The Great Agnostic

It seems "Fighting Bob" Ingersoll is enjoying a bit of a resurgence. As I noted before, I was first drawn to Ingersoll in newspaper clippings that my Great Grandfather had kept. Apparently he was a great fan of "Fighting Bob." Seems Susan Jacoby is too, as she has written a short biography on The Great Agnostic, whose favorite target was religion.

Jennifer Michael Hecht noted in her review of the book that Ingersoll was most noted for his quips, which have survived down the years. Apparently, it was this wry sense of humor that endeared him to so many followers during his time. He also had his fair share of detractors, past and present. I noticed that David Barton took a swipe at Ingersoll in his book on Jefferson.

Jacoby tries to figure out what it was that made "Fighting Bob" an American original, and also why his voice of reason hasn't fared as well as others over time. Mark Twain is a household name. Robert Ingersoll is the kind of guy who pops up in trivia games.

It seems you had to hear him speak to feel the full weight of his arguments, and sadly no voice recordings have survived. We can only imagine what his printed speeches might have been like from anecdotes like the one Hecht provides of Eugene Debs buying a train ticket from Terre Haute to Cincinnati just so he could stay with Ingersoll a little while longer after having heard one of his famous speeches.

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, noting the gro

Dylan in America

Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan. Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose. Looks like only yesterday. Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.

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

Dispatches from Vilnius

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