America250: Books for a General Review

 

    As we celebrate the semiquincentennial of the United States, here's a general list of books that I've read in the past few years that cover the span of American history.  Some I enjoyed more than others, but one of more of them might be of interest to you.

American Nations:  A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America.  Colin Woodard.  Viking, 2011.  384 pages.  (10 year anniversary updated edition 2021)

This is one of those books that make you think about American history in a different way than what you're used to.  It's not a new idea, but relatively new to me.  Colin Woodard's approach is to tell the story of America as a loose federation of eleven separate and distinct nations, each with its own very distinct roots, attitudes, and beliefs.  Those distinctions continue to shape us, our society, and all political discourse and outcomes today.  Basically,  according to this view, America has only been a unified country during World War II, and even then each nation came to its support of the war effort with different motivations.  The rest of the time, the nations have been making and breaking alliances with each other and in conflict with each other.  In fact, our country's founding and the principles on which it was founded were not universally supported. The six nations were at odds with each other throughout.  It all makes for an extremely interesting theory that makes sense in a lot of ways, and, in fact, some of the author's impressions in the original 2011 publication have proven to be somewhat prescient.  It's not necessarily an optimistic picture, but it makes you think.

History Nation:  A Citizen's Guide to the History of the United States.  David Hanna.  Morris & Essex Books, 2024.  357 pages.  

David Hanna has written an excellent and concise overview/review of American history, just in time for America's semiquincentennial, and I'm extremely jealous.  Hanna is a high school history teacher and author, and he's basically written up his class curriculum.  It feels like his curriculum and mine were very similar.  Here, he's told America's story, albeit in broad strokes, the good, the bad, and the ugly, using the "city on a hill" theme as bookends, from John Winthrop's use of the phrase in 1630's "A Model of Christian Charity" to Ronald Reagan's invocation of the phrase throughout his political career.  He connects events and ideas across time and makes them incredibly accessible.  It is a progressive and inclusive historical summary, but it's much more balanced and objective than Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, a book that some reviewers have compared it to.  If you're interested in celebrating "America250" with a solid review that will encourage thinking about America's story and how it should be studied and taught, this is a great book for you.

Democracy:  A Case Study.  David A. Moss.  Belknap Press, 2019.  784 pages.

David A. Moss is a business administration professor at Harvard, and a proponent of the Harvard Business School Case Study Method of classroom discussion.  He designed a course in which he applied those principles to the study of history and began training secondary and college history teachers to use it in their classrooms.  The idea is to begin with an objective summary of a case and break it down in an open student-led discussion of 5 questions:  1.  Define the problem, 2. What is the context?, 3. What key facts must be considered?, 4.  What alternatives are available to decision makers?, 5.  Finally, as the decision makers at the time of the case, what action should we take?  In this book, Moss has selected 19 cases that represent challenges to democracy in American history, some you're familiar with and some you're not.  The case is left open-ended to allow contemplation or discussion, but the outcome of each event is discussed in an appendix.  The whole point of this book is to encourage discussion.  As we are becoming more and more anxious about the state of our country and the rising divisions and tensions that threaten us and our ideals and discourage constructive debate, discussion of these cases in classrooms, book clubs, friends groups, etc. is a powerful antidote.  I'm engaged with it as part of a lifelong learning class, and I thoroughly enjoy the thoughtful and respectful discussion of history and politics that I haven't been able to enjoy for twenty years or more. The structure of the book allows a facilitator to pick a few of the cases to study as a group (My group is only doing 4 cases together.   The facilitator does the classes at other times with other groups and picks other cases.), but be sure to include Moss' introduction and conclusion as well, because they contain great insights.  This is another fantastic book for America's semiquincentennial, and I highly suggest it as a group read.

Overstated:  A Coast-to-Coast Roast of the 50 States.  Colin Quinn.  St. Martin's Press, 2020.  256 pages.

I stumbled onto this book.  I like Colin Quinn, and I liked I liked his book The Coloring Book,  It was a quick listen, obviously a project to keep him occupied during the pandemic.  It is, as promised, a very mild roast of the fifty states, celebrating the quirks and differences that make each state unique.  There are amusing bits and interesting bits.  While there are occasional historical flubs, he is not a historian and is not writing history, but the reader can see that Quinn does have an appreciation for history.  Try it out if you like Quinn as a stand-up.

The Year of Living Constitutionally:  One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Constitution's Original Meaning.  A. J.  Jacobs.  Crown, 2024.  304 pages.

