Book review: "Mornings on Horseback" by David McCullough

First, to be clear, I admire and respect author David McCullough. I found his book "1776" to be a compelling page-turner. His other books, plus his work on PBS's "American Experience" and Ken Burns' "The Civil War" have earned him a righful place as one of America's preeminent historians. 

That said, McCullough's 1981 book, "Mornings on Horseback," is not his best work. The book, which includes the "origin story" of Theodore Roosevelt among its various topics, suffers from a lack of focus and too much minutiae. 

Even the subtitle of the book — "The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt" — hints at McCullough's uncertainly over the scope of the book. The blend of at least three topics with frequent digressions of questionable relevance results in an uneven mixture. Not all the storylines deserve the detailed attention McCullough gives them.

Before I go too far down this negative track, let me emphasize that "Mornings on Horseback" is not a bad book. McCullough clearly dug deep in his research, combing through Roosevelt family letters and diaries, as well as other historical documents, and some of what he has to share is quite eye-opening.

First, there is Teddy Roosevelt's father, Theodore, who turns out to be almost as interesting as his future-president son. Theodore Roosevelt Senior, McCullough explains, was a wealthy man who devoted much of his life to philanthropy and public service, so much so that he earned the nickname "Greatheart." He worked to find homes for homeless children, established New York Children's Orthopedic Hospital, helped fund the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Museum of Natural History, and supported efforts to rid government of corruption.

Clearly, Teddy Roosevelt got his core principles of honesty, fairness and public service from his father. After the elder Theodore's death, Teddy wrote, "I shall try to lead such a life as he would have wished, and to do nothing I would have been ashamed to confess to him."

Another surprise from this book (for me, anyway) is how wealthy the Roosevelts were. The enormous family fortune, built from selling plate glass and investments in real estate and banking, dated back at least three generations before Teddy Roosevelt and was eventually passed down to him. 

He grew up in one Manhattan mansion before his family moved to an even grander mansion uptown when he was 15. The latter home was so large the Roosevelts once sent out 500 invitations to a party to be held there. Another mansion, at Oyster Bay on Long Island, came later. At each home, family needs were tended to by footmen, maids and butlers. 

His family spent a year touring Europe in style when Teddy was 10 and 11, and another well-funded year in Egypt, the Middle East, and Europe when he was 14 and 15. At Harvard, Teddy lived on stipend that was more than the college's president salary.  

By far the most interesting throughline in this book is the story of how Teddy Roosevelt developed from an asthma-ridden child —   "embarrassingly undersized and underweight, a scrawny frame with stick arms and stick legs," writes McCullough —  into a unstoppable personality who stormed through college, led groundbreaking reforms in government even as a young man, and worked tirelessly on a North Dakota cattle ranch.

At Harvard, his peers mocked him for his high-pitched voice, but were wowed by his unending energy. "He was a figure of incessant activitiy (as he himself said), of constant talk, constant hurry, a bee in a bottle."

He was elected New York's youngest state legislator ever (to that time) at age 23, voters drawn to the tireless candidate who seemed committed to working for the average person, "In a political fight, he fought tooth and claw." 

McCullough carefully debunks some myths from Teddy's early years (the book covers his life up to age 28) while also detailing some astonishing truths.

Teddy did, in fact, knock out a drunk cowboy with one punch in a Montana bar after the man had pointed two guns at him. He did, in fact, work for 40 hours on horseback through storm and rain to round up cattle who had stampeded away.

If only McCullough had stuck to the stories of Theordores Junior and Senior. Perhaps feeling a historian's duty to be thorough, McCullough also details the lives of Teddy's siblings and other Roosevelt relatives, but their lives are largely dull — a fact the author acknowledges. Prior to Teddy, McCullough explains, "One searches the Roosevelt family history in vain for a sign of daring or spontaneity or a sense of humor."

 "Mornings on Horseback" is one of McCullough's earlier books, his fourth of 13, and while the quality of research is unquestioned, he too often buries the reader in trivial and unimportant details.

