I read non-fiction. I really do. It just tends to be at a slower pace than fiction so there are fewer books to share.
These three books are from my reading in February and March. All three come recommended.
Book 21: Midnight Rising by Tony Horwitz
Horwitz, the author of Confederates in the Attic, has a relaxed style of writing that's perfect for popular fiction. His writing is cozy and conversational, avoiding the dense, dull text of many historians.
In Midnight Rising, subtitled John Brown and the Raid that Sparked the Civil War, Horwitz distinguishes John Brown the man from his mythic image as an Old Testament prophet, warning of the wages of sin that will be visited upon a nation that permits one man to enslave another.
That image, aided by the striking beard that Brown grew in mid-life, emerged after his death in art and literature. John Steuart Curry's mural of Brown has been seen by thousands of schoolchildren while touring the Kansas Statehouse. Striking images of Brown also emerged in the poetry of Stephen Vincent Benet and Herman Melville, who described Brown as the "meteor of the war."
But the truth, as is usually the case, is more prosaic. Brown was a poor businessman and inattentive father and husband. And he wasn't much of a planner as the ill-fated raid on the U.S. armory at Harper's Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia) painfully illustrates.
Brown burst upon the national seen in Kansas where he and his sons did there part to add to the reality of "bleeding Kansas" by an unprovoked attack upon pro-slavery settlers along the banks of the Pottawatomie River. He later led free-state fighters in the Battle of Black Jack, which led to the surrender of pro-slavery forces, and in a spirited defense of the free-state settlement of Osawatomie.
But it was at Harper's Ferry, where a small band led by Brown seized the federal armory, his subsequent capture and execution that firmly established Brown as an enduring figure -- prophet and martyr, who not only foretold the coming war, but instigated it.
This aspect of Horwitz's history is its most interesting. Whatever muddled plans Brown had -- and Horwitz makes it clear that even old Brown himself was uncertain about exactly what he intended to do after seizing the armory -- Horwitz contends that the beginning of the Civil War can be traced to the events at Harper's Ferry, which took place a full 18 months before South Carolinians shelled Fort Sumter.
Midnight Rising is an intriguing and intelligent exploration of a pivotal moment in American history.
Book 23: Unpacking My Library: Writers and Their Books, edited by Leah Price
More book porn.
Price, a professor of English at Harvard, interviews several authors, including Junot Diaz and Lev Grossman, about their personal libraries. The interviews are brief and mildly interesting.
The real attraction of this book are the many photographs -- especially the close-ups -- of the author's library shelves. It's an absolute guilty pleasure to slip inside the author's homes and peruse their personal book collections.
At Home bills itself as A Short History of Private Life. The springboard for this history is the Victorian parsonage that Bryson and his family call home.
As Bryson takes us from room to room --from the cellar to the attic and all the floors in between . His goal, he writes, is "to consider how each has featured in the evolution of private life. The bathroom would be a history of hygiene, the kitchen of cooking, the bedroom of sex and death and sleeping, and so on. I would write a history of the world without leaving home."
The rambling, discursive nature of At Homes makes it like nothing so much as sitting with Bryson at the local pub, enjoying a pint of the barkeep's best, while Bryson flits from one subject to the next, peppering his conversation with the odd fact, anecdotes either amusing or horrifying and the occasional trenchant observation.
At Home is, in short, a vastly entertaining history that will provide every reader with ample conversational material for months to come.
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