Book 285: Margaret Beaufort

 

"Edward IV's death ushered in a new period of uncertainty in England. With an underage king, it was clear that some kind of regency would have to be declared. Edward IV had brought a stability to the English crown that it had not known since the 1440s, but his dynasty survived him by a period of only just over two years. As one historian has commented, Margaret played a major role in presenting her son, for the first time, as a credible candidate for the throne. She can be considered the second great kingmaker of the Wars of the Roses..."

Dates read: December 28, 2018- January 1, 2019

Rating: 7/10

As we all know, history is written by the victors. But it's broader than that: history is written by the powerful. Which helps explain why we have so many stories by and/or about wealthy, usually white, men. Those were the people with status, who had the means to have their lives and thoughts recorded and taken seriously by the kinds of people who would preserve them. It can be easy to conflate the fact that these stories exist with the idea that they're therefore the most important ones.

It was her connection to a powerful man that gave Margaret Beaufort's life the weight it needed to be documented at all. And what a life it was! In her book, Margaret Beaufort: Mother of the Tudor Dynasty, Elizabeth Norton chronicles the times of the woman who gave birth to Henry Tudor, later to become King Henry VII of England. At age 12, she was married to Edmund Tudor, the son of former Queen Catherine of Valois with her second husband, who was literally twice her age. Despite this gap, she became pregnant before Edmund was slain when fighting for Lancaster against the Yorkists in the Wars of the Roses, leaving her a 13 year-old pregnant widow. The birth was apparently traumatic...despite two subsequent marriages during her potential childbearing years, there's no reason to believe she ever again became pregnant.

As was not uncommon at the time, Henry's life diverged from his mother's. Only about a year after she had him, she was married to Henry Stafford, while Henry remained with his father's family. Her marriage to Stafford lasted longer than her first one, but he too perished in the Wars of the Roses (fighting for York) and Margaret became a widow again in her late 20s. This time, she married Thomas Stanley, whose military support would prove crucial to Henry's eventual reign. While the conflict was ongoing, though, she almost certainly plotted with her former rival, Dowager Queen Elizabeth Woodville, against King Richard III. After Henry became king, Margaret exercised a significant amount of control over his court, almost equal to his queen. She outlived not only her third husband but ultimately, her son.

What I found remarkable about this book was how little Norton had to go on until after Henry's reign began. Margaret Beaufort was a significant heiress, close to the royal family, and a political player in the power games of the day. This, however, was not enough to create much of a record about her life...Norton does an excellent job of walking the line between a very dry recitation of the bare facts Margaret's life and extrapolating too heavily to make things more exciting but less accurate. When she does draw conclusions about subjective reality from the objective record, she explains how she got there, such as when she concludes that Margaret's second marriage was likely a fairly happy one because there's evidence that the couple renewed their vows.

Margaret's life had some quality high drama, and I appreciated the way Norton told her story. As fun as it can be to read something embellished like Philippa Gregory's The Red Queen, getting a sense of the actual person that existed, who is plenty interesting on her own, was something I thought Norton did well. The readership for this book is honestly probably pretty niche: unless you're particularly interested in the history of the English monarchy, particularly the Wars of the Roses, you're not likely to find this especially engaging. If you are interested in historical royal women, though, this is a very solid read and I'd recommend it!

 

One year ago, I was reading: The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires

 

Two years ago, I was reading: Midnight's Children

 

Three years ago, I was reading: The Heart of Everything That Is

 

Four years ago, I was reading: Migraine

 

Five years ago, I was reading: Devil in the White City

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Book 285: Margaret Beaufort

Book 267: The Library Book

 

 

"I was transfixed. It wasn’t that time stopped in the library. It was as if it were captured here, collected here, and in all libraries—and not only my time, my life, but all human time as well. In the library, time is dammed up—not just stopped but saved. The library is a gathering pool of narratives and of the people who come to find them. It is where we can glimpse immortality; in the library, we can live forever."

Dates read: October 6-10, 2018

Rating: 7/10

I don't remember the first time I went to the library. I'm sure I went quite often as a small child, but my first memories are of the Hamburg Township Library when I was probably about 8ish. There was a small market nearby to the original location, the one that was there for most of my childhood, and my mom would often drop me off to find a book while she took my sister and picked up some extra things for the week. As I got older, we'd spend more time at the library in Brighton, a neighboring bigger town with fancier facilities and wider selection. When my mom was mad at me for mouthing off, I'd be punished by being excluded from the next trip there. I can still conjure up in my mind the exact way the young readers section looked at Hamburg, the way the floors creaked. I remember how the nonfiction section smelled at Brighton, the older books with their distinctive aroma.

