A Is For American: Letters and Other Characters is the Newly United States. Jill Lepore. Knopf, 2002. 256 pages.
The concept of nationalism is rather recent in human history. The question of what makes a nation, what holds a group of people of together as a people, is still studied, discussed, and debated. All too often, the debate turns into violence and bloodshed.
In A Is For American, historian Jill Lepore looks at one element of culture, language, and its role in nationbuilding, specifically how a select group of individuals in the Early Republic period of the United States sought to use language as a tool for shaping the nation, or the world, to meet their vision. Noah Webster and Samuel Morse both wanted to create a uniquely American language to set the United States apart. Both were anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant and saw outside forces poised to destroy their country. Webster believed that an American language and spelling system would force immigrants to assimilate quicker. Morse may have been driven to develop his Morse Code as a secret weapon to ward off the international invasion led by the Pope that he feared. Sequoyah developed a new alphabet to protect and preserve his nation, too, but his nation was the Cherokee,
William Thornton dreamed bigger. He promoted the use of universal alphabet to bring the whole world together in harmony. Thomas Gallaudet and Alexander Graham Bell devoted their lives to improving the lives of the deaf, and they developed new languages to that end. In a more personal story on a smaller scale, Abd al-Rahman Ibrahima, an aging enslaved Muslim man in Mississippi successfully used his Arabic writing ability to free himself.
Jill Lepore has become one of my favorite historians to read, and she's written so much, on so many different topics. This was a very interesting look at language and nationalism.
David Grann book talk
The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder. David Grann. Doubleday, 2023. 352 pages.
On January 28, 1742, a thing that could very loosely have been called a boat - more like boat-ish, washed up on the shore of Brazil. On it were about thirty barely living men who had once been part of the crew of the British ship called The Wager that had left England in 1740 as part of a small fleet off to harass the Spanish in the so-called "War of Jenkin's Ear" or the War of Austrian Succession. They seemed to be all that was left of a crew of a couple of hundred, and they told the story of their wreck off the southern tip of South America, their survival on the desolate landscape for months, and their incredible 3000-mile-long voyage to Brazil. But, wait, there's more! Six months later an even sadder boat washed up on the coast of Chile, with just three inhabitants, including the ship's captain, and they added a new layer to the tale: murder and mutiny. When the survivors finally arrived back home in England, having been away from their loved ones for 4 or 5 years, accusations flew back and forth, various accounts were published, and the public was enthralled by the mystery and drama of what exactly had happened to The Wager and its crew.
David Grann is the author of Killers of the Flower Moon, and he has established himself as one of the top writers of narrative nonfiction working today. His follow-up to Killers doesn't disappoint. The reader will learn a lot about life on a 1740s British warship and about how the command structure within the navy operated, but Grann also succeeds in bringing the men to life and telling their stories and how they dealt with their tragedy and hardships. Some men behaved more nobly than others, of course, but all suffered.
Grann also relates the story of the shipwreck and subsequent court-martial to the bigger picture: empire. This incident occurred at the time that the British empire was really in ascendancy. The British performance in the War of Austrian Succession and the possibly embarrassing public spectacle of a high-profile mutiny trial might have had a major impact on Brittania's rule over the waves, and the world. Grann explores how all these big-picture ideas intersected with the very specific fears of some of the surviving crewmen that their careers and lives were at stake.
(2022 discussion of book. Note presenter wearing masks.)
Illustrated Journal of the Plague Year:300th Anniversary Edition. Daniel Defoe. SeaWolf Press, 2020. 222 pages.
The presenter of The Great Courses lecture on London history that we've been listening to recommended A Journal of the Plague Year for its historical value and as a truly "great psychological novel." It was written by Daniel Defoe, considered one of the first English novelists chiefly known for Robinson Crusoe. Defoe was only a small boy in 1665 when the Great Plague swept through London, England's last major outbreak of the bubonic plague. It's estimated that 200,000 died or perhaps 2.5% of the English population. Defoe published his work in 1722. It is written as a first-person account of the year 1665, recounting events and personal experiences of a narrator. For over a hundred years, there was a debate as to whether the book should be classified as fiction, or if Defoe actually just edited some personal journals and letters. Historians of the day noted that the historical details were accurate and could be corroborated in contemporary sources. Today, it is regarded as historical fiction.
