TIOLI November Read a Book About History Challenge

November is a big month for history. In the US it's election day and Veterans Day. In the UK it's Remembrance Day and Guy Fawkes Night. So I'm reading a little about politics in Common Nonsense: Glenn Beck and the Triumph of Ignorance in which Alexander Zaitchik shows how Glenn Beck takes the little American History he knows and twists it to ramp up his audience. I'll be reading an alternate view of American History. In A Renegade History of the United States Thaddeus Russell shows how drunks and prostitutes have been responsible for some of the rights we have.

Historical fiction can lead us to study parts of our past that we wouldn't have thought to explore without the story surrounding it. I'll be reading Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier about fossil hunting and friendship in 19th Century England, and March by Geraldine Brooks which follows the Dad from Little Women as he fights in the Civil War.

Here's hoping for a month full of fun learning.

I have been meaning to read March for quite some time now, so I will join you in that one, Joyce.

Yay, a shared read. It works out well for me because my RL group is reading Little Women in December, which for whatever reason I've avoided reading, so this will get me in the mood.

I will definitely read something for this challenge (even if I only end up listing my course books) but I'm yet not sure which books.

I read Remarkable Creatures a couple of months ago: I thought it was pretty good.

ETA Proper grammar. It helps.

So, how long ago does an event need to have happened before it counts as history?

I'm already planning on three books for this challenge:

Gymnastics of the Mind: Greek Education in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt
The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot
Wildthorn

But I may manage to fit in some others as well.

#5 I tend to work on a minimum of 25 years before the writing about it, but I know some people will say more and some less.

And at the other end of things - I wonder whether prehistory/archaeology counts? (Not that I'm actively planning to read anything about it this month, but you never know...)

I've had Sarah Vowell's Wordy Shipmates on my shelf for awhile. She does history like no other - very informative and very funny. If she'd been my history teacher in high school, I would have learned something! I listened to the audio of Assassination Vacation a few years ago - brilliant.

I have no idea what the time limitation is for calling current events history. To me something about the Bush Gore election or the Clarence Thomas hearings or New Orleans and Katrina is history, no matter the time frame. Prehistory to me is history. I'm not good at limiting challenges, so if you think your book is about history, it is.

I can' believe that I forgot the thing that made me think about the history challenge this month, Thanksgiving in the US. The time that the Pilgrims and the Native Americans showed they could be friends. Now, how many versions of that story do you think there are? Wordy Shipmates will be one of the books I'll be listening to on CD this month. Now that ties in to the challenge I'd envisioned.

I'm using this as a spur to get round to Wolf Hall at last - it's been on the shelf since the beginning of the year...

#6 Caty, I would have thought that prehistory and archaelology count definitely - it's all about forming some kind of account and interpretation of the past, whether based on written or other kinds of evidence.

Good point, Genny.

*Looks wistfully at Europe Between the Oceans on the shelf*

Maybe I could give up sleep for a month.

Maybe I could give up sleep for a month.

CatyM, I know what you mean. So many books I want to read this month, and I just keep finding more.

I started Wordy Shipmates this morning, I've got the distinction between Pilgrims and Puritans down now. Pilgrims were separatists from the Church of England, Puritans wanted to reform from within. Vowell has the greatest respect for the intellect of the Puritans and the high value they placed on reading, and she sure makes history interesting.

I'm looking forward to hearing more about Wordy Shipmates: I've got that one wishlisted, but I haven't managed to pick up a copy yet, or I'd be trying to fit it in this month along with all the others.

#9: I'm going to try to make it through Wolf Hall as well--I got it as an ER book and really need to finish it, but I had a hard time getting into it last month.

I'll join in the read of Wordy Shipmates as well.

To me something about the Bush Gore election or the Clarence Thomas hearings or New Orleans and Katrina is history, no matter the time frame.

Sounds good to me! In that case I may also try to fit in The Day the World Came to Town for this challenge.

I learned so much from Wolf Hall but it's a very difficult read because you never know who's talking or which he is which. I'm glad I read it, but I wasn't in love with it and am not so sure I will take on many of her other books.

