Made in America by Bill Bryson

Before the 1820s, dining out was an activity reserved almost exclusively for travelers. Though it was possible to eat in hotels and taverns, there were no places dedicated to the public consumption of food for the mere pleasure of it, nor any word to describe them. Then, in 1827, a new word and concept entered American English from France: restaurant.

-Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States

If you're going to pick up a book by Bill Bryson, be prepared to learn things. So many things--truly interesting things--that there's no way you'll be able to remember everything you'd like to. (O, for a photographic memory!) You will be highly tempted to put down the book every few pages and tell anyone in the vicinity whatever nugget of trivia you've just learned. If you're reading Made in America, I hope you keep company with people with a thirst for more information about language and history.

I very much enjoyed the facts thrown at me on every page; so many that I can't even begin to recount them (though the excerpt above, with the introduction of the word restaurant, is a good example). Just as when I read Bryson's At Home, I was staggered by how many things in everyday life I'd never stopped to consider. Like how the phrase "mother of all," in the sense of the biggest of something, only dates back to the Gulf War. Who knew?

I will say Made in America isn't a page-turner--it lends itself to being read in little chunks. You could certainly put it down for a while and return to it later without losing the thread of things, I think. It took me a bit longer than expected to get through it, but it was definitely a worthwhile read. I wonder if Bryson has considered updating it, since it came out in 1994--certainly an additional chapter on the last twenty (well, nearly--gulp) years wouldn't go awry.

Up next: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

Young Romantics by Daisy Hay

Meanwhile, the goings-on at Diodati were a fertile topic for gossip and speculation. The local hotelier did a brisk trade in sailing trips on the lake during which shocked English visitors could inspect the washing drying outside Byron's villa for evidence of female inhabitants--telescopes were thoughtfully included in the ticket price.

-Young Romantics

I'd fully intended to read Young Romantics some time ago--in April, even, for National Poetry Month. I checked it out of the library after reading of Age of Wonder and realizing that, despite my love of Keats, my knowledge of poetry from that era was still pretty lacking. But then I discovered Inspector Lynley, and I wanted to read Blue Latitudes while Age of Wonder was still fresh in my mind...and well, here we are. Better late than never.

I picked out Young Romantics because I thought it would give me a nice overview of Shelley, Byron, and Keats and further my understanding of the relationships they had with one another and with others in their circle. I discovered as I began to read, though, that Daisy Hay's focus was clearly on Shelley and Leigh Hunt, the poet and critic.* If I'd read the book jacket a bit more carefully, I would have already known this, but it turned out to be fine. I missed Keats, who was absent for long sections of the book, but I did already read a comprehensive account of his life. Byron figured somewhat more prominently. He also came off like a big ole jerk.

I had kind of a sketchy idea of Byron as a ladies' (and gents', to be fair) man; someone talented and charismatic and a bit of a rogue. I did not, however, know that he spent some time fumbling toward ecstasy with his own half-sister. Nor was I aware of his cruel streak--the way he treated Claire Clairmont (Mary Shelley's stepsister), the mother of his illegitimate child, was pretty terrible. 

And while Shelley comes off better than Byron, he still could be remarkably callous, especially in his treatment of women. I did enjoy getting to learn more about his relationship with Mary, which had more scandalous origins than I had realized, and I liked Mary quite a lot in general. It was because of that, I think, that I still found the account of Shelley's death quite moving, even though I hadn't particularly warmed to him. It was just so sudden, and so senseless, and he was just so young.

It can be difficult to learn about artists--once you've discovered something negative about someone, be it merely unpleasant or truly awful, it can be hard to divorce that from your appreciation of an artist's work. Perhaps I'm judging Byron unfairly, even.For the moment, I will say that Young Romantics has definitely influenced my opinion of him as a person, but I can't deny that he wrote beautifully.  As for Shelley, I now know more of his life than I do of his works, so I shall have to remedy that at some point in the future. Neither seems likely to replace Keats as my favorite Romantic poet--and not just because Keats seems by far the pleasantest of the bunch (though it doesn't hurt).

I feel as though I'm giving short shrift to the women in the book, which is unfortunate. The treatment of Mary Shelley and Claire Claremont, in particular, is a great credit to Daisy Hay. I feel as though I got a true sense of the place of these women in the literary circle of their day--they often weren't considered equals of the poets whose company they kept, but they certainly had their smarts and a fair degree of influence on the men. I don't know that I ever would have thought to explore the further works of Mary Shelley before, but I have to say I'm now intrigued. Much like Age of Wonder, I have a feeling Young Romantics will be leading me to more books before long.

Up next: Already finished Coraline, so I just need to come back to write it up.

*Hay mentions in passing that Hunt was the basis for the character of Harold Skimpole in Bleak House. It makes so much sense--oh, that elderly child.

