The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Recipes from an Accidental Country Girl

This may be a first for the Nonfiction Book Club blog, but I’m throwing caution to the compost—and perhaps tossing humiliation into the cinnamon buns—but I’m doing it. I’m reviewing a cookbook.

Now, in my opinion, this particular book is no ordinary cookbook. You know there are books out there masquerading as cookbooks but really are not. They’re often a forum for a writer to go beyond the cooking experience; to experiment and surmise about wider issues. Authors like Michael Pollan, Jen Lin-Liu and Julie Powell are ones that come to mind, who have looked at the social implications of food, social history and the psychology of cooking.

Alright, this book doesn’t fit into those categories, either.  What I like about this book is that it makes me laugh. And it makes me want to eat. And bake and cook. All of those things I often like to do, but this one also makes me want to invite author Ree Drummond over to hang out at the same time.

Drummond is a very funny albeit humble writer. Her book catches you charmingly off-guard right from the get-go, with her descriptions of favourite ingredients and cooking apparatuses:

“Butter. I’m not afraid to use it. It’s flavourful, versatile and a necessary component in most of my recipes.”

“Iron Skillet. If properly seasoned an iron skillet will become not only your best friend in the kitchen but also your uncle, cousin, grandmother and brother. Iron skillets get nice and hot, perfect for searing a juicy rib-eye steak.”

“Commercial baking sheets. My family considered an intervention this year because I collect these 18 X 12-inch babies the way some women collect Marie Osmond dolls. They’re the perfect size for my Chocolate Sheet Cake and hold more cookies than your average cookie sheet.”

You want to just keep reading, which is a wonderful twist on a “collection of recipes, instructions and information about the preparation and serving of foods.” (Definition from www.dictionary.reference.com ) Most cookbooks are an essential reference book, used only when you need it and only for particular items of interest: I need to find how many cups of sugar to put into strawberry freezer jam; how do I know when the cream sauce is beyond hope; how do I tell when the brownie is done? How many cookbooks have you read that you just want to keep reading for pure enjoyment?

It isn’t just the entertaining writing style that makes you want to turn the pages. Drummond photographs each step of the cooking process, so it is visually wonderful, too. Many of these step-by-steps are punctuated by groupings of witticisms that could only have been inspired by an accompanying glass of wine:

“2. Place the hot potatoes on a cutting board and dice them into 1-inch-ish pieces. Inch-ish. Say that five times fast. Just for kicks. My goal in life is to tack ‘ish’ onto as many words as possible. Possible-ish.

3. Heat a skillet over medium low to medium heat. Next put a little vegetable oil in the pan. A tablespoon is good.

4. Scrape the pan you used this morning to make bacon. You made all the bacon this morning… right?

5. Then, because I usually straddle the fence between ridiculousness and utter foolishness, I add a tablespoon of bacon fat to the skillet. ‘Cause it tastes good, that’s why.

6. Go ahead and make peace with yourself then add the onion.”

But it was her preamble on the cinnamon buns—sorry; rolls--that killed me:

“If you begin making these for your friends and family for the holidays, I promise you this: you’ll become famous. And, on a less positive note, people will forget everything else you’ve ever accomplished in your life. From that moment on, you’ll be known—and loved—only for your cinnamon rolls. But don’t worry! You’ll get used to it.”

With the pressure of doom upon you, how could you not want to try making them, let alone eating them? Better yet, find some unwitting baker-friend to make them, so you escape the fate but you enjoy the food! 

Find this book in the Mississauga Library System catalogue

Kitty Genovese: The Murder, the Bystanders, the Crime That Changed America

I have long known about the story of Kitty Genovese, who was murdered on the streets of Queens in New York City in 1964 while 38 people watched and did nothing. The story, when I first heard it, shocked me. I thought about it for days afterward, and could only wonder what riveted three dozen people to their windows without so much as picking up the phone to call the police. Over the years I read more about the murder, yet trickles of information seeped into the story that told me that the reality was tainted by sensational urban mythmaking. On the fiftieth anniversary of Genovese's death, Kevin Cook published Kitty Genovese: The Murder, the Bystanders, the Crime That Changed America. Cook retold the story marking Genovese's last minutes. The most shocking aspect of her story will always be the number of people who were said to have witnessed her murder: 38. Cook found the sources that first revealed the number of "38" witnesses and he spoke to those who, half a century later, were there on that early March night at 3 a.m.

