The Fountains of Silence

 The Fountains of Silence by Ruta Sepetys, 512 pages.

In 1957 Spain is ruled by dictator Francisco Franco and there are many things Spaniards aren't allowed to do or say. At the same time, Spain has recently opened up to American business, and the tension between the worlds of the American tourists and the employees at the hotels they stay at a palpable. In the summer of 1957, aspiring photojournalist Daniel comes to Madrid with his parents, and quickly stumbles on some of the stories that Franco would rather the world didn't see. One of his windows into these stories is Ana, a maid at the hotel who wants nothing more than to see the world, and her brother Rafa, who works at a slaughterhouse and a graveyard while training his best friend to be a matador. Sepetys artfully weaves stories of a number of a number of characters with different beliefs from all over Madrid (along with excerpts from primary source documents about the period) into an engaging story that is also a very informative history of a little known time.

I feel like this book is an example of where Sepetys really shines, and found it overall stronger than I Must Betray You. This book is, like all of her others, very informative and very sad, and I definitely found myself drawn into Daniel's story in particular. This book is very multifaceted, and definitely worth the read.

Surviving Autocracy

 

Surviving Autocracy / Masha Gessen, 295 pgs.

I wish I hadn't felt compelled to read this but given the precarious state of democracy, it is a good book to study.  Gessen was early to sound the warning of the significance of the 2016 election and the road ahead.  Here is 22 solid chapters full of examples of why we need to worry and the march up to each hill that we went over without stopping to see the obvious.  It is not uplifting, but it does show that we can't be too careful when we start looking at actually SEEING what is going on right in front of us.

How to be a dictator

How to be a dictator: an irreverent guide / Mikal Hem, translated by Hester Velmas read by Ramiz Monsef

A compendium of bad behavior of current and former dictators, this book gives you a guide to becoming a dictator yourself.  There are lots of benefits that some with the job but a few drawbacks too.  Many end up overthrown or dead but the lucky ones rule til a natural death at a ripe old age and pass the job along to one of their coddled kids.  I'm sure this was a lot funnier a year ago.  Reading it today is a bit frightening.  Enjoyed the audio version.

On Tyranny

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century / Timothy Snyder, 126 pp.

Here's what happened.  On a Wednesday in November 2016, Timothy Snyder, the Housum Professor of History at Yale University and a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, and author of the fantastic Black Earth, had a bad day.  In this he was not alone.

In the aftermath of this very bad day, Snyder took his acute historical acumen, much of which has been trained on totalitarian regimes from the 20th century, and came up with a list of recommendations for those of us who might be feeling a little worried about the current state of affairs:

Do not obey in advance.
Defend institutions. (like courts)
Beware the one-party state.
Take responsibility for the face of the world. (the physical and virtual presence of propaganda)
 & etc.

Although it feels like it was written in haste, it's still powerful, and it certainly makes sense.  I just wish it had made me feel better.