June theater roundup: Pippin, Suffs, Othello

Pippin

When I was in high school, the guy I had a crush on--we were in a production of Mame together--told me I should get the cast recording of Pippin when I told him I got a CD player. So naturally I did. I quite enjoyed the music and it wasn't until years later that I learned what the show was about and, indeed, that the songs aren't necessarily what they seem to be. 

Candice Hatakeyama, Cedric Neal, and Emily Steinhardt. Photo by Daniel Rader.

It's a show where a director has a lot of room to play, and Matthew Gardiner at Signature Theatre clearly had a blast with it. Pippin is nominally the story of Charlemagne's son; he's finished college and spends the show trying to figure out who he is--he goes to war, he sleeps around, he's briefly king, he finds a widow with a son and hangs around her farm. It's relatable, other than the Leading Player (it's a play-within-a-play concept) ominously hanging around, sabotaging him, and promising (threatening?) the big finale of the show.

It's a strange show. There's some very cool choreography (the original production was directed by Bob Fosse and you can see his influence in the above picture) and a fun ensemble. 

The cast, of course, is incredible; I don't think I've seen a show at Signature that I haven't thought that. Cedric Neal's Leading Player was the perfect balance of cool and menace; I've only seen Pippin a couple of times before this (and one was more of a concert performance), but I felt scared of the Leading Player more in this performance than I had before. Eric Hissom's Charlemagne is probably my other standout, just due to his reaction faces.

The show lends itself to being weird, and again, that's Signature's wheelhouse. I enjoyed this production, but it's not pulling me to see it again the way that, say, Fiddler did. 

(Also, side note, I can no longer handle "Corner of the Sky" after seeing the complete perfect parody of it in Season 2 of Schmigadoon.) 

Suffs 

Suffs felt like it was written for me--a middle-aged, white, liberal woman. (And indeed, some of the criticism I've seen of the show is like, "It's written for white, middle-aged liberal women," while noting that Hillary Clinton is one of the show's producers.)

The musical is the story of Alice Paul, one of the younger generation of suffragists, pushing back against Carrie Chapman Catt and the old guard who are trying to cajole the nation into giving women the right to vote without antagonizing people too much ("Let mother vote, we raised you after all/Won't you thank the lady you have loved since you were small?/We reared you, cheered you, helped you when you fell/With your blessing, we could help America as well"). She organizes a march on DC, goes on a hunger strike, and helps move the cause forward.

Suffs company. Photo by Joan Marcus.

What I really liked about the show is that it shows that neither Paul nor Catt were wrong in how they approached their activism; the two approaches combined provoked and allowed President Woodrow Wilson (the actual bad guy in the show) to support suffrage. (I read a book about Jeannette Rankin, the first woman in Congress and an activist in the suffrage movement, and this matches what I remember from that book.)

The tension with Mary Church Terrell and Ida B. Wells was also, I thought, well done. There's the echoes of the Catt/Paul tension between generations and the frustration at having to choose between promoting women's rights or promoting Black rights. That Paul and her cohort didn't do enough is brought up repeatedly, particularly at the end in a scene I found fascinating, when a women comes to talk to Paul in the 1970s. Generation after generation, we criticize those who came before us for not doing enough. It makes me think of this exchange in 1776 regarding the inclusion of a passage on slavery in the Declaration of Independence:

John Adams: Mark me, Franklin... if we give in on this issue, posterity will never forgive us.
Dr. Benjamin Franklin: That's probably true, but we won't hear a thing, we'll be long gone. Besides, what would posterity think we were? Demi-gods? We're men, no more no less, trying to get a nation started against greater odds than a more generous God would have allowed. First things first, John. Independence; America. If we don't secure that, what difference will the rest make?

I will say that perhaps the music doesn't quite stick in my head the way music from other shows does, but I am tempted to get the cast recording, because I did enjoy the songs during the show itself and remember thinking that I would enjoy listening to it again. I know a lot of people weren't too moved by the choice for the Tonys performance--"Keep Marching," the finale.

That performance got to me, though, and is only more relevant today. The show's end is something of a hopeful downer--it's all about the need to continue working toward a better future, even knowing that what we might not come and it almost certainly won't come as quickly as we'd like (or need). But it's a call to action and one that's vital in 2025:

Make peace with our incomplete power and use it for good
‘Cause there’s so much to do
The gains will feel small and the losses too large
Keep marching, keep marching
You’ll rarely agree with whoever’s in charge
Keep marching, keep marching
‘Cause your ancestors are all the proof you need
That progress is possible, not guaranteed
It will only be made if we keep marching 

(Also, the original Broadway cast performance is streaming on PBS and YouTube through the end of July.) (And also, you can visit the Belmont-Paul Women's Equality National Monument in DC, run by the National Park Service!)

Othello

Honestly, when I think of Othello, I always get the Reduced Shakespeare Company's "Othello Rap" stuck in my head ("It was a moan-a/a groan-a/He left her alone-a/He didn't writer a letter and he didn't telephone-a"). 

I kept thinking during the production how it reminded me a bit of Jesus Christ Superstar (and yes, obviously I know Othello came first) in that the antagonist (Iago [Ben Turner]) gets a lot of focus, moreso than the title character. There's debate about Iago's motives for what he does, but the dude really does talk a lot; certainly a lot more than Othello. And if you're lucky enough to sit in one of the seats adjacent to the thrust stage and Ben Turner directs his gaze at you...it's incredibly intimidating.

Olivia Cygan (Desdemona) and Wendell Pierce (Othello). Photo by Teresa Castracane.

Particular to this production was how fun Othello (Wendell Pierce) was (at least early in the play). It makes sense--the guy just got married, even if it was under slightly sus circumstances. But he smiles a lot, he's joking around, bantering with his guys. You could see how Desdemona could fall in love with him.

I also really liked Melanie Field's Emelia (wife of Iago). I don't believe she has actual lines until late in the play (the Othello Rap reports that we meet her in Act Four), but director Simon Godwin has her on stage from the very start of the play. Watching her interact with Iago and Desdemona is something of a gut punch; she clearly is very into her husband and wants to help him, to the point where I was trying to remember how complicit she was in his schemes. 

Again, of course the acting was excellent, but Godwin's staging is overall fantastic. Othello's soldiers are very present throughout the show, and I loved their choreography. I also think I enjoy the relative lack of side plots in the play.

  

A collision of murder and post-Revolutionary America

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Probably a 3.5, but I'm rounding up, mostly because I learned about a part of history that I didn't know much about.

In Kingdom of Devils: A Tale of Murder in the Shadow of the American Revolution, author Katherine Grandjean combines two of my areas of interest--true crime and early American history. Brothers Wiley and Micajah Harp went on a killing spree in Tennessee and Kentucky at the end of the 18th century, killing almost indiscriminately in what was then the country's frontier. The story of the brothers, who might be America's first serial killers, remained ensconced in the lore of that part of country, though many of the details are sketchy. Grandjean goes beyond the passed-down stories to go after the facts of the killings, while also connecting the murder spree to the mindset of America during George Washington's Presidency.

Grandjean dug through the records to find the historical Harp brothers--court cases, legal documents. She inserts herself throughout the narrative, which I have mixed feelings about; as a history major, I enjoy learning about her process. At the same time, though, I don't necessarily want that in the story; that's what introductions or afterwords are for.

Ultimately, though, I got frustrated at Grandjean coming up a hypothesis for why the Harps did what they did and then state motivations as given: "The Harps were just the sort of men who Kentucky's gentry feared were coming for their share. And maybe that was the point" (loc. 2047). 

