Never Mind The DaVinci Code, Here's Rat Scabies

Rat Scabies and the Holy Grail: Can a Punk Rock Legend Find What Monty Python Couldn't? by Christopher Dawes
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In which Christopher Dawes, a mild-mannered music journalist, somewhat improbably discovers that he's been living across the street from one of his boyhood idols, Rat Scabies (real name: Chris Millar), the former drummer for the seminal English punk band, The Damned.  Even more improbably (this is nonfiction, believe it or not), it turns out that Scabies' father, an antiquarian bookseller by trade, is something of an amateur expert on Rennes-le-Chateau, being both a crony of Henry (Holy Blood, Holy Grail) Lincoln and a past president of the UK branch of the Sauniere Society, an enthusiasm he's managed to pass on to his son. Consequently, Scabies decides, more or less on a whim, to rope Dawes into helping him look for the Holy Grail.  His method, to the extent he can be said to have one, consists primarily of careering around southern France half-drunk and freaking out the locals, which, when one thinks about it, is probably not that far removed from the approach previously used by King Arthur.

This book is not only hilariously entertaining but it proves once and for all that The DaVinci Code isn't entirely useless, as Dawes and Scabies discover at one point when they run out of rolling papers.


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An Emancipated Slave Writes:

To My Old Master

"Sir: I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this, for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Colonel Martin's to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again, and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville Hospital, but one of the neighbors told me that Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance."

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Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City by Nelson Johnson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Admittedly, I picked this book up because of the tv show, since I was curious to find out just how much of it was based on actual fact. After reading it, I can say that the producers have generally stuck to the spirit, if not the letter, of the historical record, and although they've taken a fair bit of dramatic license with the material, it's not because Atlantic City's history lacks drama. From its early days, when it was planned as an upper-crust health resort (something that went by the boards pretty quickly after speculators realized they could make more money catering to the desires -- legal and otherwise -- of day-tripping blue-collar workers from Philadelphia and New York) to its boom years (roughly from the Gilded Age until the Second World War) as America's Vice Capital to its near death during the 60s to its recent resurgence since the legalization of gambling there in the late 70s, it's not a place that has ever lacked for colorful characters, certainly not as Nelson Johnson tells it (special bonus: Johnson really, really, REALLY doesn't think much of Donald Trump), and while the show's decision to concentrate on the years of Nucky Johnson's (fictionalized as Nucky Thompson in the series) reign as Atlantic City's political and criminal boss in the Roaring 20s makes for some great drama, this book proves that there are plenty more stories here to tell.



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Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation by Mitch Horowitz

My rating: 4 of 5 stars A highly readable and very interesting, if somewhat scattershot, examination of the esoteric tradition in America, from the Shakers, Quakers, Masons, and the like that played a part in the founding of this country, to the increasingly nutty offshoots that are with us even today as the foundations of the Self-Help movement, Horowitz makes a lively and occasionally compelling case for the idea that America is not so much a Christian nation as so many would claim, but and "occult" one, at least if one defines "occult" as as ragbag of assorted beliefs, ranging from the delusional to the scholarly to the outright fraudulent, with many stops on the road between. View all my reviews >>