The German Genius: Europe’s Third Renaissance, the Second Scientific Revolution, and the Twentieth Century by Peter Watson

A quarter millennium of rich intellectual history reassessed

British historian, novelist, and journalist Peter Watson has published over two dozen books over the past 50 years. He is best known for his nonfiction books on intellectual history or the history of ideas. Rather than tell the history of the world through its wars, dynasties, and diplomacy, Watson examines world history through the arts, sciences, literature, and social sciences. In his 2010 book The German Genius, Watson explores the prodigious intellectual achievements of Germanic Europe, a realm that includes not just Germany but other German-speaking lands, including Prussia, Austria, and parts of Switzerland, Poland, the Czech Republic, Denmark, and more. The book covers a time span from 1750 to the present. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Germany (collectively speaking) led the world in a vast assortment of scholarly disciplines: philosophy, physics, biology, medicine, mathematics, chemistry, engineering, literature, history, sociology, psychology, and music to name a few. Germany’s intellectual profile took the ultimate turn for the worst in the 20th century, however, with the Nazi atrocities of World War II and the persecution of academics under that authoritarian regime. Watson examines how this nation stacked with geniuses fell from the zenith to the nadir of intellectualism, and how that fall has affected Germany’s intellectual legacy.

I had previously read Watson’s 2022 book The French Mind, in which he gives a similarly comprehensive, centuries-spanning overview of French thought and culture. I would assume his latest book, The British Imagination, does the same for the UK, but I haven’t yet read it. The German Genius is a better book than The French Mind, which tried too hard to advance a specific thesis and was only partially successful. The German Genius mostly just lets the Germans’ achievements speak for themselves. While The French Mind pushed a very feminist argument, feminists will not be happy at all with The German Genius, where maybe five women are mentioned for every thousand males. In both his French and German studies, Watson makes the convincing case that Britain and the United States could learn a thing or two from the way these cultures view the world.

Of course, the elephant in the room is the Third Reich. Watson doesn’t excuse or deny in any way the evils perpetrated by the Nazis or the horrors of the Holocaust. He calls out many scholars and intellectuals who supported the Nazis. The question Watson grapples with in this book is to what extent should the Nazis’ wrongs negate German achievements before and after the Third Reich. He traces a continuum of intellectual cause and effect from Immanuel Kant to the present day. Romanticism led to inwardness, which led to cultural pessimism. Social Darwinism led to nationalism and antiSemitism. The horrors of the Nazi years are a part of this continuum, not removed from it, but how much of this spectrum of thought should be darkened by that black mark, and where exactly is the line of demarcation? Friedrich Nietzsche’s work had philosophical value, for example, but was co-opted and misconstrued by the Nazis, thus tainting his name. Martin Heidigger, on the other hand, was a willing collaborator with the Nazis. Does that render his philosophy totally invalid?

Watson asserts that, because of animosity generated by the World Wars, many Germans who made important contributions to knowledge and society have undeservedly fallen into obscurity. He even includes an appendix on 35 semi-forgotten Germans we should all know better. Watson also points out the important contributions to American and British science, arts, and culture made by German immigrants who fled the Nazi regime.

Watson is really great at writing these sweeping historical syntheses. He summarizes vast quantities of information and explains complex concepts in engaging and accessible prose, all the while pointing out interesting connections and drawing insightful conclusions. I come away from each of his books with a long list of interesting people, ideas, and books to explore further. I enjoy Watson’s books so much, I purposefully read them slowly too make them last longer. I would suggest starting with his worldwide histories Ideas and The Modern Mind before venturing into his regional studies like The German Genius and The French Mind.

Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction by Alec Nevala-Lee

Fascinating tetrabiography of sci-fi luminaries

John W. Campbell (1910–1971) was the longtime editor of Astounding Science Fiction magazine. Isaac Asimov once called him “the most powerful force in science fiction ever.” Through the pages of Astounding, Campbell elevated science fiction from a pulp-fiction amusement to a serious exercise in speculative science aimed at an intelligent adult audience. Alec Nevala-Lee’s 2018 book Astounding is a joint biography of Campbell and three prominent science fiction authors whom he discovered, developed, befriended, and tormented: Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, and L. Ron Hubbard. Through the intertwined lives of these four figures, and their personality quirks and strange obsessions, Nevala-Lee charts the history of the science fiction genre from its niche beginnings, through World War II and the Atomic Age, to its acceptance and ubiquity in mainstream American culture.

Originally titled Astounding Stories of Super-Science, the magazine was founded in 1930, not by Campbell, but he took over as editor in 1937 and held that position until his death in 1971. The publication went through a number of minor title changes, all of them begining with “Astounding.” In 1960, however, Campbell drastically changed the title to Analog Science Fact & Fiction, a change no one seemed to like but himself.

Of this book’s four main characters, Asimov comes across the most sympathetically in Nevala-Lee’s narrative. He’s shown as a nice guy, not too egotistical, but a terribly horny lecher. If he had lived several decades later, his career would have been cancelled by the Me Too movement. Hubbard is shown as a shameless braggart and schemer who pathologically lies about his background and achievements. For much of the time period covered here, he was the most financially successful author in sci-fi, but Nevala-Lee thinks his work is hacky and mediocre at best. Heinlein, on the other hand, is presented as the G.O.A.T. of science fiction. His personality is harder to pin down. He definitely had a big ego, but given his talent, that was probably justified. He comes across as the smartest and most serious of the four and uncompromising in his unconventional views. Campbell, though praised for his literary influence, is deservedly castigated for his overt racism and sexism. All four of these guys, by the way, were swingers to some extent, so their love lives make for lively reading, although one feels sorry for their wives.

Hubbard was, of course, the founder of Scientology, and that plays into this story quite a bit as well. Campbell was a collaborator or at least a supporter in the creation of Dianetics, the psychotherapeutic precursor to the religion of Scientology. Nevala-Lee makes Hubbard out to be a flim-flam man who just used Dianetics to con people for financial gain. Campbell, on the other hand, was a true believer who saw Dianetics as a tool for increasing human potential. He was obsessed with “psionics”—heightened mental powers such as ESP, ancestral memories, or telekinesis—and he often steered the contents of Astounding/Analog in that direction. (Frank Herbert’s Dune—right up Campbell’s alley—was first published in Analog). When writing about Hubbard, Nevala-Lee treats Dianetics as a scam. When writing about Campbell, however, Nevala-Lee makes it sound like his weird psychological experiments were actually successful­ and then doesn’t bother to examine how or why that might be. If Nevala-Lee means to paint Campbell’s pursuits as pseudoscience, he doesn’t sufficiently discredit them.

