Tag: history

My Year in Books – 2024

~ jbwatson ~ 1 Comment

Another year has arrived, meaning it is time for another review of my year in books. I read fifty of them in 2024. So, here we go.

The first book I read was 24: Life Stories and Lessons from the Say Hey Kid by Willie Mays and John Shea. It was an enjoyable read, providing an interesting look at what baseball was life when Mays played but also his life outside of baseball. It was a Christmas gift from my son and proved timely since Mays passed away in June. Another Christmas present was Joe Posnanski’s The Baseball 100. Anyone who reads the book will take issue with some of the players Posnanski included, or the order in which he placed them, but it is an excellent book providing fascinating details about one hundred incredible ballplayers as well as personal anecdotes from Posnanski, who is a fine writer.

Katie Ledecky’s Just Add Water tells her life story, so much of which is centered around swimming. It is an enjoyable read and it is encouraging to see just how much fun she has swimming. Even as perhaps the best female swimmer in the world, with innumerable records to her name, she truly enjoys swimming. Misty Copeland’s The Wind at My Back is sort of an autobiography and a biography of Raven Wilkinson, who became a mentor to Copeland.

Woody Holton’s Liberty Is Sweet is a good book. He overreaches with his subtitle, though; “The Hidden History of the American Revolution” clearly implies that Holton uncovered some fascinating details that had somehow gone unnoticed—but he didn’t. While the book is voluminous—some 560 pages of text and another two hundred of notes and sources—I don’t think he revealed anything I had never heard or read before. He may be the first person to put it all in one book, and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a one-volume exhaustive history of the Revolutionary War, but honestly, his short overview of the ten years following the war that he included at the end of the book was perhaps the most insightful.

Allen Guelzo’s Robert E. Lee: A Life is a notable addition to the already numerous books on Lee. Guelzo is probably most recognized as an expert on Gettysburg, but he writes a well-researched and balanced account of Lee’s life. Erik Larson took his gifted approach to writing history to the story of the battle of Fort Sumter in The Demon of Unrest. Anyone wanting to understand everything that was involved in that conflict would do well to read this book. Andrew Delbanco’s The War Before the War capably traces the fight of enslaved Africans seeking freedom from the time of the American Revolution to the Civil War. But Samuel W. Mitchum Jr.’s It Wasn’t About Slavery is a pitiful attempt at showing that the South was motivated by things other than slavery when eleven states seceded from the Union, but his arguments fail, badly. Anyone with the desire to do so can discredit what he thinks are his strongest arguments within a matter of minutes if they are willing to search online for the full text of the documents he likes to cite. And anyone doing so will find that it actually was about slavery. The Crooked Path to Abolition by James Oakes, on the other hand, capably shows that while Lincoln’s position on slavery changed over time in terms of his strategies, his position as an opponent of slavery itself was much more consistent than he is often given credit for.

Solomon Northup’s Twelve Years a Slave is his autobiographical account of being tricked in New York, kidnapped in Washington, D.C., and sold into slavery for twelve years. The story gained significant attention a number of years ago when a movie of the same title was made.

Rachel Devlin’s A Girl Stands at the Door: The Generation of Young Women Who Desegregated America’s Schools, recounts the incredible bravery and fortitude of the girls who integrated American schools in the 1950s. While boys were involved in desegregation efforts as well, it fell disproportionately to girls, as Devlin explains. She interviewed many of the women who fought that fight and this is a book I would recommend to anyone wanting to learn more about that part of America’s history. Anne Gardiner Perkins wrote Yale Needs Women, and that was an eye-opener for me. I had no idea that Yale had not admitted female students until 1969. The book recounts the challenges they faced, the reluctance of so many to allow them to attend the school and the determination with which so many pressed on.

T. Martin Bennett’s Wounded Tiger is a sizable but fascinating book that intertwines the stories of Jacob DeShazer, Mitsuo Fuchida and a missionary family. Highly recommend.

Liz Cheney’s Oath and Honor is her accounting of the events of January 6 and her stand against Donald Trump, especially following his role in those events. She defends her service on the January 6 Select Committee. No one who despises Cheney will be swayed by the book—especially those who agree with Donald Trump and his recent claims that she should be put in prison—but as one of very few Republicans who was willing to stand up to Trump publicly, her side of the story deserves to be read. And Michael Wolff’s Landslide will also be dismissed by the MAGA crew, but the story he paints of the end of the first Trump administration shows why so many are concerned about what the Trump Presidency 2.0 is going to look like. Going back to his breakout period following Watergate, one wonders where Bob Woodward gets all of his information—and whether or not it is all accurate. If it is, Peril, which he co-wrote with Robert Costa, is, if anything, even scarier than Landslide. Tulsi Gabbard’s For Love of Country was shallower than I expected. I was disappointed at how dismissive of Gabbard the Democrats were in 2016. I do not think she is a Russian agent or even a Russian defender but I am not sure I want her as the head of national intelligence, either.

