Tag: historical

Truman

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McCullough, David. Truman. Simon and Schuster, 1992.

Reason read: on honor of Presidents Day, celebrated the third week of February.

Because Truman’s life is well-documented around the time of his presidency, it is no surprise that McCullough’s biography thinly covers Truman’s childhood and coming-of-age stage of life. The bulk of the biography centers around Truman’s careers; starting with his early venture as a clothing store owner, an eastern judge, a senator, and of course, finally, president of the United States. Having said that, I appreciate biographies that peel back layers of a person’s lifestyle and personality, for better or worse. To know that Truman harbored bigoted thoughts and beliefs was startling but logical, considering the time of his upbringing. Even though he thought of himself as a good-for-nothing American farmer, he also believed he would amount to something great one day. Indeed, he would go from being a businessman with a failing men’s clothing store to earning a seat as an eastern judge and then state senator before becoming president. Not bad for a good ole boy.
As a president, Truman faced enormous difficulties, trials, and tribulations. Only seventy-seven years ago, this sitting president had to endorse anti-lynching legislation (essentially anti-murder legislation, if we are being honest). We can’t forget his decision to definitively end World War II, how he handled Palestine, the threat of communism, and our nation’s involvement in Korea. Not to mention he survived a pretty serious assassination attempt.
McCullough’s coverage of the second campaign, where Dewey was the well-known favorite, was riveting and read like a thriller. Also, it should be noted that McCullough wrote with astounding detail. I could picture Stalin drawing the heads of wolves with a red pencil while talking with Secretary Marshall, trying to save Western Europe.

As an aside, I found myself bonding with Truman just a little. We both studied piano (although while he kept with it, I gave up too early). Truman was an avid letter writer with the desperation to have someone write him back. Me too. Additionally, “he didn’t like the telephone under any circumstances” (p 81). Me neither! Even today, I find some commonality: he read Douglas Southall Freeman. I am currently reading Douglas Southall Freeman; a different book, but same author. Truman also studied the relationship between my favorite president, Abraham Lincoln, and General George B. McClellan. Truman wanted to know more about the Lincoln-McClellan crisis to inform his decisions about McArthur.

As another aside, I think it would have been fun to have known Cactus John Garner for his snarky view of the role of vice presidents.

Monhegan Six Degrees – in 1948 a painting by Andrew Wyeth called Christina’s World was all the rage (and made a mention in Truman). Andrew was Jamie’s father and Jamie is my neighbor.

Author fact: I am reading a total of five books by McCullough. Besides Truman I have only John Adams left on the Challenge list. I finished Johnstown Flood, Mornings on Horseback and Path Between the Seas.

Book trivia: There is a good selection of black and white photographs included.

Music: Andy Kirk’s “Clouds of Joy”, Bach, Beethoven’s Sonata Pathetique, Benny Goodman, “Cieto Lindo”, Chopin’s Funeral March, Bennie Moten Orchestra, Count Basie’s Kansas City Seven, “One O’clock Jump”, Cole Porter’s “Kiss Me Kate”, “Dixie”, “Enjoy Yourself, It’s Later Than You Think”, “Eternal Father, Strong to Save”, “Faith of Our Fathers”, Fanny Bloomfield Zeisler, Felicien David’s “La Perle du Bresil”, “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow”, “Goodbye to Broadway, Hello France”, “Hail to the Chief”, “Happy Days are Here Again”, Hot Lips Page, “Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight”, “It’s a Most Unusual Day”, “I’m Just Wild about Harry”, Jerome Kern’s “They’ll Never Believe Me”, Josef Lhevinne, “Keep the Home Fires Burning”, Julia Lee, “Last Rose of Summer”, Lena Horne, Lionel Hampton, Liszt, Mendelssohn’s “Songs Without Words”, “Mother Machree”, Mozart’s Ninth Sonata, “My Old Kentucky Home”, the Nighthawks, Opus 111, “Over There, Over There Send the Word”, “O God, Our Help in Ages Past”, Paderewski’s Minuet in G, Pee Wee Hunt’s version of “12th Street Rag”, Polka Brillante, Scarlatti’s Pastorale and Capriccio, Schubert, Schumann, Strauss, “Tipperary”, Tchaikovsky, Verdi, Von Weber Rondo Brillante amd Polacca Brillante, Weber and Grieg, “Woodland Sketches”, Walter Page’s “Blue Devils”, and “When Irish Eyes are Smiling”.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Presidential Biographies” (p 192). Also from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Midcentury: from World War II to Vietnam” (p 167).