Rampage killing, almost always, is about revenge. It isn't about savoring violence. It isn't about any of the perverse, sadistic pleasures that we associate with modern serial killers. It isn't usually about worldly or material things to be gained once the victims are dead. The gains are mostly psychological: It is about having the last word, about vengeance against those who have caused the killer's unhappiness. Others must be made to suffer "as he has in the past," criminologist James Alan Fox writes of the typical offender. (loc. 2261) 

Her theory is that the Harps tried to do things right--buy land, get married--but that they lost what they had due to much larger forces than their own actions. In response, they killed a bunch of people. Brutally. She writes about them as America's losers (in a way that makes me think of Sondheim's Assassins), about how the Revolution turned the world upside down and made men think they were equal and get upset when they don't realize the American dream:

In ways that historians have not quite grasped, some of the murders of Wiley Harp's era are tied to the very core meanings of the American Revolution--the defining features of the republic itself. Appalachia's disease may only have been a more severe case of something that infected men across the United States in the wake of the American Revolution. Everywhere, in the new republic, men struggled. Shaken free of traditional safety nets, loosed into new places without family, and drunk on a giddy cocktail of new markets and new expectations, they stumbled. Then they fell. (loc. 1404)

(I also don't love the "In way that historians have not quite grasped" here.)

It's not that I don't think she's right; losing everything does drive people to extreme acts of violence. It's the connections to the ethos of the American Revolution that I'm not sure of: "In America, men compete. That is the basic ethos. To be American is to cherish the idea of material success, which, you understand, will be chased by everyone, competitively. But what happens when men fail to realize the dream? Or worse, when they feel it has been robbed from them, or withheld unfairly?" (loc. 1500). 

Murder was its own kind of treason. An affront to the state itself. An affront to the people, as it tore at the very foundations of society. That was how it stood in American law and in American minds, and that is how best to understand Wiley and Micajah Harp. American society--with all its promises--had not worked for them. . . . So in 1798, he decided to step out of society and levy his own little war on its people. . . . Murder, in the end, is social protest. (loc. 2745)

Grandjean is honing on something that is still very much talked about today, with the talk of the male loneliness epidemic and similar. I think she's right, in that the Harps saw their dreams of owning land and living presumably quiet lives with their families being taken away from them. And I'll say that I really appreciated Grandjean going into details about the fickleness of land ownership and deeds at the time, and the relations with Native Americans and their relationships with early American governments, and that while the Revolution may have changed how men saw each other, that didn't particularly change how women were treated. There's a lot of detail and narrative about the early United States that was really interesting and is why I rated this book as high as I did.

I guess it comes down to whether the various storylines in the early American period percolating in the background really affected the Harps. Grandjean mentions at one point a study that showed violence increasing during times of political turmoil in the country, so maybe people are affected. I guess the question for me is, how much of "The world screwed me over, so I'm going to go on a killing spree?" is actually political? And I don't know that it is. In that vein, how political are the murders of Sweeney Todd?

I will say that this book provided a lot of food for thought.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Random House for an advanced reader copy of this book.

Let's try to learn from the past

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 

I like history and nonfiction, but I've found I can't really handle reading nonfiction about contemporary events. I like historical nonfiction because I know how things end and how everything turned out. The story of January 6th...well. We know how it ended, namely, that there were no real consequences. It's upsetting, and reading the details of the day in Storm at the Capitol just make it more upsetting, and it does somewhat lead to spiraling about the current state of the country.

Author Mary Clare Jalonick was in the Capitol that day to cover the certification of the 2020 election; she includes her own story at the end of the book. I appreciated that Jalonick limits the book to January 6th itself; it starts that morning and ends in the early hours of January 7th. She doesn't bother going through the election and the lies and the lawsuits and the rulings. In the beginning, she just notes that the election wasn't stolen--there's no evidence. And it's treated as the truth that it is.

This book should be required reading for everyone. Jalonick includes quotes from Republicans, Democrats, rioters, DC police, Capitol police, staffers, journalists. She includes Trump's tweets from throughout the day. Watching events unfold on tv, I was horrified, but it was so much worse than what it looked like. The descriptions of the fights between the police and the rioters are harrowing. (Though I could've done without the police frequently referring to "antifa" as though that's a real group when discussing the 2020 protests.)

The book also brought back the feelings of the Covid lockdowns and strangeness of being around other people; Jalonick mentions various officials having just gotten or about to get their vaccines. What a strange, awful time for the country (and the world).

The fact that the current president has not only pardoned the people who caused this damage--physical, emotional, and philosophical--but is also trying to give them money defies comprehension...though, of course, he was at the root of the riot itself. It's amazing how quickly some of the people who feared for their lives began undercutting their own experiences.

Primary sources like this are invaluable, particularly in today's landscape. Highly recommend, though it will depress and horrify you.

Adams, Franklin, Jefferson, and the other demigods in Ford's 1776

I was momentarily surprised when Ford's Theatre announced its 2025-26 season and 1776 was on there--they had done the show in 2003 and 2012--and then I realized. Of course. America's 250th. An event I'd been excited about for years but just can't get excited about in reality.

And yet. 

I found myself in a theater full of people applauding the line "The count being twelve to none with one abstention, the resolution on independence—is adopted" and I choked up. I saw Ford's production five times this run, and in most of them, people applauded that moment. I saw the productions in 2003 and 2012. I saw it on Broadway in 1997 and the Encores production in 2016. I've never experienced audiences reacting that way. And it got to me. Even in 2026, the idea of the United States of America still has a hold on me.

The show does hit differently depending on what's going on in the world. This go-round, I was particularly hit by John Hancock (Thomas Adrian Simpson) voting that the resolution on independence would need to be unanimous, seemingly dooming the proposition: "Don't you see that any colony who opposes independence will be forced to fight on the side of England—that we'll be setting brother against brother, that our new nation will carry as its emblem the mark of Cain?" 

I generally think of the slavery debate in Act Two as what causes the United States to be carrying that mark of Cain (Adams: "Mark me, Franklin, if we give in on this issue, posterity will never forgive us"). But this time around, it's that idea of disunity. True, the colonies come together and unanimously vote for independence. And while John Dickinson's "Don't forget that most men with nothing would rather protect the possibility of becoming rich than face the reality of being poor. And that is why they will follow us to the right" always resonates, the concept of trying to keep the country from turning on itself is what stuck with me in this run.

Jonathan Atkinson as John Adams and the Ford's Theatre cast of 1776. Photo by Scott Suchman.

 

I've seen 1776, both the movie and the stage version, many many times. Many times. And listened to the Original Broadway Cast recording countless times. Those performances are ingrained in me in such a way that it's hard to try to evaluate other versions without just comparing them to the version that's in my head.

That said, Ford's did a great job. There are things about the production I didn't particularly like, but there were many things about it I absolutely loved. Above all, the acting. Jonathan Atkinson's take on John Adams somehow didn't have me comparing him to William Daniels the entire time (with an exception; see below). Particularly, his relationship with Abigail (Kanysha Williams, who was also a delight in Sister Act last year) was adorable; they played off each other beautifully.

