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With the heat and the lack of much on TV these days, there is little to do except read.
Here are a couple books I've finished recently
America's Great Debate by Fergus M. Bordewich. The debate in the title refers to the US Congressional battle in the year 1850, which was touched off by the request by California to enter the Union as a free state. The issues in California were fairly clear. The gold rush of 1849 had created a fairly large population in an area with very little government. Statehood seemed the simplest route to bringing the chaos into some order. Labor was the other main issue. According to the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the southern half of what would become California should have been reserved for future slave states. Put simply, the prospect of black slaves being brought in to work California's mines horrified the vast majority of everyone in the territory, if it sounded only right and fair to southerners far away to the east. California, it was clear, was not going to be divided.
The issue for the nation was that without a balancing slave state, California's admission would dramatically weaken the position of the slave states in the Union. Till 1850 the US government had largely been dominated by the South. Even as the growth in population in the North meant the House of Representatives was by then out of Southern control, the balance between slave and free states meant that the South had a virtual veto over any legislation in the senate. Anyone who could read a map could see that California would upset that balance forever, which would necessarily lead to growing unhappiness in the South with the Federal government.
The debate was over a new compromise formulated by the Kentucky slaveholder Henry Clay, who personally saw no future for slavery beyond Texas, and thought slavery should peacefully die out for moral reasons. It was a complex set of legislation involving statehood for California, organized territorial government for New Mexico (which even at that moment was slowly dividing itself into Arizona and New Mexico), resolving of the question of Texas' western border, the resolution of the southern border of the Mormon Deseret territory or Utah as the rest of the country preferred to call it, and the southern desire for action against those in the North who were aiding run away slaves.
I don't know how American History is being taught in US schools these days, but back in my day we learned the names of people like Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Thomas Hart Benton, John C. Calhoun and so on who were classified in our school books as "great" and shelved away without much further ado about what they stood for. The book gives a pretty clear idea of who they really were, and how they fit into the scheme of things as the country was slowly but surely moving toward tearing itself apart.
As a glimpse of these well-entrenched politicians and the relative newcomers who were making their mark, Jefferson Davis and Stephen Douglas, the book is very informative and useful. There is a bad side if you are not enthralled with politics. It is clear for all to see how much time was wasted then, as now, in Congress by stubbornness and unwillingness to give an inch by the extremes on both sides.
.............................
Catherine the Great by Robert K. Massie. Massie and I share a strange combination of interests in Russian History and World War I naval history, and I am familiar with his works on both. I think the best thing about this biography of Catherine II of Russia is that it fits these times. There is everything one would expect in a biography of Catherine: her German roots, her horrible marriage to Peter III, her seizure of power, her interest in the arts and philosophy, her lovers and her change in attitude as rebellion in her country and revolution in France forced her to rethink her personal philosophy of government.
Massie makes a fairly good case for trusting Catherine's own memoirs. Among other things, seeing a portrait of Catherine's, first lover, the snub-nosed Saltykov, there is very little reason to doubt Catherine's word that he was the father of the future Tsar Paul and that the use of the name Romanov after the death of Empress Elizabeth is very much a polite fiction.
Unlike virtually every earlier biography of Catherine, there is no hint of moral outrage or nervous humor over Catherine's lovers. Massie presents them as a matter of fact and gives a fairly straight forward opinion of whether each of them had any serious influence on Catherine or whether she kept them as a separate part of her life away from her thoughts about ruling the country.
It's very readable, and I think a fairly accurate picture of Catherine and her times.
Here are a couple books I've finished recently
America's Great Debate by Fergus M. Bordewich. The debate in the title refers to the US Congressional battle in the year 1850, which was touched off by the request by California to enter the Union as a free state. The issues in California were fairly clear. The gold rush of 1849 had created a fairly large population in an area with very little government. Statehood seemed the simplest route to bringing the chaos into some order. Labor was the other main issue. According to the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the southern half of what would become California should have been reserved for future slave states. Put simply, the prospect of black slaves being brought in to work California's mines horrified the vast majority of everyone in the territory, if it sounded only right and fair to southerners far away to the east. California, it was clear, was not going to be divided.
The issue for the nation was that without a balancing slave state, California's admission would dramatically weaken the position of the slave states in the Union. Till 1850 the US government had largely been dominated by the South. Even as the growth in population in the North meant the House of Representatives was by then out of Southern control, the balance between slave and free states meant that the South had a virtual veto over any legislation in the senate. Anyone who could read a map could see that California would upset that balance forever, which would necessarily lead to growing unhappiness in the South with the Federal government.
The debate was over a new compromise formulated by the Kentucky slaveholder Henry Clay, who personally saw no future for slavery beyond Texas, and thought slavery should peacefully die out for moral reasons. It was a complex set of legislation involving statehood for California, organized territorial government for New Mexico (which even at that moment was slowly dividing itself into Arizona and New Mexico), resolving of the question of Texas' western border, the resolution of the southern border of the Mormon Deseret territory or Utah as the rest of the country preferred to call it, and the southern desire for action against those in the North who were aiding run away slaves.
I don't know how American History is being taught in US schools these days, but back in my day we learned the names of people like Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Thomas Hart Benton, John C. Calhoun and so on who were classified in our school books as "great" and shelved away without much further ado about what they stood for. The book gives a pretty clear idea of who they really were, and how they fit into the scheme of things as the country was slowly but surely moving toward tearing itself apart.
As a glimpse of these well-entrenched politicians and the relative newcomers who were making their mark, Jefferson Davis and Stephen Douglas, the book is very informative and useful. There is a bad side if you are not enthralled with politics. It is clear for all to see how much time was wasted then, as now, in Congress by stubbornness and unwillingness to give an inch by the extremes on both sides.
.............................
Catherine the Great by Robert K. Massie. Massie and I share a strange combination of interests in Russian History and World War I naval history, and I am familiar with his works on both. I think the best thing about this biography of Catherine II of Russia is that it fits these times. There is everything one would expect in a biography of Catherine: her German roots, her horrible marriage to Peter III, her seizure of power, her interest in the arts and philosophy, her lovers and her change in attitude as rebellion in her country and revolution in France forced her to rethink her personal philosophy of government.
Massie makes a fairly good case for trusting Catherine's own memoirs. Among other things, seeing a portrait of Catherine's, first lover, the snub-nosed Saltykov, there is very little reason to doubt Catherine's word that he was the father of the future Tsar Paul and that the use of the name Romanov after the death of Empress Elizabeth is very much a polite fiction.
Unlike virtually every earlier biography of Catherine, there is no hint of moral outrage or nervous humor over Catherine's lovers. Massie presents them as a matter of fact and gives a fairly straight forward opinion of whether each of them had any serious influence on Catherine or whether she kept them as a separate part of her life away from her thoughts about ruling the country.
It's very readable, and I think a fairly accurate picture of Catherine and her times.