Books On Beechwood

Jodi Kantor is a first-rate reporter and she has done a thoughtful, sensitive job in this book on the Obamas and their life in the White House.

The topic is huge, as we have all watched. Barack Obama has written his own story, before becoming President of the U.S., in two widely-read books: Dreams from my Father, and The Audacity of Hope. Kantor is editor of the Arts and Leisure section of “The New York Times” and has been covering the Obamas since 2007. Her book tells the complex story of what happened to Barack and his wife Michelle and their two young daughters when they move in to the White House and have to deal with the hopes and promises of the stunning campaign of 2008.

The book includes sketches of the layout of the White House and the near impossibility of living a private life, what with the almost constant access of public tours to many rooms. Even the Rose Garden is public. Michelle Obama had always hated the effects of politics on her life with Barack. Here they face the problems together. A fair account is given of the various officials in charge of the Obamas’ public life, while trying to give them as much privacy as possible. We have all read the ups and downs of his legislation: i.e. the stimulus package, health care, etc. The President’s relations with business leaders were difficult at first; they developed considerably as time went on.

The famous couple remains loving, and attractive. Barack retains his reserve and control; Michelle keeps her eye on the things that mattered to him all along: the chance to change and improve things. This book gives reason to both admire and hope for future developments.

Review by Anne McDougall

Many of us have met some of the “boat people” who came to Canada in the early ’70’s, escaping from the Communists in South Vietnam. But I’ve never read or heard as vivid a description of their life at home and the terrible hazards in escaping.

Kim Thuy was a young girl living in a palatial house in Saigon, where her father was a prefect, when the Communists came in l975. The family was forced to flee to a camp in Malaysia, where they slept on the ground. They eventually got to Canada and arrived at Mirabel, overwhelmed by their first sight of a snow-covered world. Thuy describes the kindness they found in Granby, Quebec. Neighbours showered them with gifts, and food. They couldn’t cope with all the Minute Rice, being used to sticky rice in Vietnam.

Thuy doesn’t ignore the filthy jobs that came their way. But her own training took her from being a seamstess, to interpreting, practising law, running a restaurant. The book tells of her return trips to Vietnam. The anecdotes on both sides of the world are beautifully described, the brutality as well as the beauty. She has a crisp, sparkling prose and is today living in Montreal, writing for a living. Ruhas become a bestseller in Quebec, with foreign rights sold to l5 countries around the world. It is really a lullaby for Vietnam and a love letter to a new homeland.

Review by Anne McDougall

Born in Scotland and educated in the U.K., Niall Ferguson is one of Britain’s most renowned historians. Currently attached to Harvard and Stanford universities in the U.S., he has written a number of best-selling books on history and finance, as well as magazine articles all over the world. Witty and concise, he tells a gripping story.

Civilization shows how the West began its rise to power some 500 years ago. Before then, Ming China and Ottoman Turkey had been the main world civilizations. Ferguson looks at the reasons for the West’s grandeur. They include: representative government and the rule of law, with the representation of property-owners in elected legislature; competition; the Scientific Revolution (all the major breakthroughs in mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry and biology happened in Western Europe at this time); modern medicine, including the control of tropical diseases, as well as healthcare; the consumer society brought on by the Industrial Revolution and the demand for better and cheaper goods; the work ethic, back by Protestantism and a stress on savings and capital accumulation.

Ferguson looks mainly at the U.S. and Europe but he tells how the Rest (everyone else), eventually copied these countries, all the while the West began to neglect some of the main points that made it strong in the first place. He quotes Churchill who described civilization as “the subordination of the ruling class to the settled customs of the people and to their will as expressed in the Constitution.”

Ferguson describes how the 1938 barbaric and atavistic forces, above all in Germany, rose from the very civilization with the values that Churchill held dear. He warns that the biggest threat to Western civilization is posed not by other civilizations but by our own pusillanimity, and by the historical ignorance that feeds it. His book goes a long way to clearing up this ignorance.

Review by Anne McDougall

If the U.S. political game is beginning to pall – or even our own hockey season – there’s a new book out that brings something entirely new and exciting.

Gavin Menzies has already startled historians with his books on China and its part in discovering America. He developed his interest in history from his own career in the Royal Navy where he served for twenty years, becoming a submarine captain.

In “The Lost Empire of Atlantis” he sets out to show that it was the Minoan civilization operating some 3,000 years B.C. that sailed from its base on Crete in the Mediterranean to bring in copper and tin from spots as far away as Spain and Portugal, the south coast of India, up to Stonehenge, and the Hebrides and eventually across the Atlantic to a corner of Lake Superior which had the richest bronze in the world. Menzies has himself made trips to most of these spots and the book includes photographs of a rich collection of drawings and etchings, textiles, flat copper axes and pottery, all of which the Minoans are thought to have brought with them.