In describing the 1884 Republican convention, McCullough pointlessly informs us that, "The Pennsylvanians wore brilliant blue neckties and cream-colored plug hats and matching cream-colored silk handkerchiefs in their coat pockets, a spray of lily of the valley on the lapel." 

Describing two mansions owned by other families, McCullough notes that one faced east and the other south, even though this doesn't matter in the least. 

He offers tedious listings of social occasions: "There was a 'jolly little dinner' at the Iselins', a 'very pleasant little party' at Aunt Annie's, dinners at the Leavitts', the Griswolds', the Weekeses', the Keans', the Morans; the Tuckermans' ..." and on and on.

McCullough seems unable to resist a good digression, wandering off to tell us stories with only peripheral connection to Roosevelts. He goes into excessive details about the Civil War commerce raider ship Alabama, the inner machinations of the 1876 Republican convention, and a North Dakota cattle farmer named Marquis de Mores. (These stories are not without merit; they just don't fit in this book.)

The bottom line is that is that if you want to get the most out of "Mornings on Horseback" you will need to skim and skip parts. (To be fair, even McCullough's book "1776," which I liked, contains a unneeded first chapter.) Stick as much as you can to the stories of Theodore Roosevelt, Junior and Senior, and you'll enjoy the book more.                                                                                                                              

Book review: "The Wide, Wide Sea" by Hampton Sides

An amazing life, a shocking death, a riveting book.

"The Wide, Wide Sea," a 2024 book by Hampton Sides, tells the extraordinary story of English Captain James Cook's third (and last) voyage. It was on this voyage, from 1776 to 1778, that Cook's two ships explored the vast Pacific Ocean from as far south as New Zealand to the bitter icy edges of the Arctic Ocean at the north. 

Along the way, Cook made the first European contacts with numerous native cultures. Most significantly, he and his crew were the first non-Polynesians to reach Hawaii. It was there that Cook would die in a dramatic and tumultous conflict with the islanders. 

It is a fascinating book, stuffed with details, about a remarkable time when men could venture into blank spots on the map, finding places they never imagined, and meeting people who were far different from them. And doing it again and again. Such was the life of Captain Cook. 

As Sides describes him, Cook was both a tireless explorer and a master mapmaker. The later skill should not be minimized. Whereas earlier explorers clumsily created maps that were largely (or completely) inaccurate, Cook employed the best tools of the day to read the positions of the stars and the sun, and his knowledge of trigonomety to place his discoveries precisely on the map. And once on the map, they would soon be greeting a lot more visitors. 

Of course, "discovery" is a fraught word for lands that were already occupied. But from the European perspective — or really any perspective other than the islanders themselves — Cook did discover scores of islands and outposts throughout his three voyages.

Cook, says Sides, seemed to have a preternatural sense — or was it just luck? — that enabled him to stumble onto new islands (including Hawaii). 

Each fresh encounter with natives usually begain tensely, with both sides warily approaching each other. While there was sometimes violence, more often the two sides slowly warmed to each other, exchanging gifts, trading goods, and introducing each other to their respective customs. 

Sides recounts the perilous landing of Cook and his men at St. Lawrence Bay, in what is today remote Eastern Russia, where hostile Chukchi natives aimed their bows and arrows at him. Cook told his men to wait at the water's edge while he gingerly stepped forward. "The Natives, still bellicose and untrusting, could have killed him an instant, and they showed every willingness to do so."

But Cook stood his ground, slowly approaching, his arms outstretched to show he was unarmed. And gradually the tension eased, Sides notes, the mood softened. 

Cook had performed iterations of this risky minuet on previous voyages, in assorted beach scenarios, striding ashore alone and unarmed. It was a kind of theater of first contact he had perfected. On one level, it involved a bravery and a confidence that bordered on recklessness. Behind it, though, was an optimism. He believed cultures could be made to understand one another: If he used the right tone and body language, if he looked them in the eye and showed proper respect, the chasm between radically different people could be bridged.

While others on the English crew sometimes dismissed or recoiled at the "primitive" practices of the natives, Cook tried hard to be simply an observer of local customs. On Tahiti, Cook even viewed a human sacriifice (the victim was killed earlier in the day; his body then brought to the ceremony), then did his best to objectively describe it in his journal. 

