*This review is for the audiobook version of Lafayette in the Somewhat United States* This book was really fun to listen to. The actors were well chosen, (someone should put Nick Offerman in a Washington biopic immediately) but it doesn’t hold up well on reflection. She begins by talking about Lafayette’s return to the United States in 1824 and I got excited. I’d never heard about this! After a few anecdotes from his trip the book takes a turn into Revolutionary War history, which is […]
Every moment points toward the aftermath
If you were asked to name every president who was assassinated, would you remember James Garfield? He was president for only a matter of months, part of a generally undistinguished cohort that served between Grant and McKinley. There is no great legislation that we credit to Garfield, no famous speeches or charismatic wife. On the surface, Garfield was nothing more than a generally decent man, a loving father, a good husband–an ineffectual president, although to be fair he spent a third of his term in office dying of a […]
We will recognize each other, and see ourselves for the first time the way we really are
“We all subscribe to preposterous beliefs; we just don’t know yet which ones they are.” Why do bad things happen to good people? Has there ever been a satisfactory answer to that question? The people of Salem thought they had one–bad things happen to good people because bad people–witches–make them happen. Cow suddenly dies? Lightning strikes your house? Child is stricken with a mysterious illness? Without a solid understanding of veterinary medicine, electricity, or germ theory these may well seem like magical events. Is it […]
I have seen Goody Proctor speaking with the Devil!
We’ve all heard of the Salem Witch Trials. In 1692, fourteen women, five men, and two dogs were convicted of witchcraft and put to death. Another man refused to confess and was crushed to death, probably within earshot of his wife, also imprisoned for witchcraft. In his classic “The Crucible,” Arthur Miller referred to this time as the “coming madness,” a warning to us of the chaos that can envelop a community when paranoia and persecution intersect. It started with the kids. Puritan children in […]
Spoiler Alert: The Union wins the war
One of the hazards of reading a nonfiction book, especially one about a well-known subject, is that you know what happens in the end. Every time I got to a section about the Confederates, I was just thinking, “Oh, sweetie, this is not going to turn out well for your side.” Be that as it may, there were plenty of things I didn’t know going into this, especially as I can by no means be called a history buff. I knew that Lincoln was President, […]
Women Behaving Badly (i.e., like men): The Scarlet Sisters
Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee (Tennie) Claflin were two sisters famous/infamous in American social and political circles starting in the 1870s. While most would think of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony when it comes to women’s rights, suffrage and reform, these sisters were renowned orators whose lifestyle fascinated and irritated the general public, especially men in power. They were from the wrong social class and espoused scandalous (for the time) views on sex, women, the poor and wealth. And they were linked to one […]