rocketjk's 2019 in-house reading

Converses2019 ROOT (READ OUR OWN TOMES)

Afegeix-te a LibraryThing per participar.

rocketjk's 2019 in-house reading

Aquest tema està marcat com "inactiu": L'últim missatge és de fa més de 90 dies. Podeu revifar-lo enviant una resposta.

1rocketjk
Editat: gen. 3, 2020, 4:53 pm




Greetings, all! Coming over along with QuestingA from the old "Off the Shelf Challenge" group. My overall goal is to read 50 books this year, but generally about a third of my reading comes off my home shelves (instead of newly purchased!). So I'm going to say 17 off the shelf will my goal for this year.

Book 1: Scheherezade: Tales from the Thousand and One Nights translated by A. J. Arberry
Book 2: The Life of Andrew Jackson by Marquis James
Book 3: Milkman by Anna Banks
Book 4: Canaries in the Mineshaft: Essays on Politics and Media by Renata Adler
Book 5: The Land of Cain by Peter Lappin
Book 6: Gilbert and Sulllivan: A Dual Biography by Michael Ainger
Book 7: Guerilla Days in Ireland: a First-Hand Account of the Black and Tan War (1919-1921) by Tom Barry
Book 8: Netherland by Joseph O'Neill
Book 9: The Wrecker by Clive Cussler and Justin Scott
Book 10: Indefensible: One Lawyer's Journey into the Inferno of American Justice by David Feige
Book 11: Theodore Dreiser Presents the Living Thoughts of Thoreau by Henry David Thoreau
Book 12: Death in the Andes by Mario Vargas Llosa
Book 13: For the Sake of Shadows by Max Miller
Book 14: One of Our Thursdays is Missing by Jasper Fforde
Book 15: New Stories for Men edited by Charles Grayson
Book 16: In Shelly's Leg by Sara Vogan
Book 17: The Secret History of the War, Volume 1 by Waverly Root
Book 18: The Apostle by Sholem Asch
Book 19: The Longest Debate: a Legislative History of the 1964 Civil Rights Act by Charles W. Whalen and Barbara Whalen
Book 20: The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World View by Richard Tarnas
Book 21: Anybody's Gold: The Story of California's Mining Towns by Joseph Henry Jackson
Book 22: Action at Aquila by Hervey Allen
Book 23: The Liberation of Mankind: The Story of Man's Struggle for the Right to Think by Hendrik Willem Van Loon
Book 24: Esquire Magazine - 40th Anniversary Celebration - October, 1973 edited by Don Erickson
Book 25: Rampart Street by Everett and Olga Webber
Book 26: In My Father's Court by Isaac Bashevis Singer

2rocketjk
gen. 13, 2019, 2:24 pm

Book 1: Scheherezade: Tales from the Thousand and One Nights translated by A. J. Arberry

According to this book's back cover, famed British orientalist A.J. Arberry's translation of these famous tales was "the first new rendering in over half a century." This relatively slim volume contains only four tales, actually, "Aladdin and the Enchanted Lamp," "Judar and His Brothers," "Aboukir and Abousir" and "The Amorous Goldsmith." It was fun and interesting, in particular, to read Aladdin as translated directly from the Marmaluke-era Arabic (Arberry estimates the stories to date from around 1500 AD) into contemporary English, as opposed to the Disney version of the tale most American children have come to know. Not surprisingly, elements of the story are darker than the sanitized version we know. Arberry, in his interesting (though frustratingly plot-spoiler laden) introduction points out the degree to which, he believes, these tales were meant as satire on the society of the day. This volume was originally published by George Allen & Unwin in 1953. My copy is a beautiful Mentor Books paperback edition, and a first edition of such, dating from 1955. That makes my copy pretty much exactly as old as I am!

3rabbitprincess
gen. 13, 2019, 5:24 pm

Welcome and good luck with your challenge!

4connie53
gen. 14, 2019, 2:00 am

Welcome to the ROOTers, Jerry. Have a nice time ROOTing.

p.s. Your ticker says 20 ROOTs but your post >1 rocketjk: says 17?