One thing I really noticed was how much the characters themselves seemed to enjoy each other. I read a review of the production that referred to Edward Rutledge of South Carolina (Joe Mallon) as the antagonist to Adams's protagonist—that's likely because of Act Two slavery debate, but I feel like some of it is because Evan Casey's John Dickinson, though debating Adams throughout the entire show, also seemed amused by Benjamin Franklin (Derrick D. Truby, Jr.) and Adams. The movie's Dickinson comes across as more sneering than Casey, I think. In general, this group seemed to be the way we kind of wish all our politicians would act—disagree with each other, debate each other, but respect each other, too. And enjoy each other's company.

The production also used the ensemble in interesting ways, like bringing in various actors to be the Lees of Virginia, or having characters in the back of the set, clearly leading their own lives but providing vocal support during songs. And the choreography was neat! "Choreography" is something I don't necessarily think of regarding 1776, but the movement throughout the show was incredibly well thought-out, particularly in "Molasses to Rum," which frequently involves the ensemble just sitting as Rutledge sings. (The show was choreographed and directed by Luis Salgado.)

I also really liked the use of projections (designed by Clint Allen) throughout the show; they were mostly subtle, but did a good job setting the scene at the top of the show and, of course, with the signing at the end of the show. They really hit in one of the show's highlights, "Mama, Look Sharp," which is a song that I usually don't particularly enjoy. But the projections that evoked Lexington Green (which I just visited last year), plus the actors' movements, plus the show's orchestrations (more below) came together amazingly. Hunter Ringsmith's Courier and Ricky DeVon Hall's Leather Apron were just perfect. It's now forever the standard of that song for me.

Additional shout-outs to the costumes, designed by Ivania Stack; I kept feeling that Dickinson was dressed as King George III, which fit. Plus, the costume for Michael Perrie Jr.'s Richard Henry Lee was aces—as was Perrie's entire performance. It's a super fun role and he was an absolute joy.

That said, it wasn't a perfect production. The set, designed by Milagros Ponce de León, felt too small and cramped. The lighting, designed by Venus Gulbranson, could be incredibly powerful...but was also too much at times. Similarly, there were new orchestrations by Daniel Gutiérrez that worked just fantastically well at times (like in "Mama, Look Sharp"), but that at times pulled me out of the show. There was a lot of use of African-style drums that was very very cool.

Salgado seemed to want to somewhat modernize the show, and it's felt in some of that choreography and in some of the orchestrations. And most of the time it worked for me. But it didn't always. Disappointingly for me, one of the times where it really didn't click for me was in "Is Anybody There?", the climax of the show. Atkinson's voice is fantastic—I just didn't love the modern drums in there and it was the one time where I did want something more like William Daniels's performance; I missed some of the passion, I think. (To compare: Atkinson and Daniels.)

And it continued to be missing at the end, as the names of the signers are read. The appearance of the famous signatures on the stage is fantastic, but it still came across as a bit too low-key. The production has the (in my opinion) overused conceit of actors coming in wearing modern clothing and changing into the costumes of the characters, and it's just not necessary (though, again, there's a moment where Atkinson and Williams interact that is lovely). So at the end, you have the signers with some of the "modern audience" members on stage and the music isn't as overwhelming as I want it to be and it doesn't quite come together. The end just misses landing. For me, the show ultimately just felt a touch too stylized.

Do I think people who don't have the show memorized, who haven't listened to the recordings and seen the movie countless times, had the same reaction? I don't. Audiences absolutely adored this run and I am ecstatic at how it was received. I love that Salgado and Ford's tried something with this production; it wasn't the traditional staging of 1776, but it also wasn't so different as to be off-putting. They largely managed to hit a sweet spot of innovation and tradition. 

A 100-year-old feminist novel...with Satan. Literally.

 

⭐⭐⭐ 

 

I feel like Lolly Willowes, or The Loving Huntsman is a solid 3.5; I did quite like it and I liked what author Sylvia Townsend Warner was going for, but I'm not sure I'm totally on board.

Honestly, I would've enjoyed this had it been a more...let's say typical story. Laura Willowes is born toward the end of the 19th century; she has two older brothers and her mother dies while she's very young, so Laura becomes her supportive father's hostess. But when he dies, she gets shuffled off to live with one of her brothers in London. So moves from her father's house to her brother's, where she becomes Aunt Lolly and loses her identity. She lives a very quiet, regimented life and only very belated understands how unhappy she's been. So she leaves! She goes to a village and honestly, that's all I needed. I didn't need her to become a witch and literally meet and converse with Satan.

I realized after reading some Barbara Pym books that I find the stories of women's quiet lives in England, written in the interwar period entertaining. Townsend Warner's writing style is excellent; I was delighted throughout the book:

Mourning [clothing] was never satisfactory if one bought it in a country town. (p. 2)

It was a decent family boast that great-great-aunt Salome's puff paste has been commended by King George III (p. 5)

During the last few years of her life Mrs. Willowes grew continually more skilled in evading responsibilities, and her death seemed but the final perfected expression of this skill (p. 12)

and so on.

The book ultimately comes down to this:

One doesn’t become a witch to run around being harmful, or to run around being helpful either, a district visitor on a broomstick. It’s to escape all that - to have a life of one’s own, not an existence doled out to by others.

That was one of the advantages of dealing with witches; they do not mind if you are a little odd in your ways, frown if you are late for meals, fret if you are out all night, pry and commiserate when at length you return. Lovely to be with people who prefer their thoughts to yours, lovely to live at your own sweet will, lovely to sleep out all night!

Laura finds freedom by fleeing the constraints of society and her family and I feel like that can be done without saying "I'm a witch! In a town of them!" Simply the juxtaposition of her life in Great Mop with that of her life with her brother is enough to show her freedom. But I guess in that world, being a witch is the only way to have those freedoms.

I like what Townsend Warner was saying and I liked her writing, but I wound up slightly aggravated by the book as well. It's still great to get this perspective from that period of time. 

The duality of Jim Jones

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Closer to a 4.5, but not quite 5 stars.

I've always been mildly intrigued by Jonestown because the mass suicide there happened only a couple of weeks after I was born. And recently I've heard more about how Jim Jones was actually pretty progressive...before. So when my book club decided to have this month be "Pick a book about a cult," this seemed like the way to go; plus, I thought author Jeff Guinn's Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson was very good.

Here's the thing: Jim Jones actually did quite a number of very good things. He was always...off-putting, let us say, but did truly seem committed to equality. Guinn doesn't shy away from the progressively bad parts of Jones, but he also doesn't portray him solely as a power-hungry cult leader (which is obviously where Jones wound up).

Guinn details Jones's rise as a minister while also examining Jones's beliefs (while noting that obviously we have no way of knowing what Jones actually believed about God or religion). One of Jones's strengths was his ability to work a crowd; he started off opening a church in a Black-majority part of Indianapolis and instead of preaching about being rewarded in the afterlife, he focused on what could be done here and now. He attended Black churches and worked Midwest revivals and learned from Father Divine, who claimed to be God in human form. He preached for hours, so much that if you were in the crowd, you probably heard something that made you think "Yes! This guy gets me!" Guinn illustrates the tricks that allowed Jones to make people think that he had psychic abilities, but also shows that Jones was a guy who was charismatic and was good with people.

Jones did, it seem, truly believe in a lot of socialist principles; he wanted racial equality and he wanted to feed and clothe the needy (and did so!). The Peoples Temple opened nursing homes in Indiana and California and they were legitimately good facilities.