I saw a story about this book on "CBS Sunday Morning" a few weeks ago and thought it sounded interesting.  I regretted my purchase before I was finished with the author's introduction.  Strike one:  the author decided to illustrate the second amendment by walking around New York City carrying a musket and bayonet everywhere.  Nobody did that in 1787.  Reeks of narcissistic, agenda-driven stunt. Strike two:  Maybe it was meant to be a joke, but he wrote that his children invoke the first amendment every time they call him names.  Even joking about that (calling a parent names) is unfathomable to me.  If it's a joke, not funny; if not, it's so far removed from my experience to make it too weird. (Yes, I am very old-fashioned in some ways.)  Strike three:  In a couple of paragraphs, he goes on and on about what he describes as the shockingly brutal and horrific language used in the Constitution.  If you're triggered by words in an historic document, maybe you should stay away from history.  I bailed on this book in the first chapter, not worth my time.

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.

Who's Your Founding Father? One Man's Quest to Uncover the First True Declaration of Independence.  David Fleming. Hachette Books, 2023. 320 pages. 

Wow! Never, ever have I thought that I would enjoy a book written by a sports guy, an ESPN guy no less. David Fleming has proven me wrong.  This book is up there with Shakespeare Was A Woman as one of my favorite reads of 2023. Like that book, Who's Your Founding Father? takes an iconoclastic swing at a cherished and honored institution and totally backs it up. As a teacher, I loved challenging students' long held misconceptions and "elementary school teacher lies."

The challenged institution here is Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence. No, not the truth that we should be celebrating July 2nd instead of July 4th (as John Adams felt). Whaaattttt?! Yes, the D of I was approved on July 2. The signers took the next two months to sign it, and some of the men who voted for it never signed it, and some of the signers never voted for it.  July 4th is just considered the day that it was made public. The question here is, was there an earlier Declaration of Independence that Jefferson plagiarized? Fleming presents a solid case that there was.

This is something that Americans don't know, and, in fact, various people have actively engaged in suppression and destruction of evidence over the last two hundred years in order to protect Jefferson's reputation. Oh, how the mighty have fallen! Jefferson once existed at the summit of the American pantheon: thinker, architect, author, statesman. Today, his rampant hypocrisy and petty nature have chipped away at his reputation. He railed against the evils of slavery, but his whole life and fortune were made possible by slavery. He preached against race-mixing and how it would destroy society, but he had a decades-long relationship with the enslaved Sally Hemings, his dead wife's half-sister. Even during his lifetime, however, he was frequently attacked. Critics called his architecture style imitative and derivative. Fellow Congressmen remembered him as being dull, uninterested, and uninvolved, contributing nothing to Congressional debates and discussions. During the Revolution, he was accused of cowardice while other founders bravely served. 

So, what did he plagiarize? On May 20, 1775, a group of 27 Scots-Irish Presbyterian leaders met at the county courthouse in Charlotte North Carolina to draft a declaration of independence from Great Britain, severing all ties. The document was then sent to Philadelphia where the congressmen assembled replied that it was too early and ignored it. Or did they? Whole passages appear verbatim in Jefferson's D of I. Unfortunately, fire destroyed some of the evidence of the Mecklenburg D of I in 1800, and, despite overwhelming credible evidence of its existence, it has been intentionally erased from history, except in North Carolina. John Adams was even unaware until about 1819 when he questioned Jefferson in letters and wrote about it to others. Jefferson, of course, deflected or ignored the questions, but he did say that he was always tasked with "synthesizing" and "harmonizing" numerous inspirations and never tasked with writing an "original" document.

Who's solid evidence should thoroughly convince the reader of the truth about the "Meck Deck," and it is an incredibly fun and entertaining book as well.

    Americanon: An Unexpected U.S. History In Thirteen Bestselling Books by Jess McHugh examines 13 bestselling American nonfiction books and their history and legacy. The books include the Old Farmer's Almanac, Noah Webster's Dictionary and Spellers, Emily Post's Etiquette, How to Win Friends and Influence People, The McGuffey Readers, Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography, Betty Crocker's Picture Cookbook, and Everything You Always Wanted Know About Sex. They each had a major impact on American culture when they were first published, and many are still printed, updated, and selling copies today. Each one has sold more copies over the years than the best selling novels in American history. (And many of them pass through multiple hands, especially Webster's and McGuffey's schoolbooks, exponentially increasing their reach and readership.) McHugh calls them "how-to" books because they were all designed to solve a problem or problems that the authors saw in their America, and each one had a very definite agenda, to improve American society.  She has created a list of books that are truly part of the American canon, books that reflected and molded an American identity, still impacting us today.