Lee’s Lieutenants: Volume 2

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Freeman, Douglas Southall. Lee’s Lieutenants: A Study in Command. Volume Two: Cedar Mountain to Chancellorsville. Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1946.

Reason read: to continue the series started in January in honor of Lee’s birth month.

Whenever I read Douglas Southall Freeman’s books my senses come alive. In my mind’s eye, I can see the battlefields and the courage of young soldiers. I can hear the cannons volleying across enemy lines; the men yelling their battle cries. I can smell gunpowder, blood and mud. The campaigns from Cedar Mountain to Chancellorsville took place between 1862 and 1863. I can feel the pounding of the horse artillery’s hooves. I swear I can taste the victories and losses as Freeman describes every detail. Like Freeman’s first volume, Manassas to Mulvern Hill, Cedar Mountain to Chancellorsville is a minute by minute, battle by battle recounting of the Civil War. Every detail is well researched and described; using military papers, scrapbooks, memoirs, letters and official correspondence, court martial orders, and diaries and journals. A great deal of the narrative relies on Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson’s journals and official papers. As an aside, one of the most difficult passages to read was the death of “Stonewall” Jackson after his amputation. He had just become a new father and was well respected by his troops. his death was a blow to Robert E. Lee’s armies.
As another aside, Can you imagine being saved from a sure death by a hardened biscuit, baked without salt or fat, that caught and stopped a bullet meant for your heart?

Author fact: I just discovered that Freeman was born in 1886. The end of the Civil War was not that long before his birth. I imagine he heard a great deal about the conflict growing up.

Book trivia: As with volume one, Cedar Mountain to Chancellorsville has great black and white portraits of some of the soldiers.

Music: “Old Joe Hooker”.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Civil War Nonfiction” (p 58).

Coal

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Freese, Barbara. Coal: a Human History. Perseus Publishing, 2003.
Freese, Barbara: Coal: a Human History. Narrated by Shelly Frasier. Tantor Media, Inc., 2005.

Reason read: February is Science Month.

From soup to nuts, this is the history of coal at breakneck speed (with some global warming/climate change lectures thrown in for good measure).
I will be one hundred percent honest. Before Freese’s book I had never really given thought to coal. It is an interesting topic. Every Christmas there is the joke about coal in the stocking and once in a while a coal mine collapse will make the news. I did know that it has always been a dirty fuel responsible for massive pollution in cities across the world like London and Pittsburgh. However, I don’t know anyone who burns coal for heat or locomotion. I don’t think I even know what a coal stove looks like.
After reading Coal readers will know there are different types of coal and their uses will vary. Historically, coal was used for making jewelry and as currency, in addition to being a heat and energy source. Once the dangers of mining coal were fully realized, companies put animals, children, and immigrant laborers to work in the mines. The illnesses and deaths resulting from working with coal were difficult to read. Despite being less than 300 pages, Freese reserves a good section of Coal for explaining the environmental repercussions of using coal. The statistics are staggering and eye opening.

Author fact: at the time of Coal’s publication, Freese was an Assistant Attorney General for the state of Minnesota. As an aside, I would have liked to have been a fly on the wall when Freese sat her husband down and said, “I think I want to write a book about coal.”

Book trivia: there are a few black and white photographs in Coal: a Human History.

Narrator trivia: Shelly Frasier sounds like a little like Dolly Parton. I have no idea why.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the simple chapter called “Science 101” (p 195).

Eye of the Fleet

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Woodman, Richard. An Eye of the Fleet. Pinnacle Books, 1981.

Reason read: February is History Month.

