This is a page to track things I’ve read recently and over time. I don’t read as many books as I’d like, but hope to do more.
The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook, Hampton Sides, December 2024. I carried this library book with me to Ireland and hardly cracked the cover but was motivated to check it out again and actually finish it, partly because it started popping up on year’s best lists. It was an illuminating, compulsive read, pulled along by the episodic nature of Captain James Cook’s third voyage through the Indian Ocean, Tasmania, New Zealand, various points in the South Pacific, the discovery of Hawaii, the search for the Northwest Passage around Alaska, and Cook’s demise back in Hawaii. There was not only the search and discovery of new lands but also the ferrying home of the Polynesian man, Mai (or Omai), who had come to England on the second of Cook’s South Seas voyages. It provides an account of early contact between cultures similar to the memorable stories of Pocahontas, Jemmy Button, Tisquantum and Enrique de Malacca. None of these contacts went particularly well for the “natives” but could make for interesting further study.
The Last Kings of Shanghai: The Rival Jewish Dynasties That Helped Create Modern China, Jonathan Kaufman, May 2024. I learned about this book via an advertisement for an upcoming Smithsonian lecture by the author. I did not know about Kaufman’s 2021 book about the Sassoon and Kadoorie families and their impacts on Shanghai and Hong Kong. My library had it as an audiobook only, so this was my first full-length audiobook — it seems like cheating to say I read it. Nevertheless, I found the book compelling with very sympathetic coverage of Lawrence and Horace Kadoorie, both of whom I met in Hong Kong. Dad worked closely with Sir Lawrence (later Lord Kadoorie) at China Power and Light. Horace’s philanthropic Kadoorie Farm in the New Territories was a regular stop on Mom and Dad’s VIP tour route for visitors to Hong Kong. It was fascinating to learn more of their background and that of the Sassoons who played such a major role in Shanghai, including presiding over their jewel, the Cathay (later Peace) Hotel on the Bund. The book highlights both families’ complicated and often patronizing histories in China and may be a bit too fawning in its coverage of the Kadoories, but I found it a useful and melancholic distillation of the twists history has taken over the past two centuries in China, Shanghai and Hong Kong.
Clanlands in New Zealand: Kiwis, Kilts and an Adventure Down Under, Sam Heughan and Graham McTavish, January 2024. Sadly, it’s been nearly a year since I read a book and, sadly, this was the one. A friend of Barb’s gave it to us in preparation for our trip to New Zealand and I thought it might be a helpful guide to some sights or history. I actually enjoyed the first season of the authors’ TV show, Men in Kilts, which featured these two stars of Outlander (a quasi-historical drama series I’ve never watched) rambling around Scotland. This book is a companion to their second season of Men in Kilts in New Zealand…but the series is on Starz which we don’t get. The book is fundamentally in service of building the brand of these two actors that frankly I could care less about. There’s a smidgen of New Zealand history and travelogue tucked into pages and pages of these two bantering back and forth about nonsense. I found it easy to skip over large portions of the text so maybe it’s not fair to say I read the book. Let’s just say I’m glad I’m not traveling to New Zealand with these two characters.
Telex From Cuba, Rachel Kushner, March 2023. Laurie recommended this book to Sue and me as a sort of family book club discussion. I can’t say I enjoyed the book – I was rather hopelessly confused by the carousel of American and other characters and the improbable cameos by everyone from Cuba’s history for Castro and Bautista to Hemingway – but I’m glad Laurie recommended it and I look forward to discussing it further with her and Sue. In general, it’s the first novel I’ve read in a long time and I’m reminded that I get tired of the literary descriptions and roundabout ways of moving the plot forward. It involves more thinking and attention than I’m used to.
My Old Kentucky Home: The Astonishing Life and Reckoning of an Iconic American Song, Emily Bingham, March 2023. This comprehensive book charts the evolution of Stephen Foster’s song from 1853 all the way through 2022. The writing of the tune, inspired by Uncle Tom’s Cabin, is covered in chapter one along with Foster’s early death. From there, Bingham leads us through co-opting of the song as a sentimental anthem of antebellum nostalgia, not to mention twisting Kentucky’s relationship to slavery, the Civil War and factual history about the song’s origins. It’s a journey through blackface minstrelsy, Jim Crow segregation, Kentucky tourism, elevating Foster’s nearly forgotten legacy in the 1930s, the Kentucky Derby, all the way through the Black Lives Matter reckoning. There’s no mistaking Bingham’s position: “For me, singing and celebrating Stephen Foster’s song is no longer possible. For me, “My Old Kentucky Home” is unredeemable.” It’s a fascinating companion to Rhiannon Giddens’ work to shine a light on the legacy of minstrel and old-time music, revealing more about the roots of American music and its resonance today.
Rock Me On the Water, Ronald Brownstein, January-February 2023. After a number of months and several aborted attempts to get through John Pomfret’s The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the Present, I gave up and shifted to this much lighter Brownstein book subtitled “1974, The Year Los Angeles Transformed Movies, Music, Television and Politics.” The book delves into the shifts in entertainment and political movements that brought some of the progressive notions from the 1960s into America’s mainstream, positing that 1974 was “peak LA”. I’m not sure how well the thesis really stands up and whether it was more than just a coincidence that each of these industries seemed to crest in LA at that time. It struck me as a superficial analysis but an easy, nostalgic read.
Liberty Is Sweet, Woody Holton, July-August 2022. Subtitled “The Hidden History of the American Revolution,” this 2021 book was generally well-reviewed and blurbed by the likes of Nikole Hannah-Jones and Alan Taylor. It aims to offer an expanded view of the revolution, encompassing events across the hemisphere and globe, including impacts upon Native Americans, the enslaved and women, all of which make it a noble effort. Reading the actual book, however, was something of a slog with accounts of hundreds of individual episodes, skirmishes and protests that tended to blur together, sometimes obscuring rather than illuminating major trends. One of the most memorable anecdotes for me was the story of James Lafayette, an enslaved spy in Cornwallis’ camp at Yorktown. I’m working on a post of my own contrasting his life with that of Harry Washington (also mentioned briefly in this book) who escaped from Mount Vernon to fight on the British side of the war. The book is a good supplement to Alan Taylor’s trilogy, but I wouldn’t start with or rely solely on Holton’s perspective of the Revolutionary era.
Prisoners of Geography, Tim Marshall, June 2022. Laurie left behind this volume when she visited in March and thought I might like it. I did. This book was a concise, easy walk through ten regions of the world, examining how geography plays a significant role in each area’s history, politics and current relationships. The book starts with Russia and why Putin remains vitally concerned with Ukraine. Originally written in 2015 and updated since, the book remains all-too current and should have been higher on everyone’s shelves in the ramp up to Putin’s latest invasion. Geography remains a significant determinant of a nation’s fate though certainly not the only one, and maybe less so in an electronic, hi tech age. Still, there’s a lot to be said for Marshall’s breezy survey of why the world is the way it is. One of the sentiments I especially like is how the United States hit the jackpot in terms of geographic advantages, something I intuited a long time ago. There is no better placed in the world to be, if we don’t blow it.
