Willie Lincoln's Ghost

Over the years, this forum has gone from being a history book club to a political blog, so it is nice to return to the roots once in a while. I picked up a copy of Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders. He's best known for his quasi-science fiction books like CivilWarLand and Pastoralia, where he looks at history through the lens of demented amusement parks. In his most recent book, he digs into the depths of Lincoln's despair after losing his son Willie at the age of 11.

Willie goes through a bardo, a form of purgatory, in his crypt, which Lincoln visits. Saunders blends historical pieces with what he imagines Willie was going through as his father had a very hard time letting go of him. Saunders brings in a number of "speakers" from the cemetery, who work to move Willie onto the next stage. Certainly a unique perspective on this tragedy, and I think a more satisfying one than Seth Grahame Smith's vampire novel.

Saunders' story is not without precedent. Mary Todd held a spirit circle in the Red Room of the White House, hoping to call her son from the beyond, and there are those who believe the ghost of Willie is one of many that still haunt the White House. After all, this is a place that has seen many deaths over the years.

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Team of Rivals Reading Group

''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...

The People Debate the Constitution

As Pauline Maier describes in Ratification , there was no easy road in getting the Constitution ratified. After 10 years of living together as a loosely knit confederation, a few forward thinking men decided that the Articles of Confederation no longer worked and it was time to forge a Constitution. Washington would not go until he could be assured something would come of the convention and that there would be an august body of gentlemen to carry the changes through. But, ultimately Maier describes it was the people who would determine the fate of the new Constitution. This is a reading group for Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution 1787-1788 . The book has been well received by fellow historians like Jack Rakove , among others. Maier has drawn from a wealth of research piecing together a story that tells the arduous battle in getting the Constitution ratified. A battle no less significant than that Americans fought for independence.

Dispatches from Vilnius

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