OUTDOORS! LEADING YOU

HIKE, BIKE, PADDLE, CAMP, SKATE, AND MORE.

Surround yourself with natural beauty. Polk County Conservation’s growing family of parks, trails, and wildlife areas are bursting with activity for all interests in every season.

LeadingYouOutdoors.org Get out

Paul Kix

You Have to Be Prepared to Die Before You Can Begin to Live CELADON BOOKS

When Paul Kix set out to write You Have to Be Prepared to Die Before You Can Begin to Live: Ten Weeks in Birmingham that Changed America, one of his goals—in spite of the text’s lengthy title—was to ensure the book moves at a fast pace.

By god, does this book move. You Have to Be Prepared to Die is a text that comes from Kix, a Hubbard-born author who also penned The Saboteur and had his 2017 feature story “The Accidental Getaway Driver” adapted as a film. The book seeks to recount the 10 weeks of protesting that took place in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963, and be a definitive recounting of those events.

As Kix himself posited, “[What happened in Birmingham] sets in motion the Civil Rights Act of ’64 … [and] a new life for this country.”

A passing familiarity with the events of Birmingham might conjure images of dogs attacking protestors, fire hoses violently scouring fleeing Black people and Martin Luther King Jr. reflecting from behind bars.

Not only does Kix blaze through theses and other happenings from the Birmingham campaign—the recruitment of child protestors, the moral malleability of Wyatt Walker, the refusal of racist mayor Bull Connor to leave office despite not being reelected—it manages to feel as though no key detail is overlooked.

Even when the book does slow down (as it does briefly toward the center as it catches the reader up on the philosophical trajectories of King and James Bevel) that pace is welcomed after the slew of complications that preceded it. It also helps the readers understand the reasoning of these figures as events unfold.

Perhaps the most praiseworthy aspect of the text is how easy it is to imagine readers coming away with a favorite among the principal cast. I found myself constantly fascinated by Kix’s depiction of an optics-obsessed Wyatt Walker always aiming to escalate the spectacle of protests for the sake of revolution.

But I can just as easily see someone inclined toward the decision-paralyzed depiction of Martin Luther King Jr. bearing the weight of expectation and notoriety. Or the young, ambitious James Bevel, who seems to clearly detect the path forward despite the hesitancy of his seniors. Or the prideful Fred Shuttleworth, the Birmingham pastor and civil rights leader with more skin in the game than any of the other main characters.

While the book does follow the events of those 10 weeks roughly chronologically, Kix skillfully uses his medium to backfill necessary details in stray paragraphs that offer informative asides that manage to never remove the reader from the scene at hand.

The book is a masterclass in nonfiction writing. It emphasizes without embellishing, informs without lagging and prods one to wonder how these horrors could possibly conclude, despite the fact this history informs the nature of our nation today.

—Isaac Hamlet

DOUgLAS BAUER

The Beckoning World UNIVERSITY OF IOWA PRESS

Though the all-star game of July 11 has passed, baseball fans still looking for a summer read might consider Douglas Bauer’s most recent novel: The Beckoning World (University of Iowa Press, 2022).

This Iowa-set novel tells the story of Earl Dunham, a protagonist facing a crossroad—to chase the dream of baseball, or to give in to love and the pull of practical choices. It’s a familiar conflict, but Bauer

Then comes the choice. Should he stay on the road with the team or be with Emily, start a family, work the farm in Hinton, Iowa and fall into the routine of “fine day-to-dayness”?

As Yogi Berra put it, “Love is the most important thing in the world, but baseball is pretty good, too.” weaves it into a rich portrayal of the time period with a grasp of midwestern sensibilities, deft turns of phrase and descriptions of baseball action that are a pleasure to read.

The story spans from 1914 to 1927 during which the larger forces of a world war and an influenza epidemic bear down on the country. Yet there is still the thrill of baseball. Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth enter the story as they pass through Sioux City on a barnstorming tour. By this time, Earl has a 10-year-old son, Henry, and the two of them are caught up in the swirl around the two luminaries setting off sparks around Earl and his love of the game.

