Nonfiction Monday Review: Sugar Changed the World by Marc Aronson and Marina Budhos

Wow, this book has been getting a ton of praise recently - including making the shortlist for the LA Times Book Prize in the YA lit category. So I knew I had to check it out.

Marc Aronson and Maina Budhos both have family connections to the sugar trade - Aronson's family worked with beet sugar in Russia, while Budhos' family, originally from India, worked in Guyana. This personal connection is an early indication that the story of sugar is going to take us around the globe. Aronson and Budhos trace sugar from its probably origins in New Guinea, through the Middle East to Europe, and then spend the bulk of the book looking at how sugar drove the slave trade in South America and the Caribbean. As a USian, for whom the story of slavery was tied to cotton, it was eye opening to see how slavery influenced a different cash crop.

There are also interesting facts about sugar peppered throughout the book. Sugar is the only flavor humans like naturally - we acquire our tastes for salty, bitter, and other flavors. While the story Aronson and Budhos share pretty much ends with slavery in the US (going on just a bit longer to look at the indentured servitude of Indians, as well as the Asians of many countries who were brought in to Hawaii), there are tantalizing hints that the story of sugar isn't over - we've developed high fructose corn syrup as a replacement for cane sugar, and artificial sweeteners like Splenda. I think, rather than spending so much time going over the horrors of slavery again, I would have liked to see more about the modern quest for cheap sweeteners. While slavery is certainly an important part of the story of sugar, since Aronson and Budhos say in their afterword that this is a book intended for high school students I feel like rehashing a lot of the stories of slavery that aren't too different from accounts of life in the United States, with which US students will already be familiar, dragged down parts of the book.

Another small thing that I feel is missing from the book is any account of the Caribbean natives who would have been displaced by these sugar plantations. The way the book is now, it seems like the islands were discovered as empty, pristine places, perfect for growing sugar cane. I know initially native populations were used as slaves for the Europeans - by the time the Europeans got around to growing sugar, had the native populations already been exhausted by other slave work and disease? I certainly don't know - the only mention of natives doesn't even merit a listing in the index, as they are just briefly mentioned as members of the maroon population in Brazil - communities formed outside of the plantations by escaped slaves, natives, and even some white Europeans.

There were also two small passages that dragged down the quality of the book for me, because they are phrased...awkwardly, to put them in the most positive light possible.

First, on page 39:

You might be lucky enough to be trained as a specialist - the person who watched the cane grow and who kept an eye out for when the plants were ripe and ready to be cut. Special knowledge did not make a slave any less a slave - you were neither freed or paid. But perhaps some of the enslaved people had the personal pleasure of realizing that they had knowledge that the plantation owners needed.

I checked to see if there was a note in the back explaining where this notion of pleasure in slavery came from - if there was a slave narrative that had someone taking some form of pleasure in their work, this would be a much more credible statement. But since no such note exists, it seems rather tone deaf to talk about taking pleasure in having knowledge that's going to benefit the person that keeps you as property.

Then again, on page 70:

Africans were at the heart of the great change in the economy, indeed in the lives of people throughout the world. Africans were the true global citizens - adjusting to a new land, a new religion, even to other Africans they would never have et in their homelands. Their labor made the Age of Sugar - the Industrial Age - possible. We should not see the enslaved people simply as victims, but rather as actors - as the heralds of the interconnected world in which we all live today.

I think this one is worse for me than page 39 was. The slaves in the Caribbean had no choice in their situation - they were kidnapped from Africa, and their ability to act freely was removed. The enslaved Africans rarely got to enjoy the fruits of their labor - working in sugar cane was dangerous and claimed so many lives that once the Atlantic slave trade was abolished slaves weren't reproducing fast enough to maintain or increase the slave population numbers, so the sugar workers weren't usually the ones buying their freedom and then going on to be consumers of sugar (or any other goods harvested by the hands of slaves). Edit 3/14/11 at 11pm: Author Marc Aronson has posted a comment further explaining these passages.

This is a worthwhile book for those interested in another aspect of the dark history of slavery - I just had to point out those two instances because they left me feeling uncomfortable. In both instances I get the points that Aronson and Budhos are trying to make - I just think they end up falling a little short of their goal, as both of these passages almost seem to soften the tragedy that slavery is.





This week's Nonfiction Monday is hosted by Chapter Book of the Day. Be sure to stop by and check out the other great nonfiction titles highlighted this week!