Blue Latitudes by Tony Horwitz

The warriors taunted and threatened the English, but only rarely did they follow the haka with a sustained attack. Before long, the crewmen responded in kind. When a warrior waved his naked backside at the English, which William Monkhouse termed "the usual sign of contempt" among fishmongers in London, the surgeon decided to "retort the compliment" by baring his ass as well. This so enraged a warrior that he hurled a lance. The English replied with small shot, frightening the Maori--but only for a moment. "They felt the sting of our laughing at them," Monkhouse wrote, and resumed shouting and waving spears and paddles. Thus ended a fairly typical encounter, which reads today rather like a skirmish between soccer hooligans in Europe. 

-Blue Latitudes 

Blue Latitudes had been on my maybe-read list for a while. I knew Tony Horwitz was a gifted writer, since I'd thoroughly enjoyed two of his other books, Confederates in the Attic and A Voyage Long and Strange. Even so, I wasn't hooked by the premise of Blue Latitudes initially. I'd never had any particular interest in Captain Cook, so I had trouble mustering up a lot of enthusiasm for the idea of Horwitz retracing his voyages around the world.

Then, of course, I read Age of Wonder and became familiar with Joseph Banks, the scientist (and ladykiller) who accompanied Cook on his first voyage. Banks was quite a character, and he sparked my interest to the extent that I found myself considering Blue Latitudes with new enthusiasm. I'm glad I did.

In Blue Latitudes, Horwitz travels around the world just as Cook did, although he does have the advantages of airplanes and GPS, not to mention Dramamine when he does take to a boat. He journeys to everywhere from Alaska to New Zealand, and not a few places in between, ending his trip as Cook did in Hawaii, although his own journey comes to a close on a decidedly less bloody note.  Everywhere he goes, Horwitz investigates how Cook is remembered. Today Cook has become a complicated figure. Depending on whom you talk to, you might hear Cook described as an intrepid adventurer or a harbinger of doom. As someone who didn't know much about Cook, I found it interesting to see the many sides of the man. I also appreciated Horwitz's forays into other aspects of history I was wholly unfamiliar with. To wit:

The Aleutian Islands became American territory following William Seward's famous purchase of Alaska in 1867, and for seventy-five years the remote Aleuts survived in a state of benign neglect. Then came World War II, when the Japanese bombed Dutch Harbor and seized several islands farther out along the Aleutian chain, the first occupation of American soil by a foreign army since the War of 1812. The inhabitants of the occupied islands were taken to camps in Japan, where only twenty-five survived. The United States evacuated the rest of the Aleuts, ostensibly for their own protection, interning them at wretched camps in southeastern Alaska, where many of them also died. Because of wartime censorship, the Aleuts' plight remained unknown to the American public. Not until 1988 did the U.S. government formally apologize to the Aleuts and pay compensation of $12,000 to each of the camps' few hundred survivors.

I certainly don't remember that ever coming up in any of my history classes. It's amazing how much is still left unsaid when it comes to recent history.

Horwitz is a smart, compelling writer, and I certainly feel better informed for having read this book. That said, I still prefer the other books of his I've read. I'm also quite excited for his next book, which is about the abolitionist John Brown and his famous raid on Harper's Ferry.

Up next: Back to Inspector Lynley with Payment in Blood.

The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes

At all events, Coleridge treasured the memory of his father's eager demonstration of the stars and planets overhead, and the possibility of other worlds: 'I remember, that at eight years old I walked with him one evening from a farmer's house, a mile from Ottery -- & he told me the names of the stars -- and how Jupiter was a thousand times larger than our world -- and that the other twinkling stars were Suns that had world rolling round them -- & when I came home, he showed me how they rolled round. I heard him with profound delight & admiration; but without the least mixture of Wonder or incredulity. For from my early reading of Faery Tales, & Genii etc etc -- my mind had been habituated to the Vast.'

-The Age of Wonder 

I find it pretty remarkable to think that Samuel Taylor Coleridge, some 200 years ago, thought his mind "habituated to the Vast." What hope, then, do we in the 21st century have to experience wonder, when so much more of the world has been discovered and analyzed and explained? Luckily for us, we also have books like The Age of Wonder to help us to consider the world around us in a new light.

If I were to try to sum up The Age of Wonder in one sentence, I might say something like, "It's about the monumental discoveries that were made in every scientific discipline in the late 18th and early 19th centuries." Even with that "monumental" in there, though, I suspect that that sounds rather dry. (Also, passive voice. Badly done.) Imagine this instead: A Scotsman exploring an area of Africa that cartographers have left blank. A German immigrant building the largest telescope in England...and promptly discovering a new planet. A wealthy young English botanist going native in Tahiti. A 20-year-old who spent considerable time experimenting with the effects of nitrous oxide, to which he became addicted, before going on to discover elements like calcium. The Age of Wonder covers all of these stories and many more. If you've guessed that it's ambitious in scope, you would be correct.