That’s the only reservation I have about this book. Though I am not by any means a science fiction expert, I was fascinated from cover to cover. You never know which way this story is going to twist and turn because these four guys were so idiosyncratic—a polite word for messed up. While envisioning alternate worlds, each tried to fashion his life into his own personal utopia, somehow above the rules of the real world. They treated their work and their lives like science experiments, and in this book they often resemble mad scientists engaged in cockamamie or failed experiments. The pulp fiction era was an exciting time in publishing that generated a lot of classics and a lot of trash. Nevala-Lee brilliantly captures that time in science fiction’s history, the genre’s triumphs of creativity, and its sometimes misguided hopes and dreams for the future.

The Science of Liberty: Democracy, Reason, and the Laws of Nature by Timothy Ferris

Liberal common sense, well-argued

American science writer Timothy Ferris published about a dozen books on astronomy before the 2010 release of his book The Science of Liberty, which is about a whole lot more than just astronomy. Ferris was a friend and colleague of Carl Sagan (the two worked together on that gold record that went out with the Voyager 1 space probe), and, judging by this book, he shares a lot of common ground with Sagan as a science educator/promoter and liberal activist. The message of The Science of Liberty could have come from Sagan’s pen, but I actually like Ferris’s journalistic style of writing better than Sagan’s more personal Henry-David-Thoreau-of-space musings. In The Science of Liberty, Ferris makes the case that—as simply put as possible—science is beneficial to liberty and vice versa. He argues that science furthers human happiness and freedom, thus advancing the cause of classical liberalism, and that science can only prosper in a liberal-democratic society that values civil liberties, academic freedom, and emancipation from dogma.

That may sound like common sense, but it’s surprising how many people and regimes in history have tried to argue the opposite, as Ferris recounts in this historical overview. In the opening chapters, Ferris outlines the framework of his political hypotheses. Then follows a series of investigations into chronologically presented periods in history—the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the American and French Revolutions, World War II, the Cold War, etc.—in which Ferris examines how science and liberty were furthered or hindered. Periodically interspersed are a few statistics-heavy chapters in which Ferris compares the successes and failures of liberal-democratic nations versus other, less scientifically inclined societies.

Ferris introduces a simple but insightful new model of political ideology. Instead of the familiar spectrum analogy in which liberals fall to the left and conservatives to the right, Ferris proposes a triangular model in which liberals, conservatives, and progressives are the three equidistant corners. This book was published before Donald Trump entered politics, so Ferris doesn’t cover the most recent wave of anti-intellectualism from the conservative right, though he does hint at its foreshadowing with some brief mentions of George W. Bush. Surprisingly, Ferris spends fewer pages discussing conservative anti-science (e.g. fascists, Christian fundamentalists, Islamist terrorists) than he spends discussing progressive anti-science (e.g. communists, Marxists, ultra-woke academics, postmodern deconstructionists). Ferris, in my opinion, is too dismissive of socialism, implying that it always leads to totalitarianism. While Stalin and Mao were nightmares that certainly didn’t do science or liberty any favors, FDR’s New Deal or Scandinavia’s social service programs could be considered socialist science experiments that worked out for the good.

Prior to reading this book, I already agreed with just about every aspect of Ferris’s thesis, so I didn’t really need any convincing. Most of what he argues here just seems like common sense to my Jeffersonian side. While reading the first couple chapters, I found myself wondering, do I really want to read a whole book that’s persuading me to believe what I already believe? As I got further into the book, however, I really enjoyed it, and I learned quite a bit. The historical chapters present a lot of familiar characters and stories from science history, but Ferris fleshes them out with many interesting details that were new to me. I gleaned all sorts of fascinating biographical tidbits on scientists like Galileo, Newton, Locke, Jefferson, Darwin, Edison, and even anti-science figures like Hitler. Ferris also has a real knack for selecting memorable and relevant quotes, and the statistics he cites are well chosen and quite eye-opening. Though I primarily expected a book on science history, Ferris’s explication of political ideologies as they relate to science and liberty also prompted me to reexamine some of my own political preconceptions. 

The Science of Liberty is a very thought-provoking read. It really spoke to me, not only aligning with much of what I believe but also helping to clarify some of those beliefs. People who already believe in liberalism and the value of science will appreciate this book immensely, but will it convince anyone who needs convincing? Will conservatives want to read it? They should read it, but unfortunately, they probably won’t.

The French Mind: 400 Years of Romance, Revolution and Renewal by Peter Watson

A feminine emphasis on France’s intellectual history

British historian Peter Watson has been my favorite nonfiction author since I discovered his books a couple years ago. Though he also writes fiction, Watson is better known for his sweeping intellectual histories, or histories of ideas. Watson’s book The French Mind was published in 2022. In this book, Watson tries to answer the question: What’s so special about the French? To do that, as the subtitle indicates, he examines 400 years of French history, from the early 17th century to the present. Watson’s histories are generally not about kings, queens, and wars (although the Bourbons, Orléans, and Napoleons do make prominent appearances here) but rather about important developments in literature, philosophy, the arts, and culture. In The French Mind, Watson also looks beyond such highbrow disciplines and discusses how the French came to be renowned for perfecting some enjoyable aspects of life and leisure, such as fashion, food, furniture, and sex. Unlike some of Watson’s other intellectual histories, science is not part of the discussion here (Marie Curie isn’t even mentioned), except the social sciences.

Though the USA has always had its anti-intellectual tendencies (some might say now more than ever), France has always presented a decidedly pro-intellectual attitude. High culture is fashionable among the French, and one is expected to be well-read. When I visited France, I recall being amazed at how many streets they named after philosophers, scientists, and men of letters. France has always seen it as their duty to civilize the world through its refined culture, even if that means showing a disdain for capitalism, hard science, and technological progress. A crucial aspect of French intellectual life, Watson asserts, is “sociability,” which is manifested in the long tradition of the French salon and the café culture that followed. Watson also pursues a thesis (borrowed from historian Wolfgang Schivelbusch) of France’s “culture of defeat.” Even after losing the Franco-Prussian War and undergoing Nazi occupation, the French zeitgeist still managed to turn those losses into morally righteous victories.

Another element Watson really wants to emphasize is the role that women played in the development of French culture. I knew that salons would be an important part of this story, but I didn’t expect they would be the focus of the bulk of the book. Salons, in this case, were weekly gatherings, usually hosted by aristocrats in their homes, at which intellectuals and artists would gather and exchange ideas. Watson makes much of the women who hosted these salons and the influence they wielded. Many, probably most, of the chapters in the book focus on one of these salonnières—her life story, who she married, with whom she had affairs, and which luminaries she included among the regulars at her salon. France may have been less chauvinistic and misogynistic than the rest of Western Civilization, but it was still an unfairly male-dominated world. Despite his efforts to praise these unsung women, Watson’s feminist assertions feel forced. If the best thing he can say about many of these women is that they hosted a bunch of important men in their home, that’s not much of a feminist revelation. When these salonnières wrote published literature or wielded real political power, however, Watson does give credit where it’s due. At the point when the salons fade away, so does Watson’s feminist focus. Surprisingly, once this book moves past World War I, there’s barely a female mentioned other than Simone de Beauvoir.

