BIASED: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do by Dr. Jennifer L. Eberhardt

 Finished Xmas Day Mo 12/25/23

I saw this book in a scene of the Netflix series 'GANGS OF OSLO'. 

The best example of hidden prejudice is when women and minorities complained that they were not properly represented in orchestras across the world. Management instituted 'blind auditions' where the judges were not allowed to see or hear musicians before they played. They were behind a curtain. After this change, minorities and women were more fairly represented. 

From the book's page at Kirkus Reviews:

"An internationally renowned expert on implicit racial bias breaks down the science behind our prejudices and their influence in nearly all areas of society and culture.

MacArthur Fellow Eberhardt (Psychology/Stanford Univ.; co-editor: Confronting Racism, 1998) challenges the idea that addressing bias is merely a personal choice. Rather, “it is a social agenda, a moral stance.” Relying on her neuroscientific research, consulting work, and personal anecdotes, the author astutely examines how stereotypes influence our perceptions, thoughts, and actions. Stereotypes, such as “the association of black people and crime,” are shaped by media, history, culture, and our families. A leader in the law enforcement training movement, Eberhardt recounts high-profile cases of police shooting unarmed black people, and she documents her own fears as a mother of three black sons. Though “more than 99 percent of police contacts happen with no police use of force at all,” black people are stopped by police disproportionately and are more likely to suffer physical violence. Only a tiny fraction of officers involved in questionable shootings are prosecuted, and convictions are rare. Through her work, the author teaches officers to understand how their biases inform their interactions with the communities they are charged with protecting and serving. She shares informative case studies from her work with Airbnb and Nextdoor, an online information-sharing platform for neighbors, when bias among the sites’ users led to racial profiling and discrimination. Eberhardt also looks at bias in the criminal justice system, education, housing and immigration, and the workplace. A chapter on her visit to the University of Virginia after the 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville is, much like the book as a whole, simultaneously scholarly illuminating, and heartbreaking. Throughout, Eberhardt makes it clear that diversity is not enough. Only through the hard work of recognizing our biases and controlling them can we “free ourselves from the tight grip of history.”

Compelling and provocative, this is a game-changing book about how unconscious racial bias impacts our society and what each of us can do about it."

THE WRONG SIDE OF GOODBYE by Michael Connelly

 Finished Th 12/21/23

I had read this novel before but not this particular book. I probably have several duplicates of books by Connelly. 

Two Cases:

1) An eighty-five year old billionaire asks Harry to locate an heir. When the man went to Vietnam he had a girlfriend that might have been pregnant. She was and Harry locates this woman and her daughter. 

2) 'The Screen Cutter Rapist'- A man who was once a cop becomes a Los Angeles housing inspector. He's able to target the women's houses while on a legitimate housing inspection.

Maddie is in college and Harry recommends that she keep a dog bowl on the back step. This alerts burglars that there is a dog in the house. He wants to make sure that she keeps water in the dish to further 'sell the idea'. 

From the book's review at Kirkus Reviews:

"Harry Bosch, balancing a new pair of gigs in greater LA, tackles two cases, one of them official, one he struggles to keep as private as can be.

Now that he’s settled the lawsuit he brought against the LAPD for having forced him into retirement, Harry (The Crossing, 2015, etc.) is working as an unsalaried, part-time reservist for the San Fernando Police Department while keeping his license as a private investigator. Just as the San Fernando force is decimated by the layoffs that made Harry such an attractive hire, it’s confronted with a serious menace: the Screen Cutter, a serial rapist with a bizarre penchant for assaulting women during the most fertile days of their menstrual cycles. Ordinarily Harry would jump at the chance to join officers Bella Lourdes and Danny Sisto in tracking down the Screen Cutter, and he does offer one or two promising suggestions. But he’s much more intent on the private job he’s taken for 85-year-old engineering czar Whitney Vance, who wants him to find Vibiana Duarte, the Mexican girl he impregnated when he was a USC student, and her child, who’d be well past middle age by now—and also wants him to keep his inquiries absolutely secret. Harry’s admirably dogged sleuthing soon reveals what became of Vibiana and her child, but his discovery is less interesting and challenging than his attempts to report back to his client, who doesn’t answer his private phone even as everyone around Harry is demanding information about the case he doesn’t feel he can share.

