Books Read

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

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Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance
Published by Harper on June 28th 2016
Pages: 272
See it @ Goodreads


Synopsis

From a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, a powerful account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class
Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis—that of white working-class Americans. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over forty years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck.
The Vance family story begins hopefully in postwar America. J. D.’s grandparents were “dirt poor and in love,” and moved north from Kentucky’s Appalachia region to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually their grandchild (the author) would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of their success in achieving generational upward mobility.
But as the family saga of Hillbilly Elegy plays out, we learn that this is only the short, superficial version. Vance’s grandparents, aunt, uncle, sister, and, most of all, his mother, struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, and were never able to fully escape the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America. Vance piercingly shows how he himself still carries around the demons of their chaotic family history.
A deeply moving memoir with its share of humor and vividly colorful figures, Hillbilly Elegy is the story of how upward mobility really feels. And it is an urgent and troubling meditation on the loss of the American dream for a large segment of this country.

I am not really sure what to make of this book. I thought that it might be something different than what is was, simply the memoir of one young man’s rise out of poverty. Mr Vance is obviously a very bright person, and he makes a solid case for the blight of the white working class in Appalachia.

The hillbillies of Appalachia have not cornered the market on poverty in America, George Packer’s The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America tells us the same story which is effecting all of this country not just Appalachia.

What Mr Vance and others of his ilk don’t want to hear is that the only way we will break this cycle is by becoming a Social Democracy.

Missing Pieces

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Missing Pieces

Missing Pieces by Heather Gudenkauf
Published by MIRA on February 1st 2016
Pages: 288
See it @ Goodreads


Synopsis

A woman uncovers earth-shattering secrets about her husband’s family in this chilling page-turner from New York Times bestselling author, Heather Gudenkauf
Sarah Quinlan's husband, Jack, has been haunted for decades by the untimely death of his mother when he was just a teenager, her body found in the cellar of their family farm, the circumstances a mystery. For years Jack has avoided returning home, but when his beloved aunt Julia is in an accident, Jack and Sarah are forced to confront the past that they have long evaded.
Upon arriving, Sarah and Jack are welcomed by the family Jack left behind all those years ago. But as facts about Julia’s accident begin to surface, Sarah realizes that nothing about the Quinlans is what it seems. Sarah dives deep into the puzzling rabbit hole of Jack’s past, but the farther in she climbs, the harder it is for her to get out. And soon she is faced with a deadly truth she may not be prepared for.
"An action packed thriller.... Gudenkauf's best book yet!” — Mary Kubica, New York Times bestselling author of The Good Girl
“Missing Pieces is an emotional roller coaster of suspense that will keep you guessing until the final page is turned." — Jennifer McMahon, New York Times bestselling author of The Winter People

Not exactly a thriller, more a who done-it and rather a slow one at that. While I enjoyed the book there was not the spark that I have found in some of Gudenkauf other books.

If there were just a couple more twists to the plot, it would have been a really good read. Not ready to give up on this author yet.

The Nazi Hunters

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The Nazi Hunters

The Nazi Hunters by Andrew Nagorski
Published by Simon & Schuster on May 10th 2016
Pages: 416
See it @ Goodreads


Synopsis

“[A] deep and sweeping account of a relentless search for justice.” —The Washington Post
More than seven decades after the end of the Second World War, the era of the Nazi Hunters is drawing to a close as they and the hunted die off. Their saga can now be told almost in its entirety.
After the Nuremberg trials and the start of the Cold War, most of the victors in World War II lost interest in prosecuting Nazi war criminals. Many of the lower-ranking perpetrators quickly blended in with the millions who were seeking to rebuild their lives in a new Europe, while those who felt most at risk fled the continent. The Nazi Hunters focuses on the small band of men and women who refused to allow their crimes to be forgotten—and who were determined to track them down to the furthest corners of the earth.
The Nazi Hunters reveals the experiences of the young American prosecutors in the Nuremberg and Dachau trials, Benjamin Ferencz and William Denson; the Polish investigating judge Jan Sehn, who handled the case of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss; Germany’s judge and prosecutor Fritz Bauer, who repeatedly forced his countrymen to confront their country’s record of mass murder; the Mossad agent Rafi Eitan, who was in charge of the Israeli team that nabbed Eichmann; and Eli Rosenbaum, who rose to head the US Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations that belatedly sought to expel war criminals who were living quietly in the United States. But some of the Nazi hunters’ most controversial actions involved the more ambiguous cases, such as former UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim’s attempt to cover up his wartime history. Or the fate of concentration camp guards who have lived into their nineties, long past the time when reliable eyewitnesses could be found to pinpoint their exact roles.
The story of the Nazi hunters is coming to a natural end. It was unprecedented in so many ways, especially the degree to which the initial impulse of revenge was transformed into a struggle for justice. The Nazi hunters have transformed our fundamental notions of right and wrong. Andrew Nagorski’s book is a richly reconstructed odyssey and an unforgettable tale of gritty determination, at times reckless behavior, and relentless pursuit.

Nagorski’s Nazis Hunter’s story picks up after the Nuremberg trials.  The official search for Nazis waned, partly because we became obsessed with the communists and partly because we felt that Germany just needed to get on with its healing from its reign of terror.

For some reason I thought that most of the war criminals of WWII were arrested and prosecuted during the Nuremberg trials, this appears not to have been the case.  Nagorski book covers some of the men and women that continued to search for war criminals well into the twenty-first century.

The book serves to remind us that we can never forget what happened and that we should bring to justice those that abuse their powers.