I don’t care that much about football, which perhaps makes spending the last month reading about FIFA slightly ridiculous. But the four-part documentary left me with questions.

How did an organisation created for the love of the game and to organise international football competitions at the smaller scale become known for bribery and corruption more than the game itself?

And later on, as I was researching the scandals further, another question kept at me:

If journalists had been investigating FIFA for years, why did everything seem to explode at once in 2015?

The documentary led me to two books that approach those questions from completely different directions: David Conn’s The Fall of the House of FIFA and Ken Bensinger’s Red Card.

The Fall of the House of FIFA helped me understand how FIFA got to there. Red Card helped me understand how investigators finally caught up with it.

For me, the documentary was a good starting point but left me wanting to learn more, and it introduced me to journalists I wanted to learn more about and to their work.

What I bookmarked from The Fall of the House of FIFA by David Conn.

Surprisingly, I did not have to read far before stumbling upon a beautiful and intriguing story.

Chapter 3 takes you to 1904 and tells a tale of how seven European countries, insultingly without England, formed an organisation focused on the good game, playing against each other for no other reason than competition, with little to no financial games, zero business scheming, just pure love for sport. I write insultingly without England, because the English invented the game of football, formed its own governing body —the English FA, fought the idea by announcing that “its council cannot see the advantages of an international federation.”

There are plenty of books about FIFA corruption. Conn gives you something different: the history of the institution itself in an idealistic way that might end up making you interested in football.

Conn is a sharp writer who pulls you into the world of football and the history of sport even when you don’t care that much, which is testament to how well it’s written.

Years after Sepp Blatter had become the face of everything wrong with FIFA, Conn was granted an interview with him over lunch. He writes that he found more to Blatter than the “arch-villain of popular caricature”.

I liked that—Conn’s ability to look beyond and to approach the interview with an open mind. Conn’s book made me think much more about institutions.

Because if corruption survives presidents and committees for generations, eventually you have to ask: is the problem bigger than a handful of names?

What I bookmarked from Red Card by Ken Bensinger.

Even though both books I am sharing today cover the same topic, Ken Bensinger’s Red Card is a completely different book.

Bensinger reconstructs the criminal investigation that eventually brought FIFA officials before US authorities. Therefore, Red Card reads like a good thriller, or a good detective story.

Bensingers focus is on reconstructing a specific criminal investigation, covering it from the moment the news broke until the book’s publication in 2018. He relies on interviews with FBI agents, IRS investigators, and prosecutors, as well as court records and years of his own reporting.

Red Card changed the timeline in my head. Like a lot of people, I associated the FIFA scandal with the 2015 arrest of multiple officials at a hotel in Zurich. But 2015 wasn’t really the beginning.

Journalists had been investigating FIFA for years. Authorities had been building cases. That distinction is probably the biggest thing I bookmarked from Red Card.

Once I realised how long FIFA had been investigated, I became almost as interested in journalists as I was in FIFA.

One name that kept appearing was Andrew Jennings.

Jennings, who had been investigating corruption in international sports since the 1990s, was banned from attending any FIFA events, mainly due to his not exactly subtle questioning: “Herr Blatter, have you ever taken a bribe?” —blunt and to the point. His books — including FOUL! And The Dirty Game — also report on FIFA.

And this is where I had to stop myself. FIFA is sort of a subject that keeps on giving. It’s often in the news.

BUT WHAT DID THESE TWO BOOKS HELP ME UNDERSTAND?

Before reading them, FIFA corruption existed as one large scandal, a singular event. I thought I knew the story, but I did not understand the story behind it.

Reading Conn alongside Bensinger gave me two halves of that story. They made 2015 look less like the beginning of FIFA’s fall and more like the point at which decades of investigating came to resolution.

In the end, both confirmed the simple truth: institutions don’t become corrupt overnight, and investigations rarely produce outcomes overnight either.

THE QUESTION I STILL HAVE AFTER READING BOTH BOOKS. There was one moment in the FIFA Uncovered documentary that eventually sent me away from corruption and investigations.

It took me to the 1978 World Cup in Argentina. At that time, Argentina was ruled by a military dictatorship, and people were disappearing.

I wanted to know what was happening in Argentina. And that eventually led me to another nonfiction book. But that’s the next bookmark.

Any guesses what the next post is about?

Leave a comment

Over the past few months, I’ve thought about shutting it down. For a day or two, I convince myself I will, and then I come back to it. I realised I need this newsletter. It’s what keeps me committed to reading.

Honestly, without this space I’d spend my days watching TV and listening to too many court podcasts.

I write this newsletter because otherwise, I probably wouldn’t read as regularly as I’d like. My aim is to read a book every two weeks; I think that’s manageable. Maybe you’d like to read along with me. If that’s the case, here’s the plan for reading.

What do you think? Does that sound like an interesting newsletter?

Realistically, I can only publish twice a month, especially if I want every article to be the best quality I can make it.

I’d also like us to have more personal, regular interactions in the chat, where we can discuss new books, documentaries, and podcasts.

I’ve opened the chat today with the new nonfiction books that caught my attention this summer. I hope you’ll enjoy it and join the conversation if you have a few minutes.

The plan is to open the chat during the weeks I’m not publishing a full post. It’ll be a place for us to catch up and see what everyone has been reading.

I’ve been turning to books for the answer as long as I can remember. It was the same on the most recent trip. Take a look and guess at what might be going on for me.

DRAINED BY LEAH RUPPANNER

This is a book about mental load. Not the mental load you might first think of, such as usual chores and other day-to-day mundane stuff. Sociologist Leah Ruppanner believes that women experience much deeper mental load — “a complex form of emotional labour that is invisible, boundaryless and enduring.” In the Drained, she shares eight distinct types of mental load and what makes them typically heavy for women. Even though The Drained is a sizeable book in print with 300 pages, to read it took me only one evening. It’s centred around one tool — The Mental Load Audit.

Why it matters: Perhaps coming into spring carries the heaviness of the winter months, combined with the pressure of spring cleaning and starting over, which, I think, fairly leaves many of us ‘drained’.

The Ruppanner writes in the first chapter: “This is a book about unpaid labour, fulfilment and how we can make space in our lives to create more meaning, love and joy.”

They come as words of consolation, offering an invisible hug and comfort by reading them. The section that stood out to me is this, though:

I let them into the mess. If people can’t see my value beyond the mess, then they aren’t my people.

THE WALKING CURE BY ANNABEL STREETS

This book celebrates the joy of walking, which makes it an ideal book choice for me. I walk most days, before and after work, at weekends, long walks, short walks, alone walks, and walks to catch up with friends. If I am not working or reading, I am walking. It clears my head, and this book is a celebration of one of my favourite ways to spend time, plus it is healthy and a form of exercise.

Annabel Streets writes:

When my life was overwhelmingly busy and my mind frazzled from too many decisions and too much responsibility, longed for the uncluttered space of deserts or plains. When things came tumbling down in a deluge of confusion, I needed the airy perspective bestowed by mountains. When I lost confidence, yearned for the steadfastness of a river. When I felt unmoored by sadness, I wanted the reassuring clasp of trees and woodland. When I felt mired in self-pity, I needed the gratitude prompted by headstones in a cemetery. And when I was bored and restless, only the exuberance of a city would suffice.

Walking is a form of exercise that can heal, energise, restore, inspire, and offer much-needed peace of mind — with that said, this book is going to become a reading project in the upcoming months; I hope you agree.

Comment if you read these books or are considering reading them soon

Leave a comment

Or even when you have no interest whatsoever in picking any of these books up — tell me why. I want to know.

YOU HAVE ALWAYS BEEN ENOUGH BY SOULLA DEMETRIOU

This book will help you (and me) unpack limiting beliefs, set boundaries without guilt, regulate the nervous system, and practise kindness toward yourself in difficult moments. Well, at least that is the promise. I am often hesitant and distrustful when it comes to self-development books, but I also believe that it’s madness not to work on yourself and expect different outcomes. So I leave you with that.

The book attempts to answer a crucial question: When we work so hard, why don’t we still feel like we’re enough? Soulla Demetriou believes that the problem is not who you are, but the wounds you have been carrying without even knowing it.

Demetriou writes: “It’s too much to ask of a human. There was just such an accumulation of challenging experiences, and I couldn’t just believe my way out of it.”

If you look for science-backed tools for healing the old wounds and leaning towards self-compassion, or feel ridden by guilt most days.

WHAT’S GOING RIGHT BY DR PAUL CONTI

In a world where so much is going wrong, the author asks, what is going right? Good point, I thought, and that’s what drew me to this book.

Personally, when I am feeling down (especially on the drive to work), I tend to force myself to name out or list out two or three things in my life I am happy about or grateful for. I get a sense that this is what this book is about.

If you feel that most things in your life right now are going wrong and need to flip it or think your way into the opposite perspective.

Dr Paul Conti explains: “We can look at ourselves with curiosity and compassion… what we will find is the reason behind what is driving that (undesirable behaviour). Is it anger, frustration, guilt, or blame? Where is that coming from in me? Is that a desire? I thought a drink would do that for me; I did not intend for it to be five. We can look at that and say we don’t have to be afraid of that. We can look at ourselves with curiosity and compassion, and what do we find? We find routes to answers, to change.”

UNSPEAKABLE BY GWEN ADSHEAD

This book is about survival. It helps to explore resilience and healing through language and silence. Both can dramatically affect the quality of our recovery after a disaster.

Life has its way of dishing out the hard and dirty, and it can be pushed aside for years, but the dirt eventually surfaces. All on our own time, there comes a time when it’s better to face the difficulties in our lives head-on.

The author writes: “While there is no manual for how to live after trauma, language — and the capacity to think new thoughts about oneself — is a vital part of recovery.”

This could be a good read for you if you have been through some type of trauma or are dealing with bereavement. I found an especially interesting book review of Unspeakable here on Substack: Book Review: ‘Unspeakable’ by Gwen Adshead and Eileen Horne

REPARENTING THE INNER CHILD BY DR NICOLE LEPERA

The book explains how we can improve our emotional maturity and regulation to respond calmly instead of reacting, and to question the stories we’ve long believed about who we have to be. Most of the time, I am wary of inner child work and the whole personal development genre, but to be transparent with you, I am sharing this book as it did capture my attention whilst browsing the bookshop. There is something I am dealing with under the surface.

Strictly selfishly, after the burnout, I have near-zero regulation on how to respond appropriately, not to think calmly. These days it’s more about seeing red and reacting, than regretting the reaction. I don’t know if this book is an answer for me, but what the heck, it’s worth trying anything at this point.

The author writes: “While we can’t rewrite the past, we can change the way we meet the needs of our inner child—the part of us that still holds our early emotional wounds and unmet longings. This process is called reparenting: the practice of giving yourself the nurturance, boundaries, and care you may not have received growing up.”

Comment if you read this book or are considering reading it.

Leave a comment

Or even when you have no interest whatsoever in picking this book up — tell me why.

WHEN EVERYONE KNOWS THAT EVERYONE KNOWS BY STEVEN PINKER

Pinker explores the paradoxes of human behaviour and why we often result in pretending we don’t see the big elephant in the room.

