Uncontrollable by Kevin Eady

Buenaventura García, 101-year-old Spanish anarchist, narrates his life story to his great-grandson.  Forced into exile by the Spanish Civil War, he begins a journey that lands him in nearly every prison and labor camp in Europe and Asia.  The story reaches its climax in a metaphysical experience induced by hallucinogenic mares' milk offered by a Siberian shaman with whom he was having a sexual liaison in the Soviet Gulag.

Uncontrollable and I developed a love-hate relationship.  It is an intriguing tale, well paced, and Buenaventura García offers the reader a highly engaging narrative.  It is, however, told with a British accent where one would expect the voice to be Spanish.  From a personal viewpoint my inner anarchist could only bond with part of Buenaventura's politics.  He longs to exist in a Utopian sort of workers' paradise free of government, free of capitalism, free of property, free of religion and never questions the validity of the concept despite witnessing firsthand the abject failure of the Stalinist model.  Late in life he survives on reparations from both the Spanish and German governments but apparently sees no hypocrisy in this.

The book ends with a series of bizarre twists that leave the reader's head spinning and wondering if somehow he had ingested some of the shaman's mares' milk.

Price: $2.99

83,255 words

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Photo by Sammy Davis, Jr. by Burt Boyar

How does one review a coffee table book?  Most often you don't even read a coffee table book, you just flip it open now and then and look at the pictures.  That is not the case here, Photo by Sammy Davis, Jr. is a book to be read.

Discovered in a storage locker in West LA, this collection of photographs is a remarkable window into life and times of a remarkable individual.  Burt Boyar knew Sammy Davis, Jr. intimately and is able to tell the stories behind the pictures from an insider's point of view.  He has selected and arranged these photographs into chapters of the entertainer's life from the start of his career through his rise to superstardom, his marriages, his friendships, his involvement in the Civil Rights Era and political affiliations.  All are accompanied by enlightening text much of which is verbatim remarks made by Davis.

Only Burt Boyar could have put this collection together and narrated it so adroitly.  This is a book that deserves a permanent place on your coffee table.

The more Burt Boyar I read, the better he gets.




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More Trivia

Topic: History

Sub-topic: Names

Before William the Conqueror left France, he was known as William the Bastard.

 

Topic: History

Sub-topic: Royalty

Queen Victoria learned to speak Hindustani from her houseboys.

  

Topic: History

Sub-topic: Names

Hannibal had a brother, Hasdrubal.

Topic: History

Sub-topic: Names

In the early 1800's in the frontier town of Ceres, Pennsylvania, lived a woman named Nancy Furbelow.

 

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More Trivia

Filed under: History, Easter

The date of Easter is determined as the first Sunday after the full moon following the first day of Spring.  This nails it to between March 21, and April 25, and it has been so since 325 AD.  I'll bet some jackass is working on getting it moved to Monday so Federal employees can get another paid holiday.

This one is filed as: History, Law

Teddy Roosevelt had the good sense to sign into law an act excluding "idiots, feebleminded persons, epileptics, insane persons" from being admitted to the United States.  So, who repealed it?

This is filed as: Mythology, Greek; and is attributed to Norman Davies' "History of Europe"

The Minotaur, the primogeniture of bullheadedness, was said to be the product of a strange infatuation that Pasiphae, the queen of Minos, developed for a certain bull.  She enlisted the aid of Daedalus, that Minoan Tom Edison who later became famous for flying away on wings made of wax and seagull feathers.  Daedalus built the queen a hollow cow within which she assumed the position.  Apparently the bull was unable to resist.

Finally: History, Notable Quotations

That Greek sage, Botheious (c. 400 BC) said, "The most unfortunate misfortune is to have once been happy."

Something Completely Different

I have always been fond of trivia and have a small archive of it.  For a change and perhaps a chuckle, I've decided to punctuate my eBook reviews with a little trivia.  Here is my first offering.

This one is filed under: History, pre-Columbian:

The Mayan archeological zone at Uxmal in the state of Yucatán has a curious little area of repose from the blistering sun.  It is a shady garden of phalluses.

  

Perhaps in the spirit of one-upmanship, a couple hundred kilometers away at the well known—now totally ruined by touristic development—archeological zone of Chichén Itzá there is a building that casual tourists never see.  It lies, choked with weeds, about a kilometer beyond the building known as the Nunnery near the Observatory.  If it were known at all, it would be infamously known for having gargoyles in the form of penises.

 

Those pre-Columbian funsters!

Finally, just so you can feel like you got your money's worth, did you know no water flows above ground on the entire Yucatán Peninsula?

Yo Tome Panama / I Took Panama by Rodolfo Leiton

Un ingeniero francés, pequeño y belicoso, llamado Philippe Bunau-Varilla, inspirado por el enorme éxito y el prestigio derivado del recientemente completado canal de Suéz, se obsesionó por la idea de construir el canal de Panamá hasta el punto de fomentar la revolución independista contra Columbia (financiándola con su fortuna personal—fortuna ganada durante el intento fallido francés de excavar el canal).  El análisis sobre la construcción del canal se hace desde un punto de vista distinto.  La audacia, determinación y habilidad de Bunau-Varilla es una verdedera lección de perseverancia sin la cual posiblemente el canal panameño hubiera sido controlado por Alemania.  ¡Considérense las ramificaciones de esa posibilidad!

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A feisty little French engineer named Philippe Bunau-Varilla inspired by the enormous success and prestige derived from the recently completed Suez Canal, became obsessed with the building of the Panama Canal.  Obsessed to the point of fomenting the Panamanian rebellion against Columbia and financing it with his personal fortune—a fortune made in the failed attempt by France to dig the canal.  This examination of the building of the canal is seen from a unique point of view.  Bunau-Varilla's audacity, determination and ingenuity is a lesson in perseverance, without which the Panama Canal could very well have been German.  Consider the ramifications of that!



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To Steal an Election by Larry Winebrenner

Terrific characters—they are reminiscent of characters created by the great Robert Heinlein.  "To Steal an Election" is a twisted tale of shifting loyalties, ambiguous loyalties and no loyalties at all.  The unlikely hero is a one-legged Christian Marine commando with a weakness for women and the uncanny ability to escape from hopeless predicaments—usually with the loss of yet another prosthesis.  The action flows around the Carolinas as the conspirators apply all the firepower of the U.S. military in the furtherance of their plans to subvert the presidential election.  Our amputee can't be certain who to trust, so he gathers a team from the only reliable source available, his offspring.  That's when the action really gets a boost.

I will classify "To Steal an Election" as a very good book, however, it does have some pace issues.  There are places where the action lags and some descriptive passages indulge in more detail than we need.  I have corresponded with the author and believe that future editions will be tighter, but don't wait.  You can fast forward through the Southern cooking and recipes without losing the plot.  That aside, it is a cleverly constructed story with plenty of excitement.

Price: $8.99 (Tad on the pricey side.)

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