Ten Books that will make you think...
 
The ten books I am reviewing are books that made me think and change my point of view.  Now that I am old, books that can change my perspective are worth reading in my opinion.  Here is the list of books I consider worthwhile reading, you may choose to agree or disagree.  You will not lose any points if you choose to disagree.  These are not listed in order of preference either, because I am a very biased critic.  Six of the ten books listed are non-fiction.

1. Yellowface by R.F. Quang Yellowface was about a woman who befriends Athena Lui Chinese American woman who dies and leaves behind her unpublished book that June Hayword decides to publish this book under the name Juniper Song.  What caught my attention was that this was not just an artistic theft, but also the ethics of writing beyond your culture.  In the past, I have argued that it was alright for a writer to write from a culture other than their own.  I put together a manuscript as an indigenous person and a Japanese pilot during World War Two.  Is it alright for a person to write from another cultural perspective?  After reading this book by R.F. Quang I began to question my original position on the matter.  As a teacher, I have failed a student paper based on plagiarism hoping that this would be a lesson about stealing creative property.  In this book, June was heavily penalized for her attempt to steal a dead woman's manuscript. The temptation to steal someone else's creative work, even if they are deceased, can never justified as June Hayword desperately tried to do.  
2. My Friends by Fredrik Backman: I just finished this book last week and remember why Fredrik Backman was one of my favorite authors.  Using humor and his attention makes this a book worth reading.  Louisa, an eighteen-year-old runaway meets a world-famous artist and together they paint graffiti on a empty church wall.  When the police intervene, she gets away, but the artist hits his head when the police wrestle him to the ground and passes away in the hospital, but not before he tells his friend Fred to give Louisa his valuable painting of his friends painted twenty-five summers ago.  Fred and Lousia travel to the place where C. Jat pained his friends in the ocean.  During their journey by train, Fred tells Louisa the story of each of his friends that were captured in a single moment of perfection caught in that moment.  Some of the story is sad and some tells of the friendship between them.  Louisa learns that not all happy endings end as expected.  What I loved about this book is the way which Backman reveals their story a piece at a time through the perspective of Fred.  Louisa also has a chance to tell her story that includes the death of her best friend called Fish.  From the first page to the last, Backman brings out the empathy and the lasting relationships of a special friendship. 
3. Code Name: Pale Horse by Scott Payne:  This is the story of how F.B.I. agent infiltrated one of the most dangerous groups in the United States, the American Nazis known as The Base in an operation code named Pale Horse.  This book vividly describes his participation in Operation.  He describes the start of Pale Horse when he started on Halloween in 2019 when the Nazis a ritualist sacrifice in Georgia.  Scott Payne was an F.B.I. special agent who went by the name Hillbilly Donnie Brasco.  Up until he infiltrated The Base, he had done investigations on motorcycle gangs as well as the Ku Klux Klan.  Payne's narrative is fast paced and exhilarating in places as he works tirelessly to bring domestic terrorists to justice.  What really caught my attention was the extent of these white supremacy groups and the violence they were willing to engage in order to meet their goals.  I feel this book is an eye-opening account of how powerful these hate groups have become especially in light of the current political situation in this country.  I also found Scott Payne courageous in his dogged pursuit of these extremist groups.  
4. James by Percival Everette:  I liked this book because of the interesting perspective of taking a character from a book written over one hundred seventy years ago by Mark Twain.  Percival Everette brings the runaway slave Jim from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.  Everette begins his book in Hannibal, Missouri making the runaway slave Jim the protagonist.  While it seems like a retelling of the classic Mark Twain tale, Everette takes a sharp turn.  Jim runs when he learns he is about to be sold separating him from his family.  Hiding out on Jackson Island in the middle of the Mississippi River, Huck finds him as he too is escaping an abusive father.  Together they set off on their dangerous adventure on a raft. As their journey continues, the relationship between Huck and Jim binds them together until Jim reveals that he is Huck's biological father.  The novel explores the brutality of slavery.  While Twain wrote The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as a commentary on the social construct of slavery at the time, James brings up contemporary of racial issues.  What makes these one of my ten best books, is the way Everette creates James as a man willing to fight for the justice that has been denied him by society.  When we have society divided along racial lines, we do not reap the benefits of what the subjugated group has to offer.  What is pointed out is that all people can contribute to a better, stronger society.  
