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,
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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,
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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 | 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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by Richard Subber | Dec 26, 2017 | American history, Book reviews, Books, History, Politics
Our generals lied about it…
Book review:
The Myths of Tet:
The Most Misunderstood Event of the Vietnam War
Edwin E. Moïse
Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2017
276 pages
Too many lies. That’s what Edwin Moïse’s book says about the war in Vietnam.
No surprise, more or less. Moïse carefully and compellingly documents the lies created by American generals in Vietnam (“body counts,” “we’re winning the war”) and fed to credulous U. S. government officials right up to President Johnson. In The Myths of Tet, Moïse documents the lies manufactured by North Vietnamese military leaders and used to rationalize their combat strategies that resulted in uncounted military and civilian deaths.
The U. S. was not “winning the war” at the time of the Tet attacks in 1968. The early success of the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong attacks was barely understood at the time by the American intelligence apparatus. American combat deaths soared immediately, but somehow this evidence of enemy military success was not fully interpreted by the U. S. military, the American government, and the American people.
Sadly, truth wasn’t the only casualty of the Tet Offensive.
I was in the city of Hue two years after the Tet fighting. The city still looked like a combat zone in 1970. Every wall and building I saw was pockmarked by bullets and explosives. The graffiti that North Vietnamese soldiers had scrawled on the walls was still visible, and it wasn’t funny.
That’s no lie.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2017 All rights reserved.
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”
Thanks for checking out my website. Here’s what you’ll find:
my poetry in free verse and 5-7-5 format—nature poems, love poems, poems about grandchildren, and a spectrum of other topics—written in a way that makes it possible for you to know, as precisely as possible, what’s going on in my mind and in my imagination;
thoughtful book reviews that offer some exceptional critique of the book instead of a simple book summary;
bits of history that did and didn’t happen;
luscious examples of my love affair with words;
my reflections on the words, art, and wisdom of famous and not-so-famous people, and occasional comments on politics and human nature.
Your comments on my poems, book reviews, and other posts are welcome.
Book review: To Serve Them All My Days
by R. F. Delderfield
A beloved teacher,
you know this story…
click here
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