It delves into financial bubbles and crashes, revolutions, social media shaming, and cancel culture—all of which are relevant to us.

I think you might enjoy this book if it’s your thing reading about current events, social psychology and cultural shifts.

The author writes: “My goal is to explain the obscure but momentous research on common knowledge, together with some ideas of my own, and show how the concept illuminates many enigmas of our public affairs and personal lives.”

HOW TO DISAGREE BETTER BY DR JULIA MINSON

The book, apparently, reveals the secret to a life of less drama and more impact. If you are, as I am, spending most of your days in a corporate job, you are not lacking drama. The work politics are what make me want to get the van and go on the trip around Europe rather than spend another week in a place where everyone is propagandising, strategising, and marketing themselves, yet no one is a politician or marketer.

The disagreements won’t ever get old; they are an unfortunate part of our daily experience.

The author writes: “Even just thinking about our disagreements takes a psychological toll. Should I have said it? Should I say it tonight? Should I say it differently? Should I never say it again?”

Comment if you read any of these two books or are considering reading

Leave a comment

Or even when you have no interest whatsoever in picking this book up — tell me why.

MURDER IN PARIS ‘68 BY EDWARD CHISHOLM

The dead body turns up on the outskirts of Paris in the mid-1960s. Alain Delon lives on the edge in the glamorous, casinos and nightclubs buzzing, gangsters and corrupt politicians overpowering, Paris.

Thriller-like stories provide escapism from daily life.

Chisholm starts with these words: “This is a true story. The events you are about to read are extraordinary. At times, they may seem too cinematic or too perfectly plotted to be real, but they are.”

RAISE YOUR SOUL BY YANIS VAROUFAKIS

An intimate portrait of three generations caught up in the whirlwind of history from Nazi occupation, communist resistance, civil war, to the current economic crisis.

The author writes: “It was then that I turned to the five women who had shaped me, whose incredible stories I carried like a secret flame. I would write them down, I decided, not to escape the darkness but to confront it, to let their strengths, their love, lift me as my mother used to.”

Comment if you read these two books or are considering reading

Leave a comment

Or even when you have no interest whatsoever in picking this book up — tell me why.

FAMESICK BY LENA DUNHAM

To be honest, I have no idea who Lena Dunham is — just that she writes . I also have no idea what the TV series Girls is about. But this memoir kept popping up in the Substack feed as many decided to pick this memoir up, and I personally am inclined to pick up any memoir, too, especially knowing that others did, too. Call it FOMO or just being too damn curious about other people’s lives.

Memoirs are glimpses into lives we won’t live. They are teachable and often more valuable in the school of life than whole school systems we had to endure in our youth.

Dunham writes: “This was, looking back, a very innocent time. Yes, there was drama—what are your early twenties if not a chance to burn every bridge and then build it back again, to his things like “Have a nice life, bitch”…

NOTES TO JOHN BY JOAN DIDION

Record of the weekly sessions with a psychiatrist whilst Joan is dealing with the alcoholism of her daughter, Quintana, addressed to her husband, John. Some reviews called it ‘uncomfortable’ to read.

Writing was the way Didion dealt with life. It can be the same for us.

Didion writes: “Was it going to be productive or counterproductive to bring this up after so many days?”

Comment if you read these memoirs or are considering reading

Leave a comment

Or even when you have no interest whatsoever in picking either of the two memoirs, tell me why.

TSUNDOKU BY TAIKI RAITO PYM

In Japan, there's a term for the growing stacks of unread books — tsundoku. Some might find your stack of books to be clutter; to you, it is the most meaningful way of living, surrounded by a stack of books: those you highlighted and reread multiple times, and others still waiting on your TBR list.

I think, humbly, it’s important to read this book because you cherish the books. This book is also a reminder that we don’t necessarily have to read all the books we surround ourselves with.

The author writes: “In 2010, there were no fewer than 129864880 unique books in the world. Given that more than two million new books are released every year. Which means that even with a life dedicated exclusively to reading, there would still be a mammoth of 159945212 books you would have to miss out on.”

Comment if you read the book or are considering reading

Leave a comment

Or even when you have no interest whatsoever in picking this book up — tell me why. I want to know.

SUPPORT BOOKMARKED

If you enjoy Bookmarked, please become a paid supporter. You’ll get access to the full archives. Your support makes this newsletter possible. Thank you!

IN OTHER NEWS

• Most of these books will appear in weekly posts in upcoming months, but first, the book I am currently reading — Girls — which is by far my favourite book of 2026. It’s a shocking and eye-opening cultural look into what it’s like to be young and Gen Z.

OKAY THAT’S IT!

• Which books are you most excited about?

Share Bookmarked

And thanks for reading …

STATECRAFT BY JACK WATLING

The defence analyst, Dr Jack Watling, reveals the hidden mechanics of the global influence. The book includes an analysis of the Iran Paradox, The Russia-Ukraine Lesson. The Aircraft Carrier Dilemma and the Future of Taiwan.

I have hardly ever been into politics, but I do enjoy understanding how the world works and how its power shifts. A few months ago, I enjoyed reading Anne Applebaum’s Autocracy, Inc., and I’m hoping for a similar experience with Statecraft.

THE CROWN’S SILENCE BY BROOKE NEWMAN

The untold story of the British royal family’s relationship to slavery from the reign of Elizabeth I to the present—this book sounds scandalous enough to pick up and pack in the mini suitcase for my spring holiday.

The Crown’s silence comes with the promise of exposing the ways in which the British monarchy invested in, expanded, and defended the slave trade for almost three centuries.

A SICILIAN MAN BY CAROLINE MOOREHEAD

Back in the 90s, I went on my first holiday abroad, to Sicily. What I remember the most is the fear my mom had taking just me and my sister to southern Italy on her own. Mafia is what she feared. Back then, I was a naive kid; I did not understand that the world is violent, brutal, and corrupt. So, it’s the least to say that this book, as soon as I found it, in a very strange way brought me closer to my mom.

It’s 1986, 471 men and 4 women stood in the largest Mafia trial in Italy’s history. And it took place in Sicily. But the book is not about the trial, it’s centred around Leonardo Sciascia, a known European writer who published the first Mafia novel, The Day of the Owl and spent his life rising against the Mafia, and his thrilling and devastating struggle.

STALIN’S APOSTLES BY ANTONIA SENIOR

I’m not the one to turn down yet another book about history during and leading up to the Second World War.

At Cambridge University in the 1930s, five British men, now known as the Cambridge spies, did more than study; they changed the course of history. By spilling US and British strategy secrets to Stalin, they became directly and indirectly responsible for the deaths of thousands of men and women fighting against the Soviet Union. But how does five students turn into war criminals and enemies of the crown? Intriguing, isn’t it?

The author used recently declassified files to tell this thriller-like tale, for which none of the men was ever prosecuted.

British Scandal did a captivating three-part series on the Cambridge spies; if you don’t fancy reading the book and want to listen instead, here’s the link.

Then, after working two weeks back-to-back, I headed on a well-deserved couple of hours break to Reading to have some needed time well spent in the bookshop—and with that, I have a handful of new releases to share. Let’s begin with the memoir; it seems everyone talks about…

STRANGERS BY BELLE BURDEN

Under normal circumstances, I would not think twice and walk right past the memoir about marriage. Ups and downs of relationships are too intimate to read about. With that said, this memoir kept appearing in my feed as more and more writers I follow kept picking and discussing it. “This is a story about a man so cold, he asks his soon-to-be ex-wife to make him a sandwich while he says goodbye to their children”, Maris Kreizman writes in volume 95 of her review newsletter. Now that’s transitive. post “This year’s viral memoir will make your blood boil”, I went on to search for the NYT Modern Love version: Was I Married to a Stranger? Then Vanity Fair’s book extract titled: Belle Burden Wrote a Viral “Modern Love” About Her Husband’s Betrayal was a decider for me—your husband is having an affair, and the woman he is having an affair with just tried to kill herself—it’s hitting too many curiosity/gossip taste buds. It’s explosive. I thought to myself, what the heck, I’m getting my eyes on somebody else's marriage this once.

A HYMN TO LIFE BY GISÈLE PELICOT

How do you reconcile with the fact that you’ve been married for 49 years to a pervert and your pimp, whom you, until recently, did not know you had? After the recent trial, widely covered here on Substack (I’m including links below1), but also in the newspapers across the world, 51 men were convicted. Gisèle Pelicot became a symbol of feminism, emerging with a renewed passion and reverence for living and for love.

To follow the trial was extremely infuriating, sort of tart for tart, where the accused justified their actions:‘when I was little I was abused by my father’; ‘I’ve been a victim myself’— being a victim isn’t a valid excuse. It is not the details of the trial and crimes themselves, it’s this question: How does one recover from such trauma, that curiosity led me to pick up the book from the shelf.

Two memoirs that will remind you that something most of us don’t want to admit: you can never truly trust anyone, not even those closest to you. Yet, us humans are resilient and adaptable, that’s how we survive.

TRAVERSAL BY MARIA POPOVA

If not for anything else, I’d get this book for the cover—just look at it—it’s jaw-dropping! Maria Popova is the writer behind one of the biggest newsletters, The Marginalian, and I have been following her work for some time now. First, with the book Figuring, I won’t miss Traversal.

Also on my ‘Read this spring time reading list’ are the following books —all for different reasons: Girls by and a couple of historical reads into Rasputin by Anthony Beevor and Stay Alive by Ian Buruma.

The Bomber Mafia: A Tale of Innovation and Obsession by Malcolm Gladwell

For years, I avoided the news. There was simply no need to invite that kind of negativity into my everyday life. This year is different; I go out of my way to keep up with the news. I guess at 40, I can handle reality head-on, with the brutal stories that come with it. As I was flicking through articles on my break, I read

“The Feb. 28 strike that hit an elementary school in the southern Iranian town of Minab is the deadliest known episode of civilian casualties since the United States and Israel attacked Iran — and no side has yet taken responsibility.”1

Hand on heart, with the ignorance I lived with, I have zero knowledge of much that’s happening in the Middle East or in Persian countries. Perhaps you feel the same. I continued reading.

“But a body of evidence assembled by The New York Times … indicates the school building was severely damaged by a precision strike that occurred at the same time as attacks on an adjacent naval base operated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.”2

A PRECISION STRIKE, I thought, how is it possible that precision strikes land at school? If I know anything, it’s that nowadays we fight wars differently than 80 or 100 years ago. It’s done from the air; you’d not see it coming, or you could, but have zero chance to respond. It’s one of the fascinating innovations since second world war. Which reminds me of the book, of course.

Gladwell’s book tells the story of a group of U.S. military strategists who believed wars could be won without mass destruction. Their idea was simple. Instead of destroying entire cities and sending troops into battle grounds, an innovative way of war would be to bomb key infrastructure, such as bridges, factories, and power plants, until the enemy has no other choice but to surrender.

They believed precision bombing would reduce civilian deaths and make war morally acceptable. I know! Stay with me.

