Garrison Keillor. Lake Wobegon Days. Viking, 1985.

I miss The Prairie Home Companion. It was a sweet yet funny throwback radio show. There was nothing quite like it. For a little nostalgia fix, I picked up Lake Wobegon Days recently. I enjoyed it. What more can I say?

Some of Keillors’ books like Leaving Home are basically collections of his best routines from the radio show. Lake Wobegon Days is not like that. In fact, Lake Wobegon Days purports to be a history of the Minnesota town, beginning with French trappers and the Unitarian missionaries who tried to convert the local Ojibway through interpretive dance. After observing the native Americans’ traditions, they thought dance was important to them and might be a more effective way of bringing their message to them.

The book more or less ends with the description of a revival meeting at the Lutheran Church. Yes, it is satire, but it is gentle, respectful, and understanding. The Unitarian ladies and the revival preacher may be a little bit unusual but they are no Elmer Gantrys. These things could have happened that way.

The lake itself may have gotten its name from its Indian name as understood by English speakers. I grew up near Concord, Massachusetts. Nearby was the Assabet River. It sounds like an native name like Connecticut or Massachusetts, but it is actually a corruption of Elizabeth (“Elsabet”) and was named for the queen. Anyway, that is the kind of explanations and stories we get in this book. One could almost call this The Underground History of Lake Wobegon, Minnesota.

Any fans of the radio show will recognize the family names: Inqvist, Krebsbach, Thorvaldsen, Bunsen, and so on. We learn about their ancestors and their houses. We learn of the origins (if that is the right term) of the Norwegian bachelor farmers.

The other story line, such as it is, has to do with the personal history of our narrator “Gary Keillor.” What happens when he sneaks into the Sidetrack Tap Café to see what it was like? Remember, his parents are Sanctified Brethren and avoid such places. Or the time in high school when he dates an older woman who is a college student.

If there is a pattern to this book, it is loosely based on Walden. Readers of Walden note how Thoreau observes life both in the town of Concord and in the woods. (The subtitle is Life in the Woods.) But as he makes his observations of nature and society, he loosely follows the seasons, beginning and ending with spring.

Keillor’s trajectory is similar. While, yes, he begins with the history of his hometown, the stories start with summer and end with spring also. Spring is new life. So the religious revival brings new life to a few individuals in town. Thoreau may say that spring shows we can dispense with churches—let them go by the board, he says. But ordinary folks in Middle America find new life in the Christ of Easter. Jesus rose from the dead, and so we can be delivered into new life as well.

There is also a sense of personal growth. When our narrator relates his own experiences of growing up in Lake Wobegon—please understand that, unlike Walden, this is fiction—he begins with early childhood memories and by the end, he is going off to college.

Close readers may note one interesting discrepancy. Just as Arthur Conan Doyle is a little unclear of Watson’s first name—is it John or James?—so in this book, the fictional character Keillor admires is Tony Flambeau, a kind of artsy Hardy boy whose sophisticated parents travel the world as they solve mysteries. In Leaving Home, he is Tom Flambeau (or are Tom and Tony different?). Nevertheless, it shows how such stories appeal to young readers. Such an exciting life the Flambeaus and the Hardys live! But we can live it vicariously through those books.

Similarly, readers can re-live something of the Prairie Home Companion radio show by reading this book. Have fun.

J. D. Vance. Hillbilly Elegy. Harper, 2018.

Hillbilly Elegy brought its author to prominence. So much so, that he is now Vice-President of the United States. The book is a memoir, not specifically a book on politics. The twelve pages of endorsement cover the political spectrum from the New York Times and Mother Jones to the National Review and Peter Thiel.

A good friend handed me the book and told me I had to read it. What struck me is that my friend is not a reader. It takes her a long time to read anything. But this book she could not put down. I suspect also that she may have identified with it. Without going into too much detail, she grew up in a trailer park raised by alcoholic parents. Like Vance, she overcame much of what was in her background.

I confess that I also could relate to his story to some degree. No, I had a very stable family growing up. My parents grew up in the Depression, so there was a kind of awareness of how things could be if people did not work hard and respect American values. Until I was eleven, I lived in a working class neighborhood. I recall in 1960 when the steelworkers went on strike, many of my friends’ fathers were out of work. It was working class, yes, but with hope. Most of the families there and then were upwardly mobile.

Then my family moved to a different state and into a middle to upper middle class community. Things were different there, but I was a kid and fit in and made friends. Vance ended up at Yale; I went to Harvard. Vance explains his experience at Yale Law School in almost dreamlike terms. There was so much that seemed unreal to him. He began to realize that a lot of people had ideas about the working classes, but really had no idea of what it was like.

I have written a little bit about my experiences at Harvard elsewhere, but I observed something similar. The campus radicals who seemed to have an inordinate influence on campus culture had ideas about a Communistic “worker student alliance,” but they were all from privileged backgrounds. Their dialectical theories had little relation to real life in the United States.

While Vance ultimately is making a similar point, that is not his main purpose. He wrote a memoir. It is that simple. He confesses at the beginning that he is only thirty-one years old and has not done much with his life yet—in other words, this is a different kind of memoir.