Cook described New York life in the early sixties and set the scene for the brutal crime that would fall upon its streets. I felt that Cook went overboard in providing the historical context, as sometimes there would be pages devoted to the music scene, such as the folkies versus Bob Dylan. In spite of this, Kitty Genovese was a rapid read, as Cook delineated the final actions of Genovese as well as those of her killer. The reader followed Genovese home after her late shift tending bar. We knew what was about to happen--a savage stabbing of a young woman, followed by a second attempt after the first stabbing didn't kill her--and then we waited for nothing to happen in response:

"After going viral, 1960s-style, through newspapers, magazines, television and radio editorials, Sunday sermons, dinner-party conversations, schoolyard rumors, and back-fence gossip, the Kitty Genovese story prompted months of local and then national soul-searching. Over the years the story became a fixture in thousands of high school and college psychology classes despite the fact that the version of it taught in those classes, the version almost everyone accepts, isn't true. Maybe that view of the crime endures because it isn't true, because it boils a complex, troubling story down to a single simple question: How could all those people watch what happened to her, and do nothing?"

Fifty years ago, the truth obscured the facts from coming out. The murder was so shocking yet the reaction of the witnesses--their non-reaction--occupied the news media. How could the media resist such a story about witness apathy 38 times over? What was going on in the witnesses' minds to stand there and do nothing? The truth didn't matter when the witnesses were the story. The press descended onto the area where Genovese was killed, asking the residents if they had been witnesses. Residents were interrogated and harassed, and some moved out because they felt like criminals by the press as well as by onlookers who came to gawk. Decades would pass before the truth came out about the actual number of witnesses and their calls to police. Genovese did not die while a roomful of bystanders watched:

"Wainwright [a columnist for Life magazine] portrayed Kitty as dying in full view of more than three-dozen neighbors who watched like a crowd in an auditorium. In his column the number of witnesses the Times' Gansberg got from Commissioner Murphy returns as exactly 'thirty-eight heedless witnesses.'"

Yet where did this magic number of 38 come from? Cited so often, but from what original source?

"Within days of starting work on the case, the prosecution team had doubts about the now-famous number thirty-eight. Thirty-eight was the number of people the police considered witnesses in the days following the crime. It was the number Commissioner Murphy cited over lunch at Emil's, the number that shocked editor Rosenthal, Times readers, and the world. Martin Gansberg had followed up on the work Murphy's detectives did, but neither Gansberg nor anyone else spent time ferreting out the source of the official number. The number thirty-eight came from the police; that was enough. Nobody identified the thirty-eight witnesses or counted the witnesses in the detectives' reports."

The number of 38 most certainly did not refer to people who stood by their windows watching Genovese die, as Wainwright wrote. That is the myth that will not go away. Yet there were witnesses, weren't there? How many? Cook's investigation found out that among all the 38 people who were reported to have seen the stabbing, only two had actually witnessed it. Two. Many more heard Genovese's screams. Yet at three-thirty in the morning, these were people who had been roused from sleep to the point of awakening. In their groggy state they had heard something, yet they could hardly be called witnesses as Wainwright reported. Most were earwitnesses roused from sleep, versus those who had already been awake and had heard screaming. Those that did get up to look out their windows saw nothing, as the first stabbing had already ceased, and the killer had fled (only to return later) and Genovese had by then staggered around the corner, away from street view. It was not unreasonable for these earwitnesses to dismiss the murky sounds that roused them from their sleep, which upon further investigation from their windows yielded nothing that could have been their source. It would not be surprising if most of these witnesses went back to bed. When Genovese was attacked a second time, it was within an apartment vestibule, away from the open street. Cook devotes chapters to debunking the 38-witnesses myth, and by interviewing those who did hear the screams and asking what they had thought at the time.

The two witnesses who saw the attacks take place did not take direct action towards the assailant. One simply went back to sleep, and the other, who witnessed the second stabbing in his vestibule when he opened his front door a crack, panicked and crawled out his window to take cover with a neighbour. The second witness, or rather his neighbour, did call the police, as did another who had heard the screaming. So the myth that 38 people witnessed the murder yet none of them called the police is not true, as Cook uncovered police records that showed when both telephone calls were logged, and acted upon.

