Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard

Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard is a solid work of nonfiction about the 1881 murder of President James Garfield. Millard in the book delves into Garfield's rise to the presidency, his shooting, and attempts to save his life, including the medical quackery practiced by his doctor that made the attack a fatal one.

Garfield was shot four months after his inauguration, by Charles Guiteau. He had been rebuffed in his attempts to be named ambassador to France, and believed that he would receive great acclaim for killing Garfield. Right after the shooting, doctors were sticking unsterilized fingers into the wound, probing unsuccessfully for the bullet and introducing infection more lethal than the bullet. Garfield then went under the care of Dr. Willard Bliss, who tightly controlled access to the president, keeping himself solely in charge of treatment. Bliss was a proponent of allopathy, or administering large doses of harsh medicines to counteract the original ailment. Joseph Lister at the same time was attempting to convince American doctors of the importance of antisepsis, preventing infection by destroying germs. Antisepsis means anything coming into the contact with the patient is sterilized, and was already applied with great success in Europe, but largely rejected in America, including by Bliss.

Millard also covers Alexander Graham Bell and his attempts to use his induction balance invention, a precursor to the x-ray machine, to find the bullet in Garfield. Bell was unsuccessful in part because Bliss commanded him to only search the part of the body where he incorrectly believed the bullet to be. Had Garfield been shot fifteen years later, x-rays would have found the bullet, and he would have been treated with antiseptic surgery, certainly surviving. Or, if he had been simply left alone after being shot, he would likely have survived, with the bullet remaining in his body, but without infection. It was noted how many injured during the Civil War just decades prior would miraculously survive seemingly cataclysmic injuries. They often didn't have access to care, so weren't treated by doctors who introduced germs and ultimately infection into their systems. 

Garfield spent two months at the White House, with his body wracked by infection and additionally shoddy care from Bliss, and when gravely ill, demanded to be moved to the coast, where he died two weeks later. Chester Arthur was sworn in as president, and Guiteau then hanged for murder.

The Devil Reached Toward the Sky by Garrett M. Graff

The Devil Reached Toward the Sky by Garrett M. Graff is an excellent book subtitled An Oral History of the Making and Unleashing of the Atomic Bomb. Graff covers in detail the events around the bomb, it's origins, building, dropping of it twice on Japan, and effects of that. It was developed for use against Germany, and the intensity of work was to get the bomb developed before Hitler could. Germany never came close to developing the bomb, in part due to antisemitism casting out of scientists, some of whom fled Europe and then were involved in the effort. Germany had dropped out of the war by the time of the bombings, which were done to save the lives of American soldiers who otherwise might have died in a ground invasion of Japan. 

The Manhattan Project to create the bomb was a science and math achievement, but also just as much an industrial manufacturing achievement, one conducted in secret. At the University of Chicago they showed the bomb could be possible, creating a chain-reacting pile of uranium. Hanford, WA was the site of the plutonium refinement plant, Oak Ridge, TN of uranium refinement, and Los Alamos, NM where the bomb was built. 75,000 people were working in and around Oak Ridge by the end of the war, over 8,000 at Los Alamos, and 45,000 at Hanford. 

The project director was General Leslie Groves and in charge of building the bomb was J. Robert Oppenheimer. Other drivers of the project were Vannevar Bush, head of the science effort, James B. Conant, president of Harvard, Enrico Fermi, a physicist who was deputy to Groves, Richard Feynman, Otto Frisch, and Edward Teller. Noted was how important "energy = mass X the speed of light," squared by Albert Einstein is. Graff covers Feynman highlighting the "atomic hypothesis, that all things are made of atoms, little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another."

The bomber wing was the 509th Composite Group, one, including transport supply aircraft, designed to fly a single weapon. They trained at Wendover Field at the Utah, Nevada state line. The bombs were dropped by B-29s, and airmen at first were reluctant to fly the B-29 as they were worried about its safety. To convince the men to fly the B-29, women, who weren't allowed to fly in combat, were recruited to fly it, and then when men saw this, they went ahead. After the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt in April 1945, Harry S. Truman became President and was told about the bomb, with the full description provided by Vannevar Bush. Germany surrendered May 8, and the Trinity test of the bomb was July 16 in a remote corner of the New Mexico desert. 