Watson is a master of summary and synthesis, showing how ideas and movements spawn, influence, and interconnect one another. A master generalist, he draws the big picture in a sufficiently detailed and lively narrative that inspires the reader to want to learn more. If you really want to know what Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Jean Paul Sartre, or Michel Foucault were all about, you’re going to have to read their books, but with the help of an erudite survey such as Watson provides here, maybe you won’t have to read everything that came before and after those thinkers in order to understand their work. Similar to The French Mind, Watson has written other books in which he strives to encapsulate a nation’s intellectual and cultural spirit: The German Genius and The British Imagination. What’s next? The Dutch Mystique? The Scandinavian Psyche? The Polish Persuasion? Whatever Watson comes up with, I’m looking forward to it.   

An Alfred Russel Wallace Companion, edited by Charles H. Smith, James T. Costa, and David Collard

A survey of his career in and beyond biology

Alfred Russel Wallace is known as the other British naturalist who formulated the theory of evolution. While Darwin was taking his time writing On the Origin of Species, Wallace wrote a paper that also spelled out the process of natural selection. Through a gentleman’s agreement, Wallace stepped aside and let Darwin finish his book. That’s a highly abbreviated summary of what happened; the truth, of course, is more complicated. Nevertheless, Darwin’s name will forever be associated with evolution while many an average Joe these days has never even heard of Wallace. Wallace was nevertheless a very accomplished and respected biologist in his own right. He explored the Amazon basin and the Malay Archipelago, outlived Darwin by 31 years, and enjoyed a reputation as a “grand old man” of science. The book An Alfred Russel Wallace Companion, published in 2019, is an edited collection of essays by nine academics who examine various aspects of Wallace’s career. They give much-deserved consideration to his numerous accomplishments in the biological sciences while also shedding light on his endeavors further afield.

This is not an introduction to Wallace, but it is a synthesis. The reader is expected to have a basic knowledge of who Wallace was and his relation to Darwin and the theory of evolution through natural selection, but the book does not get into arcane matters that require a PhD to understand. The essays are written with scholarly rigor, citations, and notes. The reading degree of difficulty is about at an undergraduate level of proficiency. Although all the contributors are clearly very knowledgeable about Wallace’s life and career, they explain matters sufficiently for those who are not. As a survey of Wallace’s career, the book is successful in educating the reader about his significant accomplishments and influence. The scope of the essays sometimes overlap, however, which results in reading some of the same information multiple times.

If another goal of this book, as I suspect, is to get the reader to admire and esteem Wallace, it is less successful on that score. My regard for Wallace as a scientist actually lessened as I worked my way through this book. For starters, the book opens with a discussion of Wallace’s belief in spiritualism. The word “spiritualism,” in the late 19th century, meant a belief in ghosts, the “spirit world,” and communication with the dead. In other words, Wallace was attending séances and being fooled by spirit-conjuring mediums. Although Wallace was one of the chief formulators of evolutionary science, he also believed in intelligent design. When animals became humans, God intervened and somehow turned on their minds and souls. The book closes with a discussion of Wallace’s writings on extraterrestrial life. He thought humans on Earth must be the only intelligent life in the universe because God essentially created evolution for us: We are the purpose of the universe. It gets hard to take seriously a scientist who clings to such superstitious, supernatural, and teleological beliefs. The book also discusses disagreements between Wallace and Darwin over the details of natural selection, and in most cases, it seems Darwin was in the right. In the end, one doesn’t feel so bad that Darwin got most of the credit for evolution.

Wallace was also an outspoken public intellectual on socioeconomic matters. He advocated socialism and came up with a plan for land nationalization. If you’re reading this book because you’re interested in natural history, you won’t relish the chapter on British land law, tariffs, etc. The main positive verdict with which one comes away from this book is that Wallace was a pioneer in the field of biogeography: the study and mapping of the distribution ranges of species. In the days before genetics and continental drift, this was a key to determining where species arose, how they spread, and how they were related to other species. Although Alexander von Humboldt preceded him in the creation of this field, Wallace developed it to a higher level, carving out a specific domain of research in which he surpassed Darwin. There is no doubt that Wallace is an immensely important scientist in the pantheon of natural history, but the spiritualism and anthropocentric teleology are definitely a disappointment. If you’re only going to read one book on Wallace, this volume does provide a fine overview of his thought, for better or for worse.

The Secret Life of the Universe: An Astrobiologist’s Search for the Origins and Frontiers of Life by Nathalie A. Cabrol

Discouraging recap of our quest for certainty

Nathalie A. Cabrol, a French-American astrobiologist, is the director of the Carl Sagan Center of the SETI Institute (SETI = Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence). She is very much qualified, therefore, to write about the latest research on extraterrestrial life. Her book The Secret Life of the Universe was published in 2023. These days, it’s hard to keep track of all the piecemeal press releases about exoplanets, unmanned space probes, Mars rovers, and such. I hoped to find in Cabrol’s book a comprehensive and intelligent recap of what we know about the possibilities of life within and without our solar system. She does a fine job of summarizing the present state of knowledge in this area. This book is generally organized from the Earth outwards, from Venus and Mars to other bodies in our solar system, and then on to the recently discovered exoplanets beyond.

Although we’re talking about other planets and stars here, astrobiology relies much on geology and meteorology—the workings of water, ice, gases, volcanism, and plate tectonics, for example. Since the life forms are unknown, Cabrol’s work, at least as revealed in this book, is more about studying environments that might be conducive to life rather than speculating about the life itself. She has deliberately written this book to be accessible to a wide audience whenever possible. In general, the text is less challenging than articles in Scientific American or National Geographic; it’s more on the level of USA Today. There are passages, however, where complex chemistry can’t be dumbed-down enough, and the lay reader may find it tough going.

In addition to filling Sagan’s role at SETI, Cabrol also tries to fill his shoes as an inspirational science communicator, but she is less successful at that. This book is educational, but it doesn’t generate a lot of excitement or a great deal of hope. As someone who cares about science and wants to learn more about the universe, I am hopeful that in my lifetime we will discover extraterrestrial life—by that I mean evidence of microbial life elsewhere in our solar system. After reading Cabrol’s book, however, I doubt that’s going to happen anytime soon. She points out lots of possibilities for life in our solar system, but also gives plenty of examples of why confirmation is impossible. We’ve had landers on Mars for 50 years, and we still don’t have a definitive yes/no answer on life there. For almost every other body in the solar system, Cabrol says again and again that there may be life miles beneath the surface. Given how many years and dollars it takes to develop exploratory space missions, it’s unlikely we’ll be digging that deep in the near future.

