Reader’s Diary

Paul Hendrickson

What if the Great Depression had been in color? Well, it actually was, but the iconic black and white photos of the Farm Security Administration (FSA) are so embedded in our memories that it’s a shock - and a pleasure - to see the same subjects in color. The photos in this book are not only the same subjects, they’re by the same photographers, people like John Vachon, Marion Post Wolcott, and Arthur Rothstein; all better known for their monochrome work.

In addition to the wonderfully-produced pictures, the book includes a thoughtful and informative, albeit too brief, introductory essay by Paul Hendrickson.

Note: all 1,600 of the color photographs taken for the FSA and its successor, the Office of War Information, can be viewed online at the Library of Congress web site.

Julia Solis

Subways, unused railway tunnels, and subterranean passages between buildings of an abandoned hospital are just a few of the underground wonders revealed by intrepid New York City explorer/trespasser Julia Solis. The text is interesting if somewhat awkward but the often-blurry pictures are a weak link in this glossy, nicely produced book.

Steve Berry

This book is based on the premise that there’s more to the third secret of Fatima than has been revealed. It’s the mystery about the missing content that keeps this book going. When it’s revealed it’s just… stupid. Since the book is mildly anti-Catholic, I don’t have any compunctions about spoiling the plot: the missing part of the Virgin’s message is basically, “the Catholic Church is all wrong and, by the way, women should ‘control their own bodies’”. Give me a break.

And, by the way, when authors use the Church as a foil for their heterodox fantasies, they should at least get the details right. Having a priest character - the pope’s secretary, no less - who hasn’t said Mass for 10 years is just… stupid.

Elizabeth Kostova

The historian of the title is the daughter of a historian searching for her father who has gone missing searching for Dracula and whose mentor went missing searching for Dracula. All three (or more?) plot lines are told at once. There are more characters searching for Dracula. Pretty much everyone in the book is searching for Dracula, but Dracula barely appears. Kostova should have trimmed a few of the imaginary historical documents, made the chronology clear, and added some action. It could have been a chilling tale, but at 600 plus pages, it’s just windy.

Robert Hugh Benson

This is a book with a message. Author Robert Benson, Catholic priest, convert son of the Archbishop of Canterbury, said of it, “I did not know how else to express the principles I desired (and which I passionately believe to be true) except by producing their lines to a sensational point.” Benson set his book in a future where humanism reigns supreme, where religion is suspect, and where euthanasia is the norm. These may have been surprising ideas in 1907; now the book’s setting seems prophetic. In the story a benign antichrist figure unites the world while reducing the Catholic Church to a tiny remnant. People have to choose sides and there is a final conflict. From this description you might conclude that it’s a Catholic version of “Left Behind”, but this is a deeper, more spiritually thoughtful, and better work in which only the most superficial elements - such as the Verne-like flying machines - are outdated. Its message may be more timely now than it was at the beginning of the last century.