Skip to main content

What would you like to read?




Now that we have gotten over American Colonies, maybe we should try another book reading group?  Hamilton is all the rage with his broadway musical.  It is based on Chernow's 2005 biography.  There's the more recent War of Two, by John Sedgwick, which treats the parallel lives of Hamilton and Burr.



With all the fuss being made over the empty Supreme Court seat, I'm inclined to read Notorious RBG, which looks like it could be a lot of fun. At 83, you figure Judge Ruth Ginsburg doesn't have too many more years on the bench herself, so Bernie shouldn't be fretting over not being able to pick a USSC justice himself, not that he is likely to have the chance to do so.



But, our choice doesn't necessarily have to be political.  All the Wild that Remains looks like a very good book.  I'm a big fan of Wallace Stegner and Edward Abbey, and their visions of the American West.

Any other suggestions?

Comments

  1. Howdy - it's been a while since I've ventured here. Looks like the old crowd has gone the way of the Romans. This in all likelihood due to old age. As for me, I use audio books because my eyes have worn out from age & overuse. Been reading mostly fiction, especially magazines such as Good Old Days and Grit.

    ReplyDelete
  2. It does get kind of lonely in here. A lot of hits but very few comments. Not reading much in the way of history myself these days. Wrapped up in current events as far as this blog goes. Maybe that scared away some folks.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Your political comments are 100% spot on. So keep up the good work.

      Delete
  3. Thanks Trip, but it would be fun to have a group read again.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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.