusual subtleties which mattered greatly to horses, he could train an unridden horse to calmly accept a bridle, saddle, and rider within 30 minutes, a task that took experienced horse trainers like his father several brutal weeks of aggressive restraint and beatings to accomplish.

Keeping my mouth closed invited the horse's discomfort, opening it slightly was fine. Opening a fist on the side of my body away from the horse drew him in, while opening a fist close to him sent him away. Fingers open stirred one response, fingers closed another. Hands above my head with fingers splayed provoked true panic....All this matters as the horse reads my body language and I red his....I can now enumerate about one hundred or more signs the horse will respond to.

Monty demonstrated his Join Up techniques on wild and unruly horses throughout America, even coming to the attention of Queen Elizabeth, a noted horse-lover. He gave the Queen several demonstrations and toured the British Isles to promote his gentle method. He even used his techniques to train wild deer and goats near his ranch, and got them to respond to his presence and instructions.

 

I really loved this book and was entranced by the man and his experiences on every page. He is such a great story-teller about a life full of adventure, observation, failures, and successes. I learned so much about horses and the "Equus" language Monty observed and was able to duplicate countless times for recalcitrant, untamed horses worldwide. He was a fearless rodeo rider, a dedicated husband and father, and a successful horse ranch designer and manager.

 

Truly, this is a man, a life, and a revolutionary technique worth reading about. Highest recommendation.  

  

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:]

Hillenbrand, Laura. Seabiscuit: An American Legend

Wonderful, compelling history of the discovery, training, racing career and worldwide publicity of one of America's most-winning horses. 

 Happy reading.

Fred

[P.S. Click here to browse over 500 more book recommendations by subject or title and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader.]

Mostly True

O'Neill, Molly. Mostly True: A Memoir of Family, Food, and Baseball. New York : Schribner 2026. Print.

First Sentences:

Every one of my five brothers was born to play ball. For a long time it wasn't clear which of the boys would make it to the major leagues, but we had no doubt that The One was among us. We were the chosen. I do not recall a single moment of my childhood in which I was not imagining my family;'s life -- or my own -- as an epic tale. 

Description:

Author/chef/restaurant critic Molly O'Neill was raised in Columbus, Ohio, the first of six children. Unfortunately, in her eyes, all five of her siblings were rough and ready boys. Each time her mother informed her that she was pregnant, they both tried everything they could think of to produce a girl. Yet the inevitable hospital call from her father was always the same: "You have a new little brother."

 

While her youngest brother, Paul, because a Hall of Fame player with the New York Yankees, Mostly True: A Memoir of Family, Food, and Baseball, is not a baseball book. The vast majority of the memories recounted are about Mollie, the narrator, as she survives living with her rowdy family of men and her once-wealthy, fastidious mother. 

 

Early on, Mollie is allowed to help her mother prepare complicated meals and desserts for the family including a fresh pie every day. Together, they also cooked lavish delicacies for last-minute parties hosted by a rich uncle living nearby who her mother dreamed would repay them with wealth one day for all these special meals (Spoiler alert: he didn't). When left on her own, Mollie continually let her curiosity and creativity take command in the preparation of various dishes...not just a few of which ended in splendid disaster.

 

As O'Neill grew into her college years, perfecting her culinary explorations and expanding her menus, she looked for a career that would allow her to keep preparing food. Meanwhile, she worked two jobs, volunteered, kept up with feminist literature, and attended anti-war rallies. She cooked every night for her roommates and a dozen or more friends who spontaneously stopped by for meals. 

 

She eventually landed in an Italian eatery in Provincetown, preparing salads and triumphing over the obstacles intentionally put in front of her by the owner who disliked her, such as lugging cases of products to storage. Shucking oysters was her Waterloo, struggling and struggling with the task until finally mastering it, earning the other cooks' respect.

 

Other restaurant stops followed, as well as a long friendship with Julia Child. A few of her articles on cooking gradually gave her a stellar culinary reputation and subsequently a job as food critic for The Boston Globe. Soon she was authoring her own cookbooks.

