History for Adults and for Children

The past two weeks I finished Mayflower (along with two Sports Illustrated issues). The history of the Mayflower colonists was fascinating but also disturbing.  Those folks created some chaos by intruding upon the native inhabitants, but it was really the fact that they successfully planted a colony in Massachusetts that did the most damage to the indigenous way of life.  Having proved it could be done, the Plymouth colony showed the way for many, many more English people to migrate to New England and eventually the whole continent.  It was inevitable that they would clash with the Indians who gradually came to realize that the English were not going away, and that they were not going to be satisfied with a few acres of land. Nor were they willing to peacefully coexist with the people who had been there for thousands of years.

The war that resulted from the clash of cultures--King Phillip's War, as it was later termed--was more devastating to Americans, both native and English-born, than was the Civil War in the next century. Philbrick describes in great detail the battles and the combatants' futile efforts to make peace.  Brutality was common on both sides of the conflict. There was nothing superior about the supposedly "civilized" people from England, except in numbers and material support, which is what ultimately decided the war in their favor.

Mayflower was a sobering look at the more complex picture of our English beginnings.  At the end of the book, Philbrick takes some time to explain how we ended up with the more familiar, sentimental, patriotic version of the story--the one purged of King Phillip's War.  (The revision had mostly to do with time passing and Lincoln's desire to find a war-time narrative that people could rally around).  Mayflower was a very well-written, compelling book, though somewhat depressing, especially when considering what happened to the Indians.  I recommend it highly.

Following that book, I decided to turn to a children's book that many people my mother's age read when they were little, The Little House in the Big Woods, by Laura Ingalls Wilder.  It was a delightful, supposedly true account of a year in the life of a young family on the edge of the wilderness.  There was no plot beyond that and precious little went wrong for the Ingalls, so there was no suspense, only wonder at the many ingenious ways people came up with for getting by with very little.  And it was a detailed picture of pioneer life in the 1870s.  Though it has a nostalgic tone (it was written by Ingalls-Wilder 60 years after the events took place), the book actually gives a lot of information about how things were done back then and what life was like.  Wilder makes it all seem very nice, though what really made her childhood wonderful, I think, was all the love and caring she was surrounded with every day.

I asked a few of my mother's fellow residents in the nursing home whether they remember reading this or other Little House books.  Two of them said they did and that they liked them very much.  My mother had not read them, so I encouraged her to read the one I'd just finished.  I'm hoping she will.

Ever since I took a children's literature course in college, I'm been a firm believer in adults reading children's books, especially those universally recognized as great.  This book was one of those and I'm glad I read it, even if I am old!

My next book will be the latest John Grisham legal thriller, The Litigators.  So far I'm enjoying it.

See  you next time.

Magazine Week II: Endangered Rhinos, Potatoes, Coptics and Goddesses

As it turned out, this past week was magazine week, so I did not finish the history of the Mayflower colony. But I did read a variety of interesting articles in Smithsonian. One I thought particularly poignant was the story, "Defending the Rhino," in the November 2011 issue. It was about an alarming increase in the poaching of rhinoceroses in Africa, due in part to a recent (false) rumor that rhino horn cured someone's cancer.  One of the photos showed a dead rhino covered with blood streaming from where his horn used to be.  But fortunately, new techniques using DNA are helping to put at least some of the poachers in jail.  When shipments are intercepted, the confiscated horns can be matched to killed animals, thereby connecting the poached horns to captured poachers.  But so far, it's a drop in the bucket; the amount of money the horns bring on the black market keeps the animals in grave danger and conservationists very busy.

Another very interesting article in that issue was about potatoes.  "The Eyes Have It" told the story of potatoes' origin in the Americas and how they became a staple food in Europe following their discovery by Spaniards in the 16th century.  It also told of the pests that have plagued potatoes (due in large part to the industrialization of agriculture), one of which was the potato blight of the 19th century that destroyed the Irish potato crop and caused famine.  Such pests still plague potato farms today and for the same reason--lack of variety in the mass-produced strains.

Other articles of interest in the November issue involved Coptic Christians in Egypt and how they are being targeted following the revolution there; Shanghai's building boom; and the repatriation of stolen ancient art treasures from Italy, most notably a large statue of a Roman goddess.

I enjoy these little interludes of magazine reading.  They remind me that magazines are still producing interesting and informative articles, and that the well-written essay has not given way entirely to the photograph or the video.

But it's back to books next week.  Stay tuned for my next post on Mayflower.

History and Mystery

Last week I skipped posting because the week before was a holiday week which I spent mostly reading a mystery novel, Night Work, by Laurie R. King, whose novels about Mrs. Sherlock Holmes I've enjoyed in the past. This book is one of her modern-day mysteries featuring Kate Martinelli, a lesbian police detective working in San Francisco.  It was well written (if a little too detailed from time to time), and though it involved a vigilante killer, that person's actions were not condoned and she does not get away with it at the end (unlike in the Lee Child book I read a couple of weeks ago). Ms. King is a prolific writer and I recommend her books highly, especially the Sherlock Holmes stories.

The other book I started reading over Thanksgiving and continue to read is Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War by Nathaniel Philbrick. It's a revisionist history of the Mayflower colony and its inhabitants.  It's quite good.  The writer keeps readers in suspense wondering what will happen to the Pilgrims and their hopes for a successful religious community in the wilderness.  Their encounters with native inhabitants as well as other English settlers who arrive later cause them (and us) much anxiety as they try to work through their many challenges.

I didn't recognize most of this story since only the first-Thanksgiving part (a sanitized version) was taught me in school.  Apparently, there was a great deal of work to creating and maintaining an English village in the forests of Massachusetts and ensuring not only the physical and spiritual survival of the immigrants, but emotional and political as well. Those who did survive those first few years turned out to be a tough lot, thanks in part to the help they secured from the indigenous people they met.

I must admit that so far I'm not too fond of these English interlopers.  They seem quite arrogant and not entirely honest or trustworthy.  But the Pilgrims seem decent next to the less disciplined or scrupulous English that follow--my ancestors, that is. Nonetheless, I'm learning a great deal about early American history and the complex founding of our English colonies.

I will finish this book this week, I hope.  But in any event, I'll write about it again in next week's post.