history – Darker Books

American Afterlives: a Review

What’s the book? American Afterlives by Shannon Lee Dawdy

How dark is it? very light for a book about funerals

How good is it? 3/10 tasteful urns

This is the latest Morbidly Curious selection and I was relieved to find that it isn’t deeply depressing and Very Very Important. I’ve got a lot going on and I’m depressed enough without another socially important but tragic selection on my list. I didn’t enjoy this book as much as I’d hoped but at least it wasn’t depressing. Not for me, anyway.

This author writes the way I talk when I’m drunk, wandering between subjects and time periods according to her own obscure internal logic. Dawdy tries to show us a little bit of everything–traditional funerals, modern alternatives, the history of practices like embalming and headstone decor–but in trying to show us everything she doesn’t explore anything very deeply. I was excited for this book and the superficial treatment left me disappointed.

The introduction, which took nearly a quarter of the book’s length, promised a lot. Way too much for the rest of this short book to deliver. Apparently this book is largely based on material originally destined for a documentary and at times this shows. Dawdy will spend several paragraphs talking about being wrapped in a shroud or describing an interview subject’s home and then skimp on the details of actual funeral preparations or the mechanics of embalming. At times it was charming and many of her subjects probably would be interesting on camera but I don’t want to read a book describing what the documentary would have been like. I want to read about my new and exciting death care options, preferably in detail, and instead I got a lot of breezy anecdotes about the colorful characters the industry attracts. The photographs included in the book had this odd feel, too, being mostly emotive stills from the film footage that were only sometimes interesting and informative.

If you’ve avoided thinking about your own funeral and want to be more comfortable with death and its trappings, this might be a nice introduction. You’ll find out a little about everything from green burial to composting to having your ashes turned into a brilliant fireworks display, with a little discussion about changing attitudes toward death. If you’ve ever followed ‘death positive’ content or you like the darker side of history, you might not find much new here. It didn’t occur to me that I’d gone past ‘Death 101’ but apparently I have. I wouldn’t consider myself extremely interested in funeral practices but I was familiar with most of the topics covered. I picked up a few nuggets here and there but the book was largely a retread for me.

Still, I’ve read worse books. This was a quick and easy read even if it did wander off on way too many tangents. The author’s philosophical ramblings about the American approach to death left me cold but again, if you’ve never thought about the subject it might be a soft introduction for you.

Madness: a Review

What’s the book? Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum by Antonia Hylton

How dark is it? Dark like a hospital without enough windows

How good is it? 8/10 emotionally, 5/10 as a history

This month’s Morbidly Curious Book Club selection was Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum. It’s centered on the Crownsville hospital, built as a mental institution for Maryland’s black residents back in the days when the state was still segregated. It is an astounding coincidence that I spent part of my childhood in a town not far from this hospital and never knew it was there. Google maps tells me it’s a fifteen minute drive from the house I grew up in. I have clear memories of a few of the places talked about in this book. I haven’t lived in Maryland since last century but I have siblings in and around Baltimore. As I said, this is all just a big coincidence and I didn’t choose this book myself but knowing the area gave me an added layer of interest and an emotional connection I hadn’t expected. On top of that connection, I also spent several years doing housekeeping for a mental hospital when I was younger. Ever since then I’ve had a small personal interest in the history of mental health treatment and the thorny issues of institutionalization. Because of all that, I’m not sure I can be objective about this book. I found it fascinating and emotionally compelling, but how could I not?

This book is a history of the Crownsville State Hospital in Maryland, built in 1911 as the only mental health facility serving black people back when the state was still segregated. It’s a history of that hospital but it also uses Crownsville’s history as the starting point for a larger discussion about race and the mental health system in the U.S., focused on how it serves (and too often fails to serve) black Americans. It relies heavily on interviews with former patients and staff, oral history, and personal interactions the author’s family has had with the mental health system.

As a history, it’s not the best. Crownsville’s records are spotty for various reasons so putting together a thorough history is already a tall order, and Hylton hits a lot of major themes in the history of mental health care but she isn’t even trying to be thorough with that. She jumps around a bit between places and time periods, which made it hard to form an orderly timeline or historical picture as I read. Hylton also comes at this history without any special understanding of mental health so she sensibly avoids deep discussion about treatment philosophies and challenges, especially in the time before drug treatments became common. I find that kind of discussion fascinating and I felt the lack of it, but it’s fair that Hylton’s interest lies elsewhere.

