Blowout book review5/7/2023 ![]() Unlikely as it might seem, there is a thread connecting these events, and Rachel Maddow follows it to its crooked source: the unimaginably lucrative and equally corrupting oil and gas industry. And in 2014, revolutionaries in Ukraine raided the palace of their ousted president and found a zoo of peacocks, gilded toilets, and a floating restaurant modeled after a Spanish galleon. That same year, a trove of Michael Jackson memorabilia-including his iconic crystal-encrusted white glove-was sold at auction for over $1 million to a guy who was, officially, just the lowly forestry minister of the tiny nation of Equatorial Guinea. In 2010, the words “earthquake swarm” entered the lexicon in Oklahoma. ![]() “A rollickingly well-written book, filled with fascinating, exciting, and alarming stories about the impact of the oil and gas industry on the world today.”- The New York Times Book Review Big Oil and Gas Versus Democracy-Winner Take All. ![]()
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![]() Yet, there is a fire in her, a kind of freedom that is not bestowed, a quiet pride that carries her forward. She doesn’t quite understand what the other slaves are talking about and she doesn’t know what to think of the things they say and do. However, she grew up quite sheltered and when she’s thrust into her role of slave, she’s unprepared for it. Growing up as a slave on a plantation, I imagine most people would be quite worldly. The thing that struck me in The Book of Night Women is Lilith’s youth. While we get glimpses into the life of a field slave, those are from afar. Homer and the six sisters (including Lilith) are house slaves and so the story mostly focuses on the relationships between the house slaves and between them and their White owners. James shows us a glimpse of the live of a slave in those days, and of the White “masters” as well. ![]() ![]() In this story, we learn a bit of Jamaican history, of the slave revolutions that occurred, and of the Maroons, slaves who escaped and created their own communities and societies in the hills of Jamaica. If you’ve read the book and are looking for a recap, you can find one here. The story is told through the perspective of Lilith, one of the house slaves. The scene is Montpelier, a plantation owned by the Wilson family and Coulibre, a plantation owned by the Roget family. ![]() It’s set in his birthplace of Jamaica during slavery, in the 1700s. ![]() The Book of Night Women is a fictional novel by Marlon James. ![]() |