Book Reviewed: Mae West by George Eells

Mae West, an America icon This is a fascinating study of Mae West, an actress, playwright, screenwriter, and iconic sex symbol. The author reveals a radically subversive artist consciously creating her own image. Her screenplays made her a cultural icon for sexuality and social subversion. In the 1930s, she was not only considered scandalous but dangerous to the American society. She achieved her success through hard work and dogged persistence by employing fair or foul means, trickery, and ruthlessness in the rough-and­ tumble world of show-business. She dimmed Marlene Dietrich's allure, outshone glossy Joan Crawford, and overpowered Greta Garbo's subtle eroticism. Depression era audiences were stimulated by her unapologetic exhibitionism and cynical behavior. In her films she was the first woman to function as a leading man. For all the variety of the scripts she wrote, the constant factor was West’s personality to ridicule social attitudes toward sex. She was a sensation on Broadway with her play “Sex.” In 1926, she was convicted of obscenity, and spent ten-days in prison but emerged as a star. The movie “She Done Him Wrong” single-handedly saved Paramount Studios from probable bankruptcy, or it may have improved Paramount's fiscal condition and probably saved it from being merged with MGM Studios. Enigmatic life of Mae West was spent in the Brooklyn subculture of boxers and underworld figures. Her journey through burlesque, vaudeville, Broadway, and Hollywood, where she became one of the big screen's most popular and colorful stars. This book is well-written and the author’s narratives of West’s life and her interactions with other leading ladies is fascinating. Reading this book is a pleasure!

Book Reviewed: Microbes: The Life-Changing Story of Germs by Phillip K. Peterson

Living with microbes Microorganisms like bacteria, fungi, archaea, protozoa, algae, and viruses are too small but they have tremendous impact on our lives. The wilds of the human microbiome, where for thousands of years, bacterial and human cells existed in a peaceful symbiosis and in equilibrium to foster healthier bodies. The dialogue between the gut and the brain has been recognized by ancient healing traditions such as Ayurvedic medicine in ancient India, which is confirmed by the recent studies that show the microbes in the human body communicate with mind from the gut. Our personality may be shaped by your microbiome, the lack of biodiversity can make one sick which is supported by an old proverb, “you are what you eat.” Because diet has a profound effect on both physical and mental health. Most of the body’s immune system is in the gut, so pathology and dysfunction in the gut and imbalanced gut flora can cause neuroinflammation and neurodegenerative disease. This book will fascinate you about the intriguing world of good and bad bugs discussed in three sections. In the first part, the author discusses friendly microbes responsible for our current oxygen-rich environment that supports life and how they are our intimate bodyguards in making our very existence possible. The second part deals with infectious microbes that can harm us, and the final section is a futuristic story of how we can harness the power of microbes to make us healthier and safer. In this book you learn that most microbes are beneficial to humans, animals, and plants, but the belief that germs are our mortal enemies-hasn't changed. A vast majority of germs are either harmless or genuinely essential to human health. This book is written for a casual reader with very little scientific data. There are several books available in bookstore that is creative and generate enthusiasm and curiosity to learn more about microbes than this book.

Book Reviewed: The Gnostic Paul: Gnostic Exegesis of the Pauline Letters by Elaine Pagels

Was Paul a gnostic believer? The New Testament describes apostle Paul preached Christian communities all his life as the leader of the ministry of Jesus Christ in the first century. But what is known about Paul comes from Sunday school stories that were meant to keep kids reverent and obedient. Volumes have been written after the discovery of early Christian and Gnostic texts discovered in Nag Hammadi in 1945. These texts shed light on early Christianity and give glimpses of Paul, and project him as the apostle of the heretics. What does divinity school scholarship tell us about the enigmatic thirteenth apostle who looms larger than life in the New Testament? Gnostic beliefs clashed strongly with accepted Christian doctrine in the first two centuries. By the end of the second century, Gnostics broke away from the church. Their core belief was dualistic in nature which proposes that that there are two realities, the physical and spiritual realms. They believed that the material world (matter) is evil and therefore one must achieve spiritual realm to find everlasting peace. This concept is remarkably like the Sankhya Philosophy of Hinduism founded by the sage Kapila in 800 B.C.E. In this book, the author examines and interprets the texts of the Pauline Epistles; 1 & 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Hebrews in the historical and cultural context. She considers each of these non-pastoral epistles, and questions about their authorship. She examines how the Pauline epistles were read by second century Valentinian Gnostics and argues that Paul was in fact gnostic. Valentinus, a leading gnostic and follower of Paul in the second century preached that only spiritual people received the gnosis (knowledge) and they would find the Divine Pleroma, while non-gnostic Christians with material nature will perish. Maricon, another major gnostic leader from Sinope (present-day Turkey) in 150 C.E., preached Gnosticism followed a version of New Testament that included a redacted gospel of Luke and ten edited epistles of Paul. One of the difficulties in understanding Paul with the earliest Christianity has been explaining his lack of relationship to the early “sayings” tradition (the transmission and quoting of the sayings of Jesus also called “Oral” tradition). Paul quotes few sayings of Jesus in his epistles. But he became a Christian in Syria and spent the first fifteen years of his ministry there. It is in this area, the “sayings” tradition was the strongest in the first century C.E., Was this because his heretic beliefs conflicted with the parables and canonical gospels? Princeton University Professor Elaine Pagels offers a thorough analysis of the early Christian beliefs and the gnostic traditions that influenced apostles like Paul, Thomas, and Mary Magdalene

Book Reviewed: River of Blood: American Slavery from the People Who Lived It by Richard Cahan

