Ecstatic Nation: Confidence, Crisis and Compromise, 1848 – 1877

 

Ecstatic Nation: Confidence, Crisis and Compromise, 1848 – 1877 by Brenda Wineapple

I had no idea what to expect from this book.  Was this book mainly a historical narrative?  Was there any sort of focus?  Why was the focus on these particular years?  Who is Brenda Wineapple?  Well, the book popped up as a discount offering from many of the “book sale” e-mail lists I receive, so I figured I’d give it a go.  If I didn’t like it, it was cheap and could be easily dismissed and discarded.  Fortunately I did like it. I liked it a lot.  The book is quite big. It’s quite thick. Had it not been an e-book I may have shied away simply due to the volume.  Electronic books are so much less intimidating where size is concerned.

As I first started reading this book, the main focus seemed to be the persistent issue of slavery (often referred to as “that peculiar institution” in the 1800s) and how it divided the young nation of America more than any other issue.  I thought this was going to be the focus of the book. In a sense, it was; but that really wasn’t the intention.  It’s just that the 30-year time period that this book focuses on really can’t diverge too much from the topic since it was so prevalent in all of the headlines.  There really wasn’t that much else going on that warrants historical reflection.  Yes, this book does focus on other things, but those areas don’t feel as rich nor even necessary. Author Brenda Wineapple manages to be a consistent, linear storyteller, and even though there are multiple areas of focus, she never seems to lose the reader by jumping around too much.

Essentially this book is broken into three sections: Pre-Civil War, Civil War, and Post-Civil War. The book is basically peppered with various anecdotes of the times. There were many unfamiliar individuals that played a relevant part in history as well as many familiar faces that I managed to learn more about as I read the book. We read some about the literature of the time, the geography (mostly the still unexplored part of the continent), Women’s suffrage, and the unfortunate fate of the North American Indian.   Mostly, though, this book is about slavery, racism, and failed reconstruction attempts after the Civil War due to an incompetent commander in chief who abrasively got the job when his predecessor was killed at Ford’s Theatre.

Even though the focus itself tends to be somewhat narrow, the scope is quite large. There are a lot of stories to tell and a lot of moving parts within a young country. In other words, the author doesn’t just focus on the main movers and the shakers that we already have multiple biographies and histories that have been written and read.   I would almost ascertain that this book just might be a good textbook for classroom reading; or perhaps supplemental reading as part of a college syllabus. I can sincerely see a university class being offered with the years covered here making an excellent course. History teachers take note.  This time period was a very important and volatile part of the country’s history.

I have to sincerely say, though, that this book was not an easy read due to the country’s brutal treatment of non-white people. Although the author doesn’t specifically state so on the pages, a horrible lesson that our country learned is that even though we fought an incredibly bloody Civil War that eventually freed the slaves (and gave us 3 amendments around the issue), the victory ended up being very small and very minor, and many would argue we still haven’t received racial harmony 150 years after the fact.   I hear a lot of white (always conservative) people maintain that racism doesn’t exist anymore and that this was “such a long time ago”. But if one were completely honest, we’d have to maintain that change has come incredibly slowly, and even though this book ends in 1877, one can easily see just how slowly civil rights issues have taken effect.

I would highly recommend this book, yet it really is difficult to “pinpoint” a key area of focus. This book is for the history lover, and for anyone who simply wants to learn more about this particular time in American History. This book is an excellent place to start, as well as excellent supplemental reading for those who already know a bit.  Although it seemed quite long (again, hard to tell on an e-reader) it’s very well written and easy to understand and digest.  All time periods in history deserve such a comprehensive account as what is available here.

Britt-Marie Was Here

 

Britt-Marie Was Here – Fredrik Backman

If I had to guess, I would speculate that “A Man Called Ove” is author Fredrik Backman’s most popular release.  I read it and enjoyed it. In many ways, “Britt-Marie Was Here” almost seems a companion to that one.  I don’t remember that much about “Ove” other than he was kind of a grouchy old sod, but he had an awful lot of effervescent neighbors and companions that seemed to pull the crotchety guy out of his funk and make him somewhat lovable; or at least bearable.