The state of urban sociology would not have evolved--if such a concept was even in existence fifty years ago at all--if this murder hadn't occurred. If there was one watershed moment in urban sociology, or even in social psychology, the Genovese murder was it. Sociologists Bibb Latané and John Darley, in response to Genovese's murder, wrote The Unresponsive Bystander in 1968:

"According to The Unresponsive Bystander, 'The number of people who stand and watch is what shocks us; it also may be the key to their behavior.' While the number of witnesses 'determines to a very important degree what they will do, it does so in a way opposite to what is usually assumed. The presence of others serves to inhibit the impulse to help.' Rather than strength in numbers, weakness."

and:

"Their work suggested a social dynamic that may have worked against Kitty on her final night. Diffusion of responsibility, they called it--a phenomenon that distributed guilt like a firing squad in reverse. If one person sees trouble, 'he will feel all the guilt for not acting. If others are present, responsibility is diffused, and the finger of blame points less directly at any one person.'"

and:

"The Unresponsive Bystander suggested that the tragedy of the Genovese case wasn't that dozens of people witnessed Moseley's attack on Kitty, but that more than one or two did. If the psychologists were right, most of us can summon the courage to act if there is no one else who could do so, but not when there are others who might take action. If somebody else is in a position to help--someone who might be stronger, braver, or more level-headed--we want him or her to go first. Even if we only think or hope others might help, we expect them to go first."

Fifty years have passed since Genovese's murder yet Kitty has never been forgotten. She was never yesterday's news. Her death led to the development of Good Samaritan laws throughout the United States and a rethink of crowd dynamics in urban sociology. I am troubled by the points raised by Latané and Darley about crowd apathy, and know that over the past half century history has repeated itself on the late-night streets of Anytown.

Find this book in the Mississauga Library System's on-line catalogue

Tulipomania: The Story of the World's Most Coveted Flower and the Extraordinary Passions it Aroused

Tulipomania: The Story of the World's Most Coveted Flower and the Extraordinary Passions it Aroused by Mike Dash chronicles the hysterical reaction tulips aroused in the Netherlands in the early seventeenth century. It is not an exaggeration to say that tulip bulbs at this time were worth far more than their weight in gold. How could a country be so captivated by this flower? Who in his right mind would pay so much for a single bulb?

There is such a strong association with tulips and the Netherlands that it surprised me to find out that the flower was not originally from there. The Dutch may be the most famous for their luxuriant flowerbeds and for sending their tulips all over the world, including to our nation's capital, yet the tulip wasn't introduced in the lowlands of northern Europe until the mid-1500's. The flower originated in Turkey, and when it arrived in the Netherlands, it created a sensation. The tulip was unlike any other flower the Dutch had seen, and was in demand by all those rich enough to maintain a flower garden. Tulipomania sprung forth by the ceaseless demand for these rare bulbs:

"Nevertheless, the number of bulbs available at the turn of the century remained somewhat limited. Most of the new varieties had so far produced only a handful of tulips, and largely for this reason, the flower remained the passion of the privileged few. It was grown principally by rich connoisseurs, who valued it for its beauty and the intensity of its colors."

and:

"The flower was still comparatively rare, and some of the most highly sought-after varieties were hard to obtain at any price. Only in the coming decade would this scarcity be properly addressed."

and:

"The scarcity of tulips in seventeenth-century Holland is central to a proper understanding of the bulb craze. To a Dutchman of the Golden Age, the tulip was not a mundane and readily available flower. It was a brilliant newcomer, still bearing something of the allure of the exotic East and obtainable only in strictly limited quantities. Because the most superbly fine varieties were scarce, they were coveted; because they were coveted, they were expensive."

Once Dutchmen realized the going price for star bulbs, they wanted a piece of the pie. Many sold the equipment of their livelihood--farmland, cattle, looms--to get into the flower trade:

"In greater measure, though, the interest that many Dutchmen now developed in the flower trade owed less to the tulip's natural beauty than to the dawning realization that money could be made in bulbs. That was something worth investigating. For money, despite the enormous wealth now flowing into the republic, was something many of its citizens saw all too little of."