The Nation That Never Was: Reconstructing America's Story.  Kermit Roosevelt III.  University of Chicago Press, 2022, 256 pages.

If you are interested in reading a thoughtful and thought-provoking take on the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and the true character of the United States, The Nation That Never Was may be a book for you.  It is challenging, but not in a difficult-to read, legal-ese, constitutional-theorists-having-a-scotch-in-a-wood-paneled-library-esoteric-debate kind of way. It challenges what  Americans have been taught and think they know about the founding of America and its two most important founding documents, and it challenges our ideas about American ideals, but it's written in  very accessible language.

Kermit Roosevelt III is an American author, lawyer, constitutional scholar, and a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a great-great-grandson of United States President Theodore Roosevelt and a distant cousin of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

From the beginning, Roosevelt describes the American dilemma:  Do we acknowledge and address the shortcomings of America's history and move forward together from there? Or do we continue perpetuating the "standard" story of the founding, created as part of the effort to build a nation but not truthful and accurate, and simply erase the negative elements?  In the book, he thoroughly examines the "standard" simplistic and sentimentalized story we've all learned (and taught) and breaks it down, pointing out exaggerations, truths, and untruths.  Then he lays out a new way of looking at America's story.  That new story is that we should define our national identity around the promises, challenges, and aspirations (some still unachieved) of  Reconstruction instead of the founding period.   Like Reconstruction historian Eric Foner, he lays out the case for 1865, rather than 1776 or 1619, as modern America's starting point. However, he also distinguishes and separates his argument from those, like Foner, who have called Reconstruction "the Second Founding."

I don't agree with everything Roosevelt wrote, but it was definitely worth reading and thinking about.

Publisher's blurb: "In the most ambitious one volume American history in decades, award winning historian and New Yorker writer Jill Lepore offers a magisterial account of the origins and rise of a divided nation, an urgently needed reckoning with the beauty and tragedy of American history.

Written in elegiac prose, Lepore’s groundbreaking investigation places truth itself―a devotion to facts, proof, and evidence―at the center of the nation’s history. The American experiment rests on three ideas―"these truths," Jefferson called them―political equality, natural rights, and the sovereignty of the people. And it rests, too, on a fearless dedication to inquiry, Lepore argues, because self government depends on it. But has the nation, and democracy itself, delivered on that promise?

These Truths tells this uniquely American story, beginning in 1492, asking whether the course of events over more than five centuries has proven the nation’s truths, or belied them. To answer that question, Lepore traces the intertwined histories of American politics, law, journalism, and technology, from the colonial town meeting to the nineteenth century party machine, from talk radio to twenty first century Internet polls, from Magna Carta to the Patriot Act, from the printing press to Facebook News.

Along the way, Lepore’s sovereign chronicle is filled with arresting sketches of both well known and lesser known Americans, from a parade of presidents and a rogues’ gallery of political mischief makers to the intrepid leaders of protest movements, including Frederick Douglass, the famed abolitionist orator; William Jennings Bryan, the three time presidential candidate and ultimately tragic populist; Pauli Murray, the visionary civil rights strategist; and Phyllis Schlafly, the uncredited architect of modern conservatism.

Americans are descended from slaves and slave owners, from conquerors and the conquered, from immigrants and from people who have fought to end immigration. "A nation born in contradiction will fight forever over the meaning of its history," Lepore writes, but engaging in that struggle by studying the past is part of the work of citizenship. "The past is an inheritance, a gift and a burden," These Truths observes. "It can’t be shirked. There’s nothing for it but to get to know it." "

Shelved: Books Read and Reviewed in June 2026

 

Gods of Jade and Shadow.  Silvia Moreno-Garcia.   Del Rey, 2019.  352 pages.