Exoplanets, and their diversity of environments, offer more hope of finding life of some kind, at whatever stage of development, but we’re nowhere close to sending a probe over light years of distance. Our only hope of discovering interstellar life is if it discovers us first. Cabrol briefly discusses UFOs, or UAPs, but that’s really outside the scope of this book, and she’s a skeptical in that department. More coverage is given to the SETI program, which is actually a number of different programs under the SETI umbrella. Not much luck there yet, either. Cabrol then goes from disappointing to depressing by closing the book with an environmentalist tirade that reminds us that we’re on the verge of rendering ourselves extinct anyway.

Scientists who take on the role of educating the public—Sagan, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Bill Nye, and so on—generally try to inspire a sense of awe and wonder in the reader, hoping to spark their interest in the workings of the universe. Cabrol tries to do the same here, but this reader was just left feeling hopeless and kind of bored.

Cubism in Color: The Still Lifes of Juan Gris, edited by Nicole R. Myers and Katherine Rothkopf

The beautiful book his work deserves

The modernist painting style of cubism is generally considered to have been invented jointly by painters Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque around 1907. Most art aficionados, if questioned for a third artist in that movement, would call up the name of Juan Gris. In fact, though Gris followed in the footsteps of Picasso and Braque, some (myself included) consider Gris to have been the one who really took cubism to its creative apex. Gris pushed the stylistic experiments in form, structure, and color farther than his better-known contemporaries, and in the process managed to produce many beautiful paintings. Even those who can’t stand cubism (and that’s probably the majority of the world’s population) might very well enjoy looking at a Juan Gris painting.

The still life, usually an arrangement of objects on a table, was a common subject matter for cubist artists and a particular specialty of Gris’s. Now his work in that area gets its deserved recognition with the beautifully produced coffee table book Cubism in Color: The Still Lifes of Juan Gris, edited by Nicole R. Myers of the Dallas Museum of Art and Katherine Rothkopf of the Baltimore Museum of Art. This book was published in 2021 by Yale University Press to coincide with an exhibition of Gris’s still lifes organized by those two museums.

This book is not intended to be a comprehensive biography or retrospective on Juan Gris. That has already been done at least twice, by Antonio Gaya Nuño in 1986 and by Christopher Green in 1992. This book is meant to focus solely on Gris’s still lifes, but it nevertheless does contain a biological overview and a fair share of scholarly content on Gris’s work. The assortment of essays included, however, is a bit random. Myers delivers a truly excellent essay examining how Gris went about planning and executing his still life paintings. For anyone who paints or draws, this chapter reads like a behind-the-scenes exposé into Gris’s methods and materials. Another essay is a string of brief institutional histories of every Spanish museum that owns a work by Juan Gris. It’s hard to see how that’s useful; wouldn’t a list have sufficed? Another essay explores the influence of Gris on abstract artists in South America. The connection feels only tenuously established, but this chapter did bring to my attention some Latin American artists with whom I was previously unfamiliar.

While the essays are hit-and-miss, the images strike the bullseye time and time again. The text divides Gris’s tragically brief career into five distinct stages. All of those stages are well-represented by selected artworks, and one can clearly see Gris’s progression as an artist over time. The paintings are all beautifully reproduced, most of them appearing at full-page size. The photography of the artworks and the quality of the printing are impeccable. When it comes to art publications, Yale University Press always makes a quality product.

I still think Green and Gaya Nuño’s books are better overall volumes on Gris’s life and career, but Cubism in Color is a great addition to the literature on Gris’s art. I doubt any art lover would ever say, “I’m of fan of Gris, but I don’t like his still lifes.” Still lifes were so integral to his thought and vision as an artist. This book celebrates Gris’s innovative visual experimentation and sublime talent for composition. His still lifes deserve a great showcase in print, and that’s what they’re given here.

Flowers, 1914

The Violin, 1916

Still Life with a Bottle of Bordeaux, 1919

The Open Window, 1921

Marcus Aurelius: A Life by Frank McLynn

More historical context than biography

British historian and author Frank McLynn has written over two dozen books of history and biography including books on Napoleon, Genghis Khan, and Carl Jung. His biography Marcus Aurelius: Warrior, Philosopher, Emperor was published in 2010 and has since been rereleased as Marcus Aurelius: A Life. Marcus is often cited as the best of all the Roman emperors (or at least the least cruel and crazy) and is highly regarded as a paragon of leadership and wisdom. In this in-depth life history, McLynn sets out to investigate whether Marcus actually deserves such praise.

Besides being a Roman emperor, Marcus was also a philosopher. Many regard him as perhaps the closest anyone has come to the ideal of the philosopher-king that Plato put forth in his Republic. Marcus’s brand of philosophy was Stoicism, and he is considered one of the big three of that school (along with Epictetus and Seneca) because of his book Meditations, a classic Stoic text. If you’re considering reading McLynn’s biography because you are a modern disciple of Stoicism, prepare to be disappointed. McLynn despises Stoicism, calling it “nonsense” and “gibberish.” He thinks Marcus’s philosophical pursuits were a waste of time. Marcus should have concentrated on military and economical matters, as McLynn mostly does in this book. To McLynn’s credit, however, he does give some thoughtful and intelligent discussion to Marcus’s views on philosophy and religion, at least three solid chapters worth, plus a relentlessly negative appendix on Stoicism. Although tens of thousands of books have been published disputing contradictory views on Christian theology, McLynn thinks any time two Stoics disagree with each other, such inconsistency renders the whole school of thought null and void. I don’t agree with everything (or much) that McLynn has to say about Stoicism, but he’s certainly done his research, and I learned a lot about Marcus from this analysis of his philosophical thought.

The biggest complaint I have about McLynn’s biography of Marcus Aurelius is that only about a third of the book is actually about Marcus Aurelius. As the book opens, we get biographies of other figures who were connected to Marcus: a chapter on Hadrian, a chapter on Antoninus Pius, one on Lucius Verus, and maybe two on Fronto, Marcus’s tutor. McLynn provides historical context about what was going on in Rome at the time of Marcus’s reign, but he goes way overboard with it. For example, when he informs us that a war against the Parthians was underway during Marcus’s reign, we then get a complete detailed history of Rome’s relations with the Parthians going back two or three centuries, then a discussion of the Parthians themselves—their governmental structure, internal conflicts, the various nations and peoples surrounding them—then a primer on the organization of the Roman military, before we ever even get to talking about Marcus. After all that, what Marcus actually did about the Parthians, I couldn’t tell you. The Germanic tribes get a similar background treatment, but then you actually do get a pretty detailed blow-by-blow account of Marcus’s relations with them. McLynn sometimes wanders pretty far afield in his digressions, particularly towards the end of the book. In a book about Marcus Aurelius, did we really need the whole life story of Jean-Jacques Rousseau?