American Republics, Alan Taylor, May 2022. I completed Alan Taylor’s trilogy on continental American history with this book that focuses on 1783-1850. The book makes abundantly clear how slavery infected nearly every aspect of American society and politics through the early life of the nation. Likewise, the step-by-step eradication of Native Americans. It’s not an enjoyable read, but a necessary one. I feel that with Taylor’s three books I have a better understanding of the development of the American continent and how close things came to going in different directions. There was no Manifest Destiny in the rise and current configuration of the United States, rather a whole series of compromises, accommodations, audacious gambles, presumptions, miscalculations and chance that brought us through these decades. I respect and applaud the need for a broader view of the multivariate drivers of history, but that doesn’t make it any easier to make sense of what’s happening on a day-to-day basis in today’s world. We desperately reach for a narrative thread, a map to tell us where we are and where we’re heading. After all this reading and consideration of histories and revolutions, I have a better sense of where we’ve come from, but no better idea of where we’re going.
American Revolutions, Alan Taylor, March 2022. I was eager to follow up Taylor’s American Colonies with this volume that promised “a Continental History, 1750-1804.” The book is a solid continuation of the story of the emergence of the United States, with an eye toward the impact and involvement of enslaved blacks, native Americans, women and other European powers. The book doesn’t cover the other American colonies and nations as I wished, but it does give a comprehensive look at the society that evolved in the footprint of what became the United States. There’s a lot to cover, of course, and I can’t say I absorbed it all. I think I’d like to further investigate topics including the role of James Madison in the development of the Constitution and the rest of his career through his presidency, and the impacts of the U.S. revolution on the other colonies in the Caribbean and the rest of the Americas. For the moment, it’s onward to Taylor’s American Republics.
American Colonies, Alan Taylor, January 2022. This book was finally the comprehensive look at the founding and development of European colonies in the Americas that I’d been looking for. Written in 2001, the book sets the stage for American Revolution with a thorough review of the human, political and economic landscapes that shaped the Atlantic world for three centuries, roughly 1500- 1800. It opened my eyes to the interconnections between the North American and Caribbean colonies, their extensive impact on the wide variety of indigenous people, and forces in Europe that drove events. I finally have a better understanding of how important the Seven Years’ War (French and Indian War) was and how it fit into the continuum. I’m surprised this book is not more widely hailed or referenced, and was also surprised that Laurie didn’t know of it. I think it should be essential reading for students of American history. I’m looking forward to checking out Taylor’s subsequent books on American Revolutions and American Republics.
Measuring the World, Daniel Kehlmann, December 2021. I was happy to find this historical novel about the parallel lives and eventual (possible) meeting between Alexander von Humboldt and the German mathematician Carl Gauss. The novel, published in 2005, was a best seller in Germany and Europe where Humboldt and Gauss are more familiar names. I knew nothing about Gauss beyond some dim recollections of Gaussian curves in statistics (the good old normal distribution, I’m reminded); I was surprised to learn of the number of disparate things named for him, nearly as many things as named for Humboldt. The book itself, however, was a bit difficult to follow. Much of it is written in near fever-dream descriptions of Humboldt’s travels or Gauss’s ruminations on mathematics. It’s clever, sometimes witty, somewhat based on historical facts and anecdotes, but also an exercise in literary invention and allusions that flew over my head. The book was made into a 2012 German film that might be interesting to track down, but I doubt it will make things much clearer. I’m glad to have read the book but can’t really recommend it except to devoted fans of Humboldt, Gauss, or maybe modern German literature…whomever you might be.
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, Isabel Wilkerson, November 2021. I read this at the urging of Laurie though it had been on my list anyway. It’s hard to say I enjoyed this book — I feel more like I was bludgeoned by Wilkerson’s arguments and observations. I also can’t say I was deeply impressed by her thesis that draws parallels between American racism and class stratification to the Indian caste system and Nazi atrocities on Jews. The comparisons in the book are superficial and there are, sadly, a lot more examples of caste and stratification throughout the world and across history that merit consideration, though it seems a soulless exercise to try to examine who did it worst. Nevertheless, this is clearly an important and heartfelt book, and emphatically documents centuries of abuse, atrocities and ingrained discrimination perpetrated on African Americans to this day. To argue whether or not the abuse, atrocities and discrimination is a result of caste as opposed to racism or classism or white supremacy is a matter of semantics, in my view. The better point is to recognize the degrading and corrosive effects of these centuries of actions and hopefully start to do something to right the ship. Midway through the book I was hoping for a turn from description to prescription, but it didn’t come until the very end and even then only in some scattered thoughts in the epilogue. Wilkerson absolves herself with the statement, “The goal of this work has not been to resolve all of the problems of a millennia-old phenomenon, but to cast a light onto its history, its consequences, and its presence in our everyday lives and to express hope for its resolution.” She amply succeeds in that goal. It’s the hoping for resolution — for doing something to right the ship — that still stares us in the face.
Hero of Two Worlds: The Marquis de Lafayette in the Age of Revolution, Mike Duncan, October 2021. Over the past year I’ve become a big fan of Mike Duncan’s Revolutions podcast, marching with him through the English, French, American, Haitian, South American, Mexican, 19th century European and currently the Russian Revolution. In September 2021, I was listening to the Mexican Revolutions podcast (which had been recorded in 2019) when Duncan announced that he was moving to Paris to work on his new book about Lafayette. He said that it should be done in the summer of 2021…so I checked and, lo it was being published that very week. I prodded Allie to order a copy for me as a belated birthday/Father’s Day present and, being the best daughter that she is, she complied. I’ve finished reading it in just a few weeks which is lightning speed for me.
I thoroughly enjoyed Duncan’s recap of Lafayette’s full life, including involvement deep involvement with the American and French Revolutions, his Austrian imprisonment, survival in the Napoleonic and Bourbon Restoration eras, his triumphant tour of America in 1824 and involvement in the 1830 Revolution that brought Louis Philippe to the throne. When I started down my path of historical inquiries several years ago, some of my key questions were about linkages between the American and French Revolutions; more than any other individual, Lafayette is a vital connection between the nations. I read Sarah Vowell’s Lafayette book exactly a year ago but was disappointed in its historical depth. Duncan more than fills the gap in detailing Lafayette’s life and the convulsive events he shaped and survived. I admire both Lafayette and Duncan for their dedication and perseverance.
For the sake of collecting them in one place, here are a few of the better articles I’ve seen that have been spawned from the book: New Republic article, New Yorker article, Ben Franklin’s World podcast interview.
Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond, August-September 2021. This was an important book, recommended by several reliable sources including Laurie, Dan Aibel and John Leguizamo in his extended syllabus for Latin History for Morons. Diamond argues persuasively that human development has largely been the result of continental environment and availability of plant and animal food sources that could be domesticated. Diamond posits that Eurasia had multiple advantages that led to faster development along its broad east-west axis versus the north-south and geographically constrained axes of the Americas and Africa. Eurasia had advantages in plants, animals and ultimately volume of people experimenting and innovating. This resulted in an ebb and flow of human development, a running tide of migrations, competition and conflict that has been at work for millennia. He highlights the central role of germs and diseases, many of them the inadvertent product of human interaction with domesticated animals.
There are interesting discussions in the epilogue about how the Fertile Crescent became less fertile over time due to human destruction of habitat, shifting the concentration of power and empire progressively further west over time. China, meanwhile, developed largely as a continental “island” of its own, unifying much earlier than regions like Europe because of the relatively open geography in its core. China’s connectedness was an initial advantage but eventually became a disadvantage when singular imperial decisions could stifle innovation. Europe, with its jagged coastlines and natural barriers led to “chronically independent states” which continually competed to out-innovate one another for advantage. A few pages later, in an Afterword written later, Diamond walks this idea back a little, allowing that “political fragmentation has more complex effects than only providing a constructive forum for competition.” Like, World Wars, for example. Still, that notion of competition (dare we way, survival of the fittest?) being a positive enabler of change and domination lingers and resonates.
Diamond highlights an interesting pivot point in the 15th century when China’s reach and the Ming empire were at their zenith. China’s treasure fleets spanned the Indian Ocean until the dynasty shut them down and turned inward. He doesn’t mention that at nearly the same time, the Ottomans captured Constantinople while the Portuguese began working their way down the African coast, sparking a new European-led maritime race for spices. By the end of the century, Columbus “discovered” the Americas unleashing a whole cascade of unintended consequences that we’re still living.
Diamond spends more pages than I would have wished on intricacies of various grains and anecdotes about his research in New Guinea, but he’s also tackling the whole of human development so it’s hard to argue with his scope. The book doesn’t ultimately get to my questions about development and distinctions between nations, states and countries, though it does deal with distinctions between band, tribe, chiefdom and state. Among the questions I was left with was “What about India?” which hardly gets a mention despite millennia of cultural development and influence. For the 3-hour TV version of the book, there’s a 2005 National Geographic series.
The Invention of Nature, Andrea Wulf, June-July, 2021. I greatly enjoyed reading this book about the life and times of Alexander von Humboldt. It actually helped to have first read Wulf’s later graphical treatment, The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt and seen several YouTube lectures surrounding the Humboldt special exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (especially this one, which predates the exhibit). I hadn’t known much about Humboldt before all this and now have a pretty good perspective on his remarkable life.
The surprise for me is how Humboldt’s exploits link to and tie together the revolutionary century from roughly 1750-1850 that I’ve been working to understand. The Prussian intellectual grew up in the shadow of American and French revolutions, explored South America and Mexico for four years, measuring and documenting every step of the way, gained transformative insights into the unity and ecology of the natural world, recognized a harmony between the wonders of nature and man’s intellectual well-being, wrote extensively and beautifully of his findings, traveled throughout Europe during and after the Napoleonic era, knew everyone who was anyone and corresponded exhaustively, leaving behind a massive paper trail, met heads of state and had important political influence from Bolivar to Jefferson to Napoleon…and that’s only the first half of his life.
Humboldt was one of the first to recognize and extensively document nature’s amazing web of interconnections. His insights that each organism has a connection and impact on each other and the environment, encompassing all the natural sciences from biology to geology to climate to the cosmos — all tied together and evolving over time — seem taken for granted now, but he was one of the first to express and document them. On top of his insights, he was an indefatigable, loquacious gadfly who became by some accounts the most famous man in Europe after Napoleon. He influenced the arts and literature nearly as much as he did science. And he was gay (or probably was). He qualifies as one of the most fascinating historical figures I’ve encountered.
Very unexpectedly, the Humboldt book helped me piece together interconnections of events, ideas and personalities involved in the American, French, Haitian and South Americans revolutions — crucibles which formed today’s world of nation states, representative democracies, multiethnic societies, intellectual focus on reason and science, and nascent recognition of human impact on the earth. I wouldn’t have been able to appreciate this book without having traveled over these several years of readings and now podcasts, sparked by the unlikely source of John Leguizamo’s play, Latin History for Morons. I’m still embarrassed that this goofy show was the genesis of my curiosity, but it led me straight to Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, Israel’s The Expanding Blaze, Wilson-Lee’s Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books, Mann’s 1491 and 1493, Arana’s Silver, Sword and Stone, Roberts’ Napoleon: A Life, Isaacson’s Benjamin Franklin, Horwitz’s Spying on the South, and the Revolutions podcasts (courtesy of Conan O’Brian’s Big Dick History joke, thank you very much). I’m very pleased to have started keeping track of these breadcrumbs (lilypads) along the way through this post of Books I’ve Read Lately. It lends some validation to my effort to document and reflect on my own life.
I continue to grasp for a better understanding of where our nations come from, what defines us, and whether there is a better way to govern ourselves and thrive on a healthy planet earth. Why do we live the way we do and is there a better way? That’s not asking too much, is it? I feel like I’m making a little bit of progress. I also feel like maybe I’m a balloon that has become untethered and floating away a little too high and far for my own good. Or climbing my own Chimborazo but without the physical ordeal. Well, at least I’m enjoying the view.
Beeswing, Richard Thompson, June 2021. Larry Harder gave me this autobiography of one of my favorite artists for my birthday which was a nice and mildly ironic gesture since I’d been trying to entice Larry to come to various RT concerts over the years, including his recent post-Covid gig in Annapolis. The book itself focuses on Richard’s start with Fairport Convention and early couple of solo albums, 1967-1975. While I grew to love his work from the 1980s on, his music of these early years has never grabbed me quite as strongly. I found it interesting to learn of his background, the formation and initial success of Fairport Convention and Richard’s conversion to Islam and Sufism, but in all, the book is entertaining but not essential. It doesn’t really pack the wit or insight of his own lyrics, innovative guitar playing or sharp concert patter between songs. Better to see him in person while one can. Then again, if he writes more volumes on his later years, I’ll be happy to read more.
Age of Ambition, Evan Osnos, May 2021. This is an excellent book on the economic explosion in China after Tiananmen in 1989 through 2013 when Xi Jinping rose to power. Osnos, the New Yorker correspondent in Beijing from 2008-2013, has an eye for individual stories to illustrate the larger forces at play in one of the most amazing makeovers in history. This book bridges the era from the 1980s when I saw China several times, through the boom years peaking with the 2008 Olympics and into some of the corrupt aftermath as China and the Communist Party started to deal with fallout from their own success. It works best as a snapshot of a remarkable time, not really a predictor of what was to come. Someone else will have to tackle the more powerful, authoritarian, and contradictory nation China has become, and how people are accommodating these changes. The overall story remains one of the most fascinating and important of my lifetime. This book does a good job chronicling an important segment of that story.
