Book Reviews

Summary: A contextual and narrative history of the Plessey V Ferguson Supreme Court Ruling.

Part of what I appreciate about the framing of Separate is that Luxenberg takes great pains to point out segregation’s national history, not just its Southern history. It is undoubtedly true that Plessy was arrested in Louisiana, and the movement in the 1880s and 90s for southern segregation was a response to the political realities and white supremacy of the post-reconstruction era. But segregated rail cars were first established in the 1840s in Massachusetts. Frederick Douglas, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Robert Small, and many other abolitions were removed (often forcefully and with significant harm) either from the train or to segregated cars. There is a good discussion of this history in the biographies linked above, but also a good part of Until Justice Be Done, about the movement for civil rights before the Civil War, is about the role of civil rights in transportation. Before the mid-20th century, virtually everyone that traveled used some paid transportation. Individual vehicles or even private horses or carriages were incapable of long-distance travel either because of cost or effort.

Like Heart of Atlanta: Five Black Pastors and the Supreme Court Victory for Integration by Ronnie Greene, also a book on a civil rights Supreme Court case written by a journalist, most of the book is about the context and facts of the case, not the legal decision. In fact, the discussion of the actual case and ruling doesn’t happen until the final section, about 90 percent of the way through the book. This feature is both the best and worst part of the book. The extensive context is framed primarily around the biographies of Justice John Harlan (who wrote the dissent), Albion Tourgee, lead counsel for Plessy, and Henry Billings Brown, the author of the majority opinion. There were also biographical portions for Louis Martinet (who conceived of the suit as a test case) and Homer Plessy (the man who was arrested as part of the test case). And, of course, the history of segregated transportation and the New Orleans Creole community, which drove the case.

At the end of the book, I appreciate why Steve Luxenberg gave us all of the context, but the moving back and forth between the three main characters was sometimes confusing. (This is probably because I mostly listened to this on audiobook). And I very much appreciate the reality that Luxenberg points out that what killed reconstruction, the Civil Rights Act of 1875, and caused the result of Plessy was the actions of moderate Republicans as much as pro-segregationist southern Democrats. John Marshall Harlan’s dissent in the Civil Rights Act of 1875 case was a preview of Plessy and is discussed in light of that. But in both cases, the only dissenter was Harlan, who was also the only Southerner on the court at the time.

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Summary: Beatrice tries to understand this kingdom that she has awoken to. 

I am a fan of KB Hoyle’s work. I have read everything she has written (at least the book-length work). I read or re-read eight of her books last year. I trust her to write books that I am going to enjoy.

Almost two months ago, she announced a surprise book. Around two years ago, she cofounded a small publishing house to focus on middle-grade books. I guess being a publisher and an author, you can quietly release a book without any advance notice if you want to. Because it was a surprise and I have been busy, it has taken me almost two months to read it.

I don’t know how to write about The Queen of Ebenezer. In the description, The Queen of Ebenezer is compared to Piranesi, which is an accurate comparison. In both books, the main character does not know what is going on, so the reader is also lost because they rely on the main character’s perspective. I have no issues with that style of book, but it makes it hard to write about because this is a book that spoilers will spoil.

There are two subtle things I want to note that are precisely what I like about Hoyle’s writing. Plots are always well done with Hoyle; they are tight, there is always movement, and the plots are going somewhere. A good middle-grade or YA book must go somewhere to keep the reader engaged. The title uses a somewhat obscure word Ebenezer to name the land where Beatrice finds herself. Ebenezer is derived from Hebrew, and it is probably unknown among modern readers that are not Jewish or Christian. An Ebenezer is a mark of memory, especially a mark of divine help that you want to remember. In a book where the main character starts without a memory, the land of Ebenezer is a clue.

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Summary: A return to Narnia by the original four children, for them a year later.

After I read My Side of the Mountain and thought it wasn’t quite right as a read-aloud for my kids, I picked up Prince Caspian. I have previously read The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, and we started, but they got bored with, The Horse and His Boy.

Prince Caspian has never been my favorite of the series, and it has been a long time since I have read it. The four Pevensie children were on their way back to their boarding schools roughly a year after their original trip to Narnia, and they were “called” back to Narnia. They discover eventually that it has been hundreds, if not thousands of years since their glorious reign. The country is not governed by a caretaker King who is part of a line that invaded Narnia and killed off many talking animals and magical creatures and who have largely lost the memory of the golden age.

