The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life
David Quammen, 2018
Simon & Schuster
480 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781476776620
Summary
Nonpareil science writer David Quammen explains how recent discoveries in molecular biology can change our understanding of evolution and life’s history, with powerful implications for human health and even our own human nature.
In the mid-1970s, scientists began using DNA sequences to reexamine the history of all life.
Perhaps the most startling discovery to come out of this new field—the study of life’s diversity and relatedness at the molecular level—is horizontal gene transfer (HGT), or the movement of genes across species lines.
It turns out that HGT has been widespread and important. For instance, we now know that roughly eight percent of the human genome arrived not through traditional inheritance from directly ancestral forms, but sideways by viral infection—a type of HGT.
In The Tangled Tree David Quammen, "one of that rare breed of science journalists who blends exploration with a talent for synthesis and storytelling" (Nature), chronicles these discoveries through the lives of the researchers who made them—such as
♦ Carl Woese, the most important little-known biologist of the twentieth century;
♦ Lynn Margulis, the notorious maverick whose wild ideas about "mosaic" creatures proved to be true;
♦ Tsutomu Wantanabe, who discovered that the scourge of antibiotic-resistant bacteria is a direct result of horizontal gene transfer, bringing the deep study of genome histories to bear on a global crisis in public health.
Now, in The Tangled Tree, he explains how molecular studies of evolution have brought startling recognitions about the tangled tree of life—including where we humans fit upon it.
Thanks to new technologies such as CRISPR, we now have the ability to alter even our genetic composition—through sideways insertions, as nature has long been doing.
The Tangled Tree is a brilliant guide to our transformed understanding of evolution, of life’s history, and of our own human nature. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—February, 1948
• Where—Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
• Education—B.S., Yale University; Oxford University (Rhodes Scholar)
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in Bozeman, Montana
David Quammen is an American science, nature and travel writer and the author of fifteen books. He wrote a column called "Natural Acts" for Outside magazine for fifteen years. His articles have also appeared in National Geographic, Harper's, Rolling Stone, the New York Times Book Review and other periodicals.
Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, Quammen graduated from Yale. He won a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford where he studied literature, concentrating on the works of William Faulkner. Trout fishing drew Quammen to Montana in the early '70s, and he has lived there ever since—although he still maintains a heavy travel schedule, writing for National Geographic and researching his books.
During autumn 2014, his extensive research involved Quammen in the public discussion of the 2014 Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa and its spread overseas. In 2016 he wrote the entire issue of that year's May National Geographic on the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem. It was the first time in the history of the magazine that an issue was single-authored.
Quammen’s fifteen books include The Tangled Tree, The Song of the Dodo, The Reluctant Mr. Darwin, and Spillover, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award.
Quammen shares a home in Bozeman, Montana, with his wife, Betsy Gaines Quammen, an environmental historian, along with two Russian wolfhounds and a cross-eyed cat.
Awards
National Magazine Awards (1987, 1994, 2005)
Academy of Arts & Letters (Literature)
Natural World Book Prize
Helen Bernstein Book Award (Journalism)
John Burroughs Medal (Nature Writing)
PEN/Spielvogel-Diamonstein Award (Essay)
Stephen Jay Gould Prize
Andrew Carnegie Medal (Nonfiction, Finalist)
(Author bio adapted from the publisher and Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
[Quammen] is our greatest living chronicler of the natural world …[and] an exemplary guide; there are few writers so firmly on the side of the reader, who so solicitously request your patience …and delightedly hack away at jargon.… He keeps the chapters short, the sentences spring-loaded. There are vivacious descriptions on almost every page…Each section ends with a light cliffhanger. Quammen has the gift of Daedalus; he gets you out of the maze. And maybe to a bar. When not in the field, you can find Quammen and his subjects talking over a drink or two, over a combo sushi platter, over Turkish food, Chilean steaks and beers or just over a coke and pizza. It's a book born out of appetite and conviviality, an unpretentious delight in food and conversation—in being and thinking with others.
Parul Sehgal - New York Times
David Quammen proves to be an immensely well-informed guide to a complex story.… Indeed he is, in my opinion, the best natural history writer currently working. Mr. Quammen’s books… consistently impress with their accuracy, energy and superb, evocative writing.
David Barash - Wall Street Journal
Quammen has written a deep and daring intellectual adventure.… The Tangled Tree is much more than a report on some cool new scientific facts. It is, rather, a source of wonder
Thomas Levenson - Boston Globe
In The Tangled Tree, celebrated science writer David Quammen tells perhaps the grandest tale in biology.… He presents the science—and the scientists involved—with patience, candour and flair.
John Archibald - Nature
In David Quammen’s new page turner, The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life, the author reveals how new molecular techniques have come to revolutionize the way we understand evolutionary processes and how we classify life into coherent groups. In an accessible style that has won him accolades in the past, Quammen does a marvelous job of weaving together the scientific and human story of this revolution.… Quammen has once again crafted a delightful read on a complex and important subject.