McLynn’s books have achieved a wide popular audience, but if this book is any indication, he writes with the scholarly rigor of a historian. This is not Marcus Aurelius for Dummies. Part of the historian’s job is to bust myths, and McLynn does some of that here. Given all the adulation that has been heaped upon Marcus over the centuries, the truth can’t help but be less flattering than the legend. McLynn points out that life was not so fine under the Marcus administration, and of all the Roman emperors, he was one of the most severe in persecuting Christians. McLynn certainly does admire Marcus as a leader, and he shows his respect for his subject by conducting a fair and thorough character analysis, neither a panegyric nor a hatchet job. He should have narrowed his focus more tightly on the man himself, however, instead of cramming in so much extraneous detail.

Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin): A Memoir by Sly Stone with Ben Greenman

Sly accentuates the positive

Sly Stone, the leader, songwriter, and record producer for Sly and the Family Stone, passed away recently at the age of 82. Very late in life, Sly decided to get off drugs and write his autobiography. Entitled Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin), it was published in 2023. The book includes an introduction by Questlove, leader of the Roots (Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show band). Questlove was also the publisher of the book, through his company AUWA books.

In 1998, rock journalist Joel Selvin published Sly and the Family Stone: An Oral History, which contained first-hand testimony from many members of Sly’s band, family, and entourage. That book painted a very dark portrait of Sly. As he became more famous and wealthy, his drug use increased, and he became progressively more unhinged, at times allegedly threatening those close to him with violence. Sly’s Thank You reads like it was written in response to the stories told in Selvin’s book. Rather than own up to any wrongdoing, Sly either responds to such accusations with denial or ignores them entirely, opting for safer subjects. He discusses all of his recordings, album by album, with a sentence or two about most songs. He spends a few chapters giving detailed recaps of his talk show appearances. There’s a chapter about his wedding, which took place on stage in Madison Square Garden, plus a lot of name-dropping of celebrities he often hung out with or just met once.

Sly (and perhaps Questlove) wants you to come away from this book with the idea that he was an artist that was taken advantage of and creatively stifled by the music industry, but that’s a difficult theory to buy into. The book is filled with instances of people going out of their way to give Sly the opportunity to do what he does best (including Michael Jackson, for one), but Sly chooses to sabotage his own career with his drug use and his self-destructive behavior. Sly had a reputation for skipping out on scheduled concerts, not only dissing his fans but also his own band. Here he blames everybody but himself for those numerous no-shows. Sly confesses that he used a lot of drugs, and that he liked them, but he fails to mention much of the scary behavior that Selvin’s book discusses at length. In Selvin’s Oral History, there is a very harrowing story told by Sly’s ex-wife about how his unfed pit bull mauled their toddler son. Sly, however, dispatches the incident in two sentences. Much like Keith Richards’s autobiography Life, there’s much bragging about drug use, partying, and macho tough-guy brandishing of weapons. Richards, at least, seems to respect women, while Sly seems to view them as his sexual servants. Overall, Sly comes across as a child who never grew up. He wants what he wants, when he wants it, regardless of the consequences, and he needs managers and girlfriends to take care of his basic needs because he’s incapable of doing so himself. Sly mentions his friend Bobby Womack often in this book. Sly could have learned a thing or two from Bobby about how to write a memoir. Womack’s My Story is candid, forthright, and accountable, the exact opposite of Sly’s Thank You.

One thing this book does well is capture the conversational voice of Sly. Though I’m sure it required some unsung effort on the part of coauthor Ben Greenman, this memoir is written as if it came straight out of Sly’s mouth. Sly claims credit for initiating the phrase, “Different strokes for different folks” (from his song “Everyday People”), and this book is chock full of similar funky, pithy aphorisms, many of which rhyme. As an orator, Sly falls somewhere between Snoop Dogg and Nipsey Russell. The prose is enjoyable to read, but what it has to say isn’t always pleasant. I love the man’s music, but when all is said and done, I didn’t come away from this liking Sly. Maybe I’m wrong, and Sly was a wonderful human being, but that’s not the impression one gets from this book.

Sound Man by Glyn Johns

Career retrospective of a record producer extraordinaire

Though I appreciate all kinds of music, the bulk of my listening time tends to be devoted to rock music of the 1960s and ‘70s (I was born in the middle of that period). With few exceptions, I generally don’t pay a whole lot of attention to who produces or engineers a recording. I have come to learn over the years, however, that if the name Glyn Johns is attached to an album, I’m probably going to like it and maybe even love it. Through his work as producer or sound engineer on such landmark albums as Who’s Next, Abbey Road, Let It Bleed, Led Zeppelin I, Slowhand, The Eagles, and many more, Johns did much to shape the sound of rock and roll during its formative and peak years. In his 2014 autobiography Sound Man, Johns recalls his stellar career recording some of the biggest names in popular music. If, like me, you’re a fan of Johns’s work, you’ll want to read this.

In Sound Man, Johns offers up a little bit of information about a lot of different people he’s worked with, so the approach could be characterized as broad in scope but shallow in depth. Johns has contributed his production, engineering, and/or mixing skills to hundreds of albums over the course of his career, and here he discusses about fifty of the most important projects and artists with whom he’s worked, so you get a few pages on each. As a result, the chapters are short, and the reading is brisk. At times, Johns seems to have compiled the narrative from his old appointment calendars. It’s not unusual for him to rattle off the names of a half dozen artists in a single paragraph: I worked on this, this, and this project; hopped on a plane to somewhere; had a meeting with so-and-so; than went back to mixing that album.

If you’re a fan of classic rock of the ‘60s and ‘70s, you will enjoy Johns’s perspective on the music business. His narrative does extend to 2014, but the bulk of the book deals with the classic bands of rock’s glory days. Johns has interesting stories to tell about the artists with whom he’s worked, but there aren’t really any major revelations here. This is very much a career memoir about the recording industry. Most of Johns’s anecdotes of his interactions with rock stars take place within the recording studio. There aren’t a lot of personal stories here. Johns never did any drugs, which probably kept him from penetrating the inner circle of many rock artists. The exception might be his relationship to the Rolling Stones. He worked on several of their records, accompanied them on tour, and formed a close friendship with Bill Wyman. Johns gives you a behind-the-scenes look at the personality dynamics within the band. If you’re a big fan of the Rolling Stones, however, you’ve probably read other books about them, so what Johns has to say here won’t surprise you. Beyond the Stones, Johns gives a fair amount of coverage to the Beatles, the Steve Miller Band, and the Eagles. Many of the moments that Johns recalls have since become familiar nuggets of rock-and-roll lore that most fans are already aware of, but Johns was actually present at these important turning points in music history.