As this happened, the church (nominally affiliated with the Disciples of Christ) also took in a lot of money for Jones that didn't make it to the Disciples...or the poor. And naturally, over the years, Jones moved away from focusing on socialism and more on controlling people--by preying on fears of nuclear war, by creating suspicions of any outsiders and especially the government. He lured people in by helping others and then turned on them, forcing people to sign over their Social Security checks and real estate. He curried favor with the right people and got mad if he didn't get what he wanted. Guinn details the progression of the Peoples Temple from socialist church to full-on cult; he describes Jones's descent from a narcissist to cult leader, paranoid and controlling. Jones dropped hints of mass suicide years in advance.

And, of course, came the sex with everyone and the paranoia and the drugs and the physical abuse of parishioners and getting the members to spy on each other, etc., etc.

Ironically, Jonestown itself seemed like it was a fairly decent place; the original Temple members who went to the jungle seemed to have a decent-enough time of it. The work was hard, of course, but they saw themselves as creating the ultimate socialist paradise. Multiracial (Jonestown, at the end, was about two-thirds Black), growing their own food, excellent school facilities. It got a lot worse once Jim Jones got there (fleeing bad press to a place where he thought people couldn't defect from), but even so, many government officials (from both Guyana and the U.S.) went and spoke to residents and genuinely thought people were OK. Sure, their family members were upset, but what could you do?

The story of Jim Jones and what he did to his followers in Guyana is an incredibly depressing one. And it's made more so when you realize the amount of good Jones was actually able to accomplish, and when you contemplate what more he could have done. The details of what happened in November 1978 are horrifying; so is the story of the descent of man who really could've helped make the world better. You know. If he weren't evil.

Watching Hamnet while remembering Hamnet

I was excited when I saw that the Shakespeare Theatre would be bringing in the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Hamnet this season; when it came time to actually usher, though, I was slightly less enthusiastic (though part of that was just how crowded my calendar has been lately). I enjoyed the book well enough, but didn't see the recent movie.

The play, adapted by Lolita Chakrabarti based on the Maggie O'Farrell novel, focuses on Agnes Hathaway (Kemi-Bo Jacobs)--a slightly witchy resident of Stratford-upon-Avon who has a crappy stepmother and whose brothers are tutored by a young man named Will (Rory Alexander). She and Will get married and have some children, one of whom dies (the novel actually has a subtitle: "A Novel of the Plague") and the family has to come to grips with that loss.

Chakrabarti changes quite a few things about the book as I remember it. I was pleased that the Agnes of the play wasn't quite the witch that she is in the book; the Agnes on stage is how I wanted her to be in the book--strong and independent and talented with healing and animals and such; different enough that the people in town whisper about her but not actually, like, supernatural.

However, though I was bothered in the book that William was never specified as Shakespeare, here he definitely is. And while I remember his family playing a large part in the book--the married couple does live with them--in the play, Will plays too large a part. There are scenes of him and his fellow actors rehearsing and performing. I enjoyed those bits, but they didn't seem to belong in the play.

Kemi-Bo Jacobs and Rory Alexander as Agnes and William Shakespeare in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Hamnet. Photo by Kyle Flubacker.

The story of Hamnet is that of Agnes, about her life and grief and coping. I remember it permeating the book, and while the play has some ghostly children running about in Act One, Hamnet's illness doesn't occur until the second act. The book is told in flashback format and I feel like the play would've benefited from that as well. 

And once the boy does succumb, Will continues to remain in the forefront while Agnes seems more sidelined. Grief, since it is usually pretty internal, can be hard to be depicted, particularly on stage, which doesn't lend itself to closeups and such. But I still felt like more of Agnes's grief should've been seen.

Of course, that's all with the knowledge of the book; without those vague memories of a book I read 5 years ago, I probably would've enjoyed this a lot more. I thought Jacobs and Alexander were both great; likable, with good chemistry. I enjoyed seeing their relationship develop. Ditto the various side characters, particularly Troy Alexander as Bartholomew, Agnes's brother, and Bert Seymour as Richard Burbage. I was confused about who some of the side characters were, however, which was a bit distracting during the show. I also thought the set design was neat, with a platform being raised and lowered to stand in for various rooms.

I did largely enjoy the production, though ultimately I think I would've liked it more without any knowledge of the source material. Sadly, I don't think it lives up to the book.

A history that breaks the heart: How the Tulsa Massacre was shaped by history—and memory

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 

I think the first time I heard about the Tulsa riot/massacre was a news story that was about the effort to find mass graves. If I recall, the people doing the searching didn't find what they were looking for, but it did make an impression on me.

Riot and Remembrance: The Tulsa Race War and Its Legacy was first published in 2002; the edition I read had a preface in 2021, written for the 100th anniversary of the event, when the massacre was very much on people's minds after the summer of 2020. Author James S. Hirsch begins the new preface by noting "Anytime you write a book about a historical event, the question inevitably arises: What relevance does that event have today? No one is asking that anymore about the Tulsa race massacre of 1921" (p. 6).

This is an excellent book. Hirsch goes through the history of Tulsa, describing how the city developed and the attitudes of the residents and how those led to the events of May 31-June 1, 1921 ("Even in its early boom years, the city's lawlessness was virtually impossible to stop" [p. 33]); I was surprised to learn how new a city Tulsa is and how ingrained racism was in Oklahoma and Tulsa itself ("The ascendancy of the Democratic Party at statehood . . . meant the denial of civil liberties to blacks, but Oklahoma was determined to out-Jim Crow the other southern states" [p. 44]). Hirsch goes into racial violence and lynching and the tropes that white people believed about Black people being happy during slavery and how that affected race relations in the 1920s:

The "new Negro" was the malevolent counterpart of the "old Negro," or "Sambo," whom whites invented during slavery and later romanticized in merchandise as a simple, carefree "darky" who lived in an antebellum racial utopia. The "new Negro," according to this view, lacked the civilizing restraints of slavery and was therefore regressing to a state of barbarism. Physical force was the only way to restrain him. (p. 62)

Hirsch describes the precipitating events and what happened in Tulsa during the massacre, but it took up less of the book than I expected. It's still hard to read. Part of the issue goes hand-in-hand with the second part of the book title: "remembrance." Because in the years after the massacre, a lot of the primary documents disappear. There's debate about whether a newspaper published an editorial "To Lynch a Negro Tonight"; the editorial page and front-page story about the inciting incident were both cut from the newspaper's bound volumes. Even the official documentation has disappeared. So mostly what we're left with is what participants and victims told their descendants.

Hirsch details what happened after the massacre, what happened to the residents of Greenwood (which was awful and incredibly degrading, which shouldn't have surprised me but still did) in the immediate aftermath and as time went on. He talks about the town rebuilding and what happened to various people involved, and then how it was remembered--or denied.

Essentially, white people believed that Black people invaded their side of town and they had to defend themselves. Black people believed that a Black teenager was going to be lynched for assaulting a white woman--a white woman who pretty quickly denied that she was assaulted and said she wouldn't pretty charges--and so they went to where he was being held to prevent that from happening. In the time to come, both groups came to believe certain things, whether or not those were factual.

Hirsch spends a lot of the book going into the remembrance of the event, how people try to deny it, how it was discussed or not, how it was researched, how the threat of another one loomed over the residents of Tulsa, both Black and white, how it was commemorated. A commission was assembled in the 1990s to study it and make recommendations, including about reparations. He gets into what actually happened as well as he can.

