JUNE WRAP UP: What I Read This Month

Hi everyone! Welcome back to Bibliophilia Book Reviews. Today, I’m reviewing the books I read in June. This month I read 8 books. Here are my thoughts about them:

1. NONFICTION AND BIOGRAPHY: Porfirio Díaz, su vida y su tiempo: La guerra 1830-1867 (Porfirio Díaz, His Life and Times: The War 1830-1867) por Carlos Tello Díaz

This book is the first volume of a comprehensive and detailed biography―written in three parts―of Porfirio Díaz, a controversial figure in the history of Mexico who lived and fought in the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848, the Mexican Civil War between the liberals (led by Benito Juárez) and the conservatives (led by Félix Zuloaga and Miguel Miramón), and the Second Intervention of France into Mexican territory, where he fought for the republican cause and helped Benito Juárez defeat Maximilian I, Emperor of Mexico and his regime.

Díaz became President of Mexico in 1877 after reneging from Juarez and opposing his reelection in 1871. After Juárez died in 1872, Porfirio Díaz fought his successor Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada, and he was formally elected president in 1877. As president, Porfirio Díaz established a strong centralized state that he held under firm control until 1911. By then, he was a dictator and the person to hold office the longest of any Mexican ruler. In 1910, his opponents rose in arms when he announced that he was going to run for office again. After 30 years in power and the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution, however, he was forced to renounce his position and leave the country. He died in Paris, France, on July 2^nd, 1915. He was 84 years old.

In this first volume, we read about Porfirio Díaz’s life as a young man in Oaxaca, where he was studying to become a priest until the outbreak of the war between Mexico and the United States changed the course of his life. He was 16. Later, as one of the commanders of the Republican army, he led his forces against those who advocated for a monarchical government during the civil war of 1858-1860. The most outstanding part of his military career, however, was during the Second Intervention of France from 1862 to 1867 where he participated in the now famous Battle of Puebla on May 5^th, 1862.

The book is well-written and historically documented. However, despite the author’s intention of providing the reader with a well-researched account of Porfirio Díaz’s life, an important figure in the history of Mexico, there is a noticeable bias of the author towards Díaz, as one would expect when you’re related to such a figure, and Carlos Tello Díaz tries to portray his ancestor in the best possible light. Also, in an attempt to explain the historical background of a particular moment in Porfirio Díaz’s life, the author has a tendency to explain a little too much about what happened before and how that led to the moment in the now, making the main purpose of the book―to give an account of Diaz’s life―to get lost in the mist. I wasn’t particularly bothered by this (the more details, the better), but some readers might.

I will continue on with the second in the series.

2. NONFICTION AND GEOPOLITICS: Myths of Geography: Eight Ways We Get the World Wrong – A Compelling Nonfiction Exploration of Geopolitical Borders by Paul Richardson

The eight myths of geography this book addresses are: 1) The Myth of the Continents; in other words, who determines which part of the world is Europe or America? 2) The Myth of the Border; that is, why walls like Hadrian’s Wall, The Great Wall of China or the wall at the border between the US and Mexico don’t work, 3) The Myth of the Nation, i.e., what is a nation and how do you delimit its boundaries, 4) The Myth of Sovereignty, 5) The Myth of Economic Growth, 6) The Myth of Russia’s Inevitable Expansion, 7) The Myth of China’s New Silk Road, and 8) The Myth of a Doomed Africa.

The book begins with a strong and interesting chapter on the continents that seeks to answer the question of what defines them and what does not. Later, the author addresses issues such as borders between countries, what a nation is, and how sovereignty works. All of these chapters were fine. They don’t say anything new that you wouldn’t have learned from your geography classes in school, but they do try to explain the issues more clearly to the general reader as they are still relevant today. I thought this was fine. However, as you continue on with the book the chapters get more and more specific and geared towards someone who has more knowledge of current affairs or geopolitics. The general reader, and I include myself in this, gets lost here. I understand, for example, how China’s Silk Road was important for trade and globalization in the Ancient World and how the New Silk Road is making its way in a similar manner within the digital world of today, but topics such as this and Russia’s search for a warm water port are more specific and not something that the general reader will pick up by himself as an entertaining read.

This book could’ve been better.

3. NONFICTION AND RELIGION: Twelve Churches: An Unlikely History of the Buildings That Made Christianity by Fergus Butler-Gallie

This book is a journey to twelve of Christendom’s most iconic churches and the history of the people who have worshipped in them since the birth of Jesus and beyond. The author focuses, however, not on the buildings themselves―this is not a dry architectural analysis of the churches we visit―but on the humanization of history. The lives and deaths of every person who has worshipped God in these churches, he says, has shaped and built these spaces―as well as God’s relationship with humanity. The story of Christianity is linked to the people who practice it. It is journey through time about human nature and human stories.

The churches we visit are the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, on the West Bank of Palestine, St. Peter’s in Rome, Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Canterbury Cathedral in England, Mount Athos, Greece, Bete Golgotha, Lalibela, Ethiopea, El Templo de las Americas in Dominican Republic, Kirishitan Hokora, Kasuga, Japan, the Site of the First Meeting House, in Salem, Massachusetts, Christ Church, in Zanzibar, Tanzania, the 16^th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama and finally, Canaanaland, Ota, Nigeria. Each church building represents the Christian faith at a time of great unrest and controversy.

