October's Book Reviews & Previews

Rather than posting each book review (and stuffing the inbox of those on my email distribution with 2-4 messages a month), I thought I'd collect a month of reviews and post them as a group.  To keep the post short, I'll only give you the first paragraph, then a link if you're interested in the rest of the review or seeing the book on Amazon.  So, here's October.

Crazy Love by Rachael Tamayo:  I posted this review before I decided to do this summary, but here's the link if you missed it:  https://amzn.to/2RIRh5k

Empty Seats by Wanda Adams Fischer

A Fan’s View of the Pressure Cooker that Is Professional Baseball

With so many excellent books on baseball written by veteran players and coaches, you might wonder why you’d read one by a spectator?  And admittedly, sometimes the thoughts or words of the fictional characters in Empty Seats sound a bit more like the hyperbole of a fan than the analysis of a player, e.g., “Bobby sends a fireball his way, and slugger-boy doesn’t even see it until it’s landed in Russ’s mitt and the umpire calls it.”  But the story’s not about baseball strategy or history; it’s about broader themes in life.  One, for example, is the sense of belonging provided by sports.  When the team wanted to visit an injured player and the hospital was limiting visitors to family members, one coach summed it up well, saying, “Can’t chew see that we come from the same mother? Mother beisbol!”  See the complete review on Amazon:  https://amzn.to/2Cc4yOq

The Banker’s Wife by Cristina Alger

Two (or Three?) Strong Women Protagonists Make this Story Work

With the title, The Banker’s Wife, you would expect the individual in that role (Annabel, wife to banker Matthew Werner) to play a major role.  And she did.  But she knew little of her husband’s work and his oft-notorious clients.  So, she became our view into the dangerous world of offshore banking, where everyone from dishonest politicians to brutal dictators hid their money.  Although intelligent and obviously brave, Annabel spent much of the book running for her life.  Annabel’s co-protagonist is a journalist, Marina, drawn into the situation by colleague and largely unaware of Annabel and her husband.  In terms of a solution, Marina was more the instrumental.  But I suppose ‘the journalist to a banking whistle-blower’ doesn’t make for a very catchy title.  In any case, much of the book alternated chapters written from these two women’s perspectives.  See the complete review on Amazon:  https://amzn.to/2q8Zt2b

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann

Untangling the History Behind the “Reign of Terror” for the Osage Indians

In what author David Grann called a “curious provision” to the agreement between the Osage Indian Tribe and the US government, the Tribe claimed all rights to “…the oil, gas, coal, or other minerals covered by the lands.”  It was curious because the lands forming their reservation in northeastern Oklahoma were considered virtually worthless.  That is until oil was discovered there in 1897.  And in a matter of a few years, that black gold made the Osage some of the richest people on earth, changing their lives forever … but not for the better.  See the complete review on Amazon:  https://amzn.to/2D8VYS0