I appreciated how even-handed he was. The horrors of the destruction of Greenwood aren't denied; he delves a lot into issues like whether the area was firebombed and whether there were mass graves of victims. (Having read this, I feel like planes definitely flew over the area but didn't bomb it; there were definitely more victims that the official tally, but I'm unsure about the mass graves.) He tells the stories of victims with respect and my heart absolutely broke for them, but he doesn't accept everything they say at face value. He does tell their story, sharing things, for example, like the idea that the massacre was planned by white city officials; my impression is more that these people took advantage of what was going on to destroy Greenwood, but they didn't plan it. Circumstances were definitely in their favor. He follows Don Ross, a Black journalist-turned-politician (who fought to get the Confederate flag off the capitol grounds) throughout the remembrance section. Ross is a fascinating figure and this from him really struck me:

When a white interviewer suggested that race relations had improved since the 1950s, [Ross] leaned forward and glared. "How in the hell can you tell me that?" he demanded. "You know, you talk about privilege and entitlement. The biggest entitlement white folks have is the entitlement of being white. Break that for me . . . I mean, it don't make sense to me, the white folks' attitude, that somehow I ought to be appreciative that you don't hate me as much. That's the progress. Once you would physically kill me, and I have evidence of that, and now you just choke me to death economically and politically and socially, and you want me to say that's progress from dying! 'Because you sonofabitch you, we coulda killed your black a**,' that's what you're telling me. But now we let you live, and I'm proud of that progress. White folks let me live. Until I get the same entitlement irrespective of skin color, f**k you . . . But I love you. (p. 228)

I feel like I learned a lot from this book, and as a history major, the discussion of how events are remembered, officially and unofficially, fascinated me. But ultimately, the book just broke my heart over and over again.

Recommend.

Looking back to King for a road ahead

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

I never know whether it's encouraging or depressing to read books about history and feel hit over the head again and again with parallels to what we're dealing with today.

This biography of Martin Luther King, Jr., is fantastic. Author Jonathan Eig does an amazing job truly bringing King to life. He never puts King up on a pedestal; his King is fully human and his more problematic traits--particularly his womanizing and his plagiarizing--are addressed throughout the book. (Also, and it comes up a lot, King was not tall. He was 5'7". People throughout the book are like, "He was shorter than I expected.")

Eig brings home that King never really planned what wound up being his career in civil rights; he wanted to preach, maybe go into academia. (I wonder how that would've affected his plagiarism?) He basically wound up caught up in events; he knew he wanted to preach in a Southern church, but it was luck or fate or what-have-you that brought him to a church in Montgomery, Alabama to be there for the bus boycott.

Reading the book, it also hit home how much King (and other leaders) were winging it. They'd try to create organizations but didn't really have much in the way of plans or goals or methodology. Decisions frequently were made spontaneously, which was understandably frustrating for many people involved. And King wound up walking a tightrope of the fight for civil rights while trying to leverage his relationship with the Kennedys/LBJ. He was blasted by other activists as not doing enough; he was blasted by many as being too radical. And there was no clear path for what he was trying to do.

His commitment to nonviolence was striking. He was attacked and literally kept his arms at his sides. Eig takes us on King's journey; his thoughts weren't always on nonviolence being the best path, but when he committed, he committed. His acceptance of his own death also made an impression. There was just so much violence all around him, from the violence during marches to bombs being thrown into people's home and churches to activists getting murdered, King knew his own murder was inevitable, particularly as the 1960s progressed. He was under so much stress, felt all the pressure of winning the Nobel Peace Prize and being Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the leader everyone looked to, agonized over the knowledge that the FBI was trying to plant stories in the media about his adultery and what that could mean for him (not to mention the FBI trying to get him to kill himself, good Lord, J. Edgar Hoover really was the worst). It all weighed on him as he took the civil rights battle to the north, where he discovered people were just as bad as in the South. Some people thought his job was done, with various civil rights bills signed into law, but he saw more and more how much needed to change. He became more radical in his thinking, speaking out against the Vietnam War, which Eig points out again and again was still fairly popular with the general population, and more people hated him and he felt he wasn't doing enough and he was tired. There was so much to do, and he knew he didn't have much time.

King's gift was in his words, both spoken and written. The story of "Letter From Birmingham Jail" was fascinating, but what impressed me about Eig's storytelling is how he managed to convey King's speeches and preaching via the written word. His descriptions of how King actually spoke was stellar. And I just wanted to go through and underline so much of what King said because it remains powerful and applicable. His words resonate today as they did 60 years ago.

This book is incredibly worth the read. Eig's narrative is engaging; it's a big book, but it goes quickly. And the acknowledgments and notes are also worth a look.

I'll end with how Eig ends his story:

Young people hear his dream of brotherhood and his wish for children to be judged by the content of their character, but not his call for fundamental change in the nation's character, not his cry for an end to the triple evils of materials, militarism, and racism.

...Where do we go from here? In spite of the way America treated him, King still had faith when he asked that question. Today, his words might help us make our way through these troubled times, but only if we actually read them; only if we embrace the complicated King, the flawed King, the human King, the radical King; only if we see and hear him clearly again, as America saw and heard him once before.

"Our very survival," he wrote, "depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change."

Amen. (pp. 556-557)

Netflix's show about President Garfield is Lightning in a bottle

I've spent the last 10 years recommending Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard to people, particularly when I'm volunteering at Ford's Theatre. Most people don't know anything about President James A. Garfield, much less about his assassin; before reading that book, I only really knew what I had learned from Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell and the musical Assassins. The book is fantastic; go read it.

So naturally I was VERY excited when I saw that Netflix was released a limited-run series based on it, titled Death by Lightning (from a letter written by Garfield, in which he noted that "Assassination can no more be guarded against than death by lightning"), and prayed that it would be better than Apple TV's Manhunt. Of course, being much less versed in Garfield assassination lore than in Lincoln, I knew I wouldn't be turning quite the same critical eye on it--particularly since it has been almost 10 years since I read the book.

Matthew Macfadyen (Charles Guiteau) and Michael Shannon (James Garfield). (Larry Horicks/Netflix)

I was struck that, like Manhunt, the tv adaptation told a pretty different story than the book did. There's maybe 40 minutes left in the series when Charles Guiteau shoots President Garfield, which seems like an odd choice, because one of the remarkable things about the Garfield assassination is how very long it took Garfield to die (more than 2 months). Another fascinating piece is the Guiteau trial, one of the first major trials where it looked like the insanity defense could come into play.

One of the biggest things I remember from Destiny is the involvement of Alexander Graham Bell--his history, his inventions, his motivation to try to help find the bullet lodged inside of the President. In Lightning, he's basically a cameo.

I do wish the show had spent more time after the shooting. But the story the show wanted to tell was, for some reason, the clash between Garfield and Roscoe Conkling. It makes some sense, in today's world, to want to tell the story of Garfield, who seems to have been an excellent person, fighting the political machine and winning. If there's a takeaway from this story, it's that the spoils system is bad. And especially right now, it's good that people (a) learn what the spoils system is and (b) learn that it's bad.

The show does a good job of weaving Guiteau through the story. We only get flashes of his life before 1880, but it's enough. Macfadyen's portrayal is pretty much exactly as I've picture Charles Guiteau--enthusiastic and off-putting and sometimes charming but a bit strange. It's truly a fantastic performance. The flashes of anger, of betrayal; his convictions; the way he writes his story in his head, it's all there. There are moments when you feel bad for him, but then he goes and does something and you're out.