5MissWatson
gen. 14, 2019, 6:14 am

Welcome! Sounds like a very good start to your ROOTing!

6Jackie_K
gen. 14, 2019, 7:50 am

Welcome to the group! Enjoy your reading year! :)

7rocketjk
Editat: gen. 14, 2019, 11:54 am

>4 connie53: 17-ish!

8connie53
Editat: feb. 3, 2019, 1:49 am

>7 rocketjk: Ahh, got it!

9rocketjk
Editat: feb. 3, 2019, 11:52 am

Book 2: The Life of Andrew Jackson by Marquis James

This detailed biography, actually two books republished together as one volume in 1937, won a Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 1938. It is very detailed (786 pages worth), well written and quite fascinating for anyone with an interest in American History. However, it is a product of its time in that James white-washes almost entirely Jackson's duplicitous and in many cases murderous actions towards Native Americans, both as a military leader and as president (the Trail of Tears, for example, is not mentioned other than as what is implied to be a benign forced movement of Indians from Georgia and Florida to west of the Mississippi) and James actually comes up with a short but jaw-dropping defense of slavery. So in the reading I learned about Jackson's life and times, and also was reminded about what attitudes would still have been in 1938.

10rocketjk
feb. 9, 2019, 12:23 pm

Book 3: Milkman by Anna Banks

I finished the astounding, if occasionally densely packed novel Milkman by Anna Burns. This is evidently one of those "loved it" or "hated it" books. I can see why that would be. Personally, I consider it awe inspiring and revelatory, if not always pleasant to read. Imagine an 18-year old girl is being harassed by a man of power more than twice her age, and that she has nobody who will believe her. Mix that into the realities of living in an insular, violent, repressive community in Northern Ireland during the troubles. There are, for me, very powerful insights woven into this book, despite (or maybe because of) a claustrophobic quality produced by stripping every character of a name and providing generic references only (first sister, maybe-boyfriend, second brother-in-law), etc.

11rocketjk
feb. 15, 2019, 12:50 pm

Book 4: Canaries in the Mineshaft: Essays on Politics and Media by Renata Adler

This one takes a little explaining. First of all, this book was read as a "between book." What is that? Well, in addition to the books I read straight through, I like to read anthologies, collections and other books of short entries one story/chapter at a time instead of plowing through them all at once. I have a couple of stacks of such books from which I read in this manner between the books I read from cover to cover (novels and histories, mostly). So I call these my "between books." When I finish a "between book," I add it to my yearly list.

Second, I used to own a used bookstore. I owned and ran it for seven and a half years before selling it and retiring just last September. When I had the store, I used to occasionally take a book home from the store and read that. I was counting such books in my "Books off Our Own Shelves" thread, since I owned the store and the shelves therein were, by law, mine. Anyway, Canaries in the Mineshaft was a book I brought home from the store and began reading as a "between book," and just now finished. There are at least two other books currently on my "between books" stacks that fall into this category, as well. Hope that makes sense.

All that said, Canaries in the Mineshaft is a collection of fascinating pieces dating from 1976 through 1980 (with one addition from 2000) about Watergate, the Starr Report, and many other issues that are contemporary to those times but also resonate strongly to the present day. Highly recommended to anyone who thinks themselves interested in these topics.

12rabbitprincess
feb. 16, 2019, 9:24 am

>11 rocketjk: I like the idea of "between books" and am glad to hear that this one was a good one!

13rocketjk
feb. 17, 2019, 1:18 pm

>12 rabbitprincess: It's a system that's worked for me for a long time. It can get out of hand, though. Right now I have three "between book" stacks that I rotate among that include a total of 16 books I'm reading this way!

And, yes, I highly recommend Renata Adler to anyone interested in American politics and media.

14connie53
feb. 20, 2019, 4:29 am

What a nice idea, Jerry. But 16 'between books'? I would not know what to choose.

