Books About Books

     You know you're a reader if you read books about books, but, surprisingly, there doesn't seem to be a subgenre name for this sub- or sub-subgenre, at least that I could find.  Does bibliophilia work? I don't know, but there are a lot of books that fit.

    The most recent book that fits here is Americanon, by Jess McHugh, published in June 2021. In Americanon, McHugh looks at thirteen nonfiction books that  had huge impacts on America and Americans. These books sold hundreds of thousands, even millions of copies, and many of them are still published in updated versions decades or centuries after their first publication.  With each book, she goes into detail about their origin, their authors and their impact.  She includes books like The Old Farmers Almanac, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, McGuffey's Readers, Noah Webster's Dictionary and spellers, How to Win Friends and Influence People, and Emily Post's Etiquette.  These books all are self-help books, meant to make better Americans of their readers. In fact, they are very nationalistic. For example, Webster's Dictionary and spellers and McGuffey's Readers  were created in order to standardize the language and education of Americans of different regions with different cultural backgrounds, creating a new American culture and imparting moral lessons along the way. These books had a massive impact on America; updated versions are still published. In fact, I was surprised to learn that some homeschoolers still use McGuffey's Readers. I learned a lot from this book, and it was very entertaining.

    The other "books about books" titles that I list here are pretty self-explanatory, but I do want to talk about a couple of other titles. One is Books: A Memoir by Larry McMurtry. McMurtry was one of my favorite American novelists, known especially for westerns like Lonesome Dove, Streets of Laredo, and Comanche Moon, and he just passed away in March of 2021.  Books is about his personal journey as a reader and then as a writer. He writes about growing up in his "bookless" hometown of Archer City, Texas, and his transition from cowboy to reader to writer to "bookman," eventually opening several bookstores specializing in rare and collectable books. It's a very entertaining read.

    Finally, a great source of "books about books" is the Great Sources  catalog. Simply search for "books," and you'll find numerous lectures about books  that have had a great influence on world or American history. You can find courses on their website and on Audible. 

O, PIoneers!

     Real history often is, by definition, pioneer history. I mean, we don't usually remember runners-up or second place finishers. For whatever reason, the American spirit seems to be linked to the pioneer spirit. These books tell the stories of pioneers.

    Everybody of a certain age knows the name Daniel Boone from their childhood; he's one of the American pioneers who has been mythologized. Even before his death, his name was known far and wide, and stories were told of him as a trailblazer, literally leading the first white settlers into what is now Kentucky, and Indian fighter. He's been the subject of plays, books, and tv shows. Authors Bob Drury and Tom Clavin's recently published Blood and Treasure endeavors to tell the full story of the man behind the legend.  It's a page-turner for sure; Boone's life may have been even more thrilling than portrayed in popular culture. I learned a lot about Boone, and I learned even more about the Native Americans of that region and the politics within their tribes and amongst the tribes, very complicated from the beginning but when you throw in the French, British, and Americans, everything becomes even more complicated. And Daniel Boone was in the middle of all of this. I recommend this book. 

    Unlike Daniel Boone, most Americans have probably never heard of Eliza Lucas, the woman credited with making indigo a viable cash crop on South Carolina plantations in the 18th century. The Indigo Girl  is a work of historical fiction that is based on a lot of historical research, including Lucas' own letters. In 1739, Lucas' father leaves his family in search of military glory for himself, leaving 16-year old Eliza in charge of running three South Carolina plantations. While her mother works hard to get her married to a man who will save the family fortune, Lucas has no desire to marry. She throws herself headfirst into the problems of the plantation, and she decides to grow indigo (used for making indigo dye), a valuable cash crop that had not been successfully grown in the colonies. After many setbacks and several years, she succeeds, and indigo becomes a valuable cash crop on the South Carolina and Georgia coast. ( A lot of people don't realize that cotton didn't become a hugely successful cash crop until after 1800 and the invention of the cotton gin. Rice, indigo, and tobacco were the most important southern crops.)