Honestly, the entire cast is fantastic. There's a lot of great performances, including Michael Shannon as Garfield, Nick Offerman as Chester Arthur (and I feel like Arthur historians undoubtedly were yelling at their televisions throughout the show; I know virtually nothing about the man and still feel like liberties were clearly taken with his story), Bradley Whitford as James Blaine, Betty Gilpin as Lucretia Garfield. Like, yes, thank you, I do want to watch Josh Lyman and Ron Swanson go at it! And when Gilpin's Crete confronts Macfadyen's Guiteau while he's in jail...that scene was amazing. I'm sure it never happened, but I don't care. 

Do I wish the show reflected Millard's book better? Absolutely. Do I plan on recommending it to anyone and everyone, particularly when I'm volunteering at Ford's Theatre? Also yes. Seriously, go watch this show; it's only four episodes and is well worth your time. 

Lost in space (in a good way)

⭐⭐⭐⭐
 

What an enjoyable read! In Gemini: Stepping Stone to the Moon--The Untold Story, author Jeffrey Kluger, who co-wrote the book that the movie Apollo 13 is based on, details the middle child of the early U.S. space program. The Mercury missions were the firsts for the program, and Apollo missions went to the moon. Gemini made those moon missions possible.

Kluger writes in a chatty style, and the book itself is a breezy 300 pages. Naturally there's information about the Mercury program, but I enjoyed the amount of information about the formation of NASA and the decision about where to put manned spacecraft center (Houston). There's a lot about budgets and going to Congress for money and projects going over budget. And it really struck me how many vendors NASA worked/works with to build everything. A lot of my work is basically project management, and the thought of trying to wrangle all these companies on that kind of project is exhausting.

I've read a decent amount about the space program in the 1950s and 1960s and I still learned quite a bit. There were a number of people in the astronaut program whom I don't believe I'd ever heard of, and Kluger does a good job of giving the reader a feel for these men and their personalities in pretty brief snippets. Of particular note was Scott Carpenter sucking (he wasted a bunch of fuel in space when ground control was telling him not to) and Wally Schirra, in his last mission (admittedly it was one of the Apollo missions), also refusing orders from control; Schirra had flown in space three times and knew he wouldn't go again, but the men with him who also disregarded orders were thereafter grounded. (At least the orders they refused were things involving being on television and how to wear their spacesuits, not something that endangered the actual mission, like what Carpenter did.)

Kluger provides a really solid overview of the program. It really brought home what a long shot it was for NASA to get men on the moon in the time frame Kennedy wanted. There were 10 crewed Gemini missions, and 16 men went into space; they achieved rendezvous and docking and long-duration spaceflight and spacewalks. No man was lost, but dang, so very few of the missions actually went according to plan. Gemini achieved what it was supposed to--and, notably, there wasn't a single Soviet mission during the Gemini era--but it seems all the more remarkable when you learn the details of the program.

Definitely recommend for anyone interested in the early space program.

Thanks to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for the advance copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

Rankin is worth your time; I don't know that this book is

⭐⭐⭐ 

I had a tough time rating Winning the Earthquake: How Jeannette Rankin Defied All Odds to Become the First Woman in Congress. (And not just because very little of it is actually about her becoming the first woman in Congress, though one could argue that everything in her life to that point would be about that.) I had heard of Jeannette Rankin; I'm into American history so of course had heard of the woman in Congress who voted against joining both World War I and World War II. And I knew she was from Montana. But that's about all I knew.

For the first maybe quarter of this book, I was thinking that this might wind up being a 5-star review. I was fascinated to learn about Rankin's upbringing in Montana and her (and her family's) progressive views. She was born in a cabin in the wilderness; her father was one of the major contributors to Missoula's growth. I was amazed at the progressiveness of this woman born in Montana in 1880, and how living there in that time shaped her:

Decisions were made by conversation and consensus, and everyone's point of view was given weight. This culture grounded in and dependent upon participatory democracy profoundly shaped Jeannette's outlook on social change and the role of government (loc. 101)

and how it learning of a massacre of Nez Pearce by the U.S. Army in 1877 that led to Jeannette's lifelong pacifism; she later compared it to My Lai in Vietnam. As a child, she lobbied her father to give ranch hands better wages and working conditions. And when the copper kings started taking over Montana, she railed against the horrors in the Gilded Age, speaking out against child labor.

She grew up and started working for women's suffrage, and Jeannette would go to women in towns throughout the West, arguing that if women had the right to vote, it would help everyone: "women voters could blanket California in protections for workers, women, and children" (loc. 1078) and "Jeannette promised women would vote to empower unions, regulate corporations, and ensure that worker protections were codified into law" (loc. 1368). She worked tirelessly and I loved reading out this fight for women's votes. Women in Montana got the right to vote, and they promptly voted Jeannette into Congress. (At the time, Montana actually had two members in the House of Representatives, and the state wasn't divided into districts. Jeannette's enemies managed to get the state districted, and that was how she was voted out.)

Jeannette made it into Congress and the trouble started, because she was very much against entry into WWI, and many women's suffrage activists were...not exactly in favor, but didn't want Jeannette to vote against it because they thought it would hurt their cause.

As I continued reading the book, I found myself more and more annoyed with author Lorissa Rinehart, whose opinions shone through the book (in this case, making comments about the East Coast women's suffrage leaders). I assume Rinehart is from the western part of the country; her opinions about Easterners echo the opinions I heard when I moved from Connecticut to Montana in high school. The book became frustrating to read at times because the author could be so strident--and I agreed with her opinions! I'd be like, "I agree, but dang, tone it down a notch."

Particularly once the book gets into Jeannette's crusade against war, which is pretty much everything from her election on. And look, I am not in favor of war, and World War I was particularly dumb. But passages like the following (about the Lusitania) kind of just made me sigh:

Jeannette saw this tragedy not as a cause for war but as a reason to turn off the spigot of money and munitions that kept the war going. Such a measure would force Europe's evenly matched old kingdoms to reach an equitable peace without victory for either side. Many in and outside the government, including most in the suffrage movement, agreed with her at the time. Ironically, if the Wilson administration had followed this advice and ceased to intervene, this pan-European war may well have been the war to end all wars rather than the one that spawned more than a century of unprecedented global bloodshed. (loc. 1879)

I just don't think that's what would've happened if the United States hadn't entered the war. I mean, maybe? And there are also weird interjections about how the Constitutional amendment for women's suffrage was also being sacrificed ("she understood that any hope of an expanded idea of democracy in America was on the verge of being forgotten and erased altogether" [loc. 2384] and "the cause of women's rights ... would be razed in [the war's] path" [loc. 2404]) when she managed to get the votes farther than expected in Congress in 1917, I think, and the thing was passed in 1919.

The fallout from her vote against WWI was interesting, and I loved learning that she helped form the ACLU, but Rinehart doesn't really go into it much. The book focuses on her anti-war activities, with occasional sidebars like "To them [the other suffragists, I believe], despite all her success, she was persona non grata and would remain so for the rest of her life and much of history" (loc. 3077) and "Another anniversary of America's entrance into the war, another turn around the sun since Jeannette refused to be bent to the will of the powerful and was broken for the rigidity of her conscience" (loc. 3210). Rinehart also seems to credit Rankin's peace group for coming up with Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points, which seems...not right.

She does work for organizations in the anti-war movement, and we get comments like "where leadership tried to clip her wings with organizational protocol and boardroom bylaws" (loc. 3593) and I honestly had a hard time telling if Jeannette was like, "I do things my way, screw you all!" or whether her bosses were being too micromanage-y. It was frustrating because honestly, by this point in the book, I didn't totally feel like I could trust Rinehart's narration and interpretation. Rankin's strategies for getting support for suffrage in the West in the early 20th century were obviously effective, but that doesn't necessarily mean they translate well for other goals.