Review: A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park

Thanks to the 21st century constantly-changing news cycle, this seems like old news now, but I picked up this book shortly after Southern Sudan's referendum vote for independence. Auspicious timing, since A Long Walk to Water is about one boy's experiences during the outbreak of the civil war 26 years ago - and how that boy has gone on to influence and improve others' lives.

A Long Walk to Water tells two parallel stories, one in 1985 and the other in 2008. In 1985, Salva, becomes one of Sudan's "lost boys" as fighting breaks out near his school one day and he is forced to run into the bush, not knowing whether any of his family has escaped the terrible fighting. He joins other ragtag groups of refugees, constantly seeking safety and shelter.

In 2008, the fighting doesn't affect Nya, but she has her own hardships. It is her job to fetch water for her family, making the hours-long trek twice daily to try to keep her family supplied with fresh water.

This is a very slim book with spare writing that nevertheless does an impeccable job of conveying the hardships and horrors of living in Sudan in 1985, at the outbreak of their civil war, as well as the difficulties in contemporary Sudan of obtaining a basic need like clean water.

I often say that I most love books where the ending feels like merely an ending to this part of the story, but the characters have lives that go on. I don't think I've found a more powerful example of that than A Long Walk to Water - where Nya's opportunities are about to grow in ways she can barely fathom, all thanks to the installation of a well in her village.

The only downside of the length of the book is that I wanted moremoremore. Sometimes less can be more, but this is such a unique story, especially with the parallel stories of Salva in 1985 and Nya in 2008, that I craved more information about their lives.

Nonfiction Monday Review: Five Thousand Years of Slavery by Marjorie Gann and Janet Willen

So in the rest of the world, it's an exciting day. Clearly it's Valentine's Day, and also the Cybil Award winners are announced today. And what am I posting about? A slavery book. My timing, it's not excellent. Sorry for being a downer!

This is a much more in-depth look at slavery than the books I'm used to. For one, it has a much wider focus - most accounts of slavery I see are focused on the African slave trade and how it relates to US  history - so a relatively short period of time and a geographically focused story. This one, as the title says, covers five thousand years of history, from the ancient Egyptians and the pyramids, to 21st century textile factories in Asia.

This is a heavy book, not just because of the subject matter, but because of the detail as well. This is 160 pages of dense text all about one of the worst aspects of humanity that has followed us across cultures. And even in those 160 pages, stuff gets left out; the examples of slavery are very Western-oriented (accounts of slavery in Asia aren't picked up until European colonization in the 18th and 19th centuries), and some types of abuse are glossed over (not only was rape a constant threat for female slaves, but sex trafficking, a common form of modern slavery even in the United States, is never mentioned). You'd probably need a set of encyclopedias to fully examine the horrific history of slavery, but these two omissions stood out for me. It doesn't detract from the value of what is there, but especially where oppressed groups are concerned we need to keep in mind which stories we aren't reading.

Because of the Western-bias, some of the book starts to feel a little repetitive. British slave traders didn't vary their tactics much, whether the slaves were being transported to the US or Southeast Asia. I can see this being more useful in spurts than as a book to just sit down and read.

I also have to critique one design element. I can't stand sidebars and other pull-outs from the narrative that span multiple pages - in order to get the full anecdote I need to stop reading the main text, flip forward a page to finish reading the sidebar, and then go back to the main text again. This book is filled with sidebars of specific examples of slaves' lives, and that's awesome - except when I have to flip the page to get the rest of the story. And then in the final chapter there's a sidebar that takes up the margins from page 153 until 156. It's an important story (of Iqbal Masih and Craig Kielburger), but the formatting of it was irritating. If your "sidebar" is going to take up four pages, maybe you need to figure out a different format for the story.

I know that seems like a lot of critiques, but I really did find the book worthwhile. I only critique it because it's so good at so much, that I can only wish it went further! Slavery is truly horrifying, and I think it's so important to hit home the point that just because the US had the Emancipation Proclamation doesn't mean the peculiar institution has ever left us, in the US or abroad. Five Thousand Years of Slavery does an excellent job of introducing this fact, but clearly the emphasis on slavery in the past (or away from the US), shielding readers from the uncomfortable knowledge of what often goes on here, right under our noses.



This week's Nonfiction Monday is hosted by Wrapped in Foil. Be sure to stop by and check out the other great nonfiction titles highlighted this week!

