This post is exactly what it sounds like, some short reviews of what I read (for pleasure, not for work) last week!
Impeached: The Trial of Andrew Johnson
David O. Stewart.
Simon & Schuster
464 pages
Stewart is an able popular historian in the mold of David McCullough (though a lesser product of that mold, McCullough is, in terms of quality, inimitable). Impeached is among the most comprehensive analyses I've seen of the events that transpired between the death of Lincoln and the end of Johnson's term as President. It is also interesting to think about in relation to contemporary partisan gridlock. Johnson, a racist Democract who nevertheless despised the plantations of the south (seemingly on a standard of "if we don't get them then why should you"), found himself suddenly elevated and at odds with the Republican Congress over the issue of reconstruction, but found himself tripped up by a technicality. It wasn't his polices towards the South that got Johnson impeached (they were the cause but not the mechanism), it was his attempt to remove Secretary of War Stanton in violation of the Tenure of Office Act. Crazy times.
Stewart is an American historian who seems to be deeply in love with the idea of America. His other major books centered around the drafting of the Constitution, and the political machinations of James Madison. If you find such things interesting, this is one you might enjoy. The caveat here is that Stewart is not trained as a historian, and there are times when his historiographic amateurism shows through. But these brief lapses don't ruin the read, which is entertaining.
Rating: 2.5 / 4
A Drink Before the War
Denis Lehane
William Morrow Paperbacks
368 pages
The first in Lehane's series of Kenzie-Gennero novels (and his first book full stop), A Drink Before the War is as fully formed a piece of inaugural fiction as you are going to find. Lehane is not a mystery writer from the Don Winslow school of P.I.s turned crime authors, nor (seemingly) is he like James Ellroy, trying to gain a foothold over past trauma through cathartic prose. He's an author who is deeply invested in stakes and character, and on those scores A Drink Before the War is a triumph. Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennero are among the greatest fictional detectives of the last 30 years.
I won't say too much about the specifics of the plot, as it is a mystery novel and that's part of the fun, but the broad strokes are that a cleaning woman from state congressional offices has gone missing with important papers that detail the strong arm tactics of a state senator and Kenzie and Gennero are tasked with finding her. There is, as you would expect, more to the situation than initially meets the eye, and the novel really blasts off in the second act. The prose reads easy, and before you know it you find yourself lost in the streets and alleys of Dorchester.
Rating: 3.5 / 4
Cotton Comes to Harlem
Chester Himes
Vintage
160 pages
Chester Himes is a great, and severely underrated, writer whose narratives--like those of better known authors like Raymond Chandler and Elmore Leonard--frequently center around a single chaotic event which sets into motion multiple actors with a common goal, but different agendas. Cotton Comes to Harlem is no exception. Deke O'Hara is a con artist, recently released from a Georgia prison, who has created a phony Back to Africa movement in Harlem to bilk black families out of a thousand dollars a pop. When his gathering is shot up by a group of white men, and $87,000 in cash goes missing Coffin Ed and Gravedigger Jones (Himes' most famous detective pair) are put on the case.
Himes is not always an immaculate prose stylist, but in his occasional sloppiness there is a strong and consistent voice (which is, to my mind, often preferable to a sterile but precise prose). Events move quickly, but are never disordered, and Himes can always be counted on to deliver a quality crisis and resolution.
Rating: 3.5 / 4
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