The craze however was not as widespread as myth has made it out to be, as Dash pointed out that only tulip connoisseurs, or those whose wealth could afford the bulbs regardless of their price, actually paid thousands and thousands of guilders per bulb. It was a case of keeping up with the Dutch Joneses and instead of comparing cars or swimming pools, the rich Dutch looked into each other's gardens. If my neighbour had a Semper Augustus variety, I wanted it too. Yet no amount of money could pay for bulbs that simply weren't there. One can't fertilize a garden with gold nuggets. So bulb dealers practised an early form of speculation and futures trading. They would sell the bulbs before they had even sprouted yet, and the bulb and future offsets as well. It got to the point where one couldn't really be sure who owned what part of the tulip plant since dealers were selling multigenerations of bulbs and offsets. All the dealers cared about was selling off the tulip, the bulb or the offset as fast as possible, raking in the money and doing it all over again.

The most prized variety, the pièce de résistance of all tulips, was the Semper Augustus. Yet demand had grown so high for tulips that for the common Dutchman, any variety would do:

"Prices had reached such high levels that the most desirable bulbs became all but unobtainable, and less fancied varieties appreciated to the point where they cost far more than they were worth to any real flower lover."

Dealers had a slow but growing sense that rocketing prices for substandard tulips was not a normal economic situation, and that a crash was imminent. Dash conveyed that the collapse of the tulip trade was not as unexpected as myth has suggested. The extent of the economic collapse was also not as widespread nor as devastating as the Great Depression, for the simple reason that the number of tulip buyers was still so few. The common Dutchman could not afford tulips no matter what price the cheapest barrel variety was going for. Furthermore, only the very rich could afford the most expensive tulips, and no one, regardless how rich, had sunk his entire fortune into this single floral commodity. Tulipomania has the makings of great mythmaking, but no Dutchman jumped off the top of a windmill because he lost his entire fortune in bulbs.

Tulipomania was a rapid read, yet Dash was repetitious in some sentences, using the same word unnecessarily, such as:

"...and within a few weeks a few of the growers..."

where a synonym for "few" would have sufficed.

Gold, oil, diamonds...who would have ever expected that tulip bulbs could rival these prime commodities and create a trading frenzy? Tulip bulbs at one time were indeed worth more than their weight in gold.

Find this book in the Mississauga Library System's on-line catalogue

The Juggler's Children: A Journey into Family, Legend and the Genes that Bind Us

Unlike most people I know, I have little or no interest in my family's genealogy. I know the general outlines of my family background - where some of my forebears hailed from, and where they settled and what work they did when they emigrated to North America - and that's enough for me. Despite this, I very much enjoyed The Juggler's Children: A Journey into Family, Legend and the Genes that Bind Us by Carolyn Abraham. If you have a keen interest in family-history searches, you will want to read this book.

The Juggler's Children is part travelogue, part quest, and part science lesson, and Abraham is masterful at all three. The travel descriptions - to both India and Jamaica - sparkle, and the search is laced with suspense. But Abraham is a Canadian science writer, and that's the area where she most flourishes. Abraham explains complex concepts of genetics with clear images and metaphors that render them understandable to the non-scientist.

Abraham's search for her family's past coincides with the emerging science of using DNA samples in service of genealogy. Through cells gathered from a person's inner cheek, DNA tests are able to determine, within a degree of a certainty, that that person's ancestry is (for example) 25% Western European, 35% sub-Saharan African, 30% South Asian, and 10% Aboriginal North American. Each of those percentages can be further broken down, and the accuracy and certainty of these categories further enhanced, as more DNA samples are entered into more databases. The Juggler's Children unpacks the many implications of this testing - ethical, social, familial, questions of both personal and group identity.

Abraham's personal quest hinges on two men: her great-grandfathers, who she dubs The Juggler and The Captain, names as evocative and enigmatic as the scraps of information her family possess about them. The Juggler, the paternal great-grandfather, was a circus performer from China, who traveled - or perhaps fled - to India, converted to Christianity, and took an Old Testament last name. Then he vanished. Was his disappearance an altruistic act, as a recently widowed man could not care for his own children, and they were best raised by relatives? Or was there a darker, less charitable interpretation of his sudden absence from the record?