The first bomb was transported on the U.S.S. Indianapolis to Tinian, 40 square miles and 1,500 miles from Japan. The Enola Gay, piloted by Col. Paul Tibbets, was the plane that dropped on Hiroshima August 6, 1945, with Nagasaki three days later. The mission over Hiroshima was a textbook effort, that which dropped on Nagasaki was riddled with problems, including a switch from Kokura to Nagasaki as the target due to cloud cover and barely landing on Okinawa, the closest American base, while little fuel after dropping the bomb. 

In Hiroshima, 70,000 of the city's 76,000 homes were destroyed. Casualty reports had 66,000 dying in the initial blast and another 140,000 by the end of the year, roughly half the city's residents. Japan initiated surrender negotiations the day after Nagasaki, and then surrendered August 15, 1945. As people in the days and weeks and months after would suffer from radiation poisoning, the U.S. government denied that there were any lasting effects of the atomic explosions. In early 1946, New Yorker correspondent John Hershey traveled to Hiroshima, and then the August 31, 1946 issue of the magazine devoted the entire issue, 30,000 words, to covering what happened in the city. The book closes with the Albert Einstein quote "I do not know how the Third World War will be fought, but I can tell you what they will use in the Fourth... rocks."

Who is Government? by Michael Lewis

Who is Government? by Michael Lewis is a solid compilation book subtitled The Untold Story of Public Service. It came out of a series of essays done for The Washington Post, and features ten profiles of government employees by nine different writers, with Lewis providing the first and last essay.

“The Canary” by Lewis is about Christopher Mark, a former coal miner who led the development of industry-wide standards to prevent roof falls in mines. His work, accounting for all conditions in a given mine, led to 2016 being the first year of no U.S. mining roof fall fatalities. It’s a fascinating view into someone who studied mining engineering at Penn State and wound up working for the Bureau of Mines. 

“The Sentinel” by Casey Cep covers Ronald E. Walters of the National Cemetery Association. It details what’s done on behalf of military veterans after they pass away, and how each is entitled to a military funeral, regardless of where or how they died. Walters is in charge of this effort, including maintaining cemeteries around the world and online records of veterans who have died. It’s a wonderful story about the pursuit of excellence for an important cause. 

“The Searchers” by Dave Eggers is about employees at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory looking for the extraterrestrial life that they’re confident is out there. They’re searching for exoplanets, or planets outside our solar system, that can support life, either intelligent life or even just bacteria. One of those profiled is Nick Siegler, the chief technologist for NASA’s exoplanet program. He was a chemical engineer, working in industry, and then at 32 applied and was accepted to Harvard’s Special Students program, and then 43 when he completed his PhD and started at NASA. 

“The Number” by John Lanchester details the consumer price index produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and includes mention of the misery index, the unemployment rate plus inflation. It’s noted how a high misery index almost always correlates with the political party holding the White House losing it. The exception to this was the 2024 election, where the misery index was low, but food inflation was talked about in the news to the point where people felt it a huge problem. 

“The Equalizer” by Sarah Vowell profiles Pamela Wright of the National Archives and Records Administration, and her efforts as the NARA Chief Innovation Officer to make records available for people, particularly online. Reference is made to History Hub on the NARA website, where people can submit a query and it will be answered by NARA archivists, federal staffers, and citizen volunteers, a Google search done by people. Also noted is how census records are made public 72 years after the fact, to protect privacy, and the information that people can gather on their ancestors. Mentioned as well is the staff of the National Archives are responsible for physically protecting the actual Constitution.

“The Free-Living Bureaucrat” by Michael Lewis covers Heather Stone of the Food and Drug Administration. There’s a fascinating story within about rare diseases, and how those who contract them are underserved because the disease too rare to warrant pharmaceutical company focus. Lewis writes about Walter and Amanda Smith, and their daughter Alaina. At the age of five she had a medical emergency where she seemed to suffer a seizure. Doctors diagnosed her with epilepsy, but then after her family demanded an MRI, an infection was found in her brain, one caused by her having Balamuthia, an amoeba that can enter the brain through dust and consume it. When they received this information, fewer than 200 cases had been reported worldwide, and 95% of the people infected had died from it. Heather was working in the FDA and developed and was trying to promote use of a tool to catalog treatments of rare diseases. CURE ID was designed not to be about methods that had gone through the approved for public use process, but anecdotal information that could help people learn from what others in their situation did. There’s some half a dozen cases a year of Balamuthia reported in the U.S. and the treatment that the Smiths had available for their daughter was a poor blend of cocktails, ones that just made her sick. Amanda heard about a drug out of China that might be effective at treating Balamuthia and created a LinkedIn account through which she found Heather Stone's name and called her. Stone knew of a supply of pills in California and arranged for them to ship to Dallas where Amanda's daughter was. Also, Stone obtained a letter from the FDA’s review division saying that the receiving hospital could provide the pills, extending Alaina's life.

