August/September 2007

Celebrated Benicia author shares nonfiction favorites.

As the author of 18 books and numerous magazines and newspapers articles, Kevin Nelson loves to tell a good story. The Benicia resident and father of three is a history buff and his last two books testify to that love. “I read a lot of history. I’m totally story-based now.” Nelson’s book, The Golden Game: The Story of California Baseball (Heydey Books, $24.95), was named one of the top ten books of the year by National Public Radio, the L.A. Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle. KVIE made a documentary out of his latest book, Operation Bullpen (Southampton Books, $18.95), which is now being broadcast nationally on PBS. He spent three years researching and writing Operation Bullpen (operationbullpen.com), which he calls the inside story of the biggest forgery scam in America. “I went back and talked to the people who perpetrated the crime. The best thing a writer can do is shed light on history in ways we weren’t aware of. Readers liked The Golden Game because I didn’t editorialize. Here’s the story. You make up your own mind. I didn’t moralize about what they did.”
    Nelson is currently researching and writing a book about cars in California, entitled Wheels of Change. “It’s a huge topic about how automobiles influenced California and changed it, and then how Californians changed automobiles.”
    He says writing is like being in a cave. “Then your book comes out and you get to come out of the cave. Lots of writers don’t like to promote their books, but I do. You actually get to meet the people who are reading your book. It’s nice to know who your audience is. Nothing keeps you more humble than going to a bookshop to talk to people. When you write, it’s like constructing this giant ship inside your house. You never know whether it’s going to sail or not. Fortunately, the last couple of books I’ve written have done well. Writers are always battling to get people’s attention.”
    His book recommendations reflect his preference for nonfiction. “I focused on writers who revisited a historical event and discovered something new. We often sweep past history and these writers found more to the story by going back and interviewing the people involved. And all three authors are gifted writers.” 

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Nelson calls Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage (Carroll & Graf, $14.95) by Alfred Lansing one of the greatest adventure stories for both men and women readers. “In 1914 British explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton set out to make the first crossing of land in Antarctica. He had to abandon the ship when it got stuck in ice, which eventually crushed the ship. It’s amazing what happened to these guys. Things get worse and worse and worse in each chapter. Lansing interviewed the ship’s survivors—they all survived—so he got a fresh take on everything and made an old story new.” For five months Shackleton and his crew survived on drifting ice packs in one of the most savage regions of the world. Lansing reconstructs, in brutal detail, the months of hardship and terror the crew suffered in this Antarctic expedition gone to hell.

Nelson applauds author Stephen E. Ambrose as a great American historian and a very gifted writer. He says Ambrose’s book, D-Day June 6, 1944 (Pocket Books, $17.80) gives readers a fresh look at war. “Ambrose talked to over 1,400 people—both Americans and Germans—who fought in the battle. Most conventional histories of wars are told from the point of view of policy makers—the generals and elected leaders. Ambrose interviewed people who actually fought in D-Day. He captures the sacrifices they made and what they went through.” This is the story of how common soldiers—paratroopers, sailors, infantrymen and civilians—performed extraordinary feats on “the longest day.” Ambrose brings the excitement, confusion and sheer terror of D-Day to life while painting an indelible portrait of the madness of war.

In The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl (Mariner Books, $14.95), author Timothy Egan focuses the story around the people who settled the Plains states but didn’t flee to California. “This is the story of the Great American Dust Bowl and what happened to the people who stayed in Oklahoma and Texas. Egan went back and talked to some of the forgotten people in America’s history. I had no idea about these dust storms, or about Black Sunday in 1936, when a mile-long, mile-high black cloud of dust blew through people’s homes like some biblical plague.” Egan traces the horrible human consequences of poor farming practices in the Central Plain States during the drought of the 1930s. His sobering portrayals of the families who stayed behind are hard to forget.

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