Like millions of people all over the world, I have a fond, deep attachment to libraries. Author and journalist Susan Orlean is one of those people who grew up loving the library, but found herself not visiting it as much as an adult. But then she had a kid, started visiting her local branch in Los Angeles, and found out for the first time about a major fire there in the 80s that burned hundreds of thousands of books...assumed to be arson, but never actually solved. This inspired her to write The Library Book, which explores not just that fire and the recovery afterwards, but also the history of the Los Angeles Public Library in general and the changing role of it (and other libraries) as the greater world has become a different place.

As you might be able to tell from that description, there's not one particularly strong focus for the book. The closest thing to a through-line is a true-crime-esque accounting of the investigation of the fire, and the primary suspect, a failed actor named Harry Peak. But along the way, Orlean touches on the history of libraries, especially the one in Los Angeles, highlighting several of the more interesting directors it has had along the way. While the image of a library in the popular consciousness tends to be of a somewhat stuffy institution, Orlean talks to librarians on the ground to get a more nuanced view, particularly about the role they play in coordinating community and social programming for their users, from children, to new Americans learning English, to the homeless. And she also includes input from the library staff that were there at the time of the fire, the way it impacted them, and how they and the library itself got back to normal.

Orlean's genuine appreciation and love for reading, books, and libraries shines through the text, making an instant connection with the reader. It's impossible to not happily recall your own wonder at the library the first time you went in and realized that all these books are just here, for anyone to take with them and read. And while it might not work for everyone, I found Orlean's subject-hopping to be refreshing...it kept any one portion from bogging down or getting boring. Her descriptions of how the Los Angeles Public Library came to be designed and built made me want to visit it, to see it for myself, and reflect on the ways that public good buildings like libraries have seen their value, in the eyes of the public, decline over the years. Older libraries were often constructed as grand, their mission seen as important and necessary. Nowadays, it's about how to keep costs down, aiming for sturdy functionality over inspiration.

The way Orlean unwinds her story may prove irritating to a reader who prefers a strictly linear narrative. And after spending quite a bit of time going down a path which makes you think she's relatively convinced of Peak's guilt for setting the library ablaze, she refuses to draw that conclusion, leaving it ambiguous in a way that could be frustrating for someone who really wants closure. But her storytelling skills are top-notch, and if you're willing to follow her, you'll be rewarded by a genuinely compelling work of non-fiction. While I'll admit it didn't have the little something extra that would have pushed it to "great" in my mind, it was very good and I happily and highly recommend it to everyone, especially those who love to read. 

One year ago, I was reading: Sin in the Second City

Two years ago, I was reading: Say Nothing

Three years ago, I was reading: Ghost Wars

Four years ago, I was reading: The Wars of the Roses

Five years ago, I was reading: The Woman Who Would Be King

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Book 267: The Library Book

Book 234: The Heart of Everything That Is

"The more circumspect Red Cloud also recognized that the white man’s war had finally arrived on his doorstep, first from the east following the troubles in Minnesota, and now from the south. There was nowhere to run. Nor, he reasoned, should his people have to run. It was time, once and for all, to fight the mighty United States and expel the Americans from the High Plains. He had long planned how to do this. The only question had been when. Sand Creek had answered that: Now." 

Dates read: May 16-21, 2018

Rating: 6/10

At some point, it seems, most American kids end up playing "cowboys and Indians" (I know, I know, problematic). And at least when I was growing up, it seemed like you got more takers for the former than the latter. Everyone knew the Indians were going to lose. That's how history worked, after all. It's not just in the United States. The history of the world is rife with examples of indigenous people being treated like garbage by dominant cultures: the Maori in Australia, the Ainu in Japan, the Sami in Scandinavia...it's a sadly familiar story.