The Wordy Shipmates is so good. I'm listening to it on CD's read by Sarah Vowell with her funny little voice and others whose voices are more standard actor types. It's just one revelation after another. Those poor, intelligent, purposely miserable puritans. As she quotes someone at one point, "I'm so thankful to have had them in my history, and so thankful for each year they recede into history", or something to that effect. It's fascinating how she uses the "shining city on a hill" to show the outlook of various politicians. She doesn't have much use for Reagan.

I ordered March from Abebooks, so hopefully I'll get in the next week so I can join you guys. I think I'm only going to commit myself to two TIOLI books.

Joyce, I loved the audio of Assassination Vacation, also read by her -- but I did not like the additional actors - it felt too disruptive and phony to me. I'll be reading this one rather than listening.

I finished The Wordy Shipmates and am so impressed by Sarah Vowell's ability to explain our history and make it as interesting as it was. John Winthrop, probably a good husband, a scholar, a great speech writer with a wonderful vision of establishing a commonweal in which neighbors helped each other and cared for each other and allowed no one to freeze or go hungry and at the same time made sure neighbors payed close attention to the behavior of their neighbors and didn't allow them to stray from the teachings of the (one true) church. Winthrop believed the puritans could establish a city on the hill, and thought it just fine that they massacred Native Americans in order to do so. His nemesis/respected friend Roger Williams who would have been really frustrating to be married to, who didn't give an inch in his interpretation of what his religion meant yet who believed in, promoted and assured for the citizens of Rhode Island complete separation of church and state (so that the government wouldn't debase religion). And there was Anne Hutchinson who, pregnant with her 16th child at the age of 46 stood up to John Winthrop and risked banishment in order to promote her belief that individuals had a right to disagree with church officials publicly and often. (The puritan interpretation of the 5th commandment to honor your father and mother meant citizens and church members were required to honor, respect and obey their government and church officials). Vowell helps us see the honor due to our fore fathers and mothers as she shows their obstinacy and their ability to ignore the rights of others when they found it convenient.

Now I've started listening to Day After Night. What a change of emphasis from puritans to Holocaust survivors.

I'm still reading Common Nonsense. It's taking me a long time because it's so unpleasant. Maybe I'll finish tomorrow.

I chose Ragtime by E.L.Doctorow because it was in my TBR pile, and was an opportunity for a shared read. I had no idea this novel would contain so many moments of American history, c.early 1900s. And it's a joy to read.

Ragtime was the first book I read in the style that mixes real people into fiction. What's that called? Anyway, I loved it.

I finished Common Nonsense: Glenn Beck and the Triumph of Ignorance and I'm understanding a little more about him. I don't watch his program or Fox news, but I've heard him referred to enough that I thought I had to check him out. Most of the book is biography and shows him to be possibly bi-polar (he says himself he may be borderline schizophrenic), sadistic, power hungry, attention starved, self serving and charismatic. He says his conversion to mormonism helped him overcome his substance abuse problem so he is no longer sadistic, though that seems to be one of his many untruths. But more important, the reason I read the book was to understand his take on history. Zaitchik says that he is a perfect example of his Mormon faith. The crying shows his sensitivity (which Zaitchik dubs gender pirating) which is normally on exhibit during testimony meetings. As a former Mormon I attended many testimony meetings, but it's been a long time so I can't vouch for that. What I can vouch for is the Mormon attitude of paranoia and persecution that's at the top of Beck's psyche.

I was in the church long enough ago that I remember the denigration of African Americans, which I think the church is now saying never happened. I knew they were politically conservative, but I didn't know that Beck's historical mentors Cleon Skousen and Ezra Taft Benson (who was a president of the church) were John Birch Society conservative. When I was a Mormon I worked for Goldwater and had an eye opening philosophical moment reading Ayn Rand. Beck is still in the eye opening phase of his JBS mentors.

I didn't realize that Beck hates the very term "social justice". I didn't know anyone would go that far. And he has bought into the idea that poor (probably Black) people were the cause of the housing collapse thus the collapse of the global economy. I'll bet they didn't even know they had that much power. OK, now I know where my Mormon sister gets some of her strange ideas, I don't feel the need to read anything else about him.