Ivor T. Knight - Science
(Starred review) [E]xplores important [genetic] questions and …proves its author’s mastery in weaving various strands of a complex story into an intricate, beautiful, and gripping whole.
Publishers Weekly
Scientists are at the beginning of understanding the implications of [genetic] discoveries for human health. Verdict: Written in an accessible style, this book will interest… those curious about evolutionary history. —Caren Nichter, Univ. of Tennessee at Martin
Library Journal
(Starred review) With humor, clarity, and exciting accounts of breakthroughs and feuds, Quammen traces the painstaking revelation of life’s truly spectacular complexity.
Booklist
(Starred review) A masterful history of a new field of molecular biology…. A consistently engaging collection of vivid portraits of brilliant, driven, quarrelsome scientists in the process of dramatically altering the fundamentals of evolution, illuminated by the author's insightful commentary.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for THE TANGLED TREE … and then take off on your own:
1. Talk about Darwin's rudimentary idea of a family tree, and how, over the years, biologists have worked to delineate the limbs and branches of that tree. First scientists used physical similarities …and eventually DNA structure.
2. Follow-up to Question 1: How has our increased knowledge of genetics changed the understanding of the tree of life?
3. In what way is the tree more tangled? In other words, what is the significance of the book's title? How has our understanding of those once separate "branches" changed? In other words, is Darwin's "tree" a seriously flawed conception, or is it merely in need of revision?
4. Consider Carl Woese. How have his findings—on how cells translate genetic information into proteins— altered our view of Darwin's tree and, thus, our understanding of the evolution of life? Talk about how Woese's views differed from the group of 20 scientists known as the RNA Tie Club. Quammen writes that Woese "was a loner by disposition. He took a separate path. Not in the club. No RNA tie." What did Woese propose instead? Did his personality shape his ability to challenge the standing theories of Darwinism?
5. What are the archaea?
6. Woese's discovery led to a new scientific field called "molecular phylogeny." What are some of the astonishing insights this branch of inquiry has revealed about evolutionary history?
7. Consider Tsutomu Wantanabe's discovery. Can you explain (to one another in your discussion group, or even to yourself!) what "horizontal gene transfer" is and how it differs from "vertical gene transfer"? How does horizontal gene transfer explain antibiotic resistance?
8. Follow-up to Question 7: How does gene swapping change our Darwinian understanding of the pace of evolution—as well as the "shape" of the tree of life and its separate branches? What are the implications of gene swapping for the future of human existence?
9. Why, according the the author, did Woese disagree with the Human Genome Project?
10. Talk about the end of Woese's life—his disappointments, his disgruntlement against the scientific community, and even his resentment against Darwin himself.
11. The author discusses Lynn Margulis's role in eukaryote evolution, although he spends considerable time on her personal life (marriages, pregnancies, and motherhood)--concerns absent in his treatment of his male subjects. Does the attention to Margulis' family issues irritate you … or do you find it interesting in terms of the challenges female scientists face?
12. What is Margulis's theory of mosaic creatures?
13. In the end, does Quammen decide that Darwin was wrong about his tree of life?
14. David Quammen is considered one of the most lucid writers about the complex world of science. What was your experience reading The Tangled Tree? Were you engaged, bored, confused, enlightened …? Does Quammen live up to his reputation in this book?
15. What did you learn reading The Tangled Tree? What was your understanding of Darwinism before you began David Quammen's work, and to what degree has your understanding been enlarged or otherwise altered?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Happiness: A Memoir: The Crooked Little Road to Semi-Ever After
Heather Harpham, 2017
Henry Holt & Co.
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250131560
Summary
A shirt-grabbing, page-turning love story that follows a one-of-a-kind family through twists of fate that require nearly unimaginable choices.
Happiness begins with a charming courtship between hopelessly attracted opposites: Heather, a world-roaming California girl, and Brian, an intellectual, homebody writer, kind and slyly funny, but loath to leave his Upper West Side studio.
Their magical interlude ends, full stop, when Heather becomes pregnant—Brian is sure he loves her, only he doesn't want kids. Heather returns to California to deliver their daughter alone, buoyed by family and friends.
Mere hours after Gracie's arrival, Heather's bliss is interrupted when a nurse wakes her, "Get dressed, your baby is in trouble."
This is not how Heather had imagined new motherhood — alone, heartsick, an unexpectedly solo caretaker of a baby who smelled "like sliced apples and salted pretzels" but might be perilously ill. Brian reappears as Gracie's condition grows dire; together Heather and Brian have to decide what they are willing to risk to ensure their girl sees adulthood.
The grace and humor that ripple through Harpham's writing transform the dross of heartbreak and parental fears into a clear-eyed, warm-hearted view of the world.
Profoundly moving and subtly written, Happiness radiates in many directions — new, romantic love; gratitude for a beautiful, inscrutable world; deep, abiding friendship; the passion a parent has for a child; and the many unlikely ways to build a family.