5. Alive Day by Karie Fugett:  Author Karie Fugett writes a memoir about life as the wife of Cleve her husband who is disabled when an IED explodes as the Humvee causing Cleve severe injury to his leg.  Cleve is grateful he has been given a second chance as surgeons remove part of his leg.  Karie rushes to Walter Reed Hospital.  Barely out of their teens, Karie must be caregiver to Cleve.  When an infection begins to threaten his recovery, she reports this to his medical provider and surgeons remove his leg above his knee.  In order to recover, Cleve is given pain killers and become addicted to them.  Karie describes the highs and lows of her experience.  She recalls the celebrities that visit and some of the trips sponsored by the military such as an excursion to Las Vegas, but she is left with an emptiness that she has to reckon with.  Her depiction is heartbreaking at times as she feels the military has abandon him in many ways.  This is a story that went straight to my heart having served in the military myself.  It is no secret that military wives are not highly regarded by the military, and she talks about some of the walls she encountered as she struggled to get Cleve the care he needed to go on with his life.   Unable to overcome his addiction, Cleve falls and hits his head.  He never recovers and passes away.  Karie grieves for Cleve, but in her dark depression, she enrolls in college. 
6. Erasing History by Jason Stanley:  How is history being erased so that the story supports an authoritarian point of view?  Jason Stanley looks at this issue and points out how this is happened to change the shape of our understanding of the past.  In erasing history, the public perception is changed to suppress critical inquiry and banning books that may disagree with what is being taught in school.  I find this to be exactly what is happening with the Department of Defense (who I was a part of from 1979 until 1992) when the head of DOD has asked all past references of women and servicemen of color be erased from the military historical records.  This has been approved by the administration.  This was also carried out into school curriculums and colleges that were teaching Critical Race Theory (CRT).  Already we have seen the backlash as Prestigeous colleges such as Harvard have been excluded from funding and forbidding the enrollment students from outside the United States. Stanley calls for resistance to this by supporting educators who teach comprehensive and inclusive histories.  Having been a teacher who did teach history, I find it problematic since our students will not have an accurate understanding of history.  History is not for us to agree or disagree with, but it is there to help guide us to not to make the same mistakes as we have in the past.  I found this book eye-opening as we find that everything Jason Stanley warned us about is now happening.  
7. By Any Other Name Jodi Picoult:  I love Jodi Picoult's writing and this book started off somewhat slowly but then began to pick up steam as it went along.  Most of her books have substantial length.  This book can be cumbersome to those who don't like long books (400+ pages).  But if long books do not scare you, I will recommend this book to you.  The question is: did William Shakespeare write his plays for his troupe The King's Men?  When I was in college reading Richard III many of my fellow students contested that Christopher Marlow wrote the plays and since copyright was not an issue during his time.  In Picoult's book, entitled from a line from Romeo and Juliete she contends Emilia Bassano wrote some of the Bard of Avon's plays and fell in love with Christopher Marlow.  Melina Green is a contemporary playwright in New York City who is struggling to gain acceptance.  Picoult interweaves both women together to illustrate gender expectations and artistic ambitions.  What engaged me in this book was the thought that history does not accept certain event based on these two women's lives.  