Review: The Dark Game by Paul B. Janeczko

Nominated for the 2011 YALSA award for excellence in nonfiction

I've never been much of a fan of spy/mystery stories. I don't have anything against them, it's just that in the huge number of stories that are published every year, other things pique my interest first. Janeczko says in his introduction that he guesses the reader of the book has an interest in spies that "may run as deeply as [his]." Well that's not the case for me, but I still found this to be an incredibly interesting book.

Janeczko covers spying in America and by Americans from the Revolutionary War through early 2001. He picks out a few individual spies or campaigns for the major wars (plus the cold war) the US has engaged in, as well as highlights some of the evolving technology that's important in spy work (such as cameras, naturally). Some of these stories are absolutely amazing - like the tunnel the US and British dug from West to East Berlin in order to tap into Soviet telegraph cables.

Janeczko definitely has a flair for drama, as often these are tales of agents or governments crossing and double-crossing each other. For example, in the case of the Berlin tunnel, just when you think the story has ended and all is well for the US...Janeczko reveals a major twist in the story, illustrating that even the best laid plans can go awry, and sometimes you won't even know it.

I also have to say I'm really impressed that Janeczko highlights female spies, without ghettoizing them into a "lady spy" section. He covers the glamorous Mata Hari as well as Virginia Hall - a woman with a wooden leg who aided the French Resistance in WWII. Women spies also played important roles in the Revolutionary War and the Civil War.

Janeczko clearly has a deep interest in the technical side of spying. Not only are advances in technology highlighted in each chapter, but he often goes into detail about various codes that spies use. I'll admit a lot of these codes went over my head, but me and numbers just don't get along (and many of these codes rely on number substitutions), so I'm willing to be that's more of a problem on my part. It's still interesting to see the variety of codes used and how they've changed - with a highlight for me being the Choctaw Code Talkers in WWI, who were able to foil the Germans who were evesdropping on US communications by using an utterly foreign language.

This isn't an exhaustive biography of any one spy - rather this is an overview of how spying has affected US policies by looking at a few of the most influential individuals (both those who spied for the US and those who spied against us). I don't know how well known some of the people and events would be to someone who has a hard core interest in spies - I, for example, knew about the women mentioned in the Civil War from my reading on women's roles during that war - but it's certainly an enlightening and entertaining read for someone totally new to the subject.

Nonfiction Monday Review: They Called Themselves the K.K.K. by Susan Campbell Bartoletti

I knew I had to read this book as soon as I saw the cover. It's striking and even a little bit scary with the hood in stark contrast to the black background and the empty eye holes. It's definitely reminiscent of a ghost, which is of course exactly what the Klan was going for when they created these costumes.

They Called Themselves the K.K.K. takes a hard look at Reconstruction-era America, examining the social and political unrest that gave birth to, as the subtitle says, an American terrorist group. Bartoletti traces the KKK's origins to a group of former Confederate soldiers who suggested "Boys, let us get up a club" in Tennessee. From humble beginnings rose a movement that spread like wildfire across the South, resulting in the murders of countless men, women and children in the years after the end of the Civil War.

Bartoletti covers the decade or so of Reconstruction in detail, then skips ahead to the early 20th century when the Klan rose to prominence again with the publication of the book The Clansmen and Griffith's epic silent film The Birth of a Nation - it's these fictional narratives that gave us the symbol of the burning cross, as the original Klan never used that particular threat. This is also when the Klan modified its objectives and became a hate group targeting far more than just Black Americans. I believe this is also when the iconic white robe was introduced, as illustrations show that the original Klansmen wore a variety of elaborate costumes. From there Bartoletti briefly covers other important 20th century Civil Rights events, and includes a Civil Rights timeline, from the Emancipation Proclamation to the election of Barack Obama.

Hidden at the very end, in the bibliography and source notes section, are some of Bartoletti's most interesting modern observations, from her visit to the birthplace of the Klan to attending a modern day "Klan congress." I really wish this section were highlighted, rather than hidden between the quote attributions and the index. It's almost like when a movie has an extra scene at the end of the credits; this book rewards those who read literally from cover to cover.

The excellent design work exhibited on the cover continues onto the pages. Roughly every other page includes some sort of illustration, mostly woodcuts and Reconstruction political cartoons, but the occasional photograph as well, mostly included with excerpts from the Slave Narratives collected in the early 20th century. A different font is also used to contemporary block quotes, so the words of the Klansmen and their victims stand out in start relief to the narrative. It makes for a beautiful and compelling text.

