BOOKS THREAD

I just read Venetian Blinds by ... Art Vandelay.

 

I just finished "The Great Game" by Peter Hopkirk, and I can't recommend this book highly enough.  It is about the struggle between the UK and Russia over central asia during the 19th century.  I know, you're saying how boring must that be.

I'm telling you this was one fantastic book.  It lays out the history of the region in which we now find ourselves bogged down, and shows how what the US army is doing is not very different from escapades that happened 150 years ago.  Great perspective on the tribal conflicts etc.

It isn't a dry history book, but a ripping adventure yarn.  If you've seen the movie The Man Who Would Be King, this is even better because it's all true.  Do yourself a favor and pick it up.  A great adventure story you'll have trouble putting down, and you'll learn a lot.

 

I'm almost finished reading "Why New Orleans Matters" by Tom Piazza. A really good book. It's a quick read and really explains the New Orleans is my home mentality no one could really understand just after the storm. It makes me yearn to get down there to live as soon as I can. It also makes me remember the reasons why I love New Orleans and will always feel connected to it.

 

If you post here, Robert, big up from the people. Great work.

 

I've read a number of Revolutionary War books and McCulloughs was good but there are a number of better ones.
I loved Angel in the Whirlwind : The Triumph of the American Revolution by Benson Bobrick and The Radicalism of the American Revolution by Gordon Wood.

I just bought Graham Greene's The Heart of the Matter to take with me on vacation.

 

-- Royster, Charles. _A Revolutionary People at War: The Continental Army & American Character._ Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979.

-- Wood, Gordon S. _The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787._ Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993.

-- Liell, Scott. _46 pages: Thomas Paine, Common Sense and the Turning Point to Independence._ Philadelphia: Running Press, 2003. WRITING INCOMPARABLE

-- Taylor, Alan. _William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic._ New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995. WINNER OF BANCROFT PRIZE IN AMERICAN HISTORY

 

Excellent choices. I would also add. American Scripture by Pauline Maier.

 

A real winner. Pauline is a wonderful lady.

One more choice, don't mean to monopolize the thread: Elkins and McKitrick's _The Age of Federalism._ Bursts with animation and top-notch scholarship, your one-stop source for anything relevant to the 1790s. Also won a Bancroft Prize.

 

I just finished The Colony - The Harrowing True Story of the Exiles of Molokai by John Tayman. It was amazing and sad. The first paragraph on the flyleaf sums it up as "the untold history of the infamous American leprosy settlement in the Hawaiian island of Molokai and of the exceptional people who managed to survive under the most horrific circumstances."

As of 2004, the last surviving residents were still there. They were allowed to leave, but chose to stay, or chose to live there part time.

 

I'm a teacher now and just started reading Lord of the Flies with my inner city students. They really like it. Apparently, William Golding has street cred.

I also started the alcohol memoir Smashed and was really enjoying it until my teaching duties intervened.

 

We had to read Lord of the Flies in Grade 11 and I'm glad we did. An excellent story, pretty startling then but totally believable now that I'm the father of three sons.

 

Check out the 1999 movie on Father Damien. Flemish priest who lived with and administered to the lepers, built them schools and huts and perished of the disease 20 years later. He is still up for canonization, has not yet gotten the requisite percentage of votes from the Vatican press corps.