THE WARMTH OF OTHER SUNS by Isabel Wilkerson - a book well-intentioned white people should read

I just finished reading a powerful book: Isabel Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns. Wilkerson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, profiles three African Americans born in the South in the second decade of the 20th century. All three moved away: one to New York, one to Chicago, one to Los Angeles. The men died in the 1990s. The woman died in 2004. Unless you are very young, they all lived during your own lifetime. Unless you are a person of color, their experiences may startle you.

I am 70 years old. I was in third grade when Rosa Parks kept her seat in the bus, had just finished high school when LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act, was a college student when race riots broke out all across America, and had just gotten married when Martin Luther King was assassinated. I was appalled by racism without realizing I had spent my life in an extremely white bubble whose privileges were built on a racist past.

As a well-educated white woman, I wanted black people to be able to ride in the front of the bus and eat at lunch counters, of course; but I was completely unaware of the daily hardships, insults, and real dangers that provoked the civil rights movement, in both North and South. And I certainly didn't know the extent to which racism continues to exist.

Nearly five years ago I moved from a county that is 5% African American to a county that is 29% African American. I live walking distance from a city that is 63% African American. From new friends, I have learned something that should have been obvious all along: that as a white woman, I can't begin to imagine what it's like to be a woman of color. Things that happen to my black friends do not happen to me. It's been easy for me to assume they don't happen at all, or at least happen extremely rarely. I had no idea.

I've tried to educate myself by listening, watching, and reading. The more I learn, the more I realize I need to learn. Humility is painful: I will never know what it's like to be black in America. I do know, however, that I learned a lot from The Warmth of Other Suns. It's not a history book, though from it I learned parts of history that were somehow not covered in my undergrad history major. It's not a sociology book, though I couldn't miss seeing how the protagonists' social context affected their lives. It's not a political argument, though politicians show up in its pages from time to time. The book is a carefully researched story of three lives, told mostly in their own words. And it's not fiction.

2014: My Year in Books

[A wall in my office]

I started keeping a reading list in 1997 when I began commuting by train to work. I've been keeping a list ever since.

Because I rarely remember what I've been reading once I've gone on to the next book, the list comes in handy whenever someone asks, "So, have you read any good books lately?"

Yes, of course. Here is a short list of my favorites from this year, in order from the ridiculous to the sublime:

What I read

Jeanne Ray, Calling Invisible Women, is a delightful comic novel in which a middle-aged woman becomes literally invisible, and her family doesn't notice. The author, a retired nurse, is author Ann Patchett's mother. She was in her 60s when she wrote her first novel, Julie and Romeo. I love Patchett's novels, but Ray's are more fun.

Gabrielle Zevin, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry (newly published in paperback) is a comic novel likely to appeal to my friends in the book business and other bibliophiles. It features a curmudgeonly bookstore owner, a publisher's sales rep, a book tour that goes hilariously wrong, and a precocious child who loves to read.

Laura Lippman has written a slew of detective stories based in Baltimore, my new home. I began reading her in Illinois in preparation for my move and kept on reading her once I got here. Lippman's detective, like Lippman herself, formerly wrote for the Baltimore Sun; her books might appeal to readers of Sue Grafton's alphabet series.

When a new Baltimore friend told me Lippman is married to David Simon, creator of The Wire, I ordered a copy of his nonfiction book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets. First published in 1991, Homicide reads like fast-paced detective fiction. This means I do a double-take whenever I hear the name of Jay Landsman, my local police captain, the real-life son and namesake of one of the book's main characters who was transmuted into a fictional character in The Wire.

If you are planning to visit me, however, and want to bone up on Baltimore, it might be more reassuring to skip Lippman and Simon and go directly to Anne Tyler. Before moving here, I reread my old favorite Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant. Once installed in Baltimore, I got a review copy of Tyler's forthcoming novel, A Spool of Blue Thread, which takes place in a Baltimore neighborhood only 10 minutes from my house. I love Tyler for her unsentimental yet kindly way of describing family life. And even though all her books are set in Baltimore, her characters do not generally get murdered.

Ellen Harmon White: American Prophet, edited by Terrie Dopp Aamodt, Gary Land, and Ronald L. Numbers, is a fascinating collection of articles about probably the most important female 19th-century religious leader and reformer you've barely heard of--unless, like me, you were raised Seventh-day Adventist. Here's my review in the September/October issue of Books and Culture.

Finally, here's the book I've recommended to more people this year than any other: Atul Gawande's Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End. Gawande, a surgeon, has written an impassioned plea for how end-of-life medicine and end-of-life care in general should be practiced. Gawande is also a regular contributor to New Yorker magazine, which tells you something about the quality of his writing.