Without spoiling the book for you, the idea largely failed. The technology wasn’t precise enough, and commanders like Curtis LeMay resorted to firebombing entire cities such as Tokyo.

The idea is this: no matter the intentions, there’s no such thing as “clean” war. The reality of war is it’s always brutal.

Reality today is closer to making the Bomber Mafia’s dream come true. What they wanted to do is actually possible now. In the 1940s, bombs were dropped over a wide area. Today, the target can be a specific spot, just a few meters wide. The military now uses smart missiles, drones, and satellite targeting—which I only know from a couple of war movies and a few documentaries, so don’t take my word for it.

This should mean that with these weapons, the military should be able to hit one building or even part of a building instead of destroying entire cities. In theory. This is exactly the vision the Bomber Mafia imagined.

In theory, because we shouldn’t be hearing about schools getting hit. But if you look into what ‘precision’ really means, you’ll find that these weapons can still miss by a few meters.

News as such makes you wonder about how precise the precision is.

The news as such, filling today’s newspapers, still reminds us that even with precision weapons, the intelligence gathered can be wrong and civilians may still be killed.

Attacking important buildings still destroys communities, and it’s the civilians, it’s always the civilians who suffer the most.

As Malcolm Gladwell ends his book, noting that technology solves some problems, but moral judgment still matters.

We Keep the Dead Close: A Murder at Harvard and a Half Century of Silence by Becky Cooper

“A bare, fluorescent light glares against the peeling, apple-green walls of the hallway of the brick apartment house at 6 University Road, two blocks from Harvard Square,” — this is how The New York Times article from January 19th, 1969 describes reports on the murder that occurred twelve days ago on the Harvard school grounds.

From Apartment 8A, Jane Britton led a life like any student’s. Studies, parties, boys, men, friends, coursework. Nothing out of the ordinary. The archaeology was her focus and the subject she studied. Until 7th January 1969, when she failed to attend her first of three parts of the general exams. Nothing would be a miss if this were not the most important exam she had lined up to qualify as an archaeologist. Jane has failed the exams before, so this was really the last chance without exaggeration.

The crime occurred in 1969, and the mystery of ‘who done it’, the red ochre left on the crime scene, and a long line of rumoured suspects spanned for 50 years.

In 2018, nearly fifty years later, the Middlesex District Attorney announced that DNA testing had identified Michael Sumpter as Jane Britton’s killer.

Case closed.

When a case takes almost 50 years to solve, can you help but wonder what happened?

In November 2018, at the conference, Distric attorney Marina Ryan announced, “This is the oldest case that the Middlesex District Attorney’s office has been able to bring to a resolution.”

But resolution is not the same thing as justice.

By the time the suspect was found, it was too late for justice. Britton’s parents were dead. The suspect had been dead for 17 years.

In We Keep the Dead Close, Becky Cooper, leaves her job at The New Yorker behind and returns to the crime, literally and to the location of that cold case murder, as she writes, “for the past ten years, I have been haunted by”. The aim is not grandiose, as identifying a killer, even though that does happen during the process. Instead, Cooper probes the half-century of silence, rumour, and even academic politics, especially in the archaeology circles that grew around Jane’s death, and what happened to the consequent lives of those close to her after her tragic death.

Apart from the obvious question: Who murdered Jane Britton? The book attempts to give a vivid answer to yet another question, a more subtle one, that surfaces over the years:

What happens when a mystery lingers for too long?

The suspicions and rumours spread fast and wide. And then the book asks another important question:

What does it mean to live under suspicion for fifty years?

When Jane Britton was killed in 1969, forensic science was limited. Fingerprinting was not introduced until 1977. There was no national DNA database. DNA profiling itself would not be developed until the 1980s by Alec Jeffreys. In 1969, investigators relied on blood typing, perhaps the tape-lifting method, and good instincts to gather evidence and conduct interviews.

The red ochre found near Jane’s body seemed symbolic. It was a pigment used in archaeology. Jane was an anthropology student. So suspicion turned inward, toward Harvard. Toward faculty. Toward men with authority, especially the archaeology department and all involved. As the case grew colder, the mystery around the red ochre grew even more symbolic. “Red ochre was used in many ancient burial rituals, either to preserve the dead or to honour them on their way to the afterlife.“

Type of details as such of the red ochre is what derails the investigation, without ever intending to do so.

For decades, one of the names most closely linked to the case was Karl Lamberg-Karlovsky, Jane’s faculty adviser and a prominent archaeologist. Rumours spread that Jane had been having an affair with him. That she had threatened to expose him. That gave him a motive. As in many cases, none of the rumours was ever confirmed or proved to be true. Yet, they caused enough damage. To be frankly honest with you, it’s the story intriguing enough that made me pick up this book at the first place.

But Karl Lamberg-Karlovsky was not the only suspect. There were more. Jim Humphries — Jane’s then boyfriend, who was also the one who discovered the body and after the murder, withdrew from the graduate program. Lee Parsons, an anthropology professor who struggled with professional and mental issues as a result of the accusations, eventually died of AIDS in 1996. And Mike Gramly, a Harvard student who was accused of killing another archaeology student, was also linked to Jane’s murder as a result. Neither of the long-held suspects were actual murderer.

The red ochre seemed to confirm the theory that it had to be someone from the archaeology circles. Otherwise, what was the meaning of the red ochre? The symbolism and ritualism surrounding the red ochre just made it dramatic enough.

The truth was far less symbolic. When Distric attorney Marina Ryan announced Michael Sumpter as a murderer, one of the journalists asked: “ What about the red ochre?” Which played such a vigorous role for the past 50 years. Unfortunately, the mystery was over.

The ochre was later determined to be residue from Jane’s own paintings.

Often, suspicion does not demand proof. It only needs enough repetition.

The same pattern repeated in other long-unsolved crime, this one I learned about from listening to the In the Dark podcast over the Christmas break. When eleven-year-old Jacob Wetterling was abducted in Minnesota in 1989, investigators focused for years on a local man, Dan Rassier. His home was searched. His name kept circulating in relation to the case. The Jacob Wetterling case remained unsolved for twenty-seven years. When the real killer, Danny Heinrich, finally confessed, Rassier was cleared. By then, it was too late. His name would forever be linked to the child abduction case, pretty damning for the school teacher, especially from the small town.

I conduct a lot of investigations at work, but not at this level, scope, or scale. We like to think of investigations in terms of straight lines: suspect, evidence, conviction. In reality, they are greyer and murkier, heavily influenced by biases and narratives drawn from beliefs and memories that often should not be relied upon anyway.

It was easier, perhaps, to imagine that crime this brutal was result of the secret romance than to accept the possibility of it being a random act of someone unknown to Jane. There is something unnerving about randomness; unpredictability is scary.

Michael Sumpter, who was identified by DNA as the killer long after his death, did not belong to the Harvard or archaeology circles. I guess it was a murder of the opportunity. Nothing ritualistic or symbolic. Sumpter was a repeat offender who continued to harm young women in the years after Jane’s murder.

That makes the mystery of the red ochre all the more tragic in this case. It derailed focus, it misdirected the attention.

We Keep the Dead Close by Becky Cooper shows how stories form. A detail becomes a clue. A clue can be a mistake. There should not be a place for speculation or rumours in an investigation.

Lies, gossip, and rumours can destroy people’s good names, reputations and lives.

Science and technology helped match preserved evidence and eventually identified the true killer. But it cannot undo the years lived under doubt and suspicion.

What would it mean to wake up each day for fifty years knowing that you are still “the one who might have done it”?

Jane Britton was twenty-three years old. She was described as bright, ambitious, stubborn, and looking forward to her future.

Beautifully written book that will keep you gripped until the very end.

What I’m reading next

Next, I’m picking up a book, The Secret History of the Rape Kit: A True Crime Story, by Pagan Kennedy, which was suggested to me in one of my readers’ comments previously.

If you’d like to read along or have already read the book, let’s discuss it together in two weeks’ time.

Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep

This book has it all: the crime, the injustice, the vigilantism, the voodooism, the writer’s block, alcoholism, the possession and, finally, the end.

The temptation, at first glance, is to connect the theme of this book to some of the cases of fraud or murder for insurance payout from the current times—after all—there are so many.

Instead, it’s part three that stood out to me the most. Part three, called The Writer, is about the struggle to finish the story, to sort out the complicated details of several crimes and court cases happening at different times. Even with all that, there’s a bigger question at the heart of the book that still matters today, even though the events happened in the 1960s and 1970s:

It’s vigilantism, for sure. The problem with vigilantism is that it takes justice away or stops justice from happening.

If I had to sum up my feelings about Furious Hours in several sentences, it would be this: I picked up the book wanting to get lost in a true crime story from history, which seemed simple but turned out to be full of mystery. What I got from these 400 pages was more than I expected. Yes, there were murders, victims, lawyers, trials, witnesses, and not just one but two killers, but it was the life, work, and struggle of Harper Lee, which kept her from ever publishing her ‘second book’, that interested me most.

In the middle of 1977, not long after 16-year-old Shirley Ann was found murdered, the scene looked like her car had a flat tyre and she tried to change it, but the tyre was not really flat. She was only a mile from home, so she could have just walked back. After all, how many 16-year-olds would change a tyre by themselves? At 16, Shirley Ann, Maxwell’s adopted daughter, was seen as difficult, but what teenager isn’t, even without a tough start in life?

Her funeral was held just a day before Father’s Day, on Saturday, 18 June 1977, in the chapel of the funeral home in Alexander City. At the end of the service, a man in a green suit pulled out a gun and shot Reverend Maxwell in the head three times. The sound of gunfire shocked the hundreds of people there, and they rushed to get out through the doors and windows. Reverend Maxwell’s murder was no mystery, since three hundred people saw it happen. No one wondered why; everyone guessed the reason, and some even wondered why it had not happened sooner.

Three months later, the man in the green suit, Robert Burns, went on trial. It was not unusual in the American South for a black man to be judged by an all-white jury. He was represented by Tom Radney, the same lawyer who had defended Reverend Maxwell in the insurance fraud cases. Burns pleaded not guilty on the grounds of insanity.

Complicated? Undoubtedly.

But the story does not make you think that Robert Burns lost his mind on that day in June 1977 at Shirley Ann’s funeral. The truth is, before Burns shot him, there had been six unsolved murders, all connected to Reverend Maxwell.

Before the judge sent off the all-white jury to deliberate on the key question, to which answer should be without any reasonable doubt: “Did Robert Lewis Burns unlawfully and with malice aforethought kill Willie J. Maxwell?” Tom Young, prosecutor, noted this: “We are not living in the days of the wild and woolly west. We are living in Alexander City, Alabama, not Lynch City, Alabama.”

Five hours later, the jury gave their decision: “We, the jury, find the defendant not guilty by reason of insanity.” Three hundred people saw the murder, but the killer left the court a free man. Well, not completely free—he had to go for a mental health check at Bryce Hospital because of the insanity claim. Only a few weeks later, he was released, never having to pay for what he did.

Reverend Maxwell was definitely not a holy man. He had a child outside of marriage and cheated on his wife with other women. He was at the centre of not just one but six murders: his first wife, brother, neighbour, second wife, stepdaughter, and cousin, if I recall correctly.