Ultimately it's a story about love and happiness, in their many crooked configurations. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—May 16, 1967
• Where—San Anselmo, California, U.S.A.
• Education—Gaitlin Schoo, New York University
• Currently—lives in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York
Heather Harpham has written six solo plays, including Happiness and BURNING which toured nationally. Her fiction, essays and reviews have appeared in MORE Magazine and Water~Stone Review. Harpham is the recipient of the Brenda Ueland Prose Prize, a Marin Arts Council Independent Artist Grant and a grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund. She teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and SUNY Purchase and lives along the Hudson River with her family. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Utterly gorgeous…heartbreaking…staggering.… If you’re looking for a book to love, I recommend it.… [Happiness] is told in riveting, plot-twisting fashion.… But I’ll say that it’s also told with care and courage and humor, and it will deepen your understanding of not just life with a sick child, but life.
Chicago Tribune
A heartfelt exploration of mortality and life, this memoir also explores the complex pulls and pushes of human relationships, and the deep debt we owe to family, friends, and modern medicine. At heart, it is a sobering mediation on the lasting impermanence of its titular emotion, happiness.
NPR
An amazing story of love (almost) lost, then found.
People
Absorbing.… A beautifully-written, insightful tale.
Good Housekeeping
Heather Harpham's moving memoir, [Happiness] is a page-turner.
Redbook
In this moving memoir…[Harpham] describes with warmth, fearless honesty, and humor the harrowing saga of what happened after she gave birth.… Harpham has written a heartfelt exploration of familial bonds and the sometimes incredibly bumpy journey one must take to get to contentment.
Publishers Weekly
An award-winning writer, performer, and teacher of physical theater/improvisation, Harpham tells a heartrending story of discovering hours after giving birth that something was dangerously wrong with her baby.
Library Journal
Happiness is an incredibly moving account of survival and love that will inspire readers to hold on tight to what’s truly important.
Booklist
[Happiness] is filled with both pain and beauty, and [Harpham] shares a clear-eyed view of messy relationships and the journey toward something resembles joy...[A] powerful memoir.
BookPage
Although a personal story, Harpham's memoir provides a larger, universal picture of unconditional love toward a child and the push-pull of an adult relationship and all its inherent highs and lows. A frank and often affecting memoir from a mother determined to do whatever it takes for her child.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Do you think Happiness is an apt title for this memoir? Why do you think Heather chose this particular, single word as the title?
2. How do you face adversity? Do you hunker down, as Brian described his tactic, or do you reach out for people to huddle with, like Heather did? Or do you take another approach?
3. "I was suddenly afraid of being bitten by a creature whose solitary home I’d invaded" (20). Think about Heather’s early relationship with Brian and what this line means in that context. Do you think her use of the metaphor is intentional?
4. What did you think about the way Brian and Heather’s relationship evolved over the course of the book, and in particular during the medical ordeals they faced? Do your own relationships thrive during challenging times? Do obstacles you’ve had to confront with other people bring you closer to them, or test the relationship?
5. On page 68, Heather describes the Nepalese attitude toward appreciation, how people in Nepal don’t typically express gratefulness because acts of kindness and community are expected in their culture. Discuss gratitude. At what points does it emerge in Heather’s story?
6. At the start of chapter ten, Heather pictures Gracie as a balloon floating into the sky with Heather and Brian holding on tightly to its string. What does this striking metaphor for parenthood mean to you?
7. Though Heather and Brian decide not to risk having a second child (only to have their intentions thwarted), Heather poses the question of whether it is "ethical to have a second child to save the first child" (101). What do you think? If you were forced to make a similar choice, what would you do?
8. Could you see both sides of Heather and Brian’s argument about whether to subject Gracie to the bone marrow transplant? Talk about risk. Is it easier to assume such risks for yourself or on behalf of someone you love? In which scenario would you be more comfortable taking a life-threatening risk? Are you a risk-taker by nature?
9. A fellow parent in the transplant clinic said to Heather, "This will seem crazy, but don’t make friends. You don’t know which kids will make it and which won’t" (179). Talk about Heather’s response to this statement and what it meant to her later as she got closer to some of the families in the clinic. Do you understand both of these perspectives?
10. Reflect on the support Heather and Brian’s Brooklyn neighbors provided, particularly the fundraiser they organized which yielded enough money to cover Gracie’s expenses in North Carolina. Do you believe in the kindness of strangers? Is there a time when you felt the power of an act of kindness, large or small, from a stranger in your life?
11. On the book’s last page, Heather writes: "We find happiness, if we find it at all, on accident," disputing the idea of a "blueprint" or roadmap to happiness. What do you believe? Is happiness a function of design or grace? Architecture or serendipity? What in your own life brings you most happiness, or even joy, and is that something you’ve created consciously or simply found?