Why I read

Like everyone else I read Marilynne Robinson's Lila, just as in earlier years I read Housekeeping and Gilead and Home. Robinson is brilliant at character portrayal, and she knows how to turn a phrase. She's also gifted at stuffing her books with Christian theology and still gathering accolades from the New York Times (by Diane Johnson, author of Le Divorce, no less). I recommend her to all my friends whose brows are higher than mine.

But I guess this year I was just more interested in invisible middle-aged women and the floundering publishing industry and my present life in Baltimore and my past life as a Seventh-day Adventist and my future life as it winds down. Which leads me to think about the books I've loved at any given time.

2014 was stressful: I sold a house I'd lived in for 26 years, moved into an apartment, bought a house, moved into it, and lived through renovations. In the midst of all that change, I preferred books that closely connected to some aspect of my life--past, present, or future.

In more humdrum years, I've chosen books that took me out of my environment and introduced me to new times, places, and ideas. Three years ago when recovering from open-heart surgery, I read dozens of completely mindless but diverting mysteries.

I thought I just liked to read, but apparently I also use books as therapy. (I'm sure there's a reason that no matter what kind of year I've had, I adore Harry Potter.) What books did you read this year? Do your selections say anything about the kind of year you had?

MY BELOVED WORLD by Sonia Sotomayor

I was barely awake, and my mother was already screaming. I knew Papi would start yelling in a second. That much was routine, but the substance of their argument was new ...

Sonia was seven years old, and this time her parents were fighting over who was going to give her her newly prescribed daily insulin shot. For a moment she panicked: if giving her the shot was so hard for her parents, surely her grandmother would not be up to the task either--and she'd have to give up her weekly sleepovers at her grandmother's house, her "only escape from the gloom at home." The solution was simple: Sonia would learn to inject herself.

My Beloved World covers some 30 years of Justice Sotomayor's life, from her diabetes diagnosis at age 7 to her appointment as a district court judge at age 37. It is not an account of her more than 20 years on the bench, but rather the backstory of what she had to overcome in order to get there: an alcoholic father who died when she was only 9, a hard-working mother who was rarely at home, a Bronx neighborhood full of junkies and gangs, her inability to speak English fluently until she had been in an English-speaking school for several years, and a serious disease that she expected would kill her before she reached middle age.

How did a penniless Puerto Rican girl from the projects get accepted by Princeton (from which she graduated summa cum laude) and Yale (where she became an editor of the Yale Law Journal), land a couple of good jobs (in which she advanced rapidly), and eventually get appointed to a U.S. District Court, a U.S. Court of Appeals, and the U.S. Supreme Court? Much of her success is due to her own  hard work, competitiveness, and will to succeed. Much is also due to her supportive family and friends. And a significant factor in her career success is the era in which she was born.

A few months before Sonia's 7th birthday, John F. Kennedy signed the executive order that created affirmative action. When she was 11 years old, Lyndon B. Johnson reaffirmed and strengthened the policy. When she was 13, affirmative action was expanded to include women. When she was 17, she was accepted to Princeton.

I had no need to apologize that the look-wider, search-more affirmative action that Princeton and Yale practiced had opened doors for me. That was its purpose: to create the conditions whereby students from disadvantaged backgrounds could be brought to the starting line of a race many were unaware was even being run. I had been admitted to the Ivy League through a special door, and I had more ground than most to make up before I was competing with my classmates on an equal footing. But I worked relentlessly to reach that point, and distinctions such as the Pyne Prize, Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude, and a spot on The Yale Law Journal were not given out like so many pats on the back to encourage mediocre students. These were achievements as real as those of anyone around me.

My Beloved World is not a political book. It gives little insight into Sotomayor's legal or judicial philosophy. But with its emphasis not only on success but also on the importance of hard work, of the support of family and friends, and of wide-open doors of opportunity for all, it may give an idea of what kind of justice Sotomajor is likely to be. Fortunately, the treatment for type 1 diabetes has come a long way since Sonia was 7 years old. She's 58 now, still giving herself injections, and likely to wear that black robe for many years to come.

THE JEWELS OF PARADISE by Donna Leon

After writing 21 detective novels featuring Commissario Guido Brunetti, it's not surprising that author Donna Leon needed a break.

Still, having read all 21 of the Brunetti books, I was expecting Jewels of Paradise to be book 22 in the series. It is not, and I was disappointed.

