Nonfiction: History, Psychology
The Abduction of Betty and Barney Hill: Alien Encounters, Civil Rights, and the New Age in America by Matthew Bowman
Wow! This book is not just another UFO tale. The Abduction of Betty and Barney Hill provides thoughtful analysis and an expansive overview of this couple and the era they lived in. If you think this book is just about one couple’s alleged alien abduction, think again!
In 1961, Betty and Barney Hill saw something in the sky as they drove along a lonely New Hampshire highway. Later, through Betty’s dreams and the couple’s hypnotism sessions with a psychiatrist, they believed they had been taken aboard a spacecraft and given medical examinations by small gray creatures with large eyes. They reported their “memories” to government authorities. However, there is no physical evidence of their recounted “memories.” Once their story became public, the Hills became famous as the first Americans to claim that they experienced an alien abduction thus providing the template for nearly every alien encounter in American popular culture.
The Hills, an inter-racial couple who lived in New Hampshire, were civil rights activists, supporters of liberal politics, and Unitarians. Betty was a social worker, and Barney, a World War II veteran, was a postal worker, prominent NAACP speaker and on a national committee to pass the Civil Rights Act. They were educated and socially engaged people. When their story of abduction was repeatedly ignored or discounted by authorities, they lost faith in the scientific establishment, the American government, and the success of the civil rights movement.
Sadly, Barney Hill died at age 46 from a stroke. Betty then doubled down on her belief in alien abduction. After Barney’s death, she was driving down a highway and once again she saw a UFO. She pulled to the side of the road, got out of the car and yelled at the UFO that Barney was dead. She then attempted to direct the UFO to the cemetery by pointing to the location. She believed they visited his grave. Betty also repeatedly invited fellow UFO believers to join her nightly to see “her” UFOs. However, they did not see what Betty saw.
Actor James Earl Jones bought the rights to their story including the audio tapes of their hypnosis sessions. His 1975 made-for-TV movie (available on YouTube), The UFO Incident, focuses on the psychological stress of being an inter-racial couple in 1960s America. Betty claimed to be “color blind” while Barney tried to hide how anxious he was about being attacked for being a black man with a white woman. Unknown to Betty, he had a gun in the trunk of their car “just in case.”
Carl Sagan also highlighted Betty and Barney Hill’s story on an episode of his TV series “Cosmos.” (available on YouTube) He famously said, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
The Abduction of Betty and Barney Hill is much more than a UFO story. It is a “gripping account of an alien abduction and its connections to the breakdown of American society in the 1960s. Historian Matthew Bowman examines the Hills’ story not only as a foundational piece of UFO folklore but also as a microcosm of 1960s America. He exposes the promise and fallout of the idealistic reforms of the 1960s and how the myth of political consensus has given way to the cynicism and conspiratorialism and the paranoia and illusion of American life today.”
Nonfiction: Psychology
Brothers, Sisters, Strangers: Sibling Estrangement and the Road to Reconciliation by Fern Schumer Chapman
Last month I read The Quiet Damage: QAnon and the Destruction of the American Family, which dealt with family estrangement due to cult involvement and The Sociopath Next Door which discussed how sociopathic behaviors may also lead to family estrangements. While cults and sociopathic behaviors can be legitimate reasons for family estrangements, this month I wanted to learn about “normal” or “run-of-the-mill” estrangements.
"Whenever I tell people that I am working on a book about sibling estrangement, they sit up a little straighter and lean in, as if I've tapped into a dark secret." – the author
First, estrangement is intentional. Someone intentionally separates or removes him/herself from another. They experience feelings of alienation, a lack of affection, and may even display unfriendliness or hostility. Lack of connection or communication is normal in families due to living great distances apart with little opportunity for physical contact and/or sporadic communication because of diverse and divergent lifestyles. However, estrangement is someone intentionally avoiding any contact whatsoever with a family member or members for several years or forever.
This book relates the story of the estrangement between the author and her brother. They grew up in a household where the brother – the “favorite” - was given the expectation and funding to become a doctor by their father (which the son did not want). The author was basically ignored by the father. Estrangement is common when there is a “favorite” child who is given more attention, more material objects, and financial help, while the other siblings do not receive the same treatment. The author loved and looked up to her brother throughout their childhood but as a young adult her brother dropped out of college and transferred his feelings about his father’s unrealistic expectations to the author who, he thought, had it “easier.” He cut off all contact with his father and sister for four decades until their now-widowed mother begged the author to reach out to him. She did and the book tells the story of their reconciliation.
Brothers, Sisters, Strangers focuses on three main themes: Chapman’s familial story; stories she collected from her social media site for estranged siblings; and general themes of estrangement taken from collected works on the subject. If someone is experiencing estrangement, I think this book would be encouraging just by letting him/her know they are not alone! Many of the vignettes shared did not have “happy endings.” But for those who attempted to reconcile and failed, they felt satisfied with their efforts and knowing they did what they could.
