The 1619 Project : How The U.S. Failed As A Beacon For Liberty From The Beginning

Like The System, which I reviewed here, The 1619 Project edited by Nicole Hannah Jones, Caitlin Roper, Ilena Silverman and Jake Silverstein is a book that I borrowed from my landlady. I learned that it was originally an article for The New York Times Magazine, but it was expanded into an anthology.

                                           

Right wingers believe that school children need to be rescued from this book.  I'm sure it's not taught to children because it's way above grade school level.  It's far more likely to be taught in college history classes.

This book mentions that ten of the first twelve U.S. Presidents owned slaves.  I'd imagine that the two that didn't were the Adams Presidents--John Adams and John Quincy Adams.  I know that there were Presidents who considered themselves opponents of slavery who nevertheless owned slaves.  Thomas Jefferson is the best known anti-slavery enslaver, but Martin Van Buren was another according to my research.   We usually call that hypocricy, and I don't see any reason not to call Thomas Jefferson and Martin Van Buren hypocrites.  I read in a later essay in this book that Thomas Jefferson mortgaged his slaves to build Monticello.  So Mr. Jefferson, if you believed that your slaves were human beings, why would you have treated them like property?

The South was well-represented at the Constitutional Convention, and they got 20 more years for the Atlantic slave trade in addition to the three-fifths clause (Slaves count as three fifths of a person.  They can't vote, but counting them gains influence for enslavers.)and the fugitive slave cause. (Escaped slaves will be returned to their owners.) Ugh!

Lincoln thought that American democracy was intended for whites only, according to Hannah-Jones. I already knew that Lincoln thought that free blacks should live in a colony in Africa.  As I've indicated in earlier blog entries, I've never been a Lincoln fan and the news that Lincoln thought the U.S. should be for whites only makes me even less positive toward Lincoln.

 I also learned from Hannah-Jones that there was no public education in the South until the Reconstruction.  Black state legislators were responsible for compulsory education laws in Southern states. Louisiana and South Carolina briefly had some racially integrated schools during this period.  Reconstruction lasted only twenty years.  It was ended with violent White domestic terrorism.

An essay by Ibram X. Kendi included judgemental comments about the behavior of free blacks made by 19th century abolitionist William Garrison.  This implied to me that Garrison didn't really respect blacks at all.  His abolitionism was an abstract principle that had nothing to do with real people.  That's really disillusioning.

Kendi also revealed that the main reason why expanding slavery to the West was nixed was that it would take paying jobs away from white laborers.  I should have known. Abolitionists gave their speeches, but economic motives were what really prevailed.

There were numerous other insights in these essays which make this book highly recommended.  I am  glad that it was expanded from the original article.

                                         

The Lost and the Found: Daughter of the Morning Star by Craig Johnson

  I borrowed a book from a friend, but she asked me to confine my reading of it to my room. She thought that I could more easily avoid damaging it that way.  This is not about my record for damaging books.  It's about the situation for books in my house being difficult to control mainly due to the activities of the resident felines.  Cats are wonderful creatures, but they can get into a great deal of mischief.

 So whether I was commuting to my job, was engaged in other travel or was even reading something in another room in the house where I live, it would have to be another book entirely.  I agreed to those terms, but another consequence is that I'm reading her book more slowly.  I'm only about half way through the borrowed book, but have finished the one that I was alternating with it.  That's the subject of this review. It's a mystery in the Longmire series by Craig Johnson.

I've previously reviewed a total of four of the Longmire mysteries if you look at my reviews on Goodreads, but there has only been one on this blog.  It was a review of  Next to Last Stand, my first read of 2021 which can be found here .

 Daughter of the Morning Star is the most recent volume in the Longmire series.   I gave the review the title I did because the mystery deals centrally with a number of people who are lost in various ways, and the consequences of their being found.

 

                                 

  The main impetus for Craig Johnson to write this book is the issue of missing indigenous women.   The statistics are very disturbing. Craig Johnson tells us in Daughter of the Morning Star that 5,590 indigenous women went missing last year alone.  He wanted to bring this tragic problem to the attention of his readers.  So he put his detective Longmire on the case of a missing Cheyenne woman named Jeanie One Moon.

Yet some people in this book aren't physically lost. They are spiritually lost.  I think that Jaya, Jeanie's sister, is an example. It seems to me that for Jaya everything spiritual is linked to her sister who disappeared.  This frightens her which causes Jaya to be spiritually blocked.   Right now, Jaya is a teen basketball champion in high school, but what happens after she graduates?  Will she need to find a new center for her life?  Can she overcome her inability to connect with the spiritual and become whole?

 There were interesting historical bits in Daughter of the Morning Star that I enjoyed--particularly the origin of the term "gumshoe" used for detectives, and the account of female heroism in the Battle Where The Girl Saved Her Brother.  

This novel seems to be largely unresolved.  Reviewers on Goodreads are expecting a sequel that will answer some of the bigger questions about unexplained phenomena and events.  So Craig Johnson is asking for trust which he has certainly earned over the course of the Longmire series, and some degree of patience from his readers.  I don't know about you, but I expect my trust and patience to be well-rewarded.  

                               

            

                

The Madness of Crowds: Violence in the Midst of Controversy

 I've seen The Madness of Crowds by Louise Penny called preachy.  I didn't experience it that way.  I thought it was a book with a strong message, but I didn't see the author preaching overtly.  I wonder if those who call it preachy don't think a mystery should have a message  other than the general one that "crime doesn't pay".  

(Though I've seen dark mysteries in which the perpetrators got away with it.   One of the reasons that I find mysteries so satisfying is the expectation that whoever committed the crime will suffer the penalty.  I want to see justice done.  I consider that one of the essential characteristics of mysteries.  I dislike books that break that particular rule of the genre.)

                                      

There is a character who lectures in favor of  the mandatory abortion of fetuses who aren't perfect.  I'd worry that when eugenics starts being a basis for termination, dominant local prejudices could come into play.  In some localities pregnancies could be terminated on the basis of race or immigration status.  She also advocated for the termination of those who are bedridden! How long would they need to be bedridden before they are placed on the termination list?  Would illness become illegal? How far would such a law be taken?

 When a nursing home that was recently abandoned by the staff with the patients left to die is mentioned in the book, I wondered if this had actually happened.  So I ran a search and discovered an example of the owners abandoning the nursing home.  The staff had stayed on even though their paychecks had bounced.   I found the staff's dedication inspiring.  I was glad to discover that new homes had been found for all the patients. So the current situation was transitional.

A character in The Madness of Crowds had a book called How To Lie With Statistics. I was intrigued by the title. I ran a search for the book which does indeed exist.  The author is Darrell Huff.  I placed it on hold because I'd like to know what examples are cited in the book. It could be very illuminating. 

Three Pines, the village in  Quebec where most of the Gamache series take place, has unusual graffitti.  Someone inscribed "Surprised by Joy" on a bench.  The first work with that title that comes up in search is the C. S. Lewis memoir, but C. S. Lewis apparently borrowed the title of a Wordsworth poem which can be found here.   In the poem, the poet imagines seeing a beloved person who is dead.  Since I haven't read the C. S. Lewis memoir, I don't know how the poem may or may not relate to any event in the life of C. S. Lewis.  I was just curious about the source of "Surprised by Joy".

In the Acknowledgements we learn that Penny started writing this novel during Canada's coronavirus quarantine, but she set it after the quarantine was over.  Since there may be any number of variants, we can't know when we will have "normality"( however you want to define that term).  Yet even when this crisis is over, I'm sure there will be other events that will fuel future plots for mysteries.