Disappointed because by now the characters - the lovable detective from Venice; his wife, Paola, and their two young adult children; his sidekick, Sgt. Vianello; his insufferable boss, Vice-Questore Patti; and the indomitable Signorina Elettra - all seem as familiar as Facebook friends, and I wanted to stay involved in their lives.

But my nostalgia is no reason to keep Ms. Leon from expanding her horizons. I was more disappointed because Leon's new book simply didn't hold my interest.

A lot of the book has to do with biographical material concerning Agostino Steffani (1654-1728), churchman, diplomat, and nearly forgotten composer. (Hint: Leon's plot will be easier to follow if you read the Wikipedia article first. Want to hear some of his music? Cecilia Bartoli has a new album, Mission, devoted to his work [you can listen to the NPR program about it here].)

But don't come to this book thinking it's historical fiction. It's closer to historical research as done by a high-school student - and there's no afterword telling us which parts of the story are historical and which invented.

The main character, Caterina, does not seem to have much of a life outside the library. We learn even less about the other characters (though her sister, Cristina the Religious, might be worth a book of her own someday, or at least a bit part in a Brunetti novel).

The plot is thin. Somehow two 300-year-old trunks have been found, and two cousins each claim inheritance rights. Caterina, a musicologist, is charged with reading all the documents in the trunks and figuring out which, if either, has claim to the material.

There aren't many scary parts. At one point, you think scariness is developing, but (spoiler alert) it doesn't.

There isn't even much good food - but I suppose without Guido's ever-cooking scholar-wife, Paola, in the kitchen, there wouldn't be.

And when all is said and done, I know what was in those trunks, but I'm still wondering who the trunks belonged to, and how they came to Venice, and what Opus Dei had to do with the whole situation. Maybe my mind was wandering when all that was explained ...

Why I kept reading: (1) I'm loyal to Donna Leon. Up till now, she's been one of my favorite detective story authors. (2) I appreciate her wry observations about Italian culture and the Catholic Church. (3) I kept thinking the plot would heat up.

If you are a diehard Donna Leon fan like me, you should read it too - and please let me know what you think. I confess that I began skimming the historical parts; maybe I missed something important. If you have not yet become a Leon addict, however, don't start here.

CALL THE MIDWIFE by Jennifer Worth

"Call the Midwife," a BBC miniseries about intrepid nuns and nurses in London's East End in the 1950s, was the UK's most popular TV show in 2012, with even more viewers than last year's wildly popular "Downton Abbey."

I had not heard of the TV show three weeks ago when, browsing in a Chicago bookstore, I noticed Jennifer Worth's memoir by the same name. Always on the lookout for cheerful stories, I jotted down its title so I'd remember to look for it at my public library.

The book did not disappoint.

In 1965, my parents and I spent a summer in Bracknell, a middle-class suburb about 35 miles west of central London. Some 10 years earlier, Jennifer Worth had been working as a midwife in the London Docklands, about 6 miles east of central London. Only 10 years and 40 miles separated my comfortable (even though it lacked central heating and had altogether too much cabbage) world from the world Jennifer served:

I often wondered how these women managed, with a family of up to thirteen or fourteen children in a small house, containing only two or three bedrooms. Some families of that size lived in the tenements, which often consisted of only two rooms and a tiny kitchen.... Washing machines were virtually unknown and tumble driers had not been invented.... Most houses had running cold water and a flushing lavatory in the yard outside.

It was an area of bombed-out ruins from World War II air raids. "Knifings were common. Street fights were common. Pub fights and brawls were an everyday event. In the small, overcrowded houses, domestic violence was expected." Certain streets were well known as centers of prostitution.

So why am I calling this book cheerful?

Because Jennifer tells so many stories about people who work hard, who love one another, who survive against incredible odds, who welcome new life, who do their best.

Because even her heart-breaking stories--the teen-aged Irish prostitute, the weird old crone who hangs around when babies are due--reveal sensitive humanity under the off-putting exteriors.

Because her nuns, from bawdy Sister Evangelina to spacey Sister Monica Joan, are a hoot.

Because she's so good at describing all her characters, most notably Camilla Fortescue-Cholmeley-Brown ("just call me Chummy"), drolly played by Miranda Hart in the TV series.

Because she included a 13-page appendix "On the difficulties of writing the Cockney dialect."

Because Jennifer's storytelling shows her living by the philosophy she says she learned from a dying nun: Accept life, the world, Spirit, God, call it what you will, and all else will follow.
_______________________________

 "Call the Midwife" is being shown on PBS stations Sunday evenings from September 30 to November 4, 2012. If you've missed some episodes, you can get them online until December 3. Here's a link to Episode 1.

