by Richard Subber | Jun 13, 2022 | American history, Book reviews, Books, History, Politics, Revolutionary War
…before the so-called Founding Fathers…
Book review:
The Unknown American Revolution:
The Unruly Birth of Democracy
and the Struggle to Create America
by Gary B. Nash
New York: The Penguin Group: Viking, 2005
The Unknown American Revolution is chock full of facts you probably don’t know about the evolution of the revolutionary spirit in the American colonies.
Here’s a hint: the leather-apron men and other lower class members of what the elites contemptuously termed “the mob” had a lot to do with it.
Gary Nash gives a book full of details demonstrating that there was a whole lot happening in the decades before the shoot-out on Lexington Green and the wrangling in Philadelphia in June and July of 1776.
The point is: there were a whole lot more folks—men and women—involved in addition to the so-called Founding Fathers.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2022 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Comanche Empire
this is the other story of the American West…
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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 | May 23, 2022 | American history, Book reviews, Books, Democracy, History, Politics, Power and inequality, Revolutionary War
ordinary folks had a lot to do with it…
Book review:
The Urban Crucible:
Social Change, Political Consciousness,
and the Origins of the American Revolution
by Gary B. Nash
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979
The Urban Crucible is a densely researched and fully explored comparative history of the economic, social, and political environments in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia during the late 17th and early 18th centuries.
Here’s my hint: there was more well-informed “mob” action than you have read about in other histories.
The early colonial experiences in the three principal seaport towns are vividly contrasted and authoritatively explained. Nash candidly digs deep and deeper into a wide range of primary sources. The sins and the heroics of the leadership elite and the “leather apron” artisans and the anonymous working poor are examined in profoundly realistic historical context.
You can’t read The Urban Crucible and not learn a lot.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2022 All rights reserved.
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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 | Apr 16, 2022 | American history, Book reviews, Books, Democracy, History, Politics, Revolutionary War
He didn’t mention the “k” word…
Book review:
Common Sense
by Thomas Paine
Isaac Kramnick, ed., intro.
New York: Penguin Books, 1986
When I re-read a classic, I try to prepare myself for a couple “aha!” moments and one or two “uh oh!” moments.
I wasn’t disappointed in reading Common Sense this time.
Paine first published (anonymously) his 47-page “pamphlet” on January 10, 1776, after the shooting at Lexington-Concord and before the Declaration of Independence was approved.
Of course, everyone knows Paine argued for “independance” (his 18th century spelling).
This time around, it’s of interest to me to note that Paine very carefully avoided directly challenging King George III by name or even by spelling out his title—the text is full of “k—” references. Paine fully and explicitly described and condemned the bad things that old George was doing and likely to do.
Also, it’s of interest to me that Paine notably includes in his arguments for “independance” that America’s trade and international commerce would be buttressed by separation of the British colonies from Britain. He freely uses “America” and “Americans” in referring to the colonies and the colonists, although a huge majority of English colonists likely thought of themselves as “British” citizens.
Paine gives ample space to biblical themes.
Common Sense was widely and repeatedly republished in 1776 and thereafter—it was astoundingly popular in America, Britain, and elsewhere. Historians suspect that 75,000-100,000 copies were printed.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2022 All rights reserved.
The “dime novels” in the Civil War
Think “blood-and-thunder”…
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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”
by Richard Subber | Nov 3, 2021 | American history, Book reviews, Books, Democracy, History, Politics
the “public watchdog,” as if…
Book review:
-30- The Collapse
of the Great American Newspaper
Charles M. Madigan, ed.
Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, Publisher, 2007
Madigan collected 15 commentaries on the continuing decline of the American newspaper industry and the woeful prospects for its improvement or survival.
The authors of Collapse do not offer predictions, but the adverse circumstances they describe as existing or possible seem all too real almost 20 years later.
Community newspapers have mostly disappeared or shriveled in vitality and importance.
Big city newspapers have been transformed into cash conduits by profit-seeking money managers, who as a group don’t care about doing or preserving the popular (and dubious) legacy concept of journalism as “a public watchdog.”
At every level of government, from township zoning hearing board to U.S. Congress, fewer and fewer reporters—or no reporters—are showing up to observe what’s going on and report it to a citizenry that historically has never wanted to pay the full cost of getting “the news.”
The basic business model of newspaper owners today is: soak the aging, shriveling group of home delivery subscribers for as much as they will pay, and soak the shriveling group of newspaper advertisers for as much as they will pay, for as long as they’re willing to pay. One by one, newspapers are disappearing.
For example, the seven-day home delivery price of The Boston Globe is almost $1,500/year.
Can you remember how much a newspaper cost when you were a kid?
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2021 All rights reserved.
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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 | Jun 22, 2021 | American history, Book reviews, Books, History, Politics, Power and inequality, World history
profitable, powerful, vicious…
Book review:
For All the Tea in China:
How England Stole the World’s Favorite Drink
and Changed History
by Sarah Rose
New York: Viking, Penguin Group, 2010
This is a credible account of how tea from China became a worldwide drink.
With commanding competence, Rose relates the intrepid life of Robert Fortune, and the depressingly familiar tale of a giant corporation running amok.
The East India Company in England was an extremely vicious, extremely powerful, and extremely profitable company for more than two hundred years. It was tea from the East India Company that got dumped into Boston harbor on December 16, 1773. After a bloody 1857 war of its own making in India, the company was abruptly dissolved by the British Parliament. Rose says: “…the company had amassed possessions to rival Charlemagne’s and created an empire on which the sun never set; it was the first global multinational and the largest corporation history has ever known. Yet it failed spectacularly at one significant task: to govern India in peace.” No surprise there.
For my taste, the greater value of For All the Tea in China is the examination of how the commerce and consumption of tea shaped worldwide politics, warfare, and society. Tea reduced famine in Europe. Tea taxes financed Britain’s imperial expansion. Increased tea drinking—and increased sugar consumption—made the British sugar colonies important in British commerce and politics. Centuries of monopoly in tea production and engagement with Europeans altered the political and cultural development of China.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2021 All rights reserved.
Book review: American Colonies
So many and so much
came before the Pilgrims
by Alan Taylor
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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 | Jun 5, 2021 | American history, Book reviews, Books, History, Human Nature, Politics
…the Irish weren’t the only ones…
Book review:
How the Irish Became White
by Noel Ignatiev (1940-2019)
American author and historian
New York: Routledge, 1995
Ignatiev offers enough detail and context to satisfy historians of every stripe.
For the less ambitious reader, there may be a bit more than she cares to know in How the Irish Became White.
Of course, I certainly don’t presume to summarize the author’s careful exposition in 233 pages.
If you really want to know more about how non-black immigrants allowed and persuaded themselves to buy in to the systemic racism that flourished in America since the 17th century, dig in to How the Irish Became White.
One sure point is: don’t pick on the Irish exclusively. They certainly weren’t alone in their transgressions.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2021 All rights reserved.
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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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