15rocketjk
feb. 20, 2019, 2:52 pm

>14 connie53: Oh, I don't have to choose. Got a system. :)

16connie53
feb. 22, 2019, 2:35 am

>15 rocketjk: good! Always nice to have a system that works for you.

17rocketjk
feb. 22, 2019, 10:51 am

>16 connie53: ". . . a system that works for you. . . ."

. . . and has the added benefit of amusing one's spouse.

18connie53
Editat: feb. 23, 2019, 1:29 am

>17 rocketjk: Nice. Let her figure it out. I have a system of my own for shelving my books. I think my husband still is trying to get that.

19rocketjk
feb. 23, 2019, 1:42 am

>18 connie53: Oh, she doesn't have to figure it out. She's asked me and I've explained it. Happily, she finds it amusing.

20connie53
feb. 23, 2019, 1:48 am

Ahh, good. I can understand that she thinks so. My husband doesn't ask and explaining would make perfectly clear to him how big my TBR-pile is (And him asking why I'm still buying books if I have that many books to read. Typical a question for 'he, who doesn't read at all')

21rocketjk
feb. 23, 2019, 1:30 pm

Book 5: The Land of Cain by Peter Lappin

This is my second book this month about the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Whereas Milkman is about relatively contemporary times, The Land of Cain, first published in 1957, takes us back to the 1920s. The story tells of a Catholic family in Belfast, with three grown sons trying each in his own way to navigate the sectarian violence that breaks out between Catholic and Protestant. This was the author's first novel. There is much fine description of nature and countryside (the family starts out living on a farm). I learned a bit, as well, about the history of the Troubles of that era. The plot is a bit formulaic, and the characterizations could have used a much defter touch. Overall, though, I would say that I did enjoy the reading.

22rocketjk
abr. 1, 2019, 12:50 pm

Book 6: Gilbert and Sullivan: A Dual Biography by Michael Ainger

While there is too much detail offered about the individual quarrels over business and procedure, due to the author's over-reliance on the troves of correspondence he had access to, and not enough information for me about the inner lives of these two famous artists, all in all this was an interesting dual biography of one of the great music/libretto writing teams of the English stage.

23rocketjk
abr. 5, 2019, 3:24 pm

Book 7: Guerilla Days in Ireland: a First-Hand Account of the Black and Tan War (1919-1921) by Tom Barry

Commandant General Tom Barry was the commander of the West Cork Flying Column of the I.R.A. during the days of the Irish guerilla war aimed at expelling the British from Ireland. Guerilla Days in Ireland is Barry's memoir of that campaign and his role in it, written and published 25 years after the events described. Barry describes in interesting detail the ways that the decidedly outgunned (even when they had enough guns to go around, they rarely had enough bullets) and outmanned IRA forces carried on an effective enough campaign to eventually force the British government to offer truce terms in 1921.

24rocketjk
abr. 18, 2019, 1:01 pm

Book 8: Netherland by Joseph O'Neill

It's easy to see how this beautifully written novel about love, loss and perseverance amidst life's clamor in post-9/11 New York City won the PEN/Faulkner Award. I was fascinated a couple of years back by O'Neill's memoir of family history, Blood-Dark Track and am happy to have finally read one of his novels. Quite rewarding.

25rocketjk
abr. 25, 2019, 2:09 pm

Book 9: The Wrecker by Clive Cussler and Justin Scott

A super villain is blowing up and derailing trains across the western states of early 20th-century America. Super detective Isaac Bell is on the case. This is an enjoyable romp, if you like this sort of action-adventure novel, the second in Cussler/Scott's "Isaac Bell" series.

26connie53
maig 3, 2019, 3:17 am

>24 rocketjk: I really thought there is a book about The Netherlands (my country) but following the link I found that is not the case ;-) Happy ROOTing, Jerry.

27rocketjk
maig 7, 2019, 1:17 am

>26 connie53: Well, the narrator/protagonist is Dutch and some of his memories, especially those of his childhood, do take place in the Hague.