Hylton’s interest centers more around broad historical and political trends and personal experiences. Most of the stories, especially as she talks about the sweep of history beyond Crownsville, are chosen more for theme and emotional resonance than historical completeness.

This book absolutely excels on the ‘theme and emotional resonance’ front, though. Hylton clearly wants to open our eyes to two facts: one, that the larger background of racial tension and discrimination can complicate and contribute to mental health struggles for individual black folks and two, that those struggles are made worse by the very good reasons those black folks have to distrust the mental health care system. By focusing deeply on personal stories of former patients of the Crownsville hospital and of many caring but under-resourced employees, Hylton really drives those facts home in a compelling way.

Now that I’ve highly recommended this specific book, I’d like to say a few words about my general book club experience so far. This is the third pick I’ve received from this book club and I’m beginning to worry that it’s actually the Very Important Issues book club that wants to justify its darkness by making sure each book I receive teaches me deep and important lessons. I don’t need my totally voluntary book club to apologize for liking morbid topics or make up for its darkness by acting very very virtuous. I enjoyed this book and I do think it’s very very virtuous and very very important, but I do hope this club sends the occasional book that’s just darkly historical and entertaining.

Stubs: Part 2

It’s the Friday before Independence Day here in the USA, which means we’re all too busy loving/hating America to read full reviews. It’s also the day after my birthday and I’m probably getting a tattoo as this goes live. Yes, we all lead very full lives and today I’m just leaving some quick mini-reviews here of a few books that didn’t quite fit the normal profile for one reason or another. Enjoy.

Most Delicious Poison

Written by Noah Whiteman, the title Most Delicious Poison: the Story of Nature’s Toxins from Spices to Vices pretty much sums it up. I dip into history and popular science on occasion, and this one delivers some pretty interesting info about how plants protect themselves and how humans have learned to use those defensive chemicals as flavorings, medicines, and recreational drugs. The book is inspired by Whiteman’s struggle to understand his father’s debilitating problems with alcohol, so along with exciting stories about medicine and interesting facts about flavorings, we get vulnerable discussion of the more dangerous uses of plants. It’s not exactly our usual Darker Books fare but I found it fascinating and quite moving in parts.

Mystery of the Witches’ Bridge

Last October we stayed at the McCoy Hotel in Tucson, which had a cute red desk with a pile of paperbacks on it for our reading pleasure. This was in the pile. It’s a mystery for youngsters written by Barbee Oliver Carleton; the internet has precious little about her but she apparently wrote a lot of stuff for youngsters. This book is kind of quaint and cute, with detailed and interesting descriptions of the Massachusetts wetlands where it’s set. It’s not particularly spooky or exciting but it’s fun in a Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys way.

The Devil’s Butcher Shop

Last Halloween I wrote a bit about the New Mexico State Penitentiary, which is probably haunted because of the deadly prison riot of 1980. Back then, I said I’d bought a book about the riot but I hadn’t read it yet. This is that book. The main reason I’m making this a stub instead of a full review is that, even for a hardened true crime enthusiast like myself, this is a hard book to get through. It’s not for everyone. Still, I was riveted by Roger Morris’s book, which details not only the riot but the appalling mismanagement leading up to it and the shocking lack of consequences afterward (both for the murders committed by rioters and for the negligent and corrupt managers of the prison). It was thorough and moving, and I appreciated the way Morris built sympathy for the prisoners while making it clear that the actions of many prisoners during the riot were also inexcusably awful. This one will stick with me a long time and I’m glad I read it, but it’s definitely one of the darkest books I’ve ever read.

Curioddity

This one, by Paul Jenkins, is the opposite of dark. I bought it at an occult book shop in Tucson and it’s got a mysterious cover so I thought it would be at least a little dark. Instead I got a rollicking absurdist adventure with a lot of goofy humor. The book is not set anywhere in particular but Jenkins is a British comic book writer, which explains why the book felt so much like a Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett project. It also explains the main character, Wil Morgan, who is exceedingly straitlaced and depressed about life; he’s constantly baffled and disconcerted by the zaniness suddenly springing up around him even though it’s making his life better by leaps and bounds. This type of straight man seems common in British comedy. Anyway, the book is fairly funny and if you like British goofiness you should read it. But it isn’t dark. Not even a little bit.

