Alvah's Books

Nancy Clark’s Sports Nutrition Guidebook
by Nancy Clark, MS, RD
Human Kinetics, 2008
461 pages
$19.95

Okay, I’m putting it out there, I’m no athlete. Not by a stretch, a jump, or even a jog. I consider myself lucky if I can walk briskly in heels to catch a bus. However since I embarked on this current fitness obsession, I’ve noticed my energy level has shot up considerably and I’m stepping up my workouts by several notches.

With that in mind, I know that I’ll need to fuel my body so I can workout efficiently. To help me make the best nutritional decisions, I’m using Nancy Clark’s Sports Nutrition Guidebook, which is considered the number one resource for active people.

Nancy Clark, MS, RD, CSSD is an internationally known sports nutritionist and nutrition author. She is a registered dietitian (RD) who specializes in nutrition for exercise, health and the nutritional management of eating disorders. She is board certified as a specialist in sports dietietics (CSSD).

Clark is also the nutrition columnist for New England Runner, Adventure Cycling and American Fitness . She’s a frequent contributor to Runner’s World and is on the advisory board for SHAPE magazine. Clark also writes a monthly nutrition column called The Athlete’s Kitchen, which appears regularly in over 100 sports and health publications, including Active.com and the Running Network. So, in a nutshell, she’s the gal to turn to if you have any questions about sports and nutrition.

Clark cuts to the chase in her book by opening on how to build a high energy food plan. In this chapter, in the book’s first part, she breaks down each food category, offering suggestions for the top choices with meat, fats and oils, vegetables, grains and starches, and fruits, and how much should one consume. The chapter has several side-bars, tables and charts that break down nutritional elements in several food items. Clark is an advocate of a rainbow diet, i.e., one that includes a variety of colorful fruits and vegetables. For “colorblind” eaters she includes several suggestions to spruce up your meals with a palette of colorful food items.

For those who battle the carbohydrate quandary, Clark provides a comprehensive chapter on the subject to eliminate any confusion on the subject. Here she explains the chemistry of simple and complex carbs in language that won’t glaze your eyes.  Clark also answers the question whether carbs are fattening. She writes:

Fad diets preach the message that carbohydrate is fattening. Wrong! Carbohydrate is not fattening. Excess calories are fattening; in particular excess fat calorie are fattening. . . Fat provides 36 calories per teaspoon compared to with 16 per carbohydrate. Additionally, the conversion of excess carbohydrate into body fat is limited because you burn carbohydrate when you exercise. Your body preferentially burns the carbohydrate and stores the fat because  the metabolic cost of converting excess carbohydrate into body fat is 23 percent of the ingested calories. Excess dietary fat, on the other hand, is easily stored as body fat; the metabolic cost of converting into body fat is 3 percent of ingested calories.

Clark provides these points:

• Carbohydrate-based foods are less fattening than fatty foods.
• You need carbohydrates to fuel your muscles.
• You burn carbohydrates during hard exercise.
• Carbohydrate is a friendly fuel; the enemy is excess calories from fat.
• When dieting to lose weight, you should energize with fiber-rich cereal, whole-grain breads, potatoes, and other carbohydrate-dense vegetables but reduce your intake of butter, margarine, and mayonnaise that often accompany them.

Further in the chapter, Clark examines quick and slow forms of carbs, sugar highs and lows. There’s a side bar on whether white bread is poison or not (she says it can be part of a wholesome diet as long as you include whole-grains. She adds that white bread has a bad reputation because of its high glycemic effect in other words:

If you eat just plain bread without butter or sandwich filling that dampens the glycemic response—digest quickly and cause the blood glucose and insulin to rise higher than would the same amount of a whole-grain, fiber-rich bread.

Clark notes that if your physically fit, the muscles will store the sugar from the digested bread as glycogen with much less insulin than a sedentary person.

So the next time you hear one of your friends say (and I have one who tells me how he avoids carbs) make a photocopy of this chapter and give it to them to read. Hopefully, they will learn that not all carbs are bad and that our bodies require them to fuel our muscles.

The second and third parts of Clark’s book consist how to eat before and after exercise. She has a chapter about supplements, performance enhancers, and covers age-specific nutritional needs. Chapters 13 through 16 are all about balancing weight and activity. The last chapter in this section is in an important one, recognizing eating disorders and food obsessions.