12. We watch Heather’s spirituality fluctuate with the many twists of Gracie’s medical journey. Many people who go through traumatic experiences turn toward faith to help them cope and find understanding, whether it’s embracing religion or spirituality for the first time or reaffirming their existing faith in some way. Has there been a time in your own life where you rediscovered, or reinforced, your spiritual understandings? Have you ever turned away from your faith in times of crisis?
13. In Chapter 50, Heather writes, "Parents of perilously sick kids never stop being afraid," (291). Have you gone through something in your life that you are not able to shake even though the event itself is long in the past? How do you cope with lingering fear or uncertainty?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer
Michelle McNamara, 2018
HarperCollins
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062319784
Summary
A masterful true crime account of the Golden State Killer—the elusive serial rapist turned murderer who terrorized California for over a decade—from Michelle McNamara, the gifted journalist who died tragically while investigating the case.
"You’ll be silent forever, and I’ll be gone in the dark."
For more than ten years, a mysterious and violent predator committed fifty sexual assaults in Northern California before moving south, where he perpetrated ten sadistic murders.
Then he disappeared, eluding capture by multiple police forces and some of the best detectives in the area.
Three decades later, Michelle McNamara, a true crime journalist who created the popular website TrueCrimeDiary.com, was determined to find the violent psychopath she called "the Golden State Killer." Michelle pored over police reports, interviewed victims, and embedded herself in the online communities that were as obsessed with the case as she was.
At the time of the crimes, the Golden State Killer was between the ages of eighteen and thirty, Caucasian, and athletic—capable of vaulting tall fences. He always wore a mask.
After choosing a victim—he favored suburban couples—he often entered their home when no one was there, studying family pictures, mastering the layout. He attacked while they slept, using a flashlight to awaken and blind them. Though they could not recognize him, his victims recalled his voice: a guttural whisper through clenched teeth, abrupt and threatening.
I’ll Be Gone in the Dark—the masterpiece McNamara was writing at the time of her sudden death—offers an atmospheric snapshot of a moment in American history and a chilling account of a criminal mastermind and the wreckage he left behind.
It is also a portrait of a woman’s obsession and her unflagging pursuit of the truth.
Framed by an introduction by Gillian Flynn and an afterword by the author's husband, Patton Oswalt, the book was completed by Michelle’s lead researcher and a close colleague. Utterly original and compelling, it is destined to become a true crime classic—and may at last unmask the Golden State Killer. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—April 14, 1970
• Where—Oak Park, Illinois, USA
• Death—April 21, 2016
• Where—Los Angeles, California
• Education—B.A., University of Notre Dame; M.F.A., University of Minnesota
Michelle Eileen McNamara was an American freelance writer and crime blogger. She was the author of I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer, a true crime book about the Golden State Killer. The book was released posthumously in February 2018 and is being adapted as an HBO documentary series.
Early life and education
McNamara grew up in Oak Park, Illinois, the daughter of Thomas W. McNamara, a trial lawyer, and, Rita McNamara (nee Rigney), a stay-at-home mother. Her parents were Irish American. McNamara was the youngest of the couple's five daughters and one son. They grew up Irish Catholic.
In 1988, she graduated from Oak Park and River Forest High School in Oak Park, Illinois, where her senior year she was editor-in-chief of the student newspaper, "The Trapeze." In 1992, McNamara graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a bachelor's degree in English.[9] She earned an MFA in creative writing from the University of Minnesota.[10]
Career
After graduate school, in 1997 McNamara moved to Los Angeles to write in the film and TV industry. In 2006, she launched her website TrueCrimeDiary. McNamara had a long-standing fascination with true crime originating from the unsolved murder of Kathleen Lombardo that happened two blocks from where she lived when she was young.
She became interested in the Golden State Killer case and penned articles for Los Angeles magazine about the serial killer in 2013 and 2014. In 2014, McNamara and true crime investigative journalist Billy Jensen were on a SXSW Interactive panel called "Citizen Dicks: Solving Murders With Social Media." McNamara and Jensen had a long-term friendship based on their shared passion for researching and writing about true crime.
It was McNamara who coined the term "Golden State Killer," after authorities linked DNA evidence that connected the Original Night Stalker and East Area Rapist. She then signed a book deal with HarperCollins and began to work on a book about the case.
She died before the book could be finished; it was posthumously updated and finalized by true crime writer Paul Haynes and her husband Patton Oswalt. The book, released almost two years after her death, reached No. 2 on the New York Times Best Seller list for nonfiction and No. 1 for combined print and e-book nonfiction.
In April 2018, HBO announced it had purchased the rights for I'll Be Gone in the Dark and were developing it into a documentary series. Filming began in April, 2018.
On April 25, 2018, two months after the book's release, Californian authorities arrested Joseph James DeAngelo as the alleged Golden State Killer. Oswalt believes that authorities' use of the appellation, "Golden State Killer," indicates the "impact" of McNamara's book.