Caspian is the rightful king in the line of the invaders. But his uncle is trying to take over. We discover that Caspian’s father was killed by his uncle, and now that his uncle has had his own child, he plans to kill Caspian as well. But Caspian’s tutor helps him escape. Their private tutoring sessions about the real history of Narnia have prepared Caspian to seek out the magical creatures. And together, they attempt to rebel against Caspian’s uncle and recreate the type of kingdom that it was before. Much of the understanding of magic has gone. And Aslan has been largely forgotten, even by the Dwarfs and magical creatures.

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Summary: A young teen decides to escape his overcrowded NYC apartment and move to some family land in the Catskill Mountains. 

My children have not yet adopted my love of reading. I have started reading to them as we drive and am trying to find books I think they may enjoy. We are currently reading Anne of Green Gables, which they enjoy, but it has such long passages of flowery descriptive language. I picked up My Side of the Mountain recently when it was on sale and decided to read it to refresh my memory. I read it as a pre-teen, but I don’t think I read it more than once or twice and not more recently than 35 years ago.

My Side of the Mountain follows Sam Gribley and his attempt to live on his own in the wilderness of the Catskills Mountains. He is living on abandoned family land, but it is remote. It is a long walk to the closest small town. The fantasy of running away is a common one for kids. I wondered what my children would think about a teen running away and his parents not seeking after him, at least not for months.

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Summary: A good biography about a woman that many recognize but don’t know much about.

For the past several years, I have joined the Renovare Book Club. The current book they are reading is The Narrative of Sojourner Truth. I was broadly aware of Sojourner Truth. I knew she was born enslaved, and at some point, she left slavery and sued for the freedom of a child. She won that case, one of the earliest examples of a formerly enslaved person winning a court case against a white person. I also was aware of her work as an abolitionist and feminist speaker and her most famous speech, “Ain’t I a Woman.” But besides the very broad strokes, I was unfamiliar with her story. Because I knew her book was coming up, I picked up this recent addition to the Library of Religious Biography series to get some background.

Nancy Koester is a Christian history professor specializing in the 19th century, especially in how women participated in reform movements as a way of social uplift and ministry. Koester also has another volume in the Library of Religious Biography series on Harriet Beecher Stowe, which I have not read but put on my to-read list.

As I said yesterday in my review of Gateway to Freedom by Eric Foner about the Underground Railroad, several books I have read this year have overlapped in theme and content. Sojourner Truth was a character that was present in many 19th-century events. She was an abolitionist speaker who shared a stage with Garrison and Frederick Douglass. She was a part of early women’s suffrage movements like the Akron Ohio Women’s Convention in 1851, where she gave the Ain’t I a Woman speech. She was involved in various Christian reform and utopian movements, including the Prophet Mathias, the Millerite Adventist camp meetings, the interracial commune-like Northampton Association of Education and Industry, and the later utopian communities around Battle Creek, Michigan.

Part of what struck me about her association with these utopian and perfectionist movements was that only these fringe movements would allow her to speak as a woman. She believed that soon after she originally left slavery with her infant daughter, she had a vision from Jesus that called her to preach. Her initial preaching was more spiritually oriented calls to repentance. But over time, justice and reform became a large part of her message, although she always understood her work as a type of ministry.

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Summary: A history of the loosely defined movement known as the Underground Railroad in and around New York City.

Eric Foner is one of the preeminent historians of the Reconstruction era. His book on Reconstruction and his book on the Constitutional Amendments passed during Reconstruction are both well worth reading. I would classify Gateway to Freedom as a less critical but still helpful book. There is a lot of mythology around the Underground Railroad. Gateway to Freedom is working to demythologize how organized it was (it wasn’t very organized) while maintaining that the work that was done was dangerous, especially for Black people (whether free or formerly enslaved).

Gateway to Freedom concentrates on New York City. It may not be well known, but New York City broadly supported slavery. The mayor of NYC at the start of the Civil War floated the idea of joining the Confederacy, mainly because so much of the economy of NYC was centered on slavery or products derived from slavery. According to another book I am currently reading, while there were many Black residents of NYC, Philadelphia had the largest Black population of any city in the US until well after the Civil War.

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Summary: A rhetorical biography of Fannie Lou Hamer.