Think of the title, What is an elegy? The dictionary tells us it is a poem or song lamenting the dead. OK, Hillbilly Elegy is prose, not poetry, but Vance writes extremely well. His voice carries us along in a vibrant if harrowing narrative. It is a kind of lament or mourning, though.

His story focuses on his hillbilly grandparents, whom he calls Mamaw and Papaw, both of whom have died and who had a greater hand in raising him than his own parents. But it also is mourning the loss of a way of life. His family’s roots are in eastern Kentucky, but the hardscrabble lifestyle typified by the hillbillies with their distinct beliefs and even code of honor is disappearing. What seems to be replacing it is tragic for many.

One of his collateral Vance ancestors was married to a Hatfield and murdered one Asa McCoy shortly before the end of the Civil War. That incident started the most famous American family feud. (If you have never heard of the Hatfield-McCoy feud, you have lived a sheltered life. Look it up.) He suspects that his own Mamaw in her younger days may have killed someone. The hills were a law unto themselves. As a kid, though, Vance understood hillbilly justice as the best and fairest kind.

There is an undercurrent of violence throughout this memoir. Yes, occasionally someone may have been murdered, but the common violence was what we call domestic violence. His mother’s parents, Mamaw and Papaw, eventually separated because they physically fought each other. But they still lived near one another and took care of each other. Both looked out for J.D. and his older sister. What grounding, wisdom, and direction he received in his young life mostly came from them.

My friend who lent me her copy of the book warned me that there is a lot of strong language. That is the way many people talked. Vance does not mince words. At times some of the sayings are colorful, but at other times they are very intense. There is a great sense of anger at real or perceived injustice.

Vance himself was born and raised in Ohio. His grandparents had moved there from Kentucky as married teens in 1947. Vance notes that the Great Migration from the rural South to the industrial North in the first half of the twentieth century included both whites and blacks. I lived in Detroit for a while in the late sixties. Many of the working class there were white people from the South who were collectively called hillbillies there.

Vance notes that in the 1960 census, ten percent of the population of Ohio were born in Kentucky, West Virginia, and Tennessee. That, of course, does not include the children and grandchildren of such migrants like Vance and his family.

Sadly, by the time Vance was born in 1984, things were changing. Alcohol fueled a lot the violence that Vance witnessed in his family and his community. But by the 1980s drugs had taken over the younger generation. The reason his grandparents more or less raised him was that his mother, their daughter, was a drug addict. She had graduated as salutatorian of her high school class, but got married shortly after graduating and also became addicted around the same time. As Vance tells it, she went through multiple husbands and boyfriends. Her life can be summed up as unfulfilled potential.

Vance’s father separated not long after he was born and for many years knew little about him other than his name. The family name Vance was Papaw’s name, and J.D. would legally adopt it as his own. Everyone called him J.D. because even names that the J and D stood for changed. His father had also struggled with drugs and alcohol, but eventually encountered Jesus and cleaned up. Vance lived with him for a while as a teen. He appreciated but could not embrace the strict Pentecostalism of his father and his new family.

Although Vance grew up with and mostly lived with the one older sister, he figures that when he counts half-siblings and step-siblings, there are probably around a dozen people he could call brother or sister.

For many kids [of working class families], the first impulse is to escape, but people who lurch toward the exit rarely choose the right door. This is how my aunt found herself married at sixteen to an abusive husband. It’s how my mom, the salutatorian of her high school class, had both a baby and a divorce, but not a single college credit under her belt before her teenage years were over…Chaos begets chaos. Instability begets instability. Welcome to the family life of the American hillbilly. (229)

Sadly, Vance notes that the class of people who are most pessimistic about the future are members of the white working class.

Well over half of blacks, Latinos, and college-educated whites expect that their children will fare better economically than they have. Among working-class whites, only 44 percent share that expectation. Even more surprising, 42 percent of working-class white—by far the highest number in the [Pew Economic Mobility] survey—report that their lives are less economically successful than those of their parents’. (194-195)

How did Vance overcome this? Partly because of the influence, however erratic, of his grandparents. Yes, they could be rough and crude, but he knew they loved him. What education in practical living he received in his youth was from them. For example, when he was nine the school presented a lesson in what today might be called gay grooming. He wondered if he were gay. After all, his friends were all boys, and he really had little use for girls other than his sister. Mamaw straightened him out on that very simply and directly. You have to read it in her words to appreciate it. A current meme making the rounds these days says something similar—the only thing an eight year old boy needs to know about sex is that girls have cooties.

His grandfather encouraged him to go into the military, which he did. Although he could have gone to college after graduating well in his high school class, he decided to join the Marines and ended up in Iraq. He tells how that experience matured him and helped him become a man, and a stable one at that. It also provided G.I. Bill support for going to college afterwards.

I can attest to that from my own experience in the military. Now, I did not join till after college, but that was when I really matured, no longer just a boy, or what they now call a man-boy. It was also there when I learned about the law and about authority. And significantly, it was where I became part of something bigger than myself, and something I might have even been willing to give my life for.

Vance also noted that as an undergraduate in college, he heard people talk about war and the military when they really had no idea what it was like.

