Too Close to the Falls: A Memoir
Catherine Gildiner, 2001
Penguin Group USA
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780142000403


Summary
Heartbreaking and wicked: a memoir of  stunning beauty and remarkable grace. Improbable friendships and brushes with death. A schoolgirl affecting the course of aboriginal politics. Elvis and cocktails and Catholicism and the secrets buried deep beneath a place that may be another, undiscovered Love Canal—Lewiston, New York.

Too Close to the Falls is an exquisite, haunting return, through time and memory, to the heart of Catherine Gildiner’s childhood. And what a childhood it was! (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—November 29, 1948
• Where—Lewistown, New York, USA
• Raised—Niagara Falls, New York
• Education—B.A., Ohio State University; Oxford University (UK);
   M.A., English, University of Toronto; M.A. and Ph.D., Psychology,
   York University (Canada)
• Currently—lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Catherine Gildiner has been in private practice in clinical psychology 20 years. She writes a monthly advice column for Chatelaine, a popular Canadian magazine, and contributes regularly to countless other Canadian newspapers and magazines. She lives in Toronto with her husband and three sons. (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
Both funny and true, TCTTF depicts the formative years of an extraordinary child, but it also captures the essence of childhood itself. The combination is altogether compelling; I cannot recommend this book highly enough! A fascinating childhood is no guarantee of a fascinating memoir. It still takes a gifted writer to translate the past into a work of art, and Gildiner is a gifted writer. Her prose is intensely colorful, like a concentrate, but never overwhelming or laborious in its details. Against a vivid backdrop, she brings into focus those moments when the child's world and the adult world intersect, when illusions are shattered and understanding begins.
Toronto Star


[S]himmies and shakes with Gildiner's hilarious antics!Her writing sparkles on the page and the episodes she recounts have the clarity of ice after a winter storm in Lewiston. This is a memoir that makes the world seem fresh again, and worthwhile.
Literary Review of Canada


The writing is spot-on, Gildiner at her best and funniest describing the palpable happiness of her chaotic childhood!and escapades so incredible that I turned back several times to make sure this really was a memoir.
Laurie Graham - Daily Mail (UK)


Now a successful clinical psychologist with a monthly advice column in the popular Canadian magazine Chatelaine, Gildiner tells of her childhood in 1950s Lewiston, N.Y., a small town near Niagara Falls, in this hilarious and moving coming-of-age memoir. Deemed hyperactive by the town's pediatrician, at age four Gildiner was put to work at her father's pharmacy in an effort to harness her energy. Her stories of delivering prescriptions with her father's black deliveryman, Roy, are the most affecting parts of this book, with young Cathy serving as map reader for the illiterate but streetwise fellow, who acted as both protector and fellow adventurer. In a style reminiscent of the late Jean Shepherd, Gildiner tells her tales with a sharp humor that rarely misses a beat and underscores the dark side of what at first seems a Norman Rockwell existence. Mired in a land dispute, the local Native American population has a chief who requires sedatives to subdue his violent moods. Meanwhile, the feared "monster" who maintains the town dump is simply afflicted with "Elephant Man" syndrome. And Cathy's mother—with her intellectual preoccupations and aversion to housework and visiting neighbors—is an emblem of prefeminist frustration. The book's vaunted celebrity dish—Gildiner delivered sleeping pills to Marilyn Monroe on the set of Niagara--pales in comparison to such ordinary adult pathos. By book's end, Cathy, too, gets her share, as beloved Roy mysteriously exits and an entanglement with a confused young priest brings her literally and figuratively "too close to the falls."
Publishers Weekly


Clinical psychologist Gildiner's well-crafted memoir describes her 1950s childhood in Lewiston, "a small town in western New York, a few miles north of Niagara Falls." Hers was no ordinary childhood but that of a precocious, headstrong, and intelligent girl whose parents provided a uniquely unconventional upbringing. Because of her lively temperament, her pediatrician recommended to her older and devoutly Catholic parents that she work in her father's pharmacy to channel her energies. Thus, at the age of four, she was teamed with a black male employee to deliver prescription drugs when not in school. She had a wide range of experiences with her co-worker, stopping in bars and making deliveries to both the wealthiest and the poorest members of the community. In each eventful chapter, Gildiner focuses on a particular adult who strongly influenced her understanding of the world. Often dangerous, her experiences, as related here, are also amusing, charming, and relevant. Highly recommended. —Sue Samson, Univ. of Montana Lib., Missoula
Library Journal


A Canadian psychologist reconstructs her precocious girlhood near Niagara Falls. The author immediately establishes that the Niagara River is more than mere water. It is Life:"While it seems calm, rarely making waves, it has deadly whirlpools swirling on its surface which can suck anything into their vortices in seconds." Throughout this uneven memoir, the river and its celebrated cataract reappear to remind us that life is both capricious and dangerous.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Discuss what makes a good memoir. How does Too Close to the Falls incorporate these qualities?

