The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism

 Tim Alberta starts  The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory on the worst day of his life. While he was being interviewed on the Christian Broadcasting Network about his prior book, American Carnage, his father dropped dead. Dick Alberta was an evangelical pastor and as Tim stands in the funeral receiving line with his brothers, parishioners - people who have literally known Tim all his life - take the opportunity to berate him for criticizing Rush Limbaugh. This, and a nasty letter sent after Tim's eulogy calls out the politicization of religion, inspired his next book. It's a bit more of an insider's view of evangelicalism's takeover by right wing politics than Kristen du Mez's Jesus and John Wayne and it's clear that Alberta holds a deep Christian faith. While he discusses religious figures like Jerry Fallwell Sr. (more interested in power) and Jr. (more interested in money) who don't follow the path, he focuses on ministers and theologians who are being pushed out because they don't preach right-wing politics. Their story has been neglected, and Alberta also points out that the loudest, most prejudiced voices often belong to people who are also doing many of the congregation's good works. However, I don't believe that they're as small of a minority as Alberta states (or perhaps wants to believe). If they truly were only a "vocal" 15-20% of their sects, could they have so completely taken over their churches?

Secrets of the Nile

 Secrets of the Nile finds Lady Emily and her husband Colin in Egypt, along with his mother and Katharina, his daughter from a prior relationship. This time, it's not business but an invitation from the elder Mrs. Hargraves's former suitor. At the first dinner Lord Bertram Deeley gives for his odd assembly of guests, the host promptly dies - poisoned by his daily tisane. Of course, everyone has a motive to kill him and questionable clues point to the least likely suspects. Tasha Alexander provides a well supported but surprising solution, although I found it to be a bit of a letdown. She also includes a parallel story, one of a woman sculptor in Ancient Egypt and her conflict with her sister-in-law which was interesting but didn't tie in with the main plot as Alexander's other parallel stories have in the past. Overall, Secrets of the Nile was entertaining but a middling entry in the series.

The Turn of Midnight

 Minnette Walters couldn't have known. She published The Last Hours in 2017 and Turn of Midnight in 201. How could she have known that in 2020, shortly after I read her novel of plague survival, that COVID-19 would shut down the world? Normally, I would have read The Turn of Midnight shortly after The Last Hours but in March of 2020 I didn't have the concentration tor had any book, let alone one about a plague. The two books fit together so well, though, that I recommend reading them back to back.

The Turn of Midnight begins immediately after The Last Hours Develish has survived the plague and men are approaching. It's not an invasion, but Thaddeus Thurkill and the five youths who've been scouting for signs of life returning with sheep taken from an abandoned village. On their next trip, they're set upon by a local lord and his men. Somehow, after the boys kill his men ant Thaddeus humiliates him, the lord agrees to return to Develish where he sees the wisdom of Lady Anne's ways. He returns to is manor, with the late Sir Richard's steward Hugh (the only person who opposes Lady Anne's ways) while Thaddeus masquerades as a lord and Anne's kinsman and the five young men as his retinue, searching for Lady Eleanor's abandoned dowry and signs of life.

 Eventually, Thaddeus and his retinue reach a manor where Hugh has told the steward that "Lord Athelstan" is actually a bastard serf named Thaddeus, turning the final third of the book into a combination of conspiracy and courtroom drama. Thaddeus's calmness, Lady Anne's intelligence, the sigils of both their retinues, and Walters's deft writing provide a believable and satisfying conclusion.

The Tetris Effect

 I've spent far too much time playing Tetris and related games. Why is such a simple game so addictive that as an undergrad, I'd give my roommate my disc to hide (yes, that's how we played in the early 90s) during finals so I wouldn't get distracted. Dan Ackerman doesn't explain Tetris's appeal (there probably isn't an explanation), but he tells the parallel stories of Soviet Alexey Pajitnov and Dutch-American Henk Rogers, the programmers who created and marketed the program. Pajitnov became fascinated with math games and pentaminos when he was a teenager recovering from knee and ankle injuries and a few years later, using the outdated computers in his Iron Curtain workplace, turned that interest into an addictive computer game. Rogers first encountered computers as a high school student in New York City and, through several detours, ended up as a game publisher in Japan.  When he came across Tetris, no one expected him to be the person to bring legal copies to the West but through a combination of charm, tenacity, and inroads into the Russian Go playing community, he brokered a deal between Pajitnov's bosses and Nintendo. The rest is history - Tetris conquered the world, Pajitnov was able to take credit (and royalties) once the Iron Curtain fell, and Rogers ran the Tetris licensing company until he retired and his daughter took over. 