Elijah Cummings, with James Dale, wrote We’re Better Than This. Cummings represented the congressional district that includes Baltimore for twenty-four years. There is probably more that I would disagree with him on politically than agree but his commitment to finding ways to get along with people and be respectful even when he disagreed is something sorely missing in politics today.

Andrew Whitehead’s American Idolatry examines the dangers of Christian nationalism and shows how anyone who is not careful can easily go from nationalism to other dangerous -isms, like racism. Paul Miller’s The Religion of American Greatness: What’s Wrong with Christian Nationalism was the better book, I thought, but both are thought-provoking. The beginning of Russell Moore’s Losing Our Religion probably comes closer than anything else I have read to describing how I have felt over the past few years as so many people I thought highly of and often agreed with have become lockstep adherents of Donald Trump, even to the point of ignoring when and how he clearly acts inconsistently with what the Bible teaches.

Timothy Keller’s Jesus the King, which was previously published in hardcover as King’s Cross, explains the life of Christ, based on the account provided by Mark, with unique insights and reminders. R.C. Sproul’s A Taste of Heaven is a short book that puts proper worship into perspective. Even shorter, Bob Kauflin’s True Worshipers gives keen perspective on what it means to worship God. Steven Lawson’s The Daring Mission of William Tyndale is a short biography of the man who was cruelly executed for translating the Bible into English.

Karen Swallow Pryor’s The Evangelical Imagination looks at the term “evangelical” and at how one’s understanding of it has been shaped by art and popular culture. The subtitle, “How Stories, Images, and Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis,” gives you an idea of the argument that she makes. Rosaria Butterfield’s Five Lies of Our Anti-Christian Age is a good book, but there were a few times when I thought she went too far in her position. Nancy Pearcey’s The Toxic War on Masculinity does a capable job of outlining the concern she has about the culture’s attitude toward masculinity but I thought it was longer than it needed to be. Richard Alan Fuhr, Jr. and Andreas Kӧstenberger wrote Inductive Bible Study, which is essentially a guide on how to do that. Alisa Childers and Tim Barnett, in The Deconstruction of Christianity, do an excellent job of defining deconstruction, explaining what it is and explaining how to come alongside those who are “deconstructing.” And Christopher Ash, in Zeal Without Burnout, provides a short book with important insight into the very real issue of burnout.

Christopher Knowlton’s Bubble in the Sun is fascinating look at the original development of Florida real estate—the people involved, the money involved and the fabulous crashes involved. Tecumseh and the Prophet, by Peter Cozzens, is a well-written book about a part of American history that I did not know much about before beyond the battle of Tippecanoe. And The Curse of Beauty by James Bone was an intriguing read about someone I had never heard of—Audrey Munson—but whose face and even figure I have probably seen. Bone calls her America’s first supermodel, and she posed for an incredible number of statues during the Gilded Age but then spent the last 64 years of her life in an asylum.

The Outer Banks of North Carolina is perhaps my favorite place on the planet and I read a few books about that area this year. David Stick’s Graveyard of the Atlantic is an overview of the hundreds of ships that sunk off of the Outer Banks of North Carolina, as well as stories of incredible rescues of the passengers and crew on board some of those ships. John Railey’s A Murder in Manteo is not as well-written as his The Lost Colony Murder on the Outer Banks, but it is an interesting read and is different from the earlier book in that someone was convicted of the murder—though Railey thinks it was the wrong man. His Andy Griffith’s Manteo was the better of his two books I read this year and it was fun to get a look into the relaxed Griffith in his adopted hometown, but I am not sure Railey successfully made his case that Manteo was the real Mayberry. Scott Dawson’s The Lost Colony and Hatteras Island contributes to the discussion about what happened to the Roanoke colonists and lends some credence to his suggestion that they never really left the Outer Banks.

