Here are thoughts
on some recent non-fiction books dealing with historical topics:
IF YOU ASK ME by Eleanor Roosevelt contains her “essential
advice” on ten issues that reverberate today, including women, race, politics,
religion and health. Based on her advice
column which appeared in Ladies Home Journal, this will be a fun – and eye
opening – book for students to consult.
Each answer is followed by the date it appeared in brackets, like this: “Do
you really think all men are created equal? Yes, but they do not always
have an equal opportunity for development, either before or after birth. [November
1943]” IF YOU ASK ME has a
short introduction written by one of Roosevelt’s granddaughters, several pages
of notes, a bibliography, and suggested additional reading, plus a series of
photographs on the end papers.
Readers,
especially students, will be surprised by the relevance to today of many of the
comments that “ahead-of-her-time” Eleanor Roosevelt made decades ago.
HEIRS OF THE
FOUNDERS by H. W.
Brands is subtitled “The Epic Rivalry of Henry Clay, John Calhoun and Daniel
Webster, the Second Generation of American Giants” and focuses on a period of
history about which I particularly enjoy reading. These three men were indeed political titans
and skilled orators. Brands does an excellent job of relating key events in
their lives, including multiple failed attempts to achieve the Presidency. The debate
over nationalism versus states’ rights, plus regional differences (East vs.
West and North vs. South) of this era (roughly 1810 to 1850, from the
war of 1812 to the Missouri Compromise) are highlighted as well.
A best-selling author, Brands holds the Jack S. Blanton Sr. Chair in
History at the University of Texas at Austin; two of his books, The First
American (about Benjamin Franklin) and Traitor to His Class (about
FDR), were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. Teachers and students of American
history will find HEIRS OF THE
FOUNDERS to be very readable – almost like a novel. It contains
pictures of the three men at various ages and of their homes and offers
extensive notes and a comprehensive index. HEIRS OF THE FOUNDERS received
a starred review from Library Journal.
IMPEACHMENT: AN
AMERICAN HISTORY is the
combined work of four authors: Jeffrey A. Engel (who writes about the
Constitution and discusses Donald Trump in an Introduction and Conclusion); Jon
Meacham (on Andrew Johnson); Timothy Naftali (on Richard Nixon); and Peter
Baker (on Bill Clinton). Clearly, these
writers are knowledgeable scholars and have created a powerful text, filled
with relevant quotes like this one from Gerald Ford (1970): “What is an impeachable
offense? An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of
Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history.” They contrast the
circumstances and motivations of the three times when impeachment has been
used, arguing that there were strong political motivations in the cases of
Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton, but more bipartisan support for the clearer case of “high crimes and misdemeanors”
involving Richard Nixon’s actions. IMPEACHMENT:
AN AMERICAN HISTORY received a starred review from Kirkus ("impeccably researched and well-presented").
On a related
note, see also Meacham’s recent reflection in The New York Times on George H. W. Bush.
DRY by Neal Shusterman and Jarrod Shusterman is all about the
Tap-Out, the result of a major drought in Southern California which has been going on
for a while. What makes this novel so
vivid and relevant is the absolutely remarkable way that the Shustermans use
multiple narrators to relate the events after Arizona and Nevada decide to shut
the floodgates on any water supplies to California: “[Mom’s] watching the TV,
where a news anchor is blathering about the “flow crisis.” That’s what the
media’s been calling the drought, ever since people got tired of hearing the
word ‘drought.’ Kind of like the way ‘global warming’ became ‘climate change’
and ‘war’ became ‘conflict.’”