Personal life
McNamara married actor Patton Oswalt on September 24, 2005. The couple's daughter Alice was born in 2009.
Death
McNamara died in her bed on April 21, 2016, in her family's Los Angeles, California, home. According to the autopsy report, her death was attributed to the effects of multiple drugs, including Adderall, Xanax, Fentanyl and amphetamines. Atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease was a contributing factor. The coroner ruled it an accidental overdose. She is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Los Angeles. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 8/23/2018.)
Book Reviews
The definitive crime study of one of the most elusive offenders to come out of California—or anywhere, really.… Because sections of McNamara’s manuscript were pieced together from her notes, there’s a disjointed quality to some of the chapters. But the facts remain the facts.
Marilyn Stasio - New York Times Book Review
Both a vivid and meticulous investigation of a twisted predator who terrorized quiet, upper middle-class communities in California for nearly a decade, and a wrenching personal account from a writer who became consumed by her subject.
Alexandra Alter - New York Times
A powerful portrait of the scale of the Golden State Killer’s crimes, of the mechanics of criminal investigations, of the strange particular dread and paranoia in the California in the 1970s, and of McNamara’s own obsession with violent men, and this one violent man.
San Francisco Chronicle
Michelle McNamara was an obsessive. She was also a damn good writer. That combustive mix has produced I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, a dark page-turner.… Scintillating.
USA Today
(Starred review) This posthumous debut recounts the chilling crimes of a serial murderer in California in the 1970s and ’80s…. With its exemplary mix of memoir and reportage, this remarkable book is a modern true crime classic.
Publishers Weekly
[C]hillingly addictive.… A haunting, if somewhat patchy, read for fans of true crime. —Della Farrell
School Library Journal
(Starred review) Impressive.
Booklist
(Starred review) The last section of the book is written in exactly the style one would expect from an investigative journalist: no nonsense and loaded with facts and relevant observations.… An exemplary true-crime book, and with an HBO adaptation in the works.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The book’s epigraph is the poem "Crime Club" by Weldon Kees. How does this poem set the tone for the story that follows?
2. Early in the book, Michelle McNamara writes, "I need to see his face. He loses his power when we know his face." What is the Golden State Killer’s power, and how would he lose this if he was identified?
3. Michelle writes about an incident in her own neighborhood in Los Angeles, when her neighbor’s house was robbed. "We make well-intentioned promises of protection we can’t always keep. I’ll look out for you." Do you think we, as a society, have lost a sense of neighborliness? What factors do you attribute to this loss? How have changes in technology, economics, architecture—house and planned community designs—impacted you, your neighborhood, and society? Is there a remedy to bring us closer together?
4. While I’ll Be Gone in the Dark is a true crime story—a chronicle of the Golden State Killer—it is also a memoir. Why do you think she included the story of her childhood and relationship with her mother in this story? In the book Michelle confesses, "Writing this now, I’m struck by two incompatible truths that pain me. No one would have taken more joy from this book than my mother. And I probably wouldn’t have felt the freedom to write it until she was gone." Why couldn’t she write this book if her mother had still been alive? Why is it difficult for many people to reconcile parental expectations and disappointments with their own pursuits?
5. In following Michelle’s search to unmask the GSK, what did you learn about her and the kind of person she is? How does getting to know her shape the story and your understanding of the case as it unfolds? Meeting Michelle in these pages, does she fit with your "profile"of a true crime obsessive? How would you characterize Michelle if you were introducing her to a friend?
6. Novelist Gillian Flynn wrote the introduction to the book. How are crime novelists and true crime writers alike, and how do they differ? Do you read crime novels? If so, what draws you to them? How does the experience of reading a crime novel compare to reading a true crime account? What emotions do each elicit?
7. Michelle writes, "Sacramento’s was not an isolated problem. US crime rates show a steady rise in violent crime throughout the 1960s and ’70s, peaking in 1980." The term "serial killer" was coined in the 1970s. Why do you think so many of these serial offenders surfaced at this time?
8. What does Michelle tell us about the way crimes are investigated? What did you learn about the professionals who investigate them? What, if anything,might have helped them in their search for the GSK? How has technology improved their ability to share information? Has it in any way made solving crime more difficult?
9. In the book, Michelle reflects on the similarity between criminals like GSK and the people hunting them. "What I don’t mention is the uneasy realization I’ve had about how much our frenetic searching mirrors the compulsive behavior—the trampled flowerbeds, scratch marks on window screens, crank calls—of the one we seek." Are there other shared characteristics between these two different kinds of hunters?
10. Many of GSK’s victims were men. How did the crimes impact the surviving men and the women? Why do you think men might have a more difficult time coping with the aftermath of the kind of crime GSK perpetrated?
11. With so many attacks taking place in such a small area in Sacramento, do you think the East Area Rapist lived in one of those neighborhoods? Why do you think he chose the houses he targeted? How do you think the geography of those subdivisions contributed to the effectiveness of his attacks?