It's amazing how much we know of science dates from this time-- even the word scientist itself didn't come into usage until the 1820s. Richard Holmes has quite a lot of territory to cover. He juggles his stories in a way that makes it look quite easy, but I can't imagine how much time must have gone into researching this book. His voice is clear and he sometimes manages to work in some very clever asides--I would definitely be interested in looking into other books of his. (He seems to have primarily written about the Romantic poets, who flit in and out of The Age of Wonder.)

It did take me a little while to get into the book, but before long I was utterly absorbed in the Tahitian adventures of Joseph Banks. On the whole, it's a very interesting book. I particularly loved the parts about astronomy (because if anything can inspire wonder, I really think it's the stars) and the dramatic tale of the adventurer Mungo Park, the first European to find the Niger River. I was less enchanted with the story of Humphry Davy, but that may have been in part because he just didn't come across as a particularly likable fellow. Overall, I feel much better informed about this era than I did prior to reading this book, and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it.

Up next: Using Joseph Banks as a jumping off point, I'm on to Tony Horwitz's Blue Latitudes, in which he retraces the travels of Captain Cook. I loved the other two Horwitz books I read, so I have high hopes. 

Ghost Hunters by Deborah Blum

 "I confess that at times I have been tempted to believe that the Creator has eternally intended this department of nature to remain baffling, to prompt our curiosities and hopes and suspicions, all in equal measure, so that, although ghosts and clairvoyances, and raps and messages from spirits, are always seeming to exist and can never be fully explained away, they also can never be susceptible of full corroboration."

-William James, Ghost Hunters

As a child I, like many other children, was equally fascinated and terrified by tales of the supernatural. I'd ask my mom to buy the 99-cent collections of ghost stories sold in our grocery store's checkout line. I visited New Orleans and bought a book of bayou-centric ghost stories (I can still remember the pale pink cover), but at some point decided it was ill-advised to sleep in the same room with it. I believed, in one way or another, in just about everything: ghosts, UFOs, the Bermuda Triangle, the Anna Anderson story, etc.

I grew more skeptical as I got older, but, I have to say, I still enjoy learning about things that can't be explained easily. Last Halloween, I discovered Travel Channel's Ghost Adventures, and was immediately taken with the show's mix of goofy charm, bravado, and a dash of the unexplained. When I stumbled upon Deborah Blum's Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof for Life After Death, I thought it might be an interesting complement to my recent viewing.

I must say, I'm not overly fond of scientific explanations of paranormal things, however logical they may be. I feel like they suck the fun out of things, to be honest. What I found interesting about the premise of Blum's book was that William James and his fellow scientists experienced things in the course of what they called their psychical research that they could not explain. James is remembered now as the father of psychology, and some of his colleagues would go on to win Nobel Prizes or be awarded knighthoods. These were very upright, very scientifically-minded men, in other words--not the type who would be taken in without good evidence.

The research of these men coincided with the height of the Spiritualism movement. Mediums were springing up all over the place in the United States (where James lived) as well as Europe (home to many of his fellow researchers). The scientific establishment had, on the whole, rejected even research into psychical phenomena as worthless. Nevertheless, these men--James, Henry Sidgwick, Fred Myers, and Edmund Gurney, among many others--were each drawn in for their own reasons. The latter three were among the scientists that formed the Society for Psychical Research in London in 1882, an organization that still exists today. Through the SPR they explored many aspects of paranormal activity, though Blum especially focuses on their efforts to document the phenomenon of the "crisis apparition" (the vision of a loved one at the time of his death) and to explore the capabilities of mediums.

They were able to debunk many instances of apparent psychical phenomena that they witnessed--and yet not everything.  Their investigations seriously jeopardized their reputations as legitimate scientists, but they could not dismiss what they'd seen. James was among those who was fascinated by the American medium Leonora Piper, whose abilities, although inconsistent, had produced some very compelling evidence for either telepathy (a term coined by an SPR member) or life after death. Late in the book, Blum recounts a story of cross-correspondence--that is, different mediums in different parts of the world getting similar specific messages alleged to be from the same spirits--that certainly left me puzzled. James and his fellow researchers were often left in the state of uncertainty that he describes in the passage I excerpted above. In a time when science was constantly uncovering new things, is it any wonder that these men thought they might be on the verge of a similar breakthrough? That the concrete evidence they sought seemed to always be just beyond their grasp must have been hugely frustrating, yet it motivated them ever onward.

 Blum packs a lot of information into her book, as you can probably tell from my blathering. I won't lie: with the exception of James, whom I was already familiar with, and Richard Hodgson, who for whatever reason made a big enough impression, I found it rather difficult to keep all of the scientists straight. It wasn't quite as lively a read as I might have hoped--not really a pageturner, that is--but it certainly gave me some interesting insight into an era I confess I'm less acquainted with than perhaps I should be. I admire the passion and the commitment of these researchers to the cause they believed in, and I appreciate that, even though they never proved their case, their work certainly left even the modern reader with some things to think about.*

Up next: I really have a wealth of books to choose from right now. I'm going to go with Jane, a modern update of Jane Eyre.

