Book Review: The Storyteller (2021). Dave Grohl.

For those who don’t know who Dave Grohl is, he might say facetiously that he “was that other guy in Nirvana”, that is, the power drummer behind the drum set, who provided the pounding beat while Kurt Cobain was out front, playing guitar and singing the generation-defining Nirvana songs he had written, for those few short years until Cobain took his own life at the peak of the 1990s Seattle-based Grunge rock era.

As the band-mate and close friend to a tragically and prematurely deceased rock superstar, Grohl could easily have self-destructed, retired and vanished from the music scene, or chosen to switch to a different career. But he did none of those things. Instead, after a brief hiatus, he re-created himself as a guitar player, lead singer, songwriter, front man and bandleader for another top rock act of the 2000s era which he founded, The Foo Fighters.

Along the way, he did quite a few other interesting things too. He has produced several music-related documentary movies and TV shows, including a fascinating movie he made for Netflix, Sound City (2013), about a legendary old Los Angeles music studio, the stars who had recorded there, and the marvelous obsolete analog mixing board he ultimately rescued for his own home studio; a TV mini-series, Sonic Highways (2014) documenting a 20th anniversary recording tour for the Foo Fighters, during which they recorded at eight famous studios across the country; and a mock horror movie with the band, Studio 666 (2022).

He has also had various collaborations with other famous musicians, including a memorable performance on Saturday Night Live playing drums with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, which led to an offer from Petty to join the band, but which he ultimately declined in order to pursue his plans for the Foo Fighters band he had just started.

In The Storyteller, Grohl doesn’t write a straight narration of every twist and turn along his path, or provide a precise chronological account of his career and life. Instead, he tells stories: anecdotes of different things he experienced, and things that happened to him that impacted him personally, emotionally and professionally. It’s occasionally a little confusing, because he sometimes jumps back and forth in time, but ultimately it allows him to connect the dots, and paint a convincing picture of himself as a man and an artist.

This is a worthwhile and self-reflective autobiographical sketch by one of the leading and most popular men of the contemporary rock music world, who survived a devastating personal and professional loss early in his career, along with outsized fame and celebrity at an early age, only to start over and succeed again on his own terms. Recommended.

Book Review: Becoming Bulletproof (2020). Evy Poumpouras.

A former female Secret Service agent combines stories from her career, protecting the lives of several presidents and their families, with insights on how many aspects of her training as an elite security agent can help individuals to be safer and more secure in their daily lives.

The author is particularly revelatory in her discussions of interrogation techniques, and how to tell if someone is lying. She is a believer in "soft" methods that try to build an empathetic connection between interviewer and subject, and describes the sometimes counter-intuitive approaches she would take in order to elicit confessions, and to know when the subject was lying or telling the truth.  She also suggests these techniques and insights can be used by others, to be able to avoid being deceived and victimized by others in the course of their everyday lives.

I've read several of these kinds of "how to be more secure" books. It is intriguing to learn the ways of thinking and the psychological techniques used by law enforcement and intelligence experts, which certainly could translate into normal work and life situations. But I also think that most of us don't have all that many opportunities to practice and learn these sorts of skills, and to develop the level of awareness of others and of our physical environment that a top professional like Poumpouras does in the course of a law enforcement career.

Still, it was an enlightening read, and I also enjoyed her perspective on various presidents and some of their family members from her close interactions with them on their protective details. Recommended.

TV Review: The Restaurant (from Sweden, Seasons 1-3). Sundance.

This series is the story of a multi-generational family and their employees and friends, beginning at the end of World War II and moving forward into the early 1970s, who work together and fight with each other in and about the family's fancy prestigious restaurant in Stockholm.

The Restaurant has sometimes been compared to Downton Abbey, for its themes of class conflict within personal relationships, intrigue and competition within families and friendships, and love and betrayal.

It’s pretty good entertainment, although some of the family members display really contemptible behavior toward each other (I guess that's what makes it good drama). With sub-titles (from the original Swedish). Recommended.

Book Review: A Gentleman in Moscow (2016). Amor Towles.

This is the beautifully written story of an elegant Russian gentleman and nobleman of the old order, Count Alexander Rostov, who becomes a "former person" when he is sentenced by the young Soviet regime in the 1920s to live out his life confined to the Metropol Hotel in Moscow.

It’s a remarkable tale of how he copes for years under a kind of luxurious house arrest, and finds meaning and love in the human relationships he builds in his tiny slice of Russian society. At the end, there’s a surprise foray into espionage, intrigue and danger, which adds delightful spice to the story. Highly recommended.

Book Review: Killers of the Blood Red Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI (2017). David Grann.

This troubling but important book is a history of the murders, plots, investigations and ultimate convictions surrounding the violent deaths of many Osage Indians in Oklahoma during the 1920s, by which a few local white men conspired to kill off tribal members in order to gain control of the victims' shares of the tribe's fabulous oil holdings and wealth.

It's a story of despicable greed, betrayal, racism, conspiracy and the rise of the FBI, for which this was one of the first big sensational cases J. Edgar Hoover used to promote his new FBI organization.

A disturbing last chapter reveals that the author, through additional research beyond the main arrests and convictions which make up the book's narrative, discovered abundant historical evidence of the involvement of a much larger number of white participants than those convicted, in murder, theft and cover-up of many more crimes against the Osage Indians, over an even longer duration than that covered by the book. Recommended.

Book Review: Black Death at the Golden Gate: The Race to Save America from Bubonic Plague (2019). David K. Randall.

This is an interesting social history about the appearance of Bubonic plague in California at the end of the 19th century, which was the last major appearance of the plague on the North American continent.

The narrative covers the careers of the two successive key figures in the nascent U.S. Public Health Service who tried to track down and fight the spread of the plague, particularly in the oppressed and socially isolated Chinese immigrant community in San Francisco.

In the process, Randall describes the complex set of factors, including poverty, terrible tenement housing conditions in Chinatown, an out-of-control rat population, international trade pressures and local racism which had to be understood and overcome in order to put an end to the last major plague outbreak in America.

This book is an excellent piece of social history, weaving together a rich mixture of people and populations, racist movements, the science and development of modern epidemiology and public health, crime, “great man” biography and San Francisco local politics at an early stage of the city’s rise. Highly recommended.

TV Review: Self-Made (2020). Netflix.

This was a 4-part miniseries about Madam C. J. Walker, the first black female millionaire, a poor woman in the early twentieth century who built a huge and enduring hair product empire and personal fortune, focused on the cosmetic needs and desires of black women. 

Needless to say, it didn't all go smoothly, and she had to overcome constant prejudice and obstacles as both a woman and an African-American, but she had an indomitable will to succeed, which comes through well in this series. Starring Octavia Spencer as Madam C. J. Walker. Recommended.

Book Review: The Inequality Machine: How College Divides Us (2019). Paul Tough.

This book, which was originally published under the title The Years That Matter Most, is a surprisingly interesting and informative exploration of the college admissions process, and how success getting in and completing a degree shapes life outcomes. 

Topics covered include: the special role of elite universities, and the way the competition and criteria to get in to them ends up favoring the children of the wealthy; the social and academic difficulties of poor and minorities when they do get in to the elite schools; the ways that SAT and ACT also favor the wealthy, but are poor predictors of collegiate academic success compared to high school grades; the value of "top 10%" admissions policies in bringing in students who are the most highly qualified and most likely to succeed, regardless of social class; and academic approaches and non-academic factors that affect success and degree completion.

The author nicely blends social science research in these areas with personal interviews and stories of individual students, whose experiences illustrate different aspects of the topics covered in the book. Recommended.