Grade-A Connelly. The dark forces arrayed against the hero turn out to be disappointingly toothless, but everything else clicks in this latest chapter of a compulsively good cop’s odyssey through the City of Angels and its outlying neighborhoods and less angelic spirits."

MR. IVES' CHRISTMAS by Oscar Hijuelos

 Finished Mo 12/18/23

This is one of my hardbacks that I had never read, but I'm so glad that I finally got around to reading it. 

Pronounced: Oscar 'Eee- way- los'

Although it is Christmas themed, it is NOT a Christmas novel. 

A man reviews his life. He was a foster child who is adopted by a man who was also a foster child. 

He becomes an illustrator in NYC during the fifties and sixties.

His son wants to become a priest. Both father and son are practicing Catholics and their faith is deep and not corny. 

Christmas Theme: He marries the love of his life around Christmas and his son is murdered during the Christmas season. 

From Google Books: 

"When we first meet him in the 1950s, Mr. Ives is a devoutly religious man who, despite his beginnings in a foundling home, has fashioned for himself an enviable life. A successful Madison Avenue advertising illustrator, Ives is married to a vivacious, artistic woman, Annie, who shares his aesthetic passions and religious beliefs. Together they raise their children, Robert and Caroline, with remarkable fair-mindedness and moral judgment. Ives, who knows nothing of his own natural ancestry, is profoundly drawn to the Spanish cultures and language that have begun to flourish in 1950s New York City. Even after he has risen to a vice-presidency at the advertising agency, he continues to live in his unfashionable neighborhood in Upper Manhattan because he feels at home among his multi-ethnic neighbors, especially his closest friend, Luis Ramirez, and his family. But Ives' perfect world is violated when seventeen-year-old Robert is gunned down by a teenage thug at Christmas, just months before the young man is to enter the seminary. Having once considered himself as possessing "a small, imperfect spiritual gift", Mr. Ives finds himself lost without his son, doubting not only the foundations of his life but his belief in God. Overwhelmed by grief and threatened with a loss of faith in humankind, Ives must wrestle with his doubts and struggle to regain spiritual peace, perhaps even embracing the troubled young man who stole Robert's promising life." 

MEMORY MAN by David Baldacci

 Finished Fr 12/15/23

This is a hardback that Janny loaned me. It's another Amos Decker book and I was surprised to learn that his is the first book in this series!

Amos was injured in a football game and after the tackle he was able to remember everything. He also is able to 'see' colors that represent emotions. 

His wife, daughter, and brother-in-law were brutally murdered and in this book you find out 'why' and 'who'.

 There is a school shooting and this killer is linked to the Decker murders. 

A young hermaphrodite was raped and nearly killed and this trauma caused her to have more 'brain power' like Amos's condition. 

The hermaphrodite appears in the novel both as a man and a woman. 'She/He' interacts with Amos as a man and a woman and he is unable to recognize the deception until later.

This person targets Amos because in therapy (they both were treated for their 'advanced brain power) Amos said that he wanted to become a policeman and this enraged the hermaphrodite. 

She shoots up the school and kills the men that were responsible for her rape.

The school is near an abandoned military installation and this facility was crisscrossed with tunnels that were planned to be used as bomb shelters in the fifties. Amos is able to deduce how the shooter was able to commit the crimes.

An evil German is actually manipulating the hermaphrodite to make her kill.

Amos is able to kill them both. 

From the book's page at Kirkus Reviews:

"Perennial bestseller Baldacci unveils an offbeat hero with an unusual skill set and tragic past who takes on the evil mastermind behind a devastating school shooting.