2. How did you feel about Catherine's childhood "career"? Did it place her in situations that were inappropriate for a child of her age? Elaborate. How do you think being exposed to these realities affected her?

3. If Roy were to describe young Catherine McClure, what do you think he would say? What about Mother Agnes? Father Rodwick?

4. Early on in the book, the reader understands that Catherine feels she is a misfit. How much of that can be attributed to her natural character? Should her parents have made more of an attempt to force Catherine to conform? More importantly, is it wrong for a child to feel "different" from everyone else? Can it build character?

5. Catherine struggles throughout Too Close to the Falls with double standards and issues of moral hypocrisy. In which scenarios did you find these themes especially pronounced?

6. Did Catherine experience a loss of innocence? If so, when? Do you remember a particular moment in your life that contributed to a "loss of innocence"? Is that moment an unavoidable part of growing older?

7. Is the spirit of rebellion evident in Catherine's character simply innate in certain individuals, or does growing up among particularly restrictive institutions (a strict Catholic school, a small conservative town, for instance) incite rebellion where there may otherwise have been none? Are there any people or institutions that you rebelled against as a teenager, but later embraced?

8. Consider the women Catherine comes into contact with: her mother, Miranda, Marie Sweeny, Marilyn Monroe, Warty, and Mother Agnes. What did she learn from each of them?

9. How did you react to the last scene in the book, the evening that Catherine spent with Father Rodwick? Was is surprising that Catherine—the adult looking back—seemed not to be judging the priest's actions? Do you think that the time they spent together was inappropriate? Might she have drawn something positive from that night?

10. "There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in."—Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory. If you could choose that significant moment in Too Close to the Falls, what would it be? What about in your own life?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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Skeletons on the Zahara: A True Story of Survival
Dean King, 2004
Little, Brown & Co.
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316159357

Summary
Everywhere hailed as a masterpiece of historical adventure, this enthralling narrative recounts the experiences of twelve American sailors who were shipwrecked off the coast of Africa in 1815, captured by desert nomads, sold into slavery, and subjected to a hellish two-month journey through the bone-dry heart of the Sahara.

The ordeal of these men—who found themselves tested by barbarism, murder, starvation, death, dehydration, and hostile tribes that roamed the desert on camelback—is made indelibly vivid in this gripping account of courage, brotherhood, and survival. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Richmond, Virginia, USA
• Education—B.A., University of North Carolina; M.A., New
   York University
• Currently—lives in Richmond, Virginia

Dean King is the author of numerous books, including Unbound: A True Story of Love, War, and Survival (2010), and the highly acclaimed biography Patrick O'Brian: A Life Revealed. King has also written for many publications, including Men's Journal, Esquire, Outside, New York magazine, and the New York Times. He lives in Richmond, Virginia. (From the pubisher and Wikipedia.)

More
The award winning author of ten books and dozens of stories in national magazines, Dean King has a deep and abiding passion for historical and adventure narratives. His earliest works—A Sea of Words; Harbors and High Seas; and Every Man Will Do His Duty—are companion books to Patrick O'Brian's monumental Aubry-Maturin novel series and are the first and most popular companion books to the 20-novel series.

King wrote a groundbreaking biography of O'Brian, published just three month's after O'Brian's death in Dublin—Patrick O'Brian: A Life Revealed (2000). King appeared in a BBC documentary about O'Brian and on ABC World News Tonight and NPR's Talk of the Nation.

King followed this biography with the national bestseller Skeletons on the Zahara (2004), which tells the true story of the shipwreck of a Connecticut merchant brig Commerce on the west coast of Africa in 1815. The crew was enslaved on the desert by nomadic Arabs and had to travel 800 miles across the Sahara to reach freedom. Based on the memoirs of Captain James Riley and sailor Archibald Robbins, which King discovered in the New York Yacht Club library, and translated into ten languages, Skeletons was a multiple book of the year selection, the basis of a feature in National Geographic Adventure and a two-hour special documentary on the History Chanel. It is currently being developed as a feature film in London.

Unbound: A True Story of War, Love, and Survival, about the 30 courageous women who walked 4,000 miles across China with Mao Zedong, in 1934, was published in 2010. While crossing eleven provinces, the 30 women forded dozens of raging rivers, scaled ice-covered peaks on the Tibetan Plateau, and survived ambushes, bombings, severe hunger and thirst, typhoid fever, and the births of half a dozen children. Their epic march helped reshape China forever. Daniel A. Metraux, professor of Asian Studies at Mary Baldwin College wrote that "Unbound is a must read for any student of modern Chinese history and ranks with Red Star Over China as one of the classic narratives of the early days of the CCP.”