The Captain, a maternal great-grandfather, was a storied seafarer from Jamaica, who died in India. That makes at least two points where the family history intersects with India, although Abraham's relatives insist that there are no Indians in her family. Was The Captain a runaway slave... or was he a slaveowner?

As Abraham's search continues, it becomes increasingly clear that no matter how we identify ourselves - no matter what cultural and ethnic groups we belong to - we are more diverse - more mixed - than we think. And if you go back far enough, we humans are all related.

Many years ago, I read a book called Origins Reconsidered by Richard Leakey, son of the world's most famous paleontologists, Mary and Louis Leakey. I found reading about the first humans surprisingly moving, as I contemplated the fact that they were the ancestors of every human. In other words, all humans share a common ancestry. I found The Juggler's Children fascinating in the same way. For readers with an interest in genealogy - especially with roots in India, China, or Jamaica - this is a must-read. (This review was originally published on wmtc.)

Find this book in the Mississauga Library System's online catalogue.

Creativity, Inc. : Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration

Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull
(with Amy Wallace)

Most movie-goers will be familiar with the wide range of award winning computer-animated movies produced by Pixar (beginning with Toy Story in 1995 through to Monster University in 2013), and they might know some of their principal directors and recurring voice actors.  They may also have come across the name of John Lasseter (Pixar's Creative Officer), and some of the other players in Pixar's history - Steve Jobs, various folks at Disney, etc.  Outside of the film world though, one might only have ever seen Pixar President Ed Catmull at the Oscar ceremonies picking up Pixar's many awards.

Aside from being a pioneering computer scientist, Ed Catmull was also thrown into various leadership positions throughout his career along his route to realizing his dream of creating computer animated movies.  This book could easily be picked up as an insider's guide to the inner workings of Pixar, and many important players of the entertainment world (George Lucas, Michael Eisner, and Steve Jobs to name-drop a few).  It could also be picked up as an entertaining biography of one of Pixar's principal founders.

And while this book is indeed all those things, it's primary role is to be a book about business leadership.  Once his initial dream was realized upon the release and success of Toy Story, Catmull found himself in the position of figuring out what his next challenge should be.  He determined that it would be to figure out how to maintain and grow his fledgling company, and to ensure that it remain flexible, creative, and focused on excellence.

He writes very clearly using many concrete examples from Pixar's organizational history, providing insight into the following challenges a creative organization can face.  Many problems revolve around the development of organizational culture in order to foster an environment of openness and honesty with the ability to speak candidly regardless of position within the company.  Employees at every level have different insights into the way things work, and suggestions for improvement.  They should be able to speak without fear of reprisal.  The creative organization should also be able to respond to change and deal with random events in the environment, and be structurally resilient to adapt and grow in the face of these changes.  Catmull outlines how all of these issues have been addressed (in ongoing processes) at Pixar.

I think that many of the lessons from the book can be applied in any workplace (not just entertainment companies), and Catmull deliberately keeps the definition of "creativity" very vague such that his ideas would resonate in any context.  The only big blind spot that is never addressed - probably because in his world the answer is obvious - he assumes that any given organization is staffed by highly motivated people who are committed to excellence - they just run into problems sometimes.  In order to fix these problems, Catmull needs the workers to be engaged with their workplace and be sincere in their desire to improve their working environment.  And maybe in his world anyone just punching the clock and doing the bare minimum would be fired straight away, but sadly not all workplaces are like that.  Catmull addresses many things to improve performance and workplace engagement, but nothing about how to get a mediocre worker to become engaged and become interested in taking on new challenges.

Discussion Questions

1. How does Creativity, Inc. strike a balance between being a Hollywood expose, a biography, and a business manual?  Given the intent to be a business management book, how does it succeed?
2. "Unleashing creativity requires that we loosen the controls, accept risk, trust our colleagues, work to clear the path for them, and pay attention to anything that creates fear.  Doing all these things won't necessarily make the job of managing a creative culture easier.  But ease isn't the goal; excellence is."  This one quotation pretty much sums up the whole book.  Does Catmull hit the nail on the head here?
3. Do you think the management advice offered here is applicable in any of the workplaces you have experienced?
4. Many anecdotes in the book revolve around Pixar's Braintrust.  What do you think of this type of committee, and could other organizations use one?
5. If you are not a manager or supervisor, is this book still worth reading?  What would the non-manager gain by reading it?
6. What is creativity?  How is the term used?
7. Have you seen any of the movies referenced by Catmull?  Does your view of them change after reading this book?
8. How important is prior knowledge of Pixar and its movies to the reading of Creativity, Inc.?
9. Would you want to work for Ed Catmull or Pixar?
10. What is the most significant thing you learned from this book?

