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"The Devil Reached Toward the Sky" by Garrett Graff

If you haven’t read an oral history before, it’s like flashing through comments that sometimes follow an online article. Only with a difference: you don’t see those back-and-forth arguments that always seem to break out among those commenting.For Garrett Graff, it’s his third oral history effort. After 9-11 (The Only Plane in the Sky) and D-Day (When the Sea Came Alive), this time it’s the creation and delivery of the atomic bomb during World War II.The Devil Reached Toward the Sky follows the first conceptualization by European physicists to the destruction that occurred at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.One of the unique powers of oral history is the way that it puts you back in the footsteps and experiences of the people who lived these events firsthand before they knew the outcome, said Graff.Narrative history often makes events seem neater and simpler than they felt to anyone who was living them at the time, stated Graff. Reading through quotes delivered by major players of the time allows readers to feel the uncertainty that existed while the world was at war. Once it became clear—to the scientists, anyway—of the potential destructive power of atomic energy, the race was on. Physicists from across Europe, many of them Jewish and fleeing for their lives as Nazi power expanded, came to the United States with the hope that their work wouldn’t be too late—that Hitler wouldn’t get the bomb first.Graff noted that sometimes the story of the Manhattan Project tends to center only on the Los Alamos outpost. The war was won by the vast industrial effort that went into the bomb’s creation, said the author. Just as important as the New Mexico lab where the first bomb was detonated were “secret cities” developed in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and Hanford, Wash., sites where thousands worked on developing the materials needed to create an atomic reaction, he said.As a native Vermonter, Graff compared the process of converting 4,000 pages of quotes and notes down to 500 to making maple syrup. “You just boil and boil,” he said of the editing process involved. When all the boiling was done, you’re still left with some 500 voices to relate the process, both scientifically and militarily, that brought about the bomb.The oral history approach empowers the reader with the ability to skim at record speeds, choosing to skip passages at will to get to later developments. However you tackle the work, there’s a lot of history to consider. Graff said the atomic bombs represented the final part of a fierce U.S. bombing campaign that included that single night in March 1945 when 100,000 people died in the firebombing of Tokyo, the most destructive single day of a war that killed so many. A total of 66 Japanese cities were firebombed in U.S. B-29 raids before Hiroshima and Nagasaki.There’s a section of the book devoted to the transport of the bomb. The U.S.S. Indianapolis, a cruiser back in the States for repair after a kamikaze attack off Okinawa, carried off the mission but was sunk by a Japanese submarine four days later. Of the nearly 1,200 on board, only 316 survived. The survivors spent four days and five nights in the water. Graff includes two quotes to close the chapter: “The Indianapolis was the last major ship to be lost during the war and the greatest single disaster in the history of the Navy,” said Col. Kenneth Nichols.“If the Indianapolis had been sunk with Little Boy (the bomb) aboard, the war could have been seriously prolonged,” said Luis Alvarez, the Nobel-Prize-winning physicist.As for his next project, Graff said it wouldn’t be an oral history or cover an aspect of WWII. Right now, he’s leaning towards writing about the preservation of history in this country. “As America approaches its 250th anniversary, its history is under attack right now,” he said.