28connie53
maig 7, 2019, 1:48 am

>27 rocketjk: Ha, my place of birth!

29rocketjk
maig 10, 2019, 2:15 pm

Book 10: Indefensible: One Lawyer's Journey into the Inferno of American Justice by David Feige. David Feige spent fifteen years as a public defender in the hellish court system of the South Bronx. He subsequently became a writer and a frequent guest on Court TV, whatever that it. At any rate, Indefensible is Feige's very well-written and often harrowing memoir/expose of his years as a severely over-worked advocate for those who had either fallen or jumped into the frequently entirely cold-hearted legal system.

30rocketjk
maig 22, 2019, 2:06 pm

Book 11: Theodore Dreiser Presents the Living Thoughts of Thoreau by Henry David Thoreau

This is a collection of excerpts from four different Thoreau books, selected by Theodore Dreiser and arranged by topic category ("Problem of Morals," "Society," "The Good Life," etc.). These bite-sized categories are a very nice way to gain an initial introduction to a writer, and particularly, I think, to a philosopher. Unfortunately, I did not care for Thoreau's writing much at all. I found his style dense, his self absorption irritating, and his ideas mostly obvious. Maybe Thoreau is one of those writers you need to read at a younger age, and certainly he is a writer/thinker of his time.

31rocketjk
Editat: maig 25, 2019, 2:09 pm

Book 12: Death in the Andes by Mario Vargas Llosa

Death in the Andes by Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, which I very much enjoyed, is an often hallucinatory story about a well intentioned Peruvian Army corporal trying to unravel the mystery of three disappearances in a remote Andean village. Quite likely, I missed some of the depth of what is reported to be an allegory about the state of Peru itself (circa 1993 when the book was first published). But I was easily able to settle into and appreciate the shifting narrative framework Llosa employed.

32rocketjk
juny 5, 2019, 1:34 pm

Book 13: For the Sake of Shadows by Max Miller

Max Miller was a well-known San Diego journalist during the Depression, best known for his reportage on the San Diego docks, I Cover the Waterfront. Published in 1936, For the Sake of Shadows is Miller's probably somewhat fictionalized account of his very short and unsatisfying stint as a Hollywood scriptwriter. The book is basically a long complaint without enough detail to even make it satisfying to lovers of screeds. Kind of fun, though, at this late date, for its historical interest.

33rocketjk
Editat: juny 28, 2019, 11:41 am

Book 16: In Shelly's Leg by Sara Vogan

In Shelly's Leg is a novel about a group of friends who congregate in Shelly's Leg, a bar in a small Montana town. Mostly the story centers around Margaret, a divorced mother of two, and her boyfriend, Woody, who wants to hit the road with his country band and wants Margaret to come along. Also, there is Sullivan, the bar's owner, who is still mourning the death of his lover, Shelly, the bar's founder. The story moves along nicely, and the characterizations of the main players were well done; their interactions seemed realistic and struck a chord. And though I did not agree with or care for the judgements the other characters made regarding Margaret, the decisions she makes and the reasons she makes them, I'm not sure that I was meant to. Note: Sara Vogan was a teacher of mine when I was in grad school at San Francisco State University back in the late 1980s.

34rocketjk
juny 28, 2019, 11:53 am

Just realized that I missed adding a couple of the books I've completed recently onto my "off the shelve" list here. So In Shelly's Leg is really Book 16 and . . .

Book 14: One of Our Thursdays is Missing by Jasper Fforde

This is the sixth book in Jasper Fforde's fabulous "Thursday Next" series. Inside of BookWorld, the written character Thursday Next (not the real Thursday, you understand), is trying to deal with keeping the storylines in the first five Next books fresh to combat the loss of readership and potential Remaindering. In the meantime, as the book's title suggests, the real Thursday seems to have gone missing just before she was to take part in peace talks within BookWorld centering on the potentially breakaway genre, Racy Novel. So the written Thursday Next is drafted to go looking for her Real World character source. Unless, of course, the written Thursday really is the real Thursday hiding out in BookWorld for safety and just doesn't realize it.