For all my grandma’s efforts, for all of her “You can do anything; don’t be like those [idiots] who think the deck is stacked against the” diatribes, the message had only partially set in before I enlisted. Surrounding me was another message: that people like me weren’t good enough; that the reason Middletown [his hometown] produced zero Ivy League graduates was some genetic or character defect. I couldn’t possibly see how destructive that mentality was until I escaped it. The Marine Corps replaced it with something else, something that loathes excuses. “Giving it my all” was a catchphrase, something heard in health or gym class. When I first ran three miles, mildly impressed with my mediocre twenty-five minute time,¹ a terrifying senior drill instructor greeted me at the finish line: “If you’re not puking, you’re lazy! Stop being [deleted] lazy!” He then ordered me to sprint between him and a tree repeatedly. Just as I felt I might pass out, he relented. I was heaving, barely able to catch my breath. “That’s how you should feel at the end of every run!” he yelled. In the Marines, giving it your all was a way of life. (176-177)

Occasionally a student would ask me what I thought of going into the service. I would say I believe every young man should do it unless he is physically disqualified or the Lord is earnestly leading him in a different direction. What Vance wrote above shows one reason why.

As I say when I review many books, there is so much more. Hillbilly Elegy is raw and intense. It grabs the reader, and most readers will grab it until, like my non-reading friend, they finish it. Besides the language, there is a lot of alcohol and drug abuse described.

As I said, while this is primarily a memoir and not a political book, the author clearly has become involved in politics. I knew very little about Vance until I read this book. Donald Trump picked Vance as his running mate in his successful attempt at getting re-elected. Their backgrounds could not be more opposite: Trump an wealthy son of a very wealthy man compared with a poor “hillbilly” who somehow made good. President Clinton had done something similar. In his case, he was the lower class son of a single mother who went to Yale Law and made good and his running mate, Al Gore, Jr., was the elite son of a U.S. Senator. Whatever you think of either Trump or Clinton, they both came up with a winning combination.

N.B. The 2018 edition of the book which we reviewed includes an afterword that was not in the original edition. In it Vance reflects on the success of the book and its reception among many varying groups and individual, including those he grew up with.

Note
1. To put a little perspective on this, I ran cross-country in high school. Our hilly course was about 2.7 miles. We all tried to finish in under 17 minutes; the best runners could do it in under 16 minutes. Granted, we were dressed differently and not carrying anything, but that might give the reader a bit of perspective.

Victor John and Dave Coles. Breakthrough Leadership. Beyond, 2025.

Breakthrough Leadership follows the authors’ book Bhojpuri Breakthrough, something even the title suggests. The original book described a widespread movement of God among the Bhojpuri people in northeastern India. This was a major change in the country and culture. Bhojpuri Breakthrough tells how it came about. Breakthrough Leadership focuses on the people who have led the movement. Their numbers run into the millions.

The important pattern for church growth here is that leaders make more leaders. It takes time to cultivate new leaders. This book shows the pattern. As with the first book, the emphasis is on Luke 10 where Jesus instructs 70 or 72 disciples. The emphasis on this relatively short book is that it is “quite simple.” John says, “If I offered something complicated, it would only hinder the reproduction of your ministry” (35).

Compared to Western churches, the method of raising leaders is not only less complicated, it is less formal. There are no titles, paid staff, or ordinations. Many of the leaders are illiterate oral learners. Indeed, the book spends quite a bit of time showing how those who learn the Bible orally can be as effective as those who can read.

A Christian leader can wield some authority through knowing Scripture and theology. But much more authority comes from tuning in to the Spirit of God and discerning creative ways to apply Jesus’ teachings in daily situations. The two aren’t mutually exclusive. But many times a situation changes, and we have to discern God’s best a moment’s notice. (402, emphasis in original)

A good leader can discern other potential leaders. They devote time to mentor them, observe them, and then release them to multiply the church. One leader, for example, had been working as a leader for fifteen years. In that time he had mentored about seventy others, who, in turn, were planting more churches and discipling new leaders themselves.

Some leaders are women. In the Indian culture where men and women tend to be more separated than in the West, men would not be able to effectively share with or counsel women.

It is almost a cliché that God loves variety and diversity. We see this from the vastness and variations in His creation. The same idea holds true for leadership. Not all leaders are the same. Still, there are some common characteristics: it bothers them that many people do not know about Jesus, and they are not merely planting churches, but developing more leaders to sustain them and share the gospel with even more people. Most leaders have learned to live or be sustained in God’s presence. (This actually sounds a lot like another book we recently read.)

The authors make a good pair. John is from India and has the direct experience. Coles is American, though he has spent many years overseas, and understands the typical Western outlook. Both are very careful in describing what the Bible calls spiritual warfare (see, for example, Ephesians 6:12-13). Westerners, even Western Christians, often dismiss or overlook this, or try to deal with it in the terms of psychology. With its background of multiple gods, people in India are far more likely to see and understand some things coming from the activity of spirits. Coles and John together wisely bridge the gap.

Many times, then, whether encountering a new village or neighborhood, a new person, or a government office, a good leader gets a sense of the spiritual atmosphere. This then will show how the leader should pray.

But I would ask, “Isn’t it possible for a Christian to carry strong drink or pornography or an illegal drug?” Of course that’s possible, though it’s not God’s will. If we believe it in the visible realm, why do we disbelieve it in the invisible realm?…How sad when Christians and their leaders don’t recognize Satan’s devices and miss the clues of evil, spiritual forces playing their tricks. (363)

They also note, however, how a positive spiritual atmosphere can influence others in a more godly way. For example, the Bible tells us that God anointed Saul as king. He was not anointed as a prophet. “But when Saul came into the presence of the prophets, the Spirit working in that atmosphere impacted him” (419).