In addition to his books, King is a past director of book publishing at National Review, an original contributing editor to Men's Journal, and the founder of Bubba Magazine. He has contributed stories to Book Marks, Esquire, Men's Journal, National Geographic Adventure, New York, New York Times, Outside, Travel + Leisure, and the Daily Telegraph.

An avid hiker, King likes to clear his mind on cross-country treks. He writes:

I took my first major walk—190 miles coast to coast in England—in 1986 after escaping a tedious temporary job as sales clerk in a London Tie-Rack. The job made the open air all the more glorious, even if the cloud ceiling was about head high almost every day. Ever since then, my friend, Rob, an English investment banker, and I plan walks whenever we can. Various friends sign on for these no-frills holidays. On our first journey, we followed Alf Wainwright’s route through the North York Moors (stark and lovely like the end of the world), the Yorkshire Dales (where we encountered horizontal sheets of rain), and the Lake District (lush hills with rocky tops ringing with their literary inspiration). It was so much fun, we did it again in 2000.

In between, we walked Offa’s Dyke (160 rugged and breathtaking miles along the Welsh-English border) in 1987; Pilgrim’s Way, from Winchester, once the political center of England, to Canterbury, then the ecclesiastical center of England, with my wife and a friend in 1989; and the Tour du Mont Blanc, which takes you through Switzerland, France and England, in 1993. The toughest walk we have tackled was the Walkers' Haute Route, from Zermatt to Chamonix, in 1996. Each morning began with a brutal uphill stretch. One friend finally had to take a bus and meet us ahead."

In 1987, King and his wife, Jessica King, and some friends tackled the one-day Round Manhattan Walk (about 36 miles), about which King says, “The battering of walking on the pavement all day left me sorer than the New York Marathon would a few years later.” Other favorite journeys include the Mont Ventoux midnight climb, in France, the Na Pali Coast, in Kauai, Hawaii, and a series of inn-to-inn walks that Dean did for Mid-Atlantic Country Magazine: From Back Bay, Virginia, to the Outer Banks of North Carolina along the Allegheny Trail in West Virginia"; and on the Delaware River Trail, 1994.

In 1999, Dean sailed as a sailor trainee on board the tallship HMS Rose from New York to Bermuda. And in 2001, he retraced Captain James Riley’s route on foot and on camelback through Western Sahara, which informed his book Skeletons on the Zahara.

Dean is a founder, past co-chair, and advisory board member of the James River Writers organization, which sponsors the annual James River Writers Conference in Richmond, Virginia. Held on the first weekend of October at the Library of Virginia in historic downtown Richmond, the conference is known for its relaxed and collegial atmosphere as well as for its noteable guests. (Excerpted from the author's website.)

Book Reviews
Skeletons is a page-turner, replete with gruesome details about thirst, a diet of dried locusts and animal bone marrow, relentless exposure to the sun and the changes in bodily functions that result. King's plot is right out of Homer: Will the stalwart captain and his mates ever see home again? ... Even armchair adventurers satiated with exotic travelogues will appreciate heroism amid adversity in this fast-paced account of slow torture—and an almost-happy ending.
Grace Lechenstein - Washington Post

When the American cargo ship Commerce ran aground on the northwestern shores of Africa in 1815 along with its crew of 12 Connecticut-based sailors, the misfortunes that befell them came fast and hard, from enslavement to reality-bending bouts of dehydration. King's aggressively researched account of the crew's once-famous ordeal reads like historical fiction, with unbelievable stories of the seamen's endurance of heat stroke, starvation and cruelty by their Saharan slavers. King (Patrick O'Brian: A Life Revealed), who went to Africa and, on camel and foot, retraced parts of the sailors' journey, succeeds brilliantly at making the now familiar sandscape seem as imposing and new as it must have been to the sailors. Every dromedary step thuds out from the pages with its punishing awkwardness, and each drop of brackish found water reprieves and tortures with its perpetual insufficiency. King's leisurely prose style rounds out the drama with well-parceled-out bits of context, such as the haggling barter culture of the Saharan nomadic Arabs and the geological history of Western Africa's coastline. Zahara (King's use of older and/or phonetic spellings helps evoke the foreignness of the time and place) impresses with its pacing, thoroughness and empathy for the plight of a dozen sailors heaved smack-hard into an unknown tribalism. By the time the surviving crew members make it back to their side of civilization, reader and protagonist alike are challenged by new ways of understanding culture clash, slavery and the place of Islam in the social fabric of desert-dwelling peoples. Maps, illus.
Publishers Weekly