 

Of course, there is space for stories about her childhood with her brothers, watching with embarrassment as they terrorized the neighborhood with their yelling and flying balls. One neighbor refused to give back errant balls until he eventually packed to move and returned boxes of balls which he had collected. Her brothers even went through a period where they decided pooping in neighbors' yards was a thing, and encouraged this activity with other neighbor children. Each night after coming home from work, Mollie's father had to go to one or more neighbor's house to settle their complaints. 

 

The brothers regularly showed up at friends' houses and subtly coerced other boys to practically give away valuable baseball cards or risk the wrath of five O'Neill boys: 

[Their implied "consequences" left Pat] with a museum-quality collection of ten thousand cards and left most kids in Beechwold lousy with doubles of players who never made it past their rooking year....Pat was the brains. Mike was the muscle. Kevin and Robert were the foot soldiers.

Once, through her distraction, Mollie almost allowed her five-year-old brother, Paul, be killed by a car. Although instructed not to cross the street unless holding his hand, she had been absorbed in exploring a leaf fort in the park. Paul, seeing her, darted across the street to meet her and was hit. Eighteen hours of surgery to remove brain shards fixed him up. Of course, Mollie lied to her mother about what had happened:

"The nuns made me cross the street...They wouldn't let me stand there. I told him to wait for me. It's not my fault."

[Mollie noted] Of course, I had a distinguished history of lying to my mother. I lied to ease her worries, I lied to make her laugh. I lied to entertain us both. Under normal circumstances, I lied without compunction, without a second thought, and with significant elan.

Such are a few of the delightful recollections of O'Neill about her family life in Ohio and later in other cities. It's an engrossing memoir of the ups and downs of family, rebellion, goals, triumphs and failures as Molly climbed the ladder from eldest child to college radical to short order cook to critic and writer. Her inside thoughts, funny, wise, and always confident, are fully shared with us lucky readers as she tries to figure out and tackle each step in her life.

 

I loved it and highly recommend it to anyone who loves wry humor, family relationships, culinary arts, and simply great, warm, humorous writing. 

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:]

 Jackson, Shirley. Life Among the Savages

The really very funny memoir of the family life of this author who, despite her raising of children, still found time to write spell-binding novels and short stories (Previously reviewed here.)

 Happy reading.

Fred

[P.S. Click here to browse over 500 more book recommendations by subject or title and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader.]

  

First Light

 Wellum, Geoffrey. First Light. New York : Viking 2002. Print.

First Sentences:

There are some days in the early spring when the weather is such that, no matter where you are, either in town or countryside, England is at her best and it's good to be alive. I notice that it is just such a day as I emerge from the underground at Holborn, turn left, and walk down Kingsway....I am seventeen and a half years old and, I suspect, a rather precocious young man. It was some six months ago when I first wrote to the Air Ministry...and very much wanted to fly an aeroplans, so could they give me a job, please?

Description:

I've only been up in a small plane a couple of times, but the thrill and freedom of soaring in the air made a lasting impression. So I was captivated by the very personal memoirs of World War II RAF airman Geoffrey Wellum in this memoir First Light. 

 

In this compelling stream-of-consciousness book, Wellum details his adventures learning to fly for the RAF and then entering numerous combat and escort missions during the War...all starting at the ripe old age of 17 1/2 years old. (He lied about his age and got into the RAF, even though he had no knowledge of planes or how to fly). One month after entering RAF training, England entered the War, making Wellum's flight instruction more intense and rushed (and real).

 

Wellum and his fellow students are rushed into action before completing their training. Aerial combat exercises were never undertaken. Nevertheless, he is assigned to the newly-formed 92nd Squadron and, at 18, is by far the youngest pilot. Unlike the older, veteran 92nd squadron pilots, Wellum has no dog-fighting experience, much to the consternation of his commanding officer who feels Wellum will be useless for the foreseeable future. 

 

Wellum is shown for the first time a new Spitfire plane, much different from the bi-wing planes of his training and, with no instruction, told to take it up to get used to it. What follows is a harrowing take-off, flying, and landing sequences that Wellum feels are so bad they will bump him out of further training and the RAF completely. His first night landing is so far off course that he clips a landing tower and takes off one of his Spitfire's wings. 

 

And we readers are with him in the cockpit throughout these and all his future flights as he clearly, if nervously, narrates his thoughts, fears, and unwillingness to give up. We are with him post-missions in the officers' mess and local pubs where friendships are sealed and recently-departed comrades remembered. 