Still Life with Bones: a Review

What’s the book? Still Life with Bones by Alexa Hagerty

How dark is it? It’s about real atrocities so . . . it’s pretty depressing

How good is it? 6/10

This was the Morbidly Curious Book Club‘s latest selection so I didn’t come into this book with any particular expectations. I read it because they sent it to me. Turns out it’s mostly about the author’s experience exhuming mass graves in Guatemala and Argentina as part of her anthropology studies. It’s a little bit about bones and the stories they tell, a little bit about exhumation and the various ways it’s viewed, and a lot about the atrocities perpetrated in both countries during certain periods of time.

The last part was the most interesting and informative to me. I grew up in the 1980s and ’90s, vaguely aware that shit was going down in South America and President Reagan was somehow very involved, but I was way too young to understand any of the details. I remember U2 mentioning El Salvador in their songs and stuff but I didn’t really know what they were talking about. In fact, somewhere in the middle of this book, reading about the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, I realized they’re who that song “Mothers of the Disappeared” was about. I feel a little dumb now because I always thought that song was a metaphor. (To be fair, I was in middle school when that song came out.)

In parts of this book, Hagerty explains La Violencia in Guatamala and the Argentinian junta that kidnapped thousands of supposed dissidents, tortured them extensively, and dumped their bodies when they were done. These chapters were sad and horrifying and enlightening. They made me want to know more about the history and politics behind it all. These chapters were also the hardest chapters to read, by a long stretch, because they detail some of the horrific crimes behind the mass graves being investigated now. The discussion of Argentinian torture especially got to me, mostly because it was so perversely creative in its cruelty. It feels important to witness and condemn such things but it’s also hard to read over breakfast.

The rest of the book was more personal and poetic, more centered on Hagerty’s own experience and musings. In many ways, she becomes a stand in for the reader, giving us a single human perspective to guage these enormous events by. Her focus on her own emotions and thoughts gives us suggestions on how to shape our own emotions and thoughts about the subject. Sometimes this filtering makes the whole subject easier to handle but it also puts us a step farther from the action that makes it a little too easy at times. Instead of relating to these survivors and witnesses directly, we’re relating to Hagerty as she relates to them. At times, she becomes the subject in a way that feels a bit self-involved. Once in a while I got a whiff of that pampered American ‘their tragedy is so sad for me‘ rot.

But it was only the occasional whiff; for the most part I appreciated this book and the attempt it made to condense a huge and difficult topic into a relatable story for a mass audience. As such, it was a good introduction that made me want to do some more serious research some day.

Whack Job: a Review

What’s the book? Whack Job: a History of Axe Murder by Rachel McCarthy James

How dark is it? Blood red, I suppose. Is that too on the nose?

How good is it? 2/10 hatchets

We only own a little hatchet, not a full-grown axe.

This book is less than 250 pages long. I don’t expect a thorough history of anything in that few pages, much less a history of both axes and murder. The first chapter introduces the far tighter exploration of how axe murder became a cultural meme, almost a joke. Okay, yeah, you could maybe do justice to that in 250 pages. Then we jump way back into prehistory and I know we’re in trouble.

In trying to tell stories all the way from prehistory to the 21st century, the author has to settle for bare sketches and snippets. It would require heroic summarizing skill to do any of these stories justice in just a few pages, and this author does not have heroic summarizing skills. In describing the tragedy at Taliesin, for example, so much time is spent explaining Frank Lloyd Wright’s complicated love life that we barely have descriptions of the actual murderer or most of his victims. Confusion or meandering in the oldest cases might be excused by the lack of details and evidence handed down through the ages, but the modern well-documented cases are also summarized in unsatisfying ways and I was sometimes baffled by her choices of what to dwell on and what to leave out.

All this makes the book feel incoherent, more like sketches of vaguely axe-related moments in time than an actual history of any kind. This feeling of incoherence is compounded by the political lessons the author forces onto many of the stories, often with very little explanation or argument. The story of Stesagoras’s murder (an ancient one) seems chosen mostly as a dig at fascism and Trump’s infamous border wall, and many of the early American stories seem chosen primarily to remind us that slavery is bad and the U.S. did not (does not) treat Native Americans very well. All these things are true and important to talk about, but they’re not very axe-related and honestly, shoehorning these messages into such a light book doesn’t do them justice.