Woodman draws from actual events to bring the action in An Eye of the Fleet to life. His detailed descriptions of the various sailing vessels is extraordinary. Readers cannot say they do not know what a frigate looks like after reading An Eye of the Fleet. Beyond boats, readers will build an extensive lexicon of nautical terminology by the end of the book. Phrases like carrying canvas and yardarms blocks will become common knowledge. If you have ever wondered what a battle at sea sounded, looked, or even smelled like, Eye of the Fleet will take you there hook line and sinker.
Beyond a nautical education readers will meet Midshipman Nathaniel Drinkwater as he begins his nautical career aboard the HMS Cyclops. It is a thrilling coming of age of sorts as young Drinkwater helps his crewmates capture other vessels and battle privateers with cannons, pistols and hand to hand combat. The skirmishes are bloody and deadly but so is life aboard the HMS Cyclops. Drinkwater has to navigate relationships with his fellow sailors as well. One particular run-in with a bully forces Drinkwater to fight back with intensity. This antagonist adds tension beyond the battles at sea.
Gradually, Drinkwater comes into his own as a leader and a romantic. An Eye of the Fleet ends with Nathaniel dreaming of a young woman back in England.

Author fact: I think this goes without saying judging by the detailed descriptions of the boats in An Eye of the Fleet, but Mr. Woodman has sailing experience in all kinds of ships. He was a member of the Society for Nautical Research.

Book trivia: An Eye of the Fleet is the first book in the Nathaniel Drinkwater Midshipman Series.
Second book trivia: my (borrowed) copy of An Eye of the Fleet was signed by Mr. Woodman.

As an aside, I couldn’t ignore the Natalie connection to An Eye of the Fleet. Natalie released an album called Leave Your Sleep. It featured a song called “Nursery Rhyme of Innocence and Experience” originally written by Charles Causley as a poem for children. Woodman’s description of battle-scarred boats reminded me of Natalie singing, “and the flash and rigging were shot away…”

BookLust: from Book Lust in the simple chapter called “Sea Stories” (p 217).

Travels of Marco Polo

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Polo, Marco. Travels of Marco Polo. Edited by Morris Rossabi. Sterling Signature, 2012.

Reason read: Marco Polo died in the month of January. Read in his memory.

Travels of the World or The Description of the World as it is known in Europe, details Marco Polo’s 1271 journey from Venice to China and back again. through Jerusalem, Armenia, the Gobi Desert, around the Sumatran coast and India and the Black Sea and through Constantinople. The sad thing is that Polo’s original work did not survive time. His exact words are lost forever. These days, more than one hundred versions of Travels of Marco Polo exist. Each version altered the details of the original and like a game of telephone, it is hard to tell what is true to Polo’s narrative and what has been embellished or exaggerated beyond recognition. The details are fuzzy and key figures and geography are confused. Nevertheless, the world owes a debt of gratitude towards fellow prisoner Rusticello da Pisa for collaborating with Polo to document the traveler’s exploits in the first place. There is no debating its influence. It is rumored that Christopher Columbus and Samuel Taylor Coleridge both were inspired by the travels of Marco Polo.
If you are going to pick up any version of Travels of Marco Polo, make sure you consider the version translated by Henry Yule (1971) and revised by Henri Cordier (1903) with the Morris Rossabi introduction and afterword. The maps by Karl Ryavec and Tim Collins are beautiful. You just have to get passed the “you must know” refrain that is common throughout the text.

As an aside: the more things change, the more they stay the same. In 1271 Marco Polo was given “Golden Tablets of Authority” which secured passage through a king’s dominions – a passport of sorts.

Favorite line, “But why should I make a long story out of it?” (p 245).

Author fact: Marco Polo was a mere seventeen years old when his father and uncle decided to take him on their next adventure.

Book trivia: Travels of Marco Polo is also known as Description of the World.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “China: the Middle Kingdom” (p 60). Interestingly enough, Pearl indexes the British version while I read the American version.

System of the World

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Stephenson, Neal. System of the World: Vol III of the Baroque Cycle. HarperCollins, 2004.

Reason read: to finish the series started in honor of Stephenson’s birth month in October.