Mark Pryor’s The Dark Edge of Night is the second book in his Henri Lefort series. It has what readers of Pryor have come to expect but he weaves in some Nazi experiments being done on children that have their foundation in reality. Alex Cross Must Die, by James Patterson, is exactly like every other Alex Cross book in tempo and excitement and Crosshairs, the latest Michael Bennett book co-written by Patterson and James O. Born is, too. John Grisham’s Camino Ghosts is the third book in his Camino Island series and, for my money, probably the best of the three. Jeffrey Archer’s An Eye for an Eye is the penultimate book in his William Warwick series and, as he always does, he has Warwick, his family and the police department constantly battling Miles Faulkner. Daniel Silva’s A Death in Cornwall is the latest Gabriel Allon book. It was an enjoyable read, but one really does have to suspend reason when considering everything that Allon is able to get away with as the retired head of Mossad. I think David Baldacci’s A Calamity of Souls may be my favorite fiction book by a bestselling author that I read this year. In many ways I found it reminiscent of Grisham’s A Time to Kill, but it was certainly no copycat story. Colson Whitehead’s Crook Manifesto continues the saga of Ray Carney’s life in 1970s Harlem that began in Harlem Shuffle. Whitehead is an excellent writer, period. Sarah Crouch’s Middletide is her debut novel but will not, I am sure, be her last. Set in the Pacific Northwest, it creatively intertwines a couple of storylines and ends with an unexpected twist.

I’m halfway through my next book—another baseball book that I received for Christmas. Perhaps you’ll find a title in the overview above that you would like to read. Whether it’s something here or something else, happy reading.

Photo: Getty Images

Just Tell the Truth

~ jbwatson ~ 2 Comments

I recently received a mailing from Hillsdale College that had, visible through the address window, this bold-face question: “Will you help put the Constitution back in South Dakota schools?” As an educator in South Dakota–and a history teacher, specifically–I was curious what this was about. I have known of Hillsdale College for years and I enjoy reading their publication Imprimis. But I knew that the Constitution was not, in fact, missing from South Dakota schools.

The letter begins with the statement, “K-12 education in America is at a crisis point.” Not at all alarmist, right? Of course it is at a critical point, and there are very real problems, but then, when have there not been? The next paragraph is where the buzzwords come out, referencing “activists,” “entrenched education bureaucrats,” “destructive ideas” “critical race theory” and “other Marxist ideologies.” That was followed up with the bold, underlined sentence, “And they’re doing so in K-12 classrooms in your state.”

The letter is a plea to give money so that Hillsdale can continue to distribute pocket-sized copies of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, one of which they kindly enclosed with the appeal. The letter references a letter from “a little girl named Bailey” and even includes a copy. While neither the appeal letter nor Bailey’s letter says so, the response card says, “Schoolchildren like Bailey in South Dakota are counting on you!” Maybe the intent is to refer to schoolchildren in South Dakota who are like Bailey, but it sure seems to imply that Bailey is from South Dakota–just like the visible part of the letter I received suggests that the Constitution is missing from South Dakota classrooms.

So here’s my message to Hillsdale College–just tell the truth.

I can respect Hillsdale caring about the country. I can respect an effort to provide copies of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution to schoolchildren. I can respect that there are real concerns about public education in the United States and about critical race theory. What I cannot respect is lying to try to get my support.

Sadly, lying seems to have become an accepted part of American life. Politicians do it regularly. Tucker Carlson does in just about every show. So do other so-called journalists. And this is on both sides of the political spectrum. It seems that an “end justifies the means” approach has taken over and few people have an issue with it. But it’s not just sad, it’s scary. And it will, if left unchecked, lead to the end of America as we know it.

For the record, the Constitution is not missing in South Dakota classrooms. The Social Studies standards that were adopted in 2015 say “Students will explain the historical impact of primary founding documents including, but not limited to, the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, the U.S. Bill of Rights and subsequent amendments.” And that’s not for fourth grade, by the way–that’s the standard for kindergarten. The new standards, adopted in 2023, say, “The student identifies and explains the meaning of different symbols of America. Symbols may include, but are not limited to” followed by a list of thirty-three documents, dates, places, songs and mottos, including the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as well as the national motto, “In God We Trust.”

