Reader’s Diary

Paul S. Collins

The subtitle pretty much describes this book. Collins gives us a baker’s dozen of lively and fascinating essays on forgotten folk who might have - but didn’t - make it into the history books. History books, after all, tend to focus on people who succeeded. There’s the eponymous John Banvard, once probably the wealthiest painter in the world, creator of a half-mile long panorama of the Mississippi River, who died in obscurity. There’s William Ireland, who discovered Shakespeare’s “Vortigern and Rowena“, a play Shakespeare never wrote. Collins even tells us why some old houses have blue window panes.

“Banvard’s Folly” is a fun read.

(Collins’ blog is worth a look, too.)

Bernard Cornwell

Uhtred the conflicted Anglo-Saxon returns in this, the latest in Cornwell’s Dark Ages series. The previous books in the series (”The Last Kingdom“, “The Pale Horseman“, and “Lords of the North“) were wonderful, vivid adventures. Sadly, this one is a letdown. It’s not bad, but the events in this volume don’t move the story forward much and I was left wondering whether Cornwell cranked it out to pay for some home remodeling or something. Worse, parts of it reads almost as a parody of Cornwell’s style. Cornwell has always been a reliable author and I hope he recovers his form for his next book.

Philip Marchand

French America is largely forgotten in the United States. People know about Quebec and New Orleans, but the history of the French Mississippi valley isn’t taught in our schools, neither is the story of French Indiana. For the most part French settlers lived peaceably with the Native Americans; they traded and intermarried. When Anglo settlers arrived in what is now known as the Midwest they found French towns whose inhabitants were content to farm and hunt enough to live comfortably, but who were more interested in the religion, family, and celebrations than in owning land or maximizing production. In sharp contrast to the Anglo-Saxons who came after them, the French Americans were not infected with the Protestant work ethic.

“Ghost Empire” is a mediation on French America. Philip Marchand is a Canadian of American birth and French descent. He wasn’t raised “ethnically”, but feels the pull of his French heritage; he’s unabashedly Catholic. His discursive book of history, travelogue, and memoir is loosely hung on the story of René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle’s explorations.

I enjoyed this one a lot, not least because I have many ancestors who were citizens of the Ghost Empire. I wish there were more like it.

(An interesting and better-informed review by Clark Blaise can be found here.)

S. Thomas Russell

I can’t get enough of “fighting sail” stories. “Under Enemy Colors” is a promising start to a new series in the genre. It features Royal Navy lieutenant Charles Hayden, whose half French, half English ancestry is a source of ongoing tension. It also features a dictatorial captain, a mutiny, a court martial, and non-stop action. It’s a hefty and satisfying historical novel.

This is a collection of Bernd and Hilla Becher’s photographs of coal mines, power plants, blast furnaces, grain elevators and silos in Europe and the United States. The German husband and wife team made a career of this topic; the pictures in this retrospective span are from the 1950’s to the 1990’s. Their style is distinctive: the buildings are stark, monumental, and there are no humans to be seen. There’s rarely a cloud in the sky, which makes the pictures look like the 19th century western landscapes of Timothy O’Sullivan or Carleton Watkins.

One of their Pennsylvania steel mill photographs was taken from a vantage point very close to where Walker Evans took his “Bethlehem graveyard and steel mill” photo. The two pictures are an interesting contrast: Evans’ photo is dramatic and nearly abstract, the Bechers’ photo is flat and “deadpan”.

A. J. Jacobs

A. J. Jacobs, the man who read the encyclopedia and wrote about it in “The Know-It-All” took on an even bigger challenge: follow the Bible literally for a year. He compiled a list of over 700 rules and attempted to obey each one. The result is both humorous and insightful. Jacobs - self-described secular Jew - respectfully explores the border between faith and secularism and emerges a better, or at least more thoughtful, man.