While the details are interesting, the basic story is pretty much as I expected, with one exception. Researchers are looking at Tetris as a way to fight PTSD. The theory is that if someone who has been exposed to trauma can play Tetris for an hour or so during the critical 24-48 hour memory formation period, it may blunt the severity of the damage. After years of joking that Tetris is good for teaching how to load a dishwasher or fill a freezer, it turns out that it may have a vital role in society.

Prequel: An American Fight Against Facism

A few months ago, I was in an online political discussion. Someone brought up how unified we were during WWII to which I said, "Except for those who used the black market, turned in neighbors, attacked those who didn't support the war..." It didn't go over well. I wonder whether that person has read Prequel? Based on Rachel Maddow's podcast Ultra, Prequel dives into the isolationist fascist movement of the 1930s which culminated in two failed trials. It's an important topic, but I'm not quite sure how I feel about the book. The first 2/3 introduced characters and threads which didn't completely come together in the trial-based final portion. Maddow has an engaging style, but Prequel didn't engage me as well as Bag Man did. Maybe the podcast was better.

The Last White Rose

 In her author's note, Alison Weir says historical records tell us what happened but don't show the conversations or personalities. Weir is both a biographer and novelist and The Last White Rose is the fiction companion to her biography of Elizabeth of York.

We first meet Elizabeth as a 5 year old feeing into sanctuary during the Wars of the Roses. Her father, Edward IV, eventually triumphs and she, her mother, two sisters, and the newborn heir return to their life of luxury. Bessy adores her splendid father, but as she approaches her tenses he sees him age prematurely. She also watches as relations with her favorite uncle, Richard of Gloucester, decline.

When she was 17, the family once gain returns to sanctuary. Edward IV is dead and Richard has taken Edward V hostage before usurping the throne and allegedly killing his two nephews. Bessy finds herself her family's backbone, caring for her sisters and trying to temper the conspiracy-tinged rants of her mother. Here, I think Weir could have shown a better transition from the calm regal queen to the paranoid captive. We don't see the Queen's point of view, so maybe she was a bit suspicious from the start but it's a bit jarring. During this captivity, Bessy still hopes to marry Henry Tudor but willingly accepts the advances of her uncle Richard whose queen is dying of tuberculosis. Simultaneously, she plots with Lord Stanley, Henry's stepfather, to help with Henry's invasion. Richard and Henry meet on Bosworth and Henry becomes Henry VII.

Henry's claim tot he throne was tenuous, but he won his crown on the battlefield so it shouldn't matter. Still, his marriage to the heir of the Yorkist King should, ,in the dowager queen's eyes, make them co-regnants. Henry disagrees and Bessy, more concerned with bearing and supervising the upbringing of their children, doesn't object. What does vex her is Henry's parsimony and (warranted) suspicions. He's challenged by two pretenders and a feeble minded cousin of Bessy's and she can't agree with his imprisonment of her feeble minded relative. She objects, but cannot act.

Still, their marriage is happy and Bessy loves her children...except, perhaps, Arthur. She regrets her inability to bond with him - when he was a premature infant, frail child, or a boy installed in a distant palace. She questions whether he's healthy enough to marry Catherine of Aragon, and henry admits that perhaps he two should live apart after consummating the marriage. That act, which years later led to the Great Matter, most likely never happened and Arthur dies of tuberculosis a few months later. And his mother mourns.

Arthur's death leaves the succession less secure. Elizabeth's prior pregnancy had been difficult, but she and Henry decide to have another child. in giving birth to her seventh child, a girl named Katherine who died soon after, Elizabeth sealed her fate. As she hemorrhages and dies, she sees the faces of her loved ones who died before her. Weir uses this trope in most of her novels and it's effective if wearing a bit thin. Other than that, The Last White Rose effectively fleshes out the frame of Elizabeth of York

Katherine Howard: The Tragic Story of Henry VIII's Fifth Queen

 Katherine Howard died before she left her teens and lived in an era where even important women left little record. She wasn't an intellectual like her cousin Anne Boleyn, her successor katherine Parr, or Henry's first wife Catherine of Aragon. She didn't bear an heir like Jane Seymour or gracefully give way like Anne of Cleaves. All she did was make the obese, failing, aging Henry feel y young and virile and then be executed for treason. 