Amazing Grace: Words and wisdom of American slaves The book is about the formerly enslaved people who lived to tell the story of their bondage and freedom. This is a human account of what it meant to assert a place in this country, as Black people and as Americans. The words and the photographs are profound, and they offer vivid reality of how tough it was for African Americans to have basic dignity in everyday life. There are intimate details provided by the last survivors of slavery, and the violence perpetrated by the KKK . This is a well-researched book on the legacy of slavery and its imprint on centuries of American history. In 1936, the Federal Writers' Project (FWP), a branch of the Works Progress Administration, a government agency was set up to provide work to the one-quarter of Americans during Great Depression. Notable projects of the FWP included the Slave Narrative Collection, a set of interviews that culminated in over 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and five hundred black-and-white photographs of former slaves. These narratives are available online from the above-named collection at the Library of Congress website. More than seventy years after the Civil War, the people interviewed for this project were in their seventies, eighties, and nineties. Notable pictures are of Sarah Gudger born into slavery in 1816 in North Carolina and believed to be one of the oldest people when she died at the age of 122. Betty Boomer, born into slavery in Texas, and she was one of the African Americans terrorized by the Ku Klux Klan. Donaville Broussard born into slavery in 1850 in Lafayette, Louisiana. but like so many others he lived in the ominous shadow of the Ku Klux Klan and white hostility. Many formerly enslaved recall torture, dislocation, extreme overwork, severe abuse, inadequate nutrition, constant stress, and a multitude of other trauma produced serious psychological and physical scars. The book also highlights the cabin of former slave in Putnam County, Georgia, slave quarters in Cecil County, Maryland; Caruthersville, Missouri; and St. Charles Parish, Louisiana; and an African American cemetery in Person County, North Carolina. The book is a tremendous illustration of formerly enslaved people and I recommend this to anyone interested African American history.

Book Reviewed: Marlene: Marlene Dietrich, A Personal Biography by Charlotte Chandler

Blue Angel Author Charlotte Chandler reminisces about her conversation with Marlene Dietrich when she was leading a reclusive life in Paris. It relies extensively on the star’s own words to reveal her intriguing and fascinating life, but the focus of discussion changes from one section to the next often confusing the reader. For example, in one section the author describes how actor Mae West described Marlene’s friendship but used Dietrich’s own words. This biography is incomplete which depends on Dietrich’s words rather than researching her life with documents and interviewing friends, family, and her associates. The facts provided in this book comes in sharp contrast to the narratives of other biographers who researched Dietrich’s life. Dietrich devoted herself to glamour for over forty years: in stage performances, on screen, and in concert. A modern and transgressive woman, she didn’t hesitate to break the rules by dressing in menswear (she was Yves Saint Laurent’s muse for his iconic tuxedos). She didn’t mind being with her husband and her lovers (both male and female), but it was Dietrich’s unwavering confidence, gender fluidity, and firm stand against Nazism that made her a revolutionary and an icon. Dietrich would stand up to the Nazis and galvanize American troops, eventually earning the Congressional Medal of Freedom. In her final years, she would make herself visibly invisible, devoting herself to the immortality of her legend. Marlene Dietrich crafted and maintained her professional career, but her personal life was anything but normal. She enjoyed thriving gay bars and drag balls of 1920s Berlin. She defied conventional gender roles by training in boxing at a local boxing ring. Dietrich had affairs with actors like Gary Cooper, John Gilbert, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., James Stewart, John Wayne, Yul Brynner, Errol Flynn, Kirk Douglas, and Frank Sinatra. Playwright and political activist George Bernard Shaw, President John F. Kennedy, and his father Joe Kennedy were also her lovers. Her female sexual partners include, Suzanne Baulé, a coach and cabaret host, Cuban American writer Mercedes de Acosta, Ann Warner (wife of Jack L. Warner of the Warner studios), female actors, Lili Damita (wife of Errol Flynn), Claudette Colbert, Dolores del Río, and French singer Edith Piaf. Few facts of Marlene’s life are ignored in this book. For example, Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo were big rivals in Hollywood. Both were European imports of the 1920s studios system. MGM Studios brought her to the United States to cash in on her beauty and sex appeal. Paramount Pictures responded to that challenge by bringing Marlene Dietrich from Germany. Both women worked in Berlin in 1920s and throughout their career denied having ever met each other even when the two simultaneously shared lovers like Mercedes de Acosta, Erich Maria Remarque (husband of Paulette Goddard), and John Gilbert who was once engaged to be married to Garbo but left him at the wedding altar. Biographer Diana McClellan did research into their lives for her book “The Girls - Sappho Goes to Hollywood” and provide evidence that they worked together in the 1925 German film G. W. Pabst’s 1925 movie “Die Freudlose Gasse” (Joyless Street). Marlene's appearance was uncredited in the film, but she appeared in publicity stills. Another interesting fact author Charlotte Chandler reveals is about the time when Marlene becomes pregnant with James Stewart when she was casted in the western-comedy “Destry Rides Again (1939). Marlene informs her secret with Stewart, but his reaction stunned her, and she was deeply hurt when he asked, “what are you going to do about it.” Marlene recalls how it felt when he should have said “what are we going to about it.” This story is different from what I read in another biography of Dietrich, in which it said that writer/director Peter Bogdanovich revealed that Marlene Dietrich had told him that she became pregnant with James Stewart and had a surreptitious abortion without the knowledge of Stewart. The story revealed in this book is believable. There are several biographies about Dietrich, and Maria Riva’s biography of her mother, Marlene Dietrich has the depth and resonance that captures the passion of her mother. But this book, despite some inaccuracies still makes a fun read.