*Although this is only tangentially related to the research angle, I can't help but think about the famous Fox sisters. As teenagers, they became some of the best-known mediums in the early days of the Spiritualism movement, claiming to communicate with the spirit of a peddler who'd been killed in their home years before they had moved there. The sisters fell on hard times in their later years and one confessed it had all been a hoax, though she later recanted the confession. Several years after their deaths, a skeleton was found entombed in their cellar. Now, say what you will about their abilities, but that's a bit odd, don't you think?

In Medias Res: Ghost Hunters

So I was reading Ghost Hunters, which I'm enjoying so far, when I stumbled upon this passage concerning a trip the psychologist William James took to see his brother Henry, the novelist, in England:

William relaxed into the visit. He spent afternoons in conversation at his brother's clubs, surrounded by an aromatic fog of tobacco smoke. He made occasional calls on scientists. He walked the sooty streets, enjoying Henry's company. Then he found himself suddenly alone. Back in America, Henry James Sr. was dying. Their mother had died of bronchitis earlier that year, and their sister, faced with this second impending death, felt overwhelmed. She asked Henry Jr. to come home.

William--the more high-maintenance brother--was to stay in England. "All insist William shall not come," his sister telegraphed. William debated returning home anyway, despite his nervous state, but had to admit he probably wouldn't be an ideal deathbed companion.

Interesting family dynamic they had going there.

All the President's Men by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward

June 17, 1972. Nine o'clock Saturday morning. Early for the telephone. Woodward fumbled for the receiver and snapped awake. The city editor of the Washington Post was on the line. Five men had been arrested earlier that morning in a burglary at Democratic headquarters, carrying photographic equipment and electronic gear. Could he come in?

-All the President's Men 

When I was in college, I took a course on the coming of the Civil War. The professor of that course always emphasized how different the war was to the people who lived it. Today we are able to keep the outcome of the war in mind even when we're talking about Fort Sumter, and it's easy to view everything with the advantage of hindsight. But no one in 1861 said, "Alright boys, it's time for the Civil War. We expect to be at it for the next four years. Those of you in the gray coats...don't get too excited."

Similarly, Bob Woodward had no idea that that phone call he received the morning of June 19th would help to set into motion an investigation that would eventually lead to the resignation of the president. In retrospect: well, that's a pretty momentous phone call.

Everything in All the President's Men is like this, and with good reason. The book was published in June of 74; Nixon didn't resign until August. Even at the end of the book, at that time, it must have been difficult to believe that it would come to that. I can see why—it's really hard for me to imagine a presidency falling apart like that (even remembering back to the '98 scandal).

It's such a gradual process. There's about a billion people involved—the robbers, the people who paid them, the people who approved the payments, the people who covered that up, the people who hired the people who covered that up, etc. Thankfully Woodward & Bernstein provide a handy list of characters to refer back to, as well as photos of some of the key players. As someone who had a astonishingly poor grasp of Watergate* prior to reading the book, I must say that was pretty helpful.

All the President's Men wasn't the quickest read, but I think it was a pretty important one. Coming into this book, I only had very basic facts at my disposal: there was a break-in, Nixon had some incriminating tapes, he resigned. I had no sense of the timeline. (Look back up there if you're not so familiar with this point in history: The break-in was in June of '72, Nixon resigned in August of '74—that is a long time for that whole thing to play out). I think I learned a lot. It says something to me that those incriminating tapes, one of the few bits of the period I was aware of, were not even mentioned until the last ten pages of the book—that's how much was going on and that's how long it took to really get Nixon implicated in things. Crazy story. You couldn't make it up if you tried.

Up next: Stephen King's memoir On Writing, which is very enjoyable so far.

*I only just recently learned, for instance, that Spiro Agnew resigned from the vice-presidency for reasons unrelated to Watergate. D'oh.

In Medias Res: Keats

So, I've finished My Booky Wook, but I'm not focused enough right now to gather my thoughts. Instead, I thought I'd offer this passage from Andrew Motion's biography of Keats, which I've just started.

It was a world fraught with violence. In the factories and the fields, where the conditions of everyday life were routinely shaped by appalling levels of suffering, the danger of rioting was a constant threat. There was a distinctly 'Sturm und Drang quality' about political life too. 'Think of the Earl of Chatham,' one recent historian has urged, 'collapsing in the House of Lords as he made his last manic and incoherent speech against war with America in 1778, or of Edmund Burke flinging a dagger into the floor of the House of Commons in December 1792 as a symbol of his departure from the Foxite Whigs, and of Charles James Fox bursting into tears as a result.' Think too of the Prime Minister Perceval, assassinated in the House of Commons in 1811, or of the startling statistic that nineteen Members of Parliament committed suicide between 1790 and 1820, and that a further twenty lapsed into insanity, as did their king.