I found Brothers, Sisters, Strangers an easy introduction to the family estrangement topic. However, it doesn’t really offer a concrete path to reconciling this complicated and difficult situation. In fact, the author and her brother both utilized professional help. It is important to remember that sometimes the question of “why” is never answered and accepting that may entail work with a professional therapist.
Narrative Nonfiction: True Crime
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
I first read this book decades ago. Recently I heard someone say that they didn’t like In Cold Blood because the killers were “humanized.” I did not remember that aspect of the book, so I decided to reread it.
On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered by blasts from a shotgun held a few inches from their faces. There was no apparent motive for the crime, and there were almost no clues.
This book is a true masterpiece of the nonfiction narrative. The narration is remarkable! Capote develops the characters to significant degrees but doesn’t sacrifice the intense suspense from beginning to end. What is truly intriguing about In Cold Blood is that we know who committed the crime, but we must try to figure out the “why.” Even the psychiatrists who attempted to unlock the “reasoning” behind the crime leave us with ambiguous and pathetic explanations. Capote details the killers’ childhoods, families, and significant life events prior to the killings. Perhaps this is why some people think the killers were “humanized.” Personally, I found those details intriguing and, yes, they do reveal that the killers were indeed humans, with overwhelming and tragic imperfections.
This was an awesome reread.
Our public library has a DVD of the movie version (1967), so I checked it out half expecting the movie to be a poor adaptation of the book. I was pleasantly surprised! This was the first time I watched In Cold Blood, and it is an excellent adaptation. Robert Blake (1923-2023) portrays one of the killers while John Forsythe (1918-2010) portrays the detective tasked with solving the crime. It was nominated for four Academy Awards including best original music score by Quincy Jones.(1933-2024)
Nonfiction: Natural History, Science
The Last of Its Kind: The Search for the Great Auk and the Discovery of Extinction by Gísli Pálsson
The author, Gísli Pálsson, is a professor of anthropology at the University of Iceland.
Pálsson recounts how, in the spring of 1858, two Victorian ornithologists, John Wolley and Alfred Newton, engaged in a frustrating and fruitless effort to find living great auks in Iceland. Before returning home to England, the pair “became anthropologists” and spent several weeks interviewing people familiar with the birds, especially fishermen who, in 1844, captured and killed two auks believed to be “the last of their kind.”
Pálsson tells four intertwined stories. The first relates how great auks lived and became extinct. The second story traces how Wolley and Nelson set out to find great auks. The third, and most effective, story is his telling how Wolley and Nelson “rebooted” their plans and shifted from finding great auks to finding facts about their fate.
The final story is related to two other ornithologists, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, who electrified the scientific world with their theory of natural selection. Wolley and Newton realized the importance of one aspect of this theory, that extinction and evolution were inextricably linked. While species may adapt over time to changes in their natural environment, it was also true that species may become extinct due to man’s changes in their natural environment such as hunting, deforestation, and introduction of non-native species.
Thus, they launched the concept of “human-caused, unnatural extinction as a scientific and political object and making it a central aspect of our modern environmental discourse” It was this acknowledgment of man’s role in the extinction of species that formed the basis of our hunting and conservation laws.
After reading this book, I was reminded of how many people today refuse to believe that man has any impact upon our climate. Just as people in the 1800s refused to accept the evidence of over hunting the great auks brought about their extinction, today people refuse to believe that man’s burning of fossil fuels plays an integral role in the greenhouse effect leading to climate change.
The Last of Its Kind is the history of man’s initial realization that his actions could either bring about extinction or prevent the extinction of species. It opens a window onto the human causes of mass extinction and reminds us of our duty to exercise stewardship over our natural resources.
Fiction: Historical Fiction
The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven by Nathaniel Ian Miller
Publisher’s Description: “In 1916, Sven Ormson leaves a restless life in Stockholm to seek adventure as a miner in Svalbard, an Arctic archipelago where darkness reigns four months of the year and he might witness the splendor of the Northern Lights one night and be attacked by a polar bear the next.
But his time as a miner ends when an avalanche nearly kills him, leaving him disfigured, and Sven flees even further, to an uninhabited fjord. There, with the company of a loyal dog, he builds a hut and lives alone, testing himself against the elements.
Years into his routine isolation, the arrival of an unlikely visitor salves his loneliness, sparking a chain of surprising events that will bring Sven into a family of fellow castoffs and determine the course of the rest of his life.”
Initially I thought this would be like Old Jules (Swiss pioneer in the 1880s Nebraska sandhills), the story of a man creating a new life in a hostile environment, but it was so much more! Sven is a compelling narrator, and his story is unlike any others I've read. He brings a vibrancy to the harsh and freezing landscape populated by characters that are interesting, complex, and delightful. Plus, there are dogs, too. It is a wonderful adventure of the human spirit in a harsh landscape.
As Sven wraps up his tale at the age of 62, he tells us "I have seen enough to know that nothing is likely, but everything is possible."
I thoroughly enjoyed this very well-written narrative full of friendship, love, and wonder.