The Church of the Nativity, for example, contrasts Bethlehem’s troubled history with the hope and magnitude of God incarnate; of God as man, who embraces the darkest moments of humanity and offers hope for them. Canterbury Cathedral as the building that exemplifies the relationship of the Church and violence, with the death of Thomas Beckett. England is also the place where the Reformation began and that saw the rise of Protestantism and Anglicism. The Monasteries on Mount Athos, Greece, manifest the relationship of the Church with sex and society while the chapter on the Templo de las Americas in Dominican Republic tries to answer the question what role Christianity and the Church played in the age of exploration and expansion of Europe to America? A big one, actually.

At the heart of the Christianity faith, Fergus Butler-Gallis says, have always been people.

I liked and enjoyed this book more than I thought I would.

4. CLASSIC CHILDREN’S LITERATURE: Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne

Despite Winnie-the-Pooh’s popularity and ubiquitous position as a childhood classic and favorite, I had never picked up one of these books. I have never watched the TV cartoon or movie either. Yet, this book is hilarious. I was laughing out loud, and it is now one of my favorite children’s classics. I highly recommend that you read about Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends, Eeyore, Piglet, Rabbit, Owl, Kanga, Roo, and Christopher Robin and their adventures in the Hundred Acre Woods.

5. LATIN AMERICAN LITERATURE AND SHORT NOVEL: Crónica de una muerte anunciada (Chronicle of a Death Foretold) by Gabriel García Márquez

Chronicle of a death foretold is my second favorite book by Gabriel García Márquez. This book is a critique of the suffocating, patriarchal culture in Latin America that extols honor over morals and how a society can be complicit to the destruction of someone’s reputation or life by inaction. The two victims of that patriarchal society here are Ángela Vicario, who is not only abandoned by her husband when he finds out that she is no longer a virgin but also beaten by her mother, and Santiago Nasar, whose life is forfeit when Ángela names him as the man who took her virginity. Consequently, Santiago Nasar is murdered. Ángela’s brothers, Pedro and Pablo Vicario, kill him to avenge their sister’s honor. The thing is, the Vicario brothers declare their intent to kill Santiago Nasar, hoping that someone would stop them. But no one does. Everyone knows of their intent, and yet they all stand by (the Bystander Effect) and watch it happen. Everyone except Santiago Nasar, who remains oblivious to the end.

The double standard is that in Latin America, men are culturally encouraged to have premarital sex.

This book is re-read from college. I remember really liking it, and this time it was no different. I highly recommend it.

6. LATIN AMERICAN LITERATURE AND HISTORICAL FICTION: Amphitryon (Shadow Without a Name) by Ignacio Padilla

This is also a book I read in college, and I remember not understanding it very well. Now, after all the books I’ve read on WWII, I understood it a lot better. Adolf Eichmann was a high-ranking Nazi official and one of the main architects of the Holocaust. He was a subordinate of Heinrich Himmler, and his job was to manage the logistics of the mass deportation and extermination of Jews across Europe. At the end of the war in 1945, he escaped Berlin and traveled to Argentina, a well-known safe haven for Nazi war criminals. He lived there for 10 years before Mossad operatives hunted him down and captured him 1960. In April 1961, he was tried for crimes against humanity, war crimes, and crimes against the Jews. He was found guilty and hanged on June 1^st, 1962.

This book, Amphitryon (Shadow Without a Name) by Ignacio Padilla, uses Eichmann’s history of stolen identities to question whether the man who faced trial in 1961 was actually Eichmann or a decoy. It is a mystery book about identity and imposture. In the novel, Amphitryon is a military operation overseen by General Thadeus Dreyer, whose purpose was to train a select number of body doubles to secretly replace high-ranking Nazi officials and military leaders during dangerous public appearances. The novel explores the terrifying power of deceit and how history can be altered when real individuals are replaced by imposters.

I really liked this novel and recommend it.

7. HISTORY, POLITICS, AND ESSAYS: On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder

This small book is a compendium of twenty lessons on tyranny that we learned during the twentieth century and must not forget today. It is a “call to arms and a guide to resistance, with invaluable ideas for how we can preserve our freedoms in the uncertain years to come.” Written shortly after Trump was elected in 2016, the new edition has been updated to include what the author calls The Big Lie (Donald Trump’s claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen), the attack on the Capitol on January 6^th, 2021, and Russia’s ongoing war on Ukraine. Each one of these lessons is explained with a historical example.

8. HISTORY AND MEDIEVAL AGES: The Perfect Sword: Forging the Dark Ages by Paul Gething and Edoardo Albert

The Bamburgh Sword was first discovered by Brian Hope-Taylor in 1970 at Bamburgh Castle. Thirty years later, Paul Gething re-discovered it in a suitcase; the same suitcase that Hope-Taylor had put it in when he first recovered it from the castle and which was just sitting in his garage. When it was first found, the sword was broken. It had no hilt, just the extension of the blade that fits into the hilt (the tang) and the top half of the sword. It was also heavily rusted and corroded, yet for its time, the 7^th century, this was the perfect sword. Paul Gething rediscovered it in 2000, when he was going through Hope-Taylor’s belongings after he’d died that same year.

Modern testing and X-rays have revealed that the blade was a highly sophisticated Anglo-Saxon weapon; a rare six-strand pattern welded sword, and very likely a king’s weapon. The knowledge required to forge such a sword is lost to us today, and, in this book, the authors attempt to explain how such a sword would’ve been forged. Unfortunately, this shifts the focus of the book and I felt that the authors talked more about the how than the what. Yes, I agree that knowing how a sword such as this one was forged is important, but there are entire chapters where the authors barely or do not mention the sword at all and I felt like I was reading a book more about blacksmithing during the Middle Ages than about the Bamburgh Sword and its status as the perfect sword of the 7^th century.

I wanted to like this book more, but unfortunately, I did not.