Still, one of Sides' themes of "The Wide, Wide Sea," is that Cook was behaving differently on this voyage than on his first two, and sometimes exploded with uncharacteric fury after things were stolen from his English crew. For example, after one of the Englishmen's goats was stolen on the island of Moorea, Cook flew into a rage, leading a party that burnt the natives' homes, destroyed crops and wrecked canoes. 

Sides speculates that the 48-year-old Cook may have been suffering from an unknown disease causing his erratic behavior, but there is no proof.

The book is not entirely about Cook. The most substatial sub-story is about a youg Tahitian man named Mai, who had been brought to England in 1774, the first Polynesian to reach England. It was a peculiar time when exotic people from faraway lands were brough to London as "human pets" (think Pocahontas) to be shown off.

Mai travels aboard Cook's ship on his return to Tahiti, hoping to come back to his homeland to gain vengeance on his people's enemies and earn a place of prominence on the island. Sadly, he never gets the respect, or the vengeance, he wants. I had never heard of Mai, and it is an interesting story, though Sides spends a bit too much space on Mai's time in London.

If that's a small weakness in the book, it's about the only one. Otherwise I loved the way Sides tells the story, in doses of just two or three pages. History doesn't always fit together neatly, so some of the passages are simply standalone vignettes, while othes help build the deeper story of the voyage.

Even in the best of encounters, the English learned that the islanders would come to resent their presence after two or three weeks. Cook could sense when it was time to move on. 

Cook's death on the Big Island in Hawaii was horrifying, but perhaps inevitable. He had been treated as a god on arrival, but relations between the English and the Hawaiians slowly deteriorated. Still, everything would have been fine if the English had sailed away from the island in February 1778 as planned.

But a a storm severely damaged Cook's main ship, the Resolution, and they had to return to the Kona Coast harbor to make repairs. The Hawaiians were not happy to see them. 

Soon, an important English boat was stolen, Cook became enraged, and his efforts to force the Hawaiians to return the vessel triggered an eruption of violence. Cook was beaten and stabbed to death. It was an ignominous end to his life but perhaps an inevitable one, writes Sides.

What was perhaps more surprising than Cook’s violent death was that it hadn’t happened earlier, at some other island. For how many times had he landed upon unfamiliar shores—alone or nearly alone—a stranger, surrounded by thousands of understandably suspicious Indigenous people who could not know his true intentions? Over the years, across the hundreds of thousands of oceanic miles, how many opportunities had there been for disagreements to erupt? Cook had cheated death so many times, at so many of his anchorages, that it was a wonder he had lived this long.

Book review: "Cannery Row" by John Steinbeck

Early in my reading of "Cannery Row," I kept waiting for the main characters to appear.

The first character John Steinbeck introduces in thie 1945 novel set in Monterey, California, is Lee Chong, a taciturn Chinese grocery store owner who provides much of the neighborhood's food and liquor, while giving out just enough credit keep all the locals in his debt.

Next, Steinbeck introduces us to five seldom-employed men who squat in a small building formerly used to store fish meal that they call the Palace Flophouse. The men "had in common no families, no money, and no ambitions beyond food, drink, and contentment."

Then there's Dora Flood, who runs a busy brothel nearby, and Doc, a scientist who collects marine specimens to sell to laboratories, while at night sitting home alone listening to classical music and sadly recalling a lost love. 

All of these seemed like side characters to me, so it took me a bit to realize they are the main characters.

And I guess that's the point. Steinbeck is not interested in showing us the lives of the rich or the powerful, or even the ordinary middle-class. "Cannery Row" is all about the lives of people on the fringes, imperfect people who build a quirky community of their own. It is based on real people Steinbeck met while living in Monterey in the 1930s.

Steinbeck braids together a collection of stories, some of which are tied loosely together and some of which are stand-alone vignettes. 

To say this a quirky tale is an understatement. There is a embalming gone wrong, a quest for a beer milkshake, and a man building a boat with no intention to finish it. It is amusing to watch the Palace Flophouse guys attempt to throw a party for Doc, but end up getting it disastrously wrong.