    Eugene Bullard was the son of a formerly enslaved man and an indigenous Creek woman born into a life of sharecropping in southwest Georgia in 1895. Very few avenues were open to him, and most of his contemporaries found themselves trapped in the endless cycle of sharecropping life in Jim Crow Georgia. Bullard would ever be satisfied in that life, however. He left home at age 11, eventually making his way to Europe where he became a boxer and a stage performer. Settling in Paris, he continued as a boxer and worked in various nightclubs. Then World War I broke out, and Bullard enlisted in the French Foreign Legion. One thing led to another, and he soon found himself in pilot training, and he became the first black American military pilot in history, but he flew for the French army, not the American. After the war, he resumed the Parisian nightclub life, managing clubs at the height of the jazz age.  It's a great story.

    Most recently, I've finished Murder at the Mission. It's the story of the first white American missionaries in the Oregon territory, Marcus and Narcissa Whitman. The Whitmans built a mission and lived among the Cayuse Indians for a few years before they were killed. Their killing became a martyrdom in American history, particularly in the history of the Pacific Northwest. Murder  is an excellent account of the Whitmans' lives and deaths, but that's not really the author's main purpose. The book's subject is really the power of myth-making in American history, the story of how the Whitmans' lives and deaths were manipulated by others in order to further their own personal and professional lives and fortunes. It's an excellent study of how history can be be manufactured and manipulated, with the effects lasting for generations.

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.

Let Your Freak Flag Fly !?

     Here, now, in the year 2021, the word "freak" is just one of many, many troublesome words that have been declared politically incorrect. However, there was a time in the 19th century when the word had a neutral connotation, usually referring to a person who is physically deformed or has some extraordinary medical condition or body modification. For some, the word even became a positive identifier for those people who exhibited their differences and unique traits to crowds  of the curious who paid to see them. There were some freaks who saw their differences as an avenue to a life they could not have dreamed of otherwise, a life of traveling the world, becoming celebrities, and earning a living. Unfortunately, there were also many acts of abuse, neglect, and cruelty committed against freaks, many of whom were mentally impaired. Historians and authors have found lots of engrossing stories within freak shows that hit on every aspect of human nature.

    Truevine is the story of two black brothers, George and Willie Muse, born to a sharecropping family in Truevine Virginia, a black settlement near Roanoke.  At the ages of nine and six in 1899, they were lured out of the tobacco field by a white man offering candy. Why? The brothers were albinos, and the man was a "talent" scout for sideshows, one of the men who made a living by traveling the country and finding freaks.  The boys' mother was devastated, and she spent 28 years looking for them. While she searched, the boys were told their mother was dead, and they were groomed to become one of the most well known sideshow acts of the early 20th century. Like many black sideshow performers, they were displayed as wild savages, plucked from the deepest, darkest jungles of some exotic locale. Named Eko and Iko, they were even billed as Martian ambassadors. Truevine tells their story, and the story of the efforts to find them and return them to their family.  The author, Beth Macy, also does a great job of describing both worlds that George and Willie were a part of, Jim Crow America and the sideshow world.

    The second book I'm recommending is not really a book; it's a podcast and an Audible original, Stephen Fry's Victorian Secrets.  I love Stephen Fry; he's one of my favorite celebrities. I enjoy his books, his movie and tv appearances, and his narration. Victorian Secrets is a great listen. Most of us have a very stereotypical view of the Victorian Age, that it was drab, dour, stuffy, reserved, and impossibly formal. Each chapter or episode goes beyond the stiff façade and reveals some very un-stereotypical stories. There are chapters on sexual fetishes, pornography, homosexuality, royal secrets, crime, etc., but there is also an interesting episode about sideshows and some of the more famous performers in Victorian England. Secrets  is definitely not for children, but adults will find it very interesting and entertaining.