Imagine Cinderella set in Jazz Age Mexico, and you've imagined the kernel at the heart of this story, with one big difference:  the Fairy Godmother in this story is actually the Mayan God of Death, Hun-Kame.  Casiopea Tun and her mother live in her wealthy grandfather's house in the Yucatan, near the state capital of Merida.  Because her mother had married and been widowed by a Mayan commoner beneath her social status, thereby disgracing the family, they were treated like servants by her grandfather and the rest of the family, forced to serve and clean, but Casiopea has dreams of escaping the mundane drudgery.  Left alone one day while the rest of the family was on an outing, she opens a locked chest in her grandfather's room, accidentally releasing Hun-Kame from imprisonment and initiating a link between herself and the god that would transform her life.  Hun-Kame had been overthrown by his twin brother, with the help of Casiopea's grandfather, and imprisoned for eternity in the chest, minus a few particular possessions and body parts which were required for him to retake his rightful place as Lord of the Underworld.  Hum-Kame and Casiopea were now joined, and together they set out on a quest that will take them across Mexico to recover those objects and to eventually defeat the evil usurper and resume his reign.  Along the way, they meet and contend with various Mayan spirits and mythical figures seeking to thwart their quest.  They are also in a race against time since both are weakening as time passes- Hun-Kame is literally draining life from Casiopea, not only gaining the strength required to remain active in the human world, but also becoming more and more mortal in the process.  Finally, Casiopea must defeat her arrogant cousin Martin in a life and death race that will determine the true ruler of the Underworld.  This was a fun blend of mythology, magical realism, and historical fiction.

Author interview

Gates of Fire.  Steven Pressfield.  Doubleday, 1998.  400 pages.

In 480 BC, the Persian Emperor Xerxes led a huge invasion force determined to conquer the Greek city-states.  While ancient chroniclers estimated an army of up to 2 million, it was likely no more than 300,000 in reality.  Opposing them was an allied force of some 7,000 Greeks.  The two forces met at a narrow pass called Thermopylae.  After two days of pitched battle, which left 20,000 Persian troops dead with their bodies piled high and the ground soaked in blood, a Greek traitor revealed a secret route around the pass.  Spartan King Leonidas and 300 of the city's most fierce warriors volunteered to fight to the death in order to delay the Persian army and to allow the other Greeks to retreat and regroup for a future fight.  In Pressfield's novel, there is a lone Greek survivor captured by the Persians and presented to Xerxes.  He was not a warrior, not even a Spartan by birth, but he was a a helot, a slave and the squire of one of the officers.  Xerxes, desiring to learn as much as possible about his enemies, prods the Greek  to tell his version of Spartan history and culture leading up to the battle, revealing the mindset of the Spartan, shaped by a lifetime of unbelievable brutality, beginning in childhood, with the intent of building a culture of hardened warriors, and perhaps even more hardened wives and mothers, who give their lives, without thinking, for their state and for their fellow warriors.  Apparently, this novel is or has been required required reading at the US military academies because of its explorations of courage, fear, leadership, duty, and brotherhood.  It's an epic story.  

podcast appearance

The Wreck of the Mentor:  A True Story of Death, Despair, and Deliverance in the Age of Sail.  Eric Jay Dolin.  Liveright, 2026.  272 pages.  

Outstanding maritime historian Eric Jay Dolin is back with another interesting true tale of the sea.  In 1832, the American whaling ship Mentor wrecked on a remote reef in the Palau archipelago in the western Pacific.  The eleven survivors of the wreck not only had to survive being stranded on a barren island, but they also found themselves in the middle of tribal wars.  European and American contact with the natives of the archipelago had been haphazard since the 1700s.  Some ships' crews were attacked, and some were warmly welcomed.  Some captains and crews treated islanders respectfully and honorably, and some deceived, cheated, and harmed the islanders. It was hard to know how strangers would be received. Indeed, the Mentor's survivors experienced both welcomes and were ultimately captured and enslaved by one of the tribes.  Dolin's written a great account of their ordeal and their survival efforts, and he also informs the reader about the whaling industry and how sailing ships operated in the 19th century.  It's also an interesting look at first contact and culture clashes.

Stories and music of Holocaust Resistance

Partisan Song:  A Holocaust Story of Resilience, Resistance, and Revenge.  James A. Grymes.  Citadel, 2026.  352 pages.  Thanks to Citadel and Kensington Publishing for the free review copy.

In 1941, Moshe Gildenman was an engineer and owner of a concrete company in Korets Ukraine.  In his free time, he was a musician, composer, and the conductor of various school and community orchestras and choruses.  Korets was occupied by German troops on July 8, and they established a Jewish ghetto.  That ghetto was liquidated in May, 1942, and an estimated 2,300 Jews were killed, including Gildenman's wife and daughter.  Gildenman, his son, his nephew and a handful of others escaped into the forest, armed with a couple of pistols and a few bullets, determined to fight back.  Eventually, Gildenman, nicknamed "Uncle Misha," formed a small but highly effective partisan brigade that carried out more than 150 missions including blowing up bridges and other strategic targets.  Although the brigade linked up with other Ukrainian and then Soviet  partisan groups, they still acted independently, under "Uncle Misha's" leadership throughout the war.  On May 2, 1945, he was among the first Soviet troops to walk the streets of Berlin.  Not only is this book a much welcome addition to the library of books about partisan resistance to the Nazis, and a little remembered part at that, but there's also a really interesting hook into the story.  Grymes, the author, is himself a musicologist, a music historian, who discovered the story through his study of Jewish music, and music becomes an important part of the story.  