The System of the World can be called a historical novel. It is epistolary in nature, satirical, and a roman flueve all in one. Before we dig into the plot, a little book trivia. Stephenson was nice enough to remind us of the story thus far (from Quicksilver and The Confusion).
Back to the plot: We begin with Book Six: Solomon’s Gold. Daniel Waterhouse, founder of the institute we know today as MIT, has been sent back to London to resolve a feud between Gottfried Leibniz and Isaac Newton. The two brainiacs are squabbling over the invention of calculus. To utter anything about calculus, much less pinpoint who invented it, is to commit a grand faux pas of epic proportions. Jack Shaftoe is back as Jack the Coiner. Historically, the Whigs and Tories are about to face off. The irreconcilable dispute between science and religion rages (very reminiscent of “Inherit the Wind” by Lawrence and Lee). There are moments of sly humor that you might miss if you are not careful. My favorite: one of Mr. Threader’s spiels is the equivalent of the legal fine print on a contract.

Line I liked, “Daniel felt something very strange was happening to his face: he was smiling” (p 165).

Author fact: not to stereotype bald heads and beards but pictures of Stephenson on the internet make me think he would make a great bad guy in an action film.

Book trivia: System of the World bears the same title as a book of Isaac Newton’s. Another piece of trivia: System of the World won a Locus Award.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Neal Stephenson: Too Good To Miss” (p 214).

Empire Express

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Bain, David Howard. Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad. Penguin, 2000.

Reason read: November is Train Month.

Bain used an extraordinary list of sources for his epic history of the birth of the transcontinental railroad. Everything from autobiographies, essays, letters, biographies, trial transcripts, historical pamphlets, pioneer atlases, private papers, railroad reports, manuscripts, government documents, and periodicals…just to name a few sources. Not quite doorstop heft, Empire Express is an impressive true life, detail-dense, historical adventure, just shy of 800 pages. It covers thirty years of savvy entrepreneurship and brilliant engineering. He describes how Robert Mills proposed something resembling a steam train in 1819 while Asa Whitney was a firm believer in the 2,400 mile railway. The end of the Civil War brought a hunger to connect the East with the wild western plains. The Rocky Mountains proved to be a formidable obstacle so military topographical engineers sent out expeditions to solve the problem. These were the days of gold rush frenzies. By 1842 imaginations fused with innovation and the iron rails began to span the country. Bain included details of a buffalo hunt gone awry and white men wanting to witness a fight between “the hostiles” as if it is was a farcical Broadway musical. [Sometimes history is just ridiculous.] There was even a first hand description of a scalping. [As an aside, who in their right mind would tan a scalp and then put it on display in the public library in the children’s section?]

Author fact: Bain is from my home away from home state of New Jersey.

Book trivia: the series of black and white photographs in Empire Express are as beautiful as they are awe inspiring.

Setlist: “Waiting for the Wagon”.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Riding the Rails: Railroad History” (p 200). Also included in More Book Lust in the chapter called “The Beckoning Road” (p 19). I would argue that this book does not belong in this section at all.

Confusion

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Stephenson, Neal. The Confusion. Harper Perennial, 2005.

Read read: to continue the series started in October in honor of Stephenson’s birth month.

The Baroque series continues. I suppose we should be grateful that Stephenson did not want to confuse us too much with two tales running back to back. The decision to synchronize Juncto and Bonanza keeps the reader firmly planted in the correct timeframe. The year is 1689 and Jack Shaftoe is longing for escape from a slave ship. The King of the Vagabonds a.k.a. Half-Cocked Jack always has a plan that does not disappoint. Full of adventure (and misadventure), Jack’s scheming will take him around the world to places like Egypt, India, Japan, Algiers, and Mexico. Meanwhile in Europe, the Countess de la Zeur (Eliza) is desperately trying to get back her stolen fortune. Newton and Liebniz are up to their usual tricks.
All in all, The Confusion is an age old-tale of being lured into a trap for love and money. When will we ever learn?

Quote to quote, “The plan does not allow for finding gold where we expected silver” (p 357).

Author fact: there are a few interviews with Stephenson out there in which he explains the writing process for the Baroque series.

Book trivia: True to form, The Confusion has plenty of sex, violence and humor to entertain even the most jaded reader.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter obvious called “Neal Stephenson: Too Good To Miss” (p 214).

Pity of War

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Ferguson, Niall. The Pity of War: Explaining World War I. Perseus Books, 1999.

Reason read: Armistice Day is November 11th. We have been observing the day since 1918.