A GOOD MAN by Mark K. Shriver

In June my husband, who gets lots of review copies unbidden, asked me if I wanted to read Mark Shriver's memoir about his father, Sargent Shriver, who passed away in 2011 at age 95. "Since you're a fan of all things Kennedy," he said, "I thought you might want to see it." I didn't.

True, a high point in my adolescent life was standing in back of St. Matthew's Cathedral one December morning in 1963 waiting for mass to begin when suddenly a very tall, very disheveled, very pregnant Eunice Kennedy Shriver pushed past me, wearing smudged red lipstick and a full-length fur coat. But sons are not necessarily good biographers, and anyway, I had a stack of mysteries awaiting my attention.

But then in July a Facebook friend pointed me to Reeve Lindbergh's review of A Good Man in the Washington Post, suggesting that this was a book I might want to read. Lindbergh--herself the daughter of two famous parents, Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh--called it "a moving and thoughtful book." Maybe I'll read this after all, I said to myself. And then a week or two later, my friend Estelle sent me a copy of the book as an early birthday present, telling me she thought I'd connect with it on many levels. I must be supposed to read this one, I thought.

Estelle was right. This is a delightful book for lovers of Camelot--those of us who lived through the suddenly shattered dream of the Kennedy administration. Mark Shriver never saw his uncle Jack--as it happens, Mark was the baby bump under Mrs. Shriver's fur coat at that mass nearly 50 years ago, exactly one month after President Kennedy's assassination--and he was only four when his uncle Bobby was shot. But he grew up with a father who founded the Peace Corps and ran for vice-president, a mother who founded the Special Olympics, four rambunctious siblings, and twenty-some cousins, most of whom were unusually energetic and competitive. Mark's childhood home often hosted the rich and the famous, and he recognizes the privilege of growing up well connected. At the same time, he is refreshingly candid about the self-doubts such an environment fostered.

The book, though, isn't about Mark. It's about Sarge, the good man of the title, the father he adored. And Mark's portrayal of Sarge's goodness is what I liked best about the book (and what Estelle knew I'd most appreciate). See, my father was a good man too. Shriver was an extroverted, energetic, Catholic politician while my dad was an introverted, often tired, Protestant professor; but at core the two men were surprisingly similar. Both were quietly but unalterably faithful Christians. Both adored their wives and children. Both, though they worked hard and accomplished much, put their families ahead of their jobs. Neither one tooted his own horn, and neither one was bothered when others moved past him into the limelight or up the career ladder. Both men were brilliant, and, sadly, both spent their final years moving into the oblivion of Alzheimer's Disease.

Mark tells a story about his father that made me gasp in recognition. The two men were in the car together. Sarge "was having one of those lucid moments that make you ... forget for a minute or two that this is all really happening." Mark seized the moment to ask his father a blunt question.

"Dad," I said, "you are losing your mind. You know that. How does that make you feel? How are you doing with that?"

"I'm doing the best I can with what God has given me," he said.

Sixteen years ago I wrote an article for U.S. Catholic magazine about my father's decline and death from Alzheimer's. Here are some lines from that article:

"Are you afraid of dying?" I asked my father several months before he died.

"Dying?" he said, considering. "No, not of dying. I live an abbreviated life."

I asked him what he meant. "A little taken away here. A little taken away there," he explained patiently, as if to a student needing help. "I do the best I can with what's left."

Sargent Shriver was born in 1915; my father, in 1910. Their age cohort is sometimes called the Greatest Generation. Both men were great. Both were exceptionally good. And I believe both had found the secret of happiness.
______________________________________
A Good Man is also available as a CD audiobook (unabridged) and as an audible.com download (abridged). To listen to a five-minute excerpt read by Mark Shriver, click here.

RIVAL TO THE QUEEN by Carolly Erickson

Years ago while visiting friends in Warwick, UK, I went out for an early morning stroll. Not far from their house I saw an interesting-looking old church, and, being a tourist, I wandered in. In a side chapel I spotted two tombs topped by splendid full-color effigies. These turned out to be the likenesses of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and his wife Lettice Knollys.

I was enthralled. A lover of all things Tudor, I knew that Leicester was for many years the boyfriend of Queen Elizabeth I. I knew he had been accused (and acquitted) of murdering his first wife in hopes that, once she was out of the way, the queen would marry him and make him king. I knew that when he finally gave up all hope of marrying power, he thumbed his nose at Elizabeth by marrying her beautiful cousin. I had no idea, however, that Robert and Lettice were entombed just down the street from my friends' house.

