Two - For - One

     I would imagine that writing a biography is a daunting task, requiring so much research and organization required to try to make sense of a life lived in a different time and place, and I would assume that trying to write a single biography of two people would be even more difficult. However, I've lately read several books that are double biographies,  telling the stories of two individuals linked together by circumstances or in common pursuit of a single goal: power couples, if you will.

    

    American politics has its fair share of power couples, John and Abigail Adams and James and Dolly Madison immediately come to mind, but author Steve Inskeep makes a very compelling case that the most powerful couple of the 19th century may well have been John and Jessie Fremont. Fremont, nicknamed the Pathfinder, was one of America's most famous explorers, making numerous expeditions along what became the Oregon Trail and into California before Manifest Destiny brought thousands of settlers to the west, and Jessie was right there alongside - mostly in spirit since the majority of their married years seem to have been spent apart, physically. She was his staunch defender, publicist, and image-creator throughout their marriage. She wrote and published the books, newspaper articles, and letters to the editor that made him a huge celebrity, larger-than-life, and, in the process, became a celebrity in her own right. As a couple, they were linked to three of the biggest and most consequential movements of the 19th century: westward expansion, women's rights, and opposition to slavery.

    Next is a power couple of literature, definitely THE power couple of the Harlem Renaissance, Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes.  When they first met in 1925, the mutual fascination and admiration was immediate. They were the leading lights of the Harlem Renaissance and they immediately became fast friends and collaborators. Taylor's book focuses on their car trip through the South collecting stories, history, and folklore and working together on a play. Something happened on that trip, though. Afterwards, the friendship broke, and the collaboration fell apart.  Whether it was egos clashing or jealousy (While their relationship was never romantic, professional and emotional jealousies were evident.), the pair turned on each other, either making disparaging comments about each other or ignoring each other.  The book is a very interesting look into their lives and the Harlem Renaissance in general.

    Steve Inskeep apparently enjoys writing the double biography; he's back on my list with Jacksonland. His subjects are President Andrew Jackson and Cherokee Chief John Ross. I really enjoyed this book, and I found the comparisons and contrasts Inskeep makes very insightful. The two men are very similar in numerous ways, even military comrades in their early lives, but they, of course, have very different goals.  As President, Jackson sought to expand the country for white settlement (and expand his personal fortune as well), while Ross used the media, the courts, and political lobbying in an attempt to save his people. 

    A few years ago, historian Doris Kearns Goodwin gave us The Bully Pulpit, a look at the lives and relationship of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft.  It's another instance of former allies who come to be rivals. When Roosevelt decided not to run for re-election in 1908, he virtually handpicked Taft as his successor, believing that Taft would continue his work. Taft, however, went in his own direction, angering Roosevelt enough to mount a third party campaign against his former friend in 1912. As one would expect from a Goodwin book, Bully Pulpit  goes deep into both men and into their relationship.

    John Ferling is one of the best, and most prolific, historians of the revolutionary and early republic periods of American history. His book Jefferson and Hamilton is my favorite read about the rivalry  between two of the most important men in American history. America would be quite different today if one or both of these men didn't exist. Their relationship, and personal and political conflicts with each other, created the two-party system and set America on its developmental path. I learned a lot about both me and their roles  from reading this book.

    Jungle of Stone is about two early archaeologists, before archaeology was even archaeology, American diplomat John Lloyd Stephens and British artist and architect Frederick Catherwood. Together, they set out in 1839 to explore the ancient Mayan ruins of the Central American jungles. Of course, they weren't the "discoverers"; the descendants of the Mayans knew that they existed, and a few Europeans had even made the dangerous trek inland to study them. However, Stephens and Catherwood changed the racist and chauvinistic perception of the ruins that dominated European and American thought at the time. The prevailing belief among the educated elite of America and Europe was that Native Americans could never have built such cities, that they had to have been built by Egyptians, Mesopotamians, Europeans, a lost tribe of Israel, or by the people of Atlantis. After all the hardships of their expeditions, Stephens and Catherwood's work eventually changed those beliefs. If you're expecting an Indiana Jones style adventure, this book may not be for you, but it is an interesting study of the two men and their work.

Author Spotlight: John Hersey

     John Hersey was born in 1914 in Tientsin China, the son of Christian missionaries. He attended Yale University, where he lettered in football, and then he did graduate work at the University of Cambridge. After a brief stint as Sinclair Lewis' personal secretary, he began working for Time  magazine. During World War II, he accompanied Allied troops in Europe and in the Pacific, survived four airplane crashes, and he was awarded a commendation from the Secretary of the Navy for helping to evacuate wounded soldiers from Guadalcanal. His most famous works are about events of WWII.

    He's often cited as one of the founders of what came to be called "New Journalism", writing non-fiction using literary techniques often used in fiction, akin to creative non-fiction. In fact, he didn't care much for the "New Journalism" label, usually calling his work storytelling instead. He died in 1993 in Key West, Florida, in a compound he and his wife shared with Invisible Man author, Ralph Ellison. 

    He was extremely prolific, publishing dozens of books. Here are just a few:

    The novel A Bell for Adano, published in 1945 was his first great literary success, winning the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and being adapted into a play and a movie. It's the story of an Italian-American major in World War II who works to replace the 700 year old church bell from a little Italian village. The original bell had been melted down by the Fascists for making rifle barrels. 

    In 1945 and 1946, Hersey was in Japan covering the American occupation. While there, he discovered a document written by a Jesuit missionary who had witnessed the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. After meeting the missionary, he was introduced to other witnesses. He chose six survivors and wrote their stories. They were first published in New Yorker magazine before being published in a book, Hiroshima. Because of the secrecy surrounding the Manhattan Project and the development of atomic bombs, this was the first account of the effects of the bomb that Americans had ever read. It became an immediate best seller, both in magazine and book form. Radio stations and networks read excerpts on the air. 

    In 1950, he published The Wall, the account of Jewish life in the Warsaw Ghetto and of the Ghetto Uprising. It's another novel, based on fact but using fictional characters and written as if it was a discovered journal. 

    Before A Bell for Adano, Hersey published two books about the Pacific theater, Men on Bataan and Into the Valley, first-hand accounts of the battles in the Philippines and Guadalcanal.

    In the late 1960s, he wrote The Algiers Motel Incident about the 1967 Detroit race riots and police brutality and Letter to the Alumni after a trial of Black Panther members in New Haven Connecticut. In Letter, he sympathetically addressed the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements. White Lotus is an alternate history novel in which Americans are enslaved by the Chinese, meant to bring attention to issues of race, oppression, and slavery in America.