Menzies checks with many other historians and archaeologists who have struggled with Plato’s myth of Atlantis. His own discoveries of treasures from the famed Bronze Age show that Atlantis might very well be the ancient Minoan civilization, which was wiped out in l450 B.C. by a massive volcano/tsunami.

Menzies lives in London, England. He is widely recognized on both sides of the Atlantic as a historical detective, as well as a scholar.

Review by Anne McDougall

Naomi Griffiths is an excellent person to write the story of our 25th Governor General, Romeo LeBlanc. She met him first in l954, at the very beginning of both their academic careers, and remained a friend until the end of his life when she last saw him in New Brunswick, in 2004. More importantly, Griffiths herself is the acknowledged authority on Acadian history, the part of the world that Romeo LeBlanc hails from.

She titles her book from the period LeBlanc was most active in the world of politics in Ottawa. Most particularly he was known and admired as the long-standing fisheries minister in Trudeau’s cabinet (l974-l982). But LeBlanc was the 7th child of an old-established farming family living in the valley of the Memramcook River, one of the centres of Acadian culture. When he had finished school, his sisters and friends collected the fees to send him to the University St. Joseph, which played a major role in his life, making it possible for him to go to Paris and study at the Sorbonne, which is where he met Naomi Griffiths who had come over from England.

LeBlanc returned to New Brunswick to teach and eventually worked as a journalist, with postings to Washington and London. He eventually entered politics in Ottawa. Griffiths was teaching history at Carleton and they maintained their friendship. As Dean of Arts she invited him to address the Canadian Institute of Canadian Studies.

LeBlanc never forgot his roots, returning constantly to his home in New Brunswick. Griffiths shows how his loyalty to the Acadians influenced his treatment of other people. He was down-to-earth but saw the humour in any situation, hard-working but open to every point of view. These qualities were recognized by Jean Chretien (who writes a fine introduction to this book) and led to his choice as Canada’s first French-Canadian Governor General in l995). This book is an outstanding portrait from every point of view.

Review by Anne McDougall

If you are already a fan of Alexander McCall Smith, this is another charmer in his Isabel Dalhousie series. If it’s your first time, it’s hard to believe you won’t enjoy this gentle yarn, set in Edinburgh where this beloved author lives.

McCall Smith was first recognized by his best-selling No. l Ladies’ Detective Agency which was set in Africa where he lived at one time. Since then he has pursued his career as professor of medical law at the University of Edinburgh and written short novels on the side. Part of their appeal is his obvious love of the city and his walks and jaunts through every part of the old town’s upper and lower towns, castles, pubs, meadowlands.

The stories about Isabel Dalhousie feature an attractive Edinburgh woman who considers herself a philosopher — by both training and practice. She publishes and edits a journal called “The Review of Applied Ethics”. She is also living with her partner, a musician, and looking after their 2 year old boy while planning to marry, which she does in this book.

McCall Smith winds a number of complications into their lives. Isabel is sought out for help by an adopted woman seeking her real father. The discoveries are provocative and the story grabs your attention. The Los Angeles Times calls the book “a genteel, wisdom-filled entertainment”. It is also light-handed, and funny.

Review by Anne McDougall

This is a charmingly-produced memoir about a professor’s life, written by one of the most distinguished historians of our time.

Michael Bliss grew up in small-town Ontario and then moved on to the University of Toronto. Here he first studied science and mathematics, then theology (he was going to be a United Church minister) and finally philosophy and history. With the last he found his home and was soon lecturing as well as writing for journals across Canada. Bliss shares his experience in teaching and also the influence of men like historians Kenneth McNaught, Donald Creighton and Ramsay Cook.

His own interest in Canadian public life led to meeting and writing about many of the politicians of the day. An interesting section is his encounter with Pierre Trudeau. Eventually he found himself drawn to an earlier love, science. He took on the stories of doctors Banting and Best and wrote “The Discovery of Insulin,” a highly successful book to this day. He followed this with a biography of Sir William Osler and that in turn led to an investigation and book on the man who had first written about Osler, Harvey Cushing, famed neurosurgeon.

Bliss writes candidly about the combined pressures on a professor’s life of teaching and writing. He has had an exceptionally happy family life in suburban Toronto, which we see here in a number of photographs. He shares with us the importance of this happiness. It makes for a fascinating account.

Review by Anne McDougall