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It's amazing how much less trapped in my house I feel after having gone to the bookstore and drug store last week. Even with a mask on it was nice to get away and do some casual shopping.
I went to the drug store to get some new sunglasses. I've broken two pair since the virus began, and Arizona is not a place to be short on sunglasses. I got the brand I wanted and also picked up some new reading glasses. The cheap reading glasses I buy get a bit loose on my face over time and need to be replaced, but I never worry about breaking them.
The book I bought (a biography of John C. Fremont) is so-so. It was written by a reporter from NPR which should have been a giant red flag. He seems to want to tear down John C. Fremont while pumping up Mrs. Fremont. Mr Fremont was indeed a strange and self-contradictory fellow, but the author seems to want to apply a twenty-first century morality (of the author's choosing) to a man living in the early nineteen century. He seems to want to praise the wife, Jessie Fremont, for having more a consistently acceptable set of values (to the author in the 21st century). But having little evidence, we mostly have to take his word for it.
The author avoided using markers for notes and references in the text, which I suppose makes it look a little cleaner and less intimidating. But I came across a statement in the text that seemed debatable and I really wanted to know where the author came up with it. I flipped to the back of the book and sure enough all the notes were there, just listed by page number and not marked in the text. It was okay, I suppose, when I just wanted to know the source of one item. Generally his sources were not historians, memoirs and such, but rather newspaper articles from the period. I would feel better about the whole book if the author had been upfront about the fact that newspapers back then were expected to be a lot more biased and unreliable than most people today would tolerate who aren't big Trump supporters.
I went to the drug store to get some new sunglasses. I've broken two pair since the virus began, and Arizona is not a place to be short on sunglasses. I got the brand I wanted and also picked up some new reading glasses. The cheap reading glasses I buy get a bit loose on my face over time and need to be replaced, but I never worry about breaking them.
The book I bought (a biography of John C. Fremont) is so-so. It was written by a reporter from NPR which should have been a giant red flag. He seems to want to tear down John C. Fremont while pumping up Mrs. Fremont. Mr Fremont was indeed a strange and self-contradictory fellow, but the author seems to want to apply a twenty-first century morality (of the author's choosing) to a man living in the early nineteen century. He seems to want to praise the wife, Jessie Fremont, for having more a consistently acceptable set of values (to the author in the 21st century). But having little evidence, we mostly have to take his word for it.
The author avoided using markers for notes and references in the text, which I suppose makes it look a little cleaner and less intimidating. But I came across a statement in the text that seemed debatable and I really wanted to know where the author came up with it. I flipped to the back of the book and sure enough all the notes were there, just listed by page number and not marked in the text. It was okay, I suppose, when I just wanted to know the source of one item. Generally his sources were not historians, memoirs and such, but rather newspaper articles from the period. I would feel better about the whole book if the author had been upfront about the fact that newspapers back then were expected to be a lot more biased and unreliable than most people today would tolerate who aren't big Trump supporters.
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