Note: I just learned, after reading a quietly brutal book review in the Washington Post, that Evan’s father, Peter Osnos, is also a notable journalist and publisher. The review of Peter’s memoir cuts a little close to my own endeavor: “One problem is endemic to books of this sort. Many Washington luminaries think their memoirs are worth writing, and reading, but they’re often wrong…More serious is the lack of compelling insights into the people and events described here. Yes, Osnos had a good view of history in the making. But what did it all mean?…One editor warned him that his memoir had to tell readers “why they should bother.” He never really answers her question.” Ouch.
The Sense of an Ending, Julian Barnes, April 2021. Laurie recommended this short novel in light of its consideration of memory and the unveiling of a life through the accordion of time. I read it in one sitting which I can’t recall doing with any book, so in that sense I enjoyed its story and style. But I was sorely disappointed in the ending which I didn’t even understand. I had to go hunting on the Internet for an explanation, and I’m evidently not alone in that need. One of the central lines of the book is “You don’t get it, but then you never did.” I didn’t either, so I guess I’m no better off than the dull-witted protagonist. I showed the book to Barb who dimly recalled reading it and then confirmed that she definitely didn’t like it. Clearly, many people do: the book has won awards and was made into a 2017 film that I haven’t seen. Maybe the film will clear things up for me. Maybe this is why I don’t read many novels.
21 Lessons for the 21st Century, Yuval Noah Harari. April, 2021: I enjoyed this book, though it’s a bit scattered, the result of compiling what were 21 more or less standalone essays. Harari explores topics such as the role of the democratic nation state, the threat/opportunity of technologies like AI and bioengineering to significantly alter human activity, existential threats like climate change and nuclear war, God, secularism, truth…you know, big stuff. I like that Harari is thinking about the future and where things are headed. Not enough people in our world are thinking long range.
In some cases, Harari broaches topics and bats at them a little from this direction and that but never really reaches a conclusion, a little like a cat playing with a toy. But if he doesn’t provide answers to all of life’s big questions he at least scores points for raising some sensitive topics and opening the discussion. He surveys various religions and finds them part of the problem at least as much as being part of the cure:
“Humankind now constitutes a single civilization, and problems such as nuclear proliferation, ecological collapse, and technological disruption can only be solved on the global level. On the other hand, nationalism and religion still divide our human civilization into different and often hostile camps.” (p. 139)
Finding religions wanting, I like that Harari tries to define and defend secularism. I’ve never really come across a coherent definition of secularism, though I’m no student of the topic and imagine there is an academic discipline that’s been working on it. Harari states that secularism is committed to the truth (though I guess that commitment has faced a bumpy ride in the past few years — truth is not what it used to be), compassion, equality, freedom to think, and responsibility. But having defined it, I’m hard pressed to figure out what Harari suggests we do with it. The book ends with a chapter on meditation and the merits of “know thyself” and “be here now”. I’m not sure exactly where that gets us.
It’s a generally optimistic book but it also points out many disastrous paths that could await us if we don’t take care. Most of all, it’s a reminder that life is not static; things, including humanity, will change and evolve and we ought to do what we can to mindfully make better choices along the way.
I am in the library queue to get what appears to be Harari’s more notable book, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. We’ll see if that helps paint a clearer picture. In the meantime, I will muddle along on my own and see if I can cobble together my own little guide to my own life.
Revolutions podcasts: English, American, French, Haitian; Mike Duncan, January – May 2021. They don’t count as books, I know, but I delved deeply into this series of podcasts representing more than 100 episodes, so at least 50 hours of listening. I now have a much more comprehensive picture of the flow of events within and (to some extent) between these crucial revolutions. The English Revolution was mostly all new to me and filled in a big gap about Cromwell and the Charleses, Stuarts and Jacobites. Duncan’s handling of the American Revolution was a bit of a disappointment but he more than redeemed himself on the exhaustive French Revolution series (55 episodes!). The Haitian Revolution likewise filled in a big gap in my knowledge but it has fascinating linkages to the other revolutions and reverberates still today. I’m looking forward to tackling more in this series.
Spying on the South, Tony Horwitz, December 2020. I quite enjoyed this book chronicling the author’s 2015 journey following in the footsteps of Frederick Law Olmstead’s 1850s travels from Maryland to Texas. Before Olmstead became the famous designer of Central Park and the country’s premier “landscape architect” (a label he disliked), he was a peripatetic wanderer (I wish there was more about his experience as mate on a Clipper ship to China) who finagled an assignment from the early NY Times to write articles about his journeys down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers and across Texas to the Rio Grande. Olmstead turned these into a series of books, predating the travel works of Mark Twain by several decades.
In this book, Olmstead’s views of the South just before the Civil War complement and contrast with Horwitz’s observations during the rise of Trump. Both authors encounter characters that illustrate and explode a variety of Southern stereotypes. Horwitz’s modes of transport include a train (from Baltimore!), a slow coal barge down the Ohio, a luxury Mississippi cruise from Memphis to New Orleans, rental cars through the wilds of Cajun Louisiana and east Texas, and even a humorous and grueling mule ride in Texas Hill country to replicate some of Olmstead’s travels by horse.
Toward the end of the book, Horwitz cites Olmstead’s observation regarding travel: “The great key is to place oneself in situations & circumstances, where one will be most liable to accidents. I don’t mean disagreeable accidents. To place oneself where (I mean) one does not know what to expect next.” I don’t often abide by that advice, especially with Barb around, but I agree that method opens the mind for the most growth and memories. The book as a whole is well done; it succeeds best as a travel journal and slightly less well as an anthropological study of Southerners. It sparked my interest in seeing some of these areas when it’s safer to travel, particularly around Nashville, Memphis and New Orleans.
Mystery Train, Griel Marcus, November 2020. I’d long heard this 1975 book was one of the best in the canon of rock and American roots music criticism. I didn’t realize it was focused on just five major artists — Robert Johnson, The Band, Sly Stone, Randy Newman and Elvis Presley — plus one oddball, Harmonica Frank. The main book is only 166 pages, sketches of each artist and their places in the American music and cultural landscape. In this sixth edition there follows more than 200 pages of exhaustive and exhausting notes on the discographies, films and written references for each artist. Marcus’ writing is dense with allusions to American literature and culture. The book feels extremely well written but many passages whizzed over my head and even I didn’t have patience for much of the minutiae he digs up in the Notes and Discographies. I enjoyed the book and learned something about each of his subjects but I felt a bit like I did in high school AP English class struggling to keep up with the depth of the metaphors being presented, unable to see the connecting layers the teacher wanted me to see.
