Clouds of Glory

Posted on April 18, 2026 by smellincoffee

General Lee has long fascinated me as a man who did not believe in secession, but was compelled by his sense of honor and Fate to become an icon of the war which followed. He is, of course, an idol in the white South, a legend on par with George Washington. Although Lee, like Washington, sensed that he was being deified in his own lifetime — during the war, in fact — and purposely began trying to live up to being a secular saint — Clouds of Glory is a substantial biography that shows us the man he was before he belonged to the ages. While I expected to be in good hands with Michael Korda, I did not realize how quickly seven hundred pages could go by: my previous Korda works have been perfectly enjoyable, but much smaller. Clouds of Glory is not only eminently readable, but has a perfect mix of praise and criticism.

Although Lee hailed from a family with the bluest of blood in America, and his father was a hero of the Revolutionary War, he entered his adult life in very humble circumstances. His father’s signal accomplishments on the field of battle did not translate at all to business, and bad investments were made worse by profligate spending. When Robert was two years old, in fact, his father was put in debtors’ prison for bankruptcy. While we don’t truly know how much Robert knew about his father’s tendency to outspend his income, it’s worth noting that Lee was scrupulous about controlling his own spending and putting away money for tomorrow. He would seek his life’s work in the US Army, earning such high marks at West Point that he was shifted into the engineering corps — then an elite service, and one he’d prepared himself for by poring over math textbooks long before admission to the point. Lee did well in the Army, or at least as well as one could do in peacetime: one of his signal achievements was the saving of St. Louis’ river port, and during the Mexican war he would perform ably. His status as an engineer did not mean he worked in some office scribbling away at paperwork: instead, he risked life and limb scouting for the Army during Taylor and then Polk’s war. Korda notes that aggression and movement were already part of his military philosophy, perhaps the fruit of him avidly studying the life of Napoleon. (L’audace, l’audace, toujours l’audace!) It is in this early part of the book that readers are treated to an altogether different Lee than we expect — a handsome, confident engineer with a talent for painting and drawing, and a love of teasing and flirting with the ladies that he and his wife corresponded with.

Although Lee grew up accustomed to slavery as part of life in Virginia, his father’s financial difficulties meant that slaves were not a large part of Lee’s life, aside from a couple of house servants who are mentioned.Korda writes that Lee did not like slavery, and hoped like Washington and Jefferson before him that it would disappear — though he had no idea how that might be effected without creating other problems. Once his father-in-law died and Lee suddenly found himself being responsible for hundreds of slaves and several estates in disrepair, his attitude toward slavery and slaves grew even dimmer. Lee didn’t have to worry about the pains of estate management for very long, as he soon had bigger problems. Sectional dispute in the States had been brewing for years, and finally came to a head when the abolitionist Republican party came into power thanks to the inability of the Democratic party to find a candidate who could represent both its northern and southern members. South Carolina finally did what it had been threatening to do for forty years, and seceded, followed by a few other Deep South states. While Lee did not believe in secession, he could not countenance his government making war against his country — of Lincoln calling for troops to invade the South by way of Virginia. Resigning his commission when Virginia seceded in response to Lincoln’s call for troops, he declared he would not raise his sword again except in defense of Virginia. Considering that Virginia was to be the primary battleground of the War — the place whose homes were burned, whose crops were wasted, whose cattle were destroyed, etc — he would soon be quite busy.