Jeannette winds up getting elected to Congress again, where she was famously the only vote against joining WWII and then was promptly voted out of office. (Rinehart does note that after voting against the war, Rankin did vote in favor of appropriations and such to ensure that the soldiers got what they needed.) And we get glimpses of how Rankin spent her life, but without much detail

She spent years advocating for women's right to vote, the ability of labor unions to organize, the end of child labor, and the expansion of democratic voting rights for all. But most ardently and most often, she had worked for peace, and it could be said that all of her other efforts had been in its pursuit. (loc. 4411)

Rankin spent a lot of time in later years in India, which was interesting enough, though Rinehart focuses on that without delving into other issues Rankin worked on. At one point Rinehart mentions Rankin's participation in the civil rights movement without saying literally anything about what that involvement looked like. She spoke out against the Vietnam War, but again, we see very little of what that looked like.

(I did become more interested in Edna, Jeannette's sister, who worked for women's reproductive rights, becoming instrumental in extending the network of Planned Parenthood. That's awesome! More on her!)

Ultimately, I came to admire Rankin (who also spoke out in favor of getting rid of the Electoral College! She had many good ideas!), though she seems like she may have been frustrating to actually deal with--though many people with big ideas are that way. I enjoyed learning about her but got really frustrated actually reading this book, and I can't tell how much of that was because of the author interjecting all over the place. Which was even more frustrating, because Rankin seems like someone I agree with.

Do I recommend this book? Oof. I don't know. I do recommend learning more about Jeannette Rankin. 

Many thanks to  St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for an advanced copy of the book. All views are mine. 

More war against Spiritualism, less...whatever the rest of that was

 

⭐⭐

Boy, this book has promise that it just absolutely does not live up to. I was vaguely aware of Harry Houdini's crusade against Spiritualism (a system of beliefs/maybe a religion that's based on being able to communicate with the dead in various ways) and his disagreements with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on the topic, so when Lincoln's Ghost: Houdini's War on Spiritualism and the Dark Conspiracy Against the American Presidency popped up, I was interested--particularly with the hook about Lincoln and the presidency.

I can tell you right off the bat that there's very very little about a "dark conspiracy against the American presidency" in this book. Author Brad Ricca uses a series of Congressional hearings about a Spiritualism-related bill, one in which Houdini seemingly played a large part, as a framing device for the book, and in those sections are snippets about various First Ladies and members of Congress attending seances--and even seances occurring in the White House itself. There are also some mentions of mediums perhaps foretelling the deaths of some Presidents. But...that's about it.

Mostly, the book bounces around in the 1910s and 1920s, focusing mostly on various ways Houdini went after Spiritualists. But sometimes it's about other people going after Spiritualists. And sometimes there's a long digression about whether John Wilkes Booth died at the Garrett farm in Virginia in April of 1865. (He did.) It is a very long digression and it's obviously right in my wheelhouse, but Ricca never actually connects it to Spiritualism, other than noting that Mary Todd Lincoln was into it. (Spiritualism. Not Booth surviving.) There is a recurring question about how much Abraham Lincoln was into Spiritualism, but it was hardly the driving story of the book.

Part of my problem is the way Ricca wrote the book. It's very much written like a novel, with dialogue that he couldn't possibly know and inclusions of what people were thinking and feeling at the time. It almost borders on historical fiction at times, with Ricca even noting at the end of the book that "This book is not meant to be a chronological transcript of history but a narrative built around it" and that he has "characterized certain scenes and even, in a few spots, dialogue that I have taken from other sources of the same speaker or imagined around facts" (loc. 4524).

I think I would've preferred just a chronological laying out of facts, particularly since he includes some things throughout the book that are confusing, until he explains them much later on. For example, there are excerpts of letters from Houdini to his wife, and one mentions his son becoming President. It's only at the end of the book that Ricca explains that the couple made up imaginary children and had them live imaginary lives.

This is partially so he can end with some, I guess, "gotchas" about Houdini and his wife, who may or may not have had a particularly medical disorder. Which isn't discussed until the Epilogue and is clearly something Ricca thinks should completely change how we view Houdini and has absolutely nothing to do with Spiritualism. (Or Lincoln. Or the presidency.)

There is a lot of jumping around in time, which has been annoying me in many books lately anyway and Ricca does not handle with any sort of aplomb. It's hard to remember when anything happens, particularly because there's a time jump between chapters and then there are random anecdotes with time jumps within chapters before we wind up back where we began. I couldn't tell you whether certain events happened before or after that Congressional hearing. And just so many names.

Ricca also winds up...I'm not going to say "alluding to," because that implies that he didn't spend a lot of time with these topics, which he did. He goes a bit into immigration, and anti-immigration sentiment in the late 1800s and early 1900s. He discusses the KKK a bit. There's a digression into one of the mediums being the president of an organization called the Patriotic Order of America, which did things like try to "end ballot manipulation" and "fight against 'discrimination' of white men" (loc. 3633). He implies that the man who gave Houdini that fateful punch did it because he was anti-Semitic, but I'm left wondering if that was actually the case. He spends a decent amount of time here, undoubtedly in response to, you know, *gestures at the world.* But it comes across awkwardly, even as I'm sympathetic to what he's saying.

Also, there were a handful of factual errors (no, Robert Todd Lincoln was not at Ford's Theatre with his father the night of the assassination [loc. 3526]) that I sure hope got changed before this book was published. But they're enough--along with Ricca's writing style, honestly, and note about imagining things--to kind of make me question other things in the book. And I hate to say that, as someone who has published books with an error (...or two) and gotten angry emails saying that now the reader can't believe anything in the book.

Honestly, if Ricca had taken his research and given a good (chronological!) history of the more well-known Spiritualists and how the religion worked (there's a chapter about a journalist infiltrating a Spiritualist camp that was particularly fascinating), with details about Houdini turning on it and how he crusaded against it--his reward for anyone who had a reading he couldn't prove was a trick, his showing up at Spiritualist events, even, yes, the proposed bill in Congress--I would've loved it. It doesn't make a book more interesting to mess around with timelines, and authors, you can't include all of your research, because research is full of digressions that aren't germane to your thesis.

I honestly can't really recommend it, though there are very interesting stories within.

Many thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the advance reader copy. 

A gripping, heart-wrenching, little known story that needs to be told

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 

Not much kept this from being a 5-star review.

In The Zorg: A Tale of Greed and Murder That Inspired the Abolition of Slavery, Siddharth Kara explores the Zorg, a ship that transported slaves across the Atlantic around the time of the American Revolution. On one fateful journey in 1781, a number of factors came together that led to the massacre of more than a hundred enslaved people. The story was horrifying enough to make it a rallying cry in England that helped lead to the end of the slave trade and, indeed, the end of slavery in the UK. And it came to prominence because of an insurance claim.

I learned so much from this book, especially about the slave trade, from when Africans were captured through their journeys to the coast, their stays at the coast, the trips across the ocean, and auctions upon arriving at their destinations, and how abolition happened in the UK. But there's a LOT more in there. You're reading along and suddenly you get to something like "By the time independence was won, nearly half of all munitions used by the Americans had shipped through Sint Eustatius, and about half of all American communications with allies in Europe also passed through the island" (loc. 566). I had never even heard of Sint Eustasius! The British currency "guinea" comes from the slave trade, which makes SO much sense if you think about it. And while I was familiar with a lot of the abolitionist writings (largely thanks to having written my undergrad thesis on the effect of abolitionist writings on the Constitution and yes, thank you, Kara did name authors I recognized and was like "I read that pamphlet!"), the ramifications of the American Revolution on the slave trade were all new as well.