Find this book in the Mississauga Library System's online catalogue

Carsick: John Waters Hitchhikes Across America

In 2012 John Waters hitchhiked from his home in Baltimore to his apartment in San Francisco. He wrote about his experiences thumbin' rides across the USA in Carsick: John Waters Hitchhikes Across America. I am a huge fan of Waters and have read three of his other books, including Role Models. With Carsick I was prepared for a hilarious few days at work where I always read during my lunch and dinner hours. My colleagues no doubt would have to deal with me trying in vain to keep my food in my mouth for all the laughing I was in for. Carsick was divided into three parts; the first two parts however had nothing to do with Waters's actual hitchhiking adventure. Waters spent two thirds of his book writing at first fantasy dream hitchhiking tales, where he got picked up by hunky truck drivers and finding the man of his dreams. The second part of the book was devoted to fictional disastrous hitchhiking experiences. Unfortunately, none of these stories were very funny. With Waters, he doesn't need to make things up to get laughs; his gift is in the way he chronicles reality as he sees it. The more I read the fictional hitchhiking stories the more I wondered if he really had enough true adventures to fill a whole book. Were the fantasy and disaster stories all an afterthought? Was hitchhiking across the country less adventurous (or easier) than he had thought, and the fictional best and worst that could happen only literary padding? When I look at the notes I took, I hardly wrote a thing until after page 192, when the section entitled "The Real Thing" began, which shows that I didn't find the fiction all that interesting.

Waters has a wicked gift for description, and he can complete an entire picture with only a few words. I can't control my laughter at his degree of perception. For example, when he is forced to stand on the side of the road holding out his cardboard sign in a downpour:

"You can't imagine the misery of waiting for a ride in the endless pouring rain."

because:

"...I'm sure I now look like a sopping-wet junkie Mary Poppins."

The number of people who recognized Waters when they picked him up was about the same as those who didn't. Those who did not often thought he was a homeless person or a drug addict, and many drivers insisted on giving him money.

Waiting by the road, never knowing when your next ride is going to pull up, can get discouraging very quickly. Waters wrote down all the time he spent in a day hitchhiking compared to the time he actually spent travelling in someone's car. Needless to say, there is a lot of wasted time standing around doing nothing when you plan to hitchhike across the country. You can feel his frustration:

"Once again I'm stuck. Nobody stops. I stand here for four more hours. What the fuck am I gonna do? Maybe no one will ever pick me up!"

Yet instant relief when someone pulls over:

"It's always a shock when someone actually stops for you. It takes a second to sink in, and then you panic, grabbing your stuff, afraid people will change their mind and pull off."

Waters frequently drew references to his own films, which might be required viewing before you pick up Carsick. Oddly, after he made the above comment about indecisive (or prankster) drivers pulling off as the hitchhiker approaches the car, he didn't mention the scene in "Pink Flamingos" where Divine does precisely that, cackling while driving away, as the camera angle makes it seem as if the car itself is rocking uproariously with her.

Still, from coast to coast, Waters has trouble catching lifts. Truck drivers swoosh by, sometimes yelling out an apology for not stopping. While checking in at a motel, Waters says to a man waiting with him in line:

"I tell him truckers can never pick up hitchhikers these days because of all the restrictive new rules, but he says without missing a beat, 'Well, believe me, they'd pick you up if you had a vagina.'"

I was on the floor reading the next passage:

"Then one of the staff of the rest area walks out of the building and heads toward me. 'You can't hitchhike,' she says flatly. 'The cops told me it was okay, and I've been hitchhiking in rest areas all across this state with no problem,' I lie, almost with an attitude. I notice this lady has few teeth--maybe the staff is work-release from prison, I think, instantly dentally profiling her. Suddenly her whole face changes in surprise, 'Are you John Waters?!' she shouts with sudden friendliness. 'Yes,' I say, completely shocked that she recognizes me. 'Okay, you can stay,' she says with a complete law-and-order turnaround. I know I should be mad she was shitty when she didn't know who I am and now practically kisses my ass when she does, but when you're hitchhiking your usual value system collapses."