One of the most important questions we try to answer is: What can we not see in this location, and what prevents us from seeing it? (1548)

We want to learn: “What felt needs does this community have that I could somehow address to help me stay here and better understand people? (1573)

One could argue that some of the specific traits which leaders should have should apply to all believers, but it is good to illustrate how things like self-denial and obedience are especially important among leaders. This means not only how a good leader obeys God but how they share and deal with such things in the lives of others (see Mark 8:34).

And as other books by Coles about overseas church growth such as Cabbages in the Desert and Living Fire, obedience is very important. Alas, this is something Western Christians often miss (your reviewer included) because of a sense that God will forgive me anyhow, so why focus on that? But if someone is your Lord (or lord, for that matter), you are obligated to obey him.

People don’t become transformed simply by acknowledging Christ, by just believing. That’s a first step, but a person has to apply and obey Jesus’s commands. (558)

Breakthrough Leadership also shows how leaders have to deal with certain problems such as the moral failures or departures of other leaders. Again, we see different examples. In some cases a separation may be necessary, but always the goal is restoration. And sometimes parties have to admit that perhaps someone was not truly meant to lead in the first place.

Ultimately,

We all have flaws and vulnerabilities; only by God’s grace can any of us bring forth good Kingdom fruit. And I love that God can always raise up new people. The Psalmist said, “It is God who judges:/ He brings one down, he exalts another” (Ps. 75:7). Our lives and ministries belong to him. (530)

The authors note that if we were to find a historical pattern for the church planters in more recent times,

The goal is not just Christians with sound doctrine. The goal is obedient disciples who make more disciples, people who begin to think and act as Jesus taught. (659)

Throughout the book, there is a sense that the growth of the church is organic. It grows, not by being programmed. The Holy Spirit creates a hunger.

As people come to faith, they see and especially experience new patterns, and the Holy Spirit enables them to grow into new patterns. They learn to come together and serve without having to instigate it. The gatherings reflect an environment of the Holy Spirit with everybody submitting to one another. (1045)

There is a lot more, but I would leave readers of this review with two thoughts. First, II Timothy 2:2 says, “[W]hat you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.” This shows a “four generation” pattern of multiplication. Paul taught Timothy who is to teach “faithful men,” who are then in turn to teach “others also.”

Second, to sum up, John and Coles write:

As leaders we look forward to the day when we can say to those our ministry has touched, “I fought for you; first on my knees, and then with all I had, to bring you into fulness of life in the kingdom of Jesus Christ.” As the apostle Paul wrote, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have loved for his appearing.” (2 Tim.4:7-8 [NIV]) (2545)

Guillermo Maldonado. The Latter Glory of God Revealed. Destiny Image, 2024.

Many years ago when I was single, two older married friends of mine were reading a book titled What Wives Wish their Husbands Knew about Women. It was a big seller back then. The wives of both men were delighted that their husbands were reading the book. Both of them noted some very positive changes in their relationships as their men read the book.

However, about six months later, their husbands’ changes were less profound. No, they did not go all the way back to their behavior before they read the book, but people get set in their ways fairly early in life, and it is hard to maintain significant changes. It was more like three steps forward, two steps back.

I realize that over the years I have read and reviewed many books on the Christian life. Some had an immediate impact on me. I may have written that I would not mind re-reading one or two of them again. Have I done that? No. In the overall scheme of my life, those books mostly did not change things that much because for better or worse I am a creature of habit like most of us. Right now, my prayer is that The Latter Glory of God Revealed will effect a change in my life.

As I began reading the first chapter, I sensed the Holy Spirit moving. That usually does not happen when I read a book, even a profound Christian book. This book is a combination of a few testimonies and some interesting Bible studies focused on the glory of God. The author states his goal in the subtitle: How to Walk Under the Blessing of the Glory Cloud.

Any reader of the Book of Exodus has a basic understanding of what is meant by the glory cloud. During the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt to Canaan, they were led by a cloud. The cloud contained the manifest presence of God. After the Tabernacle was built, the cloud often remained in the Tabernacle. The presence of God not only led them, He protected them, healed them, gave His Spirit to some of them, and sometimes judged them. Moses was especially close to the Lord, and we are told that he and the Lord spoke face to face.

Pastor Maldonado shares that he has had similar experiences of the presence of the Lord—His glory—in his Miami, Florida, church and in evangelistic meetings he has witnessed worldwide.

He notes that “The cloud was the means of transportation Jesus used to leave this earth and the one He will use to return” (200, see Acts 1:9 and Revelation 1:7).

In one sense, his teaching is very simple. Christian believers have the Holy Spirit living in them, so it becomes a matter of making His presence known. He notes the need for repentance and receiving wholeness from God through Jesus.

The problem in many cases, he writes, is that the “glory has departed.” That is called ichabod (literally “without glory”) in Hebrew. Prayer and fasting are critical. One chapter is titled “Bring Back the Chabod [glory] to the Church.” Acts 3:21 speaks of God’s desire to bring the “restoration of all things.” That includes the glory of Eden before the Fall.