By 1970, the reverend had life insurance policies with almost every company selling insurance in the South. He had insurance on his wife, his mother, his brothers, his aunts, his nieces, his nephews, and the baby daughter he had just made legally his.

The people in Reverend Willie Maxwell’s community believed he was a voodoo priest. It is not surprising, since he was always at the center of these tragedies along the same stretch of highway and was the only one who gained from them. It’s suspicious at the very least, and probably criminal.

In the end, no one in Furious Hours was found guilty of any of the murders, even though there were several murders close together and under suspicious circumstances. It’s a sad story.

The story was not just about a bad trial, a law that did not work, or evil or voodoo practices that happened then, but also about retribution.

“If people would gratify the passion of revenge outside of the law, if the law did not help them, the law has no choice but to satisfy the craving itself, and thus avoid the greater evil of private retribution.”

Imagine you’re the writer trying to piece this puzzle of the mystery and murders together into one nonfiction book?

One Christmas, Harper Lee received a gift from her friends, the Browns: a check to cover year-long expenses, so she could quit her airline job and focus fully on writing whatever she desired. “They wanted to give me a full, fair chance to learn my craft, free from the harassments of a regular job,” she once said of their gesture. That year, Harper Lee wrote a lot, which then became ‘To kill mockingbird’.

Years after her first novel ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ became a success, Harper Lee thought about writing a nonfiction book. Years before, she had worked with her childhood friend, Truman Capote, on his crime book, In Cold Blood, about the murder of the Clutter family in November 1959. Now she was ready to try it herself.

Capote started working on the four-piece for the New Yorker about the crime, which he intended to turn into a portrait of the victims, as well as a profile of the entire town in which this brutal crime occured in. Harper Lee just handed in her manuscript for The Mockingbird and had no idea what to do next. “She had been thinking about a nonfiction book,” Capote once said, “and wanted to learn my techniques of reportage.”

Lee was familiar with crime and court cases; as a child, she often went to court sessions and, although she did not finish, she studied law.

In Cold Blood became a bestseller. Then it stood at the centre of its own scandal, where it was alleged that Truman Capote had fabricated some of the witness testimony. “It included not just imagined dialogue but invented scenes. One problem was that Capote disdained notebooks and tape recorders, relying instead on his memory, which he insisted was also 20/20—or close to it.”

The last part of the book, The Writer, shows you the life and struggles of Harper Lee. After ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ became a beloved American novel, everyone—from the publisher to the public—expected a second book. That book never came, as we know.

Even now, it is not clear if the struggle to write the book was because the story at the center of Furious Hours was just too complicated. The crimes were clear, but the victims, what happened to them, the people accused, and the trials were hard to sort out.

Investigative journalism often takes a long time, as this New Yorker piece explains. It needs facts, but most of all, it needs patience and not giving up. Usually, these stories are told in order, but this one was not. There were police investigations, criminal trials, civil court cases, and life insurance claims, and they did not all happen at the same time.

Who knows what kept her back from ever finishing her work… ”that didn’t seem to want to be written.”

Perhaps she intended to write the second book for her own enjoyment rather than to satisfy the public. ‘To kill the Mocking bird’, the novel that won the Pulitzer Prize, has also made Harper Lee very wealthy beyond expectations. According to accounts, Harper Lee never sought the spotlight. Casey Cep, a staff writer at The New Yorker, writes in Furious Hours, “To anyone who knew her, that had been obvious for some time. Lee wasn’t just struggling with a second novel; she was struggling with everything.”

In November 2007, she was awarded the Medal of Freedom by George W. Bush.

On 19th February 2016, Harper Lee died near her childhood home on South Alabama Avenue. Her grave stone does not say “Pulitzer Prize Winner” or “Author of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, or “writer”, it simply says Nelle Harper Lee.

And there’s a bigger lesson I think we ought to remember and carry every day:

“Life doesn’t make us. We create our events. Nobody asked us to be born, but while we’re here, we should do the best we can with what we have.” Lee once said.

It’s not what we do for a living, it’s how we live that matters in the end.

Recommended reading based on today’s book:

• To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

• In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

And this is what stood out to me from reading the Furious Hours: what about you? What one thing stood out to you the most?

Often, hours pass easily whilst I pick up book after book, flick through the pages, and read the summary on the back cover, whilst my man sits patiently in the reading area or hunts for the title from my TBR list.

New releases in nonfiction are always, ALWAYS my first and the longest stop at each bookstore I get to visit. So here are the three new releases I’ve picked up in Nottingham…

The other side of change: Finding strength and happiness in adversity by Maya Shankar

I’ve been waiting for the book on this topic ever since my own plans went rogue. It makes me sad to think I used to have a life planned out in 5 year-blocks. These days I am content if I have a minimum of plans.

It brings to mind the common sayings like “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans” and “Plans are nothing; planning is everything.”

I used to have plans on everything, as if there was a guarantee it all falls right into my nightly colour coded blocks, now my calendar is empty and plans resemble long walks or the title of the book I am planning to spend the afternoon with.

“There are moments in each of our lives that seem to change everything. As our lives veer off course, it can feel like time is diving into a “before” and an “after”, cognitive scientists and podcast host Maya Shankar writes in a preface of her debut book—heavily inspired by her podcast, A Slight Change of Plans.

You can probably think of a handful of big life disruptions you had to endure over the course of your life.

With the focus on understanding people’s interior lives—what has shifted within them as they went through their changes come out the lessons and ‘survival kit’ on how to move on.

“What if we saw the hardest moments in our lives as a chance to reimagine ourselves, rather than as something to just endure?” — Shankar asks.

The Other Side of Change is an invitation to rethink the change, a guide to untangling the identities attached to those parts of our lives we lost.

I wish this book was written 20, 10 and 5 years ago, but it’s better now than ever I suppose. This book has so many bookmarks, and I’m only half way through reading it, so I will be returning to The Other Side of Change very soon in the whole post dedicated to it.

Currently, I’m watching a TV series on Prime The Man in the High Castle inspired by Philip K. Dick’s novel. It’s 1962, Germany dominates the eastern US and Japan controls the west. It’s a dystopian portrait of what the world would be like if Nazis and their alias won World War II. Interesting and of course, terrifying. What I am currently wathich probably explains my next two TBR choices.

Unknown enemy: The hidden Nazi force that built the third reich by Dr. Charles Dick

Unknown enemy is the harrowing true story of Organisation Todt, military engineering organisation in Nazi Germany that became notorious for using forced labour, to a small extent supplied from the concentration camps, prisoners of war but also Germans unfit to serve in the army. All were treated as slaves and many did not survive the war or the work. Title “unknown enemy” because the Organisation Todt largely managed to slip under the radar of war prosecutors after Germany’s defeat.

The traitors circle by Jonatan Freedland

On 10th September 1943, a small group of well connected friends met for a birthday party. The birthday party was merely a cover story. The true reason for the meeting was to discuss what should happen now Hitler is clearly losing the war.

What a group of friends did not realise was that amongst them was one informant, gathering details and information to then report to his notoriously ruthless Gestapo boss, Herbert Lange.

Within 18 months, every single birthday party attendee was either imprisoned or dead.

Those who dare to oppose the strong power, often end up paying a terrible price. The traitors circle is a historical book that reads like a thriller you can’t put down, each chapter leaves with a cliffhanger. Yet, the underlying theme and question of the book is this: How many of us would, given circumstances, have the courage to stand up, speak up and face the consequences that come with it?

Over the Christmas period I spend more time with my headphones on then with the book in hand. It’s just how I felt. I needed rest and I’m always obsessed with watching investigative work by journalists. As I was reading The New Yorker, I came across the podcast In the dark and that was me immersed in case after case the whole Christmas.

Currently reading

I binge-listened to the whole 6 seasons of the In the dark and now I am back with the book in my hand and headphones placed back in the case.

I am spending time with a book, Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep, that looks at a true crime investigation into the Rev. Maxwell case—he was accused of killing five of his family members and was shot himself while standing trial for the murders. This is the book that Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, spent years working on but never finished due to a mix of outside pressures and personal struggles.

Let’s see what will stay with me this time. If you’d like to read along, let’s discuss the book together on the 11th Feb.

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell

Some books take weeks. Blink asks for a Saturday.

It seems like a book about intuition, or thinking without thinking, but Gladwell is really exploring something more uncomfortable: how deeply social bias shapes our snap judgments, and how often we follow it without realising.

You don’t finish Blink unchanged. Once you see how first impressions work, you start noticing them everywhere. Gladwell shares stories from hiring, leadership, medicine, and music.

The story that stayed with me longest is the one Gladwell returns to at the end: blind auditions and Abbie Conant.

The tale takes us to 1980, the Royal Opera of Turin. Abbie Conant, the Italian, playing trombone, applied for various job openings within orchestras throughout Europe. She got one response. The Munich Philharmonic Orchestra invited her for an audition. Thirty-three candidates played for the selection committee from behind the screen. Once Abbie completed her audition, the Philharmonic’s music director, Sergiu Celibidache, shouted out: “That’s who we want!”

It is the kind of tale you read that warms your heart, the one with a happy ending, where the main protagonist persists, works hard at their craft until one day, many years later, after countless rejections, finally gets to realise their dreams. Or is it?

When Conant stepped in front of the selection committee from behind the screen, instead of applause, she triggered disappointment. The committee expected to see Herr, not Frau.

Here in the land “where classical music was born”, the selection committee had a strong sense of “how music ought to be played—and about who ought to play music.”

There were two more rounds of auditions. Connant successfully completed both and got the lead trombone player role. And this was the beginning of the years-long battles between Abbie Conant and the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra. After a year of playing as first trombonist, she got demoted to second trombone with simple reasons: “We need a man for the solo trombone.”

Eight years of fighting persisted until she was finally reinstated as first trombone. Then the ‘pay’ battles began as the orchestra refused to pay her on par with her male colleagues. Eventually, she won this battle too.

The screen worked because it took away the story we tell ourselves about who looks like a leader, a virtuoso, or a first trombone.

That tension, between what we see right away and what we should see, is at the heart of Blink, which brings me to the bookmarks I’m keeping.

Fast decisions aren’t the problem. Unexamined ones are.

Gladwell’s first point is simple: quick decisions can be just as good as slow ones. The real risk isn’t speed, but not seeing things clearly.

Thin-slicing is powerful and fragile.

Our unconscious can pick up patterns from small bits of information. That’s how a doctor senses trouble or someone hears disrespect in a voice. But this same skill also spreads bias just as easily.

Tone matters.

One study in Blink looks at Wendy Levinson’s recordings of hundreds of conversations between doctors and patients. Half of the doctors had never been sued, while the other half had been sued at least twice. Surgeons who had not been sued spent more time with each patient, averaging 18.3 minutes, compared to 15 minutes for those who had been sued.
Surgeons who were never sued didn’t explain more. They listened better, sounded warmer, and laughed more. The difference was in how they made people feel, not in the information they shared.

What we want to believe and what we do believe often disagree.

