The Demon of Unrest - Erik Larson

 Sub-title:A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War 

I really enjoy this author.  He takes facts and quotes from historical documents, diaries, newspapers, and memoirs and weaves them into a coherent, compelling story of a time and place.  I've read previous books of his: In the Garden of the Beast, Dead Wake, and The Splendid and the Vile.  They are long and I skip some of the details to get on to the action.  

This book tells the story of the build-up to the U.S. Civil War.  The animosity between the North and South and their clashing cultures escalates around Fort Sumter in the bay of Charleston, South Carolina where it was controlled by the U.S. The initial southern states that form the Confederacy after the election of Abraham Lincoln demand that the Fort be turned over to them.  The politics of the time eerily mirror some of today's issues, with passions running high.  

Larson is a great storyteller.  He shows how the Southern lifestyle revolved around a belief in slavery being a role of benevolent caretaker and the North (and the rest of the world) condemning it as inhumane.  The sections of the book use the chivalry rules of dueling to contrast the attitudes and beliefs of each side.  It's an eye-opening lesson from the past.

Published: 2024  Read: October 2024  Genre: Historical 

Homegoing - Yaa Gyasi

It's a good month, another wonderful read.  Gyasi tells the family history of two sisters born to different fathers in Africa - one who becomes the wife of a British slaver on the Gold Coast of Africa and the other who is sold into slavery and taken to America.  She follows their descendants through time, teaching us the history of Africa and America from the beginning of the slave trade to modern day from the point of view of their descendants. What I appreciated is what I learned of the life of those in Africa and the perspectives of the slaves taken to America.  Like the book, A Place for Us that I finished earlier this month, it taught me to look through the characters eyes and experience their lives.  

The author leads us through time with the families - the end of slavery and the wars in Africa; freed slaves in Baltimore, Maryland; slavers working in the coal mines of Alabama; Harlem and the impact of prejudice and racism that is passed on.  I loved how the author brings the story along subtly and indirectly, introducing each generation in their own time frame yet maintaining the continuity of their ancestors. This is storytelling at its best.

Published: 2016  Read: October 2024  Genre: Fiction

A Place for Us - Fatima Farheen Mirza

Rarely do I come across a book that alters my thinking and opens my eyes to a new world.  This is a story of immigrant parents coming to terms with the adults their children have become.  On one hand it is the familiar tale of how first generation children clash with the expectations of their immigrant parents.  But those tales have been told using experiences and family relations familiar to someone from American culture.  In this story, I was immersed in the life of a Muslim family.  The author teaches us the day to day lives of this family: what they eat, how they greet one another, what they wear, what they believe.  Not by telling us but by showing the intimate details of their daily lives as they have their children, take them to school, teach them about their faith and, like all parents everywhere, adjust to the adults they become.  I came away feeling like I had lived in their world and had my eyes opened and my preconceived ideas eliminated.

In addition to the story, the writing is lyrical.  It's the first time I've enjoyed a story where the author goes back and forth between characters.  The story is told from each person's viewpoint but in a subtle way that moves the story forward while still going back and forth in time, sharing different perspectives of each character.  More importantly, we see a family, loving one another, clashing with each other and coming together.   Definitely in my top five for 2024.

Published: 2018  Read: October 2024  Genre: Fiction

Gilead - Margaret Robinson

 This book is a reflection on a man's life, and a message to his son. A father approaches death, reflecting on his life as a minister and the son and grandson of: ministers. He tells the story of his estrangement from his father, a pacifist, who broke from his own father, an abolitionist in Kansas after the Civil War. He writes to his own young son, the product of a late life marriage to a younger woman. The book won a pulitzer prize. It got high praises from reviewers, for its reflections on the relationships of fathers & sons. I didn't care for it, got bored as the story went nowhere.  

Quotes.

"I don't know exactly what covetes is, but in my experience it is not so much desiring someone else's virtue or happiness as rejecting it, taking offense at the beauty of it."

"Every single one of us is a civilization built on the ruins of any number of preceding civilizations, but with own variant notions of what is beautiful and what is acceptable-which I hasten to add, we generally do not satisfy and by which we struggle to be. We take fortuitous resemblances among us to be active likeness."

Published: 2004  Read: October 2024  Genre: Fiction, Philosophy