The Poisoner’s Handbook: A Belated Review

It is possible you have already read Deborah Blum's The Poisoner's Handbook. I was late to the game when I first picked it up and I have been reading it on and off for several years.*

For those of you who haven't read it, the book's sub-title says it all: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York. In the early twentieth century, poison was readily available and largely uncontrolled. Industrial chemists had created new poisons and introduced old-poisons into readily available household products in the name of progress. Carbon monoxide poured into the air from that emblem of modernity, the automobile, and from "illumination gas" leaks in the home. With the introduction of Prohibition, wood alcohol and other toxins found its way into drinking flasks and cocktail glasses. Chemists had found ways to create new compounds, but had not yet developed ways to detect their affects on the human body. Poison became the murder's weapon of choice. Blum tells the story of how medical examiner Charles Norris and toxicologist Alexander Gettler--as dynamic a duo as you could wish, without the capes--created the new discipline of forensic science, one poison at a time.

Blum organizes the book around individual poisons and the cases that developed around them.*** The result is a intricate combination of clearly told science and page-turning mysteries, set against the backdrop of rapid social change in the Jazz Age. It is fast-paced, smart, and gripping: Bones meets F. Scott Fitzgerald.

*Paradoxically, I kept putting it down because it was so good. I wanted to read it it the way I drink cold water on a hot day, draining half the glass at once. Unfortunately life didn't allow that kind of reading. For years there was always a book I needed to read for a Shelf Awareness for Readers review, or a stack of material to read for the latest book I was writing.** Having written this out, I realize this is the silliest reason to not finish a book that I have ever heard. I am tempted to erase it and just write the review. But instead I will leave it in as a Public Service Announcement to readers. Saving books for the perfect reading opportunity makes no sense.

**It's hard to belief, but Women Warriors will be my eighth (8th!!!) book in a little over ten years. It's amazing I have time to read anything.

***I originally picked up the book because fellow author and historian Holly Tucker recommended it as a primer in how to structure a complicated story.

Déjà Vu All Over Again: Evil May Day

In the spring of 1517, working class Londoners were suffering from the effects of an economic downturn, caused in part by an expensive war against France and in part by a hard winter. Artisans and merchants alike complained that foreigners enjoyed unfair advantages that allowed them to take work and trade away from Englishmen.

The foreign population was small, perhaps two percent of the city, but highly visible. Many lived in special enclaves, known as liberties, that were outside the jurisdiction of the city government. (Not an unusual situation. British merchants would later enjoy similar arrangements in Ottoman Turkey, China, and South Asia.)

In mid-April, a businessman named John Lincoln convinced a priest to address the issue in his Easter sermon. Dr. Bell's sermon was about uprising rather than resurrection. Declaring that foreigners "eat the bread from poor fatherless children", he urged Englishmen to defend themselves against foreign incursions.

The uprising took place on May 1, a holiday that was celebrated in the countryside with bonfires and maypoles and in London with drunken revelry. Grievances and alcohol are a dangerous combination. An ill-conceived attempt to impose a curfew on the traditional carousing, erupted into violence against the foreign community. Roughly a thousand young men, mostly poor laborers and apprentices rampaged through the parts of London where foreign craftsmen plied their trade, looting shops and destroying buildings. (Shoe shops were a particular target, thanks to a ruling by King Henry VIII that allowed foreign shoemakers to make shoes in styles that native Londoners were forbidden to manufacture.) Over the course of four or five hours, the rioters damaged property and left many injured. The only good news was that no one died.

The city's government had not been able to stop the riot, but it was quick to tack retribution against the rioters. More than 300 people were arrested and charged with treason.* John Lincoln and thirteen others were hung, drawn and quartered, including a number of prepubescent boys.  The balance of those arrested were pardoned after the queen, Catherine of Aragon, went on her knees to beg Henry to show them mercy.

Evil May Day was a small, pointless, ugly event, ending with a gaudy royal set piece. The only immediate impact was the issuance of new rules surrounding the celebration of May Day.**  Nothing much changed for London's artisans--or its foreign residents for that matter--as a result of the riot. In fact, smaller-scale conflicts related to the presence of foreigners in the city grew more frequent over the course of the century as European Protestants took refuge in England during the Protestant Reformation.*** (An unintended consequence of Henry's dramatic break with the Catholic Church.)

*On the grounds that they had broken the King's peace.

**Because that was obviously the most important issue.

***Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the church door only a few months after Evil May Day.

From the Archives: A Love Letter to Independent Bookstories

In the United States, the last Saturday of April is Independent Bookstore Day--a nationwide party for book lovers. (If you're reading this the day it comes out, that's tomorrow.) If you're lucky enough to have an independent bookstore near you, stop by and show them some love. Me? I'll be traveling back from a speaking gig in Oklahoma City. I guess I'll just have to celebrate a day late.

I've never seldom, met a bookstore (or book-selling venue) I didn't like. I will happily browse through a big box store, a used bookstore, or the odd shelf of books in a flea market stall. In a strange town or foreign city, a bookstore visit will always make me happy, even if most of the books are in a language I can't read. I've never come away from a library sale without an armload, or in the case of the Hyde Park-Kenwood Community Conference annual book sale, several canvas bags full.* But independent book stores have a special place in my heart.

Heritage Books in Springfield, Missouri, was my first bookstore crush. It was a small store in a strip mall within walking of my house. In retrospect I realize that the selection was both small and eccentric, but at the time it seemed as bounteous as the Strand Bookstore in New York, which boasts eighteen miles of books. In some ways both the smallness and the eccentricity were to my benefit as a novice book buyer. On those rare occasions when I had some money to spend on a book, I gave in to the delights of serendipity, finding books I didn't know existed.

Today I live in Chicago, which is home to fabulous independent bookstores. Once again, I'm lucky enough to live within walking distance of my favorite stores: the very academic Seminary Coop Bookstore and its more commercial sibling, 57th Street Books. I browse. I chat about books with booksellers. I eavesdrop on the bookish conversation of others. I check to see if my own books are on the shelves. I check to see if my friends' books are on the shelves. I attend an occasional reading when the stars are in alignment. I resist the temptation to buy books I don't need, because at this point I already own several hundred books I have not yet read. And I give in to the temptation to buy more books because with bookstores it's a case of use them or lose them.

*Held each year on the weekend around Columbus Day. It's a dangerous event. See you there?