Lafayette in the Somewhat United States, Sarah Vowell, October 2020. I became interested in Lafayette as an extension of my readings on the U.S. and French revolutions and also hearing a podcast with Julien Icher promoting The Lafayette Trail. The trail commemorates the 2024 bicentennial of Lafayette’s 1824 final tour of the United States. Sarah’s book, written in 2016, focuses on Lafayette’s involvement in the U.S. Revolutionary War. I think it would be a very different book if she wrote it today, after Trump’s election and the phenomenon of the play “Hamilton.” As it stands, the book was enjoyable but didn’t offer the insights I wanted on Lafayette’s whole life, involvement in the French Revolution, imprisonment by Austria and the rest of his life. Sarah’s approach generally incorporates about 2/3 history lesson and 1/3 Sarah’s own snarky voice and observations from a current perspective. Usually I like that mix but in this case I wanted to know more about Lafayette’s full life. I will need to read more, I think.
This Wheel’s on Fire: Levon Helm and the Story of The Band, Levon Helm and Stephen Davis, September 2020. I’m not sure why I’ve wallowed so long in the music and myths of The Band, but I continue to do so bolstered by various lengthy podcasts and the film “Once Were Brothers” that came out earlier this year. It’s become increasingly clear that the legacy of The Band has been heavily dictated by Robbie Robertson. This autobiography by Levon Helm, written in the 1990s, has been cited as a necessary counterpoint so I felt compelled to hear from Levon. It’s a quick, entertaining read and Levon certainly brings a different perspective and his own serious credibility. Robbie, however, is the stronger mythmaker and has doubtless won the long-term war. Not that it all matters greatly. It’s mostly an excuse and incentive to spend more time with the music which I still enjoy.
Benjamin Franklin, Walter Isaacson, August 2020. My second coronavirus buddy has been Benjamin Franklin. Isaacson’s biography is easily readable but workmanlike, stepping methodically through Franklin’s multivariate careers and interests. It follows the timeline of Franklin’s life rigorously, which I generally prefer, but loses some of his magic in the process. I’m no expert on Franklin, to be sure, and I now know a great deal more than I did before, but I feel that I’m missing the soul of the man and deeper context of his times and impact. Partly this is due to Franklin living an exceedingly long, productive and well-documented life with an endless array of aphorisms, anecdotes and interests — it’s a huge challenge to condense into one volume. The concluding chapter of Historical Reflections on his life and how they have shifted over the centuries could be a volume of its own, and maybe one I’d still be interested in reading if it exists. A better target would probably be Franklin’s own autobiography, published by his grandson and one of the most popular books of the 19th century. Franklin is a fascinating character, often reduced to a cartoon nowadays, but I think worthy of a rehabilitation and deeper appreciation.
Napoleon: A Life, Andrew Roberts, May 2020. My coronavirus buddy has been Napoleon, thanks especially to the Howard County Library being closed for a prolonged period. It took me the better part of three months to get through this 800+ page study of the Corsican’s full and momentous life. I was looking to fill a giant gap in my knowledge both of his background and exploits but also his relationship to the French Revolution and other events of his time. Napoleon retains a large presence in cultural history, often as an object of derision or a marketing brand, but I knew very little of his actual history. Now I know a lot more, thanks to Roberts. Roberts notes there “there are more books with Napoleon in the title than there are days since his death in 1821.” This volume incorporates a vast trove of more than 33,000 letters signed by Napoleon that was published in 2004. Roberts strives to raise Napoleon’s life and exploits above caricature into something more complex and understandable. It is, for the time being, “the definitive biography.”
I finally have a bit of a handle (forgive me for trying to consolidate it here) on the rise of this Corsican into the French military as the chaos of the French Revolution unfolded. He took advantage of the upheaval in leadership ranks as career monarchists were swept out to rise quickly though he was barely out of military school. He gained command of a portion of the French Army as it successfully pushed to deny Austrian (Hapsburg) control of the quasi-independent states in the Italian north. Then followed a foray into Egypt to counter English gains in the Middle and Far East. He returned to Paris in 1799 coincident with a coup after multiple governments failed to consolidate France after the collapse of the Jacobin Terror. He quickly gained primacy in the resulting Consulate, effectively ending the Revolution. But Austria’s Hapsburgs and the remains of the Holy Roman Empire threatened to return Bourbons to France’s throne which precipitated a return to the Italian frontier and a decisive battle at Marengo in 1800.
Napoleon consolidated power and rapidly instituted a wide range of largely popular reforms in France. In the wake of the 1801 peace with Austria and follow-on treaties with Spain and England, France regained Louisiana and Napoleon’s attentions turned to the New World. He tried to subdue a revolt in Haiti and potentially pivot into a new empire in the Americas. Failure in Haiti and the need for cash in France led to the sale of Louisiana to the United States, dramatically changing the political dynamics of North America. Despite a brief treaty with England, the Royal Navy’s command of the seas threatened France’s economy and Napoleon prodded England’s holdings in India. England re-declared war in 1803 and Napoleon considered and started preparing an invasion of England. Instead, he advanced into Germany against England’s allies, declared himself France’s Emperor in 1804, and continued winning battles culminating in a pivotal defeat of the Austrians and their coalition with England and Russia at Austerlitz in 1805, though just after England crushed the Franco-Spanish fleet at Trafalgar. Battle fronts shifted to Prussia and Poland in 1806-07, but the war was still effectively against a coalition of England, Russia and Prussia. Napoleon largely won the land battles, but England’s blockade of continental ports cramped France’s economy. The eastern campaigns ended in 1807 with the Treaty of Tilsit where Napoleon and Tsar Alexander divvied up Poland. Drawn out battles with the English continued in Spain and Portugal, though Napoleon himself was rarely involved. Napoleon sought to cement his dynasty by marrying Princess Marie Therese of Austria in 1810 but relations with Russia deteriorated, culminating in the ill-fated Russian campaign of 1812.
Russia’s rope-a-dope strategy pulled Napoleon all the way to Moscow without a truly decisive battle but decimated the French army which lost nearly as many men on the wintry retreat as it had in its long initial attack. Napoleon and the French fought coalition forces, funded by England, for two more years in Poland, Prussia, Germany and eventually France but the tide had decisively turned. France, though not actually Napoleon, finally capitulated in 1814 sending Napoleon to exile as Emperor of Elba. After less than a year, Napoleon escaped his English minders and returned to France, making his way back to Paris, gathering men through the Alps and eastern France to face down the failed Bourbon king. Within 100 days, however, his barely reconstituted army lost the battle of Waterloo and Napoleon was finally consigned to St. Helena.
Napoleon’s active career from 1795-1815 was remarkable, exhausting and truly historic. He arrived at a pivotal time in Western history and played a key role shaping its course for decades and even centuries. Roberts clearly admires him and I’ve gained a much greater understanding of the man and his times, but there is so much more to know. I’m not sure where my investigations will next lead, but I’m very glad to have spent the time getting to know Napoleon a little better. Thanks, coronavirus!