I could provide ample examples from the 2015 standards, but let me stick with the 2023 updates. For first graders, “The student can recite the Preamble to the United States Constitution from memory.” A second grade student “demonstrates knowledge of the United States Constitution,” with seven subpoints laying out what that looks like. A second-grader also “demonstrates knowledge of the early United States under the Constitution” (six sub-points for that one) and knows the “initial and later views on the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution” of Frederick Douglass. Fourth graders have nine-sub points to demonstrate an understanding of the Constitution, seventh-graders have eight sub-points to do so (plus another seven sub-points about James Madison, including his role in the Constitutional Convention and in writing The Federalist Papers) and have another eleven sub-points for demonstrating “understanding of the structure and function of the United States Constitution.” Eighth grade students can name and explain the “16th, 17th, and 18th amendments to the Constitution” and can compare and contrast “the main ideas and programs of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.” This is all before the student reaches high school, where both United States History and American Government are required for graduation.

So please, Hillsdale, don’t act like the Constitution is missing from South Dakota classrooms. Make sure you know what you’re talking about–and tell the truth!

My Year in Books – 2013

~ jbwatson ~ Leave a comment

I managed to keep my streak of reading fifty books per year intact in 2013, though I am not sure I would have done so had my wife not been hospitalized for sixteen days; I read ten books during that time! Given that I took two graduate classes during the summer of 2103 and traveled some 7,500 miles by car during my family’s two summer trips and read very little during that time I was prepared to excuse my falling short of the goal. I am glad I met the goal, though I would have preferred it to have been met in a different manner. But, without further ado, here is an overview of the fifty two books I read in 2013.

I think it’s fun to start my list with the first book I finished during the year. However, due to a computer crash suffered in the spring, the exact order of the first fourteen books I read is not known. Due to the fact that I am out in desperate need of more book shelves in my house and therefore stack most of the books in a pile as I read them these days, I do know what the fourteen books were, but I cannot guarantee the order. That’s because one of the books was loaned from a colleague and one or two others were already on a shelf and I put them back when I completed them. So, I will present my overview more by genre than by chronological order.

Let’s start with non-fiction, history. Ernest Grafe and Paul Horsted’s Exploring with Custer: The 1874 Black Hills Expedition is a fascinating book in that it provides a detailed overview of the 1874 expedition, including many first person and primary source accounts and photographs, but also provides contemporary photographs of the exact same spots and directions to get there. The result is that you could literally retrace Custer’s expedition yourself if you wanted to do so. I also read Nathaniel Philbrick’s The Last Stand. As Philbrick books go I liked it better than Bunker Hill and probably almost as much as Mayflower. It is a readable overview of the events leading up to, and including, the Battle of the Little Bighorn, including first person perspectives from both sides of that battle. If you have an interest in Custer personally or the conflict with Native Americans in general it is a good read. I also read Bunker Hill in 2013, by the way, and despite the fact that the American Revolution is perhaps the part of U.S. history that fascinates me most, and I even enjoy historical minutiae, I did not particularly enjoy this book. Though the specific reasons slip my mind at the moment I remember finding the book hard to get through and less than interesting in many parts. I can say the same thing for Kevin Phillips’ 1775. It was a book that I might not have even finished were it not for my conviction to never let a book beat me!

For those of you caught up in the international smash hit Downton Abbey you may enjoy reading Lady Fiona of Carnarvon’s Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey. I read it when my wife had finished it, and given that Lady Fiona is the current occupant of Highclere Castle (the setting of the show) she has access to a treasure trove of original documents and photographs. It was an interesting read, and she has a second book out now, continuing the exploration of the history of the castle and the families that have lived there. Another book I read that drew extensively from original documents and photographs was also loaned from a friend. E.M. Young: Prairie Pioneer tells the incredible story of one man’s pioneering farming experiences in the early 20th century.

I read David Montgomery’s The Rocks Don’t Lie in 2013, too, but I reviewed that at length in an earlier post, so I will not elaborate on it here.

