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 After the collapse of the Soviet Union, many Russians struggled with identity and with their ever-changing nation. Susan Richards has been to Russia before and goes back just to see how the people she knows are doing, hoping to see what’s happened in modern day Russia. Over the course of 16 years, she visits a variety of towns and cities around Russia, catching up with friends and investigating cults and other Russian legends.
I really wanted to like this book. Really, really wanted to like it. I’m fascinated by Russia (and Russians) – I spent five years learning Russian, picking up plenty of Russian history through both the language and various classes, and only by a sad quirk of fate haven’t visited yet. It’s still a goal. So, this book seemed like it would be perfect. Unfortunately, it really wasn’t, and largely because it didn’t really tell me all that much about modern day Russia. There were a few interesting segments, such as when Susan visits Orthodox communities hidden deep within the Siberian forest, but for the most part, she spends the entire book doing just one thing: visiting her Russian friends.
At the start of the book, it is her mission to travel to one town, Marx, and throughout the book she keeps on returning. She makes friends with people there and spends quite a bit of the book visiting them and getting updates on their progress (or setbacks). In doing so, she does take a peek into modern Russian society – exposing Russians to be just as uncertain as Westerners, ever-uneasy in a world without regulations. Regulations, when they return, are sometimes embraced and sometimes detested. What’s certain is that the levels of freedom have been restricted and the Russian lifestyle is still very volatile. It’s clear to them that anything could happen with their government and they act accordingly.
The problem for me was that I wasn’t necessarily interested in the lives of the same people, over and over again. It was useful for contrast, but I never came to care about any of the people Susan befriended. I found some of their lives much more interesting than others. By far the best parts were when she ventured out of Marx and saw how things were in other parts of Russia; though we can see the changes in Russia through the eyes of those people in Marx, the country is immense. Different perspectives were, for me, very important and helped to round out the overall picture.
What really made me more or less dislike the book was the way it ended. The author doesn’t really sum up her experiences or her thoughts. It just ends. I can see the point of this – after all, life goes on, and these lives are doing just that – but I can’t help but feel I’d have preferred an actual end of some sort. It’s as though she’s going back to visit tomorrow, but this time, we won’t be along with her, seeing things through her eyes.
I’ve read a few varying opinions on Lost and Found in Russia, but while it left me with some lingering things to think about, I overall felt disappointed. I couldn’t recommend it unless you’re very interested in post-Soviet Russia.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free for review from Netgalley.
 Gypsy Rose Lee is America’s best known burlesque dancer. What’s less known about her is the life of Rose Louise, the reasons she was driven to burlesque, and how she really thought about herself and her life. This is as much due to her own cultivation of her personal myth as anything else; taking her sister’s legacy in vaudeville and making it her own, Gypsy became a legend even in her own time, the master of the strip tease. Karen Abbott has done research into Gypsy’s early life, while she was still Rose Louise, and attempted to work out the true story of the woman behind the myth.
Gypsy Rose Lee was certainly a fascinating woman. I didn’t know much about her before reading this book, just her name and that she was a famous burlesque dancer. The story within this book was, for me, fascinating. I took a class in American musical theatre back in college and it was easily one of the more interesting courses outside of my majors. Of course, it started right at the beginning, with the origins of vaudeville and burlesque – both of which feature largely here.
As a child, Gypsy was in vaudeville, and hugely successful, with her sister June as the lead performer. An awkward child, Gypsy, then known as Rose Louise, could often be mistaken for one of the boys, while her ethereal baby sister stole the show. It was only when June ran off at the age of fifteen that Rose transformed herself into Gypsy Rose Lee, joining burlesque shows out of desperation and eventually becoming a true master of the racy performances. Behind the scenes was a difficult mother and some very difficult family relationships, all of which made for compelling reading. At times it was hard to believe that Gypsy and her family actually lived these lives – they are so outside the norm. I was simultaneously fascinating and drawn to pity Gypsy and June for completely missing out on normal childhoods – they didn’t go to school, they didn’t make friends, and they lived just to make their mother more money.