Over the past few years, psychologists have begun to examine the role of unconscious, or implicit, associations in shaping our beliefs and behaviour. Much of their work has focussed on a fascinating tool called the Implicit Association Test (IAT).

The IAT reveals something unsettling: many people who consciously reject racism still carry unconscious bias. Our attitudes towards things like race and gender operate on two levels.

Gladwell also shares data that I found interesting, especially about how many top company leaders are tall. For the last two years, I’ve believed that you need to be tall to become a shift manager where I work. Reading Blink made me feel like this belief might actually be true.

Gladwell writes: “some people look like they sound better than they actually sound, because they look confident and have a good posture.”

We confuse information with understanding.

Gladwell points out that people often feel frustrated by having too much information, which can actually make it harder to understand things. We sometimes mistake having lots of data for truly understanding a situation. Being flooded with information doesn’t help us make better decisions—sometimes knowing less, but understanding it well, is more valuable than knowing a lot but feeling overwhelmed.

We are not helpless in the face of our first impressions.

Gladwell explains that even if our biases come from deep within our minds, they aren’t out of our control. Just because we aren’t aware of them doesn’t mean we can’t change them. Our snap judgments are shaped by our environment and experiences, so if we change what we experience, we can change our first impressions. For example, if someone wants to have better instincts around people from different backgrounds, it’s not enough to simply wish for it—they need to spend real time getting to know those people and their culture. The more familiar we become, the less likely our first impressions will be unfair. Gladwell’s point is that we need to take our rapid judgments seriously, because they have real effects in our lives. It’s up to us to actively shape and manage them.

So should we trust our instincts, or should we consciously think things through?

Blink isn’t telling us to solely trust our intuition. Blink isn’t telling us to distrust intuition. The author answers this question as such:

“the truth is that this is not a question that I — or anyone else, for that matter — can answer definitively. It’s just too complicated. The best we can do, I think, is try to puzzle out the right mix of conscious and unconscious analysis on a case-by-case basis.”

There are some situations where the mind needs a little help. There are also times when instinct works better, and more data could actually get in the way. Screens, systems, and structures help protect our decisions from our worst instincts while keeping the best ones.

A sharp, unsettling, still-relevant way to start the year.

Before we end, take a poll on bias awareness—I’m curious to know where you stand…

What I’m reading next

Next, I’m picking up a book, Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep, that looks at a real true crime investigation into the Rev. Maxwell case—he was accused of killing five of his family members and was shot himself while standing trial for the murders. This is the book that Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, spent years working on but never finished due to a mix of outside pressures and personal struggles.

Let’s see what will stay with me this time. If you’d like to read along, let’s discuss the book together at the end of the month.

“What is witch? To answer that question, we have to start with another: What is magic, the force witches use? That answer depends on time and place.”

The book I recommend to you today served as a bedrock for my research on witchcraft. I began writing this post thinking most of it would focus on the history of Scotish witches. In fact, it led me to travel…

Read more

Something Wicked: The Lives, Crimes and Deaths of the Pendle Witches by Carol Ann Lee

I am cheating with this one because the book was actually released in August, but I missed it in my last new-in-nonfiction dispatch. Here it is. It is one of the books I will be covering extensively at the end of December in my dedicated Witcraft issue. Centred around ten people from Pendle who were executed before an extended crowd at Lancaster’s Gallows Hill on 20 August 1612. Their crimes included laming, causing madness and what was termed “simple” witchcraft. But more on that at the end of the month.

This September

Witches: A King’s Obsession by Steven Veerapen

Author Steven Weerapen embarks on a quest to answer some complex questions, such as: Where did our perception of witches—good and bad—come from? What motivated wide-scale panics about witchcraft? And how were alleged witches identified, accused, and ultimately punished? I will be writing more about this book in the December update, which is dedicated entirely to the Witches and Witchcraft, so hold tight. I cannot wait to get the answers to some or all of these questions.

A Scandal in Königsberg by Christopher Clark

Say the word ‘scandal’, and I’m paying attention. It’s said that Christopher Clark kept the files stashed in his mind for over 30 years, focusing on different, larger projects such as the history of Prussia, the origins of the First World War, and the revolutions of 1848 in Europe. At the time of the ‘fake news’ and ‘alternative facts’, accelerated by social media, he has now returned to those ‘gripping files’ and revisited Konigsberg. Clark uses a scandal that befell Königsberg in the 1830s to tell a story of Europe and religion, and the battle between reason and imagination.

The Tragedy of True Crime: Four Guilty Men and the Stories That Define Us: John J. Lennon

Not to say, it is bizarre to read the work of a convicted killer turned journalist published in the top publications and newspapers most of us can only dream of. And what a story! I had to stay open-minded, though, at least, that is what I like to do, remain nonjudgmental, act without prejudice and be well aware of my bias. I lived in the UK for 20 years, and, as it’s the law to believe in the reformation, I have adopted that conviction myself over the years. As indicated in the title, the book follows the stories of four guilty men. For the initial part, I was comprehensive and sympathetic. At the point in the book where the author starts interviewing convicted killer Robert Chamberlain. It was unfamiliar name, so one afternoon when I had some spare time I type the name in the YouTube search. I thought it’d be a good idea to watch a documentary about the crime he was accused and convicted of. It’s fair to say, this is the moment my open mind started to close, and I struggled to sympathise.

And I’ll leave you with that. It's up to you whether to give this book a try. I am torn. I agree with the author that the vast majority of actual crime cases and their perpetrators are sensationalised for all the wrong reasons, forgetting the victims.

We the People: A History of the US Constitution by Jill Lepore

‘We the people’ stood out to me more for who wrote it rather than what the book is about. As a consistent reader of The New Yorker, especially their section ‘What we’re reading’, I have been following Jill Lepore’s work for a couple of years now. A Harvard historian and TNY staff writer since 2005 returned in November with her 15th book(!) — We the People: A History of the US Constitution — one of the oldest constitutions in the world.

This October

Bone Valley: A True Story of Injustice and Redemption in the Heart of Florida by Gilbert King

There are so many reasons I loved this book. The story, heartbreaking and unjust, is the way the book is written. This book has pulled me out of my personal worries and distracted me; it gave me a good old affirmation, if you think your troubles are bad, think again—exactly what I needed.

Based on the true crime podcast1 under the same title, this extensive book from the Pulitzer Prize winner, Gilbert King and his research companion, Kelsey, takes you to rural Florida. The book tells a story of a man, Leo Schofield, fighting to prove his innocence in the case of his wife Michelle’s murder. On 24th February 1987, Michelle did not return from her job at a restaurant in Lakeland, and her body was found three days later in a canal in Bone Valley, ending Leo Schofield’s freedom. Spouses are often prime suspects. It was the same in this case.

1929: The Inside Story of The Greatest Crash in Wall Street by Andrew Ross Sorkin

Andrew Ross Sorkin takes us into 1929, New York’s Wall Street, and the chaos that ignited the depression, which would last for over a decade. This super-thick book attempts to explain the causes, after causes, behind the high rates of unemployment and poverty.

Next on my reading list:

• The Best American Essays 2025: Selected by essayist Jia Tolentino —I am a fan and collector of the Best American Essays, and I am also a fan of the New Yorker’s Jia Tolentino, so this book was a no-brainer for me.

• Scream with Me: Horror Films and the Rise of American Feminism (1968-1980) by Eleanor Johnson —Any book on the rise of feminism has to be added to my list. I love men, but I am a feminist at heart.

This November

The Girl Bandits of the Warsaw Ghetto: The True Story of Five Courageous Young Women Who Sparked an Uprising by Elizabeth R. Hyman

At the spotlight of this book are five Polish Jewish women (Zivia Lubetkin, ‘Celina’; Vladka Meed; Dr Idina “Inka” Blady-Schweiger; Tema Schneiderman; Tossia Altman) who helped lead the resistance and sabotaged the Nazis, and helped Jews in hiding across occupied Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe.

Even though it seems I have shared a lot of books with you, in reality, most of them I have still open, half-read. Admittedly, I have spent most of my autumn outdoors, enjoying the colours and nature, and, of course, Halloween.

Personal update

A trip to Wales (last trip of this year), as the weather is too unpredictable in the Mountains this time of year.

Taking the full beauty of autumn from the reflection of changes in the tree leaves.

Halloween at Blenheim Palace

Regardless of which book you choose from the ones I’ve shared with you today or something else, have the most fantastic holiday season, and I will return on 31st December with the special addition dedicated to Witches and Witchcraft. We still have a month to go, so you have a vote in shaping the end-of-the-year Witches and Witchcraft issue, if you vote.

“Unruly women are always witches. No matter what century we’re in.” — Roxane Gay

If you are a woman in a position of power (usually in the work setting), the chances are you have been called a witch, cowardly, behind your back.

This particular name-calling could be a whole new post on it’s own. The topic of witches and witchcraft brings a smile to my face and takes me back many (30+) years. Throughout my childhood, we had a cottage near the woods where we would spend our family weekends. Idyllic place.

Imagine a cottage set across a small pond with the tiny bridge you had to cross to get close. In front of the wooden cottage sat a tall apple tree. Across the giant stones, a path was laid out, and another tree stood, accompanied by a large wooden table and wooden benches on either side. If you follow the giant stone-made path, you get to the four or five-step staircase leading to the front door of the cottage. When you enter this wooden cottage painted in dark brown with some white paint touch-ups around the door and window frames, you find yourself in the ‘kitchen area’ with the opening to the living space, which has a wooden table in the middle and bed areas around the walls. That’s it. No other rooms, only one floor.

You can hardly call it a weekend getaway villa, but it was enough for three of us—Mom rarely came to spend time with us at weekends, most of the time she had to work. Off the cottage, there was the road leading up far into the woods. You could walk for miles, getting deeper into the woods. The cottage was not as secluded as I made it sound. We had neighbours all around us within a fair distance, allowing everyone to enjoy quiet time, but not so secluded that we feared the dark.

We would take walks often in the summer evenings and nights, walking the path towards the woods. On the right side of the path was a small stream running all the way to the woods. Right before the large wooden area where the path narrowed and narrowed, a stream gathered in a larger pond where we used to swim on hot summer days. That’s the place we used to walk up to on our early evening walks. On the way to the ‘swimming area’, about halfway, there was a cross. Old, stoned, discoloured and overgrown by mesh and grass. There was writing, but you couldn’t make out what it said, adding to its charm and spookiness. Only our dad knew.

He said it’s a monument, it stood as a reminder, no witches could enter past this ‘border’. He said they used to use little stools to tell who the witch is. He said that if you wanted to stay in the safe zone on that specific day (I cannot remember the date; it was too long ago), you had to draw a charcoal circle around you to stay safe. Old folklore tales, that’s what it sounded like. My dad was a good storyteller, especially when it came to stories around withes, not so much withcraft. It used to awaken a tiny bit of fear to hear Dad’s witch stories. However, I also recall that it used to arouse curiosity more.