One other note about the text: Bartoletti uses lots of primary sources from 19th century Americans, and includes the language of the time in the book. That means crude and vulgar words show up often, as well as passages written phonetically as they were taken down by interviewers for the Slave Narratives. I think the inclusion of such language was absolutely necessary to illustrate just how publicly acceptable racist language was at one point in our history. It makes this book even more difficult to read in some ways, but also highlights its importance.



This week's Nonfiction Monday is hosted by Mother Reader. Be sure to stop by and check out all the other great nonfiction this week!

Review: Picture the Dead by Adele Griffin and Lisa Brown

Found via: Publisher's Weekly 5/17

The Civil War is the perfect era for a ghost story, especially considering the country's fascination with spiritualism - the belief that the spirits of the dead can communicate with the living, often when appearing in the then-new photographic pictures. Adele Griffin and Lisa Brown capture the fear and uncertainty of the period in both text and illustrations in Picture the Dead.

An orphan, Jennie Lovell has long lived with her twin and her two cousins at the home of her aunt and uncle.  After the three boys go off to fight in the war, Jennie is left to fend for herself against her aunt who has never much cared for her. Jennie's position in the family becomes even more precarious after the family is hit by tragedy - not only does Jennie's twin die of illness, but Will, her aunt's favorite son and Jennie's fiancé, dies in battle and Quinn comes home wounded. With no imminent marriage to cement her place in the household, Jennie knows she could be tossed out at any time, family ties be damned. Jennie tries to make herself useful, helping to nurse the bitter Quinn,  but takes on a role more akin to a maid than a family member.

Knowing her parents had ties to the spiritualist movement, Jennie's uncle asks Jennie to put them in contact with a photographer known to be a medium. While some of the family is skeptical of the results, Jennie is sure Will is now trying to contact her - how else to explain how she found a missing locket, or a letter Will left with a comrade before he died? Encouraged by the supernatural contact, Jennie is determined to discover the truth behind Will's death, no matter how Quinn tries to stand in her way.

Brown's illustrations really add to the story, giving us glimpses into the scrapbook that Jennie keeps throughout the story. My one complaint is that the writing in the illustrations, as Jennie keeps many letters and writes captions, is only readable if you're sitting on a couch in a well-lit room. I do most of my reading on the subway, so my books are constantly bouncing around, making reading the small, cramped letters almost impossible at times.

There's lots of interesting information on the period included in the book, and it was interesting to have a Civil War story that isn't actually about the war or its causes. Of course, the realities of war are inescapable, and without giving too much away I can say that we get a glimpse at life in Camp Sumter, aka Andersonville Prison. Readers curious about this part of the story should check out The Horrors of Andersonville Prison, which I reviewed for Nonfiction Monday last week.

Nonfiction Monday Review: The Horrors of Andersonville by Catherine Gourley

Found via: A Patchwork of Books

I love Nonfiction Mondays. I'm a big fiction reader, but a lot of that is just because it can be so dang hard to find a nonfiction book at the YA level. This is something that Nonfiction Mondays have actually highlighted for me - there are lots of great books being posted, but the majority of them are for younger readers. So I was very excited to see on the July 5th edition Amanda's post about The Horrors of Andersonville, highlighting not just a book appropriate for middle school and older readers, but also a civil war history, looking at the infamous Andersonville prison.

My own Civil War knowledge is rather lacking, though I've been reading everything I can since I read They Fought Like Demons and I'll Pass for your Comrade last October. The Horrors of Andersonville does an excellent job of informing relative newbies like me, while also providing an in-depth look at prison life, and the aftermath for many key players, including the commander of the interior of the prison, Henry Wirz, the only person tried and convicted of war crimes during the Civil War.

In a prison with over 30,000 prisoners, the story of the Andersonville prison could easily be a sprawling mess, but Gourley keeps the narrative steady by picking a few prisoners to follow as well as Wirz. To aide in clarity, Gourley gives us a cast of characters twice - a brief list at the beginning, and a short biography at the end covering both their actions during the war and what is known of their post-war lives.