Some people think history is dull. I can't imagine they've read the preceding paragraph.

Underground London by Stephen Smith

There were rivers, streams, creeks, buried wharves, conduits, culverts, cellars, shelters, basements, eaves, lower ground floors, walk-downs, disappearing staircases, grottoes, dungeons, graves, tombs, crypts, a disused morgue at the foot of Tower Bridge, catafalques, sepulchres, catacombs, brick arches at Waterloo station where cabbies sat and chatted in each other's taxis, tunnels, subways, lost terraces, warrens, mazes, kitchens, lock-ups where supermarkets stored their goods, shunting yards and railway turntables, wrecks, ruins, dregs, the Elephant Man's hat in the archives of the Royal London Hospital, precious relics, forgotten booty, buried treasure. I wanted to know more about this subterranean landscape. It was going to be an escape from the city above, but an escape in another sense, too, an adventure to make me forget my inner-city blues.

-Underground London

I will fully admit that Underground London is one of the more peculiar reading choices I have made since having started this blog. As much of an Anglophile as I am, I really don't know that much about above-ground London. Starting underground seems to be a bit of a backwards way of going at it.

Of course, London and what lies beneath it are inextricably intertwined, so in learning about one, one can't help but find out a bit more about the other. It turns out to be quite a vast subject. Stephen Smith approaches the underground from a variety of angles. He explores the sewers, the Tube, and the system governing the Thames. He looks at parts of London that date from the Roman era all the way up to Cold War bunkers. One cannot fault his thoroughness, but it is rather disappointing to discover that not all of these places or eras are equally fascinating.

I was quite interested in his exploration of the Tube - dead stations are particularly compelling, though I can't quite explain why. Perhaps because they're left just as they were, and give the impression of being frozen in the moment of time when they were closed. (City Hall station in New York is a beautiful example.) Or perhaps I just watched Ghostbusters II too often as a child.

I also enjoyed the oldest areas Smith explored, such as the section of Roman wall he found in a carpark, or the remaining bits of one of Henry VIII's tennis courts. With the exception of the Tube, I found the more modern sections to be considerably drier. I guess I am just not terribly interested in how one keeps the Thames from flooding London. If that sounds like it's up your alley, well, you should find the last chapter to be spellbinding. Otherwise, like me, you'll find that the book ends on a rather dull note.

Nonetheless, I do feel as though I learned a lot. In fact, Smith used enough particularly British vocabulary and references that I took to jotting notes on my bookmark so that I could look things up at my convenience. And this is how I learned that a reference to the noise of rhubarb coming from Parliament had nothing to do with the plant. Fun fact!

Up next: Planning on taking a bit of a two-pronged approach. I checked a book out of the library a couple of weeks back on the differences between British and American English. I've read the beginning, but I have a sense that I may skim it more than read it, particularly when it hits lists of terms that I don't find terribly exciting. So, I plan to do bits and pieces of that along with the 5th Sookie Stackhouse for more of a proper read.

Bright Young People by D.J. Taylor

[Son] Matthew furious said if we invited people of this sort to the house we must behave decently & give them their drink (bought by Babe [Plunkett Greene]). He said he had thought of not coming down - & it was our faults for having such people & that we must have known perfectly well they would drink unceasingly. [Husband] A. & I protested, that we had known that they would have sherry before dinner - but had no conception that the drinking of Sherry - Brandy & Whisky would never cease. He appeared to think that we ought never to have consented to have [daughter] E.'s friends & that it was all our own fault. A. got very angry about E. & I tried to explain to M. that having seen nothing like it - & it was impossible to realise what these sort of people were & how they would behave - after all E. Gathorne-Hardy - wretched creature is a gentleman.

-Excerpt from the diary of Dorothea Ponsonby (mother of Bright Young Person Elizabeth Ponsonby), as printed in Bright Young People

In my first year of college, I went through an Evelyn Waugh phase. I discovered Brideshead Revisited*in the stacks and subsequently went back to that section of the library so frequently that I daresay I could lead you to it today (assuming they haven't shuffled things around). Later on, I fell in love with Wodehouse, and somewhere in between I read a magazine article (presumably in Vanity Fair, as it's right up their alley) on the Mitford sisters. From those three sources, I had learned everything I knew about London's Jazz Age.

And who would expect you to know much, really? It's not World War II (not yet) or one of those other eras where at least a handful of facts are fairly common knowledge. In America, common knowledge about the English Jazz Age is...nothing, at least as far as I know.

I'd never had any particular interest in the period, either - yet, for whatever reason, when I stumbled upon Bright Young People at the library, I was intrigued. I guess there's just something about the beautiful and the damned, if I may steal phrasing from our own Jazz Age.