So, as October is the month I lost my dad back in 2016. It is also the month scented with anticipation of Halloween and the Day of the Dead. I decided to pick up a few books on witchcraft and witches, and this November, go down the rabbit hole with some questions I wanted to get answers for:

• Was the old place a monument to No Witches Zone?

• When were the terms’ witch’ and ‘witchcraft’ first used, and why?

• Why were witches hunted for centuries across all of Europe?

• Do all European countries share the history of witchcraft?

• When did the church stop prosecuting and murdering witches?

• What places in England could we visit to learn more about the history of witchcraft, as well as good places to visit for the same purpose across the whole?

How to Kill a Witch: A Guide For The Patriarchy by Claire Mitchell and Zoe Venditozzi

Now onto the book suggestion and my current read…

In my recent browse through the bookshop—How To Kill a Witch caught my attention. As soon as I finished preparing for the interview and the actual interview/presentation was over, I began reading this book. Emerging from the historical facts, I read it from cover to cover in three days.

Brought up as a catholic, the atrocity done on women by the church fascinates me to the point of slight obsession.

This year, I was lucky enough to find many great books. I stretched and expanded on purpose, as I didn’t want to reach the end cover—the books I wanted to curl up with and cuddle under blankets. How to Kill a Witch is one of them—the book written by self-proclaimed Witches of Scotland.

Well, as the authors state, it’s the title of the campaign they launched, as well as the name of their podcast. The idea began with Claire, a Scottish advocate with a particular focus on constitutional issues, human rights, and sentencing, as she walked her dogs in Edinburgh’s Princes Street Gardens with a view of Edinburgh Castle. Over time, the campaign secured the formal state apology to all accused of witchcraft in Scotland, and sparked a worldwide cultural conversation about women’s history.

How To Kill a Witch reads like a guide, mainly as the book was first written as manual for ‘potential patriarchal persecutores out there’ and due to the How to title, which continues with each chapter: ‘How to start a witch hunt’, ‘How to prick a witch’, ‘How to try a witch’, How to burn a witch’. It’s a historical account; a lot of it is barbaric. As authors write, “the truth about the Scottish witch trials is bloody and horrific”; it might make you feel woozy.

The way the authors approached writing the book seems like something I want to do eventually here with Bookmarked; in this case, it’s not even unrealistic—I fancy a short weekend trip to Edinburgh early next year. Clair and Zoe followed the footsteps of those featured in the book, visiting their graves, attending memorials, meeting with historians and immersing themselves in the stories.

This makes the How To Kill a Witch book a catalyst for the month of November, when I will get into a rabbit hole of the obsession, hunts and atrocities of witches between the 15th to 18th centuries, in Scotland, England, but also the rest of Europe.

I hope you are as fascinated by this hundreds-year-old topic as I am, as I will be sharing with you the books and documentaries that I heavily relied on during my research.

I love nonfiction books, so once a month I write about one I’ve been reading and think is worth talking about.

I read across history, memoir, investigative journalism, culture, society and whatever else catches my attention.

And, selfishly, Bookmarked keeps me reading; otherwise, I probably wouldn’t read as regularly as I’d like.

What you’ll get

I’m trying to publish regularly, but with a full-time job and part-time studies, a realistic cadence is once a month on Wednesday. Every now and then, I’ll share another book, documentary or podcast that caught my attention too.

Do a little good with your subscription

I donate 50% of the profits from paid subscriptions to Give a Book, a UK charity helping get books to people and places where access to reading is limited.

So your subscription keeps Bookmarked going and helps put books into more people’s hands too. That’s pretty much it.

If you love nonfiction books, you’re very welcome here.

As a side note, Halloween is not something we celebrate in Slovakia—I know, bummer! We tend to celebrate a day after 1st November as the Day of the Souls; other countries call it the Day of the Dead. So basically, it’s similar to Halloween.

But instead of trick-or-treating, we light candles and remember those who are no longer with us. You usually take a trip to the cemetery—I don’t. I normally light up a candle for my mom and another candle for my dad. So far, that’s the only dead I want to remember.

1. The Supernatural Lens — Understanding Fear and Obsession

The Haunting of Alma Fielding by Kate Summerscale

Set in the 1930s in London. A bizarre story right from the outset. Even if you did not pick up the book (but on the contrary, I recommend you do this October), you can find a handful of facts surrounding Alma Fielding and her ‘haunting’ encounters. An example of this is her ability to manifest objects. Seriously. I did just say that. This might have been the point I would shut the book and place it on the bookshelf, yet it was too intriguing to give up now.

I couldn’t imagine where this story was going. What probably helped is not knowing anything about the story whilst reading the book. I recommend that you refrain from researching the story until after you’ve read the book. Then you’re in for a treat.

A book has left me with some questions, though. Why London again? Another famous, highly publicised poltergeist encounter occurred in Enfield, a suburb of London, several decades later.

And then there’s a question of ‘ghost craze’ culture that emerged after the First World War and again after the Second World War. Why London again, it reminds me of the movie I once watched about Enfield haunting, set in August 1977. It makes me wonder why there was a ‘ghost craze’ in London between the 1930s and the late 1970s. (It’s something worth exploring, so hold that thought.)

Ghost sightings and poltergeist encounters were not exclusive to London; “Borley Rectory has long been viewed as the most haunted house in the country”, with the earliest ghost appearances dating back to 1863, only a year after it was built. And then there’s The Brown Lady of Raynham Hall in Norfolk, England, captured on the photograph by Captain Hubert C. Provand and published in Country Life magazine in 1936. You can view a photograph on the Wikipedia page here.

Years back, I visited Warwick Castle, which has its fair share of ghost stories still told to this day, from the legend of the Fulke Greville haunting to 2016, when a visitor snapped a ghostly figure by the window in the Kenilworth bedroom. It gives me chills just as I write this.

To get a sense of ghost stories, I don’t have to travel far. Lydiard House is to be haunted by “Sir John St John, who after living a life beset by tragedy now roams the house, with some recording sightings of him floating through the Morning Room and even resting against the fireplace.”

The park surrounding the Lydiard house, which I visit once a month for a leisurely walk with my friend, is known as one of the most haunted places in Swindon. I’ve been capturing the area across the seasons and spotted nothing apart from beautiful nature. That’s not to say ghost stories are not true.

I happen to be a believer in the spiritual world when I was woken by the sense of someone being in the room with me in January 2003. It’s something I don’t talk about for obvious reasons, but it left a strong sense of conviction in me, and since that day, I don’t doubt ghost stories. I am sceptical, but I don’t deny it. How about you?

Why was there a ‘ghost craze’ in London between the 1930s and the late 1970s?

The ghost craze was not exclusive to London or Britain; most of the world got caught in fascination with ghosts, spirituality and poltergeists.

Chasing the Dark: Encounters with the supernatural by Ben Machell

From the book, Chasing the Dark, you’d only expect the selection of the most frightening encounters with spirits and poltergeists. In reality, the book is a good source of understanding the cultural shifts pushing ‘the ghost craze’.

What fascinates and excites me, in my own strange way, is that I can read a book that opens the door to a topic, leading me to hours of research, and at the end, I know something I did not know before.

Learning something new is my meaning to life. I know often we are searching for the big purpose in life, but I don’t. I mean, not anymore. I have found joy in small things — like rabbit-holing through topics I knew almost nothing about and coming out on the other side with some interesting facts I can share with my friends on Friday afternoon walks. Call me Neird. I don’t mind.

It’s precisely what happened this month. In the tribute and anticipation of halloween, I went out and picked up two books on ghosts and supernatural powers…leading to two books that openned the door to crazy (only slight judgement on my part) world of supernatural stories, fake and unexplained, twists and fascinating work of many (I might add some highly regarded people in their industries) who let themselve be fascinated by the topic to pursue it in depths.

Look beyond your walls and desk, and you uncover ghost stories surrounding you. And I only scratch the surface. Britain, with its vast history, is full of such stories.

Next on my reading list:

Haunted: The Ghost Stories and Folklore of the British Isles by E. Jay Gilbert

These books show how fear, folklore, and the unexplained have long influenced our behaviours, especially when cultural narratives lay the groundwork, as we have seen with the ‘ghost-crazed’ era before and between both World Wars. Spirituality is, after all, about the desire to connect with the loved ones we lost and miss dearly.

2. True Crime and Historical Investigation (Fear & Society)

The Peepshow: The Murders at 10 Rillington Place by Kate Summerscale

Only after reading a few pages, I found this book to be one of my favourites. I love the type of storytelling that draws you into the middle of the story, only to drag you back to the beginning with an unexpected twist. And the twist is how this book begins, it grabs you so firmly you don’t want to let go, and you most certainly don’t want to put the book down.

It probably helps if you don’t know much about the crime committed at 10 Rillington Place between 1943 and 1953, when convicted serial killer John Christie was living there. I certainly did not.

The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold

The five has been sitting on my TBR list for a long time—I’ve been waiting for the perfect moment to pick it up and immerse myself in the story that one way or another, I am sure everyone knows. The murders which took place between August to November in 1888, in the Whitechapel section of the East End of London. Most of us have heard the name Jack the Ripper, the murderer whose identity was never uncovered and who never paid for his crimes.

Yet, there aren’t many books or documentaries telling us stories of his victims, apart from The Five.

Chapter by chapter, you get to know the lives, hardships and struggles of Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Kate and Mary Jane. The Five is more women’s social history than it is anything else. All these women were victims of Victorian moral and social attitudes long before they were victims of Jack the Ripper, who barely gets mentioned in the book, which I appreciated.

Story of a Murder by Hallie Rubenhold

Following the disappearance of Belle Elmore in the 1910s, and the subsequent discovery of her remains in London’s cellar. This story features the scariest stories of all, the betrayal of the one you thought you’d spend your whole life with.

Again, Hallie Rubenhold places the lives of those involved in the centre of the story, not the murder—I appreciate this approach. Each chapter invites you into the story of the characters involved, including the social setting and historical events that occur alongside the central story.

Next on my reading list:

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: The Murder at Road Hill House by Kate Summerscale, and The Covent Garden Ladies by Hallie Rubenhold

These books explore historical true crimes through rigorous investigation, revealing media sensations, societal biases, gender vulnerability and chaos.

I’d love to hear from you — what do you think?

1. Have you ever read a book that made you question your beliefs about ghosts, spirituality, or fate?

2. Why do you think women, in particular, are drawn to true crime stories?

3. Which do you find more haunting — what can’t be explained, or what can?

4. What’s your favourite ghost or true crime book — and why does it stay with you?

5. Have you ever visited a place said to be haunted? What did you feel?

This newsletter is my small way of making sense of the world through books. If it’s become part of your week — if it makes you pause, think, or see something differently — you can help it continue by becoming a paid subscriber.
Your support keeps all issues free for everyone, and it means I can spend more time reading, writing, and sharing stories that matter.

Subscribe now

I could also be reading. My reading list is ever-growing. Whenever I chip away at my current TBR, another ten books get added to it. It’s a battle, you could say, but in fact I enjoy it.

Not this September. Instead of focusing on what needs my attention, I am binge-watching Mindhunter (on Netflix).