The final section of the book provides a wide range of recipes ranging from breakfast ideas to snack and desserts. Some recipes include:

• Greek Shrimp with Feta and Tomatoes
• Spinach Salad with Sweet and Spicy Dressing
• Carrot Raisin Muffins
• Oatmeal Pancakes
• Oven French Fries

Each recipe comes with nutrition information, including total calories, calories per serving, carb, protein, and fat grams.

Last, but not least, Clark offers a fairly extensive appendix of publications and web sites, how to become a sports nutritionist, references cited throughout the book, and sports drinks and energy bars.

If you’re looking for a book that’s not too heavy on science, and you’re serious about eating healthy and keeping active, Nancy Clark’s Sports Nutrition Guidebook is the ideal book. She’ll  answer all your questions about how to feed your body and in an easy to digest format without the chemistry and biology class jargon. Buy it, read it, get fit, and get healthy.

Dream Room:  Tales of the Dixie Mafia
by Chet Nicholson
Oakley Publishing Company
417 pages
$17.95

Reviewed by Randall Radic

Chet Nicholson, who is the author of Dream Room, is an attorney.  Dream Room is his first book.  And it is – hands down – one of the best true crime books to be published – ever.  That is a bold and categorical statement, but it is an undeniable fact.         

Dream Room is the true story of the Dixie Mafia, which is sometimes called the Southern Mafia.  Unlike the more famous Sicilian Mafia, members of the Dixie Mafia were linked only by crime and not by family or ethnicity.  Their criminal activities included moonshine, bootlegging, gambling, drug trafficking, dog fighting, burglary, prostitution, and murder.  They achieved the peak of their power between 1960 and the end of the 1980s. 

“The Strip” in Biloxi, Mississippi, was ground zero for the Dixie Mafia.  Indeed, the title of the book – Dream Room – refers to a strip joint in Biloxi.  It was owned and operated by Mike Gillich, Jr., who was the unofficial Godfather of the organization.  Gillich, who was also known affectionately as “Junior,” owned a string of motels, nightclubs, and a bingo parlor. 

One of Junior’s henchmen was a goon named Kirksey Nix, who was a singularly unimaginative worm of reckless dynamism.  The story swirls around Nix and Junior as they ruthlessly intimidated and murdered anyone who got in the way of their criminal activities.  Which means a lot of people, including a judge and his wife, ended up dead.

The Dixie Mafia had only one law, which was akin to a Biblical commandment:  Thou shall not snitch to the cops.  Of course, since most criminals subscribe heavily to the doctrine of self-interest, the rule was often violated.  And in the end, Junior fractured the law with vigorous enthusiasm.  To relate how and why would vitiate the delicate forces of the story.  Needless to say, the episode seethes with the arithmetic of necessity, contingency, and negotiation.  It is the narrative of the justice system – if you want to play, you have to pay.

Nicholson’s raw ability in storytelling is fantastic.  And it is this talent that gives the tale its resonant vibrations.  Every word and paragraph is designed to titillate interest and, at the same time, entertain.  Most writers lose their readers because they try to charm them with verbal glitz.  Which means they forget to tell the story.  They’re so busy peddling Las Vegas-like neon that the reader needs sunglasses to see through the glare.  Nicholson, either by plan or by innate talent, avoids making that mistake.  Instead, he cedes ultimate authority to the story.  Which means the story is the Star of the book, not the special effects.  Which is the way it’s supposed to be.

What is more, Nicholson lets the story develop through the actions of the characters and their dialogue.  Dream Room places a premium on conversation.  And it’s obvious that Nicholson has a real ear for conversational quirks.  Listening to the characters speak induces a delicious rippling sensation through the reader’s diaphragm.  That’s the way people really talk!  People don’t talk like robots in real life.  People aren’t machines, spewing out perfect grammar and syntax. 

Try it this way:  Nicholson’s dialogue is as good as or better than that of Elmore Leonard. 

Dream Room is a supercharged book.  It has guts, which means it has rhythm and motion, and that means it has energy.  It’s alive!  Don’t miss this one.

Fields of Greens: New Vegetarian Recipes from the Celebrated Greens Restaurant
by Annie Somerville
Bantam Books, 1993
437 pages
$35.00 

I lived in San Francisco for many years—fifteen to be precise—I attended university there, both undergrad and grad schools, and after graduating I stuck around because I lived with someone. That someone liked to eat and so did his friends. For the most part, we didn’t do much cooking, we ate out a lot and we went to some pretty good places in the City and in Napa and Sonoma counties. 