Amos Decker went off the rails 15 months ago when the Burlington police detective returned home from his shift to find someone had cut his brother-in-law’s throat, shot his wife, Cassie, in the head, and strangled his 9-year-old daughter, Molly. The case still hasn't been solved, and in his grief and despair, Decker leaves the police department. After a bout with homelessness, he settles in as a small-time private investigator operating out of the hotel room in which he also lives. The 42-year-old Decker is overweight and out-of-shape, but he was once a professional football player. During his time in the NFL, he took a hard hit, and the traumatic brain injury induced a rare condition known as hyperthymesia—he can’t forget any detail about anything he experiences. When his former partner, Mary Lancaster, tells him a man named Sebastian Leopold has confessed to killing his family, Decker lies his way into the jail to see the guy. At the same time, a bloody school shooting takes place at his old stomping grounds, Mansfield High School, leaving many dead. The FBI shows up and the BPD brings the obese ex-cop in as a consultant. But could everything be connected? Once Decker starts unraveling the threads, it begins to look like it, and soon he’s following trails that no one but he can see, much less interpret. The killer’s motive seems tenuous, at best, and the killer’s trail is difficult to follow, but Decker, who has no discernible social skills and a tendency to abruptly disappear, proves a quirky, original antihero with a definite method to his madness.

Although the crimes and their perpetrators are far-fetched, readers will want to see Decker back on the printed page again and again." 

I am going to check the library and see if more books in the Decker series are available in Ebooks. 

THE MAN WHO LIKED TO LOOK AT HIMSELF by K.C. Constantine

 Finished Mo 12/11/23

An excellent short novel from the early 70's by a writer that I really liked. The novel features racist assertions and a negative attitude toward gay characters. But, these were accurate feelings of many people at the time and it was kind of refreshing to hear, although it did seem very 'out of touch'. 

From the author's page at Wikipedia:

"Carl Constantine Kosak (1934 – March 23, 2023), better known by the pen name K. C. Constantine, was an American mystery author.

His most famous creation is Mario Balzic, police chief in fictional Rocksburg, Pennsylvania. Rocksburg is a by-product of Kosak's hometown McKees Rocks, as well as the nearby cities Greensburg and Johnstown. Kosak is much more interested in the people in his novels than the actual mystery, and his later novels become ever more philosophical, threatening to leave the mystery/detective genre behind completely. In 1989 Constantine was nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel for the Mario Balzic novel Joey's Case. In 1999 Booklist ranked Blood Mud among the year's best crime novels, saying (along with Brushback) "Constantine has given us two more superb police procedurals and a wonderful opportunity to renew our acquaintance with one of the most memorable characters in contemporary crime fiction."

From the book's page at Wikipedia: 

The Man Who Liked To Look at Himself is a crime novel by the American writer K. C. Constantine.[1][2] The novel is set in 1970s Rocksburg, a fictional blue-collar, Rust Belt town in Western Pennsylvania (modeled on the author's hometown of McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, adjacent to Pittsburgh).

Mario Balzic is the protagonist, an atypical detective for the genre, a Serbo-Italian American cop, middle-aged, unpretentious, a family man who asks questions and uses more sense than force.

As the novel opens, Balzic and Lt. Harry Minyon of the state police are hunting pheasant at the Rocksburg Rod and Gun Club when, after Minyon's dog bites Balzic, the dog uncovers a piece of human bone that shows signs of having been hacked apart.

It is the second book in the 17-volume Rocksburg series.

CINAMAN'S CHANCE by Ross Thomas

 Finished Su 12/10/23

This is one of my ancient paperbacks that I had never read. Ross Thomas is an excellent writer and I hope that Artie Wu and Quincy Durant are part of a series. 

The story concerns a missing woman. She was part of a singing group- 'Silk, Ivory and Satin'. 

Criminals are trying to take over an entire town on the California coast. They plan to make it a 'Sin Mecca' for the United States. 