It is quite a cast of beautiful people. The women are fiery and the men dandyish. Everyone drinks to excess and speaks in an over-the-top fashion that, frankly, I love. They throw wild themed parties and absolutely flummox their parents (see the excerpt above). They fritter away money and sleep through the afternoon.

They are floating along in the wake of World War I, which killed and wounded so many of their slightly older countrymen. They can only float for so long, as it turns out - both the economy and the entry of England into World War II hasten the demise of the Bright Young People. By that time, some have become successful - Waugh, perhaps most notably, along with fellow novelist Henry Green and photographer Cecil Beaton. Others - like Elizabeth Ponsonby and Brenda Dean Paul - met tragic ends. And one - Unity Mitford - became a member of Hitler's inner circle. Really.

D.J. Taylor does an excellent job making sense of an abundance of material. He's quite an erudite writer - he sent me scrambling for the dictionary to look up suzerainty and echt. He tells the stories - or at least parts thereof - of quite a number of Bright Young People, which has left me curious to know more - if not more nonfiction, then perhaps some of the novels I've overlooked, like Green's Loving or Waugh's Vile Bodies. If nothing else, I have the 2003 film Bright Young Things (based on Vile Bodies) heading to me via Netflix. No better time for it, I reckon.

I think it is worthwhile to note that, while I found this book quite interesting, I have very little interest in today's pseudo-celebrity culture. That is to say, I admit to being a bit starstruck, but I am perfectly happy knowing nothing of those people who are famous for no discernible reason. It makes me wonder if I would have found the Bright Young People quite so glamorous if I had been their contemporary. Or perhaps it just reveals that the Z-list of today need to be a bit more ambitious and interesting - why no mock weddings? That was a sure-fire headline for Elizabeth Ponsonby.

Up next: I'm reading contemporary non-genre, non-YA fiction for the first time in a while, if my memory serves - American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld. So far, so good.


*I loved the 2008 film adaptation, by the way. Perhaps not as faithful as the the 80s miniseries, but Ben Whishaw was quite devastating as Sebastian Flyte.

The Lost City of Z by David Grann

In 1911, the cohort of South American explorers, along with the rest of the world, was astounded by the announcement that Hiram Bingham, Dr. Rice's old traveling companion, had, with the aid of a Peruvian guide, uncovered the Incan ruins of Machu Picchu, nearly eight thousand feet above sea level, in the Andes. Although Bingham had not discovered an unknown civilization - the Incan empire and its monumental architecture were well documented - he had helped to illumination this ancient world in remarkable fashion. National Geographic, which devoted an entire issue to Bingham's find, noted that Machu Picchu's stone temples and palaces and fountains - most likely a fifteenth-century retreat for Incan nobility - may "prove to be the most important group of ruins discovered in South America." The explorer Hugh Thomson subsequently called it "the pin-up of twentieth-century archeology." Bingham was catapulted into the stratosphere of fame; he was even elected to the U.S. Senate.

The discovery fired Fawcett's imagination. It undoubtedly stung, too. But Fawcett believed that the evidence he had gathered suggested something potentially more momentous: remnants of a yet unknown civilization in the heart of the Amazon, where for centuries the conquistadores had searched for an ancient kingdom - a place they called El Dorado.

-The Lost City of Z

Percy Fawcett disappeared in 1925. Accompanied by his son, Jack, and Jack's childhood friend, Raleigh Rimmel, he had ventured into the Amazon to look for the ruins of an ancient city - a place he called Z. Fawcett was a veteran Amazon explorer, well known for his seeming invulnerability to the many dangers of the area. His final journey and disappearance were covered extensively by newspapers all over the world, and subsequently innumerable, often ill-fated expeditions were launched to find him.

And yet, until The Lost City of Z was published earlier this year, Fawcett's story had faded into to history. I always find it fascinating how something that at one point would have been common knowledge can gradually become a bit of trivia. More fascinating still, of course, is the idea of living in an age where there were blank spots on the map. There are still uncontacted tribes in the Amazon, but those pockets that are isolated from the outside world have certainly grown fewer in number since Fawcett's time. Fawcett lived in an age when more was unknown, and thus the possibilities were limited only by one's imagination. It's worth noting that Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, in which an adventurer discovers dinosaurs living in a remote part of South America, was said to be based partially on Fawcett's expeditions.

In 2009, I think we've left very few stones unturned (not a lot of places left to hide living dinosaurs, in other words). The world, more accessible than ever, grows smaller. For instance, author David Grann, following in Fawcett's footsteps in an attempt to ascertain his fate and/or to discover if Z actually existed, spends time with a tribe who, although they maintain many of their traditions, also have a television powered by a generator. Things have changed a lot since 1925.

