Everything Nonfiction

Reviews

By Leave a Comment

Review of The Woman They Could Not Silence

Review of The Woman They Could Not Silence: One Woman, Her Incredible Fight for Freedom, and the Men Who Tried to Make Her Disappear by Kate Moore Rating *****

Every story has a protagonist and an antagonist. Elizabeth Packard, the protagonist of this story, had a slew of antagonists, including her husband, her doctor, politicians, church members, and an extended cast of male figures who believed themselves superior to women.

If ever there was a story that demonstrated the difference one determined individual can make, it is this one. Elizabeth Packard was involuntarily committed to an insane asylum solely because her beliefs differed from her husband’s. Her battle to right this wrong not only benefited her but countless other women in similar straits. The whole idea of women’s rights and equality starts with her. Others followed, but Elizabeth laid the foundation.

The Declaration of Independence states that “all men are created equal.” It didn’t say anything about women. Women at that time were only slightly ahead of slaves thanks to egregious laws and regulations that stripped women of equal rights.

When Elizabeth’s quest for change hit a brick wall due to some ridiculous law stripping women of a fundamental right, she campaigned to have that and similar laws banned or rewritten. She accomplished this through her writings and public speaking. When no publisher would agree to publish her story, she published her work herself, using what the author described as an early example of crowdfunding. She did this despite having to fight off opponents who questioned her sanity.

If you’re someone who doesn’t read nonfiction because you think it’s boring or tedious, I strongly urge you to reconsider. You won’t find a novel with a more compelling story, a richness of characters, and an eloquence of the written word than Elizabeth’s writings and that of author Kate Moore, who weaved together this amazing tale. I also recommend the author’s other book Radium Girls.

By Leave a Comment

Review of Radium Girls

Review of Radium Girls by Kate Moore rating *****

The book Radium Girls by Kate Moore tells a story of injustice. It’s a story about corporate malfeasance, the role of government and the law, and the struggles of young women terminally affected by radium poising and their efforts to seek justice.

Marie and Pierre Curie first discovered Radium in 1898. They isolated the element in 1902. In the years immediately after the discovery, the belief was that Radium had medicinal benefits. So when the Radium Dial company came up with a paint that took advantage of the luminosity characteristic of Radium, it was believed to be safe. That belief, however, was proven to be wrong.

Executives at the company started to learn of potential adverse effects from Radium. They commissioned an independent report that confirmed their fears. Faced with the possibility of having to close down their business, they prevented the report’s publication. The common practice of workers putting radium-tainted brushes into their mouths continued. Later, when the young women who worked in the factory began showing signs of radium poisoning, company executives and doctors distanced themselves from the issue, denied that there was a problem, and did everything they could to squelch dissenters.

Thus began one of many legal challenges brought by the women, most of whom had suffered greatly from their Radium exposure. The author does a commendable job of bringing to life the disparate parties: the girls, their families, their employer, the lawyers, and medical practitioners on both sides of the issue.

The women ultimately prevail, but in too many instances, it was too little too late.

After finishing the book, I watched the film Radium Girls on Netflix. It is not an adaptation of the book, but it gives you a sense of what it must have been like during that time. I especially liked the inclusion of archival footage.

My recommendation is to read the book and then head on over to Netflix to see the story come to life. If you find this story interesting, you will also find similar stories of injustices in the following books and films: Toms River, The Devil We Know, Dark Waters, and What the Eyes Don’t See.

By Leave a Comment

A donut and a Delorean

What do donuts and a DeLorean have in common? In the case of the two documentaries reviewed below, each contains stories about individuals who achieved great success only to lose it all over bad decisions and poor choices. In both cases, greed, self-interest, and self-preservation prevailed.

The Donut King – Written by Alice Gu and Carol Martori, Directed by Alice Gu
Rating ****

First up is the story of Ted Ngoy, a Cambodian refuge who rose to prominence from the success of a chain of donut stores. Ted’s rise to donut king began from the moment he first tasted a donut. He wanted to learn all he could about the donut business. He began working for Winchell’s, the largest operator of donut stores in Los Angeles. Once he learned the ins and outs of the donut business, he left to start his own donut shop.