From 'complete-review.com': {It offers an excellent synthesis of a very complex plotline}

"      Chinaman's Chance features Arthur 'Artie' Case Wu and Quincy Durant, longtime friends -- they grew up in (and the fled) the same orphanage when they were kids -- who have long been business partners, with 'business' being a stretch for some of the things they've gotten involved in. As someone who gets to know them, and the way they operate, comes to sum up:

they were rather interesting men -- certainly different, if not wholly admirable. But then who the hell was ?

       Wu has (entirely incidentally -- but it adds to the quirky color Thomas plays with throughout the novel) a vague claim to being the pretender to the throne of China, possibly being a direct descendent of the last emperor, P'u Yi, and their path has taken them far and wide -- from a year at Princeton to landing in jail in Mexico, to joining the Peace Corps and being stationed in Indonesia, then heading to Bangkok and cashing in on the Viet Nam war and then running a chili restaurant in Scotland.

       Now they're in California, Durant renting a house on Malibu Beach, while Wu lives with his wife and their two sets of young twins not too far away. The novel opens with Wu jogging on the beach, as he's been doing for some two months now, and tripping over a dead pelican, twisting his ankle. Conveniently, if not at all coïncidentally, he falls near a man walking his six greyhounds -- Randall Piers -- who offers to help him; Wu notes that his partner (conveniently, if not at all coïncidentally ...) lives right there, and Piers helps Wu into Durant's beachside house.

       As is quickly evident, everything has pretty much been staged so that the two partners can introduce themselves to Piers, and he can get a quick impression of them. Right down to the pelican, it turns out (which took a while to find, delaying their plan). From the furnishings to the Reuters newsprinter in the corner, they want Piers to see exactly what they're capable of and willing to do. They even mention one of their current projects: they've been offered a map of where a couple of million dollars lies buried in Saigon, money that was supposed to have been burned when the Americans ended their involvement in the Viet Nam war and fled the country, and they dangle it in front of him; Piers doesn't bite -- but then he's not really supposed to.

       Piers has a problem that he's been struggling with. He is married to one of the three Armitage sisters, who enjoyed great popularity as the singing group Ivory, Lace, and Silk -- their actual names. His wife, Lace, has gone on to movie stardom, and Ivory is dead, but Silk has disappeared from view -- ever since the congressman she was involved with died in what was ruled a murder-suicide, supposedly killed by his wife. Silk arranges to regularly receive some money from Lace, but she's gone underground and doesn't want to be found; she's obviously concerned that what the congressman was looking into could get her killed too. Lace and Piers want to find her, hoping to be able to better help her, but they've failed so far; after his run-in withWu and Durant Piers thinks they might be the two fellows for the job.

       The Viet Nam money-deal and the missing singer turn out not to be entirely unrelated, as Thomas spins an elaborate tale of connections and ambitions -- to cash in, as well as for retribution ("Retribution, not revenge. There's a difference"). It all leads and points to local Pelican Bay, where someone has established themselves in a variety of ways, exerting and consolidating control (and with inconveniences including the congressman in whose district Pelican Bay is conveniently swept out of the way), with very big plans for the future. Wu and Durant's experiences -- and the people they associated with -- in South East Asia play a role here too, with Durant having suffered greatly when things went south (and Wu having gone in and saved him) and now finding an opportunity to at least exact a bit of ... retribution (and to possibly cash in, big time, as well).

       The plan Wu and Durant hatch is an elaborate one, with different stages to it -- some only figured out once they get there -- but it unspools nicely. The final coup is the riskiest, Wu laying it out for Durant -- "It took Artie Wu nearly an hour and forty-five minutes to outline his ideas" -- and observing with considerable satisfaction:

     Wu smiled. "I thought you'd like it."

     "You know what the odds against it are ?"

     Wu shrugged. "We've got a Chinaman's chance."

     "That bad, huh ?"

     Wu stuck a fresh cigar into his mouth and around it grinned a big, wide, white, merry grin. "Nah," he said. "That good."