Grann intersperses the story of his own journey with the story of Fawcett's life: his early travels, his experience in World War I, his family life, and that last expedition. Both narratives are compelling. Fawcett lived a remarkable life; each of his journeys is harrowing as well as utterly absorbing. (Fair note to those with weak stomachs: there are a great number of maggots & other creepy crawlies involved.) Grann's story also grabs one's attention, because he is the man who may solve the mystery, and because one quickly realizes that, despite the modernization of some areas, the Amazon is still a very dangerous place.

In the end, no matter what Grann found (which, of course, I'll leave to you to discover), Fawcett's story is a sad one. Sure, no one put him or his party in danger against their will, but they went into the Amazon with good intentions and sufficient preparation - if anyone could have succeeded at the time, it was them. Jack and Raleigh were quite young - in their early 20s - when they disappeared. Jack wanted to be a movie star (and in the photo Grann provides, he looks a bit like Cary Elwes in The Princess Bride, though it could just be the little mustache). One can't help but think about the hole their disappearance left in the lives of those they left behind - Nina Fawcett, for one, never gave up hope that her husband and son were alive, and consulted with mediums to bolster her spirits. (Fawcett himself also believed in otherworldly phenomena, and some today believe that Z was more of a metaphysical state of being. Cults have been started based on this idea. Seriously.)

Even though the story is tragic, I nonetheless enjoyed The Lost City of Z wholeheartedly. I looked forward to cracking it open every day during my morning and afternoon subway commute. There's just something about great non-fiction* - to read something so extraordinary and know that it really happened. I find that it is a great reminder of the complexity of people, and the breadth of our world.

Up next: I've abandoned Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. Sorry, DFW fans - The Lost City of Z was a reminder that I don't want reading to be a herculean task for me. So, while browsing at the library, I found Bright Young People by D.J. Taylor, a non-fiction account of London's Jazz Age. It's an era I know little to nothing about, so I imagine I'll learn something!

*Some of my favorite non-fiction mysteries/crime stories: These books are very well-known, and deservedly so. If you haven't read one, I would get to a library or bookstore posthaste.

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote: The granddaddy of them all. A terrible tragedy, beautifully told.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt: I remember this book being quite the craze when I was a child, but at the time I was too young to read it. I finally got to it in the last couple of years, and I can say its popularity is well deserved.

The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson: The terrifying story of one of America's most prolific serial killers, set against the magical atmosphere of the 1893 World's Fair.

I'm always looking for more books like these, incidentally. If anyone knows of a good one, let me know.

In Medias Res: The Lost City of Z

Explorer John Hanning Speke

I don't normally post about books until I've finished them, but I decided to make an exception for The Lost City of Z by David Grann. I'm enjoying it so much, and so many passages are standing out to me, that I know I won't be able to get to all of them when I write it up. So, I decided to share one now.

Perhaps the most vicious feud was over the source of the Nile. After [John Hanning] Speke claimed in 1858 that he had discovered the river's origin, at a lake he christened Victoria, many of the [Royal Geographic] Society's members, led by his former traveling companion [Richard] Burton, refused to believe him. Speke said of Burton, "B is one of those men who can never be wrong, and will never acknowledge an error." In September of 1864, the two men, who had once nursed each other back from death on an expedition, were supposed to square off in a public meeting. The London Times called it a "gladiatorial exhibition." But, as the meeting was about to begin, the gatherers were informed that Speke would not be coming: he had gone hunting the previous day, and was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. "By God, he's killed himself!" Burton reportedly exclaimed, staggering on the stage; later, Burton was seen in tears, reciting his onetime companion's name over and over. Although it was never known for certain if the shooting was intentional, many suspected, like Burton, that the protracted feud had caused the man who had conquered the desert to take his own life. A decade later, Speke's claim to having discovered the Nile's source would be proved correct.


I was going to ask if anyone else wanted a Burton & Speke movie, but it turns out there already is one. And a novel! Brilliant. That story just blows my mind.

PS - This book is totally making me want to become an explorer. Just an FYI.

Land of Lincoln by Andrew Ferguson

For a century or more, generations of Americans were taught to be like Lincoln - forbearing, kind, principled, resolute - but what we've really wanted is for Lincoln to be like us, and this has never been truer than the present day. Lincoln hasn't been forgotten, but he's shrunk. From the enormous figure of the past he's been reduced to a hobbyist's eccentricity, a charming obsession shared by a self-selected subculture, like quilting or Irish step dancing. He has been detached from the national patrimony, if we can be said to have a national patrimony any longer. He is no longer our common possession. That earlier Lincoln, that large Lincoln, seems to be slipping away, a misty figure, incapable of rousing a reaction from anyone but buffs.

Or that's what I had assumed, anyway. Then one wintry morning a while back I fetched the local paper from the front stoop and saw a headline: "Lincoln Statue Stirs Outrage in Richmond."

