Love Documented

The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon
New York : Delacorte Press, [2016]
348 p. ; 22 cm.

This book was a delight.  Two high school seniors - who couldn't be much more different - start the day total strangers, and end up by the evening deeply in love.  They have to overcome a world of differences to get there: Natasha is an undocumented Jamaican immigrant facing immediate deportation, and Daniel is as first generation Korean American who is up against his parents' plans for him to get into Yale, be a doctor, and partner up with a "good Korean girl." 

Daniel aspires to be a poet, and lives by the values of idealism, hopes, and dreams.  Natasha is a lover of science and rational decisions.  Their paths cross one morning in NYC as Daniel heads for a crucial Yale entrance interview and Natasha pursues legal aid to stave off her deportation.

It seems almost silly to describe the plot, but it really works.  In spite of a few improbable plot devices (reminded me a little of Thomas Hardy's narrative tricks!) the development of the relationship between the characters is believable and very sweet.  By the end of the book the reader can't help but be rooting for these two fine human beings.

As I read The Sun is Also a Star, I thought of a lovely, romantic movie that has a similar one day of falling in love and a similar feel - Before Sunrise., which is interesting in that The Sun is Also a Star was apparently made into a movie, but one which did not share the critical acclaim of Before Sunrise.   Don't let that keep you away from this lovely little jewel of a book.

Reconstruction Redux

Dark Sky Rising: Reconstruction and the Dawn of Jim Crow by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
New York : Scholastic Focus, [2019]
 225 p. : ill. ; 22 cm.

I'm pleased that Reconstruction is being written about more lately.  It strikes me that it is one of the most important periods in American history, a period where the promises of democracy and racial justice had a brief and shining moment and then were crushed under a wave of white supremacist violence and terror that still infects the body politic of the US.  Reconstruction helps one understand the latest rise of white nationalism that has essentially taken over the modern Republican Party.

Reconstruction offers hope and not just despair, though.  It shows that with vigorous federal power and protections for all citizens, there could be a society where power is shared by all people and not just a privileged few. It also shows how powerful the appeal of dignity and freedom is for people who have been deprived of it - and how that appeal can motivate them to strive for great achievements. 

This book has a some of the feel of the Indigenous People's History of the United States for Young People that I read this summer.  Gates wrote the book with upper middle and high school age students in mind.  That keeps it from being overly heavy and keeps the reader from getting lost in too much information.  It is a book I would recommend for both young adults and regular old adults - like me!

Brilliant Fade

Tesla: Inventor of the Modern by Richard Munson
New York : W.W. Norton & Co., [2018]   
306 p. : ill. ; 25 cm.

I've wanted to read about Nikolai Tesla for a while now.  Someone told me how Tesla had developed plans for harnessing and distributing low-cost (if not free) energy - and so had his career quashed by powerful oil/gas interests and even had his papers seized by the government after he died.  Given Tesla's revolutionary inventions and discoveries, I had to wonder if there was something to this.

This biography does a great job of conveying just how brilliant and visionary Tesla was in both his thinking and his development of applied science.  He is the towering figure behind the modern use of electricity in industry and in its wide distribution.  By figuring out how to harness and use alternating current (AC) through generators and AC motors, he triumphed over the Edison devotees of direct current.

However, much of his life was spent pursuing fruitless dreams of using high-frequency electric current to send and receive wireless energy and signals through the earth.  In spite losing himself in the pursuit of these earthbound visions, he also developed the airborne transmission of signals and has been credited with the invention of radio - though Marconi became its most famous developer and inventor.

This biography led me to believe that there is not a lot of substance to the belief that special interests shut down Tesla's potential.  Instead his own visionary brilliance seems to have trumped a more practical approach that would have greatly benefited Tesla.  He was terrible with money and contracts and did not reap the fabulous riches that his work should have earned for him.  Nevertheless, he did have years of great fame and huge financial backing, but was unable to develop that into a lifelong success with research and income.

All in all, it is a fascinating biography that I would highly recommend to anyone interested in late 19th century science and technology - especially electricity and wireless communication.