This entry isn't quite as strong as some of the other novels in the series, particularly because the written Thursday by definition cannot be as well drawn as the real character. That last sentence actually makes sense within the context of the series. Nevertheless, even a "not quite as strong" Thursday Next book is a hoot, just a lot of fun to read. Wordplay abounds, and the mystery moves along nicely and effectively.

Book 15: New Stories for Men edited by Charles Grayson

This is a fun collection of short stories, some by well known authors, published in 1941. In those days, it would have been normal to design a collection like this one to appeal to the "masculine" reader. Nowadays, if one can forgive the entire lack of women authors, this is just an enjoyable collection of stories representing the era from around 1915 to 1940.

35Jackie_K
juny 29, 2019, 7:33 am

>34 rocketjk: I've only read the first Thursday Next book so far, but I have #2 (Lost in a Good Book) on the pile for next month. You're right, it's a lot of fun.

36rocketjk
juny 29, 2019, 11:06 am

>35 Jackie_K: Yep! I got to see Jasper Fforde at a reading once in San Francisco at the late, lamented Clean, Well Lighted Place for Books. He was very funny and entertaining in person, too. I've always appreciated the fact that he's refused all offers to sell rights to the books and characters: no movies, no calendars, no coffee mugs. He says he doesn't want the characters being codified in peoples' minds to looking like particular actors or even artist renderings. The is a brief reference in One of Our Thursdays is Missing to Harry Potter (the written character) being irritated by having to go through his series looking like Daniel Radcliffe because that's how his readers are visualizing him.

37connie53
jul. 7, 2019, 2:50 am

Good job, Jerry! Only four more to go to reach your goal!

38rocketjk
jul. 9, 2019, 4:10 pm

Book 17: The Secret History of the War, Volume 1 by Waverley Root

This is a fascinating, extremely detailed book about World War 2, written for the most part while the war was still going on. Root was an American journalist stationed in Paris right up until the German occupation of the city. The book was originally to be co-written with French journalist Pierre Lazareff, but Lazareff understandably became otherwise engaged "in government service." However, he allowed Root to use the material he'd already compiled. At any rate, this long book (I am reporting here on Volume 1 only, which in itself is 650 pages of fairly small print) contains endless interesting details of, particularly but not solely, the political conditions and many machinations of governments before and during the war. In particular, Root (and Lazareff) focus on France, both pre-war and during the Vichy era. Root maintains that a) many in French leadership were, essentially, facists who abhorred their own Republic; b) much of the Germans' meticulous prewar 5th column propaganda activity was done for them by French leaders (Philippe Pétain comes in for particular criticism) and c) the French Army's efforts to resisting the German invasion were sabataged by traitors within the government and the army. These people were either Nazi sympathizers or were so convinced of the Germans' eventual victory in the war that they thought resistance to be futile. I don't know the degree to which these opinions have been backed up or discredited in the intervening years, but Root makes a very, very strong case.

39rocketjk
jul. 30, 2019, 6:26 am

Book 18: The Apostle by Sholem Asch

Asch was a Yiddish writer, a Polish Jew who wrote about shtetl life in Europe and became very well known, with his work being translated into many languages. He moved to America in his 30s and began writing about the Jewish immigrant experience here. Late in his career, however, he wrote three books in what became known as his "Founders of Christianity" series: The Nazarene, The Apostle, and Mary. This did not go over well in the Jewish community of the time (The Apostle was published in 1942), and he lost readership and his job. This despite that fact that Asch maintained that the novels were meant to bridge the gap between Jews and Christians by demonstrating in fiction that Christianity was in fact a deeply Jewish phenomenon at its core. As my old man would have said, however, "Lotsa luck." And so I was curious about The Apostle. It is the fictional story of early Christianity as seen through the eyes of Saul, who become the Apostle Paul.