As Waters travelled further westward, he rejoiced when he crossed into Nevada:

"We see a sign for a town coming up actually called Oasis, Nevada. When we pull through this, I would imagine, once highly anticipated burg, all that is left off the freeway are about five dilapidated buildings, deserted, rotted, and boarded up. What happened? Who was the last to leave? Are there squatters inside? What a perfect village--its name itself is a lie!"

Observations like those are why I enjoy Waters as a writer. He could be sitting on my couch telling me all about his cross-country thumbing adventures. His writing style resembles rapid conversation and since the oral element is so pronounced, I reread all the funniest parts, because they seemed like jokes after all. Who doesn't enjoy reading, or listening to, a hilarious joke, even the same joke, over and over?

Waters seemed quite surprised by the level of uxorial devotion expressed by his male drivers. Behind every one of his married male drivers was a great woman. Life on the road for these men gave them plenty of time to think, and to be thankful and grateful for the women they had at home waiting for them. Waters seemed genuinely touched to hear these men confide their deepest feelings they had for their wives. In spite of having written an entire section on hitchhiking horrors, Waters never met anyone like Ted Bundy. He ended his coast-to-coast trek with a sense of pride in American spirit and generosity.

Find this book in the Mississauga Library System's on-line catalogue

Act of War: Lyndon Johnson, North Korea, and the Capture of the Spy Ship Pueblo

In January 1968 the American spy ship USS Pueblo was captured while outside North Korean territorial waters and its crew was held prisoner for an entire year. The illegal abduction of the vessel and its aftermath, known as the "Pueblo Incident", kept the Lyndon Johnson administration on tenterhooks wondering whether or not the 82 crew members would be murdered or set free. Act of War: Lyndon Johnson, North Korea, and the Capture of the Spy Ship Pueblo by Jack Cheevers is a 2013 publication about this event that stunned a nation and instilled fear of a second war in Asia.

I had read about the capture of the Pueblo in many of the books I have on the DPRK, yet not an entire book on the subject. Act of War provided a background of the personal life of the captain, Lloyd Bucher. Cheevers interviewed Bucher although the captain died in 2004. While Bucher was in command, the Pueblo found itself in a most vulnerable position. Although it was outside the twelve-mile DPRK maritime boundary, it was nonetheless approached by North Korean ships, fired upon and subsequently boarded. The Pueblo could do nothing as no other American ships or planes were in the area and the two machine guns on board were no match for the hostile fire that befell them. Bucher had to make up his mind, and fast. Save face by showing at least an attempt to fight back with his relative pea shooters, which no doubt would have led to more casualties and further deaths of his men? One of his firemen, Duane Hodges, had already been killed and several other men were injured. The Pueblo was surrounded and the North Koreans were firing. SOS was signalled and help was on the way, or was it? 

The Pueblo was a poorly outfitted spy ship, and had no facilities to dispose or destroy the mountains of confidential paperwork on board. Sailors could not possibly have shredded or burned all the documents in the time when they realized enemy ships were approaching to the time that the Koreans boarded. Some sailors were left with no other option but to rip up piles of paper into bits. Faced with enemy fire, an injured crew and no help coming, Bucher was placed in a situation no captain ever wants to face: that of giving up the ship with loads of top secret cargo. That he gave up the ship without a fight would haunt him in the court of inquiry that followed.

From January to December, Bucher and his crew of 81 were beaten and tortured, but they would not confess to the crime of trespassing into North Korean territorial waters. Starved and deprived of sleep, the crew was also forced to sit through indoctrination sessions where they listened to lectures about the evils of American capitalism and the glories of Kim Il Sung. Their captors even offered to give them their freedom if they became spies for the North. In spite of the endless cycle of torture, which Cheever described in such vivid detail I often winced and reached for various personal body parts as I read, the men would not sign forced confessions or apologies. While some of the crew had written their own memoirs about their year of imprisonment, the level of detail in the methods of torture they experienced may not have been revealed until now.