And speaking of American history, fully half of this book is devoted to U.S. axe murders. Again, they seem chosen not with an eye to explaining how axe murder became a pop culture thing, but to make various other points. If they were chosen with an eye to cultural significance, she might have included the Axe Man of New Orleans or the Villisca axe murders or highlighted some modern axe murders from beyond the United States. Some of the cases she chose were interesting but again, there was no sense of a coherent throughline. Just before the end, the author devotes a chapter to The Shining and So I Married an Axe Murderer as an attempt to tie everything back to pop culture but with no throughline to the previous chapters, this movie chapter felt jarring and out of place. It was especially jarring to jump from So I Married an Axe Murderer right into the grisly and sad murders of two Missouri men in 2019. That combo gave me emotional whiplash.

This book tries to weave together a whole lot of threads–axes, political history, true crime, pop culture–and it doesn’t do any of them justice. This book disappointed me greatly. That said, there were interesting tidbits here and there and I actually enjoyed the tiny interlude chapters explaining various historical axe types. I learned a bit about different axe designs and their various pros and cons. Turns out a history of actual axe design might be a real page-turner for me. This book, however, was not.

Ring Shout Review

This is a Trex review for Djeli Clark’s Ring Shout.

Although nonfiction about the Klan is full of horror enough, this book takes the existence of the real Klan and layers on the supernatural. What if some klansmen were literal monsters? Inhuman creatures with supernatural strength disguised as humans? Ring Shout tells the story of Maryse Boudreaux and her two deadly compatriots as they hunt and grapple with white-hooded monsters in 1915 Macon. They are watched over and aided by Nana Jean whose magic called them to her to fight evil. She brews magical water by channeling the energy of spiritual “shouts” through herself. Maryse wields an otherworldly sword that was forged by slaver chiefs who channeled their regret and anguish into its’ smoky blade. She is the champion chosen by three spirit “aunties” who Nana Jean doesn’t trust and calls “haints.” There is a new and powerful entity in Macon who has pushed into Maryse’s dreams – Butcher Clyde. His plan is to use the film “The Birth of a Nation” to create a portal for an even more powerful and destructive entity than himself to enter the world. There are a lot of supernatural and frankly freaky as hell things in this book. The author does some truly terrifying things with mouths and teeth. The pacing and action feel more fantasy but the body-horror and supernatural entities make this a decidedly creepy (in the best possible way) book.

As compelling and surprising as the supernatural elements are, just as rewarding were the historical and cultural details. Nana Jean is a Gullah woman and speaks in Gullah on the page. The history and significance of shouts is explained and revered as one of the key factors of the magic in the book. One of Maryse’s friends, Chef, was a Harlem Hellfighter in the war. Disguised as a man, she fought. Now she kills monsters with homemade bombs charged with Nana Jean’s blessed water. One setting of the book is a jook joint owned by Maryse’s love interest. It’s hard not to imagine a more formalized version of the jook from Sinners and this one also gets beset by monsters so I feel fine drawing that comparison and using the movie set in my imagination. On her journey to defeat Butcher Clyde and what hell he is trying to bring forth, Maryse seeks out The Night Doctors. They are terrifying beings based on the historical atrocities committed against enslaved peoples in the name of medicine. It’s not every day that a book teaches me so many things and does so while weaving it all together seamlessly.

Ring Shout is a skillfully written book. It’s entertaining and thought provoking at the same time. While transporting you to a different historical time and place, it also imagines a world where the oppressed have magical tools at their disposal to combat injustice. Not everyone, but some. But so does the enemy. In fact, one of the inciting incidents for everything going on in the book is the release of The Birth of a Nation. In actual history, that movie triggered a resurgence of the Klan. This is also so in the book but some of those human Klansmen also become monsters because of the racist, hateful power of the film. At the climax, Maryse must decide whether she wants to take that power for herself and avenge her people or reject Butcher Clyde’s proposal. Would the end justify the means? Would vengeance make anything better?

Ring Shout got national acclaim and it was well deserved. If you haven’t read it yet, change that. It’s short, action packed, compelling, and even though there were some spoilers in this review, the journey is more important than the destination with this one. Just because you know where it’s going doesn’t mean you won’t enjoy how it gets there.

Arctic Chill

You’ve probably heard about the new Frankenstein movie coming out. This one’s by Guillermo del Toro so I expect it to be visually moody and memorable. Judging from the cover art, it looks like this will include the dramatic scenes of Frankenstein following his creation to the arctic. That bit gets cut from a lot of adaptations. I imagine it’s hard to film but it’s a poignant and dramatic part of the book.