12. With the proliferation of genetic testing services, people can find out about their heritage and links to others who share their DNA. Currently, genetic testing services like 23andMe cannot upload the DNA of criminals for possible familial matches. The colleagues who finished the book after Michelle’s death use a quote from Jurassic Park to highlight the issue: "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should." Why can’t law enforcement use these services as a tool? Should an exception be made in cases like GSK?
13. I’ll Be Gone in the Dark is a living testament not only to Michelle McNamara and her unwavering commitment to this story, but to the law enforcement professionals who have pursued him. What are your impressions of the detectives? Did you find yourself judging them for failing to capture GSK?
14. Many people have investigated this case, from police detectives to amateurs. What made the GSK case so difficult to solve? His crime spree seems to have stopped in 1986. Do you have a theory that explains why he suddenly disappeared?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Why We Can't Sleep: Women's New Midlife Crisis
Ada Calhoun, 2002
Grove/Atlantic Press
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780802147851
Summary
A generation-defining exploration of the new midlife crisis facing Gen X women and the unique circumstances that have brought them to this point, Why We Can’t Sleep is a lively successor to Passages by Gail Sheehy and The Defining Decade by Meg Jay.
When Ada Calhoun found herself in the throes of a midlife crisis, she thought that she had no right to complain. She was married with children and a good career.
So why did she feel miserable? And why did it seem that other Generation X women were miserable, too?
Calhoun decided to find some answers.
She looked into housing costs, HR trends, credit card debt averages, and divorce data. At every turn, she saw a pattern: sandwiched between the Boomers and the Millennials, Gen X women were facing new problems as they entered middle age, problems that were being largely overlooked.
Speaking with women across America about their experiences as the generation raised to "have it all," Calhoun found that most were exhausted, terrified about money, under-employed, and overwhelmed. Instead of being heard, they were told instead to lean in, take "me-time," or make a chore chart to get their lives and homes in order.
In Why We Can’t Sleep, Calhoun opens up the cultural and political contexts of Gen X’s predicament and offers solutions for how to pull oneself out of the abyss—and keep the next generation of women from falling in.
The result is reassuring, empowering, and essential reading for all middle-aged women, and anyone who hopes to understand them. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Ada Calhoun is the author of the memoir Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give, named an Amazon Book of the Month and one of the top ten memoirs of 2017 by W magazine; and the history St. Marks Is Dead, one of the best books of 2015, according to Kirkus and the Boston Globe. She has collaborated on several New York Times bestsellers, and written for the New York Times, New York Magazine, and New Republic. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
[It] grew out of an article for O Magazine that went viral, so perhaps it’s facile to say that it reads like a book that grew out of an article ... The results of this format are mixed. Some statistics feel cherry-picked or just hard to prove…. By contrast, the economic and labor statistics are both convincing and sobering…. Calhoun’s essential premise is highly persuasive.…. [T]here are pleasures to be had in the familiar pop cultural references and the darkly amusing anecdotes…. Ultimately, however, so many women appear that they blur together…. I wished Calhoun had included fewer women’s stories but gone into those stories in greater detail.
Curtis Sittenfeld - New York Times Book Review
The book makes a powerful argument to Gen X women…. Calhoun speaks directly to her own generation, peppering the book with so many specific cultural touchstones, from the Challenger explosion to Koosh balls to the slime-filled TV show Double Dare, that I found reading Why We Can’t Sleep to be a singular experience—driving home her point that Gen X is so often overlooked.
Emily Bobrow - Wall Street Journal
[A]sprint through everything—and I mean everything—that is bothering Generation X women…. [A] remarkably slender and breezy book…. Reading Why We Can’t Sleep is like attending a party where the hostess didn’t want to leave anyone off the list: It’s noisy, crowded and everyone remains a stranger. And they’re all complaining.… The advice is common-sensical, a little corny and hardly a panacea for the multitude of problems she’s spent the previous 200 pages describing…. But the final chapter is the most accessible and engaging in the book. Calhoun’s ambitious wide-angle shot of Gen X midlife malaise is blurry and overwhelming. Paradoxically, when she zeroes in on a specific woman with a first and last name, a strong voice, and a textured backstory—herself—that larger picture starts to come into focus.
Jennifer Reese - Washington Post
[A]n engaging hybrid of first-person confession, reportage, pop culture analysis, and statistics… it aspires to something larger than memoir.
New Republic
[B]racing, empowering study…. Calhoun persuasively reassures Gen X women that they can find a way out of their midlife crises by “facing up to our lives as they really are.” Women of every generation will find much to relate to in this humorous yet pragmatic account.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred revicw) Built on personal narratives and research-based data,… Calhoun asks why she and others continue to feel miserable despite traditional markers of success…. Her research offers women ways to look at but not devalue their own experiences . —Emily Bowles, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison
Library Journal
An assured, affable guide, Calhoun balances bleakness with humor and the hope inherent in sharing stories that will make other women feel less alone. She also gives good advice for finding support through midlife hardship. This is a conversation starter.
