~Say Nothing Patrick Radden Keefe A brilliantly written, hard to put down account of the Troubles in Northern Ireland between the 1960’s and 1998 Good Friday Agreement. At its centre is the story of Jean McConville, a 38 year old, recently widowed mother of ten who is kidnapped in front of her children and never seen again. With a back and forth timeline Keefe unravels the details of the kidnapping, setting it against the harrowing history of the IRA, Sinn Fein and the antagonism of Protestant Unions vs Catholic Republicans, while also giving the backstory of a myriad villains involved in years of violence, inhumanity and heartbreaking loss. It’s a tangled web of bitter conflict, martyrdom and moral dilemmas which, years later, many IRA members must reckon with, as middle aged adults, the decisions they made as teenagers. Equally as brilliant and engrossing a read is Keefe’s book Empire of Pain, an epic tale of government failure and corporate greed within the opiate industry.
~Killers Of The Flower Moon David Grann In the 1800’s the Osage Indians were run off their reservations several times by the US government, in the end being forced to hand over nearly a hundred million acres of their ancestral land. In the 1870’s they found land in Kansas that was so hilly and rocky it was deemed of no interest to the white man and the Osage purchased it. Then — in a seriously amazing twist of fate — it turned out that this barren landscape was sitting on millions of dollars worth of oil and the Osage became filthy rich. But because of the ever pervasive and insidious belief that the white man is superior and all other races “less than,” the US government stepped in and imposed a system of financial guardians for the Osage, severely limiting their access to funds. And because so many white men had control over the Osage’s fortune, the money was ripe for the taking. And take it they did. And then the Indians began mysteriously dying. Coincidence?! This is an outrageous blood boiler of a story, shocking in its depth of corruption and greed, (well, not really that shocking actually) that pulls you in and doesn’t let go. It’s also a fascinating look at the beginnings of the new FBI under J. Edgar Hoover, as they use the Osage murders as a showcase for their new organization. A brilliantly written book that deserves to be read by everyone.
~The Spy And The Traitor Ben MacIntyre Another mind blowing true story of espionage from Ben MacIntyre. This time the spy at its center is Oleg Gordiovsky, a high level KGB officer who falls in love with Western ideology and feels his own country has betrayed its people. He, in turn, is betrayed by Aldrich Ames, an American CIA agent who spied for the Russians. Not for principles, for money. A riveting story which plonks you deep into the world of espionage and the treachery of double dealings, providing a behind-the-scenes look at spy craft and culminating in a nail biting escape planned by MI6 to remove Gordievsky from Russia. What is perhaps the most shocking throughout it all, is how coincidences, human error and twists of fate have a considerable impact on the outcome of events. This is the mind-blowing kind of stuff that fiction just can’t compete with. This is my favourite of Ben McIntyre’s so far although Agent Sonya is a very close second.
~Bad Blood John Carreyrou Well, we all know how this story ends. Elizabeth Holmes started Theranos with a vision of creating a small machine that could analyze blood with just a single drop from a simple finger prick. The ultimate goal was to be able to detect cancer and a variety of other illnesses with a simple test, thereby revolutionizing the world of blood analysis. Unfortunately her vision never made it beyond a prototype — which didn’t work. Despite this she spent a decade raising millions, fooling hundreds and, shockingly, gathering a Board of luminaries and heavy-hitters. At times this feels less like a company expose and more a narcissistic character study worthy of a textbook. In the end it turned out that Holmes’ biggest talent was nothing more than an ability to be shameless, enabling her, in an avalanche of lies and bullying, to cover up one mistake after another. An epic tale of staggering proportions this is one of those brilliantly written non-fiction accounts which proves once again that the drama in truth frequently outweighs that in fiction.
~The Splendid And The Vile Erik Larson I love me a good WWII book and this one is top notch. It’s narrow focus is a year long period from May 1940 to May 1941, a time period which saw Winston Churchill gaining office and the Blitz putting the British people, primarily London, through a terrifying unrelenting bombing. Using Geobbels’ diaries, Larson draws a picture of how Hitler expected Britain to be as quick to fall as France, but instead came face to face with Churchill’s oratory genius which inspired a nation. While there are in-depth accounts of military action the book is balanced with an intimate look at not just Churchill in all his flamboyant eccentricities, (he had, apparently, a penchant for pink silk underwear and rompers of his own design) but his wife and children and a handful of aides and colleagues. It’s a compelling and accessible story which has you turning the pages almost as if you didn’t know how it ends.
~Catch and Kill Ronan Farrow Ok, you’ve heard the basics of this book ad nauseam in the headlines, so I’ll spare you a rehash of the seedy details. Suffice it to say that Farrow’s riveting narrative offers a crisp, in-depth account of the full scope of the Harvey Weinstein scandal. It’s astonishing, frequently horrifying, and parts of it play out like scenes from a bad movie. And while the subject matter is far from pleasant, Farrow manages to find plenty of ways to add comic relief with his deft, wry humor.
~Hidden Valley Road Robert Kolker The harrowing story of Don and Mimi Galvin who are raising twelve children in 1960’s and beyond Colorado. As a family they seem to represent the quintessential American dream with all of its hope, optimism and industriousness. But behind the scenes it all plays out quite differently when six of the children, all boys, develop schizophrenia. While the family’s story takes centre stage, with each family member being fully brought to life, it is also a history of schizophrenia in all its ugliness (electric shock treatment, blaming the mother!!) and the key geneticists and doctors who struggle to understand the disease and who hope that maybe the Galvin’s story can help them put some pieces of the puzzle into place. It’s a pretty bleak read to be sure, but it’s also a fascinating and important one.
~The Radium Girls Kate Moore In the 1920’s, female factory workers were hired to paint glow-in-the-dark numbers on watches using radium. Multiple times a day they would put the paint brushes in their mouth to achieve a fine point for this delicate task. It was a reasonably high paying job enabling the girls to buy nice clothes, which in turn offered up a certain glamour and high regard from the public. Added to this was the sheer novelty of the radium sticking to their hair and clothes so that they themselves would glow-in-the-dark. They became known as the Radium Girls. But after a few years they began to get horribly sick with teeth falling out and jaw bones collapsing. And then they started dying. What no one knew in the very beginning was that radium acts like calcium inside the body, depositing itself into the girl’s bones causing necrosis and bone cancer. As the truth started to reveal itself, a massive corporate cover up began and lawyers were hired to lie, obfuscate and bully. An appalling story filled with shattered lives and broken dreams and which essentially proves that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