Silver, Sword & Stone, Marie Arana, February 2020. Venturing back into the labyrinth of Latin America’s pre- and post-Columbus world, this book was helpful but ultimately frustrating. Built on a three-legged structure focused on the effects of extractive commodities (silver), military strongmen (sword) and religion (stone) on Central and South America’s history, the book combines history and journalism, though not as successfully as Charles Mann. Arana starts out strong, but the book meanders in the last half, becoming less grounded in facts and history, more prone to sweeping generalizations. Even she admits in the Afterword that it didn’t really achieve its objective of clarifying the current state of Latin America. That said, it helped open my eyes further to the region’s complex history; I have greater sympathy if not greater sense of what can be done to help this large, troubled and too often overlooked quarter of the world.
Always Look on the Bright Side of Life: A Sortabiography, Eric Idle, January 2020. A bit of fluff to cleanse the palate, or in Monty Python words, something completely different. I wanted something light to read and sped though this in about a week, which is roughly a record for me. Then again, there’s not a lot to it other than a stroll through a life very well and thoroughly lived. I knew many of the anecdotes and episodes from other Monty Python documentaries and ephemera they’ve produced over the years. Still, it was fun to run through it, supplemented by Idle’s prodigious capacity for name-dropping…though it’s quite a set of names. At one point, he admits, “I have met many people in my life and, sadly, many of them were not famous. I agree it’s not their fault, though they might have tried harder.” Most of all, I like his predetermined choice for his final words, “Say no more.”
1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, Charles Mann, January 2020. In truth, after reading and enjoying 1491, I went back and finished The Expanding Blaze before tackling 1493. I must say, I enjoy Mann’s journalistic storytelling much more than Israel’s more academic prose. 1493 explores the many sides of the Columbian Exchange that followed Columbus’ 1492 voyage. The New World was certainly turned upside down by the arrival of Europeans and all they brought with them, but so was the Old World and in fact, all the world. Mann does an excellent job of stringing together anecdotes of the spread and impact of microbes, food staples, people, and more in all parts of the world. He opens our eyes to the complicated legacies and unintended consequences of our increasingly globalized world. He doesn’t necessarily guide us toward what’s “right” but he shines a light on the complex, interwoven roots that are the result of living together on what had been effectively two planets and are now one.
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, Charles Mann, November 2019. Continuing down the reading list from Leguizamo’s “Latin History for Morons,” I checked this book out of the library. I actually read most (but not quite all) of it in the first two-week window before I had to return it. That’s pretty quick for me. I found Mann’s writing compelling and his research (and travels) impressive. He makes a good case for extensive pre-Columbian civilizations in the Americas for many thousands of years, though he admits to some dispute of the archeological record and scale of populations. I’m once again reminded of how much of “accepted wisdom” has changed just within the last few decades. How much of today’s world-view will be upended in coming decades? Plenty, I suspect. This book helps shift some of my dumb prejudices about Latin America and the depth of cultures represented there. Not sure if it means I will start traveling there, but I have greater respect. A small of the book includes an account of John Smith (from Virginia) sailing in Massachusetts waters before the Pilgrims arrived and indirectly links with the stories of Squanto, Samoset and the Pilgrims — who knew? There’s more to his scruffy story, but that’s not really the point of this book, is it?
The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books, Edward Wilson-Lee, October 2019. I finished this book within the first two-week library window which is an indicator of how much I enjoyed this history of Christopher Columbus’ son, Hernando (or Ferdinand) Colon, and his library. Hernando’s fascinating life included sailing on his father’s fourth and final voyage, being shipwrecked for nearly a year off Jamaica, his service and education in the Spanish royal court, a short return to Hispanola with his half-brother, Diego, extensive travels around Spain and Europe with Charles I who became Holy Roman Emperor, his passion for book collecting and developing methods of classifying them, and more. He was an exceptionally well-traveled Renaissance man during a tumultuous and prolific time from 1488-1539. If anything, this book actually goes light on the 2013 rediscovery of Hernando’s library and catalogues, as well as his private/family life. This is a fascinating account of a man dedicating his life to scholarship, collecting and cataloging during an extraordinary window of history. I particularly liked a line on p. 301, “The point of a life is to make sense of the world in which it is lived.”
The Expanding Blaze, Jonathan Israel, October 2019 and December 2019. I had a realization that I knew very little about the French Revolution and rise of Napoleon, and wondered how the American Revolution fed into the French. I found this book through a catalog search at the library, and I’m glad I did. It’s an excellent account of the roots of the American Revolution, the conflicting ideas in play, various champions (especially Paine, Franklin and Jefferson), and the nearness of history moving in different directions. The American Revolution had a profound impact on France, yes, but also Holland, Canada, Ireland, the Caribbean, even South Africa. I’m only beginning to grasp the complexities linking Napoleon’s rise, Haiti’s revolution, and the Louisiana Purchase — events within a few years which shaped contours of the next two centuries. This book is dense — Israel can’t drop just one name, it’s usually four or five — but very thorough and well researched. Honestly, I didn’t get all the way through the first time I checked it out, but considered it a triumph to read more than 400 pages and covered most of the ground I was interested in. I checked it out again a few months later and finally finished it, not necessarily all that much wiser about European revolutions of 1848 but still impressed overall with the book.
A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn. July 2019. This is an important book, originally published in 1980, that I’m sad to say was completely off my radar screen until recently. Of all places, I learned of it through viewing John Leguizamo’s Latin History for Morons on Netflix in December 2018. To his credit, Leguizamo recommends a reading list and that’s how A People’s History got on mine. I mentioned the book to Laurie and she highly recommended it as an essential book in her studies and teaching of world cultures and history. I mentioned it to Allie and she recalled reading excerpts in high school. I figured I should read it. I started it in June but was going slowly when I had a casual conversation with Beth Goodman at a robot event. She asked what I’d been reading and we got to talking about it and the Leguizamo show. The next day she told me she’d ordered three books to read this summer so I felt more compelled to actually finish. It’s due back at the library today and I can’t say I’ve made it through every word, but skimmed my way to the end. The book very deliberately aims to shift perspective on American and world history, and succeeds. It is, I believe, the font of the “We are the 99%” movement, Bernie Sanders, AOC and much current progressive and democratic socialist thought (and perhaps the politics of most of my nieces). I don’t agree with every word Zinn writes, and for me things bogged down with recounting scores of minor rebellions, movements and labor union actions. But one of his points is these things are cumulative and move the ball ever forward against the (usually) overwhelming forces of capitalism, corporations, finance and privilege. I’m glad I’ve read (most of) it. Soon I’ll try to move further down Leguizamo’s reading list.
1177 B.C. The Year Civilization Collapsed, Eric Cline. May 2019. I’m not quite sure how this book made it onto my reading list, but thought I’d be interested in this exploration of how multiple ancient Bronze Age cultures from Egypt through the eastern Mediterranean and Greece collapsed at the same time. I mentioned the book to Laurie, thinking she’d know about it. Surprisingly, she didn’t, but the topic corresponded to her graduate studies in archaeology and ancient cultures. She did, however, know the author, Eric Cline, who studied with her at Penn. Proving again, Laurie knows everyone.