In 1815, 12 men boarded the merchant ship Commerce in Connecticut, bound for the Cape Verde Islands after a brief stopover in Gibraltar. Weather and unfamiliar surroundings, however, caused the ship to wreck on the inhospitable coast of what is now Mauritania. Taken as slaves by regional nomads and separated (some never to be seen again), the dozen sailors endured great hardships. King (Patrick O'Brian: A Life Revealed) rivets with this account of Captain Riley's nine weeks of captivity: traveling inland nearly 800 miles, then back west, and finally north to Morocco, where he was luckily ransomed by an American consul. Referencing Riley's journals and those of crewman Robbin (which became best sellers in their day), King writes an astoundingly researched treatise on Islamic customs, nomadic life, and desert natural history, as well as detailed descriptions of dehydration, starvation, and caloric intake. Included are an 85-title bibliography, detailed maps of the northwest coast of Mauritania and Morocco, a glossary of Arabic terms, and wonderful photographs of King's own trip as he retraced Captain Riley's journey of enslavement. A wonderful, inspiring story of humankind's will to survive in spite of inhospitable conditions and inhumane treatment, this work should be in all public libraries, maritime libraries, and African collections. —Jim Thorsen, Weaverville, NC
Library Journal

The horrendous ordeal of 11 American seamen, shipwrecked on the Atlantic coast of North Africa and then sold into slavery, grippingly chronicled by adventure writer King. The War of 1812 had just ended, and Captain James Riley was hungry to get back to work on the brig Commerce, sailing out of Connecticut to buy cheap and sell dear in the wake of the British wartime blockade. But strange weather and bad luck sent Riley's ship onto the rocks of Atlantic Africa, then more bad luck put him and ten shipmates in the hands of nomads who took them into slavery. What happened over the next two months was so extraordinary that the narrative flies under its own steam, though King ably guides its progression and the reader's absorption, using two firsthand accounts published after the event as his source material. The degree of privation the men suffered was so absurd it's a wonder the nomads kept them at all, for their work value as slaves was scant. Yet there they are: sun-blasted, sand-blasted, wind-blasted, thighs chafed to bleeding ribbons from riding camels, feet shredded to the bone by sharp rocks, so thirsty that drinking urine was a comfort, so hungry they ate pieces of infected flesh that had been cut off the camels and the skin peeling off their own bodies. The men were split up, briefly reunited, then rudely separated; King plays these episodes like stringed instruments upon the reader's taut occupation with the proceedings. A lifetime of misery was packed into two months, after which six of the seamen, led by the worthy Riley, managed to convince a trader to buy them for the bounty he will receive from the European consul in Morocco. A jaw-dropping story kept on edge, along with the reader: exquisite and excruciating screw-turning.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Just before the crew of the Commerce was captured by desert nomads, Riley stole some water from Dick Deslisle, the only black crew member. In his notes, the author observes that, although this theft might possibly be construed as an act of racism, Riley was, for a man of the early nineteenth century, "remarkably free of bigotry." Do you agree with this assessment of Riley's character? Why or why not?

2. In North America the discourse on slavery is nderstandably dominated by the paradigm of white plantation owners and black slaves. Throughout history, however, slavery has existed in a number of different forms on almost every continent in the world. How did reading Skeletons on the Zahara broaden your understanding of the institution of slavery?

3. Sidi Hamet is one of the most complex individuals in Skeletons on the Zahara. Even Riley "could never fully understand his ways." To what degree was Sidi Hamet's decision to help the sailors motivated by kindness? To what degree was his decision motivated by the prospect of financial gains?

4. Dean King notes that many an outsider has been perturbed by what T. E. Lawrence called the"crazed communism" of the desert. Indeed, Riley was shocked when a horde of Sahrawis descended freely upon a camel that Sidi Hamet had slaughtered to eat. Later, however, Riley and his men benefited from the hospitality of friendly Sahrawi tribes and must have begun to realize the value of sharing resources in the harsh desert. Can you name other examples in the book of desert customs that seemed peculiar at first but later revealed their value? Have you ever found a custom strange upon first glance, recognizing its beauty only later?

5. After the shipwreck, Riley "felt a swell of regret at the unfettered pursuit of wealth" practiced in the United States. Indeed, in Riley's era, men routinely risked their lives in order to eke out a living—and often paid the ultimate price. Can you think of any modernday equivalents to this scenario?

6. Under U.S. law, Riley was allowed to command the crew of the Commerce as a father would his children. Do you think Riley was a good leader? Did he make any decisions that you consider misguided or questionable? Did his authority over his men ever break down? Offer examples from the text to support your answers.