Despite the incredibly compelling life of Gypsy, I didn’t really feel that the book lived up to its full potential. That’s because it switches around quite drastically in time. This could have been a useful device for contrasting the older Gypsy with the child Rose Louise, but in the end it flipped around too much for my liking. I wouldn’t have minded Gypsy’s biography alternated with interviews and the author’s research (presuming the latter took a secondary role) but switching through multiple time periods was just distracting. I wound up feeling the book would have been better as a straightforward biography, told in chronological order. Gypsy’s story doesn’t need these devices to be captivating.
Bar the flaw of alternating periods of history, American Rose was an incredibly addictive, compelling read. I was drawn to read more and more of Gypsy’s life, reading this non-fiction book as easily as I would read any novel. If you don’t mind the switching around, I’d highly recommend this book.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free for review from Amazon Vine.
 Space travel is something that has fascinated people the world over, even before it was an actual scientific possibility. Now that it is, and has been, Mary Roach takes her approach into the funny, hidden side of traveling to the moon and the impending tests for a trip to Mars. She doesn’t skimp on the details, from astronauts’ diapers to disgusting dried meals to whether or not any astronauts have joined the “three dolphin club”, the equivalent to the “mile high club” for airplanes. At the same time, she acknowledges both the wonder and the terror of space flight and delves deep into the history of the men, women, and animals who have dared to go where no others had gone before.
I’ve previously read one book by Mary Roach, Bonk, but I knew immediately upon reading it that I wanted to read more by her. Packing for Mars just seemed like an excellent choice; highly rated by many people I know and covering fascinating subject matter, I couldn’t resist. It’s science in a way anyone can consume it, even people who normally dislike science like me, mixed in with a healthy dose of humor and those anecdotes which other authors probably wouldn’t share, let alone investigate. Things like a freezer full of astronaut poos and the earlier-mentioned “three dolphin club” – I certainly didn’t expect to find those in this book, but I probably should have. There is plenty of history here as well as current experiments going on for future missions.
I also really appreciated the fact that Roach doesn’t limit herself to American astronauts. She also heads to Russia, and though fewer of her stories are about the cosmonauts, she certainly includes the country’s important role in space exploration and travel. Laika, the first dog in space, and her two followers who actually managed to survive the trip are mentioned right along with the monkeys that Americans used for their tests. I’ve spent a fair amount of time studying the Russian efforts into space, so I was happy to see a representation of both countries.
For me, this book was the perfect mix of facts and humor. I never felt bogged down by facts because the rest of the book was just so funny and informative. It’s great to learn and be entertained at the same time, and this is just what Roach delivers – providing a hilarious entry into the history and current situation of space travel. She doesn’t shy away from the dangers or the messy parts, and she experiences everything she can herself, from parabolic flights to going in a space travel toilet. Highly recommended.
I am an Amazon Associate. I purchased this book.
 In times of stress, there’s almost nothing better than rereading a cozy favorite book and shutting out the world. And who better to remind us of how to be the heroines of our own lives than the heroines of our favorite books? From Jane Eyre, my own personal favorite, to The Color Purple, Blakemore takes a closer look at our favorite female characters, the books they star in, and the authors who wrote them. She not only isolates a few of the greatest traits of these heroines, but explains how we can take them away and use them in our own lives.
The Heroine’s Bookshelf was everywhere in the book blogosphere last month and with all the praise it garnered, I couldn’t resist getting a copy for myself. So when it popped up on Amazon Vine, I eagerly requested it, just knowing I’d love a book about so many of my favorite female characters. It’s difficult for a book to live up to those high expectations, but this one managed just that. It’s a delightful, heartening little read, that reminds us we’re not alone and certainly made me want to go right back to these literary favorites. Perfectly written for a time when many women’s lives are getting more difficult, when the pennies have to stretch that much further, this is a book that has a place on every woman’s bookshelf.
What I really loved most about this book was that Blakemore didn’t stop at the actual heroines in the novels. No, those are the women we’re all familiar with, that we have already come to love and store within ourselves. She also talks about the fabulous female authors who created these literary heroines and their own foibles. She speculates on their motivations for creating the strong girls who still manage to inspire us today and adds them into the mix of real life – because much as we’d like it, our lives aren’t fiction with a neat conclusion. Our lives are messy, and so were these authors’, but they stood above that and created literature that transcends. Maybe our acts of heroism aren’t writing, but that doesn’t mean they can’t inspire us.