Ferguson thinks World War I is not given the respect it deserves. The Civil War and World War II are more widely written about than World War I. His book, The Pity of War, sets out to explain the war in detail by answering ten questions about the war:
1. Why didn’t the Germans win the war?
2. What kept the men fighting through terrible conditions?
3. What made the men finally stop fighting?
4. Who really won the peace?
5. Was World War I inevitable?
6. Why did Germany start the war?
7. Why did Britain get involved?
8. Did the war keep going due to well placed propaganda?
9. Was the war popular on the home front?
10. Why didn’t the British Empire defeat the Central Powers?
In truth, I felt that there was a sort of pissing contest going on about the different wars: which one lost the most men, which country financed which war more, how bloody was each battle…needless to say, they were all pretty horrible.
The table of International Alignments from 1815 to 1917 was pretty helpful. It is hard to believe that in the beginning there was Anglo-German cooperation surrounding finance. Ferguson describes the moments leading up to war minute by minute. Britain went to war at 11pm on August 14th, 1914. Can we learn from history? Few soldiers knew why they were fighting. they blames their involvement solely on the assassination of the Archduke and his wife. Here are other influences, the brilliant marketing of the Parlimentary Recruiting Committee: speeches, letters, posters, leaflets, surging military bands, and news articles. Psychological pressures of wives wanting brave husbands, the peer pressure of friends, the economy, national pride, ignorance of war, and sheer impulse to “try it.” Ferguson goes on to examine why soldiers stayed in the war even though it was sheer hell. He questions the positive effects of war and the adittance that some soldiers actually enjoyed the fight.
Ferguson’s Pity of War is chock full of detailed statistics like food consumption and the fact that Hitler did not approve of holiday cease-fire truces, such as Christmas Day.

Does an arms race accelerate the likelihood of war?
As an aside, Ferguson made me laugh with his tongue-in-cheek comment about George Bernard Shaw being “cranky.”
As another aside, I believe every man made decision is exactly that, man made. War. Peace. Debt. Excess. Behind it all is a person or a group of people. We have the power to change every wrong decision. When we say something is caught up in red tape, we are not talking about a machine denying us. We are talking about people denying people. If something is complicated it is because people, human beings, want it that way.

Author fact: Ferguson’s grandfather served in the Second Battalion of the Seaforth Highlanders. That explains his passion for World War I.

Book trivia: Pity of War contains black and white photographs of WWI images. Some of the photos are from the private collections of soldiers.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the obvious chapter called “World War I Nonfiction” (p 251).

Yiddish Policemen’s Union

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Chabon, Michael. The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. Narrated by Peter Riegert. Audible Productions, 2016.

Reason read: November is Imagination month. The Yiddish Policemen’s Union takes us to an alternate history which is quite imaginative.

The Yiddish Policemen’s Union takes place in an alternate history when the Germans do not surrender the Second Great War for another four years past reality and President Kennedy is not assassinated from the grassy knoll. In this alternate history Kennedy ends up marrying Marilyn Monroe (of course he does). Sitka, Alaska is the site of a federally mandated safe refugee location for European Jews. The area was created at the height of World War II and sixty years later, the safe haven still exists. Only, now Alaska wants their territory back. The plot is great, but the characters of The Yiddish Policemen’s Union are what makes the novel hum. Chabon’s characters exude personality. To name a few: Meyer Landsman, the main protagonist, was a character I loved. This flawed policeman whose life is a mess cannot let go of one particular cold case, the murder of a drug addled chess prodigy and supposed messiah. Landsman is supervised by his ex-wife, Bina and she has ordered the force to abandon all cold cases now that the safe haven for refugees is being dismantled. Berko Shemets, his partner is half Jewish, half Tlingit and all intimidation.

As an aside, listen to the audio version narrated by Peter Riegert. Additionally, there is an interview with Michael Chabon that is not to be missed.

Author fact: Michael Chabon is also a screenwriter.

Book trivia: The Yiddish Policemen’s Union won a Hugo Award in 2008 and a Locus Award that same year.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Travel to Imaginary Places” (p 236).

Quicksilver

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Stephenson, Neal. Quicksilver. Perennial, 2003.