The North Koreans wanted an apology from the Americans for spying on their country and for straying into their national waters, yet the American authorities always denied that the Pueblo had even come close to the twelve-mile limit. The United States was exceptionally vulnerable in dealing with the DPRK as its military resources were stretched in Vietnam and did not want to face the possibility of starting a war with the North. So while the DPRK used torture against the Pueblo crew, the US used diplomacy. The sickeningly emaciated and injured crew was paraded in front of the media, forced to sing the praises of their captors and humane treatment, while the Americans could only sit back and watch. The Pueblo Incident had left the United States shamefully embarrassed:

"A small communist country with a bathtub navy had picked off the Pueblo. How had this national mortification come to pass? Why hadn't the ship been rescued? Did the potential gains of seaborne surveillance justify the risks?" 

The North wanted an apology to shame the United States internationally, yet understandably the US did not want to apologize for a crime it did not commit. The North would not budge, however, and for all we know it would have happily kept the crew as prisoners, subjecting them to torture, beatings and starvation, until they got whatever they demanded. As 1968 wore on, President Johnson was facing increasing public pressure to do something. His administration also had to calm the trigger-happy finger of South Korean president Park Chung Hee, who threatened to invade the North even if the United States didn't. Thus in order to prevent war and also to save the lives of their 82 citizens, the US decided to sign a letter of apology, provided they could "pre-repudiate" it first. The idea of repudiating the apology before signing it was of no consequence to the North Koreans. They obviously wanted a letter to show to their own people and also to the world at large, who obviously would have already seen the American repudiation first. Propaganda purposes at home outweighed any international opinion as the letter of apology was printed in newspapers and blown-up to gigantic proportions on the Pueblo itself.

The crew was released just two days before Christmas. A court of inquiry followed, where Bucher felt as though he would have to take the fall for the whole affair. Bucher's defence always put his crew first: should he have saved American face by firing the two machine guns in vain, likely resulting in the deaths of more of his crew? Or was it better to give up the ship with only a minimal fight, in order to save his men's lives, and hope for a rescue? Public opinion, however, was always in his favour, as Bucher and his crew were treated as heroes by the American public wherever they went:

"Americans embraced Bucher for the reason that he hadn't thrown away lives for the sake of some quixotic notion of military honor or tradition. The more thoughtful ones understood, too, that regardless of the court's outcome, Bucher for the rest of his days was condemned to mentally replay the events of that ferocious afternoon in the Sea of Japan, doubting and second-guessing himself, wondering whether he'd been tough enough, searching his innermost self for some mortifying streak of yellow."

The court of inquiry, however, was looking to lay blame. How very un-American it was to hand over a spy ship full of top-secret documents without a fight. Yet:

"That issue--whether or not Bucher had the ability to fight back at the time he surrendered--was the central legal conundrum facing the court of inquiry. On its surface, 'the power to resist' seemed like a convenient rhetorical yardstick for measuring whether a skipper had lived up to the don't-give-up-the-ship ethos. As far as many naval officers were concerned, if Bucher could have fought back but didn't, he was a coward, a disgrace to the service. But could the power to resist be quantified? If so, how? By number of fighting men? By number and type of weapons? By degree of courage and determination?"

Cheevers exposed the military negligence to provide proper surveillance for one of its own spy ships. Nor did the military outfit the Pueblo with proper disposal equipment, especially for the vast quantity of confidential information it was carrying. Yet Bucher, while officially let off the hook, never felt truly vindicated and chose to retire early, as much from the repercussions of post-traumatic stress as from the sneers and taunts of servicemen who felt he was a coward.

Act of War came with a centre spread of many photos. Among them was a shot taken in 2009 of the "genocide museum" in Sinchon. The photographer credit was none other than my roommate during my 2011 trip to the DPRK, Ray Cunningham. I was surprised and also disappointed that Cheevers didn't include a photo of the fireman Duane Hodges, the only sailor who was killed during the capture. 

During my visit to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in 2011 I visited the USS Pueblo, and took the following photos of the ship, anchored in the Taedong River:

Port side of the USS Pueblo, taken just before boarding

Spy equipment belonging to the American imperialist aggressors

More spy equipment

Pueblo booty

Bunks

The "pre-repudiated" American apology, blown up to a size to fill a wall

Starboard side, taken from a lunchtime cruise of the Taedong River

Find this book in the Mississauga Library System's on-line catalogue