Nor did I expect to find snarky 17th-century doggerel on a wall plaque across from their tombs, extolling Lettice as once "fairest in the land," and going on to describe her as

She that in her youth hath bene

Darling to the Maiden Quene,

Till she was content to quitt

Her favour for her favouritt.

The 38-line poem, signed "Gervas Clifton," is headed by this inscription: "Upon the death of the excellent and pious Lady Lettice, Countess of Leicester, who died upon Christmas-day in the morning, 1634."

Brief explanation: Lettice, Elizabeth's first cousin once removed, attended the queen. At court she met the queen's "favouritt," Robert Dudley. Eventually Lettice's husband and Robert's wife both died, and Lettice and Robert married secretly. The queen found out, of course, and all hell broke loose. From then on Elizabeth wanted nothing to do with Lettie, though she continued to welcome Robert at court.

You'll learn all that and more - much more - in Carolly Erickson's newish historical romance (2010 hardcover, 2011 paperback and Kindle) about Lettice Knollys. Some of what you will learn is factual. Some is invented, but possible (Lettie's adventure in Frankfurt, for example). Some is distorted through Lettice's lens (e.g., the extremely unfavorable portrait of Elizabeth) - and justifiably, since the story is told entirely from her first-person viewpoint. Some is just plain wrong (e.g., the account of Devereux's downfall), as you'll know if you've read Erickson's own history of the era, The First Elizabeth (1983).

I appreciate Rival to the Queen for bringing to life a nearly forgotten but important woman whose very long life spanned the reigns of Henry VIII (who may have been her grandfather), Edward VI, Mary, Elizabeth I, and James I. I appreciate it for putting faces on entrancing rapscallions like the Earl of Leicester and his stepson Devereux, and for making Tudor political intrigues slightly easier to follow. I was uncomfortable, however, with Lettice's mindless and perpetual attraction to ill-behaved men, and the way all female characters including the queen seemed to think of little besides their own beauty and their ill-fated love affairs. I wished Erickson had included more details about daily life at court and at home. And as for the scene where Lettice's brother, Frank, plucks a drowning girl out of the sea and discovers ... oh, I won't spoil the surprise. But it was really cheesy.

Maybe I should stop reading historical romances.

I did love Erickson's sly humor in the Epilogue, however. Lettie is in her nineties, and once more she takes up her pen to complete the story she had abandoned 33 years previously. Her great-grandson Gervase pays her a visit:

I must note here that Gervase ... is not a very good poet, though he fancies himself one. His verses are stale.... I am not a poet, but if I were, I would at least attempt to be original.

Gervase has attempted to write my epitaph in verse. He takes undue pride in his few lines. Pray God that when the hour comes, and I am laid in my grave, someone will have the good sense to prevent those lines from coming to light.

RESCUING REGINA by Josephe Marie Flynn

Here's a book you may not run across in your local bookstore (if you're lucky enough to still have one: my town has shut down Toad Hall, Barnes & Noble, and - now - Borders). My excellent public library does not yet have a copy.

Anis Shivani of the Huffington Post, however, listed Rescuing Regina among "The 20 Most Anticipated Books of Summer 2011." It is, of course, available at Amazon, where it is #5 of books about emigration and immigration and #10 of books about Central Africa. All five of its editorial reviewers loved it, as did all five of its citizen reviewers. One suggested it should be a movie.

That was my suggestion, too, in the review I've just written for Christian Century, and to which I will link once it is published and becomes available online. But that will not happen for several months, and you might want to know more about this book now.

Regina is a young woman from the Democratic Republic of the Congo who is gang raped and jailed because she has been speaking in favor of democracy. After she makes a harrowing nighttime escape to America, her husband (who has remained in the Congo) is jailed and tortured - also for being involved in a pro-democracy group. He too manages to escape to America. And here, in the form of America's grossly dysfunctional immigration system, the two of them face further trials. Stripped of the constitutional rights available to any U.S. citizen, Regina is once again imprisoned - and this time, death seems inevitable.

Note: Rescuing Regina is a true story.  The author, Sister Josephe Marie Flynn, is a Milwaukee nun who became the reluctant leader of a community effort to free Regina and send her home to her husband and two young children. You can read more about Sister Josephe, Regina, and the book here.

Note also: Rescuing Regina is not about political ideology. The story is about human rights, not politics. Sister Josephe is an old-school liberal, but many of the people who worked with her on Regina's behalf are right-wing Republicans. Regina's plight was followed by Fox News and by NPR.

Final note: Rescuing Regina is a suspense-filled adventure tale and courtroom drama. Summer is only half over, and you may not be in the mood to read a white paper on immigration reform. This is not that, thank goodness. Rather, it's an inspirational, heart-warming story about what individual heroism and community solidarity can accomplish, even against apparently insurmountable odds.