As hard as the Native Americans fought to retain their land against white settlers, their military victories were few and far between. Most of us have at least vaguely heard of Custer's Last Stand, but before that, a battle in Wyoming called Fetterman's Fight led to the deaths of 81 soldiers of the US Army and the (temporary) withdrawal of troops from Indian territory. Bob Drury and Tom Clavin's The Heart of Everything That Is takes a deep dive the battle, from its roots in the inter-tribal warfare among the Plains Indians to the rise of Red Cloud as a leader among the Lakota to his (ultimately short-lived) martial triumph. It has significant biographical detail about Red Cloud, but it's not trying to be a comprehensive look at him in particular. Rather, it uses Fetterman's Fight as a microcosm of the greater struggle of the Plains and Western tribes against the changes to their lifestyles wrought by white Americans driving further and further west.

Drury and Clavin strive to present a straightforward, unvarnished look at their subjects and push back against the idea that before protracted contact with whites, Native Americans lived as idyllic pacifists. Tribes had allies and enemies and some of them were very comfortable inflicting brutal violence against the latter. Red Cloud was brought up among his mother's people, the Oglala Lakota, one of the more aggressive branches of the greater Lakota nation, and was groomed for leadership by his mother's uncle. As he grew up, his people were pushed farther and farther from their traditional territory and he fought against enemy tribes in his youth, gaining renown, before turning his attention to the threats posed by the continually promise-breaking whites.

After a series of skirmishes, things came to a head at Fort Phil Kearney. It was a perfect storm: angry at yet another incursion into their land, the Lakota were able to ally with other tribes. The leadership at the fort was both arrogant and foolhardy. Red Cloud was a smarter tactician than his opponents. And the United States was forced to retreat, to abandon its forts. But it lasted less than a decade. The book covers the immediate aftermath of the battle, but only touches on the long run: Red Cloud, taking a trip to Washington, DC, realized the scale of the threat to his people and the ultimate hopelessness of continuing the fight, and led those that would follow him onto the reservation.

Pretty much any book about Native American history is inevitably compared to Dee Brown's Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee simply because of that book's prominence. And I'd say this book is an excellent companion. It doesn't have, and honestly doesn't try for, the scope of Bury of My Heart, which covers more tribes over a longer time period. Instead, it takes a little known episode (I'd never heard of the Fetterman Fight) and explains it, placing its people and events into a larger context. And the book succeeds at this task, developing not only Red Cloud and to a lesser extent, his young protege Crazy Horse, as compelling and sympathetic characters, but also presenting the life of the Army fort, populated not just with soldiers but with families. No one is a cardboard cutout villain.

That being said, this book does occasionally get a little dry. I know some people are fascinated with military history and can happily read about tactics and battles for hours, but I am not one of those people. I find it deeply boring to read about attack techniques, and so I did experience waning interest when I think I was supposed to be the most engaged, during the climactic battle itself. I also found myself wanting more of the aftermath, more of Red Cloud's long life after this particular point. Overall, though, it's an interesting look at a part of history that's not well-understood by most potential readers, and I'd definitely recommend it as a way of broadening one's knowledge base about the formation of the United States as we know it today.

One year ago, I was reading: Midnight's Children (review to come)

Two years ago, I was reading: Landline

Three years ago, I was reading: Migraine

Four years ago, I was reading: Devil in the White City

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Book 234: The Heart of Everything That Is

Book 180: The Royals

"There were no more seasoned actors than the British royal family. Like an old vaudeville troupe, they filed on stage to go through their practiced routines. Looking like rouged curiosities, they performed at weddings and funerals. In costume, they still drew a few regular spectators, but they lose their biggest crowds with the departure of their ingenue Princess. They knew that they were viewed best from afar; up close, their imperfections showed."

Dates read: October 2-10, 2017

Rating: 6/10

I'll admit it: when I went to London, one of the first things I wanted to see was Buckingham Palace and the Changing of the Guard. It feels a little un-American, given that the whole reason the USA is a thing was rebelling against the crown, but I love the British monarchy. If someone wore Saint Edward's Crown, I want to know about them. The jewels, the castles, and the wide variety of people who have worn them/lived in them through the centuries is something I just can't tear myself away from.

The family currently occupying the throne are the Windsors, and Kitty Kelley's The Royals recounts their modern history. She starts with the changing of their name from Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to Windsor to downplay their Germanic origin in the World War I era, and traces the family through the divorces of Prince Charles and Prince Andrew (the book was originally published in the late 90s, shortly before the death of Diana, and while there is a bit of content added on to the later edition I had, the bulk of the material stops there). After some introductory material about the history of the House, she recounts it primarily by tracing the romances that have defined it: David and Wallis Simpson, Albert and Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, Elizabeth and Phillip, Margaret and Antony Armstrong-Jones, Charles and Diana, and Andrew and Fergie.

