by Richard Subber | Nov 21, 2022 | American history, Book reviews, Books, History, Politics
Essential, readable, provocative…
Book review:
Major Problems in the Civil War and Reconstruction
1st and 2nd editions
Michael Perman, ed.
1st Edition: Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath and Company, 1991, 598 pp.
2nd Edition: Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998, 460 pp.
Major Problems in the Civil War and Reconstruction is a tantalizing collection of contemporary documents and complementary essays by modern writers.
Perman has assembled “essential, readable, and provocative” commentaries on the catastrophes of the Civil War and Reconstruction in the middle of the 19th century.
Maybe you know a lot about that time and those events. You’ll learn more from this commendably interesting and surprisingly insightful book.
Take the time to read both editions of Major Problems—both editions are equally valuable, with almost wholly different selections.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2022 All rights reserved.
Book review: Shawshank Redemption
It’s a world I do not want to know…
by Stephen King
–
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 | Nov 12, 2022 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature
you don’t have many close friends…
Book review:
Friends: Understanding the Power
of our Most Important Relationships
by Robin Dunbar
London: Little, Brown, 2021
424 pages
This is a great book.
Robin Dunbar fans will recognize his deeply informed, very readable prose, and his comfortable and spectacular familiarity with quite a number of well-researched points of view.
Friends will confirm what you already know, on some level: friends and close family members are essential in your personal and social life, and you don’t have very many of them.
Typically, a person has five close friends/family members with whom she can share anything and everything, as often as possible. These five intimates are part of the circle of about 15 “best friends” who are nurtured and enjoyed in the greater part of the time you spend socializing, that is, being with and being in contact with other people.
Impersonal contact via social media is not a substitute for actually spending time with your friends. (By the way, nobody has 897 “friends” on Faceboook or SnapChat—if you think you do, try calling them and getting them to meet you for coffee or anything else to drink.)
Staying in touch with friends is especially important for old-timers. You can literally live longer if you maintain some active friendships.
The basic thing about friendship is trust: you know the other person well enough to understand how he thinks, and you trust him to act accordingly, and you know you can ask him for help if you need it.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2022 All rights reserved.
Book review:
Moral Tribes by Joshua Greene
sincere, but off the mark…
–
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 | Aug 31, 2022 | Book reviews, Books, Joys of reading, Theater and play reviews
the movies ignore the real story…
Movie review:
The Scarlet Letter
by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
Published 1850
I watched three films based on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s iconic story, The Scarlet Letter. My small sample (there are at least nine movies based on the story) confirms that Hollywood really can’t stand the story as Hawthorne wrote it.
Read my review of Hawthorne’s book, click here.
In 1934 Colleen Moore played Hester Prynne and Hardie Albright played Rev. Arthur Dimmesdale in the tale about Puritan condemnation of adultery and children born out of wedlock. Hester is sentenced to wear an embroidered scarlet letter “A” on her bosom, and Dimmesdale endlessly rationalizes his decision to conceal his role as the mysterious father of little Pearl. The movie reflects the production limitations and typical dramatic direction in the 1930s—there’s a lot of staring into the camera, and crowded action scenes.
Meg Foster played Hester and John Heard played Dimmesdale in the 1979 TV miniseries about The Scarlet Letter. There are recognizable scenes from the book. The script is nondescript. It’s a ponderous distillation of Hawthorne’s words.
The 1996 version with Demi Moore as Hester and Gary Oldman as Dimmesdale apparently is the latest in the unsatisfying series of film versions of The Scarlet Letter. It is an almost lurid mal-adaptation of the book. The hot scenes featuring Hester and Dimmesdale attracted to each other are a complete invention—Hawthorne eschews any explicit reference or description of physical intimacy between his principal characters. Demi and Gary get it on, but it ain’t Hawthorne.
In all three films, the role of little Pearl is deliberately underplayed. The child is a principal factor in the story—her feelings, her joie de vivre, her contemplations, her maturation are fully explored in the book, and ignored in the movies.
The mental and emotional quagmires that are explored and endured by Hester and Dimmesdale are generally ignored in the movies. None of the movies uses the ending that fulfills the book.
In short, in my mind, if you want to claim that you are familiar with the themes, plot, and denouement of The Scarlet Letter, you have to read the book.
All of the movies are scandalously thin and false charades of the powerful drama of Hawthorne’s story that was published very successfully in 1850.
If you think you remember reading it a long time ago, try it again.
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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2022 All rights reserved.
Book review: Shantung Compound
They really didn’t care much
about each other…
by Langdon Gilkey
–
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 | Aug 19, 2022 | American history, Book reviews, Books, History
Henry Adams was there…
Book review:
The United States in 1800
by Henry Adams
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1955, 1966
132 pages
Henry Adams wrote a colossal History of the United States of America during the First Administration of Thomas Jefferson (1889).
This slim volume is the first six chapters of that history, and it’s doggone interesting reading even for the casual student of history. Adams offers a somewhat disconnected, but nevertheless insightful, potpourri of facts and personal observations about the people of the very young United States.
For example, he reports that in 1800 the organization and operation of Harvard College was not exactly what you would guess: the college had a president, a professor of theology, a professor of mathematics, a professor of Hebrew, and four tutors, and “the method of instruction [was] suited to children fourteen years of age; the instruction itself was poor, and the discipline was indifferent.” So much for a college education in 1800.
The United States in 1800 offers an apparently realistic and sometimes deprecating panorama of the people and culture of the United States in the early 19th century.
There isn’t any particular reason to think that Adams didn’t really know what he was talking about.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2022 All rights reserved.
Book review: All The President’s Men
About all those men and women
who crave too much power…
by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward
–
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 | Jul 22, 2022 | American history, Book reviews, Books, Democracy, History, Politics, Power and inequality
Partisan politics, just like today…
Book review:
A Magnificent Catastrophe:
The Tumultuous Election of 1800,
America’s First Presidential Campaign
by Edward J. Larson
New York: Free Press, 2007
A Magnificent Catastrophe tells us about yet another nightmare in American history that we don’t know well enough.
Thomas Jefferson and John Adams went head to head in the first presidential campaign that was based on party politics and partisan venality and telling lies for political advantage.
In other words, just like today.
The election outcome in 1800 wasn’t clear cut—the politicians were at each other’s throats, and the public interest was lost in the shuffling.
Politics started getting its bad name more than 200 years ago.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2022 All rights reserved.
Book review: Forced Founders
by Woody Holton
The so-called “Founding Fathers”
weren’t the only ones
who helped to shape our independence…
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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”
* * * * * *
by Richard Subber | Jun 19, 2022 | American history, Book reviews, Books, History, Revolutionary War
more new learning…
Book review:
Empire of Liberty:
A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815
by Gordon S. Wood (b1933)
New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 2009
Empire of Liberty is a finely detailed and well-informed examination of the early years of the United States.
You can trust Gordon Wood to give it all he has, and to give you a lot of new learning.
This 778-page volume is part of the Oxford History of the United States.
Hey, if you can’t read it all at once, you can pick it up again soon.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2022 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Sea Runners
…it does inform, but it does not soar…
by Ivan Doig
–
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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