    Bright and Distant Shores is a novel by Dominic Smith, an Australian-born writer of historic fiction. So far, he's written five books, and they all look interesting. Bright and Distant Shores is set in Chicago during the Gilded Age, late 1800s, early 1900s. The Chicago World's Fair is happening, skyscrapers are going up and changing the cityscape, and wealthy men are competing for the top spot on the social, economic, and philanthropic ladders.  One of these tycoons (a fictional insurance giant) wants to own the tallest skyscraper in the city, and, in the process, he wants to one-up his neighbor, Marshall Field, department store magnate who founded the famous Field Museum of Natural History. To top Field, he commissions Owen Graves, a young collector, to make a voyage to the South Seas in order to collect Melanesian and Oceanic artifacts to put on display. He also wants Graves to bring back living Melanesians in order to create a village on the roof of his skyscraper as a publicity stunt to draw crowds, creating in effect a human zoo. Human zoos were the rage in the late 1800s and early 1900s. World Fairs brought small groups of people from exotic locations around the world, and visitors saw representations of different cultures that they wouldn't be able to see otherwise. The exhibits soon became big draws in zoos, parks, and traveling shows in America and Europe. Justified as "science", the human zoo exhibits were generally sad and dismal places, and many of the exhibited people had terrible lives, succumbing to depression, disease, and death, hundreds or thousands of miles away from their homes and families. Shores is a great adventure story, following Owen on his voyage and telling the story of the Melanesian brother and sister that he brings back to Chicago.

    If you are interested in human zoos, here are a couple of other books published relatively recently about two famous individuals who were exhibited. The idea of human zoos obviously doesn't sit well with us in the 21st century, and the stories can be quite sad, but history can't always be happy.

 

       

Graphic Novels for Black History Month

     I recently picked up four graphic novels about Black history recently that you may be interested in.

    

    The first two are Incognegro and its prequel, Incognegro Renaissance. They are interesting mysteries set in the 1920s, with interesting twists. The author, Mat Johnson, was inspired by the Harlem Renaissance and the investigators who documented cases of discrimination and lynching throughout the country. Like his main character, Johnson is a black man who has a very light complexion, and, in fact, could "pass" for white. His character, Zane, is a writer, and he uses his skin color to infiltrate white racist lynch mobs and organizations. He then writes the stories using the pen name Incognegro, a play on the word incognito. In these books, he finds himself embroiled in a couple of interesting cases. 

    Strange Fruit  is a two volume set of short biographies of important and interesting black Americans that the majority of Americans may not know about, written by Joel Christian Gill.  Each book has 10 or 12 stories, several of the stories were new to me. They were all interesting, and well told graphically.

Books I'm Looking Forward To in 2021, Part 1 of 3

     My To-Be-Read list grows and grows. I just can't keep up.  So what do I do? I look up lists of books scheduled to be released in 2021. Makes perfect sense, right? After looking at a few lists, I thought I would share some of the titles that sound really interesting to me. ( Amazon's descriptions used, with my thoughts in italics.)

    

    In the spring of 1942, the United States government forced 120,000 Japanese Americans from their homes in California, Oregon, Washington, and Arizona and sent them to incarceration camps across the West. Nearly 14,000 of them landed on the outskirts of Cody, Wyoming, at the base of Heart Mountain.

Behind barbed wire fences, they faced racism, cruelty, and frozen winters. Trying to recreate comforts from home, many established Buddhist temples and sumo wrestling pits. Kabuki performances drew hundreds of spectators—yet there was little hope.

That is, until the fall of 1943, when the camp’s high school football team, the Eagles, started its first season and finished it undefeated, crushing the competition from nearby, predominantly white high schools. Amid all this excitement, American politics continued to disrupt their lives as the federal government drafted men from the camps for the front lines—including some of the Eagles. As the team’s second season kicked off, the young men faced a choice to either join the Army or resist the draft. Teammates were divided, and some were jailed for their decisions.

The Eagles of Heart Mountain honors the resilience of extraordinary heroes and the power of sports in a sweeping and inspirational portrait of one of the darkest moments in American history.