Lloyd McNeil's Last Ride by Will Leitch

Lloyd McNeil's Last Ride by Will Leitch is a nice novel that starts with the main character, Lloyd, an Atlanta police officer with a thirteen-year-old son, Bishop, finding out he has just months to live. 

Lloyd comes from a police family, with his father having been a tough as nails Major, but he's a beat cop focused on trying to help people through his job. As Atlanta citizens would would record with their phones he and other police at work, Lloyd would regularly assume the persona of Happycop, your friendly neighborhood officer.

After finding out about the brain tumor that would soon kill him, Lloyd worries about how to provide for Bishop after he's gone, and comes up with the idea to accomplish this by dying in the line of duty. The book both funny and a lovely story about family, legacy, and what people will do for one another. 

Similar to two other novels from Leitch, How Lucky and The Time Has Come, it's a short book that's also memorable for the heart it has.

Isola by Allegra Goodman

Isola by Allegra Goodman is a captivating novel that begins in 1531 with twelve-year-old Marguerite, whose mother died during Marguerite's both, and father at war when she three. Her guardian was her father's cousin, Roberval, and Marguerite lived with her nurse Damienne, and friend Claire, with Claire's mother her teacher. 

Roberval was a sea-faring man, who would go on voyages at the king's behest. He began to take Marguerite's family money, first renting out the property where she lived, forcing her to stay in guest bedrooms, When Marguerite was seventeen, he decreed that she and Damienne would join his voyage across the Atlantic to the new world. Roberval considered himself a man of God, and gave Marguerite psalms to study and would test her piety while treating her poorly as a source of amusement. 

While on the ship, Marguerite developed a relationship with Roberval's secretary, Auguste, who had been instructed to stay away from her. To punish them, Roberval had the two, along with Damienne, abandoned with meager supplies and weapons on an island off the far north coast of North America. 

 Left to fend for themselves, the three hunted for birds, scavenged eggs, and fished. By September, the leaves had changed color and it turned cold, so they lived in a cavern for the winter. Auguste died while Marguerite pregnant, and she killed a polar bear that had scavenged his body. The baby was born in the spring, and died of malnourishment. In summer, Marguerite and Damienne saw Roberval's ships and signaled, but the ships continued on, leaving the two banished. Damienne in autumn accidentally cut herself and died of infection. Marguerite later killed a second polar bear, cutting off and keeping its claw. 

As her supplies dwindled further, Marguerite saw two open boats anchored, and men that came ashore. She convinced them to let her come onboard for the voyage back to France. The other of the two boats was lost at sea, and Marguerite after her arrival found that Roberval had sold her estate. She reconnected with Claire and Claire's mother, and met the Queen, who gave money for she, Claire, and Claire's mother to start a school for girls. Roberval attempted to get at some of these funds, and was rebuffed by Marguerite. While it would have been nice if the revenge on Roberval were more pronounced, it's a good book, a page turner.

Run for the Hills by Kevin Wilson

Run for the Hills by Kevin Wilson is a fun novel by the author of the excellent Nothing to See Here. His latest work of fiction starts with a farmer in Tennessee, Mad Hill, having a visitor arrive, Rube Hill, a writer from Boston. Rube who he says that he believes Mad is his half-sister, with their father having abandoned each of them with no future contact, and subsequently starting new families. 

The two embark on a cross-country road trip in Rube's rented PT Cruiser to find and talk with their father, and pick up along the way two additional half-siblings who their dad also left, college basketball star Pep and fifth-grader Tom. The story features an entertaining romp from the farm in Tennessee to Oklahoma, Pep's NCAA tournament game in Austin, Salt Lake City, and finally Woodside, California. The four half-siblings meet their now seventy-year-old father and his newest child, two-year-old Rooster. 

The relationship between Mad, Rube, Pep, and Tom grows each step of the way across the country, with them protecting each other and there for one another. Tom is described as having gone from feeling like he all alone, orphaned by his father, to having three siblings with him, and then a fourth in young Rooster. 

It's not obvious in the beginning of the book that it's going to be about the connections made, but that gradually takes shape and is revealed through the story told well by Wilson.

Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reed

Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reed is a compelling novel set both in space and on earth. It jumps back and forth in time, both when astronaut candidates are training, and when several are on the space shuttle.