7. Although it may seem somewhat difficult to believe—especially since Riley and his men were often spat upon for being "Christian dogs"—the Quran holds Christians and Jews in relatively high regard. Were the men of the Commerce ever treated with the respect traditionally afforded to "People of the Book"?

8. The camel is essential to the survival of the Sahrawis. It is a means of transportation, a source of meat and nutrient rich milk, and a signifier of status. Can you think of another example in which the lives of a people are or were so dependent on a single natural resource or geographic feature? The ancient Egyptians and the Nile River is one example.

9. What do you think about Riley's sacrifice of Antonio Michel? Was it, as Dean King asserts,"best for his men, preserving for them an indisputable leader rather than an outsider, and an old man at that"? Or was it a cowardly act?

10. During World War I, soldiers in opposing trenches shared a bond forged in the fire of brutal common experience. At the same time, they felt disconnected from the people who remained at home, who they believed could never understand the horror of war. Did the Commerce crew, who shared the hardship of the desert with the Sahrawis, ever yield to the same psychology?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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Agent ZigZag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love and Betrayal
Ben Macintyre, 2007
Crown Publishing
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307353412


Summary
Eddie Chapman was a charming criminal, a con man, and a philanderer. He was also one of the most remarkable double agents Britain has ever produced. Inside the traitor was a man of loyalty; inside the villain was a hero. The problem for Chapman, his spymasters, and his lovers was to know where one persona ended and the other began.

Based on recently declassified files, Agent Zigzag tells Chapman’s full story for the first time. It’s a gripping tale of loyalty, love, treachery, espionage, and the thin and shifting line between fidelity and betrayal. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio 
• Birth—1963
• Where—England, UK
• Education—N/A
• Currently—lives in London, England, UK

Ben Macintyre is a British author, historian, and columnist writing for The Times newspaper (London). His columns range from current affairs to historical controversies.

Books
MacIntyre is the author of a book on the gentleman criminal Adam Worth, The Napoleon of Crime: The Life and Times of Adam Worth, Master Thief (1992). He also wrote The Man Who Would Be King: The First American in Afghanistan (2004). In 2008 MacIntyre released an informative illustrated account of Ian Fleming, creator of the fictional spy James Bond, to accompany the For Your Eyes Only exhibition at London's Imperial War Museum, which was part of the Fleming Centenary celebrations.

Three of his most recent books center on World War II and have become international bestsellers. In 2007, he published Agent Zigzag: The True Wartime Story of Eddie Chapman: Lover, Betrayer, Hero, Spy. The story centers on Chapman, a real-life double agent during the Second World War. Operation Mincemeat, issued in 2010, recounts the Allied deception their impending invasion of Italy. Double Cross, released in 2012, is about the Allies' D-Day spy network.

All three books have been made into BBC documentaries—Operation Mincemeat (in 2010), Double Agent: The Eddie Chapman Story (in 2011), and Double Cross (in 2012). His most recent book, published in 2014, is A Spy Among Friends: Phil Kilby and the Great Betrayal.  (From Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews
Agent Zigzag, known to friends, lovers and the police as Eddie Chapman, was by any measure Britain's most unlikely intelligence asset. He was a longtime criminal turned double agent who, in the course of his career as a spy, would flit back and forth between Britain and Germany, occupied France and occupied Norway on one top-secret mission after another. His incredible wartime adventures, recounted in Ben Macintyre's rollicking, spellbinding Agent Zigzag,blend the spy-versus-spy machinations of John le Carre with the high farce of Evelyn Waugh.
William Grimes - New York Times Book Review


Agent Zigzagis the amazing but true story of Eddie Chapman, a professional criminal who became a highly effective double agent during World War II, winning the trust of German intelligence services even as he reported back to the spymasters of MI5…Chapman's story has been told in fragments in the past, but only when MI5 declassified his files was it possible to present it in all its richness and complexity. Macintyre tells it to perfection, with endless insights into the horror and absurdity of war.... Chapman is an endlessly fascinating figure, a man who would save your life one day and steal your watch the next. It's amusing, at this point, to see how the more aristocratic Brits couldn't quite believe that this degenerate, this criminal, could be a patriot. But Eddie Chapman was a patriot, in his fashion, and this excellent book finally does him justice.
Patrick Anderson - Washington Post


[R]ichly descriptive, marvelously illuminating, and just plain brilliant.... One could not think of a better subject for Macintyre's curious mind than the man whom British intelligence dubbed Agent Zigzag in December 1942.... [A] plot—impossible and pointless to summarize—that is as briskly paced and suspenseful as any novel's. Macintyre's diligent research and access to once-secret files combine here with his gift of empathetic imagination and inspired re-creation. He writes with brio and a festive spirit and has quite simply created a masterpiece.
Boston Globe