In addition to the Hall of Fame-level artists that Johns discusses, he also mentions many musicians and bands that will be unfamiliar to those who aren’t British and didn’t grow up in the 1960s. That’s part of the fun of this sort of book, however—discovering previously unknown bands and nuggets of music history. Knowing Johns was behind the helm of their recordings makes me want to look up some of these artists who were previously unknown to me. I may not have learned a whole lot about the Rolling Stones or the Beatles from reading this book, but I did learn a lot about Johns and about how rock records were made in the good ol’ days. That, for me, made Sound Man a worthwhile read.

Drums & Demons: The Tragic Journey of Jim Gordon by Joel Selvin

Legendary talent, infamous crime

Joel Selvin is one of the best writers working today in the rock-and-roll history genre. I thoroughly enjoyed his book on Sly and the Family Stone. When I found out about Drums & Demons, Selvin’s 2024 biography of rock drummer Jim Gordon, I was excited by what seemed to me like the perfect pairing of an excellent biographer with a fascinating subject, both of whose work I admire. With Drums & Demons, Selvin does not disappoint.

Jim Gordon was one of the greatest drummers of the late 1960s and ‘70s. Most classic rock fans will probably recognize his name from the rosters of the bands Derek and the Dominos and Traffic, but Gordon was also a highly sought-after session man who played drums and percussion on thousands of recordings, many of them rock and pop classics including the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations,” Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain,” Eric Clapton’s “After Midnight,” John Lennon’s “Power to the People,” Steely Dan’s “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number,” and Kermit the Frog’s “Rainbow Connection.” Rolling Stone put Gordon at number 59 of their 2016 list of the 100 Greatest Drummers of All Time, and, quite frankly, he deserved better. In this book, however, Selvin maybe expends too much effort in persuading the reader that Gordon was the G.O.A.T. of drummers, and after a while the hyperbolic praise grows somewhat tiresome.

Unfortunately, Gordon is not only famous but also infamous. After lifelong troubles with schizophrenia, which went undiagnosed, Gordon became psychotic and murdered his mother in 1983. He spent the remaining 40 years of his life in a prison for the criminally insane, where he died at the age of 77. Drums & Demons is a gripping biography that comprehensively covers both the soaring heights of Gordon’s music career and the crashing depths of his mental health struggles and substance abuse. This isn’t a tabloid account that revels in the horror story of the crime and the misery of its victims. Selvin writes with compassion, a genuine care and admiration for Gordon, and a sensitivity towards mental health issues that is commendable.

As a fan of classic rock, including Gordon’s music, and someone who delights in the minutiae of rock-and-roll trivia, I enjoyed the career retrospective portion of the book immensely. I find the stories of these great rock session musicians really fascinating. I similarly enjoyed Julian Dawson’s biography of the legendary rock pianist Nicky Hopkins. It’s just really interesting to read about all the illustrious artists these session men played with and learn about all the classic recordings to which they contributed their stellar talents. Who knew that Gordon’s best friend in high school was Mike Post, the composer of many classic television theme songs like The Rockford Files (on which Gordon played drums) and Magnum, P.I.? Selvin includes much fascinating detail on Gordon and the musicians with which he worked, including the Everly Brothers, Clapton, George Harrison, Glenn Campbell, Harry Nilsson, Joan Baez, Frank Zappa, and more. Whether in the studio or on tour, Selvin provides an inside look at the music industry that makes you feel like a part of the band.

The latter half of the book, which chronicles Gordon’s downward slide into insanity, is riveting. You can’t help but be moved by this terrible tragedy. Selvin compiled much of this account from interviews with those who knew Gordon, and you can feel both the love and the fear they felt towards this troubled artist. Selvin clearly did prodigious research in the making of this biography, and he writes with an authoritative knowledge and a personal pathos that make this a memorable book well worth reading for any fan of classic rock music.

Monsters by Barry Windsor-Smith

A dark and disturbing graphic masterpiece

I’m a lifelong reader of comic books, and Barry Windsor-Smith is one of my favorite artists—easily top 3 if not number one (Will Eisner and Jack Kirby would be high on my list as well, just to show you what league BWS is in). Not to sell him short, Windsor-Smith is also a writer of comics, and, unlike many in the superhero line, he often inks, colors, and sometimes even letters his own pages. Early in his career, Windsor-Smith developed an idiosyncratic style, highly detailed, lyrical, and romantic in nature, resembling what comics might look like if drawn by the Pre-Raphaelite painters. His best-known work is probably his Weapon X story from 1990 to 1991, which, when combined into graphic novel form, comprises the definitive Wolverine origin story. Having started his career with Marvel in 1969, Windsor-Smith has been a comics professional as long as I’ve been alive, and at 75 he is still going strong. He recently produced what might be his magnum opus. His graphic novel Monsters, a 365-page black-and-white hardcover, was published in 2022 by Fantagraphics Books. Monsters won the Eisner Awards that year for Best Graphic Novel, Best Writer/Artist, and even Best Letterer (Windsor-Smith himself).

In the 1960s, a young man named Bobby Bailey walks into an army recruitment office, hoping to enlist. Because of his lack of education and the fact that he lost an eye when he was younger, the recruiting officer, Elias McFarland, won’t take him for the regular army. He does, however, recommend Bobby for a secret government program that might be able to use him. This project, dubbed Prometheus, turns out to be a twisted Captain America-esque experiment, originally conceived by the Nazis, of using genetic engineering to create some kind of superhuman soldier. McFarland soon regrets having signed Bobby up to be a guinea pig for Prometheus. Tortured by guilt, he decides to investigate what became of Bobby. As Bobby’s past and present are gradually revealed, Windsor-Smith flashes back to Bobby’s childhood and beyond to his father’s encounter with Nazis in World War II. Those events from the past set in motion a tragic story, decades in the making, involving a complex web of connections between the Bailey and McFarland families, an Ohio police officer, and a Nazi scientist.

Monsters is a deeply dark and disturbing work. It has some science fiction elements that comics readers will be familiar with, but it is a highly literary novel in its character development and psychological themes. Because of its prodigious length, expert plotting, and ready-made storyboards, this novel reads like a feature film just waiting to be made. Given the subject matter, it would probably be an indie arthouse horror film from studio A24, directed by somebody like Robert Eggers or Nicolas Winding Refn. This is not a story for the faint of heart, as it includes scenes of torture, child and spousal abuse, murder, and rape, but these scenes are brief and integral to the story, not gratuitous.