The book begins in 1984 with main character Joan Goodwin of NASA in Houston as the CAPCOM, the one person communicating with astronauts on a 1984 mission. She's in contact with Vanessa Ford on the shuttle, who needs to try to get back home after two died and two were critically injured, with the shuttle saved by the actions of Lydia Danes before she went unconscious. Mention is made of the loop, where people outside of NASA can listen to the live audio from mission control, with that audio then reported around the world in an emergency situation. 

Goodwin was an astronomer and it's solid writing on how she connects with Danes. Ford is the other main character, with her coming to NASA wanting to pilot the shuttle, but not a military pilot so there as an aeronautical engineer. 

The women were part of NASA's first training group with females, and much of the book is set earlier in time, with them as astronaut candidates. The relationship between Goodwin and Ford in detailed, and there's a lot about Goodwin's sister Barbara and young niece Frances. The part where Goodwin professes to Frances how she will always be there for her is beautiful, and the ending similarly lovely. Also, blurbs are provided by the writers Kristin Hannah and Andy Weir, and Jenkins Reed makes mention of how helpful to the writing of the book was Paul Dye, former NASA flight director and author of Shuttle, Houston.

Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson

Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson is a solid work of nonfiction, with abundance defined as us having enough of what we need to create lives better than what we had. The book notes transportation, health, housing, and energy as building blocks of the future, and that we must build and invent more of what we need. 

The unaffordability and shortage of housing in America is described as perpetuated by a Not in My Backyard approach from people who already own homes, making it difficult to build affordable new housing. Particularly in California, projects are difficult to complete, as they're often hobbled by special interest groups. Rules and regulations, many of them environmental, from the 1970s have prevented urban-density and green-energy projects that would help alleviate problems today. 

Conservatives don't recognize when government is needed, as government must fund risky technologies whose payoff is social rather than purely economic, and liberals focus too much on protecting and preserving rather than building. 

Chapters from the book include:

Chapter one: Grow - Homelessness is a housing problem, and Lawn-Sign Liberalism is characterized by believing that all lives matter, but not wanting affordable housing around you. 

Chapter two: Build - Lawsuits are an overused took that prevents growth, and what starts as well-intentioned can become a roadblock to good. 

Chapter three: Govern - Rules and regulations, even when created for good reasons, make things difficult.

Chapter four: Invent - We need government to fund invention, with the COVID vaccine a perfect example.

Chapter five: Deploy - It's the delivery mechanisms that matter.

Conclusion - Abundance is liberalism, but it's a liberalism that builds.

Fever Beach by Carl Hiaasen

Fever Beach by Carl Hiaasen is another fun and entertaining novel by the author, whose books include Razor Girl, Squeeze, Me, Skink: No Surrender, Bad Monkey, Star Island, Nature Girl, Skinny Dip, Basket Case, Sick Puppy, Lucky You, Native Tongue, and Stormy Weather.

Unsavory and inept characters in Fever Beach include Dale Figgo, a dumb as a fencepost white supremacist leader of his group Strokers for Liberty, Claude and Electra Mink, the elderly right-wing politician funding racists who run a corrupt foundation whose benefactors include the Wee Hammers, a housing scam with the construction provided by children, and politician Clure Boyette, a cheating on his wife womanizer in office because of his father.

The likable and on the side of good characters in the book are Viva Morales, an employee of the Minks and renter of Dale's in the house owned by his mother, Galaxy, the 25-, but purported to be 17,-year-old escort that has dirt on Boyette, and Twilly Spree, the prone to dramatic acts of violence environmentalist who gets involved with Morales and sets his sights on taking down Figgo and his efforts.

My Friends by Fredrik Backman

My Friends by Fredrik Backman is a lovely novel that features the characters of Joar, Ali, Ted, KimKim (the artist), and Louisa. Also important to the story are Christian (a twenty year old budding artist and school janitor) and his mom (an art teacher at a university).

The book begins with a meeting between the artist as an adult in the final days of his life and Louisa as a just turned eighteen year old orphan who has recently lost her best friend. It then turns into a journey by Ted and Louisa, with Ted telling the story of the childhood friendship shared twenty-five years prior by Joar, Ali, Ted and the artist.

A central part of the story is a famous painting done by the artist (known as C. Jat, the initials of Christian and his friends), with The One of the Sea his first work when he fourteen years old and including his three friends as tiny figures in the painting. Backman writes very well about connections and My Friends covers friendship, finding your people ("one of us"), and life coming full circle. The four were damaged souls from difficult homes who found each other. They grow to share a language with each other, including "Here!" "Tomorrow!" and "I love you and I believe in you."

