Book Review: American Lightning: Terror, Mystery, the Birth of Hollywood, and the Crime of the Century

Next to my grandmother's grave at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery is a large monument dedicated to the employees who were killed during the 1910 Los Angeles Times bombing. As a child, I enjoyed looking at the massive stone memorial as I visited the gorgeous cemetery with my grandmother. I also remember her theories about what happened that day. So when I saw American Lightning in the bookstore, I was eager to read the novel.

I really enjoyed the first half of the novel where the story not only centered on the facts of the bombing, but on the labor-versus-capital movements at the time, the rise of Hollywood and the rise of Los Angeles.

The different theories about who committed the bombing at the beginning got me excited, but I felt let down when the author suddenly had Billy Burns latch onto one of many theories without investigating the others-even the most popular and controversial that my grandmother believed.

Still, it is a well-paced book with many interesting facets. I'm not sure how D.W. Griffith and Mary Pickford fit in with the crime of the century, but since I enjoy their movies I also enjoyed everything he included about their rise in the motion picture industry.

Aside from some of Darrow's personal side stories getting a little long, and Burns painted in a very favorable light even when he was knowingly breaking the law, I enjoyed Howard Blum's recreation of a turbelent time in Los Angeles' short history and the crime of the century.

Book Review: Empire of the Blue Water

This was the first book on CD I ever listened to and was thoroughly impressed. Stephan Talty's novel was not only about Captain Morgan, but about Port Royal and the British and Spanish unofficial pirate war for the Carribbean.

I really appreciated the fact that while Talty told many side stories to the conflict, they were brief and almost always were related Morgan and his campaigns. This is important in a book on CD as it's harder to skim pages in audio.

I will say however, Talty did treat Morgan with a very favoralble light. While other pirates were depicted as cruel or ruthless, Morgan's actions were almost always justified and any potential atrocities committed by Morgan's men (never Morgan) seemed to be glossed over. John Mayer's reading with a British accent and changes in cadence kept the book humming along.

I really enjoyed the novel as I drove to and from work.

Book Review: Lonesome Dove

One day, I was at a PTA fundraiser and saw an old grimy VCR tape of Lonesome Dove. Seeing the pictures of Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones, I was flooded with warm childhood memories of watching the mini-series with my parents.

To my surprise, I read that it was based on a Pulitzer Prize winning novel. So I found a copy of the hefty tome, cracked it open and was immediately swept away by the language and characters that McMurty created. Here’s the opening paragraph:

“When Augustus came out on the porch the blue pigs were eating a rattlesnake — not a very big one. It had probably just been crawling around looking for shade when it ran into the pigs. They were having a fine tug-of-war with it, and its rattling days were over. The sow had it by the neck, and the shoat had the tail.”

Talk about putting an image in one’s head. Throughout the novel, the reader is transported from one great scene to another. Even though there is no serious conflict or identifiable antagonist in the first 150 pages of the novel, McMurty’s seamless transition between multiple perspectives and unique back stories kept me going. I read a review that called the beginning sluggish. I understand that point of view. However, just when I started to wonder what's the plot, the impact of the start of the cattle drive on everyone's lives hit home and I never questioned motives or plot again.

I also enjoyed the way in which McMurty used the river crossings on the way to Montana from Texas as markers of major events in the book. It also gave me the opportunity to pull out a map and follow the cattle drive northwards.

I will say however, that anyone planning on reading Lonesome Dove should be prepared that life on McMurty’s plains, while fascinating, can be brutal.

My principal criticism, Newt cries too damn much.