When God’s glory comes, miracles happen. Maldonado speaks of many people coming to submit to Jesus even in countries where another religion is the majority. He bears witness to healings, creative miracles, and reconciliations. These are all things that God wants and that His power brings about.

The glory—the person of Jesus Christ—is the realm where all things happen easily. We do not have to strain, stretch our faith, or fight unbelief. It is where we rest to see God at work. The Father’s plan is for you to have a daily encounter with His glory and rest in Him. God is leading the church in this end time megacycle. (127)

Yes, the book teaches quite a bit about rest and resting in the Lord. “If you want to see the glory of God, do not fight against change; fight against stagnation.” (152)

The book also warns against limiting God. Much of the time we do not expect much from Him. “His name, ‘I Am,’ carries with it the prohibition to limit Him. If we limit Him, we are definitely telling Him that He is not God…” (193-194) As J. B. Phillips might say, then your God is too small.

In the Old Covenant, God lived in the Tabernacle and later in the Temple. But God’s plan is to have believing people as His Temple, as in I Corinthians 3:16. “God designed man to be the only living being who, wherever he goes, carries and manifests His glory” (212).

When Jesus said he would be giving power to His people to be witnesses for Him and to Him on Pentecost (see Acts 1:8), Maldonado says that Jesus was saying, in effect, “I give you My glory and My power to prove that everything I have said is true, that the kingdom of God has come, and that I am the Christ” (220).

Yes, let us indeed be Christ-bearers. Let the glory come. Come, Lord Jesus. And let us pray that in, say, six months from now, the glory will be even heavier and God more glorified.

Daniel Zeigler. Daybreak. Pyrotechnic Books, 2024.

Daybreak is one of a few books in a very small and distinctive genre: medieval murder mysteries. Indeed, the author seems very conscious of this because his main character is Nigel Baskervell. The most famous (and one of the very few) books in this genre is Eco’s The Name of the Rose whose main character is William of Baskerville—itself an allusion to Sherlock Holmes, literature’s most famous detective.

However, unlike either Holmes or Brother William, the protagonist of Daybreak is no lofty intellectual. That is not a putdown; after all, he is the son of a nobleman and has served as a knight in what would be known as the Hundred Years’ War. Nigel is the Sheriff of Northamptonshire in England in the spring of 1382. Without going into spoiler territory, Nigel is one of many who witness the very public and spectacular murder of the shire’s leading aristocrat, Sir Hugh Fitz Warren, during the wedding of the lord’s son.

The murderer is disguised and quickly escapes, but as Sir Hugh is dying, he names the man whom he says has attacked him. That man is an Oxford Student and Lollard by the name of Alan Duval. Sir Hugh does not like the Lollards or their leader John Wycliffe, and Duval and Sir Hugh were witnessed arguing the day before.

The plot is immediately complicated. Nigel has met Duval, and Duval prayed for Nigel’s son Robert who was wounded in an archery accident. Nigel can barely read Latin, so the theological controversies are beyond him, but Duval seems to be honest and sincere. He also seemed to have left the county after his meeting with Sir Hugh.

But the Fitz Warren family and other local nobles who attended the wedding reception where the murder took place expect Nigel to arrest Duval or otherwise quickly find a guilty party and put the matter to rest. Among those nobles are Nigel’s own older brother Guy and Nigel’s in-laws, Sir Thomas and Lady Sybill Grene.

There are any number of potential suspects. Sir Hugh was not terribly popular. The other lords considered him an unscrupulous rival. The landowners in the region all raised sheep, so in addition to other noblemen, any number of wool merchants and sheep shearers had grudges against Sir Hugh. Even Sir Hugh’s own son, who stood to inherit a nice estate, is not above suspicion.

The Fitz Warrens and the Grenes have petitioned the king to have Duval arrested and tried. Nigel, then, realizes that, be it Duval or someone else, an innocent man may likely lose his life if he does not solve the crime before the king acts—if he does act.

A typical sheriff of a relatively small county like Nigel’s has about a hundred cases a year, but most of these are fulfilling orders coming from above, settling small disputes, and making a few arrests, usually related to some kind of brawl. The murder of a prominent nobleman is something new for him, and for those in the county.

There are two other things going on that make Daybreak realistic and engaging to read. First, Nigel has his own personal problems. He lost his best friend in battle in France, Robert Grene, Sir Thomas’s son. Today we would say he struggles with PTSD. Robert’s sister would become his wife, and she, in turn, died in childbirth. His son, named Robert after his father’s friend, may not survive the arrow wound. And, naturally, as he investigates the crime, he encounters conflict from various sources including his own family.

The second item worth mentioning is the history going on in the background. Daybreak is the first of a series called the Morningstar Chronicles. Today John Wycliffe is known as the Morningstar of the Reformation. While he never appears in the story, he is very much in the minds of some of the people. When Duval quotes the Bible, for example, he quotes from Wycliffe’s translation (well, slightly modernized for today’s readers). Also in the background is John of Gaunt, the powerful Duke of Lancaster, patron of Wycliffe and uncle of the king.