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY by Margaret Sanger

Margaret Sanger, adored and reviled as the mother of birth control, published her autobiography in 1938 when she was 59 years old. Republished in 1971 by Dover, the book is still in print. I found it while browsing the biography section of the public library, and I thought I’d like to know more about this controversial pioneer. It turned out to be the most fascinating book I’ve read so far this year.

I know that some social conservatives despise Mrs. Sanger. One of her organizations evolved into Planned Parenthood, which is hated primarily because it gives women access to abortions and secondarily because it gives unmarried women access to contraception. In reaction, some have portrayed Sanger as a eugenicist of near Nazi ferocity, eager to improve the race through selective breeding, sterilization and murder of the unfit. They accuse her of aiming to exterminate people of color. They attribute her widespread support among African American leaders to a diabolical campaign of duplicity.

It’s hard to imagine anyone quite so powerful as the monster they depict, particularly if the supposed villain is a diminutive woman in an era when women did not have the vote and were barred from most influential occupations. Indeed, much of the book is a record of the obstacles Sanger faced as she struggled to help disadvantaged women learn how to space their children and produce fewer of them. She had frequent run-ins with Catholic prelates, of course. Time and again the police raided her headquarters, destroyed her property, terrorized her clients, and hauled her off to jail. Courts usually ruled against her. Congress repeatedly refused to consider bills favoring the distribution of information about contraception.

Yet nothing could stop the hundreds of thousands of women who wrote to her begging for help, and nothing could stop Sanger from attempting to provide it.

On “one stifling mid-July day of 1912,” Sanger, a public health nurse who worked in New York’s slums, had had an epiphany. A truck driver, Jake Sachs, had called a doctor to help his 28-year-old wife, who was dying of septicemia following a self-induced abortion. The young couple already had three children, and the wife was convinced they could afford no more. The doctor sent for Sanger, and for two weeks the two of them worked to save Mrs. Sachs. At the end she pulled through, but the doctor warned that another pregnancy would kill her.

“I know, doctor,” she replied timidly, “but,” and she hesitated as though it took all her courage to say it, “what can I do to prevent it?”
   The doctor was a kindly man, and he had worked hard to save her, but such incidents had become so familiar to him that he had long since lost whatever delicacy he might once have had. He laughed good-naturedly. “You want to have your cake and eat it too, do you? Well, it can’t be done.”
   Then picking up his hat and bag to depart he said, “Tell Jake to sleep on the roof.” [91]

Three months later, Jake Sachs again called Mrs. Sanger, who again rushed to their apartment. Mrs. Sachs died within ten minutes of her arrival. That night, Sanger paced for hours through city streets.

When I finally arrived home and let myself quietly in, all the household was sleeping. I looked out my window and down upon the dimly lighted city. Its pains and griefs crowded in upon me, a moving picture rolled before my eyes with photographic clearness: women writhing in travail to bring forth little babies; the babies themselves naked and hungry, wrapped in newspapers to keep them from the cold; six-year-old children with pinched, pale, wrinkled faces, old in concentrated wretchedness, pushed into gray and fetid cellars, crouching on stone floors, their small scrawny hands scuttling through rags, making lamp shades, artificial flowers; white coffins, black coffins, coffins, coffins interminably passing in never-ending succession. The scenes piled one upon another on another. I could bear it no longer.
   … I went to bed, knowing that no matter what it might cost, I was finished with palliatives and superficial cures; I was resolved to seek out the root of evil, to do something to change the destiny of mothers whose miseries were as vast as the sky. [92]

In 1912, contraception was illegal. Doctors could not dispense contraceptive devices to women (though apparently they were allowed to give men condoms to prevent STDs). The Comstock law prohibited even speaking or writing about contraception. Somehow the rich knew how to get around those laws; their families tended to be of modest size. The poor, however, had no idea how to space their children or limit their number. As a result, many desperately poor women gave birth 12, 15, even 18 times, if they lived so long. The majority of immigrant and working-class children died before reaching adulthood, and the survivors were often malnourished, sickly, uneducated, and often brain damaged as well.

Today Americans rightly protest the cruel treatment of dogs in puppy mills. A mere hundred years ago, many urban Americans lived in conditions that were just as bad. And almost nobody dared to tell women that they didn’t have to have a baby every year, that they could limit their children to a number they could support. Nobody dared to provide them with devices that would enable them to have fewer births, but also fewer deaths and more surviving children. Almost nobody, that is, but Margaret Sanger and the people who worked with her.