Booklist
Calhoun argues that Generation X women find middle age harder than those older or younger. … [and] that aging inevitably means that some life choices are no longer viable. An occasionally amusing and insightful but scattershot exploration of midlife woes.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for WHY WE CAN'T SLEEP … then take off on your own:
1. How closely (if at all) do you relate to the central concerns and issues laid out in Calhoun's book? In other words, do you have trouble sleeping through the night? Even though the book is written for Gen Xers, if you're a Millennial or a Boomer, does Why Can't We Sleep still speak to you?
2. Given the many women Calhoun has interviewed for this book, and their many problems, are there some you find particularly sympathetic? How similar are some of these women's issues to yours? Is the large number of people included in the book helpful or too diverting?
3. Calhoun also includes societal economic data in her work, as well as financial woes at the household level. Is the inclusion of these observations and statistics creditable? Do the facts bolster her argument? Which of her arguments do you find most persuasive… and which less so?
4. The ’70s and ’80s "was a rough time to be a kid," Calhoun writes. "The economy was sinking, crime was spiking, nuclear war was plausible, divorce rates were soaring and helicopter parenting was anomalous. Many of us knew about AIDS long before we had sex, and we watched the Challenger explode on live TV." How much do you recall of that era? Is Calhoun correct—did that time make for a hard childhood?
5. Some of the anecdotes Calhoun recounts are humorous, even if on the dark side. Can you point to a few?
6. Many, if not most, of the women Calhoun includes in her book tend to be "well-educated, middle- and upper-middle-class" women—which might make their problems easy to dismiss, or even to disparage. What do you think? Do their troubles seem serious or trivial to you? Or something in between?
7. What do you think of the advice Calhoun provides, her tips for curing a midlife crisis? Do you agree with her recommendations? Do you have any suggestions of your own to add?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret
Craig Brown, 2017 (2018, U.S.)
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
432 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780374906047
Summary
Winner, 2018 James Tait Black Memorial Prize-biography
A witty and profound portrait of the most talked-about English royal
She made John Lennon blush and Marlon Brando tongue-tied. She iced out Princess Diana and humiliated Elizabeth Taylor. Andy Warhol photographed her. Jack Nicholson offered her cocaine. Gore Vidal revered her. Francis Bacon heckled her. Peter Sellers was madly in love with her. For Pablo Picasso, she was the object of sexual fantasy.
Princess Margaret aroused passion and indignation in equal measures.
To her friends, she was witty and regal. To her enemies, she was rude and demanding.
In her 1950s heyday, she was seen as one of the most glamorous and desirable women in the world. By the time of her death in 2002, she had come to personify disappointment. One friend said he had never known an unhappier woman.
The tale of Princess Margaret is Cinderella in reverse: hope dashed, happiness mislaid, life mishandled. Such an enigmatic and divisive figure demands a reckoning that is far from the usual fare.
Combining interviews, parodies, dreams, parallel lives, diaries, announcements, lists, catalogues, and essays, Craig Brown’s Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret is a kaleidoscopic experiment in biography and a witty meditation on fame and art, snobbery and deference, bohemia and high society. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—May 23, 1957
• Where—England, UK
• Education—B.A., Bristol University
• Awards—James Tait Black Memorial Prize
• Currently—lives in London, England
Craig Edward Moncrieff Brown is an author, biographer, an English critic and satirist. He is the only person ever to have won three different Press Awards―for best humorist, columnist, and critic―in the same year.
Brown was educated at Eton and Bristol University and then became a freelance journalist in London, contributing to the Tatler, Spectator, Times Literary Supplement, Literary Review, Evening Standard (as a regular columnist), Times (UK: notably as parliamentary sketchwriter; these columns were compiled into a book called A Life Inside) and the Sunday Times (as TV and restaurant critic).
He later continued his restaurant column in the Sunday Telegraph and has contributed a weekly book review to the Mail on Sunday. He created the characters of "Bel Littlejohn," an ultra-trendy New Labour type, in the Guardian, and "Wallace Arnold," an extremely reactionary conservative, in the Independent on Sunday.
Brown has been writing his parodic diary in Private Eye since 1989. In 2001, he took over Auberon Waugh's "Way of the World" in the Daily Telegraph following Waugh's death but lost that column in December 2008. He also has a column in the Daily Mail.
Brown also writes comedy shows such as Norman Ormal for TV (in which he appeared as a returning officer). His radio show This Is Craig Brown was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2004; it featured comics Rory Bremner and Harry Enfield and other media personalities. He has appeared on television as a critic on BBC Two's Late Review as well as in documentaries such a Russell Davies's life of Ronald Searle.
His book 1966 and All That takes its title, and some other elements, from 1066 and All That, extending its history of Britain through to the beginning of the 21st century. A BBC Radio 4 adaptation followed in September 2006, in similar vein to This Is Craig Brown. The Tony Years is a comic overview of the years of Tony Blair's government, published in paperback by Ebury Press in June 2007.