We do briefly meet young King Richard II in the prologue as he deals with Wat Tyler’s Peasant Rebellion, which has also been going on at this time and adds to the sense of social unrest. Twenty years later, Richard, like Tyler, would end up being a tragic figure. And we are also reminded that in Nigel’s lifetime England along with the rest of Europe was forever altered by the Black Plague.

Ziegler gives readers a great sense of the history of the time. We also get a sense of justice and integrity as Nigel attempts to solve a garish murder while trying to overcome his own personal struggles and political pressures.

Neal Stephenson. Polostan. HarperCollins, 2024.

We are fans of Neal Stephenson. We have reviewed a few of his books on these pages over the years. Stephenson’s strength is coming up with new and clever scenarios. Sometimes people classify his material as science fiction. That certainly applies works like Seveneves. People see him as one of the originators of cyberpunk as we see in Snow Crash or Fall. But his best work may be the historical fiction involving science such as we see in Cryptonomicon or The Baroque Cycle.

Polostan appears to be the first in another trilogy like The Baroque Cycle. It is fiction with science, but it is historical science. The Baroque Cycle included scientists such as Isaac Newton along with a crew of political and military figures. So does Polostan.

Unlike The Baroque Cycle which has a few main characters and switches focus from time to time, Polostan is all about one character. In some ways, she reminds us of Eliza, The Baroque Cycle’s female protagonist. Dawn, a.k.a. Aurora, was the daughter of American Communists. Born in 1916, most of the story takes place so far in the early 1930s when Dawn is a teenager.

When she was quite young, her parents lived in the Soviet Union for a few years before returning to the United States to foment a revolution there. As a result, Dawn speaks both English and Russian. Her story in Polostan takes place partly in the U.S. and partly in the U.S.S.R.

Dawn’s story in the United States tells mostly of two events in which she participated, the Bonus Marchers and the Chicago World’s Fair. We first meet her as she is leaving Montana, where her deceased mother had lived. There Dawn lived and worked on a ranch that specialized in polo ponies. She, then, becomes familiar with horses, cowboys, and playing polo.

The adventure in Washington, D.C., during the Bonus March is quite vivid. Her father is on the radical fringe of the marchers, and is looking to start the revolution. He obtains some Thompson Machine Guns (“Tommy guns”), but is ultimately thwarted. Dawn goes from there to Chicago where she knows some relatives and some Communists. Part of her adventure is how she manages to sequester the Tommy gun she has been given.

She arrives in Chicago in time for the World’s Fair, the Century of Progress. She works for a shoe store at the fair, and in her spare time learns a little about physics from different exhibitions. At one point she attends a lecture by Niels Bohr where she meets a boy about her age who explains a lot of physics to her. His family is visiting the fair from New York City. His name is Dick, and we are led to understand that this is Richard Feynman. At this point in history the neutron has just been discovered and we watch manned balloons in both America and Russia sent into the stratosphere to study cosmic rays.

While still in Washington, she meets Major George Patton. They become friendly because he likes horses and plays polo, too. However, she realizes that one of the Bonus Marchers she has gotten to know is actually a federal agent, so she decides to leave town. When that same agent shows up in Chicago (though for reasons that have nothing to do with her), she thinks it might be time to return to Russia. How a teen orphan accomplishes that is another adventure involving horses and a Mormon-type communal cult.

In Russia she is known as Aurora (or Avrora). Of course, Aurora is the Roman goddess of the dawn, but Aurora was also the name of a Russian battleship that figured prominently in the Russian Revolution. This is fitting since during the 1920s and 1930s many people named their children after things that related to science, industry, or the military. Solzhenitsyn mentioned how one man named his son Tractor. A Soviet scientist in Polostan has named his sons Proton and Electron.

While we meet several historical figures from America in the novel, the one historical personage who figures in the Soviet side of Polostan is Lavrentiy Beria, the chief of Stalin’s secret police (the OGPU back then). The Soviets have a hard time believing Dawn’s story about being an orphan of American Communists who once lived in Leningrad. We get an idea of the oppressive nature of the Communist system as she is tortured. We also get a sense of how Communism devalues the family in favor of the state.

After being satisfied that she is no spy, she is trained to become an informant for the OGPU by reporting on Americans and British who visit the Soviet Union. Like Eliza in The Baroque Cycle, after many difficulties, she becomes a person who finds a place in a government operation as a spy.

The name Polostan does not emerge till near the end of the book, but readers can probably guess what it means. -Stan is the suffix used for naming a number of Soviet republics and oblasts, e.g., Uzbekistan is where Uzbeks live. Polostan, then, is a place in the Union where people play polo.

Even from what little I have shared here, readers can tell this is an inventive and creative story about a time period and a philosophy that still affects the outlook of many today. In other words, it can get the reader to think about our culture, an effect similar to that of The Baroque Cycle.

I do have one personal problem with it. Readers of the blog may note that I read the three books in the Baroque Cycle trilogy one after the other. It was a lot of fun and extremely intelligent. I can only compare it to reading The Lord of the Rings. Like the three titles in that series, Polostan does not stand alone. I am going to have to wait for the next volumes to come out. One friend who is also a Stephenson fan told me, “I hope I live long enough to read the whole thing.” Ditto.

Robert L. Dilenschneider. Character: Life Lessons in Courage, Integrity, and Leadership. Citadel, 2025.