The bulk of this work (60%) follows Lee during the war, as he first served Jefferson Davis as an advisor and pseudo-secretary of war, then later found himself commanding the whole of the Army of Northern Virginia and involved in most of the war’s most recognized battles. The problem facing Lee and Davis was of defending a State that offered five broad avenues for invasion, and Lee’s talents and experience as an engineer came in handy throughout the conflict– though arguably, and tragically, after Gettysburg they served only to delay the inevitable and prolong the bloodshed and suffering. As Lee settled into command, he was blessed with some very capable men, several of whom he shared close bonds with: Stonewall Jackson, for instance, seemed to know exactly what he wanted and would engage in his own bouts of daring to accomplish the mission. Unfortunately, the easy understanding between the two men appears to have spoiled Lee some: when he engaged in his first large-scale battle after Jackson’s death, the general found himself struggling to communicate his strategy effectively to his corps commanders. It didn’t help that at least two of them (Hill and Longstreet) were reluctant to fight around Gettysburg, especially seeing as the cavalry under J.E.B. Stuart were off joy-riding instead of giving Lee some idea of where the Yankees were. That Gettysburg went as well as it did for the Confederacy (prior to the attack on the Angle) is a testament to the fighting men themselves, as the Confederate army stumbled into the Union army piecemeal.Korda believes that the defeat at Gettysburg, and particular Lee’s calm demeanor afterwards, accepting responsibility for the defeat and comforting the soldiers streaming back from the bloody ridge, played a large part in turning Lee into an icon of grace and leadership under fire. Even in defeat, he somehow inspired loyalty and affection. Unfortunately for him, even when Confederate hopes were riding high in 1862 and early 1863, the Confederate army simply didn’t have enough men to capitalize on its victories against the Union army. It could break lines and send them running, but the Union could always retreat, regroup, refill its ranks with new conscripts, and come again — whereas the Confederates were often so hard-up for supplies they depended on victories just to refill ammunition from Union stores.

I’m very familiar, of course, with the war in the Eastern theater, so I read this primarily for deeper insight into Lee’s early life. Even so, it is impossible to not admire him and his behavior as the war progressed — a man who refused invitations to dine and sleep in civilians’ homes more often than not, who preferred to remain with his soldiers even when they were bivouacking very near Lee’s family. There is first and foremost a great sense of humility in the man: when he ordered a Confederate uniform for himself, he chose a simple one that was appended with the highest rank he’d earned in the Union army — that of colonel. Like Washington, he earned fame and glory by eschewing it, by withdrawing from acclaim and devoting himself to quiet service and grace under fire. Unlike other generals who lived through the war — Longstreet and Grant, say — he did not write his memoirs, instead spending his postwar years as the president of a university until his passing. What I liked about this, though, is that Korda was unafraid to criticize his subject — particularly Lee’s shying away from personal conflict, which caused issues in and outside of war.

This was an excellent biography, one that gave me a deeper appreciation of ol’ “Marse Robert”, and humanized him beautifully as a man and father who was beset by conflicting values and loyalties, and worked his way through them as best he could. It is difficult for the modern mind to really get into the boots of those in the 19th century whose values are different than our own — people who were morally compromised by the system they were born into, but who nonetheless took things like honor and duty more seriously than we can imagine. I think Korda is able to communicate much of that, and he keeps his focus on the man rather than letting his life be overwhelmed by the war which nonetheless defined him.

Quotations

“I enjoyed the mountains as I rode along. The views are magnificent — the valleys so beautiful, the scenery so peaceful. What a glorious world Almighty God has given us. How thankless and ungrateful we are, and how we labor to mar his gifts.”

The bond of trust between Lee and Jackson, forged at a distance, was to become one of the most important weapons in the arsenal of the Confederacy. “If Lee was the Jove of the war, Stonewall Jackson was his thunderbolt. For the execution of the hazardous plans of Lee, just such a lieutenant was indispensable.”

McClellan’s problem was not that he lacked courage or skill; it was that he excelled at building up an army that was neat, tidy, disciplined, and equipped in every detail, and having done so he could not bear to see it destroyed.

Lee’s imperturbability was one of the Army of Northern Virginia’s most important weapons — his appearance polite and visibly unafraid, near the firing line, encouraged his soldiers, and no doubt shamed many soldier who did fear into courageous behavior. He did not have Napoleon’s flair for the dramatic gesture; instead, it was Lee’s impassivity that impressed the etroops: his calm courage and his confidence in victory.

Stuart saw no activity on the part of McClellan, nor indeed did the White House, to the growing irritation the President. Lincoln had taken to referring to the Army of the Potomac unflatteringly as “McClellan’s bodyguard”.