I didn't realize Beck was a Mormon. Joyce, have you read Under the Banner of Heaven? I'm planning to read it this month. More wackos - Mormons gone bad.

Yes, I read Under the Banner of Heaven a few years ago. I do so love a completely unrepentant killer. It's a mighty creepy book, especially when the author says how nice the men were.

I couldn't finish The Wordy Shipmates. I would be interested to read an actual history book that discussed the Puritans, what their beliefs really were, and how they have been misappropriated/mischaracterized, but this is just a political rant interspersed with quotations taken out of context and then interpreted in ways that do not make sense. The book lacks organization, jumping from topic to topic. Vowell also tries to connect events far apart in time without any explanation of why the first event influenced the second; she just asserts that they are related. I also doubt her research--when an author cites plaques next to museum exhibits as sources, I'm not too convinced (and I'm a liberal).

#23: this is just a political rant interspersed with quotations taken out of context and then interpreted in ways that do not make sense.

I had the same problem with Vowell's Assassination Vacation, Carly. I have no desire to read The Wordy Shipmates because of that experience.

Wow, how's that for a difference of opinion? I was very impressed at the way Vowell was able to personalize history. I thought her opinion was clearly expressed but I also thought she accurately showed the lives of the people she described.

I just finished March and again I think Brooks shows some accurate views of history I knew nothing about. She shows a farm in the south leased by an ignorant Northerner who has no idea how to work with freed slaves as equals. It says in the afterword that such a leased farm wouldn't have existed in the early days of the war, indicating that they did exist later. She shows John Brown pretty much cheating abolitionists out of money in order to support his uprising. I don't know if that happened, but she makes it seem plausible. Ah, one important thing she mentions is that Bronson Alcott, in the person of March, invented the idea of recess. She pictures that very well. She paints a picture of Civil War Washington DC with the Washington Monument 1/3 built.

The book is mostly a study of the conflict of ideals and reality, but I think it does a fine job of showing aspects of the Civil War. Oh, and relating back to The Wordy Shipmates she shows the conflict between Calvinist preachers and Unitarians which I wouldn't have understood as well without Vowell.

I just finished Over the edge of the world:Magellan's terrifying circumnavigation of the globe for the history challenge.

I find it hard to believe that Magellan who was as important as he was to history, doesn't even get a first page hit in Google - if it's not a GPS, Magellan is nothing. Magellan was the first person who set out and proved that by sailing west you can get to the east.

The story was filled with tales of mutiny, cannibalism, disease, orgies, superstitions, and religious zeal. I found it fascinating.

"Mutiny, cannibalism, disease, orgies" you can't beat that. Seems rather more important than a GPS to me, but I guess not as commercial - at least not any more.

Onto the TBR it goes...

Some fun tid bits from A Renegade History of the United States Some of the most influential and biggest property owners in early San Francisco and Colorado were prostitute-madams. Sister Noon referred to the same phenomenon. They were portrayed as so oppressed on "Deadwood" that I hadn't thought of the power some of them had. Russell says that when madams ran their own houses, the girls were well payed and well cared for. When reformers tried to outlaw prostitution men stepped in as pimps and prostitution became a rather more unpleasant choice for women.

He said early Irish immigrants were thought of as African like, there were "studies" that showed Anglo Europeans to be "white" but Celtic Europeans were a whole different race. The same argument was applied to Jews. When the large numbers of Italians started to immigrate, people accepted northern Italians as white, but southern Italians (since they came from a part of the country so close to Africa) were not thought to be white. Italians, Jews and Irish immigrants at first lived with African Americans, intermarried and copied their culture. When they decided they could benefit economically from being considered as white they became less personally expressive as their political influence increased. He says at one time 75% of the fire fighting force in New York was Irish and 75% of the prostitutes were Jewish. He also said at one time Jews were the biggest name in basketball.

Renegade music always seems to come from African American influence: jazz, R & B, rock and roll, boogie, disco and has been embraced by renegades. I have a hard time understanding the appeal of sexist hip hop and letting your pants droop down your butt, but now I see it as a renegade appeal thing, and it makes sense.

