OTish: Ann Arbor/UMich & General Book Recommendations

Just read "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" never saw the movie, but it's the best mystery/thriller book I've ever read. All I could think after reading it was how did it take me this long to discover this book?

If you like historical fiction, I read Beneath a Scarlett Sky last year, and really liked it. It's told from the point of view of a teenager in Nazi occupied Italy during WW2, and he gets a job as a driver for a Nazi general. It's supposedly a true story but feels rather embellished. There aren't a ton of books or movies in that setting so it was interesting to learn about a part of the war you don't typically hear about.

I'm reading Black Detroit by Herb Boyd right now and it's very good. When by Daniel Pink and Alchemy of Us by Ainissa Ramirez were two others that I read recently that I enjoyed thoroughly. 

Not a big Rolling Stones fan but read Keith Richard's autobiography "Life" and found it both fascinating and brutally honest.  Worth checking out if you are at all interested.

On the historical fiction front I recall enjoying "Trinity" by Leon Uris and "Poland" by James Michener.

Also just finished "The Right Stuff" by Tom Wolfe about the Mercury program and found it pretty engaging and insightful.

I read Kelly Lytle’s book about his dad and a book of short stories from Michigan Daily alums. Both were good reads. I found both on-sale at MDen.com IIRC.

 I just finished reading The Power of the Dog and The Cartel by Don Winslow. Coincidentally, I also just watched a movie called Savages, based on another of his books. If you are interested in historical fiction about the drug war, they are very good.

How about some really old history (paleoanthropology) and a textbook at that?

Paleoanthropology, second edition 1998/1999 by the University of Michigan's own Milford H. Wolpoff.

It's an easy read and I found it fascinating.

Wolphoff is a proponent of the multiregional human evolution (MRE) scientific model.  There were not many adherents to this theory back in the early 1980s, but it looks like Wolpoff is being proven correctly now that we've sequenced Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA.

Full disclosure: I took two of his classes at UofM.  He was a very entertaining lecturer and while I never studied the subject beyond my undergrad years, I've kept abreast of developments in the field.

Dunno about Ann Arbor books, but a few I've enjoyed recently in the historical fiction/non-fiction category are:

• The Mirror and the Light, the last volume of Hilary Mantel's epic fictionalized biography (kind of) of Thomas Cromwell, one of Henry VIII's chief counselors and an architect of the creation of the Church of England. The first two volumes, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies are masterpieces, and if you're interested I'd suggest starting from the beginning. The last book isn't quite as great but I still enjoyed it.
• West With the Night, by Beryl Markham, about her childhood and young adulthood in British East Africa. Hemingway said it made him "ashamed" of himself as a writer. 
• The Last Mughal, a history of the Delhi uprising of 1857 and the end of the Mughal Empire. By William Dalrymple.
• The Best and the Brightest, by David Halberstam. A masterpiece, absolutely brilliant and infuriating to read 50 years after the fact.
• The Botany of Desire, by Michael Pollan. A history of humans' relationships with four plants: potatoes, tulips, apples, and cannabis.
• The Book of Night Women, by Marlon James. Historical fiction about a slave plantation in Jamaica in ~1800. Incredible and very violent and dark, as you might imagine. Based in part of the diary of a white plantation owner from that time.
• The Unwomanly Face of War, by Svetlana Alexievich. An oral history of Soviet women fighters in WW2. Briefly made me reconsider all my life choices up to the point when I read it, which have led me toward being something other than an oral historian. Extraordinary work, she won the Nobel and richly deserved it.

Oh, one to add that isn't only about Michigan but touches on Michigan in a big way: Joshua Freeman's Behemoth, which is a history of mega-factories. 

I don't know how current historians regard this book today since it was initially published 30 years ago, but Jonathan Marwil's A History of Ann Arbor might be a good place to start.

Marwil is a long-time UM history prof, so he devotes a good portion of the book to U-M itself.

https://www.amazon.com/History-Ann-Arbor-Jonathan-Marwil/dp/0472094637

The Catskills and Woodstock:

Eileen Pollack, prof in UM's MFA writing program, has written Paradise, New York, a book based on her experience growing up in a hotel in the Catskills.

She also wrote The Rabbi in the Attic and Other Stories, including one about a young girl with Woodstock blaring around her, again based on her experience.

I started A Gentleman in Moscow but forgot to finish it. Thanks for the reminder, OP!

Just finished this one. If you like the natural sciences and how they affect human history, it's a great read.

Currently reading the Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant. A fascinating read especially in context of current events. We think we know things but we do not. 

The former Michigan Daily writer Howard Kohn has had a remarkable career, with lots of Michigan connections in books and articles worth reading.

• In the radical 60s, he wrote about heroin dealing and police corruption in Detroit, was then kidnapped—or not—and made national news when he said he'd lied, either because he had a breakdown or was threatened.

* In the later 60s (i.e., 70s), he reported for Rolling Stone on the SLA terrorists and Patty Hearst in hiding, with hints that he knew people involved.

• He wrote Who Killed Karen Silkwood?, inspiration for a gripping movie with Meryl Streep & Cher.

• He also wrote The Last Farmer, a wonderful elegy on the fade of family farms, like his family's farm in mid-Michigan.

First to Fight by Roger Moorehouse (or Poland 1939, US title).

A much needed corrective on the narrative of the German-Polish war. A deeply inspiring, tragic and infuriating story. Poland was ripped in half by the twin evils of the 20th century losing millions of citizens in the process. Poland would lose 1/5th of it’s population in the war.

Don Faber's "The Toledo War" is a really fun breakdown of the wild and eccentric personalities and events involved in that infamous conflict. (He was an A2 News columnist for decades and passed a couple years ago.) Great book and may be up your alley in terms of what you're looking for... 

If you like historical fiction, the Herman Wouk Winds is War and War and Remembrance duo about the Henry family in WW2 is really good 

No Ann Arbor recommendations from me, but I'm also reading the Chernow biography of Grant and am finding it really engrossing.  I agree that Grant's memoirs are also superb and worth the time.  

Earlier in the pandemic I re-read "The Great Influenza," about the 1919 flu.  Was good to refresh my memory on that difficult period and to draw hope and perspective as the book underscored the fact that we got through it.  I've never cared for the expression "the new normal," as if struggle and misfortune have to be semi-permanent, and that book reinforced for me why.  

In fiction, I read "Look who's back," about a mysteriously returned Adolf Hitler who is mistaken for a comic genius in modern-day Germany.  It was made into a movie 8 years ago or so, and both the movie and book were unsettling enough to be thought-provoking, while still funny enough to be enjoyable.   

Check out Once in a Great City: A Detroit Story by David Maraniss for a deep and well written look at a 3 year period of the city in the early 60s.

It's part of a time period trilogy, which includes They Marched Into Sunlight, about several days in the late 60s juxtaposing one battle of the Vietnam War and the protests against napalm and Dow Chemical at the University of Wisconsin. They Marched Into Sunlight may be the best historical non-fiction I've ever read. 

“The Big House - Fielding H Yost and the Building of Michigan Stadium”

Highly recommended.  While it is obviously sports related, there is a lot of cool Ann Arbor history in this book.  I’ve always been surprised this book does not get more run on this blog. 
 

There are cool stories about how train travel played into campus life...  like the band and students marching down to what is now the Gandy Dancer to see the team off for away games.  And a cool bit on how a giant score board as build in Hill Auditorium and students would pack Hill for away games as progress was updated on the scoreboard. 

it also covers the stadium building boom in the Big Ten and does a great job of giving life to a football season season from an era that is so far back it’s hard to imagine.