Kelley's book lies somewhere between the tawdriness of an expose and glossiness of an official biography...she's looking to tell a behind-the-scenes story to get to who the Windsors actually are, but mostly avoids being sensationalistic. Kelley highlights the steely reserve of the Queen Mother, who held on to her grudge against Wallis Simpson until the day the latter died, and how her deep opposition to divorce was internalized by her daughter and trapped many of the family members in marriages long past their expiration date (and prevented one marriage from occurring at all, in Margaret's case). Queen Elizabeth II is shown to be both deeply devoted to her duty as monarch, and also as a woman who's fundamentally introverted and struggles with social relationships, including parenthood. And while Phillip hasn't always been faithful to his wife, he has always been loyal to The Firm, as he calls the royal family.

This is actually what interested me the most as I was reading the book...the line that the Windsors walk between being a family, with all the messiness that entails, and being an institution, which needs to show staying power and continue to have meaning in order to maintain relevance. The Queen can never just be a daughter, or sister, or mother, or wife...she is always the monarch and the figurehead of the Commonwealth. For some, like Princess Anne, who has famously inherited her father's stubborn prickliness, this seems to have worked out just fine. But for Prince Charles, with his almost painful earnestness, it's clear that a more traditionally middle-class/warmer household would have been better for him...I found myself feeling more sympathy for him than I would have expected after reading this book. He's not either of his parents' favorite (Phillip prefers Anne, while Elizabeth reportedly favors Andrew), and his obvious desire to be feel loved and be taken seriously is sad. Kelley doesn't let him off the hook for the issues in his marriage to Diana (nor does she let Diana off the hook for her own contributions to the breakdown), but reading about his obvious lasting devotion to Camilla made me glad for him that they finally ended up married. 

Like I said previously, I think Kitty Kelley does a pretty good job of including enough gossip to be dishy, but not going overboard and just printing every rumor she heard while doing research. Obviously the Windsors themselves may disagree, but she definitely paints portraits of them as people who are neither flawless example of nobility nor cartoon villains (well, later-in-life Margaret veers towards cartoon villainy but it doesn't seem gratuitous, at any rate). At the end of the day, I found myself glad that the families I was both born into and married into are warm and loving and free from public scrutiny, even if that scrutiny does come with the castles and the jewels and all that. This book is sure to entertain those who enjoy reading about the British royal family, but won't have much for those who aren't already disposed to be interested. It's long, but never feels like a slog.

Tell me, blog friends...do you know anyone who's been raised in the public eye because of who their parents were?

One year ago, I was reading: Children of Blood and Bone

Two years ago, I was reading: Friday Night Lights

Three years ago, I was reading: The Witches of Eastwick

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Book 180: The Royals

Book 151: The Man Without A Face

"Putin loved the Soviet Union, and he loved its KGB, and when he had power of his own, effectively running the financial system of the country's second-largest city, he wanted to build a system just like them. It would be a closed system, a system built on total control—especially control over the flow of information and the flow of money. It would be a system that aimed to exclude dissent and would crush it if it appeared."

Dates read: June 9-14, 2017

Rating: 7/10

There are two kinds of people, in my experience working in politics, who decide to run: people who genuinely care about people and want to be a part of the solution in helping the community run better, and people who like power. These aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, but there's generally one that seems to be predominant. Thankfully, most of the people I've worked with are in the former rather than the latter category. As hard as it seems to believe in our currently climate of partisan enmity, the solid majority of politicians on both sides are in it because they're trying to do good for their communities, states, and country.

It's the other ones, the ones who are focused on power, who are hard to deal with at best and dangerous at worst. Perhaps the world's most prominent power-oriented politician is President Vladimir Putin of Russia, and The Man Without A Face is Russian writer Masha Gessen's look at how he rose and how he's managed to stay on top.  Russian interference with the 2016 presidential election has been and continues to be a very hot topic, so this book got bumped up on my reading list because I wanted some context for what's going on in the world right now. It proved a very timely, very enlightening read.