Editor interview

The Foxfire Book of Appalachian Women:  Stories of Landscape and Community in the Mountain South.  Edited by Kami Ahrens.  The University of North Carolina Press, 2023.  288 pages.  

In 1966, an English teacher in a small rural school in the extreme northeast corner of Georgia published a magazine and created a program that still thrives today, a program designed to collect, to preserve, and to celebrate Appalachian stories, memories, and cultural ways.  The journal, numerous books published over the years, and audio and video interviews and demonstrations have created an invaluable treasury of Appalachian history.  This volume is a collection of 21 oral histories from a variety of women, white, black, and Cherokee who share their lives, memories, and experiences.  The reader feels like he or she is sitting on the porch with the women, maybe shelling peas, shucking corn, or quilting while they tell their stories.  Each story is unique in its own way, but they all reinforce the importance of the land and how it shaped the Appalachian culture.  Their stories are all very familiar to me in various ways, and as I read them, I realize that even though both sides of my family have deep south Georgia roots, they were very Appalachian.  Things like planting "by signs," hog killings, picking cotton and tobacco, quilting, not doing laundry on New Year's Day,  oranges and nuts in Christmas stockings --- these are all stories passed down in my family.  This - and the other Foxfire books - are must reads for anyone interested in southern history and oral history.

Documentary 

The Everlasting Life of Charlie Wall.  Paul Wilborn.  St. Petersburg Press, 2026. 304 pages.

People outside of Tampa Florida have probably never heard of Charlie Wall.  I hadn't until moving to the area six years ago.  From the 1920s into the 1940s however, Charlie Wall owned Tampa Bay and was a big player in state politics and crime.  He controlled organized crime and shaped election results, gaining a large fortune through bootlegging, strip clubs, and especially bolita.  Bolita was a hugely popular game of chance imported into Tampa Bay from Cuba.  Basically,  people bet spare coins daily on which numbered ball would be drawn from a sack.  Everybody played, often daily, sometimes for pennies a draw, sometimes more.  While bolita draws could be easily fixed and usually were, Wall always steadfastly claimed that he ran honest games.  Wall's empires started to crumble when Sicilians, with ties to larger crime families up north, moved and took over Tampa.  Wall eventually retired, after testifying in federal hearings  on organized crime.  In 1955, he was murdered in his home; it's still unsolved today.  In this book, Paul Wilborn creates a historical fiction fantasy based on the premise that Wall actually survived the fatal attack and, now in 1985, is an old man sharing his life story, and life lessons, with Trip, a young aspiring writer, who takes a job as Wall's driver and bodyguard as a step on his path toward sobriety, leaving his drug-selling past, and gathering fodder for a book.  The fantasy part comes in because not only does Wall survive his murder, but also Wilborn adjusts the real timeline a bit, making his Charlie Wall born 20 years later than the actual Wall.  Wall is the only real-life character in the book, but I think Wilborn captures the real essence of the man and his world and tells a really satisfying story in the end.  

Author talk

American Nations:  A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America.  Colin Woodard.  Viking, 2011.  384 pages.  (10 year anniversary updated edition 2021)

This is one of those books that make you think about American history in a different way than what you're used to.  It's not a new idea, but relatively new to me.  Colin Woodard's approach is to tell the story of America as a loose federation of eleven separate and distinct nations, each with its own very distinct roots, attitudes, and beliefs.  Those distinctions continue to shape us, our society, and all political discourse and outcomes today.  Basically,  according to this view, America has only been a unified country during World War II, and even then each nation came to its support of the war effort with different motivations.  The rest of the time, the nations have been making and breaking alliances with each other and in conflict with each other.  In fact, our country's founding and the principles on which it was founded were not universally supported. The six nations were at odds with each other throughout.  It all makes for an extremely interesting theory that makes sense in a lot of ways, and, in fact, some of the author's impressions in the original 2011 publication have proven to be somewhat prescient.  It's not necessarily an optimistic picture, but it makes you think.  