Split into sections for the trait each character epitomizes, Blakemore takes us on a literary journey of sorts, through one heroine’s capacity to love, to another’s classification of magic, to a third’s unrelenting faith. Even without having read all the books (I have never read The Color Purple or Colette’s Claudine works), I still felt I gained from those sections. As an added bonus, I’d now love to read them, and plan to do so in the very near future. The entire book felt like it was written just for me – and it reminded me of how fortunate I am to love reading and to find inspiration in it on a regular basis.
If you are a woman and love to read – if you spent much of your childhood lost in a book like me – The Heroine’s Bookshelf is simply a must read. I’m thrilled to have it on my shelf.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free for review from Amazon Vine.
 Despite being a son of the North of England, Stuart Maconie has found himself mostly living in the South, a very different place. When he realizes he has a cappuccino maker and keeps sundried tomatoes on hand at all times – both, apparently, very un-Northern things to do – he decides to return to the country of his childhood in search of the true North. He explores how the cities and countryside have changed over the years and whether any of the stereotypes still hold true.
I haven’t lived in England for all that long and even I know the stereotypes of Northerners – generally big, dirty men (I always think of miners, probably for good reason as there were many here) with rough exteriors but a heart of gold. For the most part, that’s what you get on TV shows, especially older ones. Of course, the mining industry is basically gone now, and Northern towns are pretty much the same as Southern towns, in my limited experience, so Maconie’s quest to discover the true North interested me very much. After all, we live in the North now, so I was looking forward to finding out more about it.
Unfortunately, I think this book didn’t really suit me personally as a reader. For one thing, I’m American. There are many, many British cultural references that I’m still unfamiliar with and I’m pretty sure Maconie uses every last one of them. He also relies heavily on many places’ musical roots, which again I’m unfamiliar with. I know the big British bands that made it over the pond, but there are quite a few – many of which are probably big names over here – that I just hadn’t heard of. There were also a few notes about football, which is again something I’m not crazy about, nor do I know the details of football history and rivalries. So, I’d recommend other non-Brits to be a bit hesitant before picking it up.
For me that was kind of a shame, because I did quite enjoy the rest of the book. I loved learning about the different Northern cities and how they’d changed over the years, whether they’d done well this century or not. The book is slightly outdated so I’m not sure the same towns are still prosperous, but it was all very interesting and usually focused on areas I didn’t know much about. He did manage to leave out a large part of Yorkshire, including the bit that I live in, despite having a whole chapter on the country. I think his focus was on the “happening” cities and the ones around here aren’t really what I’d call exciting. I think Maconie does a decent job breaking the North out of its stereotyping and explaining just why it’s so appealing. It’s not the dirty poor place that it’s imagined to be.
I think Pies and Prejudice would appeal to those Brits who are interested in a cultural journey through the North of England, but I’d hesitate to recommend it to anyone who isn’t very familiar with British culture and recent history.
I am an Amazon Associate. I borrowed this book from my local library.
 In his own time, Luther Burbank was a living legend, as well known in his own field as Henry Ford was for automobiles. Starting out with hardly any land and even less money bar what he’d earned breeding a new kind of potato, Burbank headed west for greener, California pastures, where he could make his name. There he could work his magic, combining varieties of plants to create perfect specimens, which have now become so ubiquitous that we would no longer recognize the originals he tampered with. But due to the nature of the botanical market, Burbank could never be assured of his position, and his eccentricity ensured that he would struggle to be accepted amongst scientists. Regardless, he changed the nature of plant breeding and introduced new ideas about plants that continue to resonate in the American psyche today.
I’d only ever heard of vague echoes about Luther Burbank before winning this book on Twitter from the publisher, at least a year ago now. I had no idea that he was regarded as such a great man or that his name could sell plants just by being attached to them. It’s a bit of a joke amongst those who know me that I have a “black thumb” – everything I’ve ever tried to grow has, unfortunately, died pretty quickly no matter what I do. So, I was purely interested in this book from a historical perspective; whatever information about gardening I took from it would surely never be put to good use. It was fortunately very satisfying from that historical perspective.