The book mixes touches of poignancy with Steinbeck's wry sense of humor. Refering to the ubiquity of the Model T Ford at the time, and its persistent need for repair, the author says, "Two generations of Americans knew more about the Ford coil than the clitoris, about the planetary system of gears than the solar system of stars."

"Cannery Row" is a fairly short book, but I didn't read it fast. This is partly because Steinbeck loads every paragraph with a lot of meaning. If you read too fast, you'll miss it. Here, for example, is his description of Hazel, one of the Palace Flophouse gang.

"Hazel’s mind was like wandering alone in a deserted museum. Hazel’s mind was choked with un- catalogued exhibits. He never forgot anything, but he never bothered to arrange his memories. Everything was thrown together like fishing-tackle in the bottom of a rowboat, hooks and sinkers and line and lures and gaffs all snarled up."

Mostly the book centers on Palace Flophouse men, led by a man named Mack. Sure, they steal food, overdrink, fail to pay their debts, and botch their attempts to help people, but Steinbeck looks at them and respects them for their commitment to a simple life:

"What can it profit a man to gain the whole world and to come to his property with a gastric ulcer, a blown prostate, and bifocals? Mack and the boys avoid the trap, walk around the poison, step over the noose while a generation of trapped, poisoned, and trussed-up men scream at them and call them no-goods, come-to-bad-ends, blots-on-the-town, thieves, rascals, bums."

This is only the second Steinbeck book I have read. The other is "The Pearl." "Cannery Row" is better.

How to reach the Los Angeles County Tax Collector

If you've tried to contact the Los Angeles County Treasurer and Tax Collector recently, you've discovered something disturbing: You can't.

If you call the Treasurer and Tax Collector's number (213-974-2111), you will enter the obligatory phone tree and after selecting some combination of choices, you will always end up hearing this recording:  

"We are current experiencing a high call volume. Please call back during our non-peak hours of 8 am and 10 am and 2 o'clock to 4:30 pm."

 And then the Treasurer and Tax Collector will hang up on you. Every. Single. Time. 

I've called the office nine times and have been hung up on nine times. And each call was during the supposed "non-peak hours."

So you can't get through by phone. Can you email them? While the TTC's website does not offer an email address, it does have a contact form for submitting a message. 

Don't get your hopes up, though. I submitted queries through the TTC's official system 17 days ago and am still waiting for a response.

So if they don't answer the phone and they don't respond to messages, how do you reach our public servants at the Treasurer and Tax Collector's office?

Two words: Gardenia Guerrero.

Gardenia works for Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn and when I contacted that office looking for help it was Gardenia who stepped up, responded to me, and had somone from the Treasurer and Tax Collector call me. 

Here is Gardenia's contact info:

Gardenia B. Guerrero, MPA

Constituent Caseworker

LA County Supervisor Janice Hahn 

O: 562.256.1920 C: 213.631.8648 

E: GGuerrero@bos.lacounty.gov

Email or call her. Unlike the TTC, she actually will respond. 

Book review: "A Tale of Two Cities" by Charles Dickens

It was not the best of books. It was not the worst of books. It was, uh, somewhere in the middle. 

When I began reading "A Tale of Two Cities" I knew little about it. Sure, I knew it was a classic by Charles Dickens, but I had no idea what it was about or whether a book from 1859 would be good reading in in 2026.

As it turns out, "A Tale of Two Cities" is good reading — in parts. It is also, unfortunately, overlong and overwritten.

The strength of the book lies in its portrayal of France before, during and (mostly) after the French Revolution. While it's called "A Tale of Two Cities," and there are some scenes in London, it's mostly a story set in and around Paris.

Dickens portrays pre-revolutionary France as a time of horrid inequities. The rich, the powerful, and the royal live in castles and on estates, well removed from the sufferings of the hungry masses. In one scene, a wealthy man's carriage runs over and kills a poor boy; the aristocrat tosses a coin to the child's father as compenation and then continues on.

Elsewhere, Dickens describes a youth who was sentenced to have "his hands cut off, his tongue torn out with pincers, and his body burned alive, because he had not kneeled down in the rain to do honour to a dirty procession of monks which passed within his view."