Fannie Lou Hamer, I think, has had a minor renaissance in the public’s imagination over the past few years. Kate Clifford Larson (who also has a biography of Harriet Tubman), Keisha Blain, and Maegan Parker Brooks all have new biographies of her in the last three years. There is also a children’s picture book only a couple of years older. And PBS documentary of Hamer in 2022. Maybe it is more about who I am listening to and the era I tend to read about. (Jemar Tisby, who lives in the Mississippi Delta area and is a historian of the 20th century Civil Rights movement, talks about Hamer as one of his heroes).

I read Keisha Blain’s short biography of Fannie Lou Hamer just over a year ago. Hamer was also a significant player in the biography of Stokley Carmichael. And many of the broader histories of the civil rights movement include discussions of Hamer’s work and influence. But A Voice That Could Stir an Army is the most detailed look at her life, especially the rhetoric I have read so far. Blain’s biography was intended to be a short, accessible introduction to Hamer at only 135 pages of the main text. Brooks’ biography is just over 100 pages longer, and while much of the difference is a close analysis of Hamer’s speeches, many details here help to round out Hamer’s legacy.

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Summary: A posthumously edited collection of sermons on Revelation, most from 1984. 

I am a big fan of Eugene Peterson. By my count, this is the 14th of Peterson’s books I have read. And many of those I have read more than once. I will probably continue to pick up his books. This Halleluah Banquet was published in 2021. And four books are being published this year in his name (two devotionals that are edited from his writing and sermons, a sermon collection, and a new edition along with the audiobook of his book on David, Leap Over a Wall.)

I am not opposed to books being posthumously edited and released. I really enjoyed reading the novel Thrones, Dominations by Dorothy Sayers. It was not finished and lost until about 60 years after she died. It was found in some files of her lawyer and finished by Jill Paton Walsh. Similarly, I have picked up several books that the students of Henri Nouwen compiled from a mix of his notes, class lectures, and other materials. But at the same time, these edited works often lack the vitality of books written directly by the author.

Parts of This Hallelujah Banquet are worth reading (or listening to as I did). I largely agree with the interpretation of Revelation that is being taught here. It is far more common to be hearing about Revelation as guidance for living in oppression today than it would have been in 1984. Earlier generations of teaching about Revelation would have been oriented toward dispensationalism and seeking to “break the code” of the future prophecy. I remember attending “Prophecy Conferences” at a friend’s church when I was a teen. Those conferences were full-on dispensational teaching with charts and images trying to show listeners how our current events fulfilled a 2000-year-old prophecy.

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Summary: A history of race and politics since the civil rights era.

I am a big fan of Great Courses-styled audiobooks. They often are helpful in summarizing complex issues, but one of the weaknesses, which is present here, is that they can be oriented more toward summary than laying out detailed evidence for those new to a subject. My main complaint about the course/audiobook is that it is too short.

The negative reviews on Audible are overwhelmingly calling this book “woke” or “leftist propaganda.” Only one of the negative reviews had any specifics about what they thought was wrong, which was a misunderstanding of Candis Smith’s point. Many negative reviews complained that it was only talking to people who already agreed with her, and I am unsure how to evaluate this point; in some sense, the complaint is valid. If the course were designed primarily to convince people who deny that racism continues to play a role in politics, it would be a very different course. The course focuses on an overview of how race and politics have shifted since the end of the civil rights era, not on convincing white people of the changes.

The course opens with a discussion of the Kerner Commission. I am going to quote from Wikipedia about the report, but these points were in the course:

The report’s best-known passage warned: “Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal.” The report was a strong indictment of white America: “What white Americans have never fully understood — but what the Negro can never forget — is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.”^[11]

Its results suggested that one main cause of urban violence was white racism and suggested that white America bore much of the responsibility for black rioting and rebellion.

The Kerner Commission report was released in February 1968 and sold over 2 million copies. It was widely read. But the main focus of the report’s conclusions was largely ignored. The Kerner Commission, King’s assassination, and the 1968 Civil Rights Act are largely seen as the end of the main civil rights era and a shift to the post-civil rights era. The civil rights era was predominantly focused on changing the laws around segregation. Once those laws were changed, many thought cultural changes would naturally result. But as Smith points out, the legal changes were a prerequisite but did not change the systemic realities.

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