I also read several biographies and autobiographies. Tony Bennett’s Life is a Gift is a fascinating look at his artistic life. Even if you do not particularly like Bennett (who I just realized, incidentally, I am listening to at the moment) his first-hand accounts of such now-hard-to-fathom incidents like seeing incredible and well known African American artists perform in clubs that they could not enter as patrons provide a unique perspective on that sad part of American history. David Green’s More Than A Hobby tells the story of the development of the Hobby Lobby juggernaut and the philosophies that have driven the Green family in its development. The book was written long before Hobby Lobby’s run in with the federal government over the contraceptive mandate but reading it leaves a good understanding of why the family would have challenged in the way that they did. Gracia Burnham’s books In the Presence of My Enemies and To Fly Again recount the experience of being taken hostage in the Philippines, the incredible ordeal she and her husband endured in their year-plus of captivity, and his death during the rescue (the first one) and the way in which her life has “moved on” since returning to the states and recovering from her injuries (including being short herself). Kisses From Katie by Katie Davis will no doubt leave you overwhelmed at the incredible things this young woman has done already to impact hundreds of lives in Uganda. The way in which the Lord has used her and the things that she has accomplished, and is doing, as a single young white woman in Africa will certainly prompt you to learn more about her Amazima Ministries, if not prompt you to take some action yourself! John Ownes’ Confessions of a Bad Teacher recounts the experiences of this publishing executive who decided to leave his skyscraper office to become a teacher in New York City. The book highlights the challenges faced by teachers everywhere when parents are absent or uninvolved but, even moreso, highlights the challenges teachers face when their administrators do not have the first clue about how what may seem like grand ideas or necessary policies actually play out in the classroom, and the challenges faced by teachers, students and parents alike when administrators are more concerned about rules than about students actually learning. The scenario Owens presents is not common, in my opinion, but he highlights important realities nonetheless. Finally, Malala Yousafzai’s I Am Malala provides a vivid first-person account of the realities of living in a region controlled by the Taliban and how incredibly repressive many of their rules are. That Malala survived when she was shot in the face is amazing, and she is an articulate advocate for education.

I actually read quite a bit of fiction in 2013. I made a conscious decision to read mostly fiction while my wife was in the hospital because I did not really feel like having to think too much! I also decided, thanks to the local library and the convenient proximity of a Barnes and Noble to the hospital, to read some authors I had never read before. So, by way of new-to-me authors, I read Jodi Picoult’s The Storyteller, which I found to be a fascinating story and one that deals intriguingly with the question of forgiveness–what it is, who can give it, and more. There were parts of Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief that I did not really care for or find necessary to the story, but in the end Zusak succeeds in presenting a very different kind of hero than is often seen in literature. Elliott Holt’s You Are One of Them was an interesting tale with an interesting perspective on Cold War U.S.-Soviet relations, from the perspectives of children becoming teenagers. Alafair Burke’s If You were Here has some nifty plot twists in it. While I have watched the show based on her books I had never read Tess Gerritsen until I read Rizzoli and Isles: Last to Die. Being familiar with a television version of characters before reading a book can have the same influence on the reader as being familiar with the book before seeing the movie or show can have on the viewer, but it was a good story overall. More than a few parts seemed a bit far-fetched but it is fiction, after all. I loved Mark Pryor’s The Bookseller, and I look forward to reading more of his Hugo Marston novels. Jonathan Cahn’s The Harbinger was given to me by a friend; it is not the kind of book I likely would have read on my own. It presented some interesting things, but it is correctly placed in the fiction section of bookstores. Chevy Steven’s Still Missing presents a graphic look at how we humans in our sin nature can get focused on things that really matter not at all and, as a result of that focus, can cause us to do things that no one in his or her right mind would ever even give a second thought. I also read two Robert Crais books, Taken and The First Rule. These are mostly typical crime drama/suspense books similar to many other authors.

My fiction reading was not limited to new-to-me authors, though. I read several books by those authors I tend to keep up with, too, including the following: Merry Christmas, Alex Cross; Alex Cross, Run; Private Berlin; NYPD Red; and Cross My Heart by James Patterson; The Racketeer, Theodore Boone: The Activist, and Sycamore Row by John Grisham; The Forgotten, The Hit, and King and Maxwell by David Baldacci; Best Kept Secret by Jeffrey Archer; and Threat Vector and Command Authority by Tom Clancy (with Mark Greaney). Clancy’s death late in the year means, I assume, that there will be no more true Clancy books (though there is always the possibility that he left behind some manuscripts) but I suspect it will not mean the end of Jack Ryan or The Campus.

Finally, in the area of spiritual growth, I read Jacqueline Pierre’s Totally Infatuated, a short book aimed mostly at teens (and Pierre is still a teen herself) highlighting the relevance of Scripture to our everyday lives; R.C. Sproul’s A Taste of Heaven and The Work of Christ; R. Albert Mohler’s Desire and Deceit (which I have also referenced in earlier posts); Joe Stowell’s Following Christ; John Piper’s God Is the Gospel, and Matt Chandler’s To Live is Christ, To Die is Gain. All of these books are very good and depending on where you are in walk with the Lord, what you want to focus on or dig deeper into may or may not be what you “need” right now, but Stowell’s book would be relevant and practical for any Christian at any stage of their Christian walk, I think.

So, there you have it, a quick run through of my year in books. Until next January…keep reading!