-Land of Lincoln

On an April evening 144 years ago, Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theatre. He had been enjoying a comedy called Our American Cousin. Booth, an accomplished actor who knew the play well, purposely timed his shot to a laugh line. The wound was not immediately fatal. As Booth jumped down to the stage (allegedly shouting Sic semper tyrannis - Thus always to tyrants) and made his escape, people gathered to tend to their fallen leader. He was eventually moved to the boardinghouse across the street, where the bed in which he lay was far too small for him, as most beds of that time would have been. The doctors in attendance knew there was no hope, but nevertheless continued to try to relieve his pain (particularly the swelling). Lincoln died the next morning.

It was a climatic moment in history, seemingly more appropriate to Shakespearean drama than American politics (no accident, given Booth's career). And yet, along with the Civil War itself, it happened quite a long time ago. People generally seem to remember Lincoln fondly, which is undoubtedly tied to his martyrdom in death. Many people don't think of Lincoln at all, I would imagine. So it may come as a surprise that he has the ability to rile some up.

Andrew Ferguson discovered as much when he picked up the newspaper mentioned above, and later traveled to Richmond to talk to the people protesting the placement of a Lincoln statue in their city. People had placards ("Jefferson Davis Was Our President"). They sang "Dixie" - a song that Lincoln enjoyed very much, actually. No mention as to whether or not they knew that. Lincoln may have died well over 100 years ago, but the memory of his actions as president was still fresh to these protestors.

I could spend an entire review just on that first chapter of the book. Like Ferguson himself, I'm a bit of a Lincoln buff. I'm far from an expert, but he's someone I generally enjoy reading about*. I wrote the paragraph on Lincoln's death from memory (though I did have to double-check that it was Ford's Theatre and not Ford's Theater). In college, I took an entire class on the Civil War and it was hands-down my favorite class. A book on Lincoln in modern life is right up my alley, but I daresay it's an entertaining read for anyone who enjoys learning about different parts of American society.

Ferguson discovers that Lincoln means many things to many people. Even the buffs express their love differently - the collectors, the scholars, the impersonators (they call themselves presenters). He travels through the Midwest, visiting many sites that were meaningful in Lincoln's early life, and tries to understand Lincoln in how he is interpreted at each place. He tries to rediscover the Lincoln he loved as a boy, and who is more unknowable than ever.

Although I admire Lincoln greatly, I do feel in some way for the skeptics, who are chagrined at what they perceive as hero-worship of a man who was undoubtedly controversial while in office. I feel like it's common knowledge at this point that it's incredibly oversimplified to say that anyone was fighting for or against slavery exclusively during the Civil War. Perhaps I'm wrong, and everyone thinks that The Great Emancipator had just been looking for an opportunity to free the slaves. That every Union man was an abolitionist and every Confederate was a slave owner. I hope that we as a country know that things were not nearly so clear cut. Books like Ferguson's remind me of that famous quotation by William Faulkner: "The past is not dead. In fact, it's not even past."

Up next: I've started Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace, but as it's bit dense, I wouldn't be surprised if I took a break to read the 3rd Sookie Stackhouse book.

*Further reading:

Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz. Similar to Ferguson's book, but broader in scope. Horwitz examines the way the Civil War is still being fought today, from Confederate flag controversies to reenactments. I loved this book when I read it a few years ago.

Manhunt by James Swanson. The definitive book that charts the immediate aftermath of the Lincoln assassination. I felt like it really pulled me into the period - like an old-time episode of 24.

The March by E.L. Doctorow. A beautifully imagined fictionalization of Sherman's march through Georgia.

March by Geraldine Brooks. Not to be confused with Doctorow's book, March tells the story of the patriarch from Louisa May Alcott's Little Women and what he endures before coming home to his family. It won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize.

From McSweeney's: "From the Diary of John Adams"

The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epocha in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forevermore.

- John Adams

As promised, something lighter: "From the Diary of John Adams." Is it odd that, considering the essay clearly has little basis in fact, I still feel the need to point out that Sally Hemings was not born until around 1773, and thus clearly Thomas Jefferson was not having an affair with her in Philadelphia? Everything else I can take to be funny, yet I am too nerdy to let that slide.

Since I am on the subject of history, I might as well take the opportunity to be the millionth person in the world to recommend John Adams by David McCullough. I read it a couple of years ago and it was completely absorbing. Despite my college minor in history, my knowledge of the man had been largely gleaned from my repeated viewings of 1776 (which is actually remarkably accurate in many little details). John Adams really made me love him - for all his crotchetiness and bluster, he was just so human, so smart, and so true in his love for Abigail. Theirs is truly a story for the ages. The HBO miniseries is also pretty great, though the book is still superior.

In conclusion: Happy 2nd, Happy 4th, whichever you prefer. I'm almost finished with Blackwater, so I expect to be back to review that within the next couple of days as well.