His modest success allowed him to sponsor other Cambodian refugees. Once in America, Ted offered to teach his fellow countrymen the donut business and persuaded them to open their own donut shops. In return, they would enter a lease arrangement with Ted, providing him with thousands of dollars a month in lease payments.

Ted became very wealthy and was well respected. He threw it all away over an addiction. An addiction that in many ways wiped out all the good he had done prior. In looking back over his rise, it’s hard not to think that his benevolence early on had more to do with the possibility of income for himself rather than to help other refugees. I won’t spoil the story here about the addition that caused his downfall. I will only say that I don’t believe it was his only character flaw.

This documentary is available on Amazon Prime.

The Framing of John DeLorean written by Dan Greeney and Alexandra Orton, Directed by Don Argott and Sheena M. Joyce
Rating ****

The second rise and fall story is the story of John Delorean. Here is a man who was considered a visionary in the automotive industry. He was a top executive at General Motors. He headed the Pontiac division and was instrumental in the development of the widely successful Pontiac GTO. After leaving GM, he started his own company and came out with the futuristic Delorean automobile.

John DeLorean at his Ireland factory

Behind the scenes, however, John Delorean was more of a con man than a visionary. He dumped his first wife, had plastic surgery, and pursued attractive younger women. His second wife was just nineteen years old when they married.

When it came time to build a factory for his bat-winged Delorean, he chose Ireland, which was facing economic hardships and civil unrest at the time. His pitch to the Government was that if they provided startup funds, he would build his factory there, bringing thousands of jobs to the region.

It seemed like a win-win for everyone. But Ireland did not have any workers who had experience in automobile manufacturing. The first batch of cars had quality control problems. Additionally, those first cars came out just as the United States was entering a depression. It wasn’t long before Delorean faced financial difficulties. His efforts to solve that crisis would affect not just him but his family and the thousands of workers who relied on him. He should have followed Spike Lee’s advice, “Do the right thing.”

This documentary makes use of dramatizations to help tell the story. Alec Baldwin plays John DeLorean. The actor does a commendable job, but the behind-the-scenes footage distracts more than benefits. The documentary is available for viewing on Netflix

By Leave a Comment

Review of Billion Dollar Loser

Review of Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork by Reeves Wiedemann Rating ****

Billion Dollar Loser is a story about hubris and excess. It is a cautionary tale of what can happen when an unproven idea receives more attention than it deserves.

I am a fan of risk-takers. In the case of Adam Neumann, he was a risk-taker but with other people’s money. The whole idea behind WeWork seems a bit lame – building a physical, social network. There isn’t anything unique or disrupting behind renting out office space with a few design tweaks. Uber was a disrupter. They built something that completely changed the way people move from place to place. The only thing Adam Neumann made was a trail of losses.

Having a flamboyant style is one thing. But giving the guy free rein on billions of dollars of capital wasn’t very smart. Neumann was a fast talker who convinced well-heeled investors to invest millions of dollars, which Neumann quickly put to work overpaying for properties, giving away rent to stifle competition, and paying exorbitant amounts for businesses that never panned out.

Along the way, he enriched himself, cashing out his shares for millions of dollars while his employees got little to nothing. Once it became clear that Adam Nuemamm had to go, he walked away with over 400 million dollars, an amount that has grown to nearly a billion dollars after lawsuits.

I give the author credit for unraveling the story of WeWork, but I grew tired of reading about Neumann’s many homes and his wife’s vanity projects. The only good thing about this story is that everyday investors didn’t get caught up in the hype. The losses went to the wealthy early investors who fell for the sales pitch and didn’t take the time to look behind the curtain.

By Leave a Comment

Crazy in Texas Part III

I’m no fan of Governor Greg Abbot. Nor am I a fan of the Republican-led legislature, our Lt Governor Dan Patric, and our Attorney General Ken Paxton. They all take stupid to a new level. Rather than represent the people of Texas, they would rather spend their time passing nonsense laws like allowing people to buy and carry guns without a permit; spread conspiracy theories like how wind turbines caused the electric grid failure; and try to pass voter suppression laws that will allow them to steal future elections.