The book is divided into two parts, first covering life in the filthy, squalid prison, and the second half focusing on the court martial Wirz faced, which was perhaps the most fascinating part. It's clear from Gourley's presentation that Wirz never had a chance at a fair trial, that the court was out for vengeance even though in all likelihood Wirz had very little control over conditions at Andersonville. She doesn't paint Wirz as a good guy - he clearly had anger issues and absolutely no love for the North - but he wasn't quite the monster the press and prosecution painted him as, and there were certainly others far more deserving of a trial (such as the president of the Confederacy, whose case was dismissed by the Supreme Court).

The descriptions of life in Andersonville were enough to make me gasp and gag. Why anyone thought Anderson Station would be a good place to house prisoners is beyond me, considering the very ground was infested with fleas before a single prisoner showed up. Eugh. Then there's the descriptions of scurvy many men suffered from, and the lack of treatment for wounds which often led to gangrene. Yuk, yuck, yuck.

Gourley presents lots of quotations from period sources, including letters and newspapers, and keeps the book accessible to all by defining unfamiliar words in brackets as they occur. No flipping back and forth to a glossary every time an unfamiliar word shows up. I also appreciated that sidebars and full pages that would describe situations outside of Andersonville appeared at natural stopping places in the text. It annoys the heck out of me when such an interruption in the main narrative occurs when a sentence is split between two pages, forcing me to turn the page, finish the sentence, and then turn back for the supplementary material. Here, such insets occur after a sentence has ended. Finish the sentence, turn the page to read about what was going on in prisoner of war camps in the North, then smoothly keep reading about Andersonville.

I also love Gourley's use of 21st century technology in the bibliography. When period books and letters are available online, through Google Books or other sources, she makes note of the link. This means I can download a PDF of John Ransom's Andersonville Diary or look at scans of the Harper's Weekly newspaper immediately after finishing the book, and know that I'm using the same sources the author did. I love living in the future!

This is absolutely a must for Civil War buffs, and anyone who is interested in asking questions about history and whether the dominant narrative is anything close to presenting "the truth."



This week's Nonfiction Monday is hosted by In Need of Chocolate (which happens to sum up my attitude this morning). Make sure to check out the roundup of other nonfiction titles highlighted today!

Review: Grease Town by Ann Towell

Found via: April at Good Books and Good Wine



So the cover here for Grease Town is in some ways the opposite of all the white-washed covers we bloggers have been decrying. As April pointed out in the review that brought this book to my attention, it looks like it's going to have a black protagonist, but in fact the narrator here is a young white Canadian boy who befriends a young black boy.

Tired of living with his prim and proper aunt, when Titus hears his big brother, Lem, is on his way to work in Canada's prosperous new oil fields, Titus is anxious to join him. Of course, since he's just a kid there's no way he'll be allowed to go - so he stows away in Lem's wagon, hoping he'll at least get far enough away that it'd be impractical to send him home once he's discovered.

In the hardscrabble town of Oil Springs, it takes hard work and more than a little bit of luck to stay afloat. As the grown men are focused on striking it rich with oil, Titus meets and befriends Moses, a black boy around his age. On the outskirts of Oil Springs is a small community of rundown shacks and lean-tos that house the black workers, many of whom are escaped slaves from the United States. As the US is fighting its Civil War that will decide the fate of slavery, race relations are tense in Oil Springs as well as local ne'er-do-well John Longman starts stirring up trouble by accusing the black workers of driving down wages and taking jobs that should be going to whites. As tension and anger rise in the community, Titus finds himself torn between defending his friends, and taking the path of least resistance by staying out of the way.

As a US citizen, my history classes tended to ignore the rest of the world when something major was happening in the US, so I honestly have very little idea what was going on in the rest of the world while we were fighting the Civil War (except that there was an English governess in Siam). It was interesting to see the racial tensions that were playing out in Canada on the frontier, and how a few troublemakers can easily make these tensions explode into something much more dangerous.

On the other hand, this was such a short book that sometimes the race relations parts felt shoehorned in. Moses only shows up a few times, and really we're told more than shown how close he and Titus are, so when Moses and his family are in danger I didn't react as emotionally as I felt I would have if we'd actually seen more of the boys' friendship. Instead, Moses disappears for large chunks of the text while Titus deals with Lem and Uncle Angus and their budding romances with the house's kitchen girl and the town's school teacher respectively. This makes it feel much more like a period family drama at times until the final act when the racial tension finally explodes.

Note: I'm including this in the African American tag, even though it's set in Canada, because Moses' family are immigrants from the US.