The Chaperone (Laura Moriarty)

This historical novel tracks the real-life story of Laura Brooks, Hollywood silent-film star and famous wild girl, from the perspective of a fictional character. When Laura was 15 she had the opportunity to study dance in NYC under the condition that she travel with a chaperone. History says very little about who this chaperone was, so the author imagined Cora, giving her a back story involving the New York orphan trains. Cora is a wonderful heroine, brave and tolerant and caring. I enjoyed being in her head as she confronted and overcame the prejudices of her time and culture to bring love and joy to the people around her. In places the plot seemed a little too pat, with some people's decisions motivated more by the author's decisions than the characters', but for me it all worked. The writing is clear and compelling, though the atmosphere and environments are not as well drawn as the people are. I recommend it for anyone who enjoys historical fiction or is interested in the changes in society from the 1920s to the 1960s.

An Officer and a Spy (Robert Harris)

A gripping fictionalized retelling of the famous Dreyfus Affair that tore France apart at the start of the 1900s. Dreyfus was a Jewish army officer falsely accused of spying for the Germans, stripped of his rank, and imprisoned under the harshest conditions. Everyone from the highest levels of the government to the people in the streets believed him guilty and hated him with indescribable passion, partly because of widespread fear of Germany and partly because of rampant antisemitism. Piquart, the narrator of this tale, was as convinced as anyone of Dreyfus's guilt to begin with, but after Dreyfus was convicted Piquart took over as head of the army's intelligence division and became aware of inconsistencies in the government's case. The more he dug into it, the more convinced he became that Dreyfus was actually innocent and the German spy was still at large. His story, historically accurate but turned into an epic, fascinating novel, is one of courage and righteousness triumphing at last over power and greed. Highly recommended.

The Secret History of Wonder Woman (Jill Lepore)

I've never been a big comic-book fan, and only remember Wonder Woman from her TV days with Lynda Carter playing the Amazon princess. This book details the history of how Wonder Woman was created by William Moulton Marston, a harvard-trained psychologist and inventor, by some accounts, of the lie detector test - and advocate of feminism and free love. This is a fascinating story because Marston is such an outre character. He was never really successful at any other career except Wonder Woman, and he very deliberately used her to project propaganda that women can and should have power over men to make the world a better place. His is a story of contradictions, though. While pressing the agenda of women's rights and independence, in his own life he ruled a small harem with a wife, a live-in mistress, and an occasional other mistress who often visited and lived with them for a time. The mistress wore a wide bracelet on each arm as "love bonds" to symbolize her subjugation to Marston; they are eerily similar to Wonder Woman's bracelets that allow her to deflect bullets. This history delves deeply into the lives of Marston and those around him, including his women, his business dealings, and his family. The author argues that Wonder Woman, by herself, bridged the gap in women's rights from the suffrage movement in the 1910-1920 time frame and the resurgence of "women's lib" in the 1960s, keeping the flame of feminism alive. I'm not so convinced. She was clearly a force for strong, independent woman in the 1940s, but after Marston died in 1947 her message was much diluted and she became a pretty face in tight clothes, focused on finding a husband rather than saving the world. One clear sign of this change: The Wonder Woman comic book for years in the 1940s had a four-page section on Wonder Woman in History, profiling strong, independent, world-changing women. In the 1950s, this section changed to one giving wedding tips. How far she had fallen.

The Signature of All Things (Elizabeth Gilbert)

This novel traces the long and complex life of Alma Whittaker throughout the 1800s. She was born to wealth, with parents who made their fame and fortune with plants, and developed from early childhood a strong mind with a love of science, languages, and most of all plants. In this leisurely, richly detailed book we see her childhood relationship with her parents and her adopted sister, her various unlucky loves, her travels to exotic lands, and her brilliance as a botanist. Alma is a complex person with layers and layers of strengths and weaknesses, and it is wonderful to watch her make her way in the world, sometimes battered, sometimes doing the battering herself. All the characters, settings, and events are vivid and three-dimensional. This book will disappoint those looking for action, but there is adventure in plenty of a quieter sort.

Native Tongues (Charles Berlitz)

Berlitz knows languages, and this book is a collection of interesting facts about languages. Here are a few examples: After discussing various Chinese ideograms, including the one for "horse" and the one for "door," we learn that the symbol for something surprising is a horse in a door. I love knowing that the Latin word for "seagull" means "noise with feathers."  Berlitz includes the worlds most efficient travel dictionary, based on the claim that knowing eight words in 25 languages will allow you to convey most essential ideas to the vast majority of the people in the world. Language tells a lot about a culture (in traditional Chinese, the word for "wife" is "the person inside") and about history (the Russian word for "train station" is just their version of the name of an English train station, Vauxhall, that early Russian railroad engineers admired). I recommend this to anyone who wants to know more about how we talk to each other, and why.

Killing Jesus (Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard)

I was glad to read this book because it painted a vivid picture of what life was like in the time of Jesus (sometimes too vivid, in the case of the excesses of some of the Roman leaders). If it had not called itself an accurate historical document I would have enjoyed it more, because it was so clearly elaborated beyond what history can tell us and bent to O'Reilly's own biases. I suppose I could forgive the statements about the weather on a particular day, or what Agrippa was thinking as he stood looking out a particular window, as unimportant attempts to bring the narrative to life. But when he describes how Mary gasped in shock at finding Jesus teaching at the temple at age 12, because he had never shown such an ability before, I am left wondering how he could possibly know this, and such unsupportable insight is rampant in the text. He also ignores a lot of biblical scholarship when he assumes, for instance, that the Gospels were actually written by the specific Apostles for which they were named, or that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute. All together I found it an interesting book if one is careful not to take it too seriously, but I can't really recommend it.