The Bronze Age collapse has generally been blamed on the Sea Peoples, an amorphous collection of unknown invaders from the “west”. Cline walks methodically through research and archaeological records of the preceding 400 years or so for each culture, establishing the extent of their trade and interconnections. Though extensively footnoted and exhaustively researched, Cline’s work mainly reinforces the skimpiness of our actual knowledge of ancient civilizations. History may be (literally) written in stone, but our interpretation of ancient eras is open to recurring revisions and speculations. Cline eventually casts doubt on the ultimate role of the Sea People (whom we know very little about anyway). Instead, he blames the more or less simultaneous collapses on “complexity theory” which as best as I can tell is an academic way of saying “shit happens”. This was ultimately a very dissatisfying book for me, raising lots of questions about whether we know anything at all for certain.
Earning the Rockies: How Geography Shapes America’s Role in the World, Robert D. Kaplan. Read in April 2019. A cross-country drive from Massachusetts to San Diego gives structure to this meditation on America and its imperial history and ambitions. The book starts with thoughts of westward expansion and nation building, leaning heavily on mid-20th century writings of Bernard DeVoto and Wallace Stegner, neither of whom I know well. Kaplan seems to tire of the travelogue somewhere around Nebraska as his pronouncements become more grandiose and less anchored to his thesis. The last chapter about America as a naval power bringing peace to the world is especially dubious. Overall, an interesting structure gets lost along the way, but this is a quick read that feels more like an extended series of magazine think pieces.
Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back), Jeff Tweedy. Read in Feb-Mar, 2019. Larry Harder gifted me this autobiography of Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy, in advance of us going to see his solo concert next month. Larry is a big fan, and he brought me to a Wilco concert in Baltimore several years ago. I was very impressed by them as a live band, but have never really connected very much with their recordings, nor Uncle Tupelo’s that preceded Wilco, despite their being very much up my Americana alley. The book is a light, conversational read and I certainly know more about Tweedy than I did before. Put me down as an admirer but not a superfan. The same goes for the book.
Salt: A World History, Mark Kurlansky. Read slowly over 4 months, finished Jan. 2019. Though I liked the premise of this book, exploring salt’s pivotal role throughout human history and across societies, it took me a very long time to slog through it. I’m not sure why. I enjoyed learning that the Celts traced their origins to the salt mines of Hallstatt and ranged across pre-Roman Europe. And how England’s support of local salt makers in Liverpool had profound effects in India and led to Gandhi’s salt march protests. And the story of the McIlhenny and Avery clan’s shift from being salt purveyors to the Confederacy to originators of Tabasco sauce. But between the interesting episodes were too many expositions on various salt-making techniques and ancient, foul-sounding recipes.
Vacationland: True Stories from Painful Beaches, John Hodgman. Read in Portugal, August 2018. Light, popcorn reading meant for vacations. Reflections and essays from comic and sporadic Daily Show correspondent John Hodgman, a self-proclaimed east coast (Yale!) privileged liberal white man with a voice I recognize very well. I enjoyed stories about his homes in Western Massachusetts and Maine and his various insecurities. The book occasionally dips a small toe toward profound insights but mostly it’s light and frothy, printed with a large font and open line spacing to make it seem like you’re reading a respectable number of pages. This is the kind of book that fuels the fantasy that maybe I could write a book someday.
Adopted, The Chinese Way, Marguerite Chien Church. Read at home, July 2018. After reading Remembering Shanghai, Barb reminded me of Marguerite Church’s biography that had been sitting on her bedside table for years. Marguerite and her husband were colleagues of the Fishers in the Foreign Service world and an extended member of Barb’s family of “Aunties”. She had written the book about 10 years ago and Mary Dean obtained this autographed copy for Barb. It makes for a very interesting companion piece to Isabel Chao’s story, covering much the same time period from the (mostly) Beijing perspective of another very well-off family of privilege. Marguerite’s memoir is a little more earthy and is more honestly compelling with the family’s struggles through the war years, though she also gives an inordinate amount of coverage to the layout and intricacies of their courtyard home in Beijing. Marguerite has the added complexity of being adopted into the home of an American mother and Chinese father, by way of the father’s other family members (“The Chinese Way”).
Remembering Shanghai: A Memoir of Socialites, Scholars and Scoundrels, Isabel and Claire Chao. Read at home, June 2018. The Chao family were friends of both Barb’s and my family in Hong Kong. Lloyd was my best friend and tennis buddy, and Claire is his younger sister. I learned through the HKIS Facebook group that Claire and Isabel worked together more than 10 years to produce this memoir of Isabel’s family in Shanghai and Hong Kong. I read early reviews and promotions from its release in Hong Kong and was eager to get the book once it was released in the States. The book is a portrait of a privileged girl’s life in Shanghai through the 1930s-40s, with background on the family’s wealth and branches. It’s a fascinating journey, but frustrating in how sheltered Isabel was through China’s years of war and revolution (better for her, no doubt, but less so for the reader). The overall depiction of the lifestyle is valuable and there is hope it will be turned into a television series…perhaps a Chinese Upstairs, Downstairs, though most of the perspective in this book is decidedly from upstairs. The book evoked memories for me of my time in Shanghai in the early 1980s with Bei Jing-Washington. I was there for several weeks at a time on at least two trips, with rooms in the Jin Jiang Hotel in the old French concession. I remember many evenings hobnobbing with ghosts in the art deco French Club (Cercle Sportif Francais), wandering the Bund trying to figure out the past lives of the pre-war buildings, and searching for the past in the early post-Cultural Revolution years. Bringing Isabel’s story through to present day and a return to Shanghai is a welcome coda to the book. It is great to have Isabel’s memories written down, but it makes me yearn for a more comprehensive and compelling historical novel to capture the wide scope of romance, wealth, poverty, shattering political and personal upheavals of the past century in China.
The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: American and China, 1776 to the Present, John Pomfret. Started in Austria and then at home, but not finished, May-June 2018. This is an episodic history of relations between China and America through the years stated. I’m a fan of John Pomfret since reading his Chinese Lessons book. I slogged a bit through this one, getting only halfway (up to 1948) before having to turn it back in to the library. It’s very much a chronological history book without a true central storyline, and I dragged through the late 19th century. But it’s comprehensive and was getting better the closer we came to present day and times I recognized. I’d like to finish it eventually and then offer a more complete comment.
Testimony, Robbie Robertson. Started in Aruba but read mostly at home, Mar-Apr. 2018. While I slogged through the Silk Roads book, I also had this autobiography in hand. Once I really got started, I chugged through it in just a few days, partly to prove to myself that I could. Robbie spends a lot of time on his formative years with the Hawks and the early Band years, then glides through the salad (and drugs) days of the Band culminating in The Last Waltz. It’s not high literature, though Robbie does weave a fine story here and there. I was hoping for more insight into the music, lifestyle and era…Robbie drops lots of names and tells some by now well worn tales. The best and most natural outcome of reading the book is taking time to more fully appreciate the music of the Band, listening to their full albums, which is well worthwhile. They were groundbreakers and traditionalists all at the same time. Happily, one of the strongest notes of the book is to emphasize just how close and vital a band these guys were, in every sense stronger together than apart.