 

We are all young, all paddling the same canoe, and as the evening progresses [at the local bar] the certain knowledge that few, if any, of us will survive to see the end of the war bind us even closer together....the thought of the possibility of being killed is not unduly worrying or upsetting. One just ignores it. Each is convinced that it cannot possibly happen to him. 

 

Wellum and the 92nd Squadron begin flying missions to defend England from attacking German planes. Two, even three sorties are required each day, all of them exhausting, tense, and death-defying. We readers experience what such fighting, terror, confidence, and survival tractics a pilot experiences during these encounters. 

 

And Wellum loses his friends and fellow squadron companions on a regular basis. Sometimes they are seen being shot down; others simply fail to return from a mission. And still the flying missions continue.

 

As the War begins to turn, Wellum' squadron is assigned to escort huge British supply convoys across the Channel from England to France, providing air cover and dog-fighting with any German planes which try to attack these ships. Sometimes the loss of these British boats and their contents signal a huge setback to the troops in France, while others that Wellum helps slip through enemy fighters provide relief that bolsters the Allies' war effort. Longer and longer distances to each flight are required as Allied forces push deeper into France, requiring air support for all troop movement even all the way to Malta.

 

The narration is breath-taking in its clarity of each flying situation and how Wellum responds. Sometimes he almost panics, sometimes he gets lucky, and sometimes he draws on extraordinary calm skills to see him through the flight and back to base.

 

I was fully engrossed in this man and his adventures aloft, constantly reminding myself that he was only a teenager taking on these incredibly taxing, dangerous missions. Fortunately, Wellum took copious notes daily of his missions and thoughts, so his accounts of life in the RAF are highly detailed and personable, reflecting his and other pilot feelings about fighting the enemy in the sky:

Coupled with fear, I now also feel a sense of anger. What right has this German to fly his snotty little aeroplane over our England and try to kill me? Who invited him?....The bloody arrogance of it! Well, you'll not shoot me down you black-crossed sod. 

For anyone interested in flying, World War II dog-fighting, and aviation training along with the teamwork and execution of aerial missions, First Light is your book. Highly recommended. 

Often, after take-off and on the climb up, especially if we are top cover at 25,000 or more, a wonderful remote feeling of unreality seems to come over me. It's almost like a drug. Complete freedom from earthly worries or fears for the battle that will almost certainly develop after we cross the French coast. I just can't be bothered to get scared any more....I find it an environment of great beauty. It brings on a happiness and, almost, I look forward to the next operation before the one I'm on is finished. It's like getting your second wind.

  

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:]

 Dahl, Roald. Going Solo

The children's book author relates his adventures learning to fly in World War II and later entering combat missions in Africa and Greece. Riveting as he takes you right into the cockpit with him and tells you his thoughts throughout each step in his aviation and combat experiences. (Previously reviewed here.)

 Happy reading.

Fred

[P.S. Click here to browse over 500 more book recommendations by subject or title and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader.]

So Help Me Golf

Reilly, Rick. So Help Me Golf: Why We Love the Game. New York : Hatchett 2022. Print.

First Sentences:

When I was one, my family was staying at a mountain cabin in Evergreen, Colorado. Apparently, my dad had hit a rough patch with work and we had no place to live, so we stayed in my grandfather's vacation cabin until things turned around. 

Description:

Do you love or at least enjoy watching or playing golf? The sweeping fairways, the brilliant shot-making, the unbelievable escapes and shanks, and the colorful players themselves? Well, then, I've got the book for you:  Rick Reilly's So Help Me Golf: Why We Love the Game.

 

This is a collection of his very short pieces about his life playing and writing about golf. Each essay is only 2-4 pages, giving you an clear, often very funny insight into the workings of the game beyond the scores and standings found in general sports reporting. Reilly interviews the ordinary people as well as the stars behind each profile, giving a human touch to every story.

 

And oh, the things you will learn about the game and the figures who make it unique. Here are just a few examples from Reilly's interviews and research:

• Bob Gustafson played 536 rounds of golf in one year, usually about 63 holes a day, rain or shine, which he worked in before work, between job breaks for lunch, before dinner, and a quick nine after dinner;

• In a 1943 German Prisoner of War camp, Stalag Luft 3, American aviator pilots found a woman's 7-iron, pulled together scraps of string and rubber from their boots to make a small ball, and constructed a golf course. (This was the same Stalag where the Great Escape took place, with prisoners digging tunnels underground while others played golf above them.)