Those looking for a straightforward biography of Putin will be disappointed. Although the details of Putin's life, such that they are available, are discussed at significant length, the book is just as focused on explaining the Russia in which he came to power and how he's worked to concentrate and hold that power ever since. The relative comfort in which Putin grew up, the disappointment of a boring posting to East Germany while with the KGB, his good fortune in finding himself attached to then-Mayor of St. Petersburg, Anatoly Sobchak, the way in which he was plucked from obscurity to succeed Boris Yeltsin by political handlers overconfident that he would be moldable clay...and his utter ruthlessness in completely destroying potential foes before they were able to gain any real momentum. All of that's there, but Gessen provides important details about Russia's political history to help understand how it was all able to be executed so effectively.

Speaking of executed...Gessen's book doesn't directly accuse Putin of having them carried out, but she draws damning connections between dissident activity that angered him and then sudden, untimely deaths due to very unlikely causes, like radioactive element poisoning. Documentary proof of this and other clandestine, illegal activity very likely doesn't exist or is deeply buried, so she can't present it to her readers. This is not surprising, but I didn't get the sense that she was scare-mongering or making molehills into mountains. It seemed to me like she picked examples of politically motivated scare tactics/violence where the logical chain was clear, and I have to imagine that for every situation she presents, there are several sketchier ones that required larger conclusory leaps that were left untold. If you're interested in Putin, or Russia, or autocrats, I'd definitely recommend this book. It's worth your time.

Tell me, blog friends...do you think politicians are mostly good, or mostly bad?

One year ago, I was reading: Player Piano

Two years ago, I was reading: The Executioner's Song

Three years ago, I was reading: Gilded

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Book 151: The Man Without A Face

Book 140: The Children of Henry VIII

"There remained, however, the problem of what to do with the body. The Duke had hoped for a fortnight in which to gather his resources, but, since the weather was warm and the corpse already beginning to decay, this proved untenable. He could not leave the body in the King's chamber, yet nor could he risk an autopsy - which, in view of the current rumors, his colleagues might suggests which might reveal the arsenic in Edward's body."

Dates read: April 13-21, 2017

Rating: 7/10

The more I read about Henry VIII and the world into which he came, the more understandable he becomes. Instead of reading his serial marriages as the behavior of a man who refused to control his desires, it becomes obvious that, in significant part, the desire for a male heir to ensure the security of his bloodline was all-consuming and not unreasonable. After decades of brutal warfare between the Lancaster and York family lines, Henry was the product of a fragile new dynasty, and his failure to produce a viable heir could plunge England back into active hostilities. He needed a son, or better yet two, so that in the event that the first one didn't survive to produce heirs of his own (like Henry's own older brother Arthur), there would be someone to carry on the line.

These fears turned out to be both founded and unfounded. While he was absolutely correct to be worried about producing a son that would survive to adulthood, his failure to do so led directly to one of the most successful reigns in English history. In The Children of Henry VIII, Alison Weir focuses on the period between Henry's death and the beginning of Elizabeth's rule. This 11-year timespan saw three monarchs and a significant amount of instability, much of it driven by the religious schism between English Catholics longing to return to the old faith and Protestants wanting to protect their gains. With this book, Weir explores how Edward VI, Lady Jane Grey (Henry's grandneice), Mary I, and Elizabeth I interacted with each other, with the nobility, and with the levers of power.

In popular culture, there's a tendency to focus on Henry and then Elizabeth, with little if any thought to what happened in between. But there was a LOT of drama...Elizabeth's teenage sex scandal with her stepmother's husband, Edward's slow death from tuberculosis, complete with an artificial prolonging of his life to give courtiers more time to scheme to get another Protestant on the throne, Jane Grey's 19-day queenship, in which she was mostly a pawn to her parents and their co-conspirators, Mary's romantic obsession with her largely uninterested husband and her extended phantom pregnancy which everyone just apparently pretended never happened. Seriously! She went into confinement to have her baby and stayed there for months and then just disbanded it long after it should have been obvious that there wasn't going to be a baby.

As always, Weir has a keen sense of who her subjects are as people and gives them life rather than just dryly recounting the events of their life. We see Edward's haughty remove and strong religious conviction, Jane's helplessness as a pawn in a game she's not a player in, Mary's desperation to have a family of her own to love and fervent Catholic faith, and Elizabeth's intelligence and caution, constantly trying to balance on a wire. It's easy to see why Weir was inspired to write about Jane for her first stab at fiction, as her sympathy for the doomed teenager shines through brightly. She's clearly done her research and the book feels satisfying both as reading for information and reading for entertainment. I'd definitely recommend this book!

Tell me, blog friends...did you know that Elizabeth got into hot water with Katherine Parr's husband?