My wife and I visited Heart mountain a few years ago. It was one of the most moving historic visit experiences I've had. There are so many stories of the Japanese internment camps that must be told, and this is one that I don't recall being mentioned in the Heart Mountain museum.(Blog http://histocrats.blogspot.com/2016/08/reluctant-history.html )

    The surprising story of how George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson came to despair for the future of the nation they had created

Americans seldom deify their Founding Fathers any longer, but they do still tend to venerate the Constitution and the republican government that the founders created. Strikingly, the founders themselves were far less confident in what they had wrought, particularly by the end of their lives. In fact, most of them—including George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson—came to deem America’s constitutional experiment an utter failure that was unlikely to last beyond their own generation. Fears of a Setting Sun is the first book to tell the fascinating and too-little-known story of the founders’ disillusionment.

As Dennis Rasmussen shows, the founders’ pessimism had a variety of sources: Washington lost his faith in America’s political system above all because of the rise of partisanship, Hamilton because he felt that the federal government was too weak, Adams because he believed that the people lacked civic virtue, and Jefferson because of sectional divisions laid bare by the spread of slavery. The one major founder who retained his faith in America’s constitutional order to the end was James Madison, and the book also explores why he remained relatively optimistic when so many of his compatriots did not. As much as Americans today may worry about their country’s future, Rasmussen reveals, the founders faced even graver problems and harbored even deeper misgivings.

A vividly written account of a chapter of American history that has received too little attention, Fears of a Setting Sun will change the way that you look at the American founding, the Constitution, and indeed the United States itself.

    The founding of the United States and the creation of the Constitution were unprecedented. Although there were many influences from history, no people had ever revolted against their colonial masters and established a republic.  That fact that it has lasted so long, even battered and bruised from time to time, is also unprecedented. Many of the men involved didn't have high expectations for longevity. This looks like very interesting book, maybe offering lessons for us today and in the future.

    The New York Times bestselling author of Escape From Camp 14 returns with the riveting and revealing story of one of the most persistent "alternative facts" in American history: the story of a missionary, a tribe, a massacre, and a myth that shaped the American West

In 1836, two missionaries and their wives were among the first Americans to cross the Rockies by covered wagon on what would become the Oregon Trail. Dr. Marcus Whitman and Reverend Henry Spalding were headed to present-day Washington state and Idaho, where they aimed to convert members of the Cayuse and Nez Perce tribes. Both would fail spectacularly as missionaries. But Spalding would succeed as a propagandist, inventing a story that recast his friend as a hero, and helped to fuel the massive westward migration that would eventually lead to the devastation of those they had purportedly set out to save.

As Spalding told it, after uncovering a British and Catholic plot to steal the Oregon Territory from the United States, Whitman undertook a heroic solo ride across the country to alert the President. In fact, he had traveled to Washington to save his own job. Soon after his return, Whitman, his wife, and eleven others were massacred by a group of Cayuse. Though they had ample reason - Whitman supported the explosion of white migration that was encroaching on their territory, and seemed to blame for a deadly measles outbreak - the Cayuse were portrayed as murderous savages. Five were executed.

This fascinating, impeccably researched narrative traces the ripple effect of these events across the century that followed. While the Cayuse eventually lost the vast majority of their territory, thanks to the efforts of Spalding and others who turned the story to their own purposes, Whitman was celebrated well into the middle of the 20th century for having "saved Oregon." Accounts of his heroic exploits appeared in congressional documents, The New York Times, and Life magazine, and became a central founding myth of the Pacific Northwest.

Exposing the hucksterism and self-interest at the root of American myth-making, Murder at the Mission reminds us of the cost of American expansion, and of the problems that can arise when history is told only by the victors.

The "myth that shaped the American West" . There is so much wealth to be mined here, and the development of the Oregon territory is a part of the story that I personally am a little weak on. (I've already pre-ordered my copy.) 

