This post marks Michigan in Books second year in operation. In its first half-dozen posts, the blog might have gotten 50 page views a month. In the past quarter, page views have averaged over 600 a month. Thank you, readers.
Reviews
Rosie: A Detroit Herstory
by Bailey Sisoy Isgro, Illustrated by Nicole Lapointe
This well-told story introduces young readers to one of the most remarkable and major social, cultural, and economic changes in American and women's history. The agent for change was World War II. When American men went to war in December of 1941 and the United States, by necessity, became the arsenal of democracy women flooded the workforce taking jobs previously considered not fit for, or simply undoable by women.
No where in America was the ground-shaking societal change more evident than in Detroit. The city's factories that put America on wheels turned from making cars to making weapons of war. With the men from the factory filling the ranks of the military, women filled the vacant jobs on the assembly line. But instead of cars, the women were making Sherman Tanks, machine guns, ammunition, and airplanes. At the Willow Run Plant, the largest factory in the world, women assembly line workers built B-24 bombers. In the course of the war 8,600 bombers rolled out of the plant and in the last months of the war, a bomber was coming off the assembly line every minute.
The author tells the story of Detroit's WWII female defense workers in a narrative verse accompanied by colorful illustrations that are full of energy, strong women, and the flavor of the times. The author explains how the hundreds of thousands of women workers got the nickname "Rosie the Riveter," their deep patriotism, and immense pride they took in doing a job once thought only men could do. The thousands of Rosie the Riveters made a huge contribution to the war effort and the book, written for 8- to 12-year-olds, is a fine overview of how women flooded the workplace during WW II, helped win the war, and changed American society.
At the end of the war, most of the women lost their jobs to men returning from the war. Many women were glad to become homemakers once again but they returned home filled with a new confidence in themselves and their new found independence. As the author shows, some women didn't want to give up their jobs and decided on careers outside the home. That women, in significant numbers, are working today in factories and on assembly lines is traceable directly back to Rosie the Riveter.
This book offers children valuable insights into a significant and often overlooked aspect of American history and how World War II changed forever women's place in society. The book also contains a glossary of terms from the era and a timeline of the war.
Rosie: A Detroit Herstory by Bailey Sisoy Isgro, Illustrated by Nicole Lapoint. Wayne State University Press, 2018, $16.99. www.wsupress.wayne.edu/books/detail/rosie-detroit-herstory.
At the end of the war, most of the women lost their jobs to men returning from the war. Many women were glad to become homemakers once again but they returned home filled with a new confidence in themselves and their new found independence. As the author shows, some women didn't want to give up their jobs and decided on careers outside the home. That women, in significant numbers, are working today in factories and on assembly lines is traceable directly back to Rosie the Riveter.
This book offers children valuable insights into a significant and often overlooked aspect of American history and how World War II changed forever women's place in society. The book also contains a glossary of terms from the era and a timeline of the war.
Rosie: A Detroit Herstory by Bailey Sisoy Isgro, Illustrated by Nicole Lapoint. Wayne State University Press, 2018, $16.99. www.wsupress.wayne.edu/books/detail/rosie-detroit-herstory.
The Russian Five: A Story of Espionage, Defection, Bribery and Courage.
by Keith Gave
Hockey fans will enjoy this fascinating book. Detroit Redwing fans will love it. The book will salve the wounds of Detroit's hockey fans suffering through the often painful rebuilding of a team that won three Stanley Cup's from 1997 to 2002 and two seasons ago ended a 25-year streak of making the playoffs.
Keith Gave covered hockey for the Detroit Free Press for fifteen years and his insider's book tells the story of how Detroit made history by drafting Russian players and within a few years revolutionized North American hockey by putting five former Russian players on the ice as a unit and letting them play the game as they learned it in their homeland. In what reads like a good spy novel the author even played a part in the Wings acquisition of their first two Russian players. It is a book filled with both never-before-told stories and a vivid retelling of the familiar with new information added to the mix.
Keith Gave covered hockey for the Detroit Free Press for fifteen years and his insider's book tells the story of how Detroit made history by drafting Russian players and within a few years revolutionized North American hockey by putting five former Russian players on the ice as a unit and letting them play the game as they learned it in their homeland. In what reads like a good spy novel the author even played a part in the Wings acquisition of their first two Russian players. It is a book filled with both never-before-told stories and a vivid retelling of the familiar with new information added to the mix.
In June of 1989 NHL draft, Detroit picked Russian Red Army hockey players Sergi Federov in the 4th round and Vladimir Konstantinov in the 11th. Within a few days of the draft, Jim Lites called Gave and set up a meeting. Lites knew that Gave had spent six years working as a Russian linguist for the National Security Agency and spoke fluent Russian. He asked Gave to fly to Finland where the Russian Red Army team was playing an exhibition game with the Finnish National Team. Lites wanted Gave to speak to Federov and Konstantinov, let them know they'd been drafted by the Wings, talk to them about Detroit, NHL salaries and signing bonuses, and a promise that the Wings stood ready to help them escape Russa. After some thought Gave agreed to go to Finland but decided to neither accept pay nor travel expenses from the Redwings. His price was exclusive first rights to the story.