Reading The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man in the 21st Century

The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man.  James Weldon Johnson.  Sherman, French, & Co., 1912.  236 pages. Reprinted in 1927 by Alfred A. Knopf.

My latest classic read or re-read, one of the first books ever published in the US that presented a frank and honest portrayal of black life in the country, without offensive over-the-top stereotypes and broad comic characterizations.  It is a fictional memoir that Johnson first published anonymously, but many readers  assumed it was more factual than fiction.  It's a frame story, with the unnamed narrator revealing his life story and the secret that overshadowed his life. Born in Georgia just after the Civil War, he is the child of a formerly enslaved woman and a wealthy white man.  Knowing that they couldn't be together in Georgia, the father sent mother and child to Connecticut so that the boy could get an education and have a better life.  Because he had a very light complexion, race and color, and all that those constructs entailed, were of no concern to the boy for his first few years in school, but then realizations hit him head-on, and he begins his life-long struggle with racial identity.  He develops an extraordinary musical talent which opens up many opportunities for him, and he also realizes that he can operate within both worlds, black and white.  He decides to dedicate his life to spotlighting black music and to introduce it to the world, elevating it to the attention it deserves - "glorifying" his race and their achievement.  In the process, he has many experiences that remind him constantly of the overemphasis on race in America.  Finally, on a return visit to Georgia, he witnesses a lynching, and that leads him to make a final decision.  He gives up his race, his talent, and his "birthright" in exchange for security and safety, choosing to "pass" as white for the rest of his life, thereby becoming an "ex-colored man." The book is a brilliant depiction of race relations in America, colorism within a race, and the idea of "passing," forsaking one's true identity for expediency.   

Author Talk

The Beast in the Clouds:  The Roosevelt Brothers Deadly Quest Find the Mythical Giant Panda.  Nathalia Holt.  Atria/One Signal Publishers, 2025.  288 pages.

I have never understand the fascination with/admiration for the Kennedy family that many Americans have.  I've never found much to admire in any of them. Maybe it's all the tragedy that seems to surround the family over generations?  I've always thought that Theodore Roosevelt and his family were much more interesting and admirable, and perhaps even more tragic.  I mean, Roosevelt's first wife and mother both died on the same day, Valentine's Day, in the same house, just a few hours apart.  He had a bit of an estranged relationship with his first child, Alice, one of the most interesting of all the presidential children in history. His youngest son Quentin became a WWI pilot and was killed in action over France.  Ted, or Theodore Jr., had a long and distinguished political career and was the oldest soldier, and only general, to land on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day.  Kermit accompanied his father on numerous expeditions, including an Amazon trek that nearly killed them both, and he led a troubled personal life that ended in suicide.  This book documents the 1928-1929 expedition led by Kermit and Ted Roosevelt in the Himalayan region of Tibet and China.  The expedition was sponsored by Chicago's famous Field Museum of Natural History, and its objective was to collect specimens of the region's wildlife, specifically the almost mythical giant panda, thought to be - if it existed - a ferocious bear.  As incredible as it seems now, the animal most connected with China was almost totally unknown outside of legend well into the 20th century.  The first evidence of their existence didn't reach the West until the 19th century.  Even few Chinese claimed to have ever seen one, representations are almost nonexistent in Chinese art over the centuries although artists portrayed many other animals, and, in a country in which one can find furs, skins, and body parts of almost every animal that ever existed in the country, its furs were never offered for sale in markets.  It was the Roosevelts' job to prove its existence, to kill specimens, and to bring the hides and skeletons back for mounting and scientific study.  Here's another hard-to-reconcile bit for many of us:  I've never understood or appreciated the concept of trophy hunting and find it repugnant.  However, well into the 20th century, it was standard scientific practice to hunt down and kill thousands of animals, make orphans of baby animals, and kidnap said babies, dooming them to miserable lives in captivity, or more likely, miserable deaths.  It was even considered acceptable to go after and kill the last known specimens of a species.  The expedition was a harrowing one, and both brothers nearly died.  The expedition also changed them and their attitudes forever.  It's a great read, and a great companion read to Candice Millard's River of Doubt, about the aforementioned Amazon expedition.  

 

Author interview

The Land and Its People.  David Sedaris.  Little, Brown and Company, 2026.  272 pages.