Let us now praise famous men… (Sirach 44:1 KJV)

Character is another in a series of motivational or inspirational books by public relations guru Robert Dilenschneider. Like his earlier Decisions and Nailing It, this is an account of the lives of a number of influential people and how they succeeded. In this case, we learn of thirty-one people who made a difference in no small part because of their character. The book is divided into ten sections enumerating important character traits.

Such character traits include integrity, resilience, leadership, loyalty, and transparency. In some cases we get examples of what these terms mean in such things as loyalty illustrated by John Wooden, famed coach of the UCLA basketball team, and integrity, as shown by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

In other cases the traits are shown by how people used these traits in distinctive ways: Steve Jobs and Walt Disney in innovation, for example. There were many people working in computer innovations in the seventies and eighties, what made Jobs’ work stand out? There were hundreds of film animators in the nineteen thirties, how did Walt and Roy Disney distinguish themselves?

A few of the personalities here are from the nineteenth century including Susan B. Anthony and Florence Nightingale. Most are noted people from the twentieth century such as those mentioned above and leaders like Dwight Eisenhower (uniquely a military, political, and academic leader) or athletes like Arthur Ashe and Lou Gehrig.

A few of these people Dilenschneider had met personally. It seems that he developed an interesting personal relationship with Colin Powell, who gave him much useful career advice. A few like Powell are probably best known from what they did in the current century.

Character lists Anwar Sadat under leadership, though in my mind he could be listed under courage, resilience, or breaking barriers. I recall seeing him in a television interview. He was talking about the time he was in prison when Egypt was still Anglo-Egyptian. The only book in his cell was a Bible, which he read. He said it helped him understand Christianity and Judaism, but he also said something else. He said that after reading it, he believed Jesus was the Son of God.

At the time, the observation did not mean all that much to me, other than him saying he saw some legitimacy to Christianity. “We are all children of God, aren’t we?” I thought back then. Muslims consider Jesus (Isa) a prophet, don’t they?

Now I realize that was a radical observation from someone who represented a Muslim nation. The Quran claims of its god:

Far be it from his transcendent majesty that He should have a son…It befitteth not the Majesty of God that He should take unto Himself a son.

I realize now that a Muslim claiming God had a son would be considered heretical if not blasphemous. Was Sadat a latter day Naaman? It might even be an additional reason why the Muslim Brotherhood wanted him dead.

This reader noted the section on transparency. Dilenschneider tells us that there is a term from computer graphics and word processing WYSIWYG (“wizzy wig”), “What you see is what you get.” That is a rare and notable character trait. People can trust those who have such transparency. He names Washington Post publisher Katherine Graham, actor Jimmy Stewart, and Notre Dame University president Theodore Hesburgh.

Transparency seems to be missing from much journalism today. Acting as a profession of being paid to pretend goes against transparency. Recent investigations into certain colleges seem to suggest that at least some college presidents are less than forthright about what is going on in their institutions. It is truly refreshing to read about some who go against the typical grain in their chosen professions. Indeed, Dilenschneider quotes Graham: “News is what someone wants suppressed. The rest is advertising” (147). I wonder how she would see today’s Washington Post…

Character delineates three people involved in politics as examples of integrity. We have already noted P. M. Thatcher. He also notes Ambassador and Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Moynihan recognizes that we live in a less than perfect world, but integrity can make it better.

Am I embarrassed to speak for a less than perfect democracy? Not one bit. Find me a better one. Do I suppose there are societies which are free from sin? No, I don’t. Do I think ours is, on balance, incomparably the most hopeful set of human relations the world has? Yes, I do. (128)

In 1993 Moynihan observed:

The Soviet Union came apart along ethnic lines. The most important factor in this breakup was the disinclination of Slavic Ukraine to continue under a regime dominated by Slavic Russia. (129)

Hmm…Dilenschneider observes that this is still significant today.

One section that seemed weaker than the others was on transcendence. That is one term that the book does not really define. The single person used to illustrate it is the late billionaire banker S. P. Hinduja. Now, he is an interesting person to study, helped his family business to thrive, and donated money to various charities.

I am not sure how this is all transcendent, except that he was Hindu, and in the West the common form of Hinduism is Transcendental Meditation. Still, his life does provide an interesting profile. I wonder if tolerance might be a more appropriate term for his character. If any of the profiles were transcendent, it would be that of Mother Teresa, whom the book uses as an example of leadership.

Still, Character follows the pattern of the other Dilenschneider inspirational books mentioned above. All three would make very good graduation gifts. The author no doubt uses them in motivational seminars or speeches that he gives. Famous people can be examples for good or evil. Certainly these sketches show how we ordinary schlubs can learn from others, even if we never become household names like Walt Disney or President Eisenhower.

James Ponti. The Sherlock Society. Aladdin, 2024.

Young Adult (YA) author James Ponti is starting a new series of young teen mysteries. The first introduces us to The Sherlock Society. Another Sherlock Holmes spinoff? Not exactly, but sort of. In this case two the four young protagonists are brother and sister Alex and Zoe Sherlock. Their family name is Sherlock, hence the obvious connection.

Their mother is a defense attorney known for her success with impossible cases. Their seventy-three year old grandfather is a retired newspaper reporter. Grandpa could be considered another member of the society as he is the only one who can legally drive. He also gives lots of good advice from his years in journalism.