Smith takes us through a journey of Burbank’s life, from his relatively lowly origins to his path to fame and stardom. Quite a few of his own problems reflected the problems of the day; for example, none of his plants could ever be patented. As a result, men who “invented” things and were in the same class as him became wildly wealthy without needing to do much else, while Burbank had to continually innovate throughout his life in order to achieve results and deliver the next best thing. Tossed into the mix were bits about early twentieth century marketing, which was also quite interesting to me now that I work in marketing, and plenty about Burbank’s personal life and his various attempts to expand into other markets depending on how he felt at the time.
One of the more interesting aspects of the book was Burbank himself, which shouldn’t really have been a surprise. Such an eccentric man must have been a delight to write about. No one knows how to replicate some of his creations because he hardly ever documented what he did and he stymied every attempt to follow him and write about his methods. Instead he’d say it all depended on emotions and visitors to the farm would catch him talking to his plants as he went about the day’s work.
I didn’t really know what to expect from The Garden of Invention but I got an interesting little book about gardens, history, and a US that was rapidly legalizing. If any of those subjects interest you, give this one a try.
I am an Amazon Associate. I won this book in a giveaway.
 The written word is a powerful thing, and every once in a while, a book comes along that hits the mood of the times perfectly and influences history. Because there are very many of these books, Bragg limits his selection to books published by British authors, and includes a single fiction title in his list. His aim is to present the measurable affects of these books – and while fiction touches us deeply, it’s nearly impossible to gauge reactions to fiction titles in the same way. His list consists of:
- Principia Mathematica (1687) by Isaac Newton
- Married Love (1918) by Marie Stopes
- Magna Carta (1215) by members of the English ruling classes
- Book of Rules of Association Football (1863) by a group of former English public-school men
- On the Origin of Species (1859) by Charles Darwin
- On the Abolition of the Slave Trade (1789) by William Wilberforce in Parliament, immediately printed in several versions
- A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) by Mary Wollstonecraft
- Experimental Researches in Electricity (three volumes, 1839, 1844, 1855) by Michael Faraday
- Patent Specification for Arkwright’s Spinning Machine (1769) by Richard Arkwright
- The King James Bible (1611) by William Tyndale and 54 scholars appointed by the king
- An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776) by Adam Smith
- The First Folio (1623) by William Shakespeare
While I thought this book was very interesting for what it covered, there was a lot it didn’t cover, and sometimes I didn’t agree with his choices. For one thing, a couple of the choices aren’t actually books. One is a patent and one is a speech later made into a pamphlet. Bragg argues that because they were so influential, they should still count, but I wasn’t sure I agreed with him. The book is also quite Anglo-focused, but he explains that clearly in the introduction so it’s not really a fault – it’s just something I didn’t consider when initially browsing in the library and picking up the book.
The books are described in much the way they’re ordered and I thought Bragg did a great job of explaining the period of the times and how, in many cases, the book more or less guided public consciousness along the way it was prepared to go. The same book wouldn’t have had such an effect 50 years earlier or 50 years after – the world might in fact have been an entirely different place by that point. He doesn’t dig deeply into any of the books, but when he has so many books to get through in so few pages, what’s there is still very interesting and, I thought, makes a good cause for it being there.
The exception, for me, was football. Personally, I’m not the world’s biggest fan of football. I have a difficult time understanding why anyone really cares and particularly why fans get so militant about their teams. My philosophy is, generally, you go ahead and watch it as long as you don’t make me watch it, too, so I was never going to really like that section. Plus, Bragg explains that football is a game that had been played in some form or another for centuries, and which has continued to evolve since then. Even if football has an effect on nations, for once I wasn’t convinced that the book itself had actually influenced anything besides rules. The game would have continued.
Again unsurprisingly, my favorite chapter was the final one on Shakespeare. It’s pretty clear that Bragg loves literature himself, and I felt Shakespeare was the perfect person to end the book with. It may be difficult to pinpoint what effect other novels have had on the public consciousness, but it’s easy enough with Shakespeare, and this is one section Bragg excels in.
So, if you’re interested in a very Anglo-centred vision of world-changing books, 12 Books That Changed the World might be a good choice. But it’s not quite what it says on the cover and I wouldn’t have minded the inclusion of more fiction and a more solid definition of “book”. It was interesting, but had quite a bit of missed potential.
I am an Amazon Associate. I borrowed this book from my local library.