Our friends, who were foodies, liked to cook and they created some fabulous meals. One close friend Mourad Lahlou, owner and chef of Aziza, made one of the best chicken pastillas I’ve ever had. Nothing has ever come close to his, and believe me when I say this, I’ve eaten a lot of pastillas. 

I’ve dined at a number of well-known restaurants and one of the most memorable meals I’ve had was at Greens Restaurant located at Fort Mason. Although this was several years ago, I distinctly remember Annie Somerville’s exquisite carrot soup. Since then I’ve never had one that had the right balance of sweet and savory and the perfect creamy consistence. Like Mourad’s pastilla, I’ve tried many carrots soups (and even made my own) and none can compare to the one I had so many years ago at Greens.

When I discovered that Somerville had a cookbook, I plunked down my $30 because I knew I had to have it as part of my collection. Fields of Greens is a vegetarian cook book. The premise of the book is to use the freshest and seasonal produce with pasta, beans and grains. Some dairy products and eggs are essential ingredients for some dishes, but Somerville uses them sparingly. Fields of Greens is about “big flavors” in most of the dishes, but as Somerville writes in the introduction, “…but leave the final seasoning of salt, pepper, and vinegar to your taste.” 

Somerville provudes a nice little primer on planting an organic garden and suggests to start small and expand your garden as your knowledge develops. The advice is basic from cultivating the soil to starting your plants. From there she moves on to her recipes and there are a lot: salads with leafy greens, beans and grains, and marinated vegetables. She has recipes for grilled vegetables and for soups galore, including my favorite Carrot Soup with North African spices.

If you like your carbs, Somerville has recipes with pasta and risotto. One of my favorites is Spring Risotto with Asparagus and Peas made with a tomato and mushroom stock and with tender asparagus and sweet sugar snap peas—a perfect summer meal!

Not in the mood for pasta or risotto? Perhaps some pizza with onion confit, walnuts and gorgonzola cheese? Or maybe a Mexican pizza with salsa roja, cheddar cheese and cilantro pesto?

If you’re like me and want to make a healthy or rich dessert, Fields of Greens has an impressive selection of recipes to choose from. Some of my favorites include Lemon or Ginger Pots de Crème, Ginger Pound Cake, Gateau Moule – a very rich steamed chocolate cake.

Need advice of what to serve that’s in season? Fields of Greens has seasonal celebration meals. Also included is a section on pairing wines with vegetables, and a low-fat cooking guide.

 Now that we’re in the dog days of summer with fruit and veggie stands galore, pick up a copy of Fields of Greens, believe me, you won’t miss your barbecue meats.

New Stories from the South 2009
Madison Smartt Bell, Editor
Kathy Pories, Series Editor
Algonquin Books
357 pages
$14.95 

Reviewed by: S.L. Weis

New Stories from the South 2009, the twenty-fourth annual volume in this series published by Algonquin Books, offers a sampling of the year’s best short stories which are either set in the Southern United States or authored by Southern writers.  The authors featured in this volume ranged from established Southern writers, such as Wendell Berry, Pickney Benedict and Cary Holladay to debut authors, and while the stories varied widely in content and tone, all were generally of high quality.  A few, such as Stephanie Soileau’s Camera Obscura, Wendell Berry’s Fly Away, Breath, were exceptional.  

If a Southern anthology captures the collective unconsciousness of its population, then how do their struggles and dreams differ from those of other regions?  How does a story capture place?  What does it mean to be Southern?  How can this be contrasted with what it means to be more generally American, and do themes like alienation, teen pregnancy, desperate love and suicide have a greater significance in the south than elsewhere?  Or are these themes common to the broader cultural landscape in an age of disrupted families, economic decline and the homogenizing effect of mass media?  These are all reasonable questions that, given the geographic emphasis, resound from the pages of this volume.  In fairness to its editor, this does not reflect a lack of editorial focus.  In his introduction, Madison Smartt Bell described his struggle with these questions as he selected the pieces for this volume.  He described the diversity of topics and treatments in hopeful terms, as a departure from focus on the Old South, the Confederacy and racial tensions to a broader set of concerns more reflective of what he called the new south’s rootlessness.  

