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 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 12, 2026 | American history, Book reviews, Books, History, Joys of reading
This is good storytelling
Book review:
The Brothers
by Janet M. Kovarik
2014
If you’re a student of the Civil War, you’ll recognize the actual historical figures who are part of the story, and you’ll quickly feel comfortably familiar with Stu and Beau and Sarah and their families, because they embody some of the compelling human agents of the wartime drama.
These characters are three-dimensional. There is human urgency in their speech and actions. These are cerebral characters who are articulately reflective, thoughtful about their circumstances and their life journeys, and passionate about love and rectitude and their personal legacies and futures.
The Brothers is the first novel in The McCullough Saga. The twins, Beau and Stu, have explicitly distinct personalities but their lives have remarkably similar if unconventional trajectories. They are the central figures in a human story, on a human scale, with a conspicuously realistic historical setting. Storm Haven, their deep South plantation, is convincingly researched, as are the gritty battle scenes, the economics and logistics of the war, the arduous success of the Underground Railroad and the delights of antebellum southern cuisine.
The Brothers is a dialogue-rich offering of historical fiction. I’m a dialogue fan. This is good storytelling.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
The Bridges of Madison County
book/movie review
If you’re looking for highly stoked eroticism,
look elsewhere.
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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”
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by Richard Subber | Mar 19, 2026 | American history, Book reviews, Books, History, Politics, Power and inequality
it’s about money, not journalism
Book review:
Newspapers and Democracy:
International Essays on a Changing Medium
Anthony Smith, ed.
Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1980
Newspapers and Democracy may be of most interest to informed readers who understand the basics of the history and the modern business model of newspapers, and want more historical context.
The essays were published in 1980. There is no mention of the internet or Google or social media or any of the digital manifestations that have crowded the traditional newspaper audience into a small corner.
There is no substantial or convincing assessment of the putative public service mission of “the press” that has been blatantly claimed by newspaper owners and journalists for at least more than 60 years.
Newspapers and Democracy is a museum piece, not an explanation of the alleged “power” of the alleged “free press.”
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
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Seeing far: Selected poems with 47 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 | Mar 15, 2026 | Book reviews, Books, Joys of reading, Language
We’re all connected…
Book review:
The Mother Tongue: English & How It Got That Way
by Bill Bryson (b1951)
New York: Harper Perennial, 1990
270 pages
The Mother Tongue is a fascinating collection of details you haven’t dreamed of about the English language. It’s easy enough to skim the parts that you don’t need to read in detail.
If you think that English stands alone as our primary means of communication, think again, and then think again.
We’re all connected by words, and the connections are everywhere.
As it happens, English is the pre-eminent language of the world. Of course, that doesn’t mean that English speakers are pre-eminent, but it does mean that if the little guys ever step out of the spaceship from Mars, it won’t take them long to figure out which language they want to learn first.
There is a really elaborate bibliography if you want to know more.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
Book review: Shakespeare’s Wife
Germaine Greer went overboard a bit…
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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 | Mar 3, 2026 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature
good and bad, a great story
Book review:
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)
Scottish novelist
141 pages
Originally published in 1886 as Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, this iconic novella was an immediate hit and sold 250,000 copies in the United States.
(Later publishers added “The” and punctuation to the title in a gratuitous fit of grammatical purity).
It’s a masterly drama and a quaint exploration of the Manichean theme of good and evil in man. In my most recent re-reading, Jekyll seems to be a much less respectable character than in my previous experience with this classic: he is weak, licentious and mostly unrepentant.
His alter ego, Hyde, is still a bad boy.
The narrator’s reflections on human nature are thoughtful and instructive.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
Old Friends (book review)
Tracy Kidder tells truth about old age…
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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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