At almost that moment the sun came out, “as if the ready war god rang up the curtain on the scene set for slaughter, and against the vast backdrop of the gun-studded hills of Stafford, the whole stage was disclosed, from the upper fringe of Fredericksburg’s streets to the distant gray meadows in front of Hamilton’s Crossing.” There was something deeply theatrical about that moment. It was not surprising. Again and again the Civil War produced scenes of grandeur that imprinted themselves on the minds of countless men on both sides of the conflict.

To Lee, and to every senior Confederate officer present, it was a moment of awe — this, after all, was their army, the army that they attended West Point to serve in, and whose uniform they had worn in Mexico or on the frontier, lined up in perfect formation with a precision that would have satisfied the most demanding of drill sergeants, and about to march straight toward them over open ground, in the face of 306 Confederate cannons, which had been carefully sited, dug in, and ranged to receive them. It can only have been with mixed emotions that Lee watched them dress their lines for an attack he knew must fail.

In retrospect, the defeats of Gettysburg and Vicksburg seem to mark the point at which the defeat of the Confederacy became only a matter of time, although there would be almost as many casualties on both sides in the two years after Gettysburg as in the three years preceding it, and vastly more civilian deaths.

Southerners had made him into a symbol for which they were fighting, and they recognized his constant, calm acceptance of God’s will. A nation besieged needs a powerful national myth to keep it fighting, and Lee became, however unwittingly, the personification of that myth. Jefferson Davis might have his people’s respect, but Lee held their trust and affection — he was, and would remain, what they wanted to see in themselves.

Although Lee seldom touched wine or liquor, he was not immune to the intoxication of battle: “His face was aflame and his eyes were on the enemy in front.” The spectacle of the commander of the Army of Northern Virginia eagerly spurring Traveller ahead of a brigade of Texans toward a Union infantry line now only 150 yards distant apparently attracted the attention of soberer spirits among those infantrymen who suddenly recognized him, and they shouted, “Go back, General Lee, go back!” Beneath the calm exterior, he hid the spirit of a beserker; the blood of Light-House Harry Lee ran in his veins.

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My Cousin Rachel

Posted on April 16, 2026 by smellincoffee

Phillip and Ambrose had a good thing going: Phillip was largely raised by his older cousin, a man with twenty years on him and a tremendous unease around women that he passed on to his ward. They lived in Ambrose’ country estate in Cornwall, staffed only by men, and Ambrose took a particular delight in inviting guests to put their boots up on the table if they’d like: there were no wives or maids to fuss here! Then Ambrose, wintering in Italy, wrote with news: he’d met an Englishwoman in Florence from their own country, and she shared his passion for gardens! — and, they were to be married. The old bachelor had at last struck his colors. As a year without Ambrose passes, Phillip begins worrying about the future of their bachelor’s mess, but then receives a series of increasingly disturbing letters that force him to travel to Italy himself. There he learns, to his dismay, that Ambrose is dead — but Phillip suspects that something rotten has been going on in the state of Florence. He returns home, despondent and suspicious, but then is surprised to learn that his cousin’s widow is coming to see him. With suspicion in his heart, he waits for her like a hunter in a blind — but it is he who is struck, by Cupid.

My Cousin Rachel drew me in almost immediately with its air of malice and mystery, flecked with humor: I don’t think I’ve ever read a classic that captivated me so quickly. In this, du Maurier accomplishes doing to the reader what Phillip’s cousin Rachel did to Ambrose — and then to him. Her depiction of their banter and growing affection struck me as perfect, a happy drifting into a serious bond — and yet this is not merrie tale of love and happiness wrested from death. It’s extremely Gothic in terms of setting and the air of menace, mystery, and wonder that hangs over the text regardless of setting. In fact, I don’t know that I’ve ever read anything that hit that quality more, despite reading classic gothic tales like Frankenstein and Greg Iles’ southern gothic novels. One character uses the word enchantment, and it’s extremely apt — his cousin Rachel simply has that effect, but enchantments can go either way, as C.S. Lewis reminded us. Part of the fun of reading this is the delicious tension in the mystery, and the reader’s growing conviction that something is awry, but the inability to get off the primrose path.