Katrina, which surfaced in one form or another in a few of these stories, has emerged as a metaphor for this new rootlessness; for the way the South has been torn apart and is re-emerging in unexpected ways.  He argues that the South has, like the rest of the country, largely moved beyond the false duality of race and has adopted a broader, less stereotyped character.  However, one thing that seems to be virtually absent in this set of stories is the lyrical Southern dialect, arguably­ one of the most distinctive facets of Southern literary tradition. While it is true that Southern dialect is often misappropriated and used as shorthand for a number of derogatory characteristics, it would be hoped that Southern fiction could reclaim those stereotypes and place them in a context more befitting the reality of the New South, rather than to wipe out the Southern flavor of the language in favor of uniformity.

The Game On Diet!
By Krista Vernoff and Az Ferguson
Harper
291 pages
$14.99

A few Sundays ago I wrote I was shooting to run a 5K race and lose five pounds. My attempts to train for a race were thwarted thanks to very painful plantar fasciitis that left me hobbling around the house and outside when I walked the dogs. So, no training or walking long distances. The pain in my heel turned to be a be a pain in the ass when it came to my fitness goals; consequently because I wasn’t getting enough exercise, I was getting very grumpy, and used food for comfort. Instead of losing five pounds, I gained four.

One day on Twitter, I noticed the hash tag for The Game On Diet! (#gameon) and wondered what this was all about. It seems that a few of my followers were playing this game and losing weight. What the hell was it all about I wondered? I ventured to Amazon and searched for the book, looked inside and thought that I might as well plunk down the money and try it, but in the back of my mind I thought it would be one of the many diet books (or snake oil remedies, as one reviewer for Alvah’s Books likes to call them) that would collect dust on my shelf.

Well, I was wrong.

In a nutshell, The Game On Diet is actually a game with teams, rules, points, penalties, and a grand prize. The reasoning behind the diet is to get dieters motivated to lose and have fun. Let’s face it, dieting is not fun and it’s hard to stay motivated. However, with The Game On Diet, players are motivated to earn their points and stay on track to lose the weight (which really is the BIG prize, achieving that goal and not getting frustrated).

Krista Vernoff, Emmy winner and head writer for TV’s Grey’s Anatomy, writes of her trials and tribulations with weight, but when she became pregnant, had her baby and then couldn’t shake off the 25 pounds, she knew she had to do something that would help take it off, but what? Vernoff readily admits that she wasn’t into exercise, that her eating habits weren’t great, and that she wasn’t disciplined about her meals. So how did she manage to lose over 40 pounds? Her trainer and co-writer Az Ferguson, Million Dollar Body for Life champion,  came up with a neat psychological device that made losing weight into a game. And Krista loves games and loves to win even more.

I can certainly relate to that. When I read Krista’s story, I thought, yup that’s me to a T—I hate organized sports, but love board and card games, and I want to win, win, win! This is the only time I’m actually competitive, and to make matters worse, I am a terrible winner because I gloat and let’s not even talk about losing.

The rules to game are fairly simple to follow. To win your daily 100 points, you have to eat five meals a day, basically three meals with two snacks. Each meal has to be balanced. That means a carbohydrate, a protein, a healthy fat, and as many green, leafy veggies as you like—minimum 2 servings a day. Vernoff and Ferguson provide a list of verboten foods which they’ve labeled as F.L.A.B.B or fat-loading or belly-bloating foods as well as healthier alternatives labeled as  F.Y.T or flatten your tummy foods. In addition to healthy eating, there’s also healthy drinking. To earn 10 points, you have to drink 10 glasses of water or three liters. Alcohol is only allowed on your day off, if you decide to lush it up one evening, plan on losing 25 points per drink. Oh, and when you lose points so does your team—so it’s not all about you.

As for exercise, Vernoff and Ferguson only ask that players make a daily 20 minute commitment to get their heart rate and their limbs moving. No exercise, no 20 points.

Other rules include getting enough sleep, keeping in touch with teammates for motivation, and one very interesting rule which is eliminating one bad habit and starting a good one, which helps a great deal with discipline (at least it does for me). Snacking is the one activity that is almost every dieter’s Achilles heel and that sabotages a weight loss regime so there’s a no snacking rule–not even popping a handful of cereal or taking a spoonful of peanut butter. You snack, you get minus 10 points per infraction.