Reason read: Neal Stephenson celebrates a birthday in October. Read in his honor.

The timeframe is 1660 – 1688 and Europe is transforming itself into a culture of scientific thinkers. Alchemy and imagination. Burgeoning financial complexities and modernized social developments abound. [Side note: the experiments on dogs was really hard to read. And I’m not a dog person.] Quicksilver follows real-life historical figures in real-life events. The glint in a crow’s eye. The cough of a cholera-infected child. Fine grains of dirt that cling to a man’s boots as he strides across a courtyard. The tremble of a drop of water as it rolls down a soot-covered windowpane. The hair of a rat as it scurries under a table. The details of Quicksilver are even finer than this; an overabundance of details. I hope you stub your toes on the sly humor that pops up in between the verbose narrative.
Additional facts about Quicksilver: it is exactly one third of the Baroque Cycle, Stephenson’s trilogy. Quicksilver in and of itself is in three separate parts. The second section follows the adventures of Jack Shaftoe. The third involves a slave who ties the characters of the first two sections together. As an aside, Eliza’s story had me scratching my head. I felt that Stephenson had more to say about her than he was letting on. The writing of Cryptonomicon and the reading about Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz inspired Stephenson to write Quicksilver.

Author fact: Stephenson wrote Quicksilver, all 930 plus pages of it, by longhand.

Book trivia: This might be a no-brainer for some, but read Peter Ackroyd’s London: the Biography before Quicksilver. Certain historical events and characters will come into sharper focus when you meet up with them in Quicksilver. For example, I enjoyed reading about the fictional account of the Great Fire of 1666 from Ackroyd’s storytelling perspective.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the obvious chapter called “Neal Stephenson: Too Good To Miss” (p 214).

Common to This Country

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Munger, Susan H. Common to This Country: Botanical Discoveries of Lewis and Clark. Illustrations by Charlotte Staub Thomas. Artisan, 2003.

Reason read: August is Friendship month. Read in honor of Lewis and Clark’s relationship.

Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, an exploring match made in heaven. Lewis’s specialty was botany and Clark was an expert at creating topography maps. Together, they spent two and a half years traveling the country from the Louisiana Purchase to the Pacific Ocean in search of a waterway passage. Along the way, they were tasked with collecting, preserving and recording thousands of artifacts for President Thomas Jefferson. With the help of Sacagawea and varying native tribes, the members of the Corps of Discovery made their way over hundred of miles of prairies, mountains, cataloging and describing every rock, bird, animal, flora and fauna along the way.
Munger had a diplomatic way of describing conflict with certain Native American tribes. She called their relationship “edgy.”
In addition to sharing parts of Lewis and Clark’s journals and interesting facts about each plant, Munger shares if the particular plant can be purchased in a garden center.

Here are the flowers Munger highlighted in Common to This Country:

  • Osage Orange – supposedly this plant is still growing on the University of Virginia campus. It is said to be the direct descendant of the cutting sent by Lewis.
  • Calliopsis – used as a dye or tea. I want to see if I can grow this in my garden.
  • Bur Oak – fire, drought, and pollution resistant.
  • Narrow Leaf Coneflower – used to “cure” the bite of a mad dog or rattlesnake.
  • Lewis’s Prairie Flax – each bloom only lasts one day
  • Prickly Pear – probably my favorite from the southwest.
  • Western Serviceberry
  • Snowberry – planted on the banks to hold soil in place and prevent erosion.
  • Angelica – used for respiratory ailments and as a sweetener.
  • Camas – used the root to make bread.
  • Bearberry
  • Oregon Grape Holly
  • Lewis’s Syringa – used to make needles or combs.
  • Glacier Lily – the bulb, leaves, flowers and seed pods are all edible.
  • Ragged Robin – beautiful and uniquely shaped flowers.
  • Silky Lupine – probably my favorite of the bunch highlighted since they remind me of the lupine we have at home.
  • Old Man’s Whiskers – a unique looking flower that resembles an old or wisps of smoke.
  • Shrubby Penstemon – related to the Indian Paintbrush.
  • Monkeyflower – it needs a “cool situation” in order to thrive.
  • Bearberry Honeysuckle – not edible
  • Gumbo Evening Primrose
  • Bear Grass – a very beautiful plant that can lapse for ten years between blooms.
  • Ponderosa Pine – Indians ate the inner bark, seeds and rosin.
  • Bitterroot – the state flower of Montana.
  • Wood Lily – the official flower in the emblem for the Province of Saskatchewan.

