Richmond Reads by
John Denniston
Get
Your Reading Glasses (If You can Find Them)
“Adjectives elude me. Verbs escape me. Nouns, especially proper
nouns, totally defeat me. I may meet you at a party, have a long, lovely
conversation with you, be charmed by you, want to know you forever, and
a day later not
remember your name. (Do not feel offended. It is not
your problem. However, if you do not remember my name, I promise you
that I will feel offended.)”
Sound familiar?
If you’re over 30, and especially if you’re over 50, the inability to
recall simple words, names, phrases, even important dates, tasks and
information, has probably become, to some degree, just a part of life.
It can cause embarrassment, frustration, and fear (“Am I losing my
mind?” “Am I getting Alzhimer’s?”) But it’s nothing to worry about. It’s
all a normal part of getting older and it happens to virtually everyone.
That’s the good news in Martha Lear’s Where Did I
Leave My Glasses? The What, When, and Why of Normal Memory Loss
(272 pages, $22.99), due out this month from Grand Central Publishing
and a must-read for anyone who has ever been stopped by a simple answer
on “Jeopardy!” or by trying to remember what was for dinner last night.
Lear, an award-winning journalist for the New York Times Magazine, has
tackled a complex subject in the finest of conversational tones. Her
writing is sharp and crisp, and she has a unique ability to maintain the
personal in her “aging memoir” while bringing in comments from top
experts at the cutting edge of memory and brain research.
“Where Did I Leave My Glasses” will actually make you remember (“Yes!
That’s exactly what happens to me!”), and it will make you smile, if not
laugh out loud. Even better, this sparking little book will offer you
reassurance that your inability to remember a name (names are always the
first to go, and Lear will tell you why) or to multitask the way you did
in high school is a natural, physical, and somewhat remediable
phenomenon.
Another book dealing with memories, but on a much less serious note,
Things I’ve Learned From Women Who’ve Dumped Me,
edited by Ben Karlin (Grand Central Publishing, 240 pages, $23.99), may
trigger some unpleasant recollections of personal experiences, but it
will definitely make you laugh at them.
“Things I’ve Learned” features 46 lessons from comedians, writers,
actors, musicians, even a former senator, who have one thing in common:
They were, at some time in their lives, dumped.
From “Beware of Math Tutors Who Ride Motorcycles,” to “Nine Years Is the
Exact Right Amount of Time to Be in a Bad Relationship,” to “Dating a
Stripper is a Recipe for Perspective,” Karlin, the former executive
producer of TV’s “The Daily Show With John Stewart,” has put together a
hilarious collection life lessons that will brighten up the most dreary
of February days.
Did Lincoln Own Slaves? And Other Frequently Asked
Questions about Abraham Lincoln by Gerald J. Prokopowicz
(Pantheon, 352 pages, $24.95) is an insightful volume in
question-and-answer format from the former scholar-in-residence at the
Lincoln Museum. Organized chronologically by Lincoln’s life, these are
questions actually asked by the 50,000 or so annual visitors to the
museum, and they range from the personal to the interpretative.
Was Lincoln manic-depressive? Was Lincoln the greatest president? Did he
write his own speeches? Was he gay? And what about the book’s title
question?
“Lincoln hated slavery,” Prokopowicz writes in his conversational tone.
“He didn’t live in a slave territory after the age of seven; he was a
lawyer, not a planter, so he had little use for a slave. No matter how
many times facts or logic are driven into its heart, the question Did
Lincoln own slaves? refuses to die.”
Thirty pages of other questions concerning Lincoln and slavery follow
this question in the well-researched and well-documented book.
On the other side of the “Recent Unpleasantness,”
How the South Could Have Won the Civil War: The Fatal Errors That Led to
Confederate Defeat
by Bevin
Alexander (Crown, 352 pages, $25.95)
actually reads more like a military novel than a ground-breaking
historical record. The premise is interesting, of course, (as was
Alexander’s “How Hitler Could Have Won World War II”), but one walks
away from this book feeling that, somehow, the big picture has been
missed.
Alexander, who quickly explains that he is not advocating the
Confederate cause, basically says that three men determined the outcome
of the Civil War: Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.
Davis wanted no offensive action against the North, believing that as
long as the South fought a defensive war, Europe would eventually help.
Lee wanted an offensive war, but only army-to-army and only with frontal
assaults.
Jackson, on the other hand, proposed attacking Northern civilians and
industry and avoiding frontal assaults with the larger Northern army (a
strategy, ironically, adopted by the Union Gen. Sherman in his march
across the South).
Had the South adopted Jackson’s war philosophy, Alexander states, the
South could have quickly won the Civil War. Alexander’s elevation of
Jackson, along with his myopic vision of the North’s abilities and the
South’s other problems (such as along the coasts and in the west) make
this book less than convincing.