If you think about The Game On Diet it’s really all about the common sense basics of dieting that every one knows, but the authors really drum into your head that it’s the quality of calories that you eat and will burn. In addition to the basic rules, there are few give aways, you’re allowed a 100 calories daily of FLABB foods with a meal (butter in a baked potato or some dried fruit in a salad); one meal off during the week, and the entire-the day off–in which you can say toodles to the rules and just have a rest day, eat what ever you like, have a drink and slip into one bad habit. However, some players (like me) might not want to lose momentum and apply some of guidelines even on their day off.

The Game On Diet is an amusing and fast read. Most people will finish the book in two days. Some minor issues should be noted about including possibly too much dairy and/or protein in every meal. Some of the rules need clarification; for example are players allowed to weigh daily or not. Once a week is the rule, and there is a penalty for weighing more than once, however Vernoff later writes that she weighs in daily (most diet and fitness books recommend once a week,while a minority say that weighing in daily is a good method to keep you on track daily).

Some readers might find Vernoff’s jokesy manner a little over the top (the section on water and crack wasn’t really that funny), but overall, she writes in a manner that’s chummy and shares her success story to dieters who have lost all motivation and keep on piling the pounds.

How have I fared? I’ve completed one week of The Game On Diet, followed all the rules, with the exception of one weigh-in penalty, and one popcorn snacking penalty, and I’ve lost six pounds, and I still have three more weeks to complete. Six pounds lighter, not flabby, frustrated, grouchy, or hungry, and very motivated to continue, now that’s a game I like.

The Spanish Civil War: A Very Short Introduction
By Helen Graham
Oxford University Press, 2005
175 pages
$11.95

The Very Short Introduction series published by Oxford University Press is a wonderful way to get readers acquainted with various subjects ranging from Marx to Christianity, but be forewarned that these small tomes with their tiny print are nothing like the Dummy or Idiots books. Each of these short books pack a hell of a wallop and, hopefully, they will tempt readers to learn more about a specific subject.

In this case, it’s the Spanish Civil War written by Helen Graham, a professor of Spanish History at Royal Halloway, University of London. She is also the author of The Spanish Republic at War 1936-1939, which was published in 2002. Paul Preston, another historian on the subject, sums up Dr. Graham’s book, “This is far and away the best short introduction to the Spanish Civil War that I have read in any language.”  And there you have it. Graham takes a very complex subject whose history can turn any sane person into a raving lunatic–and that’s after finally figuring out all the acronyms for all the political parties—and puts it all into a context that everyone can understand and, hopefully transition to Preston’s or to Hugh Thomas’ much longer accounts of the war.

To fully understand the implications of the war, readers need to have a pretty solid foundation of what led to Spain becoming a Republic and Graham provides succinct historical background. A Very Short Introduction is divided into seven concise chapters. In the second chapter, “Rebellion, Revolution, and Repression” Graham provides a concise narrative of the violence on both sides, from anti-clerical to the executions of poet Garcia Lorca and Amparo Bayaron, the wife of Republican novelist Ramon Sender. Graham writes:

“Those who did the killing in rebel Spain during the first few months were mainly vigilantes. What occurred was a massacre of civilians by other civilians. Mostly this took the form of death squads abducting people from their homes or else taking them out of prison. In a majority of cases the assassins had close links rightist political organizations that had backed the coup, in particular the fascist Falnge. But the military authorities made no attempt to reign in this terror. In fact the killers were often with the connivance of the authorities, otherwise the death squads who came for Amparo Barayon and thousands of her compatriots would never have been able to take their victims out of gaol at will.”

One of the strongest chapter, “The Making of Rebel Spain” Graham provides tight summary of how Franco came to power through skill, but also with some luck thanks to a few “fortuitous deaths” of some serious rivals—either by accident as in the case of General Sanjurjo or through Republican execution. However, Graham points out that Franco’s great advantage at war’s start was his command over the Army of Africa, and aid from Hitler and Mussolini.

The only drawback to Graham’s tight presentation of the Spanish Civil is that her subject–which rouses strong opinions from both sides of the political spectrum—is written a fairly dry manner and rarely interjects any of the passions of the war. However, for readers who want a short  overview on a vast and difficult war, The Spanish Civil War: A Very Short Introduction is a good place to start.

The Spanish Civil War: Reaction, Revolution, and Revenge
By Paul Preston
W. W. Norton and Company, 2007
432 pages.
$16.95

 Reviewed by Randall Radic

 In The Decline of the West, Oswald Spengler wrote:  “With this enters the age of gigantic conflicts, in which we find ourselves today.  It is the transition from Napoleonism to Caesarism….  The Chinese call it Shan-Kwo, the period of the contending states.”  Spengler was not writing about the Spanish Civil War, of course.  His perspective was purely historical and not specific to one event.  Nevertheless, his statement provides an explanation for the Spanish Civil War.