Alex and Zoe are joined by Alex’s best friend Yadi and Lina, the new girl in school who feels left out otherwise. Ponti does an excellent job of delineating their various personalities. Alex is the one who likes mysteries. Yadi loves filmmaking and is also into conspiracy theories. Zoe is trying to fit in with the popular girls/mean girls of her middle school. Lina’s parents recently divorced. She and her mother have moved from the prairies of Wyoming to the tropical metropolis of Miami, Florida.

The kids first work together to solve an escape room puzzle and decide it would be fun to start of detective agency. Of course, there are certain legal and certification requirements that twelve and thirteen year olds cannot meet. But they can perhaps do some exploring of unsolved mysteries.

Yadi would love to work on the Bermuda Triangle disappearances. But they might find more concrete clues if they can solve the alleged mystery of Al Capone. Capone spent the last seven years of his life in south Florida and was suspected of burying some of his ill-gotten loot somewhere in the Everglades.

Remember the Indiana Jones movies? They begin with Indiana Jones in some kind of predicament. Right away there is action. That technique goes back at least to The Odyssey. The technical term is in medias res (“in the middle of the thing”). So The Sherlock Society opens with Alex, Zoe, and Grandpa leaping for their lives off an exploding boat in the middle of Biscayne Bay. Action! We want to know how they ended up there. So do the police.

The investigation into Capone’s background is interesting, but it does not provide a whole lot of clues about his missing treasure. But while the Sherlock Society is checking things out in the Everglades, they come across a spot where there clearly has been some illegal chemical dumping. Maybe this is something they can look into…

An eclectic group of friends working together to (perhaps) solve a mystery reminds us of Gordon Korman’s Swindle series. That their mother is an attorney who might have insight or connections takes us back to Nancy Drew whose father was also a lawyer or the Hardy Boys and their private detective father Fenton Hardy. I suspect readers who have enjoyed any of those series would like The Sherlock Files.

But there is one more author who it almost seems could have written this—Carl Hiaasen. His books are set in Florida and often involve complicated environmental adventures with young people. Most of his stories involve the outdoors, often the Everglades. So does The Sherlock Society. YA readers who have enjoyed Skink, Squirm, Scat, Wrecker, or Chomp will probably get a kick out this book. Are you sure James Ponti is not a pen name for Carl Hiaasen?

Good Birders Don’t Wear White. Edited by Lisa White, Houghton, 2007.

I had heard of Good Birders Don’t Wear White since it first came out, but I never took the opportunity of reading it until recently. I do wish I had read it sooner. It has some tips I could have used, but, as they say, better late than never.

Although the title and cover illustration suggest this book has a humorous take on birding, it is for the most part direct and straight nonfiction. It is not a take on Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche. It contains fifty short essays by experienced birders: primarily authors, trip leaders, and artists. One might say from Alden to Zickefoose. Canadians would say from Acorn to Zickefoose. The various essays together create a discussion.

One topic touched on by a number of essays is simply the difference (if any) between birding and birdwatching. I personally would turn to the titles of two magazines: Bird Watcher’s Digest and Birding. If one compares these two works, one can detect a significant difference in approach.

The book title comes from the title of one of the essays which described a birding trip to a famous remote spot in southern Arizona. The group was looking for a rarity known to only reach the United States in one small area near the border. The bird was acting upset and hiding until a person wearing a white shirt covered up with a camouflage patterned jacket. A number of land birds display white flashes of their wings or tails to indicate danger. White clothes also stand out more in many situations. No white for the bird to see—no fear for the bird to experience.

On the other hand, another essay noted that that rule does not necessarily apply when one is scoping ducks and seabirds from a beach or shoreline. Waving a white handkerchief or wearing white in that situation can get distant birds on the water to come closer out of curiosity. Both essays contribute to the discussion.

There are many other tales and stories that people interested in birds should find enlightening. It includes other things to do and to avoid as well as places to go and other surprising pieces of advice. Such advice includes using and buying binoculars, feeding birds, and what to plant in your yard to attract birds.

Some of the essays include stories of how the writer became interested in birds. In some cases it was an offshoot of other work dealing with nature, in some cases it was a friend or spouse, and in some cases they grew up with it. These can be fun to compare.

I did relate to an experience in one story but not in the way the author had. I got interested in birds and birding when I was quite young. My father had been a member of the American Ornithologists’ Union and began taking me on bird outings when I was seven. I tell people that some fathers take their kids fishing, mine took me birding. All our lives it was something we shared. It helped me when I was young because I ended up as a nature counselor at a summer camp when I was a teenager and also gave me some standing in Boy Scouts.

One writer had a similar testimony except that while he was a teenager he kept his interest on the down low, as they say. He said he was teased and called Nature Boy. I had to chuckle. Nature Boy was a nickname given to me as well when I was a teen, but if anyone meant it as a slur, I guess I never took it that way. I identified with the label and had fun with it. Once I even wrote Nature Boy on a name tag. Yeah, birding or birdwatching is meant to be fun.

Anyway, this short book is well worth reading for anyone interested in studying birds at any level: from backyard birding to competitive listing to serious ornithology. It reminds us both of how birds are fascinating to watch and what fun and how challenging birding or birdwatching can be.