Like Ove, Britt-Marie is old – or at least “old-ish” and she’s a bit of a weird duck as well.  Britt-Marie has had a bit of a rough life and ended up marrying a man who really didn’t care that much for her. He’s used her more as a servant than a loving partner, but due to Britt-Marie’s upbringing, she really doesn’t know any better.  So when she gets to her somewhat advanced years and her husband is now gone (with no children of her own), she’s not really sure what to do.  She obsessive about cleanliness, she likes order, and she’s very stubborn about anyone’s behaviors when they don’t coincide with hers.  But Britt-Marie is single now, so she turns to an employment agency for help. She needs a job, but doesn’t really know what to do with one if and when she gets it.

I should point out that Fredrik Backman is from Sweden and apparently his books have all been translated into English.  I mention this because, as someone who has never been to Sweden, many of the behaviors and environments that I read about in Backman’s books seem very….well….foreign.  There’s something about the people, the places, the culture that just seems a bit bizarre and unfamiliar.  I’m sure I wouldn’t feel that way if I were an indigenous Nordic, but the strangeness is overtly obvious.  Fortunately, though, none of this takes away from the enjoyment of the story.

As an example, Britt-Marie gets a job through the employment agency as a worker at a recreation center in a small, dying town.  This is one of those towns where everyone is out of work and seems to drink alcohol as a hobby.  There’s a pizzeria in this town along with the rec center, but nothing else.  I kept wondering how people can afford to go to a rec center or eat out at a pizzeria (let alone drink alcohol), but it’s best not to overthink these things.

There are a lot of children in this town, and soccer is their passion.  Britt-Marie feels slightly uncomfortable around all of these urchins, yet when you work at a rec center, you can’t escape something such as soccer that’s such a passion for these kids.  So Britt-Marie begins to slowly find herself, and she allows herself to get close to these strange people which is definitely a new thing for her.

So it’s fun to watch Britt-Marie in her journey. It’s fun to watch her finally become a person who has some human interactions.  Yes, she’s quite annoying (as was Ove) but people in Backman’s stories seem to overlook such peculiar idiosyncrasies of people such as this odd out-of-towner. It’s enjoyable to watch everyone grow and cling to each other during such tough times.

Again, the people and places seemed a bit strange, and maybe if I were to see a movie with this strangeness in front of me, it might be easier to assimilate. So I had a lot of questions about certain people and what they did, or why they were presented a certain way, but this seems to be common with the author’s work and it certainly didn’t deter my enjoyment.  A bit different and strange, but a satisfying read nevertheless.

President Garfield: From Radical to Unifier

 

President Garfield: From Radical to Unifier – C.W. Goodyear

Several years ago I made a goal to read at least one biography of every United States president.  I soon became aware that many of the lesser-known presidents had very little, if any, volumes devoted to them.  For every Franklin Roosevelt or Abraham Lincoln that literally had hundreds of volumes devoted to them, the minor chiefs such as Franklin Pierce or Benjamin Harris had little to nil.  James Garfield, being somewhat inconsequential, did actually have one biography written about him around 1978, and because he was one of the lesser-known presidents, I was a bit surprised.  So I was even more surprised when there was yet another biography written about 45 years later.  Did we really need another one? And if so, is there enough interest about the man to actually warrant one?

Being a dedicated reader to the subject, I obviously had no problem picking this one up and adding to my collection.  But I’m in the minority. I have a hard time understanding why many would want to read a bio of the 20^th United States president.  That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy reading the book.  I enjoyed reading it immensely.  This book was well written and captivated my attention.  I have to honestly say that I wish EVERY U.S. president had such a volume devoted to them.  I would rapaciously snap it up and quickly devour it.  But for the masses of other readers?  Perhaps I’m overthinking things.  There’s an awful lot of books out there, and there are hundreds of millions of readers with a diverse set of tastes.