Jesus took the long view, too, when he said, “There will be wars and rumors of wars until I come again.”  Indirectly, his words provide another explanation for the Spanish Civil War.  Something along the lines of “that’s just the way people are.” 

Paul Preston, the author of The Spanish Civil War, wanted a more specific answer, so he wrote a book in which he examined the causes and effects of the Spanish Civil War (SCW).  A war, according to Preston, that set the stage for World War II.  In the first chapter of his book, Preston implies that – generally speaking – the SCW was the result of growing pains – “the struggles of a society in the throes of modernization.”  The SCW was “the culmination of a series of uneven struggles between the forces of reform and reaction which had dominated Spanish history since 1808.”

In other words, there were two groups of people in Spain.  Those that wanted to change things and those that wanted things to stay the same.  The reformers wanted to modernize Spain, pushing it out of the past into the 20^th century.  Like most people who are afraid of change, the reactionaries liked things the way they were.  And they liked it even more if they got to be in power.  That way they could make sure the status quo was preserved.

In chapter two, Preston begins breaking his general explanation for the SCW down into specific factors.  The reformers, called the Second Republic, were liberals with wonderful ideas that they couldn’t implement effectively.  Their failure caused them to revert to “revolutionary solutions.”  And that’s when everything went to hell in a hand cart.  Preston details the conflict and its aftermath in the succeeding chapters.           

Before reading Preston’s book, the reviewer’s knowledge of the SCW was scanty to almost non-existent.  After finishing the book, the reviewer would like to know more, especially about General Franco, who led the Nationalist forces to victory – if one wants to call it that – and set himself up as dictator for life.  The reviewer would also like to read more about the 3000 Americans who took up arms and fought against Franco.  What motivated men whom, for the most part, had no military experience, to take part in the civil war of a foreign country?  Preston merely writes, “the volunteers went to Spain to fight Hitlerism.”  The reviewer suspects there’s more to it.  He also admits that the subject probably commands a separate book, dedicated to the topic.  

Preston does a remarkable job in relating the story of the SCW.  His presentation and knowledge of General Franco is stunning.  To the reviewer, it appeared that without Franco the outcome of the civil war might have been different.  For Franco did whatever needed to be done to win.  He was ruthless, driven by an inner energy, which the Republicans could not muster.  Franco’s mantra seemed to be “kill, kill, kill.”  And although a little simplistic, his willingness to kill provided the crucial advantage to the Nationalists.         

Previous reviewers have accused Preston of “leftist bias.”  In the book’s preface, Preston himself acknowledges that he has no sympathy for the Nationalists.  He writes, “it is not a book which sets out to find a perfect balance between both sides.”  He then explains that he lived in Spain during Franco’s domination.  In other words, Preston is not writing history from his penthouse suite at the Ivory Tower Hotel.  To this reviewer, that means he knows what he’s talking about, because he actually experienced it.  And that means his book tells what really happened.  Which is called “the truth.”

Truth is a bias only to those who want to believe a lie.

All in all, The Spanish Civil War is essential reading for a better understanding of the dynamics of history as it occurred in Spain just prior to World War II.

Alvah Bessie’s Spanish Civil War Notebooks
Edited by Dan Bessie
The University Press of Kentucky
156 pages
$22.00

This historical and valuable first-hand personal account presents the war in Spain through the eyes of writer and volunteer soldier Alvah Bessie. Edited by Dan Bessie, Alvah’s son, Alvah Bessie’s Spanish Civil War Notebooks are a daily record of activities, which he jotted down in four notebooks (and incidentally are kept for the general public to view and read if they can decipher Bessie’s scrawl at New York University’s Tamiment Library in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives) when he was in Spain from February 3^rd to December 1^st 1938.

As Bessie fils writes, these four pocket notebooks were filled with details of his father’s arrival in Spain (via Paris, for it was illegal to travel to Spain at that time), his training, his battlefield experiences and his work for the Lincolns’ newspaper The Volunteer for Liberty and his departure from Spain.
 
These notebooks are the foundation for Bessie’s brilliant memoir Men in Battle, first published in 1939 by Charles Scribner’s Sons. These events covered in the notebooks are fully detailed in Men in Battle, but the beauty of the notebooks is actually reading what happened at the given moment or as Dan Bessie writes, “…have an immediacy that reflects the fast pace of a soldier in training and combat, jotting down impressions while on the move.”

