Update from the Civil War Deep Dive

Erik Larson is one of my favorite non-fiction authors. When I heard that he had a new book out on the Civil War, I knew I had to read it. That put the worm in my brain to finally read James MacPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom, and then that made me want to read some fiction. The best Civil War fiction writer around is Jeff Shaara, son of Michael Shaara, whose Killer Angels is one of my favorite books. You see how this goes. One minute I am planning on reading one tome on the Civil War, and pretty soon I'm down the rabbit hole and getting lost in the warren.

So, let's start with the Erik Larson book, which I finished last weekend. The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War is a painstaking, slow crawl from November 1860 to the firing on Fort Sumter in the Charleston Harbor in April 1861. It may be a slow crawl, but Larson is an incredible storyteller whose writing is sharp and incisive. 

I particularly liked learning about the so-called Southern Fire-Eaters, who preached secession for decades before 1861 and were instrumental in rousing sectional violence through their rhetoric. Most of the history books I've read on the Civil War mention the Fire-Eaters as a collective but don't provide particulars as to who they were and what they even said or did. Not so with Larson--one of the Fire-Eaters, Edmund Ruffin, is a major character in Demon of Unrest. Same with Mary Chestnut whose diary is quoted frequently but not much of her backstory is provided to put the quoted parts in context.

Larson used the Southern version of the ancient Code Duello has a framework for exploring and attempting to understand the irreconcilable chasm between the North and South that made the Civil War inevitable. I don't believe in single causes, but I did find this framework to be a useful way of corralling the many perspectives on why and how Americans came to such savagery 163 years ago.

This was a 5-star book for me--compelling, structured, meticulous, insightful.

Before reading Demon of Unrest, I spent a couple of months slowly reading James McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom. First published in 1988 and winner of a Pulitzer Prize in 1989, it is an absolutely superb cover-to-cover book on the war. Not only are the major battles and major military leaders covered in detail, but McPherson dives into the politics, the economies of both North and South, the international factors, and the role of the navy, the industrial revolution, and the western frontier in how the war was waged. I absolutely loved reading this book, and interestingly, I found it familiar in that the lecture series I listened to from the Teaching Company seemed to come straight from this book, not only in the outline but in anecdotes and references. 

Bruce Catton is one of the giants of Civil War non-fiction, with in-depth treatments of various battles, generals, and phases of the war, I decided to start with his survey book, titled simply The Civil War. It was outstanding. At 400 pages, it is less than half as long as McPherson's 867-page tome. They cover the same ground and with much the same analyses regarding the causes, the resources, and the impacts of various decisions along the way. I must say, though, that Catton's final chapters in which he talks about how the effects of the conflict are still being played out today (i.e., 1960 was when this was first published) and today (2024) are chilling and sobering, but his writing is beautiful and memorable.

If there is only one book you read on the Civil War, I would recommend this one. Truly a classic.

Now for the fiction. Michael Shaara wrote the fabulous The Killer Angels, about the battle of Gettysburg. After he passed away, his son Jeff took up the mantle and has written two trilogies about the Civil War, one focused on the eastern theatre and one on the west (meaning west of Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Maryland). Gods and Generals is the first in the eastern series. It is a prequel to The Killer Angels and ends with the battle of Chancellorsville. A Blaze of Glory is the first in the western trilogy and includes the battle of Shiloh.

I decided to read all six books, including a reread of The Killer Angels. While I love to read the non-fiction, I also love stories and both Shaaras do an excellent job of portraying the players (military officers, politicians, regular soldiers, and even civilians) with credibility and empathy. The real people only say things they are documented as saying, and I know it's cliche to say, but these novels are really meticulously researched. I trust their history!

I'm currently reading A Chain of Thunder, book two in the western theatre series, which focuses on the seige of Vicksburg on the Mississippi.

I'm also haunting Jeff Shaara's events page to see if/when he might be speaking on the Civil War. He has an October lecture in PA, but it is focused on WWII. He also has series of novels about WWI and WWII, which I will likely read at some point.

Simon the Fiddler is another novel, this time set in the immediate aftermath of the war and in the far west, Texas. in fact. The author is Paulette Jiles, author of the wonderful News of the World, and Captain Kidd from News does make a cameo appearance in this novel near the end, which was a real treat. Simon is a reluctant soldier who survived the war by playing his fiddle in the regimental band. After the fighting ceases, he teams up with three other fellow musicians and they make their way as a band playing in bars and saloons and occasionally for weddings and other social events when they can find respectable clothes. Simon falls in love with an Irish immigrant girl who is an indentured servant to one of the army officers, and the bulk of the novel is about him working towards winning her heart and her freedom so that they can start their own life together. As might be expected, there are loads of challenges along the way.

This was a really interesting novel in terms of showing the struggles of the common soldier as he was turned loose from the confines of military life and left to figure out how to survive in a hostile environment.  Simon is a wonderful character, full of grit and honor, passionate about his music, introspective, and always searching to understand who he is and how he fits into the world.