Her story is more than a history of birth control in America. Much of it reads like a vivid travel memoir: Sanger visited many countries and recorded her observations and impressions. It is also a fascinating social history of the now almost-forgotten lifestyles and mores of the early 20th century. Besides, the book is fun to read: Sanger is a clever writer. She describes one newly married couple, for example, as having “little but love, faith, and hope to save them from charity.” Here is her one-sentence characterization of a lawyer she consulted: “The seeds of social service had been planted in him; his legal training only temporarily slowed down their growth.”

So what about Sanger’s supposed secret schemes of race purification? I found no evidence of them in this book. Some of her supporters were indeed eugenicists – people who thought that the mentally and morally unfit should be sterilized. That view was quite common until at least mid-20th century (my own evangelical parents said similar things) and Sanger probably shared it, but it was not her primary concern. The way she wanted to purify the race was to allow people to choose the number of children they bore, so that they could adequately feed, clothe, and educate their families. Then, she believed, far fewer children would be sickly, far fewer mothers would die in childbirth, and far more children would live to adulthood. In this way, she thought, the human race would become stronger.

Interestingly, some of Sanger’s views are at odds with the views of many Planned Parenthood advocates today. In October of 1916, she opened a birth control clinic in Brooklyn. Women were admitted in groups to learn how to plan their families.

To each group, [she writes,] we explained simply what contraception was; that abortion was the wrong way – no matter how early it was performed it was taking life; that contraception was the better way, the safer way – it took a little time, a little trouble, but was well worth while in the long run, because life had not yet begun. [217]

Her pro-life views conflicted with those of a prominent German gynecologist she interviewed in 1920. When she opined that abortion was a ridiculous substitute for contraception,

the doctor rose, his chest sticking out; he buttoned his coat, bowed formally, and inquired, “Where did you say you came from?”
   “New York City.”
   “Are you sure you are not from France or Belgium?”
   “Certainly not.”
   “Nobody who has the welfare of Germany at heart could talk to me as you have this morning. Only enemies could come here to give such information [about contraception] to our women.”
   I wished he would sit down; he made me nervous. But I went on. “Why is it such an act of enmity to advocate contraceptives rather than abortions? Abortions, as you know yourself, may be quite dangerous, whereas reliable contraceptives are harmless. Why do you oppose them?”
   To my horror he replied, “We will never give over the control of our numbers to the women themselves. What, let them control the future of the human race? With abortions it is in our hands; we make the decisions, and they must come to us.”
   That was not the tone of this doctor alone but also that of most of his confrères. [286]

Margaret Sanger was, I believe, pro-life. She was also pro-choice. People on both sides of today’s culture war have a lot to thank her for.

It’s easy for us older folks to complain that the world is going to hell. Whenever I get in a curmudgeonly mood, the surest cure is to watch an old movie or read an old book and notice how people lived and how women were regarded back then. Sanger’s autobiography made me profoundly grateful to live in an era when women are, comparatively speaking, respected; when most children – even of the poor – survive to adulthood; and when the Constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech is taken for granted.

DESERT QUEEN by Janet Wallach

"If you liked The Sisters of Sinai," my librarian friend Beth told me, "you'll probably also like Desert Queen."

Both books are about rich, feisty, brilliant, and often misunderstood and misrepresented British ladies who defied convention, traveled without male escorts in the Middle East, accomplished what male rivals only dreamed of, and made enormous contributions. The Smith sisters, twins born in 1843, were devout Scottish Presbyterians whose discoveries advanced the field of biblical studies; Miss Bell, born in 1868, was a North England atheist whose networking genius and intrepid desire for adventure helped to create the modern nation of Iraq. All three women were brilliant linguists. (My review of Sisters is here.)

Gertrude Bell, who has been called "the brains behind Lawrence of Arabia," made her first trip to Jerusalem in 1899 and died in Baghdad in 1926. During that tumultuous quarter-century, the political map of the Middle East was redrawn, and Bell was one of the principal mapmakers - literally, in that much of her work involved drawing maps to inform European diplomats, spies, and businessmen; and figuratively, in that she represented Mesopotamian interests at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, participated in the 1921 Cairo Conference that created the British mandate over Mesopotamia, and was instrumental in making Faisal king of Iraq.

That last sentence only hints at the genius that was Miss Bell. Of the 40 delegates to the Cairo Conference, she was the only female. Without her support, Faisal could never have navigated post-war political chaos and jockeying for power to become ruler of a nation that was not even his own. "I must tell you in confidence that he is my appointment," she wrote to her brother; "everyone is delighted, but they don't know it was I who did it."