On my recent bookshop trip, I found the book on which the series is based. I added it to my pile and started reading it alongside watching the TV series. Have you ever done that?

For those who did not watch the TV series or read the book, it’s a fascinating story of how FBI profiling evolved. The psychology and persistent hard work that went into creating this type of special unit. But let’s get to the point of the email.

I need your advice.

Over the past months, posting regularly once a week was a strain. Reading and writing quality pieces about the books is consuming if you work full-time. I know you know that, you are probably in the same place. Therefore, I have been considering changing my publishing to twice a month. This would include one post featuring the book I am currently reading and a full-on reads recommendation post on the specific topic of the month (similar to September’s post focusing on the Russia-Ukraine conflict). My current topic choices I’ve been considering are something like this (but this is not a final list, so any suggestions from you are welcome):

• September 2025: Russia-Ukraine Conflict (Including the History of both countries)

• October 2025: True crime in books (preparation for the Halloween)

• November 2025: Climate change

• December 2025: (History of)Witchcraft? —I’ve not decided yet

• January 2026: Personal growth and development

• February 2026: Volcanos

• March 2026: Invisible women

• Journalists silenced for exposing the truths

For the paid subscribers, I have something else in mind.

As I am reading, I am coming across hidden gems, the facts which are not at the centre of the book (yet they could be), sort of ideas, teaching that deserves to be spread and shared. Very often, these ‘footnotes’ help me change my mindset about how I approach certain situations, or they are simply interesting facts that deserve further research. Many of these might help us change our perspective (or attitude) and work on the relationship between what we think we should do and the daily demands. I am thinking of calling this series “From the footnotes”.

My aim was never to recommend only books to you; the core idea of the bookmark is the learning aspect. How do we connect what we read to our lives and make some aspects easier to handle, ultimately leading to a better quality of life?

I’d love your feedback on a couple of things to make this newsletter even better for you. Firstly, could you please take a vote on the two questions I have for you:

Some of you have decided to support my work by upgrading to the paid version (THANK YOU). My upgrade offer is unclear until I started finding the footnotes, which excited me, and I thought —these might interest you, too. So the second question is about my paid offer:

Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts! Your feedback really helps me shape this newsletter for you. See you next week when we start with the October Halloween theme — true crime in nonfiction. First up are the ‘ghost’ stories, poltergeists, and “the ghost craze” period, which occurred during post-war times.

Subscribe now

On the evening of June 27th, 2023, in the Donetsk region, a Russian cruise missile hit the restaurant. You probably read that the award-winning novelist, Victoria Amelina, who turned war crime researcher, died as a result of the explosion.

“I’m scared all the time”,

writes Victoria in her current bedroom—a closet, a wardrobe which was intended to hold he…

Read more

Autocracy Inc. is not about the conflict between two countries; in fact, it explains that the war between the two countries reaches much further. The world is at war already, East against the Western world, using deals and trades as weapons.

This book, on its own, could become a ‘pilot’ book for a brand new monthly topic—there’s so much to research based on a relatively short book. Five long chapters pull the curtain on current affairs between the West and the Eastern worlds. It’s a terrifying read. I have gathered hundreds of bookmarks to research and revisit in the near future.

At this point, I feel embarrassed for refraining from keeping myself informed of current events for so many years. Honestly, the news is negative, and I tried to stay away from too much negativity. This book has awakened my interest to the point that it’s spun me 180 degrees around, and now I search and am open to the news, even though they are still negative.

I wonder if you had a similar experience?

Back to the book, as someone who lacks and has massive gaps in current affairs, this book is serving as the focal point for understanding the world (even politics, dreadfully).

As I mentioned at the start of this post, this book, on its own, could become a ‘pilot’ book for a brand new monthly topic—there’s so much to research based on a fairly short book. Let me break these down by the chapter.

Chapter 1: The greed that blinds

Sometimes, after the Second World War, the West German foreign minister, Willy Brandt, made a deal with the Soviet Union. This deal concerned the building of the pipelines reaching from the communist East to the capitalist West. The Soviets recently discovered huge gas fields in western Siberia (even this seems an interesting topic to research, as I remember, correctly, Russia uses Siberia as an exile place for ‘the prisoners’). Yet, for obvious reasons, not the whole world was convinced and backed this pipeline project.

Second point for the research is Alexei Navalny, who became Putin’s critic in 2013 and was placed under house arrest — it’ll be interesting to research what happened in this story.

“Autocracy is a political system, a way of structuring society, a means of organising power. It is not a genetic trait. Particular cultures, languages, or religions do not necessarily produce it. No nation is condemned forever to autocracy, just as no nation is guaranteed democracy. Political systems do change. In the late 1980s, during the explosion of public conversation and debate known as glasnost, many Russians believed that Russia could change.”

Chapter 2: Kleptocracy metastasises

— no bookmarks in this chapter, there are however, related bookmarks in the first chapter to the topic of kleptocracy which I found interesting:

• The British journalist Oliver Bullough has called this universe "Money-land," the title of his 2019 book.

• Tom Bungis, an investigative reporter for the Financial Times, has called it "Kleptopia," the title of his 2020 book.

Chapter 3: Controlling the narrative

• On June 4, 1989, the Chinese Communist Party ordered the military to remove thousands of students from Tiananmen Square. Protesters demandes free speech, accountability and democracy. Soldiers killed and jailed some of them, those in Beijing and around the country.

Chapter 4: Changing the operating system

• Members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation-China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan (Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran, and Mongolia have observer status) —all agree to recognise one another's "sovereignty," not to criticise one another's autocratic behaviour, and not to intervene in one another's internal politics.

• The group of countries known as BRICS (the acronym stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, and was originally a term coined by a Goldman Sachs economist to describe emerging-market business opportunities) is also transforming itself into an alternative international institution, with regular meetings and new members.

• A fake bomb threat to the airlines. After the plane landed, it became clear that the true purpose of the stunt was to remove two passengers: Roman Protasevich, a Belarusian opposition blogger and journalist, and his girlfriend, Sofia Sapega. Protasevich had fled the country and had been living in exile. Even though he was not killed, he was subjected to brutal interrogations, isolation, and torture.

Chapter 5: Smearing the democrats

“There is no liberal world order anymore, and the aspiration to create one no longer seems real. But there are liberal societies, open and free countries that offer a better chance for people to live useful lives than closed dictatorships do. They are hardly perfect. Those that exist have deep flaws, profound divisions, and terrible historical scars. But that’s all the more reason to defend and protect them. So few of them have existed across human history; so many have existed for a short time and then failed. They can be destroyed from the outside and from the inside, too, by division and demagogues. Or they can be saved. But only if those of us who live in them are willing to make the effort to save them.”

That’s all from this book, to which I will keep returning, as you can see from my bookmarks. I’d 100% recommend this book as a great resource to explore current affairs, especially if you, like I, have been avoiding the negativity of the world we live in. It’s still fascinating.

Consider upgrading to paid: each month, we delve into one nonfiction topic, distilled from books, documentaries, podcasts, and articles into clear, engaging insights. Learn, question, and reflect—without doing all the digging yourself.

Subscribe now

Historian and professor of modern history at Cardiff, Mary Heimann, has particular expertise in Czechoslovakia, as she points out on the Cardiff University Website. Her book began as an experiment for her students, a way to encourage them to develop their capacities for historical imagination and empathy. The experiment was fascinating enough for Heimann that she put her life on hold and moved to Prague.

Heimann’s book is a thoroughly researched account of Czechoslovakia, telling the story of the country from its founding in 1918 to the famous peaceful split in 1992—from democracy to Nazi occupation, through Communist rule until the Soviet Union's collapse, and back to democracy.

However, the book is labelled controversial for multiple reasons and was not received well in the Czech Republic, with many perceiving it as “one-sided attack”.

Mary Heimann set out to dispel myths and

“show how intolerant nationalism and an unhelpful sense of victimhood led Czech and Slovak authorities to discriminate against minorities, compete with the Nazis to persecute Jews and Gypsies and pave the way for the Communist police state.”

On the flip side, the Czech edition included a foreword from the Czech Prime Minister, adding the country's credibility.
As a born Slovakian, I found the book fascinating enough to lead me to the path of exploring the history from post-World War II to communist oppression and ultimately to the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

I’d give it 7 out of 10—it’s a time-consuming and extensive read. However, I will summarise the key events below.

In mid-February this year, I was in London, browsing around in Foyle's, when this book caught my eye. I wondered why I did not know more about the history of the country where I was born. I knew I would circle back to it.

A rich history of twists and turns, marked by power shifts, independence, collapse, subjection, and takeover by surrounding countries. Reading this book felt like returning to the classroom, specifically to the history class, but with more in-depth details of events that were once mentioned in brief.

This book provides a comprehensive account of Czechoslovakia's history, from its inception to its dissolution, when, at a secret meeting, Vaclav Klaus and Vladimir Meciar made a covert decision to split the country.

What the book does not represent is the life in those times, a detailed account of what people were experiencing. For that, we have to dig deeper. Not much is published; you have to search persistently.

Czechoslovakia’s existence as one country could be described as a marriage of convenience. When Austria-Hungary broke up. The Czechs feared the Germans, and the Slovaks feared the Hungarians. Both felt they would be stronger together. But why did the Czechs join with the Slovaks?

Tomas Masaryk, the first president of Czechoslovakia, often referred to as the father of Independence, was born in Moravia, the border between the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

The equality between Czechs and Slovaks was superficial. 90% of the national income came from Czechs, and with only 9% from Slovaks. Czech dominance in the country is therefore obvious to Slovaks, as it’s a reluctant topic to discuss.

52% of all industry in the entire Habsburg monarchy was located in the Czech territories, as the Czechs were considered the engine of the entire monarchy. On the other hand, Slovakia was an agrarian state with little industry, where many people were uneducated.

According to history, it’s the nation that builds the state. The opposite was the case for Czechoslovakia. The state came first, which was then intended to create a new political Nation. Surprisingly, it was not the Slovaks who were the second-highest population in Czechoslovakia; Germans outnumbered them. (Czechs: 50% Germans: 24% Slovaks: 15%)

On September 30th 1938, the Munich agreement was signed. The agreement, which, according to then British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, would bring peace for a time.

In reality, this was the beginning of the partition of Czechoslovakia. Soon after, it collapsed and in its place, the second Czecho-Slovak Republic came into being, though only for a short period: 1938-1939—this time, with the difference of a hyphen, which is more significant than it may seem.
Hitler proposed an ultimatum: The Slovaks must secede from the Czechs or be absorbed into Hungary.

As a result, Slovaks did not remain with their Czech friends; instead, they declared independence on March 14, 1939. The second Czechoslovak Republic ceased to exist, and what the Czechs were trying to prevent has happened. The rest of the Czech lands were absorbed into Germany.

This period is recognised as the first time when Slovaks understood that they did not need the Czechs to live in their own state. In reality, Germany had at the time an interest in Slovakia being an independent state. Jozef Tiso, a priest who headed the Slovak Republic at the time, claimed that this had to be done, or Hungary would absorb Slovakia. To Germany, Slovakia was a ‘puppet state’ implementing the policies of the Third Reich. In reality, Slovakia was dependent on Germany, with no Gestapo or German troops present, yet it acted as an independent state.