 Until he was 12, Ishmael Beah lived with his mother and brothers in Mattru Jong, Sierra Leone. Then the war came to his hometown with the arrival of the rebels and he was forced to flee for his life, losing his entire family in the process. Because he then proceeds to hang around with a group of boys, his friends, he is kicked out of towns, starved, and forced to run again and again until he is finally drafted into the army. Force fed drugs and given an AK-47, Ishmael is turned into a mini killing machine, hardly aware of what he’s doing, until he is chosen for a rehabilitation program and begins the slow process of re-acclimatizing into civilian life. Eventually, he becomes a spokesman against putting children in war, and has written his memoirs in a bid to stop this horrible practice.
This is a difficult book to read, not only because Beah’s childhood and teenage years are so horrific but because this drafting of children into warfare is something that still happens around the globe. Beah never wanted to be a soldier; he spends most of the book actually running away from them, while at the same time regularly condemned simply for his age. He and his friends nearly starve and are nearly killed a number of times by the very same forces they end up fighting for. Once they’re caught, there is simply no choice.
In terms of prose style, Beah’s book is plainly written but descriptive enough to get his point across; more and I think some of the things he describes would have been almost too graphic, even if they did happen. His time as a child soldier was easily the hardest to take. He describes how he was turned from a regular boy into a violence machine. The army used drugs and persuasion to make the children kill with a vengeance; these same acts make Beah’s rehabilitation all the more difficult when it does happen. One of the most heartbreaking parts of the book occurs when Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, is retaken by soldiers, and many of the rehabilitated children wind up back in the army. Beah is saved this fate and indeed turns out incredibly fortunate as he finds a new life in the United States, but he doesn’t fail to remind us that his case is unusual and is the very reason he can write his book.
Personally, I knew very little about child soldiers before reading this book, and I’ve been reminded once again how fortunate I am to have grown up in a peaceful society. I never had to worry that a gang of rebel soldiers was going to invade my town, evict me from my home, and kill everyone I’d ever known. Beah did, and these things are still happening around the world. This is one of those books that I believe everyone should read; it’s important to know what’s going on in the world and to find out ways we can help. I can’t recommend A Long Way Gone enough.
I am an Amazon Associate. I borrowed this book from my local library.
 How often do you think about whether what you’re eating is food or science? So much of our nutrition is now supplied by processed food that it’s hard to tell; even bread isn’t reliable because it’s got so many additives in it. While nutrients are constantly labeled “good” or “bad” by the authorities that matter – too much saturated fat, too much trans fat, not enough omega 3 – Michael Pollan chooses to stand up in defense of food, real food, and argue that if we stuck a little closer to what nature intended, we’d be much better off than by following the dictates of the latest fad diet.
While I don’t think this book supplied me with too much information that was entirely new, it definitely combined it in a way that opened my eyes to some of the problems with our eating. I try when I can to buy local and fresh, but do find myself giving in to the temptation to get something ready made because it’s a lot easier. This book has definitely made me reconsider signing up for a local box scheme – where you get a box of fresh local vegetables each week – and think about cooking more from scratch like I used to, back in those days when I had time. (Let’s hope Jamie Oliver’s 30 minute meals do the job – a review of that will be coming soon too!)
Anyway, on to the book itself. Pollan starts out with guidelines. Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much. Doesn’t sound hard, right? He then goes and explains how, surprisingly, it is difficult. He demonstrates the fact that nutrition guidelines these days are driven by profits, not by actual consideration of public health – science makes discoveries, but the big food companies can easily turn them around and soften them so no one pays attention. The first processed food to really catch on, of course, was margarine, and even now the vegetable spread blends aren’t far from shelves and mouths even if they’re not allowed to be called margarine any longer.
Now everything’s being processed in an effort to make more money and produce more food. Pollan explains the history, also including the fact that we’ve known for decades that a mostly plant-based diet is good for us. He shows how our food intake, which should be rich and varied, has been reduced to four main things – corn, soya, wheat, and rice. Most of us eat some other veggies too, but not in nearly enough amounts, and our diets are mainly full of those things plus meat which has also been fed corn instead of grass. He also goes on to show how science hasn’t really explained why vegetables are so healthy; aside from knowing that they’re fantastic for us, no one can explain just why or make something that does the same job. But there’s no marketing vehicle behind carrots or tomatoes, so they don’t tend to get much attention, and it’s Pollan’s aim to reverse that. After all, people who eat their native diets, no matter the content of them, suffer far less from cancer, diabetes and heart disease than those who eat a Western processed diet; shouldn’t we try and compromise to achieve better health for all? We may not be hunter gatherers, but we can try a little bit harder, and Pollan argues that our generation finally can.
