“Rough Magic: Riding the World’s Loneliest Horse Race” by Lara Prior-Palmer

Every heard of the Mongol Derby? Nope, neither did I. In fact, I was unaware of the sport of equestrian endurance racing.

The (modern) Mongol Derby originated in 2009, but is based on the sophisticated communication system created by Genghis Khan in 1224. Messengers on horseback connected Khan’s vast empire. Every year a new route is selected for the modern 1000 kilometer, multiday race. Each rider mounts a different horse daily, selected from those at a “horse station” in the Mongolian outback.

Ms. Prior-Palmer won the race in 2013, the first woman to win and the youngest competitor to that date. Her account is gripping. She was an experienced rider, but this race was an exceptional challenge in harsh, isolated terrain. Her book subtitle refers to loneliness. Riders are on their own most of the time, and language issues complicate their stays with nomad families along the course.

Much of the structure of the race is designed to protect the horses. Riding is restricted to certain hours, and veterinarians check on their condition (most heart rate) after each 40 kilometer segment.

It’s interesting to learn about the nomads still living traditionally on the Mongolian steppe, and to get some feel for the Mongol empire at its peak.

If you like travel, adventure or Asian history, you will enjoy this book.

PS – The 2019 Mongol Derby was won by a 70 year old Robert Long of Boise, Idaho. The race, which had 41 competitors, ended on August 14. Long described the race as a “death march”.

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“The Tale Teller” by Anne Hillerman

The Tale Teller is subtitled “A Leaphorn, Chee and Manuelito Novel”. Hillerman catches my attention so quickly and completely that I ignore the pings of my cell phone. (This is saying a great deal.)

Like her deceased father Tony Hillerman, who started writing his Navajo mystery novels in 1970, Ms. Hillerman writes about a few characters who start to seem like old friends. The trio featured in this book are familiar.

These books delve into various aspects of Navajo life. In The Tale Teller, history is crucial. The cultural element of witchcraft is also explored. What did it mean in the past? What does it mean to the contemporary characters we meet, who live in the dual worlds of reservation life and 21st century America?

All this is seamlessly woven into an exciting police procedural/mystery. Don’t miss it!

“When I Was White – A Memoir” by Sarah Valentine

 

Another lucky grab from the “New Arrivals” shelf at my local library. Sarah Valentine was a mixed race child born into an otherwise white American family.

Ms. Valentine’s childhood was in most respects idyllic – suburbia, good schools, friends, family (including two younger brothers). Her parents were devoted to their children. She was athletic as well as academically talented.

Her parents kept from her the fact that she had a different father from her two younger brothers. She was told that her skin tone (darker than her brothers) and relatively curly hair came from her father’s Greek and Italian ancestors. There’s too much for me to summarize here. Ms. Valentine still identified as white when she finished college, but considered herself African American or multiracial when she finished her PhD (in Russian literature) at Princeton University.

One thread running though is book is the power of secrets. The choice to keep a secret, to withhold important information from another person, is weighty. Secrecy distorted Ms. Valentine’s relationship with her mother and greatly troubled her brothers.

Ms. Valentine was a very high achieving child and continued to earn academic honors during college and graduate school. In this respect, she reminds me of Michelle Obama, whose memoir I reviewed on December 14, 2018. I wonder if the two ever met? Each is a very accomplished woman, but Ms. Obama has never had to wonder who she was or where she came from. Her identity was secure, though she occasionally encountered criticism for being “too white”. Ms. Obama, who has spent at least 15 years in the public eye, may envy Ms. Valentine’s “private citizen” status.

“When I Was White” is a wonderful, energetic autobiography and a valuable contribution to the ongoing discussion of race in our country.

“Empty Planet – The Shock of Global Population Decline” by Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson

Published 2019 by Crown Publishing, 240 pages plus footnotes and index.

This book (found at my public library) took me entirely by surprise, and caused me to look on climate change (and certain other social problems) differently, and with somewhat more optimism.

The authors discuss a future drop in human population, NOT (as has often been predicted) due to climate related calamity, but due to changes in human reproductive behavior. These changes comprise the “demographic transition”, defined in Chapter One, entitled “A Brief History of Population”. For eons, the human race simply struggled to survive. Following the retreat of the last Ice Age, agriculture allowed population to increase through a series of stages, beginning with high birth rate coupled with high death rate, moving through periods of imbalance and ending (in “developed” societies) with low birth rate, long life and low death rate. Bricker and Ibbitson believe the entire global population will arrive at the latter pattern within the next two or three generations. Hence, human population with stabilize relatively soon, and then continue to fall slowly.

Having grown up reading The Population Bomb and The Limits to Growth, I was startled by this book and read it very carefully. I’ve asked the opinion of friends and even my favorite demographer (a relative), and I eagerly await their responses.

Actually, I heard the warning call of this change a few years ago. In 2015, China reversed its “one child policy”. I was VERY surprised, and failed to recognize the significance of the change. Come to think of it, 25 years ago I heard a Russian woman described as a “hero mother” because she had TWO children. I didn’t understand what was behind this.

What do demographers measure, in addition to absolute population? Birth rate is crucial. How many babies does each woman have? “Replacement” is pegged at 2.1, to allow for the fact that not all children survive to become parents. At this point, it all starts to feel personal. I had two babies. So did my parents. But their parents had a total of 10 surviving children! What changed? American families left the farm. (The post World War II baby boom, in case you are wondering, was an aberration.)

Bricker and Ibbitson attribute falling birth rates to the education and subsequent increased employment of women, and to urbanization. They consider these changes unlikely to be reversed.

I think Empty Planet went to press just before the flareup of immigration as a “hot button” topic in the US. It would help if people on both sides of the issue would settle down and read this book! Immigrants and refugees are not identical. Most people, most of the time, prefer to live where they were born.

What do Bricker and Ibbitson project for the future? Both are Canadian, and their other collaborative publication (The Big Shift, 2013) deals with Canadian politics and culture. They expect the future big winners (nations able to maintain their populations and to innovate) to be Canada, the African states and (maybe) the United States. “WHAT?!” you squawk. Better read the book!

At some point, an entirely new concept is introduced – the post national state. I’m still trying to get a grip on it.