Like all well-written biographies, this book does what it should in the sequential department. We read about James Garfield as a child, a young man, a teacher, a local politician, a soldier in the U.S. Civil War (he achieves the rank of General), a U.S. Congressman, and eventually a President of the United States.  The main source of appeal that I found in this book wasn’t really about James Garfield the man, but rather the detailed paint strokes that the author gives us when creating a canvas of the time period in U.S. history.

I enjoyed reading about what life was like during Garfield’s 50 or so years of life (from about 1830 – 1880). I love the images of colonial America, the sweats and smells of the rather putrid city of Washington D.C., and most of all, the language of the educated populace that has been preserved through the multitudes of correspondence and diary entries.  The American language had not quite been infested with slang, so reading very astute observations by key political figures of the time always seemed more as though they came from the mouth of a William Shakespeare as opposed to a cable tv talk show host.

But Garfield the man, well, there simply isn’t that much here that is very interesting.  He was a rather quiet man who was thankfully an abolitionist, yet he never craved the spotlight nor had any searing ambitions to hold a high political office.  In fact, even though he achieves the rank of general in the Union army during the Civil War, I can’t really recall too much about anything vastly historical that Garfield ever achieved on the battlefield.  Yes, we do read of some important decisions he made and battles he fought, but it really does sort of have a rather a ho-hum feeling when discussing the escapades.

Once Garfield is elected to congress, the real joy in this book is reading not about him, but about the political system that exists.  This book is a reminder that politics has always been corrupt and politicians were mostly about power and rarely selfless altruism. For people disgusted with the political climate of the 2020s, please don’t think that things are now “much worse” than they ever have been.  No, the wretchedness has always been there, but in the days before sharing libelous Facebook posts and re-tweeting obvious lies, it took much longer for ignorance to breed and grow.  The real appeal of this book was to see Garfield interact with some of the more wretched elements of U.S. politics such as the infamous New York City power boss Roscoe Conkling.  Let’s just say that if you’re somewhat innocent like James Garfield, you need powerful friends to help you get elected.  Once you’re elected, the expectation is reciprocation, and if it doesn’t happen there are problems. Big problems.

What most modern readers don’t know is that the actual presidency of James Garfield was very short. He only held office for about six months before an assassin’s bullet cut his life short.  Because of this, the author spends a tad too much time talking about the primaries, the general election, and the attempted recovery of Garfield after he was wounded.  It seems as though Garfield remained alive (with heavy suffering) for about the same amount of time as president as before the assassination happened.  So read a LOT about Garfield on his sick bed, the nauseating details of the prolonged suffering, and the countless primitive medical techniques applied to him to try to keep him alive.

I did feel as though there were many parts of James Garfield’s life that were skipped over a bit. We don’t read a whole lot about his family life. Most of what we read about his wife ‘Crete’ we read from Garfield’s correspondence to and from her.  It rarely seemed as though the two were ever in the same room.  Their marriage didn’t seem to a particular joyous one either. In fact, we briefly read about an affair of Garfield’s fairly early in the marriage, yet the details provided in this book are incredibly sparse.

Speaking of incredibly sparse information, although we read ad-nauseum about the slow death suffered by Garfield after he his shot, we read almost nothing about his assassin, his background, nor his motives. In fact, we only read his name once.  (As you’re reading this review, do YOU know the name of Garfield’s assassin? I didn’t think so.)  So although this book was very well written, I confess that I thought maybe there should be more attention paid to some of the details that seemed a bit thin.

I should also point out that I did also read the biography of James Garfield that came out 45 years or so earlier (by Allan Peskin), but I read an awful lot, so I honestly can’t say that I remember much about it, nor can I give any sort of fair comparison.  If you like history, though, and do have the urge to read about James Garfield, this book will more than adequately scratch your itch.