What Have I Read Lately?

Nobody asked, but I thought I'd tell you about a couple of books that I have just finished reading.

Erik Larson is a terrific writer of non-fiction, and I have written of him and his books (In The Garden of Beasts, Devil in the White City, Dead Wake) in this space in the past.  "Isaac's Storm" is one of his older books, published in 2000, and it tells the story of a devastating hurricane that struck the coastal city of Galveston, Texas  in 1900.  He centers his narrative around Dr. Isaac Monroe Cline, the man who headed up what today we would call the "Weather Bureau" in Galveston.  It is a story of hubris and bureaucracy that existed at the time that allowed the human results of such a calamitous event to become far more devastating than they needed to be.  (Not-so-Fun Fact:  More people died in the Galveston hurricane than died in the Johnstown Flood and the San Francisco Earthquake combined.)

As it was in his other books, Larson's descriptions of the events as the storm enveloped Galveston are remarkable and totally compelling.  On the down side, he spends a lot of time writing about the science of meteorology (isobars, barometric readings, low and high pressure pockets).  It got to the point where I kind of began to skim over those parts.   It was raining a lot and it was really, really windy.  That would have sufficed.

Not the best of Larson's books, in my opinion, but a worthwhile read, nonetheless.  Three stars from The Grandstander.

By the way, a search on the Google Machine tells you that Larson's next book will be coming out this Fall.  It is called "The Splendid and the Vile" and it covers the first year of Winston Churchill's first term as Prime Minister of Great Britain.  Some have termed it a sort of a "Downton on Downing"  look at this darkest hour in Britain's history.  Here is how one pre-publication write-up describes it: 

"The Splendid and the Vile promises to take readers out of today’s political dysfunction and back to a time of true leadership, when Churchill’s eloquence, strategic brilliance, and perseverance bound a country together in the face of unrelenting horror."

Knowing what Larson has done with such historical events, I can't wait to read it.

This book has spent time on the New York Times best seller list this year, and was a selection for Mrs. Grandstander's book club.   It looked intriguing to me, so I read it.  It is a novelization of the story of actress Hedy Lamarr - her rise as a young actress in her native Austria, her marriage at age 19 to Fritz Mandl, an Austrian arms manufacturer fifteen years her senior and one of the wealthiest men in Austria, how Mandl sided with both Mussolini and Hitler, Lamarr's escape - and that's what it was, an escape - from this abusive marriage, and her arrival in Hollywood where she became a prominent movie star. 

More importantly, it tells of how Lamarr teamed up with Hollywood composer George Antheil in 1942 to invent a radio guidance system to be used for more accurate guidance systems in torpedoes and other weapons.  Their invention was approved by the US Patent Office, but rejected for actual use and development by the War Department for various bureaucratic reasons (even in wartime!).

Eventually, Lamarr was recognized for her scientific accomplishment.  The technology that she developed is a major component of the wireless technology that enables us today to have WiFi technology.  Yes, the fact that each of us are attached to our cell phones 24/7 can be traced, in part, to technology that was developed by the beautiful Hedy Lamarr!    Both Antheil and she were posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014.  She was indeed more than just another pretty face.

Three stars from The Grandstander.

Reading this book prompted me to do a little research on Miss Lamarr.  She was indeed beautiful, as these photos will attest:

She was, in fact, married to the so-called "Austrian Merchant of Death" Fritz Mandl, and he was certainly not a good guy.  I do not know how many of the details of the marriage spelled out by author Marie Benedict, a Pittsburgh area resident, by the way, are real or inflated for dramatic purposes, but it is a novel, so one must, I suppose, keep that in mind.

In 1974, she filed a $10 million invasion of privacy lawsuit against Warner Bros. over the parody of her name ("Hedley Lamarr")  used in Mel Brooks' "Blazing Saddles."  The suit was settled out of court for a nominal sum and both Brooks and the studio apologized for "almost using her name."

Google will also give you a trove of great quotations from Miss Lamarr if you just type in "Hedy Lamarr quotes."  Here are some good ones:

Any girl can be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid.

American men, as a group, seem to be interested in only two things, money and breasts. It seems a very narrow outlook.

I advise everybody not to save: spend your money. Most people save all their lives and leave it to somebody else. Money is to be enjoyed.

She was, it turns out, a most interesting woman.

Oh, and I can't end a post about Hedy Lamarr without including this clip of perhaps her most famous single line of dialog from her Hollywood career.  From the 1942 movie, "White Cargo".....