With that in mind, Pollan lays out a few guidelines. My favourite was not to buy anything with more than five ingredients. This is impossible to avoid if you eat anything that comes in a package! It’s my new mission, however, to try and minimise what we are eating out of packets and make fresh food instead. And if I do buy a package, I need to make sure I actually recognise what’s in there and don’t purchase lab experiments.
I’d highly recommend In Defence of Food to anyone looking to improve their eating, to have a little peek into the history of the food industry and be inspired to make a change. It’s not a perfect book, he slips into the “nutritionisms” that he is so against at times, but he does explain everything in a way that makes sense and appeals to my own instincts. This is a book well worth reading – it’s not a diet, it’s logic that should make sense to all.
I am an Amazon Associate. I purchased this book.
 Idina Sackville was one of the most scandalous British women of the 20s – her reputation was so destroyed that her great-granddaughter, the author of this book, wasn’t even told they were related until a coincidence forced her mother to reveal the truth. Idina married not just once but five times, divorcing most of her husbands; her need for intimacy caused her to cheat on many of them and lent her character to a number of infamous seductresses depicted in fiction. Throughout, however, it’s clear that Idina is a woman who simply needed to be loved, who was treated unfairly by the rules of her society, and whose life gives us a perfect lens for looking at this period in history for women.
I’ve seen this book around for what seems like a year now, and one day I finally saw it on the library shelf and decided it was time to read it. That decision was a good one, because in many ways this book was fascinating. Idina epitomizes the raciness of the 20s and the post-war era, but because she didn’t remain safely in the bonds of marriage, she was completely ostracized. From a young age, she learned that men leave, because her father left her mother and they divorced – which meant Idina’s mother couldn’t introduce her into society. Instead, an aunt had to do it. She seems to have adored her first husband, but after the honeymoon period his attention wandered to other women, especially when Idina fell ill and couldn’t satisfy his needs effectively. And so she fled, divorcing him and leaving two small boys that she was forbidden to ever see again, thus starting the cycle of scandals that defined her life.
What struck me most about this book was how hypocritical Idina’s society seemed. The author relates plenty of stories about just how the Edwardians were emerging from the strict Victorian era, and how in particular the two world wars started to shake the foundations of marriages and morals, especially in the higher echelons of society and particularly as these started to break down. It was fairly typical for aristocratic married couples to take lovers, but it was kept safely under the guise of marriage. Divorce became less and less scandalous over the course of the period, but Idina pushed the limits with her many husbands – most of whom were younger than her and by quite a bit as she aged. Yet we also got stories of women who greeted their guests while arising from their baths and one particular story of a woman who went to her own party clothed in nothing but pearls. For married women, this seems fine; for Idina, a divorcee, not so.
Truly the saddest part of the book was the way that Idina’s many marriages and divorces robbed her of all chances of happiness. Through the author’s eyes, she seems to have just wanted love and affection. Otherwise, why marry? Why divorce? Why not just take lovers under the safe cover of marriage if all she needed was physical? Her attempts to regain contact with her children at the end of her life show that she started to regret her choices and excerpts from her letters at the end of the book are heartbreaking.
This wasn’t a perfect book, though; I did feel that Idina remained an elusive, mysterious figure throughout. I struggled to get a true feel for her and her decisions don’t always make the most sense. I’m not sure what would have done the trick; I think I would have preferred more excerpts from letters by her. At the start of the book, they’re mainly from her husband, with a few interruptions from Idina, and I felt that trend continued. At times the author reimagines scenes, with speech quotes, which make it clear she did have access to personal records, and I think I’d have preferred straight quotes from letters to get a feel for Idina’s voice and character from the woman herself. I certainly felt for her, but I didn’t get that connection I was craving.
If you’re looking for a interesting social history through the lens of one woman embodying an ever-changing society, The Bolter is definitely a book for you. It’s less a portrait of a woman and more a portrait of a time; regardless, it’s fascinating.
I am an Amazon Associate. I borrowed this book from my local library.
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