8. Confederates In the Attic by Tony Horowitz: The American Civil War ended in April 1865 according to what history has told us, but if you read this book by the late Tony Horowitz, you know that this war still rages on.  There are no causalities anymore, but the feelings still run pretty high depending where you happen to be.  The truth is that in some corners, many people south of the Mason-Dixon line feel that the Union armies invaded the South and became an occupational presence during the Reconstruction.  Horowitz starts out investigating the reenactment groups that gather on the battlefields to reenact history.  How serious are these men that dress up in uniforms to reenact these horrific battles.  According to Horowitz, these men are as serious as their ancestors were when they fought in the battle over one hundred seventy years ago.  As a man well versed in history, Horowitz reviewed some of the battles as he traveled from one to another, places like Manassas, Shilo, Cucamonga, Vicksburg, Gettysburg, Chanclerville and finally Appomattox. At each battle site, there were guides and paraphernalia to remind visitors what had taken place there.  Horowitz a veteran correspondent from the Middle East was intrigued by the some of the things the people he met had to say about the war. It seemed everyone had an ancestor who fought on one side or the other and in some cases had ancestors who fought on both sides.  He reported about some of the photographs including surgeons' tents since his father was a retired surgeon. What about the Confederate Flag?  There were two sides to that with many feeling that the flag represented the Southern fighting spirit while many of the descendants of slaves felt the flag represented a racist past. Many reenactors emphasized that the war was not about slavery, rather about states' rights which is still a hot topic today.  We talk about the red and blue states and all that goes with this discussion.  Tony Horowitz was married to Geraldine Brooks the Pulitzer Prize winner from Australia. He passed away in Washington D.C. from a heart attack which is Geraldine wrote about in her memoir recently.  When he talked about his wife from Australia, he was quick to say she had an ancestor who fought in the war.  As Americans, like it or not, we are all connected to this historical event where we remain divided on our perspective.  History usually favors the victor, and this war was no different.  The North won the war and the South lost but was readmitted back into the union after the death of Abraham Lincoln.  Horowitz even told that the war continued after General Robert E. Lee surrendered at the Appomattox Court House.  This book made me think and reevaluate what I thought I knew about the Civil War.  Sometime history needs to be reexamined at times.  What we think we know may not be the entire story.  Thank you, Tony Horowitz for pointing that out to us in your book. 
9. The Message Ta Nehisi Coats: Perhaps this is the most controversial book on my list, because Ta Nehisi Coats speaks out on behalf of the Palestinians on the West Bank saying the Israelis are morally wrong in their occupation of the territory in Gaza.  As a journalist for the Atlantic, he has written about social, cultural and political issues along racial lines.  He has taken criticism from pro-Israeli side of the argument that points out he has not covered the complexity of the issue after a ten-day trip, but he has received some positive feedback from Washington Post writer Becca Rothfeld about his insight into this complex issue as she calls it lyrical and richly detailed. This was the one of the first book of essays that support the Palestinian side of this issue when Hamas took hostages two year ago.  With the presence of Hamas in Gaza, Netanyahu felt justified in bombing Gaza.  Many supporters of Isarael supported the attacks even when civilians were targeted.  Netanyahu told hsi supporters that Hamas uses civilians as human shields.  In Oprah Magazine, "In each location, Coates negotiates the double-edged sword of language: the mythmaking that builds these oppressive systems and the witness bearing that promises to undo them. At once a rallying cry and a love letter to writing itself, the book is an urgent reminder that 'politics is the art of the possible, but art creates the possible of politics.' He was interview and asked if he believed the state of Israel had a right to exist, because his book sounded extremist, but many defended Coates.  Now I will never claim to understand the complete political ramifications covered by this book and others that decry the attack by Hamas.  I will state that both sides have a right to state their case since this conflict had been costly in lives and resource by both sides.  With many universities in this country claiming that the Israelis are guilty of genocide and thus not willing to support the Israelis Just like everything else in human history, there are two sides to every coin.  
10. Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green:  While John Green has written some of the better Young Adult novels such as Fault in Our Stars, this book was non-fiction.  In his book he explores the history of tuberculous and talks about Henry from Sierra Leone who had tuberculosis when he visited the country.  His main point was that if we have the medicine to eradicate this killing disease, why don't we use it?  He discusses how poorer countries like Sierra Leone cannot afford the vaccine.  He finds this appalling that people are dying needlessly.  For a man who has written young adult books, it was really striking that he wrote this book in which he made his perspective on the subject known.  I was drawn to this book because when I was in Korea in 1985, I tested positive with tuberculosis with a record breaking positive that the medical staff photographed.  I ended up taking medication for an entire year to which I did not have any trace of the transmittable disease, but I know have to get a chest x-ray.  In a previous generation before a vaccine was developed, many people wound up in an iron lung to no avail.  As the book tells us, the disease attacks the lung tissue until there is no lung left.  People with TB cough up blood until they can no longer breath.  There were many snake oil cures that did absolutely nothing to help the person.