The Best of 2020

      "The Best of 2020." For most of us, "Best" and "2020" probably don't belong in the same sentence, but I thought I'd look back at my reading log for 2020.  It's been a mixed bag - 30 books, including memoirs, fiction, short story collection, history, political satire, comedy, and autobiographies. Some have been great, some good, some unfinishable. First, my favorite three reads of the year.

    The Cooking Gene by Michael Twitty is one of my favorite books of all time. History and food are two of my great passions, and this book is a fantastic combination of the two. Twitty is a culinary historian who cooks traditional 19th century southern food, using 19th century techniques. He often appears at historic sites as a historical interpreter, in costume and demonstrating antebellum cooking as it was done then, largely by enslaved Africans who fused their tastes, skills, and knowledge into the mix, creating what we now know as southern food or soul food. As a gay, black, Jewish man, his perspective opened many doors in my mind, and I learned from almost every page. I've also done a couple of his included recipes.  The Cooking Gene is a book that I will return to again and again, and I can't wait to see him in person at an appearance in the future.  "The Old South is a place where people use food to tell themselves who they are, and to tell stories about where they've been."

    Erik Larson is one of my favorite authors. Winston Churchill is one of my favorite historical figures. Lo and behold, the two meet in The Splendid and the Vile, a record of the year 1940. The United Kingdom was standing alone against the Axis onslaught that had conquered much of Europe. Hitler turned his attention to conquering Britain, and Britain was battered and beaten by the Blitz, almost to the point of collapse. Winston Churchill returned from political exile to lead the British people during its darkest hours. The Splendid and the Vile  sets the scene in great detail, and I really got a feel for just how close conquest was. This is my favorite Larson book, Larson at his best.

    My last choice is not really history related, but it's by another one of my favorite authors, You may know David Sedaris from his essays on National Public Radio, in magazines, or his occasional late night talk show appearances. To put it bluntly, David Sedaris is a weird little man who sees the world through his own weird little lenses, and he's made a career of writing essays that can be hilarious, ironic, life-affirming, depressing, and sad, all at the same time. Most of his essays are based on his own life and his own family, all just as weird as he is. This fall, he published The Best of Me, a collection of his works that he personally curated.  It doesn't included some of his most famous works, but works that he personally thought were his best. In fact, even though I have read all of his books in the past, there were only a few stories that I had read before, and I didn't mind reading them again.  Sedaris does extensive book tours around the world, reading stories. In fact, this is his way to "workshop" them so to speak, since the readings often lead to revisions, and he often reads unpublished work in order to edit it. If you see him speak in person, you can see him constantly marking up his script as he reads, based on the audience's reactions.  If you want to give Sedaris a try, I would suggest you start with this collection, and listen to the audiobook version, which he reads.  As a sample from the book, here's one of my favorite Sedaris stories, and it's a Christmas story. (Warning: he does use explicit language and write about adult themes.)

 

A Continuing Series.... Or Several....

  

There’s something comfortable about the familiar. Everybody has that favorite television series, movie series, or book series to which they like to return. You know and like the characters, and you’re familiar with the creator’s storytelling style. It may even be like having a conversation with an old friend. Over the last year, I’ve read a few books in series that I’ve enjoyed.

What if Abraham Lincoln and his longtime friend Joshua Speed solved mysteries in their days as young law partners in Illinois?  Jonathan Putnam, a nationally renowned lawyer and a Lincoln scholar,  writes books that imagine exactly that.  A House Divided is the fourth in the series. Inspired by actual events and lots of historical research, House Divided has Lincoln and Speed attempting to save their client from being convicted of murder and finding themselves mixed up in a great financial mystery.  In the process, they find their friendship shaken by the appearance of a headstrong and forward-thinking young woman named Mary Todd.  A House Divided  is just as entertaining and interesting as the previous three entries in the series.

