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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 14, 2017)
for what it says about the Russian impact on November 2016, about Hillary Clinton’s fears for our democracy, what we should do now and why Donald Trump is president even though she received more popular votes than he did. It is a ponderous but fascinating read, and although she says she takes full credit for her loss, she never convinces me that she truly understands why from her perch of wealth and amassed power. She repeatedly blames James Comey’s late email charges and the Russian influence for her defeat, but this is an insightful paragraph: “Moreover, I have come to terms with the fact that a lot of people — millions and millions of people — decided they just didn’t like me. Imagine what that feels like. It hurts. And it’s a hard thing to accept, but there’s no getting around it.” Now that we are nearly a year into Donald Trump’s presidency, this book is important for telling us what might have been. Even if you didn’t like her, Hillary Clinton would have been a good president, so much superior to what we have. Her book convinced me. — Anita Johnson Grass Roots: A History of Cannabis in the American West by Nick Johnson. Oregon State University Press, $19.95. Pot is hot and, as Nick Johnson points out, it has been in the West for more than 100 years. Grass Roots: A History of Cannabis in the American West isn’t the most colorful tale of cannabis connoisseurs, but Johnson’s extensive research and immaculate blend of scholarly research and short character sketches overcome this singular shortcoming. While he touches on the countercultural icon that cannabis has been and the campaigns that the federal government has waged on the plant, he doesn’t dwell on these well-covered facts. Instead, Johnson has set out to give readers the first history of cannabis from an agricultural perspective. Johnson doesn’t shy away 16 December 14, 2017 • eugeneweekly.com Tsunami Books 2585 WILLAMETTE STREET, 541-345-8986, TSUNAMIBOOKS.ORG SCOTT LANDFIELD’S PICKS: The Round House by Louise Erdrich. HarperCollins, $14.40. k Wildman by J.C. Geiger. Disney-Hyperion, $16.20. STAFF PICKS: You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me by Sherman Alexie. Little Brown, $25.20. Brendan O’Meara says, “In his trademark voice full of wit, love and pain, Sherman Alexie delivers a poignant memoir of his late mother. A must-read.” k Birding Without Borders: An Obsession, a Quest, and the Biggest Year in the World by Noah Strycker. Houghton Mifflin, $24.30. Emily Poole says, “Noah’s account of his whirlwind journey across the world in search of birds is just the thing for readers wishing they could fly south for the winter.” Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders. Random House, $25.20. The Tsunami staff say, “The whole Tsunami team read Lincoln in the Bardo and were unanimously impressed. This master of the short story has hit a home run with his first novel.” k Teacher: Two Years in the Mississippi Delta by Michael Copperman. University Press of Mississippi, $22.50. Brendan O’Meara says, “This honest, wrenching and powerful memoir shows what happens when idealism collides with reality.” OTHER PICKS: k Too Shattered for Mending by Peter Hoffmeister. Knopf, $16.20. Braving the Wilderness by Brené Brown. Random House, $25.20. The Sun and her Flowers by Rupi Kaur. Simon & Schuster, $15.30. k The Whiz Mob and the Grenadine Kid by Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis. Harper Teen, $16.20. The Photo Ark: One Man’s Quest to Document the World’s Animals by Joel Sartore. National Geographic, $35. Ever since the day Noah invited all those couples to step aboard his ark, we’ve been fascinated with collecting — and preserving — the animal kingdom. Veteran National Geographic photographer Joel Sartore follows in that grand tradition with The Photo Ark, a beautiful coffee-table book that records his mission to photograph every species of the world’s animals that exist in captivity. We’re not talking simple snapshots here; instead Sartore has managed to pose his subjects, great or small, in stark studio-like settings against plain black or white backgrounds, focusing our attention on the exquisite form and color of everything from bright-hued katydids to a baby aquatic box turtle emerging, a bit tentatively, from its newly hatched egg. Sartore has been traveling the world on this project for just over a decade; as of last year he’d photographed more than half the 12,000 species in captivity. It’s hard to miss with animal pictures, and The Photo Ark doesn’t shy away from melt-your-heart cute, as in an inseparable pair of orphaned young gray-tailed moustached monkeys. But Sartore brings a sophisticated eye to his subject, finding wonderful common visual ground in pairing photos of, say, a snowy owl and a small cat called an oncilla, or a common garden snail and a cheetah. Sartore is continuing the project, and I’m already looking forward to seeing volume two. — Bob Keefer On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder. Tim Duggan Books. $8.99. from firing back at cannabis growers’ high-and-mighty view of themselves, pointing out the numerous ways that the cannabis industry in the West is doing harm to the environment while touting itself as a green industry. Despite the damage that indoor farms and large-scale illegal grows are doing, Johnson presents a compelling case that it is federal prohibition that is doing the most harm. — Max Thornberry This is an elegant and terrifying little book, only 126 pages, by the Levin Professor of History at Yale University. An expert on the Holocaust, Snyder was described by The New York Times as “a rising public intellectual unafraid to make bold connections between past and