Once he is converted and begins preaching about the Messiah, Paul schlepps back and forth across the Middle East, founding congregations and converting Jew and Gentile alike to the new faith. Being Jewish myself, I never knew the details of Paul's life nor much about the turning point where Paul stopped preaching only to Jews that their Messiah had arrived and instead insisted on preaching to everyone, thus taking the new religion out of the realm of Judaism. (And that is, of course, to whatever extent this book is faithful to what is know of those events.) So that was interesting. Unfortunately about 95% of the storytelling is done in flat, expository prose. There's almost nothing to draw us into the narrative for its own sake. At 775 pages, the book is long and tedious, so I can't really recommend it.

40rocketjk
jul. 30, 2019, 6:32 am

Book 19: The Longest Debate: a Legislative History of the 1964 Civil Rights Act by Charles W. Whalen and Barbara Whalen

This is a fascinating, in-depth, day-by-day account of the creation, debate and passage of one of the most important pieces of legislation to ever come out of the United States Congress. Charles Whalen served in the U.S. Congress from 1967 to 1979, so although he wasn't part of the proceedings described in his book, he knew a lot of the participants and was intimately familiar with the workings of the two chambers. Barbara Whalen, Charles' wife, was, among other things, a newspaper columnist in their native Ohio.

The book takes the bill from its inception during the John F. Kennedy administration, urged upon the president by his brother, Robert, the attorney general, as a moral imperative, through Kennedy's assassination and to the legislation's passage with even stronger support than Kennedy's by his successor in the White House, Lyndon Johnson. Committee meetings, caucuses, amendments, pressure and support from civil rights leaders, individual arm-twisting and cajoling, all are delved into here in a riveting, detailed presentation.

41rocketjk
ag. 13, 2019, 12:50 pm

Book 20: The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World View by Richard Tarnas.

This is a relatively comprehensive survey of Western thought from the early Greeks through modern times. Tarnas takes us through the several stages of Greek thought, through the rise of Christianity and and the evolution of Westerners' view of themselves and their place in the universe over the centuries. Tarnas also does a good job of taking us through our various changes as science, on the one hand, and spirituality (outside of organized religion), on the other, become sort of dually transcendent in modern humanity. The writing is clear, meant for "laypersons" rather than academics, although things do get kind of dense, in a way that seemed mostly unavoidable to me, when the concepts become particularly complex.

This is a discussion of relatively mainstream ideas, however. I recall little, if any, discussion, for example, of the religions that Christianity supplanted as is spread through Europe, or of the repression of those religions practiced at the time, so often including the repression (to put it mildly) of women.

42rocketjk
ag. 27, 2019, 2:28 pm

Book 21: Anybody's Gold: The Story of California's Mining Towns by Joseph Henry Jackson

This is a brightly written, very well researched and extremely readable history of the California Gold Rush. Jackson was a well-respected California historian and editor, serving as the literary editor for both the San Francisco Argonaut and then the SF Chronicle. (Here's a short biography.) He did an impressive amount of research for this book, delving into the historical archives of several libraries and museums. He was thereby able to find primary resources, including newspapers of the mining towns and the personal journals of the miners.

Jackson successfully puts lots of color and movement into his history. He revels in offering characteristic incidents, gleaned often from those newspapers and journals mentioned above. He also enjoys describing the miners' superstitions, and narrating the prevailing legends and tall tales, some of which were still being offered to visitors when Jackson was doing his research. (The book was published in 1941.) Jackson, however, is not shy about immediately debunking those legends when appropriate, and rightly (in my view) saying he had providing each legend as a way of filling in the color and atmosphere of the times and of how those times have come to be viewed by subsequent generations.

There is a dark side to all of this, which Jackson mentions fairly often but doesn't delve into much or even seem particularly troubled by. That dark side, of course, is the era's racism. Mexican miners were routinely run off their land and their claims. Indians had no rights at all. Chinese people were allowed to work only those claims that whites had already worked over and abandoned and were tolerated in some areas only because they were willing to pay an additional tax for the privilege. For a modern-day reader, these facts will not be dismissed during the reading, and they do take the luster off of Jackson's overall glee in describing the times.