Bessie provides a two page chronology of his father’s arrival to Spain and his departure and then kicks it off with Notebook 1. This section includes diagrams of infantry formations, letters from his children and his ex-wife, and drawings. Entries are succinct, yet descriptive. In one, he aptly illustrates fear (dated April 10, [1938]):

Fear: men who have experienced avion attacks show greatest demoralization. One man carries a stick in his mouth to prevent his teeth from chattering and equalize pressure between inner ear and outside. Others noticeably jittery when “avion” is called.

Bessie starts Notebook 2 on April 16, 1938. About the same time period that his iconic photograph at Darmos, Catalonia was taken [and is shown in the About Alvah’s Books page—editor]. In this notebook, Bessie includes a list of Spanish expressions and slang frequently used by soldiers, he writes of his budding friendship with poet Edwin Rolfe, and introduces his company commander Aaron Lopoff, a young man who will be like a close brother to Bessie and will leave a lasting mark as reflected in the writer’s work.

Bessie was a prolific letter writer and on numerous occasions he drew several panoramic diagrams of his location. These letters were met with exasperation from military censors. On May 15^th, Bessie received this handwritten letter from the Anglo-American sector of the Brigades stationed in Barcelona:

May 15 – 1938 SR 20E – C333 – Barcelona

Comrade Bessie –

This is just to inform you that thereafter your correspondence that contains any diagrams – calculations or similar items necessary for regular communication will be detained indefinitely and possible cause you some individual inconvenience. I believe you are a reliable comrade but, please use your intelligence and don’t complicate the necessary work of the censorship. 

[Signature illegible]
Anglo-American Sector
Censura Militar 

Bessie would receive several of these handwritten reprimands.

Notebook 3 starts in late July 1938; the entries are longer with more details of battles. He is close to Gandesa and is part of the Ebro Offensive. In a brief section on August 17th Bessie notes that Lopoff is wounded in the head with expectations to recover. On August 19^th, he writes:

The worst day so far, of this life. Hell broke loose at 12:30 pm . . . . artillery and mortars, preparation for a fascist attack. For 7-1/2 hours we were shelled, the shells covering practically every inch of our parapets and the barranco behind our hill. The strain, unbearable, the shells, thousands, falling in groups of 3, 4 at second intervals. . . . Whitney, translator for the company, 1-1/2 years here, scared as a rabbit, nearly hysterical with fear for weeks now, severely wounded two feet from me, together with telephonist who occupied the same shallow refugio . . . the sight of Whiney, his buttocks nearly torn off, hold them, his face dead yellow, covered with rock dust, screaming…

August 24: Word last night that Lopoff’s wound is worse than thought. At first – 3 m.g. (?) bullets in the head, which apparently destroyed the eye and may result in the loss of the other.

September 8: Tte. Aaron Lopoff, we learn, died of his wounds received on hill 666 in the Sierra Pandols the night of August 17, leading a night attack against fascist positions. He received 3 m.g. bullets in the head, which destroyed one eye. Report that meningitis set in.

Notebook 4 is the shortest of all. Here, Bessie writes of the retreat of the Brigades and his return to Barcelona and then to Paris. The journal ends on December 1^st, yet Bessie continues to make entries until December 4. His last entry is:

PS: We sailed on the Paris from Cherbourg, after going there by train. Were back in New York before Christmas. At New York we were held aboard the ship for six hours before disembarking, out passports were taken away from us. But there was a terrific welcoming committee of thousands who stood in the bitter cold from 6 a.m. (when the ship docked) till noon, when we came off.

For Bessie, Spain, was a turning point in his life and these notebooks were the first of many letters, speeches, short stories, articles and books about his time with the Lincolns and fighting to save the Spanish Republic. In 1980, Bessie commented in Peter Wedyn’s The Passionate War:

 This is the most important experience of my life, and it always has remained so, and I have never regretted it for a moment.

Thanks to his experience and his notebooks, historians and readers of the Spanish Civil War have a priceless source to add to their libraries.