Fiction: Mystery
A Murder of Quality by John Le Carré
Miss Brimley, the editor of a small newspaper, received a letter from a worried reader: "I'm not mad. And I know my husband is trying to kill me." But the letter had arrived too late: its author, the wife of a teacher at the distinguished Carne School, was already dead.
Miss Brimley asks her old friend, George Smiley, to investigate. George Smiley went to Carne to listen, ask questions, and think. And to uncover, layer by layer, the complex network of skeletons and hatreds that comprised that little English institution.
“Smiley quickly noticed that he had one quality rare among small men: the quality of openness.”
A Murder of Quality is a British mystery set in a small coastal town famous for its decrepit yet proud boarding school, steeped in its traditions – a typical “British village” mystery. It was just the quick distraction I needed from current events.
Books by the Beach Book Club International Literature: Memoir
One Day I Will Write About This Place by Binyavanga Wainaina (Kenya)
*A New York Times Notable Book* *A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice* *A Publishers Weekly Top Ten Book of the Year*
Throughout, reading is his refuge and his solace. And when, in 2002, a writing prize comes through, the door is opened for him to pursue the career that perhaps had been beckoning all along. A series of fascinating international reporting assignments follow. Finally, he circles back to a Kenya in the throes of post election violence and finds he is not the only one questioning the old certainties.”
“I start to understand why so little good literature is produced in Kenya. The talent is wasted writing donor-funded edutainment and awareness-raising brochures for seven thousand dollars a job. Do not complicate, and you will be paid very well.”
I found this book to be a struggle. The writing style for the first part of the book is hard to follow. Wainaina describes his early years, through his childlike imagination, visual interpretations of his surroundings, and stream of consciousness - his childish mind jumping from one thought to another. I found reading these chapters challenging.
After Chapter 28 (there are 33 chapters), I finally “got into” the book. When Wainaina is older there is a linear narrative. I much preferred the second part of the book.
The success of this book, for me, was the author's unique view on what it is to be a Kenyan, an African. He describes how to navigate in a country with many languages, cultural traditions, and how tribalism creeps into Kenyan politics and daily life.
“Kenya has become the Tribes…for others to belong among us, they have to behave like us. We do not need to examine ourselves. We need to tame the tribes.”
Wainaina fulfilled his title - One Day I Will Write About This Place. He shared his unique perspective of Africa as an African. For that reason, I “forgive” him for the first 27 chapters and appreciate how he brought a continent to life that I will probably only learn about from reading. Although it initially took some effort, this book was worth reading.
Nonfiction: History, War
Women Warriors: An Unexpected History by Pamela D. Toler
For the purposes of this book, Toler focuses on women “in the theater of war, near the front lines, giving orders, planning operations and making command decisions, ... they wield a sword, fire a weapon, drop a bomb, or throw rocks down the wall of a besieged city. They get their hands dirty.”
Women Warriors helps you to understand that the concept of women warriors is not a rare occurrence all! “These are the stories of women throughout history and around the world who commanded from the rear and those who fought in the front lines, those who fought because they wanted to, because they had to, or because they could. Considering the ways in which their presence has been erased from history, Toler concludes that women have always fought: not in spite of being women but because they are women.”
Toler is careful to include the complete history of women warriors not just the “winners” but also the “losers.” She explains each warrior’s impact during her lifetime and includes information on how important women are to every culture regardless of what role they play. From cunning rulers such as with Tomyris in 530 BCE leading the Massagetae against the Persians and winning to the women warriors in the African country of Dahomey in the 1700’s, the author makes the point that just like men, women did extraordinary things.
Joan of Arc, Molly Pitcher, Boudica, and Mulan are all well-known but Maria Vasilyevna Oktiabrskaya also deserves to be recorded in history. Maria’s husband, a Red Army soldier, was killed during World War II. She then sold all her possessions and raised enough money to buy a tank for the Red Army on the condition that she was allowed to drive it into battle. After training, Maria successfully drove the tank into battles and even repaired the tank while under fire from the Nazi Army. This widow’s “mite” was mighty!
Then there’s Mika Etchebehere who was a commander during the Spanish Civil War. The men she led described her with pride as “a female captain with more balls than all the male captains in the world.” (A compliment best taken in the spirit in which it was given.)
This was an interesting book about little known history.
“Opponents of allowing women in combat often invoke the image of a mother or daughter coming home in a body bag as if it were an argument against the use of women in combat in its own right, and as if the death of a mother in combat is inherently more horrifying than the death of a father … The horror of women in body bags is not the horror of a dead woman. It’s that the woman was a warrior, that she is not a victim … To accept women as warriors means a challenge to patriarchy at its most fundamental level.”
Still reading ... The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer
This is taking some time, but it is excellent reading! I am a little over half-way through and will probably need a separate blog post to share notes on this volume. Until next time …something to contemplate: At age 10, German children were required to swear the following oath of allegiance:
“In the presence of this blood banner, which represents our Fuehrer, I swear to devote all my energies and my strength to the savior of our country, Adolf Hitler. I am willing and ready to give up my life for him, so help me God.”