43rocketjk
set. 22, 2019, 3:52 pm

Book 22: Action at Aquila by Hervey Allen

This is a mostly enjoyable historical novel about the Civil War, originally published in 1938. The physical descriptions of the country around southern Pennsylvania and into the Shenandoah Valley are wonderful, the descriptions of southern Pennsylvania towns who have recently lived through Lee's invasion and retreat, and the experiences of our protagonist, Colonel Nathaniel Franklin of the Union Army, as he travels this territory during a 3-week leave and then rejoins his troop in time to take part in a horrific battle, are often quite engaging (the battle scene is very well done). Some of the characters fall into stereotype, and some of the developments, especially between the characters, are predictable, but all in all I enjoyed reading this novel quite a bit.

44connie53
set. 23, 2019, 1:32 pm

Hi, Jerry! You have reached your goal!

45rocketjk
set. 23, 2019, 1:39 pm

>44 connie53: Yep! And then some, and with three full months to go! Guess I just didn't know my own strength, plus the wonders of my first year of retirement. Thanks for the confetti!

46MissWatson
set. 24, 2019, 5:00 pm

Well done!

47Familyhistorian
oct. 2, 2019, 9:14 pm

Ah, retirement, that explains the unexpectedness of your results. Congratulations!

48rocketjk
Editat: oct. 10, 2019, 7:55 pm

Book 23: The Liberation of Mankind: The Story of Man's Struggle for the Right to Think by Hendrik Willem Van Loon

This is an interesting and very well written history, originally published in 1926. As Van Loon tells us very early on, "This is not a handbook of anthropology. It is a volume dedicated to the subject of 'tolerance.' But 'tolerance' is a very broad theme. The temptation to wander will be great. And once we leave the beaten track Heaven along knows where we shall land." It should be noted that, as it turns out, by "mankind," Van Loon means, essentially, Europeans. Also, as per the book's publication date, we are not surprised to find that, according to this narrative, basically every single person of influence or note was male.

Van Loon starts with the Greeks and then moves through the Roman era and then through European history up through the French Revolution, describing the movements, institutions and individuals who have the most to do with, in turn, enhancing or curtailing the cause of tolerance in society. The book's second half is composed of short biographies of influential individuals, either via politics or philosophical writing, over the ebb and flow of the idea of tolerance in Western society. Erasmus, Spinoza and Montaigne get particularly interesting treatments, as do the figures of the French Revolution. Van Loon describes the repression in the Puritan settlements, but, disappointingly, misses the admirable Roger Williams. The final chapter, "The Last Hundred Years," is only a few pages long, and Van Loon concludes with a hopeful passages that beg for patience and perseverance in the struggle for overall societal tolerance. He writes with an uneasy eye backwards toward recent history (World War One and the Russian Revolution). But as he was writing in 1926, he could not be expected to be able to see what was coming. I don't know how historically accurate all of his descriptions and observations are. Nevertheless, I think he's well worth reading even given, or possibly because of, the book's vintage of close to 100 years old. Van Loon's sense of humor, as already noted, is enjoyable and quite dark. For example, while the book's dust jacket, as pictured above, is certainly benign, the cover of the book itself, a book, remember, about tolerance and liberation, depicts a guiilotine!

49rocketjk
nov. 29, 2019, 9:25 am

Book 24: Esquire Magazine - 40th Anniversary Celebration - October, 1973 edited by Don Erickson

In October, 1973, Esquire Magazine published sort of a "greatest hits" edition of their first 40 years of existence. It is a very thick publication with somewhere around 60 articles/essays/short stories grouped in various categories. The authors included are many of the biggest and brightest lights of literature, commentary and journalism over those four decades. Featured is the Hemingway/Fitzgerald dust-up that played out in the magazine's pages, plus a long essay by Arnold Gingrich, who was friend and editor to both. Steinbeck and Styron, Trotsky and Sinclair Lewis, Aldous Huxly and Dorothy Parker are all represented. Highlights for me included journalist Richard Rovere's acute analysis of Joseph McCarthy, James Baldwin's savage yet thrillingly written 1960 essay on race relations, "Fifth Avenue, Uptown,"* Tom Wicker's "Kennedy Without Tears" and Truman Capote's famous story, "Breakfast at Tiffany's" which, somewhat unbelievably, I read here for the first time. Just a super collection, all in all.