It's enough to drive a people to revolt, and they do. Midway through the book, Dickens shows the French rising up and storming into the Bastille. 

But the joy of the revolution soon gives way to the horrors of the Reign of Terror, when thousands of people were executed at the guillotine — what Dickens coldly calls "the National Razor."

"It sheared off heads so many, that it, and the ground it most polluted, were a rotten red ... It hushed the eloquent, struck down the powerful, abolished the beautiful and good."

Dickens describes rivers choked with drowned execution victims, and a daily parade of the condemned through the streets of Paris, many them innocent people swept up in the chaotic ferver of the day. A vengeful populace, the author says, was "headlong, mad, and dangerous" and demanded retribution against foreigners or anyone even remotely associated with the aristocracy.

Is this an accurate portrayal of the time? Honestly, I don't know enough about that era to say. But the images Dickens paints will stick in your mind. 

Still, to get to these sections of the book, the reader has some work to do. You must wade through a disjointed plot, elliptical and repetiive writing, stilled dialogue, and wooden characters.

Dickens can be witheringly sarcastic, skewering the arrogant, the rich and the smug, but he is often too much in love with his own words. He seems to never settle for saying something in one sentence if he can do it two, three or four. He prefers the longer and the redundant over the short and simple.

At one point, he says "More months, to the number of twelve, had come and gone" rather than "A year had passed." Later, he writes "Fifty-two were to roll that afternoon on the life-tide of the city to the boundless everlasting sea," rather than "Fifty-two were to be executed that afternoon."  

There is a chapter where the characters of Lucie and Alexandre Manette, daughter and father, express their love for each other —  over and over. Not only is it repetitious, Dickens had already established, before the chapter, the characters' deep love. 

Dickens' wide-ranging plot goes from bewildering to borderline brilliant. In the first half, like someone dumping out the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, the author scatters an assortment of seemingly disconnected plot lines. Characters are introduced, developed and then disappear. Events and secrets from the past are hinted at, but then dropped. The story abruptly jumps ahead in time, leaving behind questions unanswered 

For a reader looking for cohesiveness, it can be frustrating.

But in the second half, Dickens slowly takes all those disparate puzzle pieces and fits them cleverly into his grand saga. Almost everything from the first half has a place, an important role. It is quite masterful and impressive, though tempered by one factor: The book is so long, it can strain a reader's memory to recall the elements from the first half that become relevant in the second. 

I wish I could suggest a strategy for the prospective reader to get the rewards of "A Tale of Two Cities" without the poorer elements, but they are well intertwined. I will say that the book's weakest part is the start; I suggest skimming the first three chapters, which are filled with a lot of vague allusions that are difficult to understand. Don't get bogged down there, move on as quickly as you can to Chapter 4. The book gets better as you go along. 

Book review: "The Gales of November" by John U. Bacon

I picked up John U. Bacon's 2025 book "The Gales of November" because I thought it would tell me the story of the wreck of Edmund Fitzgerald, the freighter that sank in a storm in Lake Superior in 1975, taking the lives of 29 men with it.

The book does tell that story, but it also has a lot more. Bacon describes the history of shipping on the Great Lakes, the ships, the work, life aboard the vessels, the men who worked on them, and even the crew's families.

Frankly, this is the kind of storytelling that often makes me impatient. "C'mon," you'll find me saying. "Let's get to the important stuff."

But Bacon is such a talented writer and thorough researcher, that every bit of this book is interesting. Bacon conducted hundreds of interviews and scoured through historical records, collecting truckloads of illuminating stories. Every page of the book is filled with details that surprise or educate, sometimes both. 

In all, "The Gales of November" is one of the best books I've ever read. 

To start, Bacon takes the reader back a couple centuries to explain the how Great Lakes shipping began with the transportation of beaver pelts, then moved on to copper and lumber and eventually to taconite, the rock that gives us iron. Taconite is dug out of northern Minnesota, then shipped to Detroit or Toledo for processing so the iron can be extracted and made into steel. Long the "cash crop" of Great Lakes shipping, there were 26,000 tons of taconite aboard the Edmund Fitzgerald on its final voyage.