I’ve read Frankenstein a couple of times. I’ve watched a handful of adaptations. I own the Lego set (you may not remember their “monster fighters” collection but I was briefly obsessed with it). I’ll be giving this new adaptation a look when it comes out. I’m not, however, going to bother reviewing Frankenstein because every goth on the internet talks about Frankenstein. It feels overdone and I have nothing useful to add to those recommendations.

I’ve had those arctic scenes playing in my head lately, which got me thinking about how many real live dramatic stories have happened in frozen wastelands. So instead of writing yet another recommendation to read Shelley’s most famous novel I’m going to share a few real life tales of people boldly venturing into the far north and south of the globe. Only some of them end in tragedy.

Ernest Shackleton’s Trans-Arctic ExpeditionThis expedition was trying to cross Antarctica by land. It completely failed in that mission, instead becoming one of the most dramatic survival stories in history. Before even beginning their overland trek, two different ships had to deliver men and supplies to opposite sides of Antarctica. Both ships ran into serious trouble, leaving men stranded and starving. The supply ship Aurora blew off course and stranded its crew. Amazingly, they lost only three men before being rescued. Shackleton’s ship, the Endurance, was trapped by the ice of the Weddell Sea and eventually was completely crushed and sunk. Nigh miraculously, Shackleton lost none of the ship’s 28 men as they walked and sailed hundreds of miles in hope of rescue. Finding the wreck of the Endurance (accomplished in 2022) was an ordeal in itself; even with modern ships and technology the antarctic is a cruel place.
The Lost Franklin ExpeditionWhile Shackleton’s harrowing expedition ended in rescue, Franklin’s quest for the elusive Northwest Passage, a fabled sea lane across the north of Canada, ended in death and enduring mystery. Franklin’s ships became trapped in ice. After a year trapped with the ships (and several deaths) the remaining party tried to reach rescue in an overland journey but never made it. Rescue missions found clues and records but no definitive answer to the fate of the expedition’s many lost crew members.
The Dyatlov Pass IncidentThe “incident” is that nine young people set out to climb a mountain and died. More specifically, in February 1959 these Soviet kids set out with their cross country skies to complete a mountaineering challenge and never came home. Their bodies were found at varying distances from their still intact (and presumably safe and cozy) campsite and no one could figure out why they all wandered away to die in the night. It’s still a mystery and the subject of some pretty wild Cold War conspiracy theories. I read a book about it once called Dead Mountain but it looks like I gave it away at some point. It’s a pretty thorough look at the mystery and does make some interesting guesses about the case. It also taught me that Soviet youths used to trade music using records made of old x-rays. I also bought the book about that, which I still own.
Badass Ada Blackjack Ada Blackjack was the only Alaska native and only woman on a small expedition to Wrangell Island. This time it wasn’t their own ship stuck in the ice, but a supply ship. When it failed to arrive, three men of the expedition set out to find help and disappeared, leaving Ada to care for the last man until he died of scurvy months later. When someone finally came by to pick her up she did not become famous for surviving alone all that time. She didn’t even get her full paycheck for her work on the expedition. But Wikipedia has a lot of cool pictures of her and some of the dudes she set out with.
The Death of Rodney MarksThis Antarctic death had nothing to do with ice or snow. Marks died of methanol poisoning at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. Methanol was used to clean equipment and with plenty of alcohol available at the station it seems unlikely Marks would be chugging cleaning fluid for kicks. The whole thing seems fishy but since Antarctic legal jurisdictions are weird and murky, the death was never properly investigated. That, and the various science agencies (mostly American) in charge of research there seemed to really want this to not be murder and weren’t interested in helping police figure out what really happened.
Against the IceThis one’s a bit of a two-fer. First we had the Denmark Expedition to Greenland’s northeast coast from 1906 to 1908, which was kind of successful but also involved some tragic deaths. Then in 1909 Ejnar Mikkelsen launched an expedition to recover the bodies of some of the lost men and hopefully also the records of their findings. This he did, but his ship got trapped in ice (this seems to happen more often than not) near Shannon Island. While he and his engineer Iver Iversen were off exploring, most of Mikkelsen’s crew hitched a ride home on a whaler. He and Iversen were not so lucky, having to build a cabin and survive in it for two more winters before another whaling ship picked them up in 1912. The cabin they built still exists. He wrote a book about his survival called Against the Ice, which was made into the movie Against the Ice, which was pretty good.

And that’s the last of the frozen death (and survival) stories I have for you today. As winter approaches, may they makes us all appreciate our warm homes and grocery stores.