So why did I knock it down? The way Kara told the story didn't quite work for me. There was a lot of jumping among characters--and there were a lot of characters, which made sense, but it was sometimes hard to remember who was who and their place in the story. He also tended to fall back on "This decision would have disastrous consequences down the line" or "Who knows how things may have happened differently had this not happened" and the like, which I hate. This story doesn't particularly need foreshadowing.

That said, it was shocking the number of things that had to have happened in a certain way to allow for this atrocity to have happened, and Kara's research shines as he details it. He manages to balance the story of what happened and why without losing sight of the fact that the slaves who died were people. The book is a hard read, but Kara manages to find a balance; he writes about many egregiously awful details in a fairly straightforward way, but you can feel his horror at everything he learned. Is he at times clearly judgmental of people in this? He is, and who can blame him? If anyone deserves harsh judgment, it's these men profiting off the slave trade.

His utter contempt for Robert Stubbs, a former slave ship captain and former governor of a British African fortification, is both unmistakable and warranted. This man brought his 12-year-old son with him to Africa and then kind of just...left him there. Kara has many Thoughts about Stubbs and you don't have to wonder why. (Sample: "Robert Stubbs--a 'scoundrel' who brought his twelve-year-old son to Africa and abandoned him there, who used his position as governor at Anomabu to deal in slaves for personal profit, and who was 'wicked enough to say what he cannot justify.'" [loc. 3204])

The last third or so of the book is focused on how the horrors of the Zorg came into the public consciousness, the building of the abolitionist movement, and how progress was won in Parliament. The various trials include some details that Kara left out earlier in the book, probably for shock value when they come up in the trial, and let me tell you, it works. I gasped out loud, the way I have no doubt the spectators did. But I also found it reassuring, how progress can build and coincidences can bring people together. And also how people can change.

(Not Stubbs. Stubbs doesn't change.)

It's a hard book to read, but it's definitely worth your time.

Thanks to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for the free advance copy in exchange for my honest opinion.  

At least they didn't get the Fabulous Baseball Diamond

We're all kind of obsessed with the Louvre heist, right? I mean, sure, it's probably because we collectively need something to distract us. I was going to say "something fun," but "fun" probably isn't the right word. It's bad that the people of France have lost their crown jewels! That's not OK! (And if you want a good visualization of what happened, the BBC has you covered.)

But honestly, ever detail about this heist is amazing. Which has led to some amazing memes, and honestly what more can we ask for?  

The fact that the Louvre heist didn’t take place at dawn, but at the very reasonable hour of 9:30 a.m. shows that even French jewel thieves have a better work-life balance than us.

— Leslie Gaar (@thelesliegaar.bsky.social) October 19, 2025 at 7:09 PM

hang this in the louvre (there's room now)

— derek guy (@dieworkwear.bsky.social) October 19, 2025 at 10:57 PM

I spend a year plotting a mystery novel and then this happens.

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— Maureen Johnson (@maureenjohnsonbooks.com) October 19, 2025 at 9:56 PM

This photo accompanying a news story about the heist at the Louvre is perfection.

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— Carrie Tait (@carrietait.bsky.social) October 19, 2025 at 5:56 PM

And, of course, I'd be remiss in neglecting to mention the other prominent jewel heist of a European museum. 

I think part of it, too, is that it's the French crown jewels. Had you asked me a week ago whether France even had crown jewels, I would've assumed no. I can't believe they made it through the Revolution! And I feel like people don't talk about them the way they talk about the British crown jewels...probably because the Brits still have a monarchy, so the jewels make appearances somewhat regularly.

I will say, having been to the Louvre and the Hermitage and other palaces in Russia, the level of monarchical ostentation in France and Russia is beyond anything I've seen at palaces in the UK. Going to the Peterhof, you look around and are like, "Yes. I can see why people revolted." It all fascinates me, but at the same time, I think that's part of the reason I can't be too upset. Though the thought of the individual pieces being broken up is sad; they truly are works of art.

Ford's Theatre's trip to the March on Washington is more than worth your time

The American Five culminates with images and videos of the March on Washington in August of 1963. The 2+ hours leading up to that moment are captivating.

The play, making its premiere after being done as a reading in Ford's Theatre's 2024 First Look festival of new plays, is the story of what led up to Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. (The words "I have a dream" aren't uttered in the play; those words were ad libbed on the day.) We see Martin (Ro Boddie) and Coretta Scott King (Renea S. Brown) early in their relationship (the reaction to Martin's line “I can see you speaking for me when I can’t speak for myself…” was strong); we see Bayard Rustin (Stephen Conrad Moore) preach to Martin about nonviolence; we see Martin rise in prominence and become friends with Stanley Levison (Aaron Bliden) and Clarence B. Jones (Yao Dogbe) and have them join his inner circle. We see Martin in the Birmingham jail and the idea for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom form.

The brilliance of the play is that while it revolves around Martin, we get to spend time with the other characters and see how they deal with each other, without Martin, and who they are. There's a reason the play is titled The American Five and doesn't mention Martin Luther King, Jr. The relationship between Stanley (who frequently points out that he's not white, he's Jewish!) and Clarence was particularly fascinating, particularly toward the end of the play as they hash out what the focus of Martin's speech should be.

The cast of The American Five at Ford's Theatre. Photo by Scott Suchman.

 

Another notable scene that's gotten a lot of mentions in reviews is one between Martin and Coretta. Martin has just met with President Kennedy and is trying to cope with that pressure, plus knowing that this huge march is coming up, plus all of his other obligations as a leader and a minister. Coretta stands up for herself as the one who does the work so he can do the work. It really lands in a way that it probably wouldn't have in 1963, when the scene is set. There's another part later in the show that touches on intersectionality--Coretta being a woman, Stanley being Jewish, and Bayard being gay.

I love that the play doesn't shy away from showing Martin Luther King, Jr., as a person with flaws. Yes, it acknowledges his affairs in a scene where you both profoundly empathize with him even as you roll your eyes at his excuses. The weight of his knowledge of his own place in history clearly hangs heavy on his shoulders.

And let me tell you, the acting in this show is phenomenal, all five of them. I've seen all of them except Moore in other shows; this is my second time seeing Boddie as King--the other being in The Mountaintop, which he starred in with Brown. I also saw Boddie and Dogbe in Topdog/Underdog, which, woof. They blew me away in that, too; such a powerful show that I am still gutted by. Boddie continues to be a fantastic King; I obviously never got a chance to see King speak myself, but seeing Boddie play him feels like the next best thing. Listening to him, you can understand why people were drawn to him, and it made me want to pull up and read more of King's speeches and writings. 

Honestly, they were all amazing. Brown absolutely owns the stage as Coretta and her chemistry with Boddie is strong. Moore disappears into Bayard Rustin; the pain of his life as a gay Black man in mid-century American shines through even as he jokes around and spurs Martin on. The cast clicks completely; I could've watched them for a much longer show.

It's depressing how much of this show still hits home today. A fantastic debut from playwright Chess Jakobs; here's hoping it has a strong life in theaters across the country.