One year ago, I was reading: Butterfly Boy

Two years ago, I was reading: The White Tiger

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Book 140: The Children of Henry VIII

Book 126: Zealot

"The messiah was popularly believed to be the descendant of King David, and so his principal task was to rebuild David's kingdom and reestablish the nation of Israel. Thus, to call oneself the messiah at the time of the Roman occupation was tantamount to declaring war on Rome. Indeed, the day would come when these angry bands of peasant gangs would form the backbone of an army of zealous revolutionaries that would force the Romans to flee Jerusalem in humiliation. In those early years of the occupation, however, the bandits were little more than a nuisance. Still, they needed to be stopped; someone had to restore order in the countryside."

Dates read: February 11-16, 2017

Rating: 7/10

I always think it's pretty ridiculous when religious groups mock each other's ideas. Isn't it soooo funny that Hindus hold cows to be sacred? I don't know, Catholics who believe by doctrine that the host literally transforms into the flesh of Christ are actually kind of cannibals, right? It seems like an inimical tenet of religion that some things that sound preposterous are meant to be taken on faith by true believers. And surely the story of Jesus, featuring divine conception upon a virgin and death followed by resurrection, is no more inherently believable than any other. But Jesus's life was recent enough that historical records, however scant, exist of it. So who was Jesus of Nazareth anyways?

Reza Aslan was born into a Persian family and Islamic faith, but was so enamored of the story of Jesus that he converted briefly to Christianity as a teenager. He eventually returned to Islam, but remained fascinated with Jesus. His book, Zealot, is a nonfiction history that looks at the man, not through the lens of his religious/mythological importance, but rather in the context of his time and place: Israel (or rather, the Roman province of Judea) in the early Common Era.

This is not a hatchet job by a nonbeliever intent on denigrating an important figure of faith. But it will challenge some of the fundamental facts Christians take for granted. For example, Jesus' birth. According to Aslan's research, what the Bible states about a census compelling all to return to the cities of their father's birth (leading Jesus to be born in Bethlehem), would have been completely anomalous among the many Roman censuses. While that doesn't necessarily mean it's not true, it does mean that it is much, much more likely that Jesus was both born and raised in Nazareth. He also places Jesus into context as one of many self-annointed Kings of the Jews in the area at the time, and far from the only one that was crucified by Rome for such a crime.

As an agnostic/atheist with a Christian background, I found the book fascinating. This is my first time reading a history of this time period, but Aslan's research seems well-grounded. His writing doesn't come across like an attempt to debunk the Christian religion (indeed, he usually states that the most faith-based aspects of Jesus's life are unknowable by historical accounts), but rather asks the reader to think about the world in which Jesus, whether he was just a man or a prophet or divine, actually lived. For my money, more critical thinking is always a good thing.

Tell me, blog friends...have you ever read into the history of your faith?

One year ago, I was reading: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Two years ago, I was reading: The President's Club

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Book 126: Zealot

Book 121: Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee

"As soon as the dancing was finished, many of the young men rode off to Texas to hunt  buffalo and raid the Texans who had taken their lands. They were especially angry against white hunters who were coming down from Kansas to kill thousands of buffalo; the hunters took only the skins, leaving the bloody carcasses to rot on the Plains. To the Kiowas and Comanches the white men seemed to hate everything in nature."

Dates read: January 26-30, 2017

Rating: 7/10

Lists/awards: New York Times bestseller

History is written by the victors. Growing up in the north, I learned about the Civil War the way I thought everyone did: it was fought over slavery and the Union Army were the good guys. But when I moved to Alabama for law school, I knew people who would, tongue only halfway in cheek, refer to it as the War of Northern Aggression, and who insisted passionately that it was fought over federalism and states' rights. It makes you wonder how many more of the things we learn about have a completely different narrative from the other side.

Like Manifest Destiny, for example. From what I recall from my K-12 history classes, this was a largely positive event, stretching the US from sea to shining sea. There's some token acknowledgment that it meant "resettling" the Native Americans, but it's not dwelled upon. Dee Brown's Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, though, tells the story of the settling of the American continent from the people who were there first.