And yet for years, Bell had had to endure "the disdain of her colleagues and the humiliation of working without an official position." She may have earned the respect of every sheikh in Araby, but to the British, she was merely a woman. When in 1916 her superior, Sir Percy Cox, finally gave her a salary and the official title of Liaison Officer, she became "the only female Political Officer in the British forces."

Just five years later, the New York Herald was calling her "Mesopotamia's Uncrowned Queen."

Though the book sometimes reads like a novel - and more than once made me wonder how author Janet Wallach could possibly have known that - Wallach says she based her account, right down to reported conversations, on Bell's voluminous letters and diary entries as well as on letters and memoirs written by her family and associates. In addition, Wallach visited many of the sites where Bell traveled and worked, and she has skillfully recreated a bygone era in both England and the Middle East.

Published in 1996, five years after the first Gulf War, the story of Iraq's formation is even more poignant now that fighting has destroyed so much of what Bell hoped - perhaps misguidedly - to create. Wallach's focus, though, is less on geopolitics than on the near mythical and eventually tragic character of Bell herself.

Bell was happy when she was hard at work, whether traveling by camel through uncharted desert, gathering data for British intelligence, schmoozing with world leaders at strategic conferences, or creating her beloved Baghdad Archaeological Museum (which was looted when U.S. forces invaded Iraq in 2003; click here for more information about the current state of the collection).

She was less happy back in England, where she felt out of place and was constantly reminded of several lost loves. Probably clinically depressed, she lost her appetite for life once her influence in Baghdad began to wane. Her closest friends had moved on to other assignments. Her typical work day dwindled from ten hours to three or four. Her father's fortunes had reversed, and she no longer had funds to finance further adventures. Her health was precarious. And one July night in 1926, just before her 58th birthday, she took an extra dose of sleeping pills.

Gertrude Bell, the extraordinary woman who became one of the most influential Europeans in the Middle East before she ever held an official position, was buried with full military honors.

"Newspapers throughout the world carried her obituary," Wallach writes:

- not just in notices but in long articles complete with her photograph - and in England, King George sent a message to the Bells:

'The Queen and I are grieved to hear of the death of your distinguished and gifted daughter whom we held in high regard.

'The nation will with us mourn the loss of one who by her intellectual powers, force of character and personal courage rendered important and what I trust will prove lasting benefit to the country and to those regions where she worked with such devotion and self-sacrifice. We truly sympathise with you in your sorrow.'

THE SISTERS OF SINAI by Janet Soskice

When my friend Irene, who reads much more deeply than I do, said "I love this book," I thought, Uh oh. Now I'm going to feel shallow unless I read it too. So I put a hold on it at the public library (no commitment required), and I looked at Amazon's reviews, which you can find here.

Whoa... an "enthralling narrative"? "Luminous"? "Absorbing and delightful"? "Lively and lucid"? Improbable descriptors for a book about two middle-aged female linguists who discover a Syriac palimpsest in St. Catherine's Monastery, and I've been in publishing long enough not to trust book-jacket blurbs.

Still, it's no mean feat to garner favorable reviews - or, really, any reviews at all -  from the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Washington Post, Books and Culture ... well, I was beginning to be embarrassed that I hadn't heard of the book before my friend tipped me off. And now that I've read it, I pass her tip on to you.

Janet Soskice, who is Professor in Philosophical Theology at the University of Cambridge, has nevertheless written a fascinating biography of Agnes Lewis and Margaret Gibson, twin sisters from Scotland who were never as famous as they deserved to be for discovering an ancient biblical manuscript.

Their discovery, which came at a time when ancient biblical manuscripts were all the rage, was of one of the oldest New Testament manuscripts ever found. It contained most of the Gospels, almost definitively proved that the original book of Mark did not include the snake-handling, poison-drinking verses in the last chapter, and was written in Syriac - first cousin to the Aramaic spoken by Jesus and the disciples. So why have we never heard of Mrs. Lewis and Mrs. Gibson?

Mostly because they were women. Born in 1843, they educated each other, becoming proficient in a variety of languages ancient and modern. They could not earn university degrees, because universities in mid-nineteenth century did not award degrees to women. Besides, they were Scottish Presbyterians, who were not especially in favor at Oxford or Cambridge. And several university professors desperately wanted the credit for their work.

Luckily, Mrs. Lewis and Mrs. Gibson were extremely rich and incredibly motivated.

Soskice has done a fine job of presenting them and their era in all their glorious eccentricities, turning their story into a good read even for people who are not usually fascinated by archaeological findings and ancient manuscripts.

Thanks, Irene.