Within a year Federov walked out of a hotel in western Canada, jumped into a car driven by Mr. Lites for a short ride to Mr. Ilitch's private jet which flew them to Detriot. Konstantinov was a captain of the Red Army team and an officer in the army. If he defected he could be charged with desertion and face the death penalty. A paid Russian agent for the Wings bribed six doctors to diagnose Konstantinov with inoperable brain cancer. He was allowed to resign his commission and permitted, with his family, to travel to America for advanced cancer treatment. Just stepping off a plane in Detroit miraculously cured his cancer and within days was skating with the Wings. The next year the Wings drafted Slava Koslov. Shortly after the draft, he was involved in a terrible automobile accident. Russian doctors were paid to declare he would never play hockey again. And he didn't -- until he arrived in Detroit.
When the Wings hired Scotty Bowman to coach the Wings he arranged trades for defenseman Slava Fetisov and center Igor Larionov. Bowman made the trade with the idea he would put the Russian five together as a unit. When he told the Russians they would play as a unit he also told them to play the game their way and they would receive no coaching from the staff.
The author does a great job of describing the Russian style of play and how the rest of the Wings held them in awe. Brendon Shanahan remembers players on the bench laughing in pure delight at the way the five played the game. The Russian Wings influenced the rest of the Wings to play a possession game instead of the dump and chase style of play. Eventually, they even helped change the way the league played the game.
The author provides personal, up-close portraits of the five distinctly different personalities of the five Russians and makes clear their huge contribution to winning the Stanley Cup. The book is also a very good recapitulation of the run-up to the 1997 Stanley Cup, the horrendous injuries to Konstantinov and the team's Russian masseuse in an auto accident within a week of the cup victory. The tragedy made the team determined to win another cup for their injured teammates. And when they did win Lord Stanley's cup the following year, in Washington D.C., Capt. Steve Yzerman took the cup from the NHL commissioner, skated the length of the ice and placed it in the lap of wheelchair-bound Vladimir Konstantinov who had been wheeled onto the ice by Fetisov. Gave writes, "With Fetisov and Larionov on either side of the wheelchair and Yzerman skating shotgun, holding the Cup steady, the entire team skated a victory lap that had nothing to do with a sporting event and everything to do with the triumph of the human spirit." There wasn't a dry eye on the ice or among the thousands of Washington Capitol fans. Chris Draper said, "he experienced no finer moment in his career."
If you're a Redwings fan this is a must read. It's a literary hat-trick.
Within a year Federov walked out of a hotel in western Canada, jumped into a car driven by Mr. Lites for a short ride to Mr. Ilitch's private jet which flew them to Detriot. Konstantinov was a captain of the Red Army team and an officer in the army. If he defected he could be charged with desertion and face the death penalty. A paid Russian agent for the Wings bribed six doctors to diagnose Konstantinov with inoperable brain cancer. He was allowed to resign his commission and permitted, with his family, to travel to America for advanced cancer treatment. Just stepping off a plane in Detroit miraculously cured his cancer and within days was skating with the Wings. The next year the Wings drafted Slava Koslov. Shortly after the draft, he was involved in a terrible automobile accident. Russian doctors were paid to declare he would never play hockey again. And he didn't -- until he arrived in Detroit.
When the Wings hired Scotty Bowman to coach the Wings he arranged trades for defenseman Slava Fetisov and center Igor Larionov. Bowman made the trade with the idea he would put the Russian five together as a unit. When he told the Russians they would play as a unit he also told them to play the game their way and they would receive no coaching from the staff.
The author does a great job of describing the Russian style of play and how the rest of the Wings held them in awe. Brendon Shanahan remembers players on the bench laughing in pure delight at the way the five played the game. The Russian Wings influenced the rest of the Wings to play a possession game instead of the dump and chase style of play. Eventually, they even helped change the way the league played the game.
The author provides personal, up-close portraits of the five distinctly different personalities of the five Russians and makes clear their huge contribution to winning the Stanley Cup. The book is also a very good recapitulation of the run-up to the 1997 Stanley Cup, the horrendous injuries to Konstantinov and the team's Russian masseuse in an auto accident within a week of the cup victory. The tragedy made the team determined to win another cup for their injured teammates. And when they did win Lord Stanley's cup the following year, in Washington D.C., Capt. Steve Yzerman took the cup from the NHL commissioner, skated the length of the ice and placed it in the lap of wheelchair-bound Vladimir Konstantinov who had been wheeled onto the ice by Fetisov. Gave writes, "With Fetisov and Larionov on either side of the wheelchair and Yzerman skating shotgun, holding the Cup steady, the entire team skated a victory lap that had nothing to do with a sporting event and everything to do with the triumph of the human spirit." There wasn't a dry eye on the ice or among the thousands of Washington Capitol fans. Chris Draper said, "he experienced no finer moment in his career."