Oh, and he says Busby Berkeley dance numbers were an expression of FDR's fascist collectivism. He says WWII was just a squabble between brothers (FDR, Hitler and Mussolini) to see who would be in control of the world family.

More later if anyone's interested.

Thank you for sharing the extracts, since it doesn't sound like a book that I would want to read, nor would I want to contribute in any way to the author's income, (even indirectly, and I'd be embarrassed to buy/borrow/read it in public) but these snippets are quite interesting reading.

I saw this book promoted on some sites I like very much, so imagine my surprise to find the extent of his need to sound different. I think many things these days: fashion, movies, music, talk radio, crazy right wing news networks are the offerings of people who have no further desire than to stand out. Self aggrandizement, now that's a topic Russell can get behind. Hunter Thompson and his gonzo journalism was the first place I noticed the tendency. I'd always thought people communicated what they thought to be the truth. They might be wrong or might just misunderstand, but before Thompson I thought they tried to present reality as they saw it. Now I realize truth has nothing to do with much of what is out there. It's all about making a name for oneself. Too bad, because many of the little facts in this book seem accurate, it's just the larger analysis of them that seems to be fabricated.

Just finished Wolf Hall - not an easy read, but hugely worthwhile, and very different from many varieties of historical fiction, especially those which deal with the ever-popular Tudor period. Mantel has done a very interesting thing in breathing life into, and causing us to re-appraise, a character like Thomas Cromwell.

Towards the end she has Cromwell reflecting that coffins are nailed down not to prevent the dead from springing out and chasing us (as he was assured as a small boy); rather

It's the living that turn and chase the dead. The long bones and skulls are tumbled from their shrouds, and words like stones thrust into their rattling mouths: we edit their writings, we rewrite their lives. Mantel admits in an interview published at the back of my copy that some might think what she has done is dubious, even reprehensible, but she believes we have no choice but to reimagine the past, and in doing so can't help but project our own insights and preoccupations backwards.

Certainly the way she has re-imagined Cromwell and his times made me aware (as I'm sure she intended) of some interesting parallels with our own time - for example, then as now was a time of rapid technological change (the effects of the recent invention of printing) and of religious upheaval, with the former playing an important part in the latter. Much food for thought.

32: Wolf Hall has been on my TBR list for a long time--thanks to you, I'll bump it up some.

I finished Remarkable Creatures for this challenge, and I just loved it. Tracy Chevalier is now one of my favorite authors.

Karen O.

I'm glad I read Wolf Hall. If the mark of a classic is a book that can be reread many times and still transmit new knowledge, Mantel manages it with this one. Maybe I've become kind of a reading wuss as I've aged because I found it too difficult to really love, but I like and respect it. Good enough for this little brain, I guess. I love your take on forcing words into the dead's mouths, a perfect explanation of what history does.

I'm glad Remarkable Creatures has made Chevalier one of your favorite authors, klobrien2. I'm finding this book much different from her others, less romantic yearning perhaps, a more practical take on relationships? I think that's why some people don't find it appealing. However I think it's amazing the way she's able to convey the oppression of class and sex in 19th century England, and the puzzlement over fossils before Darwin's book was published. Remarkable applies to this book in so many different ways.

Wolf Hall has been in my TBR for ages, too. Definitely need to get to it soon.

I'm glad you enjoyed Remarkable Creatures, Karen: I thought it was very good.

Okay, I've finished The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland and I'm wavering back and forth about whether I should count it for this challenge. What do you think?

Hmm, I've been looking for a reason to read A Criminal History of Mankind. Maybe I'll pick that up this week and say it's for this challenge.

Zoe, strange title. Tellus about it.

Gander is a small town of about 10,000 people with the easternmost major airport in Canada, so when the US airspace was suddenly closed on 9/11, hundreds of flights that had been on the way to the United States from Europe ended up landing there. So there were thousands of unexpected visitors in this small town, and the community really went above and beyond in making them feel welcome. I'd definitely recommend the book.

ETA: And I'm glad to see the voting is unanimous; I'll add it to the wiki.

Wow, that sounds very interesting, and almost like fiction.