The writing is ambitious, and the art is impeccable. Visually and narratively, Monsters calls to mind Will Eisner’s graphic novels of the 1970s and ‘80s, such as his A Contract with God trilogy. The lengthy page count allows Windsor-Smith to take his time telling the story. Conversations between the characters run their course as they would in real life, without feeling crammed into a limited number of panels. Who else in comics today devotes that kind of time and effort to character development? Maybe once or twice a decade, much like Eisner, a comics auteur comes along that shows us the apex of what the comic art form can be. Right now, Windsor-Smith is that artist. In terms of literary merit, Monsters can hold its own against most works of contemporary fiction, and among graphic novels, Monsters is a masterpiece.

A page from Monsters (from the publisher’s website)

Slowhand: The Life and Music of Eric Clapton by Philip Norman

Read the autobiography instead

Published in 2018, Slowhand is a biography of guitar legend and three-time Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Eric Clapton, written by Philip Norman, a British rock journalist who previously published several biographies on the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Slowhand is ostensibly a full cradle-to-the-present biography, but it focuses heavily on Clapton’s early career and gives short shrift to anything that happens after about 1986.

Norman’s primary area of concern in this book is Clapton’s love affair and marriage with Pattie Boyd. Clapton’s love for Boyd inspired the song “Layla,” one of the most powerful love songs in the history of rock. The real story of their romance, however, is far from enchanting. Boyd was the wife of George Harrison, one of Clapton’s closest friends. Clapton stole her away, although George really didn’t seem to mind, and once Clapton had her, he really didn’t want her anymore. Poor Pattie. Why does Norman spend almost half the book on this relationship? Because Norman is first and foremost a biographer of the Beatles, so in this book what matters most to him is Clapton’s connection to the Beatles, which is through George by way of Pattie. Norman also clearly relishes cataloging horror stores of drug abuse, alcoholism, and infidelity. Once Clapton gets clean and sober, Norman doesn’t want to talk about him anymore.

Another favorite topic of Norman’s is the fact that Clapton was abandoned by his mother, which Norman repeatedly cites as the reason or excuse for just about every action Clapton has taken in his life. Norman has really nothing good to say about Clapton in this book, but, granted, a lot of that is Clapton’s fault. For most of his life, he wasn’t a very nice guy, at least not to women. It is just rather depressing and kind of annoying to read a book about a terrible person by someone who really doesn’t like him much. In his autobiography, Clapton is very open and reflective about the bad things he’s done in his life, yet you can also see him making strides to become a better person. Clapton writing about himself comes across more objectively than Norman’s take on him and gives a fuller, well-rounded portrait of the man. So why take Norman’s word for it, when you can get the story straight from the horse’s mouth?

If you don’t know anything about Eric Clapton, then this book will certainly give you a good overview of the general story of his life. If you are a fan of Clapton, however, and have followed his musical career, you’re likely to know just about everything Norman relates in this volume. He’s mostly synthesizing information from other biographies and prior rock journalism. In the book’s introduction, Norman says that he just found out that Jim Gordon, drummer for Derek and the Dominos, was in prison for killing his mother. I knew that thirty-odd years ago when I was in high school, because I’m an Eric Clapton fan, and I read Rolling Stone. The book also contains some dumb errors that should have been caught by a copy editor. At one point Norman confuses Duane Allman with Gregg Allman. “Greg” [sic] was neither Clapton’s “guitar blood-brother” nor did he die in a motorcycle accident (p. 286). Song titles aren’t always exact, like Phil Collins’s “Something in the Air Tonight”? These may seem like paltry complaints, but if any average-joe rock fan can point out these mistakes, then there’s no excuse for Norman getting them wrong.

For any number of reasons, you’re better off reading Clapton: The Autobiography. Though it’s far from a perfect book, you learn more about Clapton, and it’s just a more interesting read than Slowhand.

A Flag Worth Dying For: The Power and Politics of National Symbols by Tim Marshall

Vexillogical history, with an emphasis on violence and jingoism

I’ve always had an interest in flags and heraldry, probably because I’m a graphic designer. Flags are like the ultimate logos in terms of impact and endurance (in some cases). Even though they’re not always well designed, I find it interesting to learn about the stories behind how flags were created and the intended meanings of the colors and symbols. Not surprisingly, therefore, Tim Marshall’s book Worth Dying For: The Power and Politics of Flags is right up my alley. It was published in Britain in 2016. The American edition was retitled A Flag Worth Dying For: The Power and Politics of National Symbols.

In this book, Marshall discusses the origins and symbolism of numerous flags. Most of them are national flags, but he also covers some organizational flags and a few anomalies like the checkered flag of racing. For the purposes of discussion, Marshall divides these flags into families, like evolutionary branches with similar characteristics—for example, flags based on the American flag or the British Union Jack, the tricolors and crosses of Europe, and flags exhibiting the pan-Arab, pan-African, or pan-Colombian (Latin American) color schemes. Marshall doesn’t discuss the flag of every nation of the world, but he does cover around a dozen flags in each category. Presumably, he has chosen the flags of more populous nations or those with more interesting origin stories.

The book starts out rather underwhelmingly with its history of the United States and United Kingdom flags. These are two of the most important flags in the world, but English-language readers are also likely to already know much of what Marshall has to say about them. The chapter on the U.S. flag reads like a Cub Scout manual. The farther afield that Marshall looks, to smaller nations outside of North American and Europe, the more likely the reader is to find surprising, untold facts and histories. The book does contain many interesting stories about how flags were created and how their designs have been shaped by political events.

In fact, the talk of flags often seems like just an excuse for Marshall to discuss politics, a subject on which he is very knowledgeable. He has worked as a journalist in many nations of the world, including several war zones, so he offers his personal perspective on the nations and political developments covered in the book. Sometimes he’s a little too openly biased in his opinions of particular nations and peoples, when a journalist should maybe keep his cards a little closer to his vest. As the title of the book indicates, Marshall certainly makes an effort to emphasize the negative aspects of flags—the violence they inspire, conflicts over flag burning, the co-option by right-wing factions, warmongers, racists, and so on. Marshall seems to revel in reports of conflict and patriotic sacrifice. It is undoubtedly true that people take their flags very seriously. If fewer writers glorified the notion of dying for one’s flag, however, maybe fewer people would be slaughtering each other over symbolic pieces of cloth

Marshall has written a series of popular books on geography for general audiences. In A Flag Worth Dying For, he strives to make the subject of flags interesting to readers interested in current events and recent history. Personally, I would have preferred a nerdier book that focused more on the flags themselves rather than politics and war, and a book with a more comprehensive selection of nations rather than Marshall’s somewhat arbitrary choices. For those with an interest in vexillology (the study of flags), Alfred Znamierowski’s World Encyclopedia of Flags is a book that I enjoyed, or you can browse through the treasure trove of information at crwflags.com/fotw/flags/.