Joar was focused on the artist becoming a successful painter so he could escape their town and his difficult life. The start of the artist's painting career was also triggered by meeting Christian, who said to paint like the birds sing and the best art is painting not what you see, but what you feel. Later, the artist would describe his work as painting the way his friends laughed. When the four friends were young, they broke into a museum and hung The One of the Sea on the wall, which brought Christian's mother into their lives, and would become circled back on at the end. One thing about the the book is it feels at times to be going a direction, then surprises you.

The Emerald Mile by Kevin Fedarko

The Emerald Mile by Kevin Fedarko is a really good book subtitled The Epic Story of the Fastest Ride in History Through the Heart of the Grand Canyon. Fedarko details both a 1983 wooden dory trip 277 miles down the Colorado River, one intended by Kenton Grua and two others to set the mark for fastest float through the Canyon, and the potentially cataclysmic events at the dam upstream that made the speed run possible. 

Huge El Niño rains in 1983 causing the water level at Lake Powell, held back from the Colorado River by the Glen Canyon Dam, to rise to within feet of its top. Lake Powell holds some nine billion gallons of water and the dam supplies power for many parts of the west. The book also details the harnessing of water for electricity, citing that dams covered almost every major river except the Yellowstone, including twenty-nine on the Mississippi, thirty-six on the Columbia, and forty-two on the Tennessee. 

The Glen Canyon Dam was built with spillway tunnels on either side, but it was discovered that cavitation had occurred in the tunnels, with repeatedly high water pressure straining the concrete, causing water to go into the bedrock. Rocks and dirt then further damaged the tunnels and were tossed into the river. 

It was never said in the book that the dam at risk of failing, like in the Johnstown tragedy of 1889 where thousands died, but even lesser possibilities included things that could have been calamities, ranging from overtopping of the dam to the bedrock eroding so much that water from Lake Powell make its way around the dam. Engineers had plywood put up to raise the height of the dam by several feet while the spillway problem could be worked on, and released huge amounts of water into the Colorado River. 

This created the largest flow of water down the river in a generation, making conditions dangerous for rafters, and tantalizing for Grua and the two others on The Emerald Mile. The trip down the river is typically several weeks and they finished in just over thirty-six hours, breaking the prior speed record by more than ten hours.

Fedarko provides a detailed and interesting account of the float down the river, events at the dam, including the engineering experts who worked the crisis, and the Grand Canyon itself. He writes of how remarkable it is, and how river trips often feature side hikes, with guides talking about the geology of the Canyon. 

Framed by John Grisham and Jim McCloskey

Framed by John Grisham and Jim McCloskey is a solid nonfiction work with ten stories of wrongful arrest, conviction, and imprisonment, with five by each man. McCloskey works with Centurion Ministries, a group dedicated to exonerating innocent people wrongly convicted, and Grisham is on the board of directors of both Centurion and the Innocence Project. There are twenty-three defendants across the ten wrongful conviction stories, with four that were on death row, two who came within days of being executed, and one who was. 

Three of the stories to highlight are that of Todd Willingham, Joe Bryan, and the Norfolk Four. Willingham was put to death by the state of Texas for the house fire that took the lives of his three children, examined by David Grann for The New Yorker with the piece "Trial by Fire: Did Texas Execute an Innocent Man?" Joe Bryan was arrested for the murder of his wife Mickey in Clifton, Texas, where Joe was a principal, away at a conference at the time of the murder. The Norfolk Four features police concocting stories of what they believe happened, and then fitting evidence that fits their theories, ignoring evidence that disproves them. As new evidence would come to light disproving a police theory in the case, they would arrest another as an accomplice, and create a new theory. Then once that theory was disproved, they would arrest another purported co-conspirator and create a new made-up narrative. 

Police in these cases were often desperate to show their small towns that the killer not at large, and other examples of shoddy, malicious, or illegal police work included the following...

- Long interrogations and convincing people that maybe they did commit the crimes while sleepwalking. 

- Medical examiners who seem to specialize in autopsies that tell whatever story police want to be told.

- Jailhouse informants put in as cellmates for the purpose of them "hearing a confession."

- Hiding of evidence, that which was legally required to make available to the defense.

- Relying on shoddy work around areas like bloodstain analysis or fire investigation.

The stories of police misconduct in the ten stories are horrifying, and illustrate the importance of people asserting their Miranda rights so they not interviewed without a lawyer present.