Thursday, March 27, 2014

April Not Fiction Book Discussions

With The Men Who United the States: America's Explorers, Inventors, Eccentrics, and Mavericks, and the Creation of One Nation, Indivisible by Simon Winchester, we continue our discussion of what holds us together as a nation and what forces have the potential to tear us apart. In his Preface, Winchester tell the reader that his book is "a meditation on the nature of this American unity, a hymn to the creation of oneness, a parsing of the rich complexities that lie behind the country's so-simple-sounding motto: E pluribus unum" (xvi). Trained as a geologist, he focuses especially on "what might be called the physiology and the physics of the country, the strands of connective tissue that have allowed it to achieve all it has, and yet to keep itself together while doing so. For the ties that bind are most definitely, in their essence, practical and physical things" (xviii). He recounts the work of explorers, inventors, and businessmen who have linked the geographical United States by canal, rail, highway, telegraph, and Internet.

Winchester chooses to emphasize what holds us together in his book, even though the events he describes are part of the somewhat discredited notion of American exceptionalism, the belief that it is America's Manifest Destiny to subdue the North American continent, a belief that continues to influence its foreign policy initiatives today. An interviewer for The Daily Beast asked him, "You became an American citizen two years ago. How did that influence your decision to write this book?" He replied, "I had long thought that America, on this particular part of its history, has been particularly hard on herself. As I was approaching the time to write the book, it was also the time of the financial meltdown, the Bush presidency--a number of things that made America, a large chunk of itself at least--feel disillusioned with itself and its standing in the world. I wanted essentially to say, I threw my lot in with this country because I believed in what it stands for. I wanted to write a book that, in essence, reminded everybody what a great experiment the United States is."

A critic for The New York Times notes that "When people are smitten, they are blind to flaws in their beloved. Winchester is no exception, and this book is less a history than a love letter," while a critic for the Globe and Mail says The Men Who United the States is a "foundation myth" about "the greatness of American enterprise, and the verve and dazzle of that nation's rise to power." What do you think? Should Winchester be more critical of America as a capitalist enterprise? Of the roll of big government in establishing and maintaining America's infrastructure? Should he devote more space to a consideration of the role of women and minorities in the development of the nation?

We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, April 1, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, April 17, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

Readalikes: If you liked March's selection . . .

If you enjoyed Junius and Albert's Adventures in the Confederacy: A Civil War Odyssey by Peter Carlson, then you might these titles suggested by our discussion group members: Cold Mountain: A Novel by Charles Frazier in which a wounded Civil War soldier returns to his home in the mountains of North Carolina and is hunted by the Home Guard as a deserter; This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust, which explores the impact of the enormous death toll of the Civil War; and, of course, The Odyssey, the classic epic poem by Homer.

Thursday, March 6, 2014

March Not Fiction Book Discussions

Junius Browne and Albert Richardson reported on the Civil War for the abolitionist New York Tribune. They were captured by Confederates and spent nearly two years in a series of brutal prisons before escaping and walking 300 miles through the Blue Ridge and Appalachian Mountains in the dead of winter to Union lines. Along the way, they were aided by slaves and Union sympathizers and supported by their devoted friendship. In Junius and Albert's Adventures in the Confederacy: A Civil War Odyssey, Peter Carlson has crafted a true epic, with nods to both the form and the content of Homer's Odyssey, from their harrowing adventure.

Carlson, himself a journalist who reported for The Washington Post for 22 years, is clearly fond of his two real-life protagonists. In Chapter 23, he comments wryly on the first newspaper articles to appear about Junius Browne's escape from Salisbury prison: "Those two short items in the Tribune provide a valuable lesson about the glamour and the glory of a career as a newspaper reporter: Junius Browne risked his life covering a war. He was captured by the enemy and imprisoned for 20 months. He escaped and trudged 300 miles over snow-covered mountains. And when he finally reached safety, his own newspaper misspelled his name. Several times. On several days. First name and last name" (222). Carlson also dedicates the book "To newspaper reporters, past and present, who went off on adventures and came back with stories." Junius and Albert's Adventures in the Confederacy asks us to consider the important role journalists have played in recording and even making American history. George Packer says of the many political, social, and cultural crises in our history, "The unwinding is nothing new. There have been unwindings every generation or two . . . Each decline brought renewal, each implosion released energy, out of each unwinding came a new cohesion. . . . In the unwinding, everything changes and nothing lasts, except for the voices, American voices . . . " (The Unwinding). Our journalists' voices and the principles of free speech and witnessing the truth have been a through line in the American story.

As James M. McPherson, author of the classic one-volume history of the Civil War, Battle Cry of Freedom, notes, "This absorbing story of two Northern war reporters who were captured by the Confederates at Vicksburg demonstrates that for the Civil War, truth is indeed more thrilling than fiction. The accounts of the essential help the escapees received from slaves and Southern white Unionists provide key insights on Southern society." How does Junius and Albert's story illustrate the political, social, and cultural challenges America faced at the time of the Civil War? After reading their story, what do you think held us together as a nation at that desperate moment when it seemed like we might come apart? Does their story make you optimistic about our future as a nation?

We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, March 4, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, March 20, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.