by Richard Subber | Apr 6, 2024 | American history, Book reviews, Books, History, Politics, Revolutionary War
the Adams-Jefferson “friendship”
Book review:
Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson
by Gordon S. Wood (b. 1933)
New York: Penguin Press, 2017
502 pages, extensive index and notes
Gordon Wood is a rightly acclaimed historian and author. Friends Divided is not his best work.
Wood has enviably thorough knowledge of the history of the American revolution, and his oeuvre is fascinating and compelling.
It seems to me that Wood has invested too much of idealized historical circumstances into the thinking of Adams and Jefferson, and the torrent of writing that they produced.
They were influential human beings and leaders in their society. I don’t buy the so-called “great man” concept of historiography. I don’t think Wood endorses it, but it seems that he has pasted the towering personalities of Adams and Jefferson into and onto his remarkably comprehensive understanding of the Enlightenment, American revolutionary politics, and the social/commercial evolution of America before and after the divorce from Britain.
Adams and Jefferson had a celebrated (then and now) on-and-off friendship during most of their adult lives.
Friends Divided is not what the American Revolution is all about, despite Gordon Wood’s rapturous concatenation of the “friends” and the world they lived in.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
“…an era of corruption in High Places…”
Old Abe got it right….
In other words: Poems for your eyes and ears with 64 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 21, 2024 | American history, Book reviews, Books, History, World history
lots of personal drama
Book review:
Battle of Wits:
The Complete Story of Codebreaking
in World War II
by Stephen Budiansky (b.1957)
New York: The Free Press, 2000
436 pages with index, detailed notes
It is somewhat disappointing to me that Budianky’s well-researched work is focused on American and British codebreaking work during WWII, with relatively little said about the opposing code work of the Axis powers.
Nevertheless, Battle of Wits is a personalized and engaging account of the people involved in codebreaking that began, with baby steps, in the years following WWI.
It’s a lot to read, the personalities are dramatically presented, and there is a fair amount of technical stuff, so the book can satisfy both casual readers and the techies.
If you think you know a lot about Enigma and the Japanese code work and all of the half-truths about codebreaking in the second great war, read this book and learn some more.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review:
The American Revolution: A History
The “Founders” were afraid
of “democracy”…
by Gordon S. Wood
My first name was rain: A dreamery of poems with 53 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 17, 2024 | American history, Book reviews, Books, History, Human Nature
very destructive bogus stuff going on…
Book review:
The Witches:
Suspicion, Betrayal, and Hysteria in 1692 Salem
by Stacy Schiff (b.1961)
Little, Brown and Company, New York, 2015
498 pages
It may be that Stacy Schiff has neglected to include some fact or sentiment about the Salem witch trials, but I can’t imagine what it might be. The Witches is an expansive compendium of the whos and whats and whys and wherefores of this compelling—yet essentially impenetrable—story about a community gone crazy.
Maybe you had to be there to understand it.
It’s too easy to suggest the McCarthy Communism hunting in 1954 as a modern analogy, but it won’t work. The whole dreadful McCarthy thing was a political football, approaching a sideshow even though it attracted the nominal attention of the nation and destroyed many lives.
The Salem witch trials (and the witch hunting that went on in neighboring towns) consumed the waking hours of all the townsfolk, who were deeply convinced that witches exist and that they are in league with satanic forces.
For my taste, Schiff tells too much of the story. I would have been content with a less detailed account. There is repetition that is dispensable.
For my taste, she struck a good balance between telling the story as it happened, and inviting the reader to suspect that the teenage girls were fooling all along, and that too many accusers had a personal reason to “get” the accused, and that too many religious and civic leaders struggled unsuccessfully with their religious faith and the opposing impulses of their arguably decent selves who quickly figured out that the witch craze was a very nasty game.
You don’t need to read the whole book to figure out that there was some very destructive bogus stuff going on in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1692.
Maybe you don’t need to read the whole book to be convinced that some folks aren’t continuously motivated by a decent streak of good will and a desire to support communal well-being.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 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…
My first name was rain: A dreamery of poems with 53 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 9, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature, Joys of reading, Language
the good old way…
Book review:
Scaramouche
Rafael Sabatini (1875-1950)
New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1921
392 pages
These people talk to each other. It’s face-to-face communications. They pay attention to body language and what you do with your face.
Scaramouche ends the way you think it’s going to end: boy gets girl.
But there’s a lot of road to travel before we get to that ending—I think there’s only one reference to a heaving bosom—there is fastidious bad language, and lots of casual use of Latin—there’s a lot of hand kissing, which is something we could do more of these days.
Sabatini was a prolific writer and he wrote this romance novel the way it should be written. The reader gets an eyeful and an earful and a heartful of genuine romance, with all the words that make it work.
It’s still possible to make love in the good old way they did it in the 18th century. Read all about it.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
The Scarlet Letter, victim of Hollywood
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s version is best
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 5, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature
don’t think about John of Arc
Book review:
Saint Joan
by Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Baltimore, MD: Penguin Books, copyright 1924, rep. 1964
159 pages
Imagine that Joan of Arc had been John of Arc.
I’m no fan of “what if” history, but I dare to say that John might have become a saint without the burned-at-the-stake part.
Saint Joan is a play, so if stage directions are a distraction to you, you can just pretend that Shaw is whispering in your ear.
Shaw’s 42-page preface is historical treasure added to the literary treasure. He offers even more than you imagine about the life and context and historical significance of la pucelle de Domrémy.
All of the men whose lives she crossed accepted Joan’s exceptionalism. Many believed her story about hearing voices from the saints and from God.
Joan went to the fire without understanding that the kings and the generals wished that she had never been born.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Bridges of Madison County
If you’re looking for
highly stoked eroticism
and high-rolling lives
that throw off sparks when they touch,
look elsewhere.
by Robert Waller
–
Above all: Poems of dawn and more with 73 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 | Feb 22, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature
to each his or her own…
Book review:
On Chesil Beach
by Ian McEwan (b1948)
New York: Nan A. Talese, Doubleday, 2007
203 pages
Most likely you will find yourself undeniably drawn to keep turning the pages of On Chesil Beach.
It’s a quiet book, but it’s loaded with exotically passionate words and moments and discoveries about the very private concepts of love that Edward and Florence bring to their marriage in 1962.
There is almost none of the heaving bosom stuff that corrupts so many tales about love, and the language is realistic, almost chaste.
Ian McEwan lets the two lovers try to talk to each other about stuff that they deeply feel but for which they hardly know the words.
There is a sad, and sadly understandable, ending.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Financier
Theodore Dreiser’s villain…
Writing Rainbows: Poems for Grown-Ups with 59 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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