The Council of Twelve is the seventh book in a fictional series written by Oliver Potzsch. Potzsch wrote the first in the series, The Hangman’s Daughter, after he discovered that his family history included a long line of city executioners.  That discovery led him into deep research of the lives of medieval and Renaissance-era executioners, and he found that the job was often hereditary, and, while the job of torturing and executing prisoners was considered essential, the executioners and their families lived in a very unique social position. On one hand, they were seen as unclean and unfit to live amongst the population, but, on the other hand, they were often sought out for their knowledge of healing and medicine.  In The Council of Twelve, the hangman Jakob and his family travel to Munich for a meeting of the hangmen’s guild.  In Munich, the family discovers that a number of young women have died under mysterious circumstances, and they set out to discover why. As in the previous six books, the mystery is intriguing, the story is entertaining, and it’s fun to see the family member grow and develop.  For history lovers, there is also so much great historical detail about the time and place that you can almost picture the streets.

When Tony Hillerman died in 2008, many of his fans were afraid they had read the last of Navajo policemen Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee. Hillerman had written 18 contemporary mystery novels starring Leaphorn and Chee that were full of the history, the legends, and the flavor of the Southwest and of Navajo and Pueblo culture.  No need to worry though; Hillerman’s daughter, Anne Hillerman, picked up the pen and continued where her father left off. So far, she has written three Leaphorn and Chee novels, and they stand up to her father’s work.  

Author Spotlight: Elie Wiesel

By Jeff Burns

Recently, the world mourned the passing of Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Elie Wiesel.  At age 16, Wiesel was liberated from the Buchenwald concentration camp.  His Romanian family perished in the Holocaust.  Wiesel survived and dedicated his life to educating the world about the Holocaust and to being a champion for the oppressed around the world.  He wrote 57 books over the course of his 87 years. Here are a few of my favorites, and I hope to re-read some of these soon.

Many of us are familiar with his first work, Night, published in 1960.  It is commonly read in high schools, and, if everyone had to read one book about the Holocaust, it would have to be this one.  Night is Wiesel’s memoir of his “life” in Auschwitz and Buchenwald. Only about 120 pages, it is one of the heaviest books you will ever read. Many people do not know, however, that Night is the first work of a trilogy, and the other two books are just as powerful.  Dawn is the story of a young Holocaust survivor and Jewish guerilla fighting for independence in British Palestine.  Day centers on the death of a Holocaust survivor in New York City.  All three books poignantly explore life, death, guilt,  brutality, inhumanity, and humanity.

Wiesel’s two-volume memoirs, All Rivers Run to the Sea and And the Sea is Never Full, takes the reader from his childhood memories of his Romanian village through his career as spokesman for humanity.

The Gates of the Forest tells the story of a Jewish teenager who is the lone survivor of his family, wandering through caves, forests, and villages, seeking some sort of order or explanation. The Town Behind the Wall follows a Holocaust survivor as he returns to his home village in Hungary, now behind the Iron Curtain. As he finds himself imprisoned as a spy, he grapples with the bystander question:  what did the people of his village do as the Germans deported their Jewish neighbors to death camps? The Trial of God is a play, set in a Ukranian village in 1649 following a pogrom in which almost all of the Jewish residents had been murdered or driven from their homes.  A traveling group of actors arrives at an inn, and the Jewish innkeeper demands that they put God on trial for abandoning humanity.

Has God abandoned humanity?  How can God allow things like the Holocaust to happen?  How can human beings so cruel and brutal?  How can human beings stand by as brutality happens? How does humanity – and individual humans – survive such experiences?  How can such things be prevented?  These are all the questions that Wiesel addressed in his writing, and we would be hard pressed to find a better “spokesman for humanity.”

Eat Your History! History through Cookbooks, Part 2

By Jeff Burns

My wife and I love cooking (and eating) and often combine that love with our love of history.  Over the years, we’ve accumulated a collection of cookbooks.  Our favorites are the ones that combine great recipes and culture and history.  Foodways are an important part of learning and enjoying history, and, of course, you can find interesting cookbooks in bookstores, but don’t forget to look for cookbooks in museums and historic sites as well.  You can also find them in garage sales, used book sales, and on Ebay.  Here are some of the books in our collection.

