by Richard Subber | Apr 23, 2026 | American history, Book reviews, Books, History
Three dynamic decades in America…
Book review:
Society and Culture in America: 1830-1860
Russell Blaine Nye (1913-1993)
The New American Nation Series, Henry Steele Commager and Richard B. Morris, eds.
New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1974
432 pages
Nye tells a great big story, in sufficient detail for the serious student, and with enough style to satisfy any more casual, interested reader. If you don’t find a lot in this volume that matches and illuminates your interests, then you need to get out more.
In Society and Culture in America: 1830-1860, the decades before the American Civil War are remarkably filled with Americans and American society spreading and maturing in all directions.
Wagon trains were crossing the largely unmapped west (the transcontinental railroad wasn’t completed until May 1869).
European performing artists were getting top billing all over the United States—that is, all 33 of the states—while American musical arts were building up steam.
Education became effectively accessible for quite a few of the 20 million Americans who were eager to learn. “Sunday schools” (based on a British philanthropist’s program to set up schools for poor kids in Britain on Sundays, when the kids weren’t working) started catching on after the turn of the 19th century, and then they blossomed when churches got into the business to teach reading and writing, and, of course, elements of their respective faiths. All kinds of volunteer societies established “institutes” to spread learning. The “lyceum”—a locally sponsored program of uplifting lectures—was popular everywhere. By 1860, every state in the union offered at least elementary and secondary education, funded by tax dollars.
I could go on and on. Nye did so for 432 pages. The life of the nation in three dynamic decades, 1830-1860, is a great big story.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
Book review: Saint Joan
by George Bernard Shaw
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Above all: Poems of dawn and more with 74 free verse poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Apr 21, 2026 | Books, Joys of reading, My poetry, Poetry
be ready…
Book-ish
Pick up that book again.
Yes, too many words,
too many pages.
In there, somewhere,
a lustrous phrase
you didn’t see,
a deepest thought
you didn’t think,
a relic of song
you didn’t sing,
a wayward dream
you didn’t know,
a sequence of best words,
they were a blur.
Take the book again,
open it where you will,
be ready for something more.
June 20, 2025
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
–
Empyrean: new poems with 57 free verse poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
Your comments are welcome—tell me what you’re thinking.
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by Richard Subber | Apr 18, 2026 | Human Nature, Reflections, Tidbits
think it over…
“If all your life you endure
the consequences of a single deed,
then you cannot imagine life before it…”
from The Girl at the Lion d’Or
by Sebastian Faulks
New York: Vintage International/Vintage Books/A Division of Random House, Inc., 1989.
246 pages
p. 43
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
Movie review: A Doll’s House
Henrik Ibsen’s classic on abuse…
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My first name was rain: A dreamery of poems with 52 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Apr 16, 2026 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature, Reflections
give your arm to a loved one…
Book review:
The Gifts of Imperfection:
Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be
and Embrace Who You Are
by Dr. C. Brené Brown (b1965)
Center City, MN: Hazelden, 2010
135 pages
Dr. Brown offers this “tough lesson” from her life:
“How much we know and understand ourselves is critically important,
but there is something that is even more essential
to living a Wholehearted life: loving ourselves.”
This book moved me to think about changing the way I think about life, and my life.
Give yourself a gift: take time to read The Gifts of Imperfection and then D.I.G. into your life.
That is, start consciously thinking about wholehearted living and tell yourself a lot of truth, and then:
Get Deliberate about doing the right things for you, in all your glorious imperfections,
Get Inspired to acknowledge what you’re doing in all your loving relationships, and
Get Going, take the next steps in actually living a love affair with yourself and all you can be…
…and don’t mind if you stumble now and then, and give your arm to a loved one now and then…
…and have good intentions, and take the agony and the ecstasy as they come.
Quote is from The Gifts of Imperfection, p. xi.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
Book review: Colonial America
A Very Short Introduction
by Alan Taylor
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Above all: Poems of dawn and more with 74 free verse poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Apr 14, 2026 | My poetry, Poetry, Reviews of other poets
I welcome the time…
I decided to entertain myself at breakfast in the Linden Ponds Café
by doing this little re-write
of Robert Frost’s memorable poem, “A Time to Talk.”
I kept his rhythm and rhyme, I made the text a bit smoother,
I think I preserved his earthy friendly tone.
A Time to Talk, Rick’s version
When a friend calls down to me from the road
and slows his horse to just a walk,
I don’t stand still and look around
on all the hills I haven’t hoed,
and shout from where I am: “What is it?”
I know to welcome time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
blade-end up and five feet tall,
I start to climb to the old stone wall
for a friendly visit.
February 3, 2025
Hingham, MA
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Frost’s original version, it’s in the public domain:
A Time to Talk
Robert Frost (1874-1963)
When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don’t stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven’t hoed,
And shout from where I am, What is it?
No, not as there is a time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit.
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
Book review: An Empire on the Edge
by Nick Bunker
The British wanted to win
the Revolutionary War,
but they had good reasons
for not trying too hard…
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many waters: more poems with 53 free verse poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
Your comments are welcome—tell me what you’re thinking.
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