While most of us don't spend much time thinking about Great Lakes shipping, Bacon shows that it has been vital for the development of the United States. The auto industry, for one, depends on it. He makes a compelling case that America wouldn't have won World War II without the freighters of the Great Lakes bringing the elements needed to make planes, ships and vehicles for the military.

But shipping on these inland lakes comes with significant hazards. The storms and unruly waves they produce make the Great Lakes more dangerous for ships than the ocean. Bacon recounts the storm of 1913, which sank 19 ships and left 254 people dead. "For two weeks bodies surfaced on the coasts of the Great Lakes."

The launching of the Edmund Fitzgerald 1958 was a game-changer. The biggest and fastest freighter on the lakes, the famous "Fitz" drew crowds to its launch, broke records, and attracted VIP guests to well-appointed dining room and first-rate cabins. Even though some bigger and faster ships were eventually built, the Fitzgerald retained its status as the most respected and renowned on the lakes.

Bacon introduces us to the men who made this their career(at the time, there were no women crew members). For nine months of the year — they took the winter off when ice clogged the lakes — the men went back and forth across the lakes, earning good pay but rarely seeing their families.

In the summer, the workers in the engine room found the metal on hand rails so hot you could leave skin on them if you weren't careful. "If it was 90 degrees outside, it could be 120 degrees in the engine room," Bacon writes. "The engine crew would sweat so much they'd leave white salt lines on their blue work T-shirts from the sweat drying."

Not that other jobs on the boat were easy. Three deckhands had the chore of latching and unlatching 1,428 hatch clamps on every departure and arrival — and they had to do it quickly, because everyone else was waiting for them to finish.

Many of the men didn't know how to swim, Bacon notes. Some said it didn't matter — the lakes were so cold, if your ship sank you would die quickly regardless.

At off loading, a giant crane would grab huge "fistfuls" of taconite, then lower a bulldozer into the holds of the ship to push the rock into piles that could be more easily grabbed. Once that hold was empty, the crane and the bulldozer moved on to the next one.

Bacon finds nice side stories, too. He tells of the only boat in the U.S. with it's own zip code, the J.W. Westcott, which delivers mail to the sailors on Great Lakes ships. 

If Bacon had stopped here, even with no mention of the sinking of Edmund Fitzgerald, he would still have had an excellent book. 

When he does tell of the final journey of the Fitz, in in the final 40 percent of the book, the story grows tense. It can be painful to read. You know it's going to end in tragedy, but even as you're reading it, you're hoping that something, anything, will take them down a different path.

The voyage began inauspiciously. As the Fitzgerald left the dock at departure at Superior, Wisconsin, the weatther was uncharacteristically calm and relatively warm for November.

Soon, however, two monstrous storms, one from the northwest, one from the southwest, came together over Lake Superior, kicking up winds of 85-miles-hour and turbulent waves. 

It is impossible to know for sure why the Fitzgerald sank since there were no survivors and there was no "black box" in the pilot house. Bacon finds clues in looking at other ships that were in the water that day, particularly the Anderson, which was similar size to the Fitz and just a little behind it when it disappeared. 

If you want a full explanation for the sinking, you should read the book, but I'll try to sum up the key factors.

First, it was epic storm, one of the all-time worst. The storm produced 30-fout waves that rolled over the Fitzgerald's deck. It knocked out the ship's radar and pushed and pulled on the ship in extraordinary ways.

Second, they were carrying too much taconite. It wasn't unusual for the freighters like the Fitz to push, and even exceed, weight limits. The company earned more money and the captain often got a bonus if they carried more. But in November, with its more perilous weather, captains usually avoid being overweight, Bacon explains. 

Third, they were going too fast. The Fitzgerald almost always went fast; that's what it was know for and that helped its owners make more money. But the severe conditions of this storm required a slower pace to allow the ship to synchronize with the waves, rather than fight them, Bacon explains. 

Fourth, they failed to pull into safe harbor when the storm turned bad. One ship, the Wilfred Sykes, did, pulling into the protection of Thunder Bay, but the Fitz was bigger and had survived many a storm, possibly leading to overconfidence of Captain McSorley (Bacon goes out of his way to emphasize that McSorley was considered the best captain on the lakes, but may have still made mistakes on this day). 