If you're a Redwings fan this is a must read. It's a literary hat-trick.
The Russian Five: A Story of Espionage, Defection, Bribery and Courage by Keith Gave. Goldstar Publishing, 2018, $24.99.
Death Lease
by Peter Marabel
As penance, I will not wipe the egg off my face until I've written this review. In this blog's last post I admitted to having a serious craving for mysteries set in Michigan and said something about how I actively search them out. Yet here is the fourth in a series of mysteries featuring a private detective who works out of Petoskey that I've never previously run across. Peeking around the humiliation of not having found this author years ago is the keen sense of anticipation in having the first three Michael Russo mysteries to enjoy.
Russo, a former downstate lawyer, operates a private detective business in Petoskey's Gaslight District. He isn't cut from the same cloth as the world-weary and often cynical private-eyes found in Estleman's, Chandler's, or Hammett's works, but that attitude would be pretty hard to maintain living in Petoskey with a view of Little Traverse Bay and having a beautiful and understanding woman deeply in love with you. What Russo does have in equal amounts to the above authors' famed hard-boiled detectives is doggedness in searching for the truth, loyalty to his client, and a loyalty to justice, even if it comes to administering their own kind of justice.
I particularly liked this book because the plot hangs on a singular arrangement by which most cottage owners live on Mackinac Island and which I was unaware. Most of Mackinac Island is state land and years ago wealthy families built and spent most of the summer on the island in their huge Victorian style cottages. But they did not and do not own the land their building sits on, They must rent that land from the state park and leases are renewed every thirty years. Obviously, many of the cottages and leases have stayed in the same families for generations.
The Sanderson family built their cottage on the island's East Bluff in 1922. The latest leaseholder is Camille Sanderson. The cottage and the lease stayed in her name even after she married Conrad North who turned out to be a cruel and morally despicable husband. When Conrad filed for divorce from Camille she was shocked to learn her name had vanished from the lease and had been replaced by Conrad North's. Camille's divorce lawyer sent her to Michael Russo in hopes he could discover how her client's name disappeared on the lease and was replaced by her estranged husband's. Camille is, of course, baffled, outraged, and fearful of losing the family summer home.
Russo can't find a clue as to how the switch was made but apparently, his snooping is not welcome and a killer is soon stalking him. As Russo digs into the case and investigates how the state park handles and records a lease he hits one dead end after another. One of the dead ends is a murder in Mackinaw City that leaves Russo without a client. The author builds his plot slowly and realistically to a satisfying if not fully resolved conclusion with hints of a sequel. The author also brings Petoskey and the Straits area to life in all its flavor, sights, and sounds. The book could almost serve as a walking tour of Petoskey and Mackinac Island's commercial and tourist area surrounding the island's harbor. And if you are not familiar with some of the better restaurants in Petoskey you will be before the books final page.
The only fault I can find with the book is that Russo never made it to Jesperson's Restuarant in Petoskey and had a piece of their world-class Coconut cream pie.
Death Lease by Peter Marabel. Kendall Sheepman Co., 2018, $15.95
Any of the books reviewed in this blog may be purchased by clicking your mouse on the book's cover which will take you to Amazon where you can usually purchase the book at a discount. By using this blog as a portal to Amazon and purchasing any product helps support Michigan in Books.
Russo can't find a clue as to how the switch was made but apparently, his snooping is not welcome and a killer is soon stalking him. As Russo digs into the case and investigates how the state park handles and records a lease he hits one dead end after another. One of the dead ends is a murder in Mackinaw City that leaves Russo without a client. The author builds his plot slowly and realistically to a satisfying if not fully resolved conclusion with hints of a sequel. The author also brings Petoskey and the Straits area to life in all its flavor, sights, and sounds. The book could almost serve as a walking tour of Petoskey and Mackinac Island's commercial and tourist area surrounding the island's harbor. And if you are not familiar with some of the better restaurants in Petoskey you will be before the books final page.
The only fault I can find with the book is that Russo never made it to Jesperson's Restuarant in Petoskey and had a piece of their world-class Coconut cream pie.
Death Lease by Peter Marabel. Kendall Sheepman Co., 2018, $15.95
Any of the books reviewed in this blog may be purchased by clicking your mouse on the book's cover which will take you to Amazon where you can usually purchase the book at a discount. By using this blog as a portal to Amazon and purchasing any product helps support Michigan in Books.
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