• Ricky Meissner, a journeyman player trying to qualify, learned he could make enough money to get to the next tournament by robbing a bank in the tournament town. In one year, he robbed 19 banks before being caught.

• Reilly, while preparing for his Mall of America book signing, noticed there were 200 chairs set up and ropes in place to control the lines of expected attendees. Food and beverage were available. But when he finally got started, only one scruffy man was sitting in the sea of chairs, urging Reilly to give his full presentation. When done, Reilly asked if he had any questions, and the man responded, "Can we eat them cookies?";

• On the Tour, the caddy of the winning player has to buy the other caddies a chicken dinner with beer, originating the phrase, "Winner, winner, chicken dinner."

• After falling from a horse following the second round, Mike Reasor, a 10-year Tour player was still required to play the final two rounds in order to qualify for automatic entry into the next tourney. With a separated shoulder, two torn ribs, and damaged knee ligaments, he went out on Saturday and Sunday with just a 5-iron and putter (those were the only clubs he could swing ...one-handed), and shot 123 and 114...but got his automatic entry into the next tourney;

• World Champion poker player Daniel Negreanu made a $500,000 bet with fellow pro poker player Phil Ivey that Negreanu, in one year, couldn't shoot an 80 on a chosen course. Negreanu took the bet, but ignored practicing for it for 11 months. Finally, in last-minute pratice, managed to shoot an 86. But with one week to go, he started a fantastic round that ended up with one putt on the final green to win that bet: a 5-foot putt worth $100,000 a foot; 

• RJ Smith of Minnesota went out every day with his wife to collect balls while she played (he did not like the game). He'd bring his haul back to their barn, sort them (by brand, number, style, as well as themed ones like NFL teams, Super Bowl balls, car manufacturers, etc.), and eventually collected over 70,000 balls carefully organized into egg cartons and crates.

Sorry to be so long in this review, but there were so many great, funny, off-beat stories to share with you I couldn't decide which ones to choose. Also included in the chapters are Reilly's own stories about his troubled relationship with his alcoholic father, an family environment that drove him to golf.

 

A well-written, humorous, easy-to-get-lost-in book that is perfect for these warmer days of spring and our own chance to get out on the course or at least watch the pros hit their magnificent shots. Enjoy. 

 

Will Rogers said. "Golf is good for the soul. You get so mad at yourself you forget to hate your enemies." 

 

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:]

 Reilly, Rick. Who's Your Caddy?

Author Reilly humorously documents the year he spent as a caddy for famous golfers and celebrities, recalling their wisdom, cheating, and his own ineptitude, all the while rejoicing in the beauty of the game of golf.

 Happy reading.

Fred

[P.S. Click here to browse over 500 more book recommendations by subject or title and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader.]

Shock

Dukakis and Tye, Larry. Shock: The Healing Power of Electroconvulsive Therapy. New York: Penguin 2007. Print.

First Sentences:

 

There is no treatment in psychiatry more frightening than electroconvulsive therapy. It works like this: Two electrodes are strapped to the patient's skull. The doctor presses a button that unleashes a burst of electricity powerful enough to set off an epileptic-like convulsion. The sheer strength of the seizure shocks the brain back into balance.

 

There also is no treatment in psychiatry more effective than ECT. 

Description:

 

Wow! Those are some mighty strong, challenging first few sentences which launch into Kitty Dukakis' (with Larry Tye) memoir of her depression, addictions, and Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) treatment. Her book is Shock: The Healing Power of Electroconvulsive Therapy. And in a world where I, along with probably many other people, only have knowledge of ECT (commonly referred to as "Electroshock") from films like The Snakepit, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and A Beautiful Mind, I felt it would be interesting to learn the facts behind this seemingly scary procedure and the patients who receive it. 

 

In those films, ECT is often used as a punishment rather than as a real treatment, nefariously meant to be administered to a recalcitrant patient. Results were portrayed as similar to a lobotomy, making patients passive, submissive, and quiet.