Not quite as good as News of the World, but still a very enjoyable story told in a compelling way.

Big Book Summer Challenge 

Now for the tally. Simon the Fiddler was under 400, and I started both Battle Cry of Freedom and Blaze of Glory before Memorial Day.

Demon of Unrest, 565 pages read in July 

The Civil War, 400 pages read in July

Gods and Generals, 498 pages read in mostly June and a bit of July

So, three books to add to my Big Book Summer Challenge 2024.

April Roundup

April was a tough month on so many fronts, but at least I read some great books!

The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz, by Erik Larson - I like Larson's books and have read most of them and this is one of the best. Focus is on the Churchill family and the prime minister's staff. Larson's primary sources were the diaries of Churchill's youngest daughters, Mary, and one of his private secretaries, John Colville. While most of the narrative is on the British experience, it was interesting to read about the German perspective of the same events. Absolutely powerful book - one of the best of 2020 for me.

Case Histories, by Kate Atkinson - the first in Atkinson's Jackson Brodie mysteries, I absolutely loved this book. Atkinson is a very literary writer and this was a very literary mystery - she did a superb job of telling 4-5 different stories simultaneously, while also introducing her main character and giving us his back story. Eager to read the rest in this series.

Empire Falls, by Richard Russo - this is part of my Maine reading project for 2020, and was a very interesting story about a depressing little town in Maine. The mill has closed, no jobs or prospects of jobs, and the main character Miles is struggling with family, his past, his faith, and his job. Nevertheless, I thought it a compelling novel, and I plan to read more of Russo. Sadly, as expected, our trip to Maine this summer is cancelled, but I am enjoying digging into the fiction of the region.

Girl, Woman, Other, by Evaristo Bernardine - just finished this incredible book last night, and recommend it to anyone who wants to get a different view of Britain than the land served up by most of the novels I read. This is a collection of short stories about women of color in Britain whose lives intersect in the most interesting ways. This was one of the Tournament of Books contenders in 2020, making it to the quarter finals. I had read a few reviews that made it intriguing to me, and I thought it powerful, well-written and inventive, and broadened my horizons considerably.

The Atomic City Girls, by Janet Beard - I picked this up on impulse and wasn't disappointed. A novel about the women who worked at the Oak Ridge, TN factories that processed the plutonium used in the Manhattan Project (aka the atomic bomb). A fascinating story about race, naivete, patriotism, and ambition. I liked the main character, June, and thought her coming of age story was interesting and believable.

Hope you are all staying well and healthy, practicing social distancing, and finding comfort and strength or whatever you need from the reading you are able to do.

Top Ten Tuesday: Gateway Books/Authors

This week's Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by The Broke and the Bookish) is about those Gateway Books or Authors in Our Reading Journey who got you into reading, or into reading a genre you never thought you'd read, or brought you BACK into reading.

Definitely this was a fun Top Ten list to consider--I focused on authors because when I find an author who works for, I tend to try to read everything they come out with.  I also had a blast coming up with the right illustrations for my authors.

Donna Leon - Leon's series of books featuring Guido Brunetti sparked an interest in Venice that has taken hold of me and just won't let go.  Now I seek out books--histories, novels, memoirs--about Venice.  Hoping to make it there this fall.

Nevada Barr - I've always liked mysteries, but Barr's Anna Pigeon series which features a lot of National Parks and a lot of hiking got me interested in both.  Now I walk daily and hike weekly, and make a point of planning vacations around visiting National Parks...truly one of America's best ideas! 

Mary Stewart - I'm not much of a Romance reader but my mom used to get British women's magazines from our town's newspaper/tobacco shop in the 1960's and I learned to read by reading the serialized Mary Stewart stories, complete with stirring illustrations!

Bill Bryson - My love of travel and travel memoirs can be traced to reading Bryson's oh-so-snarky travel books.

Jane Austen - Classics don't have to be big, scary, or filled with political ramblings that are incomprehensible to the modern reader.

Daphne du Maurier - I love psychological thrillers and DDM is the mistress of the genre.

James Michener - I love historical fiction and Michener hooked me early.

Margaret Forster - I didn't really start reading literary bios until my dad gave me Forster's bio of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and I fell in love with the genre.

Erik Larson - I love his histories that read like novels; Larsen's books made me go back and read In Cold Blood, the prototype of the genre in which Larsen shines.

Tracy Chevalier - Artifact-based fictionalized backstory. Love it!

In the Garden of Beasts

Erik Larson's latest book, In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin, is powerful, fascinating, chilling, and unforgettable.

At the center of the story is William E. Dodd, U.S. ambassador to Germany from 1933 to 1937, not FDR's first choice or even second or third for the post, but a professor of history who loved Germany and was utterly crushed by despair at seeing what it became under Hitler. Dodd lived in Berlin during his years as ambassador with his wife and two grown children, Bill Jr., and Martha, who nearly steals the focus of the book from her father.