* Here's a link to Esquire's online version of this amazing, disturbing essay, which connects quite closely with Between the World and Me: https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a3638/fifth-avenue-uptown/

50rocketjk
nov. 29, 2019, 12:45 pm

Book 25: Rampart Street by Everett and Olga Webber

First published in 1948, Rampart Street is part swashbuckler, part romance that takes place in New Orleans from the years just after the Louisiana Purchase, through the War of 1812 and up into the 1830s or so. Woven into the intrigue, murder and passion, however, are lots of interesting historical threads about life in New Orleans during that time, provided in matter-of-fact exposition that lets us see the conditions as the characters would have seen them. For example, we observe the cultural conflicts between the older Creole society and the upstart American newcomers. When the Yellow Fever epidemic hits it is noted that the rise in the mosquito population is a good thing, as mosquitoes are known to help clear the miasma over the swamps that causes the illness.

As we begin our story, the brave and noble merchant captain John Carrick has just fought off an attack in the Gulf of Mexico by a Barbary pirate ship. Carrick is an American is trying to win the hand of the beautiful young Elizabeth, from a Creole family and already betrothed to a rich but (of course) dastardly Creole adventurer. Adventure and intrigue ensues. This book is a lot of fun, if one is in the mood for this sort of thing. Also, while I was prepared to wince at the treatment of race and slavery, expecting a "that's just the way things were" sort of attitude, the book does hold some mildly nice surprises in that regard. The workforce on the property our hero eventually acquires is noted as being all black, but we are told specifically that Carrick will have only free, hired help, and will not own slaves. Also, the last half of the book deals strongly with the absurdity and tragic nature of the city's race laws, wherein a person with even a single drop of black ancestry is black, and therefore of low caste if not an outright slave. That's a distinctly mild form of social consciousness, certainly, but given the time of publication, the setting and the genre, any amount of thoughtfulness in those regards was welcome.

51rocketjk
des. 23, 2019, 5:45 pm

Book 26: In My Father's Court by Isaac Bashevis Singer

In My Father’s Court is Isaac Bashevis Singer's memoir about his childhood in Poland in the years leading up to, and during, World War One. Singer’s father was a Hasidic rabbi and the court of the title was the Beth Din, the traditional court in the Singers' home to which community members came to have their divorces, lawsuits and other disputes arbitrated and their questions about Jewish holy books and law answered and illuminated. As Singer wrote in his Author’s Note to his book, “The Beth Din could exist only among a people with a deep faith and humility, and it reached its apex among the Jews when there were completely bereft of worldly power and influence.”

The book is presented as a series of short vignettes, each from five to seven pages in length, told more or less in chronological order, with Singer’s narrative evolving as the small boy begins to grow and to question his surroundings. In the early remembrances, the perspective is kept very tightly on his father’s fierce devotion to God and to Jewish biblical and rabbinical law, custom and mysticism. The tales told are about the people who arrive in the Singers' home, what their problems are, and how his father deals with them. There is a somewhat otherworldly glow about it all, the result, I thought, of Singer’s representing the viewpoint of a small and overawed boy as well as the effect of the author’s journey back through decades of his life.

Soon enough, however, the outside world begins gradually to intrude. The family moves from a small town to the crowded streets of a Jewish Warsaw slum. Next come rumors and then the realities of World War One, with its uncertainties and sharp deprivations. Singer’s older brother becomes more worldly, and young Isaac begins asking questions himself and longing for information about the outside world. Zionism and socialism begin to be discussed among the young, further eroding the hold of the old ways over the community as a whole.