Defoe's narrator is a single man who worked as a saddler (maker of saddles and riding apparatus) who maintained a small London home and shop with a couple of apprentices and servants. He describes the outbreak of the disease from its beginnings, when people paid little attention. As the published death tolls mounted however, he describes the actions and reactions of London's citizens and government officials as they fought to make sense of the terror. Some fled the city, others found themselves locked inside their homes, with the infected and dying, by government orders to prevent spreading. Disinformation spread as people tried all sorts of quackery to prevent illness, and some people purported to have secret cures and preventatives, for a fee. Some people risked their lives to treat and comfort the ill. Some people took nursing jobs or swept into abandoned homes as soon as they were able in order to steal all the belongings in the home, including bedding and clothing. Some people left the city and wandered the countryside, sometimes being driven away violently by frightened villagers, sometimes given food and assistance by townspeople. The economy was crippled. The narrator expresses skepticism about the "official" information released by the government, and he saw huge pits dug for mass burials, and bearers leading wagons through neighborhoods collecting the dead. The narrator also speculates about the cause of the disease, taking the position that it was naturally transmitted and not some punishment for wickedness, a radical way of thinking in 1722.
Journal is a great work of historical fiction full of insights into the past and, as it turns out, into our present as well.
The Making of the Evening and the Morning with Ken Follett
The Evening and the Morning (Book 4 of the Kingsbridge series). Ken Follett. Viking, 2020. 928 pages.
I am a huge Ken Follett fan. His Kingsbridge series and Fall of Giants trilogy are, in my opinion, some of the greatest historical fiction ever written, with fantastic historical detail and exciting stories packing every page. The Evening and the Morning, published in 2020, is a prequel to The Pillars of the Earth, and book 5 is set to be released this fall (already pre-ordered). I decided it was time to catch up and get around to reading Evening, set from the late 990s into the early 1000s.
Well, it's another tour de force in storytelling as one would expect from Follett. However, honestly, there are lots of familiar notes. There's the extremely bright and talented peasant boy who falls in love with a beautiful, assertive, young woman who challenges all of the traditional roles and expectations of the time and is far above his station. He's friends and allies with a low ranking cleric who lives an exemplary life. Practically every other nobleman and church official is evil and corrupt, terrorizing, brutalizing, raping, and murdering anybody and everybody beneath him. And, of course, there are a few painfully awkwardly written sex scenes - I think Follett is one of the worst writers of sex scenes ever.
Nevertheless, this book is a must-read for Follett fans, Pillars fans, and lovers of medieval history.
Author talk
Beneath a Ruthless Sun: A True Story of Violence, Race, and Justice Lost and Found. Gilbert King. Riverhead Books, 2018. 432 pages.
No doubt about it, Florida has a horrible history of racial violence, and Lake County, in Central Florida near Orlando, has been the epicenter of much of it, thanks largely to Sheriff Willis V. McCall who ruled the county from 1944 to 1972 and has to be on any list of horrible and evil Americans of the 20th century. A few years ago, Gilbert King published Devil in the Grove, a great book about the Groveland Four, a rape case that made national headlines and brought McCall and Lake County into national prominence. King continues the story of McCall's reign of terror in Beneath a Ruthless Sun.
In 1957, the wife of a prominent citrus and watermelon grower, and future politician, was raped in her bedroom. Within hours, McCall and his men rounded up dozens of young black men and carted them off to jail with no evidence or cause. Lake County was undoubtedly surprised when the young black men were ultimately released, and McCall declared that the rapist was a mentally challenged white teenager. Without trial, McCall and the duplicitous prosecuting attorney got the young man incarcerated in Florida's horrible state mental institution, Chattahoochee. The boy's mother fought the best she could and eventually found a strong ally, the woman publisher of the local newspaper who had begun a crusade against McCall. It took 13 years, and lots of twists and turns, but he was eventually freed.
Sun also relates other horrors committed by McCall, who was probably directly responsible for a couple of dozen or more deaths and terrorized black and white citizens of Lake County so that almost none dared to oppose his will. He was targeted for investigation by multiple governors, the FBI, and the US Justice Department, but nothing ever stuck. Finally, in 1972, he was tried, and acquitted, of the murder of a black inmate and removed from office by the governor. That didn't prevent him from running for re-election, and he won the Democratic primaries but never regained the office. He never paid for any of the suffering he caused for decades.
Beneath a Ruthless Sun is a well-written page-turner and proof that truth is stranger, more horrible, and more terrifying than any fiction.
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