Josephine Wilkinson provides a bit of background. Katherine's father was a bit of a ne'er do well (or failure) and when her mother died, Katherine was sent to live with relatives and generally neglected. She technically received a proper education in household management and embroidery and was literate, but was also left to the predation of older men.

Her descent from the Duke of Norfolk got her a position as a Maid of Honor to Anne of Cleaves. Her beauty attracted Henry's eye. He didn't know she'd ben molested - could her inability to conceive be due to damage or infection from one of her predators? (Personally, I think the problem was with Henry since Katherine Parr also didn't conceive during their marriage. By this point, Henry likely had type 2 diabetes and/or congestive heart failure, either of which would have impacted his fertility.)

Would producing a Duke of York have saved Katherine? Maybe, but her friendship with Thomas Culpepper (whether consummated or not) led court factions to inspect her earlier encounters. That would have cast doubt on the parentage of any child she bore. Katherine Howard was doomed from the start.

Mr. Churchill's Secretary

I love used books. Besides seeing how cover art and typefaces have changed over the years, they're a good way to find new authors and series. They're cheaper so I'm likely to take a chance, and sometimes I start a series that already has several installments. I took a chance on Susan Elia MacNeal and bought the first two books in her Maggie Hope series. The chance paid off - Mr. Churchill's Secretary was a fun, fast-paced read.

Mathematician Maggie Hope first traveled to London to sell her grandmother's house so she could pay her graduate tuition at MIT. Unfortunately, the house was a decaying Victorian pile so she stayed in London, fixing up the house and supporting herself through tutoring and renting rooms to friends. Once Britain entered WWII, she realized she wanted to stay. 

A few months into the war, Maggie's friend David calls her. David is an intelligence analyst (a job Maggie interviewed for but did not get because they hire men from the 'right' schools, not women with mathematical abilities). One of Churchill's typists has been murdered and they need a replacement. Maggie agrees to take the job and between taking dictation and typing speeches finds a hidden German code which links Maggie's story to the subplot involving a German sleeper agent who's in communication with a radical Irish separatist. These threads also connect to Maggie's search for information about her parents who died when she was a toddler. The last third of the book is a series of action scenes, revealed identities, and last minute rescues. While exciting, it did feel like the book could have ended multiple times. This, and the level of exposition needed to introduce a dozen characters (possibly necessary for a first book but still distracting) bring the book down a bit, but I enjoyed it and am looking forward to the next installment.

The Land Beyond the Sea

I love Sharon Kay Penman's sprawling novels which combine medieval politics with the love stories between intelligent and strong willed characters. She was meticulous in her research, but the dearth of personal history (and for women, even royal women, sparse records in general) gave her the freedom to create complex and believable personal interactions.

The Land Beyond the Sea refers to Jerusalem in the late 12th Century. The novel opens with Almaric rejecting his wife Agnes in order to succeed his brother as King of Jerusalem and barring her from contact with their two children. Almaric's reign is short and he's soon succeeded by his 13-year-old son Baldwin, known as the Leper King.

Today, leprosy is a treatable bacterial infection but 900 years ago, it was a certain death, so we know Baldwin's life will be short (he died at age 24) and Penman doesn't shy away from showing his physical decline. Intelligent and strong willed, he learns to fight left handed (his right arm experiencing the earliest nerve damage) and control horses with his legs alone and he surrounds himself with good advisors. Still, he knows that as he becomes more infirm his kingdom will dissolve into chaos. He's right, and I found the hundred or so pages after Baldwin's death to be less compelling than the story of his reign. Penman shifts focus to his stepmother Maria and her second husband Balian (the main romance in the novel) and her daughter/Baldwin's half-sister Isabella and their attempts to stabilize the kingdom. Without Baldwin there's no heart and Penman probably should have ended the book with his funeral.