It was the medical madness of an earlier era, a remedy forever equated with thrashing limbs and obliterated memories. Now, at the same Harvard teaching hospital where Kitty Dukakis gets her treatment, twenty patients a week volunteer for shock therapy....Today [2007] the number of Americans getting ECT each year is almost 100,000 and growing.

The reality presented by Dukakis' spellbinding recollections of her personal ECT experience helps readers understand that this treatment can be highly beneficial for a great number of patients suffering from depression, suicidal thoughts, and addictions. Shock presents Dukakis' honest, often powerful recollections of her decades-long journeys into addiction (diet pills and later alcohol), overwhelming depression, and suicidal thoughts, as well as her experiences with various psychologists and prescribed medications. 

 

Dukakis first became addicted to diet pills when she was very young to achieve her mother's image of a slimmer daughter. She also received a tremendous energy boost from these daily tablets. Later, as she tried to kick that addiction, she began to rely on alcohol to blot out her overwhelming depression about her appearance. 

She soon lacked any of her former commitment to social programs, volunteering, and even family, remaining in bed for days, and was regularly found passed out in her vomit. As a governor's wife, she realized she was a danger to her politician husband, Michael's, campaign for president, but was helpless to overcome her mental illness.

[In 1988] I stopped showing up at my office. I spent all day at our duplex....I got up in the morning, waited for Michael to leave, then canceled all my appointments. I headed straight to the liquor cabinet in the dining room, carried the bottle into the kitchen, poured out three or four ounces of spirits, and gulped it down. Then I grabbed a newspaper or magazine, went upstairs, drew the blinds, unplugged the phone, and read for the ten minutes it took me to pass out. When I got up two hours later, I did it all again. 

When ECT was suggested to her as a last resort, she naturally was hesitant. But after undergoing her first treatment on her 38th wedding anniversary, she immediately felt lighter, less stressed, and with enough energy to go home that same day. She continued the normal series of five ECT treatments spread over the next weeks, finding she was much improved mentally for about eight months. After that time, she then began a new series. This became her regular pattern over the rest of her life.

 

There is one predictable drawback faced by Dukakis and other ECT patients: memory loss. Sometimes it is only portions of minor memories that are lost only for a few weeks. But for other patients, the loss might be of more important events and permanent. Dukakis completely forgot a romantic trip she took with husband Michael to Paris. Re-enacting that vacation, even staying in the same hotel and eating at the same restaurants, did not jog a hint of the old memory.

 

But that same memory loss side effect also included forgetting about those areas that troubled her into depression. She no longer could remember why she was insecure about her image and personality, could not conceive of the causes of her depression, nor remember her flawed behavior when under the influence of diet pills and alcohol.    

Co-author Tye, in alternate chapters, delves deeply into the historical background of these mental illnesses and ECT treatment, including its discovery and testing in 1938 (which first included putting patients into a medical coma). Tye interviews  doctors, psychiatric hospital staff, and patients themselves, presenting a well-rounded picture of individuals and research involved with these paralyzing and all-encompassing mental illnesses, as well as the changes brought about by ECT. He also examines the extreme backlash from many doctors, teaching hospitals, and public organizations who vocally denounce and actively work against the benefits of ECT.

 

Of course, as published in 2007, the medical treatments and advances in ECT presented in Shock make some data, both for and against ECT, possibly dated. But regardless, the confessions of Dukakis and others, her struggles, and her triumphs over crippling mental illness cannot be discounted.

 

I was swept away by her candid narration as well as Tye's medical and personal interview and research to provide a more clear picture of ECT and its affect, good and bad, on its patients. There were fascinating facts and personal assessments of this treatment on every page. 

I know it sounds strange to go on and on about this controversial treatment. But Dukakis' book is a must read for anyone interested in depression, addictions, psychiatric treatments, and impacts of individuals suffering from mental illness.

How one of the most reviled psychiatric procedures is fast becoming one of its mainstays is an astounding yet untold chapter of American medical history. 

 

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:] 

  

Mukherjee, Siddhartha. The Emperor of All Maladies  

In-depth research into the medical history and current status of all forms of cancer, treatments, and patients. Fascinating.

Happy reading.

Fred

 

Click here to browse over 475 more book recommendations by subject or title

(and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).