BOOKS THREAD

I just finished Stephen Budiansky's The Bloody Shirt about the destruction of the reconstruction governments in the South by white terrorism. Sad, obscure chapter in our history, told mostly through letters and journals of the people who tried to make it work.

 

One can spend an entire career, a lifetime of sweat and tears, on Reconstruction alone, and not near scratch the surface.

Which is why I love it when some jackass on this board thinks it can encapsulate the whole thing in some 16-word message board post.

 

Adelbert Ames is one of my new heroes.

 

Amazing coincidence. I'm second on the list at my local library consortium for this.

 

Staying in the south, but far away from reconstruction, I just finished A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe. Even if you've never been to Atlanta, his descriptions of the city and its social structure and racial makeup are well written. The premise is that a real estate tycoon is going bankrupt how his decisions affect many people. Blew through 700-plus apages in about 3-weeks.

 

Sirs, Madames,

Just finished L. Jon Wetheim's Running the Table: The Legend of Kid Delicious, the Last Great American Hustler. Loved it (and not because one memorable scene was set in a poolroom where, yes, I misspent my youth). An entertaining read. It must be a great game to write (snooker, ditto). The second-best book on the game, I figure ... my favorite is still Minnesota Fats's The Bank Shot. Hysterical. (I have an old paperbook of it.) The ghost writer completely captured Fats's voice. (Not in the book but a scene from his old syndicated show: While Fats was making a run an announcer would hit him with off-beat questions and this one time asked him about the moon landing. Quoth Fats: "I bought some property there once.")

100 pages into Jeffrey Toobin's The Nine ... just how freakin' talented is this guy and exactly where does he get the time? He's on CNN every hour, once just justice, now politics too ... files a bunch of stories for the New Yorker like clockwork. I'm ust guessing he has figured out a way to write in his sleep. The Nine is great stuff--a lesson in SCOTUS without ever feeling like homework.

YD&OHS, etc

 

I'm reading a lot on Civil War and Reconstruction this semester and I'm writing a thesis paper on Horace Greeley. My favorite book so far was Daniel Sutherland's "Seasons of War." It's a look at the Civil War from the perspective of Culpeper, VA which was occupied at various points by both the Northern and Southern armies. It's written as if Sutherland was there and it flows in a way that most historical books don't.

On a completely different topic, I recently "A Russian Diary" by Anna Politkovskaya. Anna was a journalist in Russia who was killed in 2006. She was one of the few journalists still willing to question Putin. I knew the situation in Russia wasn't great but I had no idea it was this bad. Putin is hearkening back to Ivan the Terrible's oprichniki, black riders of death, the way people are disappearing and, in most cases, being killed for just standing up to the current regime. I'm really interested to hear if anyone else here has read it and what their thoughts on it were. Also, if you haven't read I highly recommend it, especially for a group of journalists.

 

Ames was the oldest-surviving major general. Had something to do with his premature commission, but it is something.

I believe he was related to the famous almanac-writing Ameses in New England in the 18th century. Those guys were real pissers.

 

We got some almanac-writin' cowpokes up here, no question.

 

Yep, all those Ames' are related in some ways. In fact, Adelbert's daughter Blanche Ames married into another New England Ames family.

How do I know this? Because I attended a private college in Massachusetts where practically every building is named after an Ames.

 

If you haven't read Carl Bernstein's "A Woman In Charge" about HRC, you owe it to yourself, whether you love/hate/neutral.

Bernstein plays it right down the middle, in a wonderfully well-organized, entertaining rendition of one of the USA's great long-running political soap operas.

 

But... what about the end? In any way satisfying?