Since he focuses on the era of Manifest Destiny (there's some information about how European arrival in the Americas played out, but it's a small portion of the book), Brown confines his focus to the West. It's heartwrenching to read about from the perspective of now, because you know that each chief that tries to negotiate in good faith with the white people will eventually be cheated and that each warrior who tries to fight back against the people who were eroding their way of life will eventually lose. Brown uses as many Native American sources as possible to show how the westward march of white settlers progressed from the point of view of the people who were pushed away from the land and lifestyle they'd always known in order to make room. With each passing year, restrictions on their territory become tighter and tighter, but their inability to safeguard even the small promises that they were able to extract is just relentlessly sad to read about.

I think it's important to wrestle with all parts of American history, and remember that many of what we think of as gains come from losses by someone else. As such, I'd definitely recommend this book to anyone who's interested in how this country has treated its original residents.

Tell me, blog friends...have you ever read any books about the less pleasant side of American history? 

One year ago, I was reading: Stranger In A Strange Land

Two years ago, I was reading: On The Edge of Gone

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Book 121: Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee

Book 118: The Wars of the Roses

"From 1399 to 1499 the crown became the object of feuds, wars, and conspiracies, not because of a dearth of heirs, but because there were too many powerful magnates with a claim to the throne. During this period a new and disturbing element became involved in determining the royal succession: the prevalence of might over right. This brought a new awareness of the lack of statute law governing the succession and a debate as to whether the rights of a senior heir general, with a claim transmitted through a female, could take precedence over the rights of a junior heir male. But in the final analysis strength and success were what counted: an effective ruler was more likely to remain on the throne, however dubious his title. Weak or tyrannical rulers met with disaster."

Dates read: January 14-18, 2017

Rating: 7/10

Historical fiction is a genre I tend to enjoy, and one of the reasons why is that it introduces you to worlds you might have only known about through brief mentions in the classroom. I'm coming to enjoy non-fiction history a lot more as I get older, but I still really like my Phillipa Gregory (sorry not sorry). When getting introduced to a historical figure and period, I've usually just turned to old reliable Wikipedia. But even the most in-depth Wikipedia article can only tell you so much.

Ever since I first read her, Alison Weir has become one of my go-to historians. And as much as I enjoy the soap opera-esque The Cousin's War series (which I've read the first three of so far), Gregory is a fiction writer, and I know better than to trust her to teach me history. While I'd always been aware of the so-called Wars of the Roses in British history (I knew it was the Yorks and the Lancasters and it finally ended for good when the two houses intermarried and formed the House of Tudor), it doesn't tend to be taught in American schools. Which is why it's perfect that Weir has a whole book just about that period in English history: The Wars of the Roses.

It's a confusing story, to be sure: it seems like virtually every man in it is named Edward, Richard, or Henry, and they're all related to each other, besides. But Weir does her best to distinguish each of them, and she traces the conflicts not just from the point that they formally began, but from the point where they are rooted. The fighting doesn't get started until about halfway through, but it would be well nigh impossible to understand without all the preamble. She sets her stage carefully, and, much to my relief, when the fighting begins, it doesn't turn into a straight blow-by-blow battle narrative. I find descriptions of war maneuvers to be boring beyond measure, but Weir tells us enough to give us a sense of the battles but not make us feel like we're sitting through a military history lecture.

As always in Weir's work, it's well-sourced (she uses sources contemporary to the events being described, and traces language use back to ensure that she's giving the proper context to what was being reported) and well-written, with a definite sense of narrative and not just fact-dumping. One minor quibble, though, with this book is that it doesn't quite see the Wars through to what I thought to be their end: the ascension of Henry VII and his marriage to Princess Elizabeth of York. While I was hoping to get a bit more information about the end stages of the Wars, I definitely enjoyed getting Weir's take on the period she covered, and would recommend the book to others curious about this period of English history.

One year ago, I was reading: A Leg To Stand On

Two years ago, I was reading: Without You, There Is No Us

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Book 118: The Wars of the Roses

Book 105: Eleanor of Aquitaine

"She had inherited many of the traits of her forebears, and was energetic, intelligent, sophisticated, headstrong, and perhaps lacking in self-discipline. She possessed great vitality and, according to William of Newburgh, a lively mind. Impetuous to a fault, she seems to have cared little in her youth for the conventions of the society in which she lived. Sharing many qualities with that company of ambitious, formidable, and strong-minded female ancestors, she was to surpass them all in fame and notoriety." 