London Times associate editor Macintyre (The Man Who Would Be King) adroitly dissects the enigmatic World War II British double agent Eddie Chapman in this intriguing and balanced biography. Giving "little thought" to the morality of his decision, Chapman offered to work as a spy for the Germans in 1940 after his release from an English prison in the Channel Islands, then occupied by the Germans. After undergoing German military intelligence training, Chapman parachuted into England in December 1942 with instructions to sabotage a De Havilland aircraft factory, but he surrendered after landing safely. Doubled by MI5 (the security service responsible for counterespionage), Chapman was used "to feed vital disinformation to the enemy" and was one of the few double agents "to delude their German handlers until the end of the war." Meticulously researched-relying extensively on recently released wartime files of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service-Macintyre's biography often reads like a spy thriller. In the end, the author concludes that Chapman "repeatedly risked his life... [and] provided invaluable intelligence," but "it was never clear whether he was on the side of the angels or the devils." Of the two Zigzag biographies this fall (the other, by Nicholas Booth), this is clearly superior.
Publishers Weekly


Sixty years after his incredible career as a double agent for the British, Eddie Chapman (1914-97) is the subject of two new books charting his experiences as one of World War II's most amazing spies. A cad, bounder, womanizer, safe cracker, and general bad guy before the war, Chapman was in a jail on the Channel Island of Jersey awaiting trial when the Germans took over the island and decided that he might make a good spy for them. After training in Germany, he was parachuted back into England to blow up an airfield. Instead, he immediately turned himself into the authorities and cooperated with MI5 (the UK's security intelligence agency) as one of England's double agents. The Germans were fooled into thinking that Chapman had indeed destroyed the airfield and rewarded him upon his return to Germany with the Iron Cross. Sent back to England, Chapman spent the latter part of the war giving incorrect information to the Germans about the success of their V-1 and V-2 rockets. He wired inaccurate coordinates to the German rocket launch crews who then sent their rockets to places of minor importance, causing little damage.
Ed Goedeken - Library Journal


A preternaturally talented liar and pretty good safecracker becomes a "spy prodigy" working concurrently for Britain's MI5 and the Nazi's Abwehr. London Times newsman and popular historian Macintyre (The Man Who Would be King: The First American in Afghanistan, 2004, etc) reports on the life and crimes of the late Eddie Chapman using interviews, newly released secret files and, cautiously, the English spy's less-reliable memoirs. Just launching his criminal career when World War II began, the dashing adventurer was jailed in the Channel Island Jersey. Volunteering his services to the occupying Fatherland, he was taken to France and schooled in the dark arts of espionage and the wicked devices of spies by the likes of convivial headmaster Herr von Groning and spymaster Oberleutnant Praetorius. Then the new German agent signed a formal espionage contract (under which his expected rewards were to be subjected to income tax). Dropped in England's green and pleasant land to commit sabotage, he instead reported directly to His Majesty's secret service. There they called their man "Agent ZigZag." The Germans had named him "Fritzchen." Little Fritz, with the help of a magician, fooled his Nazi handlers into believing he had wrecked an aircraft factory. After a crafty return to Germany, he made another parachute drop home to report on an anti-sub device and the accuracy of the new V-1 flying bomb. The energetic adventurer from a lower stratum of British society was being run by Oxbridge gentlemen and by aristocrats of Deutschland at the same time. Or perhaps he was running them. Adorning his exploits were several beautiful women and an Iron Cross. It is a remarkable cloak-and-dagger procedural and a fine tale of unusual wartime employment. Based on the same material, another first-rate text (Nicholas Booth's ZigZag, 2007) with much the same Hitchcockian contortions qualifies as an exciting black-and-white spy thriller. Macintyre's version is in full color. One of the great true spy stories of World War II, vividly rendered.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Agent ZigZag:

1. What kind of character traits make for a good spy—and how does Eddie Chapman reflect those traits? Is he typical of other successful spies you might have read about previously? Are the qualities it takes to become a spy present in your make-up?

2. Follow-up to Question #1: What in Chapman's character, if anything, would you say is admirable? One reviewer has commented that "there is something about a democracy that makes a spy untrustworthy to the public and unworthy of its respect.... Chapman was no exception." Do you agree...or disagree? Where does the author come down on this question? Does he attempt to convince readers, one way or another? Or does he let you make your own determination?

3. How does did Chapman convince the Nazis to use him as their spy—what enables him to convince them? Same with the British—how does he persuade the Allies to use him as a double agent?

4. What have you learned about how the secret intelligence services operated during World War II—both the Abwehr and MI5? What do you find most interesting...or disturbing? Same questions regarding the techniques used to train spies.