It's also possible that the breakthrough design of the Fitz was a factor. The ship had been built with fewer rivets (but more welds) to save weight. Crew members had often commented on how much the ship bent in heavy waves. Supposedly this was an advantage, allowing the ship to bend but not break. But in this storm, the ship did break, splitting in two. Did the design make it too weak? 

Bacon also outlines a tepid response from the Coast Guard to calls from McSorley, but it's likely that any rescue mission would have come too late.

Finally, the mere mention of this tragic voyage likely reminds you of Gordon Lightfoot's famous song, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." Bacon doesn't ignore this, spending a fascinating chapter describing how Lightfoot, a recreational sailor on Lake Superior, wrote lyrics for the song after reading the news coverage.

Lightfoot agonzied over the song, fearful that doing it wrong could come off as tone-deaf or look like he was simply cashing in on the tragedy. It was only because Lightfoot's band had some extra studio time that he agreed to even try recording the song at all. 

As it turned out, the recorded version — the one you've surely heard many times — come from the very first time Lightfoot and his band did the song. No one but Lightfoot even knew the lyrics until that moment. They later did three or four more attempts with the song, but eveentually decided the first take was the best.

Book review: "A Study in Scarlet" by Arthur Conan Doyle

As the first Sherlock Holmes book, "A Study in Scarlet" starts off pretty much as what you would expect. Then it gets weird.

Arthur Conan Doyle's 1887 book begins with Dr. John Watson meeting the mysterious Holmes, simply because they are both looking for a roommate. If you've seen the Benedict Cumberbatch-Martin Freeman TV series this will feel comfortably familiar.

Watson, as the narrator and eyes and ears of the reader, describes the curious ways of the Sherlock Holmes, a man both brilliant and arrogant. Soon there is a murder and the game is afoot. Watson tags along as Holmes tries to solve a set of crimes that are baffling police.

It's all very readable and satisfying, in a style similar to what you've seen in Sherlock Holmes movies or TV shows. Conan Doyle's plot moves briskly along. as smooth as a skate on ice. 

Then, just after the halfway mark in the book, Holmes abruptly solves the case and arrests the perpetretor. But he doesn't explain how he solved the case.

You might expect the explanation to immediately follow, but instead the book launches into something called "Part II: The Country of the Saints."

This is an entirely different story, about a man and girl who are rescued from near-death in the American desert by a band of Mormons and their subsequent life in the religious group. There is no Sherlock Holmes, no Watson.

This story is not a not just different in content but in tone as well. Whereas the Sherlock Holmes story was playful and whimiscal, "Country of the Saints" is dark, sad, and grim. 

I wasn't even sure that it could be by the same author and wondered if it had been tacked on to my digital copy of "A Study in Scarlet" by mistake. 

But slowly the two stories start to come together. The first tip-off are some character names shared between the two stories. Eventually, it all makes sense. 

For all its differences, the second half is every bit as readable as the first. It was written by Doyle, who again shows his skill in storytelling. I read the whole book in a swift day and a half.

As strange as the combination of the two stories seemed at first, it does work. Not only does the second story explain the motive for two murders, it provides an appropriate balance of seriousness to the lighter Sherlock Holmes' story. We are talking murder, after all. 

One of the curiosities of this book is Conan Doyle's harsh portrayal of the Mormons as an evil cult that featured forced marriage, and used kidnapping and murder as its tools. A real person, Brigham Young, is portrayed as the brutal leader. 

According to Smithsonian magazines, this image of Mormons was common in 19th century England, perhaps fed by the Latter Day Saints slaughter of 140 people in the Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857. "At the time he wrote the story, Conan Doyle had never even been to America," said the magazine. 

The Salt Lake Tribune, in 1994, wrote: "From the LDS point of view, A Study in Scarlet was another in a long line of antagonistic Mormon-hating books that made for popular reading. Conan Doyle was not high on their list of favorite people."

Doyle tempered his views on Mormons latter in life and even came to Utah to speak.