Raised in rural Iowa, Bauer captures the particulars of Iowa’s midwestern ethos when he describes the farm and small-town orbit inhabited by young Henry as a “radius of richly isolated life.” Bauer is the author of three other novels and three non-fiction works including the essay collection What Happens Next? for which he won the 2014 PEN/New England Book Award in NonFiction.

The story starts as a teenage Earl is setting out to follow his dream of playing professional baseball. There isn’t much to hold him back, only work in a southeast Iowa coal mine and an abusive father who “hated the whole of life with an appetite that thrilled him.” After a scout signs Earl to pitch for the Waterloo Loons, Earl meets Emily Marchand, and the two fall in love.

In The Beckoning World Bauer is at his best when describing the hum of the crowds and the tension of plays on the field—the high-fly ball soaring toward the outfield and the dogged fielder racing to catch it or Earl’s surge of emotion when Lou Gehrig hits a home run during an exhibition game. As he watches the ball leave the park, he thinks, “It could be an exhibition, it could be the World Series, it could be neighbors in a pasture with grain sacks for bases, it would feel just as good.”

––Diane DeBok

Across

1. City near Lake Tahoe

5. City near Cayuga Lake

11. Genre popular in Jamaica, then Britain

14. b × h ÷ 2 calculation, for a triangle

15. Sub-Saharan “tree of life”

16. Worker often called to perform welfare checks, unfortunately

17. Songbirds on psilocybin?

19. Style for Young M.A

20. Turns into tiny particles

21. Turns on the lights, so to speak

23. Longoria of the shortlived Telenovela

24. Cliffside home

26. Chinese gambling mecca

29. Cottontailed cutie committed to equity and fairness?

33. Totally

34. Uncertain qualification

35. Flute part

36. Reznor’s act, briefly 37. “Picture it in your mind ...”

40. Aptly named business magazine

41. Uses the Method, say 43. Chippendales bills

44. Ancient Greek spot where Hercules killed a lion

46. Roster of offerings from rag & bone, Guess, etc.?

48. Black column Schiaparelli with a giant fake lion’s head, e.g.

49. Diploma word

50. Intense anger

51. Subsidiary of Penguin Random House

53. Woes caused by wax, perhaps

58. Note of debt

59. Match in which a used copy of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Microsoft Office 97 is pitted against a coffee-stained Beanie Baby?

62. Easy mark

63. Pain relief brand

64. 1977 Jaws ripoff

65. Song title for Green Day, Selena Gomez, and Tyler, the Creator

66. Person without status

67. Like a positive outlook

Down

1. Rig-Veda ruler

2. Quod ___ demonstrandum (Latin “that’s what I was trying to show you”)

3. 2000s R&B singer whose name is a “Matrix” reference

4. “Overnight” breakfast

5. Spanish island known for dance parties

6. Medium on which I originally purchased Forever Your Girl and Rhythm Nation 1814

7. Beer flowers

8. Former Japanese prime minister

9. Malibu or Santa Fe

10. Soak up, as knowledge

11. Modern parental concern

12. Zen paradox

13. Developer’s creations

18. Italian town where Napoleon won a 1797 battle

22. Pope name last taken in 1939

24. Helpful lift

25. School for Prince Harry

26. Nicki who provided the English lyrics for “Tukoh Taka,” the 2022 World Cup anthem

27. “What’s ___ kid like you doing here?”

28. Melon in some agua fresca

29. ___ Loves Chachi

30. Deep desires

31. Bebés

32. Some fitness centers

38. Desirable growth on cheese, perhaps

39. Went around, as regulations

42. It’s initiated by a center

45. Big name in kids’ construction sets

47. Stevens whose Fifty States Project remains stalled at 4% completion

50. Popular 1990s device

51. Prince jam with no bassline

52. Trevor who left The Daily Show late last year

53. Kitchen gadget brand 54. Dead tab?

55. One who may not necessarily wear a cape 56. Keys near F1, often 57. “Don’t leave!”

60. Mattel card game

61. Apprehend