While Dodd struggles to navigate the stormy diplomatic waters of Nazi-controlled Berlin while dealing with political manuevering and backstabbing within the U.S. State Departement and diplomatic corps, Martha embarks on a career of socializing with Nazi officials, including Rudolf Diels (head of the Gestapo) as well as a variety of international diplomatic staffers and anti-Nazi intellectuals. Hers is a journey from being naively sympathetic towards the Nazis, whom she initially sees as part of a positive force that is rejuvenating Germany, to being naively sympathetic towards communism and the Soviet Union, which tries to recruit her as a spy during and after WWII.

Larson does an absolutely magnificent job of writing history within the context of a story narrative, and in this case the dual story of Dodd and his diplomatic charter versus Martha as the ingénue who knew too much makes for a perfectly balanced work.

As in the other Larson book that I read this year, The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America, In the Garden of Beasts is thoroughly researched and rigorously documented. The only words in people's mouths are those they uttered themselves (i.e., in letters, memoirs, etc.) or from primary sources who were present and recall what was said by individuals. Increasingly, I have little patience for novels that masquerade as history or biography and resent wild speculation on the part of the author. In the case of this book, the facts are so unbelieveable (i.e., the Nazis treatment of the Jews and other "undesireables") that Larson needn't invent anything.

The title of the book comes from the location of the house that Ambassador Dodd rented in the Tiergarten--Tiergarten is German for Animal Garden, and the Dodd family witnessed Berlin and Germany as the garden animals transformed into monstrous beasts capable of indescribable cruelty. It's a particularly apt title as the warm, gentle, genial idea of a garden of animals (ala The Peaceable Kingdom) is cruelly and ironically undercut by the viciousness that initially simmered and eventually boiled while the Dodds were in Berlin. I kept on remembering the scene in Stephen King's The Shining when the topiary garden comes to life and menaces Danny.

Reading this book has launched me on a quest to learn more about WWII, and so I am now listening to Churchill's The Second World War: Milestones to Disaster, and after that I may have to reread Ella Lefland's excellent book about Hermann Goering, The Knight, Death, and the Devil.

Time and again when I was reading about the atrocities the Nazis committed In the Garden of Beasts I kept on thinking of George Santayana's famous quote that "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." While it is often not easy to read about such troubling times as those Larson documented in this book, it is essential that we do read books like this and keep from hiding our head in the sands when the going gets rough.



The William E. Dodd family embarking to Germany in 1933.

The Devil in the White City

Even though Eric Larson's book, The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America , was published in 2003, I didn't hear of it until I read about it on a few blogs last year and what I read intrigued me enough to add it to my various wish lists.

I had an Audible.com credit that was burning a hole in my virtual pocket last month and so I downloaded the audio version as read by Tony Goldwyn. It was magnificent...chilling, interesting, balanced.

The book reads like a novel but as Larson asserts in the opening pages, everything in it is painstakingly researched, and when Larson makes suppositions, he clearly notes what is in the record and what he is piecing together.

The White City is the Columbian Exposition of 1893, aka the Chicago World's Fair, and the Devil is H.H. Holmes (born Herman Webster Mudgett), a serial killer who lived near the fair and lured his victims to his "castle" where he murdered, dismembered, and otherwise committed heinous acts upon them.

I really enjoyed the story of Daniel Burnham:, the fair's Director of Works who was responsible for having all the buildings designed and built and having the grounds designed and planted. He engaged leading American architects and masterfully dealt with their egos, their budgets, and their demands all while working under incredible time pressure. I also liked hearing about Frederick Law Olmsted, designer of New York's Central Park, who got the commission to design the fair's grounds.

Balancing this story of building the fair was the very dark story of H.H. Holmes and his macabre castle, outfitted with vaults, gas chambers, and ovens (for cremating bodies). Just when I got really chilled or shaken by this part of the book, Larson mercifully resumed the story of Birnham and his cohorts.

Other interesting side stories included that of Carter Harrison,Chicago's flamboyant major, who was assassinated on the eve of the fair's closing, and his insane assailant, Patrick Prendergast, Buffalo Bill Cody and his Wild West Show that crashed the fair (i.e., they were denied a spot in the fair so they set up shop next door and made millions!), and George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr. and the selling and construction of his magnificant wheel.

After I was finished with the book, I promptly ordered a copy of The Chicago World's Fair of 1893: A Photographic Record so that I could pour over the pictures of the fair. It truly was a magnificent little city--I can imagine the impact it must have had on visitors to the fair, many of whom took the train in from the down on the farm to see the sights.

I felt like reading this book taught me a lot about a slice of American history that I knew virtually nothing about before. Somehow I've always skipped from the Civil War to WWI, without paying much attention to the time in between.

If you read it, brace yourself for some pretty grizzly stuff when Larson discusses H.H. Holmes, though regular watchers of CSI may find this fairly mild stuff! I kid you not, it gave me nightmares. I had to start listening to The Secret History of the Pink Carnation in order to get my dreams realigned.