The Silk Roads: A New History of the World, Peter Frankopan. Read in Aruba and at home, Mar-Apr. 2018. Barb and Allie each brought 6 or 7 books to Aruba and finished them all in 4 days. I started this one and barely made it through 100 pages, partly because I’m an admittedly slow reader but also because the writing is simply not initially very compelling and there’s no real “story” to follow. The book is not what I expected, but I’ve come to better appreciate what Frankopan is trying to do. I was thinking this would be more of a travelogue and history of the Central Asia, a guide to a region that I don’t know much about and is generally opaque to Westerners. Instead, this is more of an economic history of the entire globe built around the concept that East-West trade has been the central driver of history’s ebbs and flows over the centuries. There’s something to the notion, but I suspect Frankopan overstates his case, cherry picking examples and getting noticeably more didactic as he reaches modern days. For example, after explaining that the British East India Company fostered opium-for-tea trade with China beginning in the early 1700’s, the company became increasingly corrupt in the rule of India, enriching the English and causing famine in Bengal.
The situation was entirely avoidable. The suffering of the many had been sacrificed for personal gain. To howls of derision, Clive simply answered–like the chief executive of a distressed bank–that his priorities had been to protect the interests of the shareholders, not those of the local population; he deserved no criticism, surely, for doing his job. Things were to get worse. The loss of manpower in Bengal devastated local productivity. As revenues collapsed, costs suddenly rose sharply causing panic that the golden goose had laid its last egg. This prompted a run on the shares of the EIC and pushed the company to the brink of bankruptcy. Far from its directors being superhuman administrators and wealth-creators, it turned out that the practices and culture of the Company had brought the intercontinental financial system to its knees.
After desperate consultation, the government in London concluded that the EIC was too big to fail and agreed a bail-out.To fund this, however, cash had to be raised. Eyes turned to the colonies in North America, where taxes were substantially lower than in Britain itself. When Lord North’s government passed the Tea Act in 1773, it thought it had found an elegant solution to pay for the EIC rescue, while also bringing at least part of the tax regime of the American colonies closer into line with Britain’s. It provoked fury among settlers across the Atlantic.
And we all know what happened then, what with the Boston Tea Party and Revolution and all that. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders would be proud of both the prose and polemics of this passage echoing today’s headlines.
I did gain a little bit better understanding of the Sunni/Shi’a split in Islam, abetted by seeing the “Bitter Rivals” pair of Frontline documentaries while I was working through this book. Similarly, I gained a deeper appreciation of how malleable history is in the hands of teller, very much a matter of perspective…and how simplistic and superficial my America-centric general education was (much less what gets passed as news and general knowledge in today’s media).
The Secret War: Spies, Ciphers, and Guerrillas, 1939-1945, Max Hastings. Read in London and at home, Dec 2017 – Jan 2018. Borrowed this library book to learn about Bletchley Park in anticipation of our visit. Had a hard time slogging through the level of detail Hastings offers on all manner of spy rings and operations. Impressive for the depth of research, including into Russian archives, but not an easy read for me. Was impressed by how ingrained and proficient the Russians are at spying, but also how leadership very often discounts all the intelligence provided by spy agencies because they don’t trust it, and because there’s so much of it. Mining gold from the dross seems nearly impossible in real time; it only becomes apparent with time and the unfolding of events. All the more impressive that Bletchley code breakers managed to produce anything meaningful out of the thousands of messages intercepted daily.
As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride, Cary Elwes and Joe Layden. Read at home in January, 2018. Got the book from the library for Allie and I to read in London; it took me a while to get to but once started it was a very quick read. Cary has nothing but nice things to say about everyone involved in the film and doesn’t really add much to understanding either gossip or understanding why it became a hit. Seems like a very pleasant time was had by all during the 4 months of filming. Was hoping for either a little more humor, feel for being there, or a little more dirt.
The Year of Living Danishly: Uncovering the Secrets of the Worlds Happiest Country, Helen Russell. Read at home in October, 2017. Fun and light chronicle of British journalist’s year living in Billund, Denmark. When her husband is recruited by LEGO, the author tracks a year learning some of what makes Denmark tick, and in turn explores what it means to be happy in a society. There’s a lot to like about the Danish take on life, and the book had interesting overtones for me based on connections with LEGO, the feeling of being detached from a career, and memories of our visit to Barb’s friends in Denmark nearly 15 years ago. Introduced me to concept of “hygge” months before I started to see it referenced in many other sources.
Willin’: The Story of Little Feat, Ben Fong-Torres. Read at home in October, 2017. Reading “Cerphe’s Up” led me to find this book which goes deep into Little Feat music and personalities. A little too deep, sometimes, but the book spells out the birth and extended life of the band I grew to love after their live album, Waiting for Columbus.
Cerphe’s Up: A Musical Life with Bruce Springsteen, Little Feat, Frank Zappa, Tom Waits, CSNY, and Many More, Cerphe Colwell. Read at home in September, 2017. Definitely not literature, but a loose set of reminisces that evoke the Washington, DC radio/music scene in the 1960s-80s when WHFS became my favorite radio station. DJ Cerphe sketches memories of music and interviews with many heroes, as listed in the title. Most of the songs on my favorites list come from that era and many I discovered on WHFS. Looking forward to the documentary, Feast Your Ears, not based directly on this book but will include interviews with Cerphe and other episodes from the book, I think.
Everybody Behaves Badly: The True Story Behind Hemingway’s Masterpiece The Sun Also Rises, Lesley M. M. Blume. Read on trip to Spain in August, 2017. This was a very useful companion to “The Sun Also Rises” and a portrait of the early career of Ernest Hemingway. It gives a great deal of context about who Hemingway was, the people and places he was writing about, and why it caused such a sensation at the time. “Sun” was a groundbreaking piece of gossip and style about a troupe of real people and events in Hemingway’s life, and that just wasn’t done in his day. This book provides context and appreciation for a piece of work that fostered a more casual, journalistic, readable style — and a loose bending of fiction and non-fiction (fake news!) — that seems natural today.
The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway. Read on trip to Spain in August, 2017. I enjoyed it but wondered to some extent what the fuss was about. It’s Hemingway’s first novel; I haven’t read any Hemingway since high school and even then not much, but I was looking to read more “classics” and the Spanish connection was enticing. I could tell Hemingway was playing with rhythms and run-on sentences and I came to wonder how many times he used the word “and” in the book. While the style seemed clean and straightforward, the actual plot felt thin and I was surprised there wasn’t more death and mayhem. The book is basically a group of 1920’s Americans and Eurotrash in Paris getting bored then taking a trip to Pamplona to see the bullfights, fish and drink too much. I had also checked out and brought a companion book, “Everybody Behaves Badly: The True Story Behind Hemingway’s Masterpiece The Sun Also Rises”. I would have to read that to get a better sense of the story and its impact.