We love Indian food, and we have a couple of Indian cookbooks.  Madhur Jaffrey is the undisputed queen of Indian cuisine in the United Kingdom and the United States.  You might say that she did for Indian cooking what Julia Child did for French cuisine or Paula Deen for southern food.  Besides cooking on television and publishing cookbooks, she’s also a noted actress and author.  She has a great gift for demystifying Indian favorites and for imparting cultural history along the way.

The Classic 1000 Indian Recipes is an expensive book, filled with more recipes than you can make, and there aren’t glossy photos. The recipes are thorough, but doable.  The Art of Brazilian Cookery has been around for a long time, first published in 1960.  Brazil’s culture reflects a combination of many different cultures; it is a true melting pot, and the recipes reflect that. 

Analogy time again:  Before anybody had ever heard of Paula Deen, there was a queen of southern cuisine on television, in magazines, and publishing cookbooks. That queen was Nathalie Dupree. Even though she was born in New Jersey, she grew up in the South, and she became the first woman since Julia Child to host more than one hundred cooking episodes on public television. Nathalie Dupree’s Matters of Taste represented sort of a departure for her as it is not solely southern cuisine.  Instead she blends stories and recipes from all over America.

The Jewish Holiday Kitchen is a treasury of knowledge about the traditions and rituals of Jewish holidays, and an important part of those holidays is food. Jewish or not, it makes for interesting reading and tasty food.

Alton Brown is a current star on the food scene.  His show “Good Eats” entertained and educated for years, he’s been a staple on The Food Network since its start, and he’s currently on another tour of sold out venues across the country with his combination of food, science, music, and comedy.  A few years ago, he undertook a motorcycle road trip along the Mississippi River, from the Gulf of Mexico to Minnesota, and made the trip into a TV series.  He introduced the viewers to the best roadside food along the way, the food and traditions that make each region and community unique.  The accompanying book, Feasting on Asphalt, is part travelogue and part cookbook and every bit as entertaining as the television show.  We’ve not only used some of the recipes, but we also used the book as a guidebook for our own roadtrip, stopping at some of the locations he wrote about.

Musical Notes: Rock Star Autobiographies

By Jeff Burns

I am a child of the 1970s and 1980s, so like most people, my musical tastes are somewhat stuck in that era.  80s British New Wave is my favorite, but my taste covers the period. For me, the fall of 2015 was a great time as publishers released four autobiographies from four of my favorite artists, all trendsetters and survivors of decades in the music industry.   Why did they all have to come out at once? It’s an embarrassment of riches. They’re all on my reading list; maybe they should have a place on yours too.

 

Elvis Costello, born Declan McManus, was the son of a crooner and followed his father into the music world, just following his own punk/rock path.  However, musical boundaries don’t exist for Elvis, and he has been influenced by and collaborated with artists from every genre, from George Jones and Loretta Lynn to Aretha Franklin and The Clash. He’s known for his complex and meaningful songwriting.  Turns out, he proves in Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink that he can write prose as well. I was lucky enough to attend a book talk/performance in Atlanta, and the stories he told were great.

Tom Jones’ autobiography, Over the Top and Back, relates the story  of his Welsh upbringing and his unlikely rise to international superstar and sex symbol.  In his career spanning more than six decades, he has also crossed boundaries, performing in rock, blues, country, and gospel among others.  At 75 years old, he’s still a phenomenal artist.

Chrissie Hynde is one of the leading ladies of rock and roll.  She is the quintessential rock chick. Whether as a solo artist or as the front woman of The Pretenders, she’s rocked for forty years.  Reckless: My Life as a Pretender covers that career, in which a girl from Akron Ohio became a major player in the London rock scene.

If Chrissie Hynde is the illustration of the word “rock” in the dictionary, Grace Jones’ word would be “wild.”  Model, actress, disco queen, rocker, pop star, Grace Jones doesn’t follow anybody’s rules, even her own, since the title of her autobiography is I’ll Never Write My Memoirs.  She is definitely an iconoclast, and her book promises to be a wild read.