The Magic Mountain (Thomas Mann)

I confess: I skimmed this book. I'm just not cut out for speeches on philosophy and reality that go on for pages and pages without a break. It's a classic, though, so I stuck to the end, all 854 pages. In the years before WWI, a young German engineer, Hans, goes to a sanitarium high in the Swiss Alps to visit with his cousin who is being treated there for TB. His visit is meant to last three weeks, but shortly after his arrival he is himself diagnosed with TB and winds up staying for seven years. During his time there other patients arrive and leave, some via cure, some via death, some via simply being fed up with the routine of the place. And routine it is, with patients spending hours each day in mandatory rest cures, constantly taking and tracking their temperatures, and indulging in five hearty meals each day. There are numerous interesting incidents--romantic infatuations, seances, blizzards, duels--but none of it seems to add up to much, at least not for me. I suppose it has given me an insight into the life and times of pre-war Europe, but that doesn't seem enough to counterbalance those 854 pages.

The Dante Club (Matthew Pearl)

This is a creepy, atmospheric murder mystery set in Cambridge in 1865, as a body of famous poets led by Longfellow worked on the first American translation of Dante's Divine Commedy. A wave of particularly grotesque murders (described in vivid detail) begins, and it gradually becomes clear that the murders are someone's attempt to make the tortures of hell Dante described into reality. The novel is generally well-written, though it necessarily suffers from the overwrought language its characters use; while no doubt an accurate reflection of how men of letters talked at the time, it becomes tedious to read. The other issue I have with it is that there was not enough information for the reader to have discovered the killer before it is revealed. In general, though, the mystery held my interest.

Traveling with the Dead (Barbara Hambly)

This sequel to Those Who Hunt the Night, one of my favorite vampire novels, is not quite as good as the first, but still good. It is set in the early 1900s, and features the same main characters: James Asher, former spy turned Oxford professor; his wife Lydia, brave medical researcher in a man's world; and Don Simon Ysidro, ancient vampire they have to work with. Hambly is a wonder at creating the ambiance of Paris and Vienna and Constantinople in historical realism, and evokes soul-numbing horror that storms the gates of melodrama without a qualm. She also raises the moral questions many such stories overlook. Why is one vampire a "good" vampire and another not, when they both must feed on the death of humans to survive? The added ingredient that made the first novel better is that it had a splendidly unexpected but completely fitting solution to the central mystery, whereas this one did not click quite so well. Still, I enjoyed it and was eager to find out what happened next. There are others in this series, and I will certainly read them, too.

Blackout (Connie Willis)

This is half a story, set in the same universe as Willis's Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog (the second half is in the volume called All Clear, which I'll be reading soon). It is a time-travel novel, but it's really more about WWII, the time period visited by the historians from Oxford in 2060. These intrepid explorers get to their various assignments (observing children evacuated to the countryside, ordinary heroes of Dunkirk, and Londoners during the Blitz) and settle in, before things start to go wrong. The book is much too long - there is no need for devoting quite so much time to the paperwork snafus and scheduling headaches at Oxford, or the logistical problems with trying to take a train in wartime England. Willis makes the places and the people seem real, though, so I never quite lost patience with the Keystone Cops feel of things. I look forward to reading the rest of the story soon.

Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)

This is a big book with an amazing number of threads: math, computers, cryptography, World War II, treasure hunting, data security, hacking, and more. At first, the two halves of the story (WWII and present day) seem connected only by the last names of some of the characters and the general theme of cryptography, but by the end everything has come together. I enjoyed all the science geekery, presented in a way that is accessible but also accurate, and was completely caught up in the personal stories of loyalty, trust, and love. Highly recommended.

The Tiger (John Vaillant)

This carefully researched true story about the hunt for a man-eating tiger in far-eastern Russia is engrossing and moving. Woven in with the story of what made this tiger stand out and how it was hunted is the history of Russia and particularly its far East rim, the natural history of tigers, and the complex and changing relationship between humans and tigers in the ancient forests. What was most amazing, aside from the sheer nail-biting adventure of it, was that the author managed to portray all sides in the story with even-handed empathy. Highly recommended.

The Information (James Gleick)

A fascinating examination of what information is (knowledge, uncertainty, meaning, and bits) and how our understanding of and relationship to information has changed over time. It starts with the pre-literate communication of word and talking drums and works its way up, through writing, printing, telegraphy, radio, computers, and the Internet, to Google and Wikipedia. There is much to enjoy here. I loved learning about how talking drums actually talk, about the Analytical Engines of Babbage (never quite realized) and MIT (which took up a room and actually worked to solve differential equations). The controversies over whether information has a thermodynamic cost or whether Wikipedia should include a page on one screw in one particular bicycle were a delight to behold. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in this sort of history and philosophy of ideas.

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass an American Slave (Written by Himself)

A beautifully engaging and compelling story of the experience of slavery, written by one of the famous spokespersons of the abolitionist movement. He speaks eloquently of the physical hardships, and also the soul-crushing effects on both slaves and masters, and the yearning of people to be free. A good choice for Black History Month.

Guns, Germs, and Steel (Jared Diamond)

An ambitious and largely successful attempt to illuminate some of the complex historical forces that drove some human cultures, largely Eurasian, to develop so much faster than others since the end of the last ice age. The main factors he identifies are environmental; Eurasia had a larger suite of plants and animals suitable for domestication, an east-west axis that made it easier for crops and livestock to diffuse to nearby regions with similar climates, and few natural boundaries to this diffusion. As a result, farming and husbandry developed earlier and spread faster there, supporting denser human populations and therefore more innovation (and more deadly germs from the animals, to which they developed some resistance). The author supports his thesis with a great volume of data that is exhaustive, not to say exhausting.