Runner’s World Complete Book of Women’s Running
By Dagny Scott Barrios
Rodale, Inc.
324 pages
$16.95

Like most women I like aerobic activity over weight-trainig. I like riding my bike, walking briskly, working out on the elliptical or stairmaster, but running has always been a challenge for me. I like the treadmill, partly because I can control the pace and the incline, but after a two mile run on the machine I get bored. Running outdoors can be less boring, but I’m dealing with outside forces like the weather, cars, dogs, bicyclists and uneven terrain.

In the past, I’ve signed up for running classes through my local sports shop and every time I’ve been sidelined either by an injury or time constraints. I’ve never reached my goal, which was to run a 5K race. This time, however, I will complete a 5K race and I will lose a minimum of five pounds.

To help me achieve these two goals, I have Dagny Scot Barrios’ book, Runner’s World Complete Book of Women’s Running, which provides terrific advice on how to get started, stay motivated, lose weight, run injury-free, be safe and train for any distance.  Now that’s everything I want in a book.

What factors are important to me? Since I injured my calf in the past and it took a full six weeks for it to fully heal, I don’t want to sabotage my efforts. The first chapter I turned to was Chapter 16: Caring for Your Body (frankly, I think this should be the third chapter). Barrios provides a quick guide of running injuries that especially that affect women, what causes the injury and how to treat it. In my case, it was my right calf muscle bunching up into a tight ball. She explains that this may have been caused by a combination of dehydration (check) low electrolyte levels (double check), and possibly a lack of flexibility (triple check). How to treat it? Warm up and cool down, stay well-hydrated, drink a sports drink with electrolytes if you workout for more than 60 minutes. Engage in a regular stretching program.

So far so good…but I am on my third day of a running/walking program and there’s that bloom of motivation, but what happened when it withers away? How do I keep going and not get discouraged? This is the most important chapter for me, and again it comes late in the book as Chapter 12: Staying Motivated and Beyond: The Mental Aspects of Running.  Here Barrios writes of the most common factors that droop motivation these include boredom, stress, lack of results, and time constraints. When boredom strikes, Barrios recommends to fight back with some variety: Change your route, your speed, make your run an adventure, invite a friend to join you, etc.

A key factor to keep motivated, Barrios writes, is to keep positive and offers the following advice:

• For every run, find a success. Maybe you didn’t feel like running or you a had a late start, but that didn’t stop you from running.
• Write or recite positive affirmations.  Dump the negative self talk and replace it with positive affirmations. For example instead of saying I only completed ¾ of a mile, say I ran ¾ of a mile and didn’t walk any of it.
• Build a support team. Find friends who support and encourage you to reach your goals (and theirs too)
• Keep running in perspective. Sometimes our schedules don’t lend them themselves to a daily run or life just happens. Anything can shift a priority that can make running a chore instead of a fun activity. Think of running as source of pleasure, meditation, relaxation, and enjoy and think of what you want to accomplish.

Beginner runners will find the other chapters in the book valuable. Barrios provides realistic training programs that transition from walking to jogging; jogging to running; running to racing; and to conquering the marathon. She answers questions for pregnant runners, younger runners and has great chapters on body issues, diet and nutrition, and a slimming-down program.

So, for the remaining part of the summer, Runner’s World Complete Book of Women’s Running will be my bible that will help me keep motivated and injury-free and help achieve my goals. For women who want to start a running program, or restart one, Barrios book is a must-read or reread.

About a month ago, I wrote a review of Gerald Martin’s fabulous biography on ‘Gabo’ otherwise known as Gabriel Garcia Marquez for The Feminist Review. It’s finally been posted, but for a sneak preview below are the first two paragraphs:

Gabriel Garcia Marquez: A Life
By Gerald Martin
Alfred P. Knopf
672 pages
$37.50

In his exhaustively researched biography of Gabriel Garcia Márquez, Gerald Martin, who spent seventeen years examining every aspect of Marquez’s life and interviewing over 300 people, beautifully takes the reader through the life and times of one of Latin America’s most influential writers, a Nobel Prize winner, and one of the most popular novelist in the last fifty years.

Martin traces Márquez’s (or “Gabo” as he is affectionately referred to throughout the biography) early beginnings back to Aratacata’s early days and to the life of Colonel Nicholás R. Márquez Mejia, Gabo’s maternal grandfather, who played an influential and supportive role in the young boy’s life until he was swooped up by his nomadic parents at nine years old. It’s during that time, Martin writes, that the inspiration for One Hundred Years of Solitude was born and where Gabo learned of magic via his superstitious grandmother.

To read the rest of the review, please visit the Feminist Review’s blog.