As an aside, I was thrilled to learn of the pen pal relationship of Bartram and Collinson. while they never met, the exchanged letters for thirty-five years. I find that remarkable.

Book trivia: the map to plot Lewis & Clark’s journey is stunning. Common to This Country was dedicated to “The Tennis Group” whoever they are.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Lewis and Clark: Adventurers Extraordinaire” (p 136).

Colony

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Tayman, John. The Colony: the Harrowing True Story of the Exiles of Molokai. Scribner, 2006

Reason read: Hawaii became a state in August. Read to celebrate the history.

It does not seem possible that our government could rule that having leprosy would be a criminal offence. In 1866, that same government also believed these assumptions: that exile was the best means of controlling leprosy, that anyone in exile was an extreme contagion and finally, that everyone suffering from a leprosy diagnosis was never, ever, going to get better: to have leprosy was to have a death sentence. [As an aside, I guess if you can have a high ranking official tell you that drinking bleach can cure Covid-19 in 2020, we could have a government with such backward beliefs about Hansen’s disease in 1866.] The language of government criminality goes even further by calling a person with an unconfirmed case of leprosy a suspect and using bounty hunters to round up these “suspects.” Even a temporary release from the confines of the colony was called “parole.” This what fear can do. People were so frightened of the disease that they made hasty decisions to exile people too quickly without setting up proper accommodations. Seven years after the colony was first started, it still lacked running water, proper housing, and basic medical supplies.
The leper colony on the Hawaiian island of Molokai started on January 8th, 1866 with a dozen individuals all thought to be suffering from what was then known as leprosy. With each chapter, the colony grows in numbers until the cures and treatment of science start to win and numbers dwindle.
Tayman was careful to stress that in addition to the illnesses, Molokai was an inhospitable place in and of itself. Landing on the island’s rocky shore was a extreme danger, crops constantly failed due to water shortages and poor soil conditions. Living quarters were made out of any material people could find and were unsanitary. Mankind’s presence didn’t make life any easier. White man’s diseases: smallpox, syphilis, gonorrhea, and influenza all plagued the islands of Hawaii throughout history. Morale within the leper community was fraught with turmoil and confusion. Besides being in pain from debilitating diseases and missing their families, patients brought their grudges and prejudices to Molokai. If all that was not bad enough, political ambitions led certain officials to wildly exaggerate the success of the experiments in the fight to cure leprosy.
My only disappointment in The Colony is actually a complaint about Tayman. Makia Malo and Olivia Breitha changed their minds about being included in The Colony. They asked to be left out of the book and Tayman not only left in their stories, he also included photographs of them. If he wasn’t going to respect their wishes, at the very least, he could have changed their names and removed the photographs from the finished publication. Having said all that, I could not help but be inspired by Olivia and Makia’s spirits. Their courage and grace astounded me.

The Colony left me thinking about the psychology of cordoning off the undesirables, the dangerous. Our country has a history of sending people somewhere else, out of the public eye. The Japanese during the war; Jews in Europe, American Indians, Molokai. What we do not understand or trust, we banish.

As an aside, there is a 1999 documentary about Father Damien and his work on Molokai and Mark Twain based his Connecticut Yankee on William Ragsdale. There is also a documentary called “Olivia & Tim: Very Much Alive” which I want to see.

Playlist: “The Star-Spangled Banner”, “Home Sweet Home” (probably not the Motley Crue version), and “My Little Grass Shack in Kealakekna”.

Author fact: while Tayman wrote more books, I am only reading The Colony for the Challenge.

Book trivia: This might be a first for me, but the notes in The Colony included photographs that Tayman mentions in the text. No photographs are in the actual text. For the purists – Tayman didn’t change a single name in The Colony.
As an aside, the cover photograph by Todd Gipstein is stunning.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the very simple chapter called “Hawaii” (p 93). However, the book is misplaced. Pearl included it in fiction because of Father Damien mentioned in another book.