Sardonic. Outrageous. Acerbic. Curmudgeonly. Quick-witted. Arrogant. Egocentric. Obsessive. Neurotic. Iconoclastic. Irreverent.  Finicky.  Judgemental. Fussy. Curious. Weird.  Critical.  Candid. Blunt. Attention-seeking. Funny.  Hilarious.  Honest.  Cantankerous. Contrary. Ornery. Not afraid to say what everybody is thinking.  All words used to describe David Sedaris.  Absolutely one of my favorite celebrities ever and my favorite essayist/social commentator, but you have to wonder sometimes how he has any friends or a 35-year relationship.  Nevertheless, I will read anything that he writes (OK, to be honest, I didn't love his unedited diaries and his book of animal fables, but I do love everything else.)  This is one of his best collections of essays.  

Street scenes Vienna, 1911

Anima Rising.  Christopher Moore.  William Morrow, 2025.  400 pages.

More Christopher Moore! Why haven't I read him before?  I love this book.  It's a historical fiction fantasy comedy set in 1911 Vienna.  Artist Gustav Klimt spots the body of a beautiful, young, nude woman in the canal.  Thinking she's dead, something compels him to draw the scene.  While  he's sketching, the woman sputters. She's alive.  Instead of alerting police, he takes her to the house he uses as a studio. At first, she appears mentally ill, even feral, but eventually her fantastic, incredible, totally unbelievable story emerges, with assistance from Klimt, his model Wally Neuzill, artist Egon Schiele, Sigmund Freud, and Carl Jung.  Since she initially remembers nothing about her past life, Klimt names her Judith, and she assumes a place in his world while her new friends and acquaintances help her rebuild her memory.  And what a memory! Turns out, Judith is literally the Bride of Frankenstein's Monster, resurrected by Dr. Frankenstein to be his creation's companion.  Following a harrowing existence as the monster's- Adam's - wife/prisoner/hostage in the Arctic, she makes multiple journeys into the Underworld,  alternately interacting with gods and spirits and reappearing on the Earth, both among the Inuit and in Europe.  Once her story is revealed, it becomes obvious that she is being hunted by various unknown people, putting herself and the people around her in danger.  Besides being a fantastically fun and fast-moving story, this book is full of great historical bits.  Most of the characters are real people, and many of the events are real.  I love books that lead me down multiple rabbit holes of research as I read.  There's art, philosophy, psychology and more, overlaid with very creative fantasy and totally irreverent humor.  Note:  there are elements that are not for the prudish or those easily triggered by open and frank sexuality. And I highly recommend the audio version; narrator Mary Jane Wells is a genius at voices and characters, adding tremendously to the enjoyment. Picture a cross between Mel Brooks and Lenny Bruce, maybe even raunchier.  I will definitely be reading more Moore, especially the historically themed titles.  

Movie Trailer 2018

Ready Player One.  Ernest Cline.  Ballantine Books, 2011.  384 pages.

I consciously avoided Ready Player One when it was the biggest novel on the planet and later when the movie was released, for two reasons:  1) my natural aversion to anything that is universally popular and 2) I am not and have never been a gamer - Tetris is as game-y as I get.  I know next to nothing about video games, and I'm totally happy with that.  It's been 15 years now (impossible!) since the book came out, so I decided to try, and I'm glad I did.  You probably already know, but this is the plot summary:  "In the year 2045, reality is an ugly place. The only time Wade Watts really feels alive is when he’s jacked into the OASIS, a vast virtual world where most of humanity spends their days. When the eccentric creator of the OASIS dies, he leaves behind a series of fiendish puzzles, based on his obsession with the pop culture of decades past. Whoever is first to solve them will inherit his vast fortune—and control of the OASIS itself."  The result is a hugely fun adventure filled with 80s nostalgia perfect for a Gen X 80s teen like myself.  The fact that I'm not a gamer did not affect my enjoyment at all.  It was a lot of fun.  (And the audiobook narrator is Wil Wheaton who has become one of my favorite narrators.)

1996 Movie Trailer

Mother Night.  Kurt Vonnegut.  Fawcett Publications, 1962.  192 pages.  