"America America" by Greg Grandin

When you get through reading America America by Greg Grandin, a Yale University history professor, you have to wonder what might have been when it comes to U.S. policies regarding Latin America over the years.Grandin figures that Washington had a hand in 16 regime changes in Latin American countries between 1961 and 1969. He goes into great detail outlining U.S. involvement in countries like Cuba, Nicaragua, and Brazil.While U.S. officials are interfering with Latin American governments, many of the rest of us in this country are ignoring the countries and people south of the border.All too often, it’s portrayed as a region plagued by economic instability, drug cartels, and death squads. The Trump Administration, after all, is going to great pains and expense to stress the region’s problems.Grandin received the Pulitzer Prize for The End of the Myth, his previous book about the U.S. frontier, and the relentless drive that pushed people west. But an all-out surge to take over territory isn’t the way it worked in South America.Grandin details centuries of turmoil, bloodshed, and diplomacy in Latin America that have shaped the laws that govern the modern world. Despite the struggles and slaughter of millions over the years, Latin America clings to a social democratic tradition, principles worthy of the United Nations.Grandin writes that Latin America has helped develop the notion that nations have common interests and that cooperation is preferable to competition.The United States hasn’t always been the imperialist meddler. Grandin recalls Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Good Neighbor Policy” in the 1930s and 1940s, a period that involved mutual respect and admiration. FDR’s VP Henry Wallace (replaced by Truman for the 1944 election) talked about raising the wages of the common man on his triumphant swing through Latin America in 1943. “(Latin Americans) didn’t think Roosevelt would run in 1944. They thought Wallace was going to be president,” said Grandin.Instead, the postwar period brought the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe. Latin America got left out when it came to the billions the U.S. was spending around the world. If South American countries wanted private capital, they needed to assure investors that it was safe to do so, said Marshall. As a result, Latin American regimes turned oppressive. Dissent was stifled. By 1950, nearly the entire region of Latin America was ruled by brutal men,” noted Grandin, citing dictators such as Batista (Cuba), Trujillo (Dominican Republic), Duvalier (Haiti), Odria (Peru), and Somoza (Nicaragua). “All were faithful to the U.S.,” added Grandin.Mexico. With its strong commitment to sovereignty, it plays a central role in the history that Grandin relates. “Mexico’s Constitution was the world's first social democratic constitution, the first constitution to recognize not just individual rights, but social and economic rights. The right to dignity, to a pension, health care, and education,” stated the author.Grandin also had praise for Claudia Sheinbaum, the first woman president of Mexico. “She has the support of 60 percent of the population. The people love her,” he said. 

"The World's Greatest Detective and Her Just Okay Assistant" by Liza Tully

Liza Tully’s previous literary effort was a grim thriller set in Siberia. “It was a suspense novel, but I realized it was very dark,” she said.The author, who wrote Finding Katarina M under the pseudonym Elisabeth Elo, decided to follow that with something a little lighter. The result? The feel-good mystery, The World’s Greatest Detective and Her Just Okay Assistant.Her latest effort teams Aubrey Merritt, “a brilliant Boomer detective," with Olivia Blount, “an ambitious Gen Z assistant.” Together, the pair repair to the lavish Wild Goose Resort in Vermont to solve a murder—or is it suicide? The clues are there for the reader to come to his or her own conclusion, said Tully, who worked as an editor at a children’s magazine before turning to fiction writing. She’s also worked as a project manager at a tech company and as a counselor at a halfway house. A lover of mysteries, particularly those of Agatha Christie, Tully said she followed the approach used by Christie, saving the concluding chapter in her book for “the big reveal,” where the detective lays out her case, lists the clues, and names the suspect.Tully noted that in the world of mysteries today, she plays it pretty straight in the publishing world that now offers a wide variety of mystery categories—such as historical, psychological, hard-boiled, and others. The “cozy mystery” category usually involves “amateur detectives and cats,” she said.The fact that so many books get published in this country each year—as many as one million titles by one estimate—might give one pause to someone trying to corral readers. But Tully said the fact that so many books are published “is a sign of a free and healthy society.”Tully, who lives outside Boston with her family, taught classes at Harvard and Tufts before attending night classes at Boston College, a schedule that allowed her to write during the day. As far as her present writing routine goes, “I’ll start at noon and go until four or five,” she said.As for her intake of books, Tully loves mysteries but said she often reads those with a critical eye, judging style and substance as she shapes her own future efforts. “For my own pleasure, I tend to read non-fiction. It allows me to learn things that I didn’t know before,” said Tully, citing All the Beauty in the World by Patrick Bringley, a 2023 memoir of a museum guard, as an example.  

