Saralee Says
There are thousands of books about the founding of the United States. Some whitewash our history and avoid the bloodshed, courage, and even political and moral mistakes of our earliest citizens. Others are very blunt about what the United States has done right and wrong.
Through Women's Eyes: An American History with Documents (Bedford/St. Martin's) by Ellen DuBois and Lynn Dumenil proves that no women in our history really had it easy. This is not a discussion of history as told by women with money and status but a summary of how war, depression and discrimination affected women who were African-American, Native American, Anglo-Saxon and Latino.
Tired of hearing about only the founding fathers? Best selling author and journalist Cokie Roberts has written another wonderful book in which she describes the influence of Martha Washington, Abigail Adams, Eliza Pinckney and Mrs. Benedict Arnold in Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation (Perennial). Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America's Independence (Knopf) by Carol Berkin graphically describes the role of women during the revolution which included being wives, spies, prostitutes and slaves.
You can motivate the young women and men in your family by giving them Outrageous Women of Colonial America (Wiley) by Mary Rodd Furbee, who inspires her readers with stories about actual women who lived in colonial America. For the hometown version read Tennessee Stories (Turner) by James Dumas.
The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism (Houghton Mifflin) by Megan Marshall takes place years after the American Revolution but is one of the best historical books written in years. Elizabeth, Mary and Sophia Peabody were very independent and free thinkers. These sisters exuded powerful influence for their time, much like women of science as told in Miss Leavitt's Stars-The Untold Story of the Woman Who Discovered How to Measure the Universe (Atlas/Norton) by George Johnson.
One of the most stimulating writers today really sheds light on how women and others have been treated in A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present (Perennial Classics) by Howard Zinn.
Larry's Language
One of the great advantages of our nation is our ability to reinvent ourselves and our ideas every 50 years or so while remaining true to the spirit of our American ideals. These books document our progress and our failures.
The "can-do," pragmatic attitude of the founding fathers is illustrated by the book that should win the Pulitzer this year 1776 (book or audio Simon & Schuster) by David McCullough. Books of biography are required reading to appreciate that revolutionary zeal for the concept of independence, and the best recent books are Alexander Hamilton (Penguin) by Ron Chernow; George Washington (HarperCollins) by Paul Johnson; James Madison: The Theory and Practice of Republican Government (Stanford University Press) by Samuel Kernell; and The Meaning of Independence: John Adams, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson (University of Virginia Press) by Edmund Morgan.
Independence is an empty gesture, of course, without freedom; so the stories of resistance, underground railroads and civil war demand our attention. While the two leading war studies are Shelby Foote's trilogy The Civil War (Random House) and James McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom (Oxford University Press and Ballantine Books), the worldwide political struggle is written best in Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves (Houghton Mifflin) by Adam Hochschild and Though The Heavens May Fall: The Landmark Trial That Led To The End Of Human Slavery (Merloyd Lawrence Books) by Steven M. Wise. In our region the best recent books are Bound For Canaan: The Underground Railroad And The War For The Soul Of America (Amistad Press) by Fergus M. Bordewich, Why Not Every Man? African Americans & Civil Disobedience in the Quest for the Dream (Ivan Dee) by George and Willene Hendrick, The First Emancipator (Random House) by Andrew Levy and Freedom's Sword (Routledge) by Gilbert Jonas.
Independence and freedom became harsh words for Native American Indians due to broken promises and violated treaties in our history. That story is well told in the Tennessee region by the Cherokee Nation: A History (University of New Mexico Press) by Robert Conley and Cherokee Medicine Man (University of Oklahoma Press) also by Robert Conley and is tragically illustrated in Native American art in Treasures of Gilcrease (Gilcrease Musuem) by Anne Morand, Kevin Smith, Daniel Swan and Sarah Erwin.
Join us for our next book club discussion which will feature The Kite Runner (Riverhead Trade) by Khaled Hosseini.