5. Talk about the relationship between spies and their "handlers." How would you describe Ryde and his handling of Chapman? Does Ryde run Chapman...or the other way around? Also, what role does class play in the relationship of spies to handlers?

6. Should agents' lives be considered expendable—or promises negotiable—in the overwhelming necessity of winning a war?

7. Talk about the dangers Chapman faced in Germany. How vulnerable was his position as a spy?

8. We rightfully herald the heroism of armed forces in World War II. Yet the story of intelligence gathering and analysis remained untold for years. (The story of the Ultra secret, for instance, wasn't written about till the 1970s.) Discuss role of intelligence operations—including code-breaking as well as spying—in the Allies' ultimate success? Would the war have been won in 1945 without their efforts?

9. Follow-up to Question #8: Overall, how vital was Chapman's role to the Allied victory? Did his work make a critical difference?

10. What in this story do you find humorous? The episode, for instance of Bobby the Pig? Any others? What about the hapless German agents in Britain? Were Nazi spies truly bunglers?

11. Chapman was dead by the time Macintyre wrote his book. Having read Agent ZigZag, do you feel you have a fairly complete picture? Or are there still unanswered questions—more you would like to know?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online of off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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First Family: Abigail and John Adams
Joseph J. Ellis, 2010
Knopf Doubleday
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307269621


Summary
The Pulitzer Prize–winning, best-selling author of Founding Brothers and His Excellency brings America’s preeminent first couple to life in a moving and illuminating narrative that sweeps through the American Revolution and the republic’s tenuous early years.

John and Abigail Adams left an indelible and remarkably preserved portrait of their lives together in their personal correspondence: both Adamses were prolific letter writers (although John conceded that Abigail was clearly the more gifted of the two), and over the years they exchanged more than twelve hundred letters. Joseph J. Ellis distills this unprecedented and unsurpassed record to give us an account both intimate and panoramic; part biography, part political history, and part love story.

Ellis describes the first meeting between the two as inauspicious—John was twenty-four, Abigail just fifteen, and each was entirely unimpressed with the other. But they soon began a passionate correspondence that resulted in their marriage five years later.

Over the next decades, the couple were separated nearly as much as they were together. John’s political career took him first to Philadelphia, where he became the boldest advocate for the measures that would lead to the Declaration of Independence. Yet in order to attend the Second Continental Congress, he left his wife and children in the middle of the war zone that had by then engulfed Massachusetts. Later he was sent to Paris, where he served as a minister to the court of France alongside Benjamin Franklin. These years apart stressed the Adamses’ union almost beyond what it could bear: Abigail grew lonely, while the Adams children suffered from their father’s absence.

John was elected the nation’s first vice president, but by the time of his reelection, Abigail’s health prevented her from joining him in Philadelphia, the interim capital. She no doubt had further reservations about moving to the swamp on the Potomac when John became president, although this time he persuaded her. President Adams inherited a weak and bitterly divided country from George Washington. The political situation was perilous at best, and he needed his closest advisor by his side: “I can do nothing,” John told Abigail after his election, “without you.”

In Ellis’s rich and striking new history, John and Abigail’s relationship unfolds in the context of America’s birth as a nation. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1943
• Where—USA
• Education—B.A. College of William and Mary; M.A., Ph.D., 
   Yale University
• Awards—Pulitzer Prize, 2001; National Book Award, 1997
• Currently—Amherst Massachusetts, USA

Joseph J. Ellis is the Ford Foundation Professor of History at Mount Holyoke College. Educated at the College of William and Mary and Yale University, he served as a captain in the army and taught at West Point before coming to Mount Holyoke in 1972. He was dean of the faculty there for ten years.

Among his previous books are Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams, Founding Brothers, and American Sphinx, which won the 1997 National Book Award. He lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, with his wife, Ellen, and their three sons. (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
We may not learn anything appreciably new about the Adams family, per se, but in First Family Mr. Ellis employs his narrative gifts to draw a remarkably intimate portrait of John and Abigail s marriage as it played out against the momentous events that marked the birth of a nation.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times


Written with the grace and style one expects from the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Founding Brothers...John Adams could not have a better biographer.
Los Angeles Times


Ellis’s strength is his ability to portray historical icons as real human beings, and his talent remains sharp.... Ellis has made himself into a sort of bard of our early Republic, and [First Family] is a fitting addition to his repertoire.
Anne Bartlett - Miami Herald


The author’s fluid style penetrates a correspondence studded with classical references, political dish, felicitous turns of phrases and unvarnished pleadings of affection and anxiety. America’s first power couple enjoyed, teased and rescued each other during 54 years of marriage.
John E. Lazarus - Newark Star-Ledger


Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Ellis (Founding Brothers) gives "the premier husband-wife team in all American history" starring roles in an engrossing romance. His Abigail has an acute intellect, but is not quite a protofeminist heroine: her ambitions are limited to being a mother and helpmeet, and in the iconic correspondence she often strikes the traditional pose of a neglected wife who sacrifices her happiness by giving up her husband to the call of duty. The author's more piquant portrait of John depicts an insecure, mercurial, neurotic man stabilized by Abigail's love and advice. Ellis's implicit argument—that the John/Abigail partnership lies at the foundation of the Adams family's public achievements--is a bit over-played, and not always to the advantage of the partnership: "Her judgment was a victim of her love for John…," Ellis writes of Abigail's support for the Alien and Sedition Acts, the ugliest blot on John's presidency, all of which explains little and excuses less. Still, Ellis's supple prose and keen psychological insight give a vivid sense of the human drama behind history's upheavals.
Publishers Weekly


On the heels of Woody Holton's prize-winning Abigail Adams, renowned historian Ellis (history, Mount Holyoke Coll.) returns to the well-trod ground of the founding era, this time shifting his focus to America's "first family" and political dynasty, the Adamses. Bringing his talents for narrative writing to the task, Ellis recounts the compelling relationship that included an awkward courtship and a life of sacrifice along with raising a family and constructing a legacy. However, here—unlike in Edith B. Gelles's Abigail & John: Portrait of a Marriage and G.J. Barker-Benfield's forthcoming Abigail & John Adams: The Americanization of Sensibility—Abigail is frequently relegated to the sidelines as the narrative becomes yet another biography of John. And there is nothing new here. Verdict: Lacking the intellectual depth of Ellis's previous American Sphinx and the originality of his Founding Brothers, his new book nevertheless imparts a poignant tale. Biography buffs who haven't yet read about John and Abigail may well enjoy this; those familiar with the subject have no need for it. —Brian Odom, Pelham P.L., AL
Library Journal


Ellis is that rare professional historian who can eloquently convey both information and insight with remarkable clarity... he has once again given us a consistently engaging dual biography and love story as well as an insightful exploration of early American history. —Roger Bishop
Bookpage


In addition to looking at the strengths of the Adams’ marriage, the book examines the toll taken by their years apart and the misfortunes in the lives of all their children except John Quincy. Ellis has produced a very readable history of the nation’s founding as lived by these two. —Mary Ellen Quinn
Booklist


(Starred review) The author’s beautiful writing draws the reader wholly into this relationship, bringing new perspective to the historical importance of this enduring love story. An impeccable account of the politics, civics and devotion behind the Adams marriage.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The First Family:

1. Some reviewers say Ellis's book offers little new about Abigail and John Adams. Was it new to you? Have you learned something you didn't know before? Or is it rehashing old ground...things you've already read about the couple and their role in history? If you've read other works on the Adamses, how does this book compare?

2. The marriage of John and Abigail Adams is one of the most famous in U.S. history. What is it that draws the two to one another? Talk about their relationship as Ellis portrays it. What makes it work? What are its weak points ... and its strengths? Who was the more independent ... and who the more dependent—either...or neither?

3. Does the Adams marriage offer any lessons to those of us in the 21st century? Can we learn from a marriage that occurred over 200 years ago when cultural expectations were very different? How would you compare their relationship to one another with your own relationship(s)?

4. What does Ellis mean by "the paradox of proximity"?

5. How supportive is Abigail of John's growing political involvement and ambitions? What does she reveal in letters to friends and relatives? What affect does John's choice of career have on her and on their marriage? Male or female, how would your partner's absences and political involvements affect you?

6. Talk about how Ellis presents John's famous temper and the possible reasons for it. How would you describe John Adams? Was he justified in his mistrust of his colleagues...or are his constant suspicions a sign of a deeper paranoia?

7. Describe Abigail Adams. Was she a feminist...or a forerunner of feminists? If so, why so...if not, why not?

8. What kind of parents are John and Abigail Adams? What about their clear favoritism of John Quincy?

9. The Jefferson-Adams friendship and enmity is long famous. Talk about that relationship, it's dissolution and the later reconciliation? What prompted the friendship...what dissolved it? How does this book affect your attitude toward Jefferson, a famously enigmatic figure?

10. Talk about the press in the early days of the nation—its reflection, even fueling, of a deep political divisiveness. Are there similarities to today's media coverage of politics? Or not.

11. In what way does Ellis take sides in the Adams-Hamilton debate. How does Hamilton come across in Ellis's portrayal of him?

12. Consider watching clips from the 2008 PBS John Adams mini-series, based on David McCullough's 2001 book, John Adams. The series stars Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney. It's excellent! Make comparisons to Ellis's book.

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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