"Nightmare in the Pacific" by Michael Doyle

Michael Doyle's Nightmare in the Pacific is a book about an aspect of World War II you probably haven’t heard before: the saga of Artie Shaw, the big-band leader who took his group on a whirlwind tour of the Pacific in 1942-1943.What makes this story so interesting are the characters involved: Artie Shaw, himself, the motley group of band members that Shaw recruited himself, as well as figures from the worlds of the military and show business. Even before the United States joined the war, Shaw exhibited erratic behavior. At the top of his game in 1939, riding the success of big-band swing and a hit recording of Cole Porter’s “Begin the Beguine,” Shaw abruptly walked away from the bandstand, disappearing from sight to spend six weeks in Mexico without telling anyone of his whereabouts. That was a characteristic of Shaw’s, said Doyle. He would walk away from difficult situations throughout his life. Married eight times (among his brides: movie queens Lana Turner and Ava Gardner), Shaw often turned off the people who were closest to him.“He was probably a musical genius, but he was also prickly, short-tempered, and driven, Doyle noted. Shaw’s epic Pacific roadshow had him playing in Hawaii for several months before heading out to sea where Navy Band 501 played aboard ships, aircraft carriers, as well as indoor and outdoor venues in Guadalcanal, Australia, New Zealand, and islands in between. By all accounts, the band delivered regularly, sharing the hits of the day including his trademark tune "Nightmare," providing entertainment appreciated by military personnel who faced danger far from home.“Artie had traveled, by some accounting, 68,000 miles throughout the Pacific,” related Doyle in his book. “He had ducked into foxholes and hidden from bombs. He had felt his stomach lurch at sea and in the turbulent air. He had been bedside with the dying, and he had entertained admirals, generals, and foreign dignitaries. He had been cheered by thousands, and he had charmed the president’s wife,” he noted.And Shaw also had a nervous breakdown that ended his tenure as wartime bandleader. By 1944, Shaw was back in the States, trying to clear his head. The band, incidentally, kept playing under the guidance of Sam Donahue, a sax player with the band. The group was sent to play before military crowds in England. They soon became popular favorites, even beating the esteemed Glenn Miller Band in a battle-of-the-bands competition (before Miller lost his life when his airplane went down in the English Channel).As for Shaw, the post-war music scene brought change. It no longer made economic sense to take 20 musicians on the road. Following the trend that dictated smaller musical groups, Shaw formed the Gramercy Five. But in 1954 he decided to put away his clarinet and walk away from performing completely (save for a brief late-in-life resurrection). He took up sharpshooting as a hobby and appeared occasionally on the What’s My Line TV show.“As much of a jerk he could be, he had integrity,” said Doyle of Shaw, a musician who didn’t want to spend the last 50 years of his life playing “Begin the Beguine.”In his own 370-page autobiography, Shaw only devoted three pages to his wartime experiences. Doyle corrects that oversight. 

"The Age of Choice" by Sophia Rosenfeld

A new book looks at the short history of the freedom of choice.Some of us have more choices than we’ve ever had—from what to buy and where to live and whom to love, even what to believe--but how did that come about? That’s the basis of the book Sophia Rosenfeld has written, called The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life.Rosenfeld said she wanted to find those times when the early forms of choice were taking shape—when you could marry whomever you wanted, shop for what you might need, and vote as you saw fit. “I tried to find the moments when the practice was new,” she said.We haven’t always had so many choices, said Rosenfeld, a professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania. The dance card is one example, as viewed by the author, of a measure of freedom that emerged in the 18th century, developed in the 19th century, and largely disappeared by the early 20th century. "Once, though, dance cards had a real function," Rosenfeld noted. Designed mostly by men and used mostly by women, the cards facilitated decision-making in the ballroom. A lady could show that her dance card was already full, but "the expectation for the woman was a yes," she said.The process was formal and may seem restrictive by today's standards, but it marked a step forward in the age of choice. “Rosenfeld demonstrates how modern societies have made the ability to choose the hallmark of freedom, whether in the marketplace, in ideas and belief systems, in courtship, in voting, in feminist and other rights-oriented politics, or in the social and behavioral sciences. But as we learn from Rosenfeld, this equation of choice with freedom can often exclude rather than empower,” said Lizabeth Cohen, author of A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America.Moving from the seventeenth century to today, Rosenfeld pays particular attention to the lives of women, those often with the fewest choices, who have frequently been the drivers of this change.