       There are some plausibility issues in how it all plays out -- a bit too neatly --, as indeed there are for most of the way, but this is a small flaw in an otherwise very enjoyable twisting ride. Thomas unfolds what's going on piece by piece, as the various plots -- what the various figures are after and how they're going about reaching those ambitious ends -- are only revealed (or figured out) piece by piece; it's especially satisfying to see how thought-through Wu and Durant's plan -- much bigger than initially suggested -- turns out to be. It all gets to be a bit much, and a bit too conveniently interconnected, but it's still a load of fun.

       Beyond that, however, what really makes the novel is the characters and how they're presented -- their attitude, their wits, their failings (and their histories). There are shades of grey to most -- though quite a few are definitely only in the darkest spectrum. Most everyone can be bought, if the price is right -- but the price is often very high. From the main bad guys to the police chief who isn't quite the patsy the powers-that-(would-)be hoped to the secondary and tertiary supporting cast and cameos, Thomas nails a lot of this just right. Wu and Durant, too are well-presented: a lot of colorful history, and then a good glimpse of their present-day demeanor, but not over-stuffed characterization. Confidence has a lot to do with it -- a lot of the characters are very self-confident (several of them way more than is good for them), which makes for entertaining encounters. And the real sad saps -- such as the self-sabotaging journalist who never made the big time (but knows a lot of the local secrets) -- fit in nicely too.

       One or two touches are a bit off -- Durant and the ladies (well, the surviving Armitage sisters) is hard to pull of well, and Thomas doesn't quite manage -- but otherwise Chinaman's Chance is really consistently well done. Yes, the plot is overly convoluted -- working, just, out, but also only because the sheer range and complexity allows Thomas to leave it fuzzy enough at its many edges -- but it's also pretty satisfying. And it all is a good deal of fun."

RADICAL CHIC & MAU-MAUING THE FLAK CATCHERS by Tom Wolfe

 Tu 12/4/23 

I watched the Netflix biopic on Tom Wolfe and I noticed that I had a copy of one of his non-fiction books in the stacks.

In two days I skimmed to the end of 'RADICAL CHIC' and glanced through 'MAU-MAUING'.

'RADICAL CHIC' is about a party that Leonrd Bernstein ('Stein'! not 'Steen') hosted for the Black Panther Party at his sumptuous townhouse in 1970. Wolfe is explaining the irony of armed radicals linking with some of the richess members of Manhattan's High Society. I thought that he was fair to both parties. 

He draws comparison to Marie Anntoinette's 'love' of the poor. She built a poor farm at her estate so that she could pretend that she was 'one of the people'. 

Wolfe would say that he was 'for the opposition' when asked if he was 'Left' or 'Right' politically. I like that. 

'MAU-MAUING' deals with the corruption in The Office of Economic Opportunities in San Francisco. 

I liked Tom Wolfe's fiction much better, but his non-fiction is well worth a look.   

DEMON COPPERHEAD by Barbara Kingsolver

 Finished Mo 12/4/23

This was a hardback that Janny loaned me. A terrific story and won a Pulitzer Prise and was an Oprah Winfrey Pick. 

The book is a harrowing tale of a boy's negative experience with the South's 'foster care' system in Appalacia, but some of the novel is hilarious. 

"Demon says that he had a teacher that looked like a shrunken head in a dress".

"Who in the world would name a boy child 'Woodie'? "Don't worry, he'll have a new nickname when he's five". They both say, "hard-on". 

From the book's page at Wikipedia:

"The protagonist and narrator is born Damon Fields to a teenage mother in a trailer home. He is raised in Lee County, located in Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, and nicknamed "Demon Copperhead" for the color of his hair and his attitude. As Demon grows up, he must use his charms and wits to survive poverty in the contemporary American South."

The only compliant that I could have was that 'Demon' seems so self assured and intelligent, but I guess that's the point. Sometimes highly pressurized environments can produce diamonds. 

I have a note to find more books by barbara Kingsolver.