Brown's predominantly factual biography of Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon, Ma’am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret, was published in 2017 (2018 in the U.S.) and won the 2018 James Tait Black Memorial Prize in the biography category.
Personal life
Brown's wife is the author Frances Welch. They have two children. Frances Welch's niece is Florence Welch of Florence and the Machine. (Adapted from the publisher and Wikipedia. Retrieved 8/26/2018.)
Book Reviews
Brown ignores all the starchy obligations of biography and adopts a form of his own to trap the past and ensnare the reader—even this reader, so determinedly indifferent to the royals. I ripped through the book with the avidity of Margaret attacking her morning vodka and orange juice…[Brown] swoops at his subject from unexpected angles—it's a Cubist portrait of the lady…As a subject, the princess proves to be something she never was in life: obliging. Beautiful, bad-tempered, scandal-prone, she makes for unfailingly good copy, and heaps of it.…The wisdom of the book, and the artistry, is in how Brown subtly expands his lens from Margaret's misbehavior…to those who gawked at her, who huddled around her, pens poised over their diaries, hoping for the show she never denied them. History isn't written by the victors, he reminds us, it's written by the writers, and this study becomes a scathing group portrait of a generation of carnivorous royal watchers…Without ever explicitly positioning Margaret for our pity, Brown reveals how we elevate in order to destroy. Who or what, in the final reckoning, is the true grotesque—the absurd, unhappy princess, those desperate to get close to her, or the system propping them all up?
Parul Sehgal - New York Times
Brown, a longtime contributor to Private Eye magazine, is capable of witty concision.… His “Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret,” …are mostly fast and entertaining. But more than a few could have been a single sentence, and a handful of counterfactual fantasies …never gain altitude. Too much of the book, like so much of its subject’s life, is extraneous … [and here and there a reader may wish the author had given Margaret a smidgen more credit.
Thomas Mallon - New York Times Book Review
Craig Brown’s delectable Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret is not a novel, though its subject seems like a sublime work of fiction, too imperious to be true.… Brown has done something astonishing: He makes the reader care, even sympathize, with perhaps the last subject worthy of such affection.… His book is big fun, equal measures insightful and hysterical.
Karen Heller - Washington Post
An original, memorable and substantial achievement.
Times Literary Supplement
A biography teeming with the joyous, the ghastly and clinically fascinating.
Times (UK)
Chatty, catty, and intelligent… Brown’s entertaining vignettes form a collage portrait of a rebellious anti-Cinderella.
Publishers Weekly
In this biography from noted satirist Brown, one expects and gets an effective skewering of both its subject …and the entire royal industry and its hangers-on, yet a small balm of sympathy for Margaret is added to the mix. —Kathleen McCallister, Tulane Univ., New Orleans
Library Journal
[A]n an acerbic biography of the star-crossed princess, one that is hilarious and bittersweet in turns.… Brown’s book is highly recommended for all American royal-watchers.
Booklist
Sensationalistic snippets from the life of a royal princess.… While savory overall, the onslaught of dishy details bends beneath its own weight in the book's final third.… [Still, an] endlessly provocative and deliciously scandalous book for royal watchers.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers Talking Points to help start a discussion for NINETY-NINE GLIMPSES OF PRINCESS MARGARET … then take off on your own:
1. How does Craig Brown present Princess Margaret in this biography? Describe her: the kind of person was she in the public's eye … and the kind of person in private. Does she seem to change during the course of her life? Do you find her sympathetic?
2. In what way do you think Margaret's childhood, as the younger sister to then Princess Elizabeth, might have shaped her personality and how she lived her adult life?
3. Talk about Margaret's disappointments surrounding marriage, starting with Peter Townsend and later Anthony Armstrong-Jones. What do you think of her husband and the deterioration of their relationship?
4. Do you feel Ninety-Nine Glimpses is a fair assessment of Margaret—her life and character? Does the author present her in a balanced light, or do you feel his material is sensationalized, a little too "dishy"? Perhaps, it's both?
5. How does the author characterize the institution of royalty, as well as the people who occupy it (the Queen Mother, in particular)?
6. What do you make of the people the princess socialized with—the celebrities and 1960's "in crowd?" To what extent were they genuine in their friendship? Or were they primarily hangers-on, attracted to her status as royalty? (Consider how many of them recorded their comings and goings with the princess.) How did those friends/acquaintances treat her … and vice versa?
7. Follow-up to Question 6: She had a powerful affect on people who met and befriended her. Why do you you think? Was it her personality, her charm, her intelligence … or her status as royalty?
8. Do you envy—a lot, a little, or not at all—the life of Princess Margaret?
9. How familiar were you with Margaret's story before reading this book? Have you, for instance, watched the film series, The Queen? Has your view of her altered after reading Brown's Ninety-Nine Glimpses?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)