After World War II, Slovakia once again joined the Czechs, and Czechoslovakia was reestablished. Slovaks were associated with nazis, and to join the winning side meant joining again with the Czechs.
Slovaks and Czechs became allies and Czechoslovakia was established, but without Carpathian Ukraine, which today is part of Ukraine.

This was the beginning of 45 years of communist Czechoslovakia in 1945. Czechoslovakia struggled to build a united nation, which, according to historians, can be blamed on the lack of history. Prior to 1918, there was only Czech history for over 1000 years. Slovak history is part of the political history of Hungary. Commonalities were hard to find. There were some occasions where unity came through, such as in ports. Czechoslovakia won third place in the 1962 Football World Cup, as well as the European championship in 1976. Czechoslovak pop music, as well as films, TV programs. Both countries had their own language, and both Czechs and Slovaks understood and spoke both languages. [A side note: To this day, I understand and can speak Czech.] Common culture did not lead to one identity. In those times, you’d hear people say I am Czech from Czechoslovakia, the same goes for Slovaks. People did not identify themselves as Czechoslovakians.

Yet, Czechs and Slovaks lived alongside each other as part of one state, two separate nations, sharing culture under the Soviet regime, until 1989, when the Velvet Revolution broke out, which led to the end of Communism. According to history, this is where the differences between the two nations began to show. It started with the hyphen issue.

What should the new independent state be called? Czechoslovak Federative Republic? Or Czecho-Slovak Federative Republic? The hyphen was emphasised by Slovaks, who believed that the hyphen demonstrates the balance between both countries. The third name was suggested, the Czech and Slovak Federative Republic.

The discussion about the future of both countries continued until the 1992 elections. The Czech Federation, represented by Vaclav Klaus. The Slovak Federation represented by Vladimir Meciar.

From the research, it seems that the reason for the split of both countries is this: Slovakia had aspirations of independence. There was a lack of vision for the functioning of both states. Czechs were inclined towards federations where the Slovaks' ideas were strong in establishing their own Government. Two governments within one federation, how would this even work? Vaclav Klaus, according to some accounts, aspired to win the Nobel Peace Prize for the fastest economic reformation, but felt that Slovakia would slow this down.

The elections of both countries, in the summer of 1992, accelerated the split by the events which took place and finalised by the unofficial meeting in the Villa Tugendhat in Brno, between Vaclav Klaus and Vladimir Meciar.

In January 1993, Czechoslovakia was dissolved.

According to the accounts of those who remember January 1, 1993, Slovaks celebrated, while Czechs were sad. The future of both countries was unclear; what would both countries become as separate entities was unknown. The split, also well-known as Velvet Divorce, was admired by the world, which is used to seeing wars as a result of two countries coming to a separation; the war over the borders and amongst minority groups.

In the 1990s, Slovakia was privatised, which was the primary aim of Vladimir Meciar, primarily to his advantage. The topic that I’d have to research further could become its own monthly theme. But for now, I won’t, as I don’t want to become all too political here on Bookmarked. We might explore the topic of the European Union, which sounds intriguing and historically interesting to explore.

The tension that once existed in 1992 had eased by 1994. Since both countries exists, there is intervention by Slovaks studying in Czech universities. Czechs living in Slovakia. Both countries intervene by both languages. Each side speaks about the other in a highly warm manner. Both sides support each other, especially in ice hockey competitions. There are no extra sanctions imposed on one another. Nothing has changed apart from both states being independent. But it’s not how the nations within both countries view it. The view is that Czechs and Slovaks are brothers and sisters, however cliché this may sound.

The stream of immigration is uneven. There are not many Czechs immigrating to Slovakia. On the other hand, multiple Slovaks study in the Czech Republic; once their studies are done, they remain working in the Czech Republic. By the present day, Slovaks are more familiar with the Czechs' history than vice versa.

Czechs are considered Slovakia's older sibling. It's often regarded as a unique relationship between both countries that goes as far as one of the most popular Czech Prime ministers (2017 to 2021, Andrej Babis, is actually Slovak.

The tradition and courtesy that newly appointed Slovak or Czech presidents head for the first visit to either Bratislava or Prague shows the importance of the political relationship between both countries.

In 2004, both countries joined the European Union, meaning they have representatives in the European Parliament. Both are also aliases in NATO. It’s often viewed as the vision that both countries had back in 1992, but could not realise, actually came to existence when both countries joined the European Union alongside each other.

The Eurozone is something that’s currently separating Slovakia from the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary. [Even with the shared history, Slovakia keeps itself independent by making some questionable decisions. Slovakian Prime Minister Fico attended Chinese President Xi’s Victory Day parade in Beijing, alongside many world leaders, including Putin.]

In 2004, most Slovaks would vote for preference in upholding Czechoslovakia; this is primarily due to the political and economic directions Slovakia took. This, however, changed in 2005 with Slovakia’s ability to join the European Union with the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary.

Back in 1939, Slovakia felt it did not need the Czechs, and they separated from them after Hitler’s ultimatum. In current times, it’s the Czechs who are realising they did not need Slovaks, one would say, they are better without them. One truth, both countries agreed on today, is that there is no going back to Czechoslovakia because it would not benefit either side for political, economic, or security-related reasons.

Barriers which emerged in 1993 do not exist today, as both countries function with a similar political structure, the same military Alliance, within a single market and single customs area.

I hope you enjoy this short trip into history. I am curious, what historical book did you read recently?

If you love the facts and enjoy learning (weekly) and have the means to do so, please consider upgrading. Your support means a lot to me and allows me to provide more in-depth lessons like this one.

Subscribe now

Red Famine is an account of the period between 1932-1933 when Russia attempted and succeeded in starving, by recent estimation, 4 million people in Ukraine, especially from the farm lands.

Apart from some superficial information around Red Famine, I didn’t know much before I picked up this book. It’s a tragic tale, a difficult read, but such a thorough account that will teach you all you didn't know about the genocide that doesn't receive much attention.

As part of the Russia–Ukraine conflict this month, to fully understand the conflict, I had to look back decades and even centuries. Part of it is reading and learning about the Red Famine, which I found extremely difficult and had to take breaks from over several days.

With that said, please, if you choose to pick up this book, take care of your well-being with regular breaks. It’s undoubtedly one of the most challenging reads.

Book and Anne Applebaum's writing is impeccable, emotive and highly captivating.

Red Famine took place between 1932 and 1933 and affected a large part of what was then part of the USSR, known in Ukraine as the Holodomor (the death by starvation).

Anne Applebaum takes us through the history of Red Famine in her book under the same title. From the times before the famine, during and the cover-up that followed.

In 1917, Ukraine gained freedom — briefly. By 1922, Ukraine was part of the USSR (forcefully) known as the Ukrainian Soviet Republic.

Ukraine has some of the most fertile soils, enabling it to grow grain twice a year. Back then, it was known and labelled as ‘the breadbasket of the soviet union’. According to Applebaum, Russia under Lenin and then Stalin was obsessed with the grain and wanted absolute control of those parts of Ukraine.

By the 1920s, they feared that Ukraine's National ideologies could bring about the revolution; they considered a threat to the ideological regime (of Russia), so the actions were taken against historians, teachers, activists, journalists, writers and many more. Some were imprisoned, some were exiled.

In 1928, Stalin introduced what he called the “five-year plan”, which would eventually give him ultimate control over Ukrainian agriculture (we’re back to grains).

The official goal of the five-year plan was to industrialise most of the USSR, develop industries such as coal, steel, and electricity at a rapid rate. To fund this goal and project, Stalin turned to the collectivisation of agriculture.

Collectivisation means the consolidation of individual farms across the USSR into state-run farms.

This gave Stalin control over Ukraine's grain, allowing him to sell it to the West and fund his projects.

The ideology that Stalin was pushing was that it’s not about the land, it’s about the Soviet state that will provide you with a livelihood.

Ukrainian farmers resisted this plan; after all, they work for themselves most of their lives. Stalin's response was a “smear campaign” against the farmers, whom he labelled as “kulaks.” The campaign was pushing the idea that Kulaks are Greedy exploiters and enemies of the state.

Stalin seized the belongings of ‘kulaks’, many of whom he executed, exiled or imprisoned. For those that remained, he orchestrated a famine to starve them.

In 1931, the quota set by Stalin was so high that none of the farmers were able to meet it. Stalin's response was to find and take all of the grain they produced. According to historians, 4.27 million tons of grain were taken from the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in the 1930s.

Anyone hiding or keeping even a handful of grain was given 10 10-year sentence, or even death penalty in some cases.

The first famine was deadly to many countries of the USSR, especially Ukraine. Stalin, instead of easing off, doubled down. In the fall and winter of 1932, the Soviet Union police started seizing anything eatable. As the farmers failed to meet the quota, Stalin responded by prohibiting them from receiving any supplies.

Ukrainians started to leave in search of food. So at the beginning of 1933, in January, Stalin closed the borders. Any farmers caught fleeing were sent back to their villages to starve, leading to the peak of famine in May and June of 1933.

In that summer, famine started to subside by decreasing the amount of grain taken from farmers and also by decreasing the imprisonment of farmers.

By 1934, most farmers had been collectivised and started working for the state. Recent studies show that almost 4 million Ukrainians died during the famine. This meant that Russia had to send many new settlers to reinforce the farm workforce. To this day, east and south of Ukraine are places with a large russian population.

To cover up the famine he created, Stalin started massive misinformation complain in Russia. He denied and denied that famine ever happened. He banned the russian press from using the word famine and reporting on famine completely.

He banned foreign correspondents from even travelling to Ukraine. Instead of talking about starvation, he often played on words and called it ‘food shortage’ or ‘food supply problems’.

Moscow corresponded for the New York Times reported, Walter Duranty, who also won the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on Stalin’s five-year plan1 (who we know from the current reading of the book The Grey Lady Winked by Ashley Rindsberg), often downplayed reporting on famine by describing it as ‘food shortage’.

He was challenged by the reporting of Gareth Jones2, who sneaked into Ukraine and reported how famine ruled Russia.

In which Duranty, with more influence as a correspondent for the New York Times, responded with an article titled: Russians hungry but not starving3.

Multiple photographers who attempted to expose the famine were arrested. Even when photographs made it to the West, the Rest of the world did not want to get involved in Russian politics.

The attempt to suppress the Holodomor did not succeed; the events of 1932-1933 were quietly passed down from generation to generation in Ukraine.

In recent days, the Holodomor was recognised by most countries as genocide. Researcher Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term ‘genocide’, applied it to Ukraine on the basis of four reasons: 1. The extermination of intellectuals; 2. The destruction of churches; 3. The starvation of farmers; 4. The fragmentation of the Ukrainian people through resettlement.

To this day, Russia refuses to take responsibility for the famine by claiming that it was hit by starvation as hard.

Thank you for reading. I am interested to know,

Did you know much about the Red Famine before reading this post? If you have learned something new and would like to continue, please join the bookmarked community.

Subscribe now