Dates read: November 15-21, 2016

Rating: 8/10

It's easy to forget that the world didn't always look like what it looks like today. Obviously, everyone knows that Egypt now is different than Ancient Egypt, but what we think about tends to be the cultural differences between them. The very borders of what land was considered Egypt aren't the same. So, too, in Europe. We think about the countries of Europe as being more or less settled, but it wasn't always so. It took the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella to bring together much of what is modern Spain. And when she married the King of France, Eleanor brought much larger and richer landholdings, in Aquitaine and Poitou, to the marriage than did her husband.

Alison Weir's Eleanor of Aquitaine brings to life a remarkable (and remarkably long-lived) woman. She married two kings, and was the mother of three more. She went on Crusade. One of the kings she married was the son of a man she'd likely had an affair with before her marriage, and she was rumored to have been a little too close to her own uncle. Despite having been a desirable wife to the kings of both France and England because of her inheritance, she never really ceded control of those lands to her husbands. She actively encouraged her sons to rebel against and try to overthrow her husband, Henry II of England. This is some soap-opera level stuff.

Weir has quickly become one of my favorite historians to read, because she has a way of synthesizing lots of information into an easily readable and understandable narrative. She's open about when the scholarship is unclear, or there's more than one version of a particular event, and she tells the reader why she has chosen to take a particular position on what likely really happened. She knows that her reader isn't as immersed in the subject as she is and provides context for the events she relates...she finds a good middle ground between assuming her readers know too little or too much.

My only real exposure to Eleanor's story had been the movie version of The Lion In Winter with Peter O'Toole and Katharine Hepburn, which I saw several years ago and remember little of apart from Eleanor being portrayed as a ruthless schemer. Weir never stoops to that kind of caricature of the people involved in Eleanor's life, especially Eleanor herself: she was a political opportunist to be sure, but she also lived in an era that was especially skeptical of women in power and the accounts of her that survive reflect that bias. I've got quite a few of Weir's books on my TBR, and I always look forward to them and recommend them (including this one!) heartily.

Tell me, blog friends...do you have any family history in areas that have had changing borders? We found my great-grandpa's immigration records, and he's actually recorded as being ethnically Polish, but with Austrian nationality, because the area in Poland where we're from was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire!

One year ago, I was reading: Freakonomics

Two years ago, I was reading: All The King's Men (my favorite of that year!)

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Book 105: Eleanor of Aquitaine

Book 93: A History of the World in 6 Glasses

"Unlike beer, which was usually produced and consumed locally, and wine, which was usually made and traded within a specific region, rum was the result of the convergence of materials, people, and technologies from around the world, and the product of several intersecting historical forces. Sugar, which originated in Polynesia, had been introduced to Europe by the Arabs, taken to the Americas by Columbus, and cultivated by slaves from Africa. Rum distilled from its waste products was consumed both by European colonists and by their slaves in the New World."

Dates read: September 24-27, 2016

Rating: 4/10

For someone who's as fussy of an eater as I am, my taste in drinks has changed a lot over the years. I changed over to coffee, finally, from my longtime Diet Mountain Dew habit only a few years ago once I was finally convinced that my continued possession of my own teeth depended on it. I drank mostly shots and liquor in college, wine through law school and early legal practice, and have become a beer person over the past couple years. I've ever developed a fondness for some kinds of tea...especially kombucha!

Tom Standage's A History of the World in 6 Glasses examines what was going on in the world as six different drinks were developed and had their heyday: beer, wine, liquor, coffee, tea, and Coca-Cola. It's set in that order, too, taking us chronologically from early civilization to close to the present day. While each subject is worthy of its own full book-length treatment, honestly, shorter examinations provide an interesting lens through which to look back at history.

I think the three most interesting segments are the ones regarding liquor, coffee, and tea. While anyone who remembers history class can probably connect the dots between rum and the large-scale slave trade, I think Standage does a good job of developing both that connection and going into the larger cultural history of liquor. The coffee section details not only the beverage itself, but the role that coffeehouses played in political intrigue, which is something I'd never read about before. And he does a great job tying the British imperialism to the tea trade, which isn't a connection I would have drawn on my own but was really insightfully done.

Nothing about it is particularly revelatory...it did more to pique my interest into looking more deeply into some of the topics it covered than captivate me on its own. But it's a novel way to look at the span of human history, it's well-written, and it's an enjoyable if not mind-blowing read. A good choice for the beach or the airplane!

Tell me, blog friends...if you had to drink just one thing besides water for the rest of your life, what would it be?

One year ago, I was reading: The Other Side of the River

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Book 93: A History of the World in 6 Glasses