The Politics of Voter Suppression: Defending and Expanding Americans' Right to Vote (A Century Foundation Book) , by Tova Andrea Wang

 

Cornell University Press, ISBN 9780801450853, August 2012

Wang gives us both a history of voter suppression tactics in the USA since the end of Reconstruction, and a strong case for the illegitimacy of voter suppression as a means of partisan competition.

Some will remember at least some key facts about the use of poll taxes and literacy tests to prevent African-Americans from voting in the post-Reconstruction era. Even those readers may be startled at the extent of the suppression and the strength of its effects, as well as parallel efforts in northern states to limit the votes of "undesirables" there. Wang follows the evolution in both tactics and in who was interested in suppressing whom.

Revelation (Matthew Shardlake Series #4), by C.J. Sansom (author), Simon Jones (reader)

Macmillan UK, ISBN 9780230531932

Matthew Shardlake is absolutely, totally retired from politics. He's not really cut out for the rough play of Tudor politics, and is now devoting himself to his legal career, with the status and distinction of being appointed to practice in the Court of Requests, along with the handicap of being a hunchback. The monasteries are dissolved, Matthew has lost his past fervor for reform--and those now in ascendance at Henry VIII's court are pushing the old, papist ways with as much vigor and brutality as Thomas Cromwell ever pushed Reform. Matthew is glad to be out of it, and happy to agree to his friend Roger's proposal of a fund to create a new hospital for the poor in London, replacing the services once provided by the now-dissolved monasteries.

Then on his way to work at Lincoln's Inn the morning after that conversation, Matthew finds Roger, dead, in the fountain. His throat is slashed, he has bled into the water turning it red, and he has a strangely peaceful look on his face.

The President's Brain Is Missing? by John Scalzi

Tor Books, February 2011

This is an ebook-only short, barely a novella. It's also vintage Scalzi, funny and irreverent and insightful.

A senior staffer for an unnamed president gradually comes to the shocking realization that the president's brain is missing. He's walking, he's talking, he's functioning normally--but his brain is missing! (Yes, insert jokes here; Scalzi is careful to ensure you can't peg this president as being either Bush or Obama. He's not doing contemporary political commentary, here.)

The senior staffer starts digging for an answer to what's happened, and solution to the problem. But is it a problem? Who is responsible? Does this need to be fixed? And what's going to happen to the nosy staffer?

It's wickedly funny, and well worth the time you'll spend reading it. Recommended.

I bought this story.

An Orkney Murder (Rose McQuinn #3), by Alanna Knight (author), Hilary Neville (narrator)

Ulverscroft Soundings, Ltd., ISBN 9781845599209, June 2008

This is the the third book in the series, and the first that I've read. There's some backstory, but it was pretty easy to pick up enough to enjoy this story.

Rose McQuinn is trying to decide whether to marry her new love, an Edinburgh police detective, and is relieved, finally, two years after her return from America, to get an invitation to visit her sister Emily and her family on the island of Orkney, where Emily, Rose, and Rose's first love and now (probably) deceased husband, Danny McQuinn, grew up.

Beneath the Shadows, by Sara Foster

Minotaur Books, ISBN 9780312643365, June 2012

This is a really engaging contemporary Gothic, set in Yorkshire, and with characters I truly wanted to spend the time with.

Grace Lockwood's husband Adam inherits a cottage from his grandparents, in a tiny Yorkshire village, and persuades her to move there with him and their new daughter, Millie. Grace isn't enthusiastic at first, but she's settling in and warming to the setting and the close-knit community when, quite abruptly, Adam disappears, leaving Millie in her stroller on the cottage porch. When the ensuing search turns up no trace of Adam, not of accident, or of foul play, or of Adam himself, the police gently suggest that he may have simply chosen to disappear. Grace doesn't believe that, but the alternative isn't any more attractive. It's a devastating loss, and she leaves the village. She's not ready to return to her life in London, but instead spends most of the next year with her parents, in the south of France.

It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the Politics of Extremism, by Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein

Basic Books, ISBN 9780465031337, May 2012

This is a scary book.

First, it needs to be said that Ornstein and Mann are not "liberals" in any sense. They are, at most, center-right conservatives. They are respected and popular pundits "inside the Beltway" and frequent guests on the Sunday political talk shows.

At least, before they published this book.

We're all aware that our politics in recent years have been unusually broken, with gridlock and partisan obstructionism preventing even basic government functions from being carried out properly. Conventional, mainstream media wisdom says that this is equally the fault of both sides, that Democrats and Republicans both have become more extreme in recent years.

Bring on the Blessings, by Beverly Jenkins

Avon, ISBN 0061688401, January 2009

On her fifty-second birthday, Bernadine Brown catches her husband cheating with his secretary. This frees her from a marriage that has become dead, and with the help of a good lawyer, she gets out with $275 million. Free to do anything she wants, she spends some time indulging herself, but also looking for a purpose--because to whom much is given, from them much is expected. In time, she finds one--the town of Henry Adams, an historic all-black town in Kansas, founded by members of the Black Exodus in the 1870s, is broke, and is offering itself for sale.

New York to Dallas (In Death #33), by J.D. Robb (Nora Roberts)

Putnam Adult, ISBN 9780339157783, September 2011

Eve Dallas' past comes back to bite her in some very painful ways in this book, but this is Dallas, and ant it's always a mistake to bite her.

The first blast from her past is a serial killer she arrested twelve years ago, when she was still a uniformed patrol officer. She stumbled onto the man while looking for possible witnesses in another case, realized there was something hinky, and wound up bagging the killer and rescuing the girls who were his current crop of victims. The killer was locked up, and his victims returned to their families.

Twelve years later, he has escaped from prison, victimized a young couple, and sent Dallas a message.

A Planet of Viruses, by Carl Zimmer

University of Chicago Press, ISBN 9780226983332, April 2011

This slim volume is an excellent and highly readable introduction to the subject of viruses for the interested layperson. Written as a series of essays for the Science Education Partnership Award, to help support outreach to students, it covers in compact form an amazing array of basic information about what viruses are, how they affect our lives for good and ill, and the important role they have played in the evolution of life.

Viruses are the smallest life form there is, and there is even dispute over whether they technically qualify as "alive," since they cannot reproduce without hijacking the reproductive capacity of fully developed cells.

Fuzzy Nation, by John Scalzi

Tor Science Fiction, ISBN 9780765328540, March 2012

Half a century ago, H. Beam Piper gave us the wonderful story, Little Fuzzy. Delightful as it still is, in some ways its age shows. John Scalzi, one of the many who loved Piper's Little Fuzzy, rather more recently set himself to writing an updated, 21st century story of the Fuzzies, originally just as a writing exercise for his own edification and pleasure. It couldn't end there, of course, and after book contract negotiations somewhat more complex than average, you can now read Fuzzy Nation.