How do people like this get elected? Oh, yeah, I remember. It has to do with campaign donations. So let’s take a look at what they have been up to since my last Crazy in Texas post.

If nothing else, Republicans are consistently stupid. Once they latch on to a crazy idea, that nonsense spreads like wildfire to other Republican-led states. Take Republican attempts to pass abortion laws. Republicans cry about too much regulation and government infringing on people’s rights, yet they want to regulate women’s right to choose. They write crazy bills that all but make abortion illegal and then pass on the same bill to every Republican-led legislature in the country. It’s a copy and paste process repeated over and over. And most of the time, the bills are written by outside parties with ulterior motives.

Like many other Republican-led states, Texas refused Medicare expansion because it was part of Obama’s ACA. Now the Governor is taking away unemployment benefits from Texans, stating that there are plenty of jobs available. It’s Federal money. It doesn’t cost the state anything to provide these extra benefits. Yet Abbot thinks that if you are a fifty-something professional who lost their job in the pandemic, you should run out and get one of those waiter jobs that pay $7.50 an hour because there’s a worker shortage.

Now all the Republican states are up in arms about the 1619 project and critical race theory. They argue that it teaches children to hate their country. So they’re going to regulate school curriculums. They don’t want children learning about slavery and civil rights. Yet they were all on board when Trump proposed mandating schools to teach conservative values.

Your health, education, and financial survivability should not be dependent on whether or not you live in a Republican-led state. If you are a Republican and are offended by this post, you’re part of the problem. You still think that Trump won the election. You believe a twice impeached pathological liar is your savior. You give money to conspiracy theory candidates like Marjorie Taylor Greene and teeny-sex addict Matt Gaetz. Feel free to post your comments below. I’m all about fairness and debate.

By Leave a Comment

Review of the HBO docuseries The Crime of the Century

The Crime of the Century: Big Pharma and the Opioid Epidemic Written and Directed by Alex Gibney
Rating *****

In a scene in the second installment of this two-part documentary, the filmmakers follow DEA agents as they raid the house of a man in Lubbock, Texas whom they believe was selling large quantities of fentanyl. That man is eventually arrested and convicted and given a lengthy prison sentence. The arrest, however, is just one part of a much larger story that begins before the raid and continues long after the man begins his sentence.

It starts with the overdose death of a young woman. The investigation into her death and scores of other fentanyl-related deaths leads to an unassuming computer repairman named Caleb Lanier. As much as you’d like to see this man pay for the many deaths that resulted from his actions, you come to realize that he is just another addict. He is a family man whose wife knows nothing about his addiction or his connection to the fentanyl deaths. Caleb Lanier pays the price for his choices. The same can’t be said about the pharmaceutical executives, politicians, doctors, sales reps, and pharmacists whose greed and lax oversight led to the epidemic.

The filmmakers trace the origins of the opioid epidemic to a single company – Purdue Pharma. Their success is largely the result of the intervention from an FDA insider who paves the way for the company to introduce OxyContin as an all-purpose pain reliever with a low liability of addiction. Once the company has the blessing of the FDA, they are off and running using bribes, deceptive advertising, and other deceitful tactics to get physicians to over-subscribe the medication.

Other unscrupulous companies such as Insys use similar tactics to introduce even more addictive drugs to an unsuspecting population. Add to this mix a lack of common-sense regulations, politicians who promote bills written by lawyers representing the pharmaceutical companies, all while accepting large campaign donations, and you have the ingredients for a full-scale epidemic that is still causing pain and suffering.

Except for John Kapoor, the CEO of Insys, none of the big Pharma executives receive jail time. They get off scot-free with their billions in sales, leaving behind a trail of destruction and suffering.

As with any good story, there are heroes and villains. The heroes are people like former DEA official Joe Rannazzisi, who tried unsuccessfully to draw attention to the flaws in the bill proposed by Rep. Tom Marino (R-PA) and Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN). The villains are those who turned a blind eye to what was going on because the money was just too good.

For more on this subject see the reviews for American Pain and The Pharmacist.