El Norte: The Epic and Forgotten History of Hispanic North America by Carrie Gibson

Pride and prejudice, from the Spanish conquest to the Trump administration

Since Christopher Columbus first landed in the New World, Hispanics and Hispanic culture have had a profound effect on the development of North America. (Columbus was born Italian, of course, but exploring on behalf of Spain.) In the United States, however, this Hispanic influence has been downplayed in the historical narrative of the past five centuries, in favor of an Anglo-centric view of the U.S. as a nation founded by and for non-Hispanic whites. Journalist Carrie Gibson strives to correct that Anglo-biased view in her 2019 book El Norte, a history of North America that emphasizes the triumphs and tribulations of Hispanics in the U.S., Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean, plus a tiny bit about Canada. (I use the term Hispanic here as Gibson does in the book, meaning of Spanish descent, regardless of racial identification.)

Gibson begins the historical narrative, not surprisingly, with Columbus and the subsequent conquistadores, Hernán Cortés’s conquest of Mexico City, and the initial Spanish explorations in Florida and the Caribbean. A lot of this may be familiar to those with a basic knowledge of Latin American history, but Gibson fleshes out the main plot with plenty of interesting details. Then follows a couple centuries of settlement in the United States. In this section, there is an awful lot about the British, the French, and the early Anglo colonists, which makes one wonder at first what’s so Hispanic about this Hispanic history. Instead of paying the usual attention to the 13 colonies, however, Gibson concentrates more on Florida, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, areas with a more prominent Hispanic presence. Heck, the Spaniards even made a play for Vancouver Island.

As the narrative moves forward in time, El Norte reads less like a typical American history textbook and more like a people’s history of the Hispanic ethnicity. Those Texan heroes who died at the Alamo, for example, are revealed to be unruly squatters who, wanting to establish slavery in Texas, rather impolitely attacked their Mexican hosts. The Mexican War of Independence from Spain is followed by the Mexican-American War, a conflict in which the United States was clearly the greedy, belligerent aggressor. The resulting treaty transferred half of Mexico’s territory to the U.S., after which the whites commenced unjustly driving out the Hispanics (after both stole the land from Native Americans, of course). Half a century later, the Spanish-American War was yet another imperialist power-hungry land grab by the U.S. that set in motion repeated waves of oppression and revolt in Cuba and Puerto Rico through the 20th century. The book ends with the first Trump administration and the devastation of Puerto Rico by Hurricane Maria. We now live in an America where Trump’s biggest campaign promise is to drive Hispanic immigrants out of the United States, and Hispanics continue to be the targets of white xenophobic rhetoric (yet, oddly enough, a lot of them voted to give Trump a second term).

Without excusing the atrocities of conquistadores or Latin American dictators, Gibson celebrates Hispanics’ contributions to American history and culture. She gives credit where it’s due, as well as blame. She also highlights the resilience of Hispanics in the face of Anglo oppression and discrimination. On the one hand, you admire them as tenacious freedom fighters. On the other hand, the fact that they’ve repeatedly been forced to fight for their rights inspires sadness and anger. Nevertheless, El Norte is not a woke exercise in white guilt. Gibson provides a very objective and well-researched account of historical events. Just as we’re all familiar with the accomplishments of those white Founding Fathers of the Eastern Seaboard, the Hispanic history of America is a part of our national heritage that all Americans should know and understand.

Curators: Behind the Scenes of Natural History Museums by Lance Grande

Professional memoir, career guide, and museum lore

If I could go back in time and start another career, I think I’d like to be a naturalist of some sort, someone who explores the wildernesses of the world, studying plants and animals and discovering new species, like a modern-day Audubon, Darwin, or Humboldt. Nowadays, many of the people who conduct this kind of research work as curators for natural history museums. Lance Grande has occupied one such enviable position for roughly four decades at the Field Museum in Chicago. In his 2017 book Curators: Behind the Scenes of Natural History Museums, Grande recounts his distinguished career in natural history and provides an enlightening look at the profession of scientific curation.

Grande has degrees in geology, zoology, and evolutionary biology. Before being hired by the Field Museum, he completed his PhD while working and studying at the American Natural History Museum in New York. Grande’s specialty is vertebrate paleontology, particularly fossil fishes, but, as he explains in Curators, his work at the Field Museum has also led him to research in other related fields. Grande discusses his field work hunting fossils in Wyoming and Mexico, his involvement with the acquisition, preparation, and display of the Field Museum’s famous Tyrannosaurus Rex fossil named SUE, and his redesign of the Grainger Hall of Gems exhibit. Grande also held a management position as head of Collections and Research for the Field Museum, so he discusses the administrative issues he faced while overseeing that department.

For the first several chapters, one wonders why the book wasn’t called Curator, singular, since it’s basically a memoir of Grande’s career. In the second half of the book, however, he discusses the work of his fellow curators at the Field Museum, the general workings of the museum and the various research initiatives they’ve launched, and broader issues in the museum field such as wildlife conservation and the repatriation of human remains. Grande also spends a few chapters looking back at great Field Museum curators of the past, such as herpetologist K. P. Schmidt, anthropologist Franz Boas, and geologist Bryan Patterson, whose father hunted the legendary man-eating lions of Tzavo (now immortalized through taxidermy at the Field Museum). These stories of past generations add further depth to Grande’s survey of the curatorial profession.

This would be an excellent book for a high school or college student interested in the natural sciences. It might very well provide the inspiration for students to explore careers in natural history, museum work, or wildlife conservation. For an older reader like me, it was just a fascinating behind-the-scenes fantasy-camp look into natural history museums—institutions that I enjoy visiting. The text is accessible to students and general readers, but not oversimplified. Scientific and administrative matters are discussed at an intelligent adult level, about on a par with National Geographic or Science News magazines. Professors and museum professionals aren’t likely to gain any scientific revelations from this book, but they might enjoy reading it for an overview of what’s been going on at the Field Museum. The book is also very well illustrated, with a color photograph of just about everything, everyone, and everywhere that Grande discusses in the book.

Scientific biographies and autobiographies are a genre that I typically enjoy, as I like to live vicariously through scientists’ explorations and discoveries. Curators not only succeeds as a scientific memoir but also has the added benefit of functioning as an illuminating glimpse into museum careers. Grande’s obvious enthusiasm and aptitude for addressing general readers results in an engaging and informative book that anyone with an interest in natural history will enjoy.