What Just Happened

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Gleick, James. What Just Happened?: a Chronicle from the Information Frontier. Pantheon Books, 2002.

Reason read: Gleick celebrates a birthday in August. Read in his honor.

Gleick needs a time machine. He wants his reader to put him or herself back in the 1990s as much as possible when reading What Just Happened. We need to remember the internet as it was just starting out. Portable phones. Pagers. ATMs. The essays cover bugs in Microsoft (essays written in August 1992 and again in June of 1997), the transformation of cellphone communication, the question of caller ID and ethics, the Y2K Crisis (for which Gleick apologizes for reporting impending doom four years prior), the idea of anonymous spending is only possible with cash (Think about it. No other form of money is without identifiers of some sort.), humorous password creations – all with a snarky tone that is just delightful.
Gleick’s opinion of internet pornography and its future is laughable. My favorite section was when Gleick unpacked an alert sent by MSN, pointing out vague language, half truths, cloudy communication, deliberate mis-directions, down playing failures, all with skillful ambiguity and clever concealment of the truth. Humor aside, Gleick makes you think about how far we have come.

Quotes to quote, “We have to learn the odd skill of speaking freely to someone who won’t hear us until later” (p 38). I wish I could teach my mother that skill. She will talk and talk on someone’s answering machine until she is cut off.

Author fact: At the time of publication, Gleick lived in the Hudson Valley. I wonder if Natalie Merchant was a neighbor?

Book trivia: What Just Happened isn’t Gleick’s only book. I am reading Chaos and Faster for the Challenge.

Playlist: “Stop in the Name of Love”, Supremes, Dolly Parton, Nat King Cole, “Naughty Angeline”, Crash Test Dummies, T-Bone Walker, Jim Fyhrie, 10,000 Maniacs (!), “Hail to the Chief”, Beastie Boys, Adiemus, Frank Sinatra, Harvey Danger, Dave Matthews Band, the Beatles, Scott Joplin, Mozart, and Madonna.

Nancy said: Pearl said What Just Happened is one of Gleick’s more accessible books. I agree 100%.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Science Books (for the Interested But Apprehensive Layperson)” (p 211).

Dead Man’s Walk

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McMurtry, Larry. Dead Man’s Walk. Simon & Schuster, 1995.

Reason read: McMurtry celebrates a birthday in June. Read in his honor.

As a prequel to Lonesome Dove, this is the reader’s first introduction to Call and Gus and their budding friendship. Together they join an expedition from Texas to New Mexico. They, along with 200 other men, cross a landscape fraught with danger at every turn. Apache and Comanche natives that could steal a captain’s horse or thirty without a sound; slit your throat without disturbing a single sleeping comrade. Mexican armies trying to defend “their land” from the Texans. Hunger and thirst at every mile. There are so many ways to die: falling over a cliff, drowning in a river, bleeding to death as a result of a scalping or throat cutting, arrow or lance through the heart, hanging, burning, whipping, suicide, starvation, freezing, exhaustion, thirst, firing squad, crushed by a horse, snake bite, spider bite, suicide, being run down by a buffalo, or gored by a bear. Things turn from bad to worse when the Rangers are captured and forced into a dead man’s walk across the desert in leg irons. Be forewarned – only a few will survive.
Please keep in mind, Dead Man’s Walk was published in 1995 and takes place years before one needed to be politically correct. In the spirit of authenticity of the era, one will have to endure racism and sexism on multiple levels. In contrast, McMurtry several times acknowledges native ownership of the land Call and Gus travel.
The opening line of Dead Man’s Walk reminded me of a line from Josh Ritter’s song “Myrna Loy” for she had a wolf pup at her heels and a snow white rabbit huddled in her arms. It wasn’t a 200lb prostitute carrying a snapping turtle by the tail…but close.

Book trivia: Dead Man’s Walk is a prequel to Lonesome Dove. Someone mentioned that if you read Lonesome Dove before Dead Man’s Walk you figure out who survives in Dead Man’s Walk.

Author fact: I am reading seven books by McMurtry.

Setlist: “Barbara Allen”, “Buffalo Gals”, and Verdi’s Nabucco.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Western Fiction” (p 240).