Latest classic read/re-read.  First published in 1962 and inspired by the war crimes trial of Adolf Eichmann and Lord Haw-Haw, a British traitor who did pro-Nazi radio propaganda broadcasts, it's in the form of the fictional memoir of Howard W. Campbell Jr, and American citizen who moved to Germany in 1923, remained as the Nazi regime took over, and became a well known, author, playwright, and propagandist.  However, he was also secretly an American spy,  transmitting coded information - so coded that he had no idea what he was passing on -  in his broadcasts.  The trouble is that only three people beside himself knew that he was an American spy.  At the war's end, Campbell became a war criminal.  Initially captured by soldier Bernard O'Hare (Campbell and O-Hare both appear in Vonnegut's later Slaughterhouse Five.), Campbell's handler strikes a deal for his release, and Campbell lives the next 15 years in relative obscurity and anonymity in New York City.  That life comes crashing down when his identity is revealed and publicized, and Israel, the USSR, and West Germany all start demanding his extradition for trial.  Campbell writes this memoir while awaiting trial in an Israeli prison.  The resulting novel is a dark-humored parody of white supremacy and extreme fanaticism, but the larger theme is really that the world is almost never black and white; everything is gray.  It's a powerful short read that affirms Vonnegut's stature as one of the greatest American novelists.  

America250: Histories, Memoirs, and Travelogues - Florida and Georgia

 

  One of the most often cited defining traits of Americans is restlessness.  From nomadic Native Americans to the European colonizers and immigrants crossing oceans to start new lives to space exploration, Americans have seemed to share the desire to move, to explore, to test frontiers, and to push boundaries.  That trait has inspired many contributions to a huge literary nonfiction genre, travelogues.  It's one of my favorite genres, especially the travelogues that blend history, memoir, encounters and conversations with a wide range of Americans, and keen observations about American history, culture, and attitudes.  This is the first of a series of posts about some of the books that fit this genre.  In some, authors re-trace paths of historic explorers, while some authors set out with a particular theme or mission in mind.  Some  are histories of famous treks in American history and the explorers who did the trekking.  A few are journals and primary accounts written by the actual participants, and there are a few works of fiction as well.

    Here's a selection of a few books from and about the states that I've lived in, Georgia and Florida.

Taylor Brown is a very popular current southern novelist.  My favorite Brown novel is The River of Kings.  The River of Kings by Taylor Brown is a novel that interweaves three timelines: two brothers kayaking down Georgia's Altamaha River to scatter their father's ashes, their father's life as a shrimper and drug smuggler, and the story of a 1564 French expedition to the same river, led by artist Jacques Le Moyne (discussed in previous travelogue post, pre-1800).  Having grown up near and fished on the Altamaha, Georgia's greatest river, this book really resonated with me.  The Altamaha was once a major transportation route through Georgia.  Barges carried goods, and lumbermen floated logs down the river to the Atlantic all the way into the 1930s. An attorney in Lyons, Georgia (the county seat of my home county) named T. Ross Sharpe also wrote a column for the local newspaper in the 1950s and 1960s in which he recorded stories of life along the Altamaha going back to the early 1900s.  The stories were collected into a volume, which I was lucky to find a copy of, and, since 2005, the community has put on an annual folk play dramatizing a selection of stories.  A few years ago, one of my cousins published a guide to Georgia's 159 counties called Georgia Patchwork.  She traveled to each county, took photos, and collected stories about each one.  There's a little less travel involved in John Berendt's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is centered in 1980s Savannah, Georgia.  Ostensibly, a true crime story, Berendt actually an exploration of the city and a number of eccentric real-life actors.  A lot of Savannahians enjoyed a long 15 minutes of fame as a result, and 32 years after the book's publication, Savannah still makes lots of money from tourism generated by the book and subsequent movie.  Few authors have built as huge a career off of one book as Berendt has.  

Shortly after moving to Florida, I was fortunate to meet prolific writer Craig Pittman and to discover his books.  Pittman is a very talented journalist known for exposing state and local corruption, especially related to environmental issues, and for highlighting the people who are real Florida characters and who do or have done their part to make Florida the unique place that it is.

Joshua Ginsberg is another acquaintance I've made since moving to Florida.  He's published guidebooks to the weird, wacky, and wonderful things  in Tampa Bay and Orlando.  Whether you're a long-timer, a new resident, a snowbird, or a tourist, you can use his books to make your own adventures.

  

Finding Florida  is a general history of the state.  At the Dawn of Tourism tells the story of the men and women who were among the first tourists in Florida and who inspired the tourists who followed.  Art Levy's book is another great collection of stories about people from various walks of life who have contributed to Florida's Florida-ness.  Cathy Salustri's book book is more of a true travelogue.  Salustri made a 5,000 mile road trip through the backroads and small towns of Florida, inspired by the 1930s guidebook published by the New Deal agency, the Federal Writers' Project, visiting the locations and driving the roads described.  Rick Kilby has written a couple of books about Florida's famous springs and waterways, attractions that have inspired travel for hundreds of years.