This was delicious, and I plan on returning to du Maurier again with Rebecca as soon as I’ve gotten a term paper out of the way.

Quotations

The point is, life has to be endured, and lived. But how to live it is the problem.

There is no going back in life. There is no return. No second chance. I cannot call back the spoken word or the accomplished deed, sitting here, alive and in my own home, anymore than poor Tom Jenkyn could, swinging in his chains.

“I never thought,” said my godfather slowly, “to see you grow so hard. What has happened to you?”
“Nothing has happened to me,” I said, “save that, like a young warhorse, I smell blood. Have you forgotten my father was a soldier?”

A halo can be a lovely thing, providing you can take it off, now and again, and become human.

“Really, cousin Rachel, you might protect me. Why not tell these gossips I’m a recluse and spend all my spare time scribbling Latin verses? That might shake them.”
“Nothing will shake them,” she answered. “The thought that a good-looking young bachelor should like solitude and verse would make you sound all the more romantic. These things whet appetite.”

“If it’s warmth and comfort that a man wants, and something beautiful to look upon, he can get all that from his own house, if he loves it well.” To my astonishment she laughed so much at my remark that Tamlyn and the gardeners, working at the far end of the plantation, raised their heads to look at us.
“One day,” she said to me, “when you fall in love, I shall remind you of those words. Warmth and comfort from stone walls, at twenty-four. Oh, Philip!” And the bubble of laughter came from her again.

When the men brought the new lead piping to be placed against the walls, to serve as guttering from the roof to the ground, and the bucket heads were in position, I had a strange feeling of pride as I looked up at the little plaque beneath them stamped with my initials P. A and the date beneath, and lower down the lion that was my mother’s crest. It was as though I gave something of myself into the future.

Not Really a Spoiler, But Too Close for Comfort “I can’t go on hating a woman who doesn’t exist.”
“But I do exist.”
“You are not the woman I hated.

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WWW Wednesday + Odd Hobbies

Posted on April 15, 2026 by smellincoffee

Today’s prompt from Long and Short reviews is….odd hobbies! I think the best I can think of is my penchant for memorizing poetry and Anglo-American folk songs. Other hobbies like photography, hiking, PC modding, gaming, etc. are fairly pedestrian. I almost got into Civil War reenacting (camping out with history buffs who know how to use a Dutch oven? Sweet!), but then I remembered that I live in Alabama and I’m often miserable wearing cotton — nevermind wool uniforms and brogans that don’t breathe. It’s also an expensive hobby: imagine paying $1500 for a musket that you only shoot blanks in.

WWW Wednesday

WHAT have you finished reading recently? Backstage at the Lincoln Assassination. I’d begun reading it a few months back, but delayed finishing it so my post would go up on April 14 for historically salient reasons.

WHAT are you reading now? Halfway into Clouds of Glory a biography of Robert E. Lee, a few chapters into Rebecca.

WHAT are you reading next? I began looking at My Cousin Rachel by du Maurier and am now halfway through it, so….that. After that, Dan Jones’ book on the Magna Carta, since I already have it, but I’m also thinking of finishing Wayne Grant’s Richard the Lionheart-era Roland Inness series.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Backstage at the Lincoln Assassination!

Posted on April 14, 2026 by smellincoffee

This will be an unprecedented post, as I’m combining a TT and a review of the book from whence it came.

On the stage of Ford’s Theatre, Harry Hawk, facing upstage and bent over in mock civility, rotated his comic face to the audience and started his retort: “Don’t know the manners of good society, eh? Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal—”

Before he could finish, John Wilkes Booth with outstretched arm squeezed the trigger and their world turned upside down. BACKSTAGE AT THE LINCOLN ASSASSINATION

On April 14th, 1865, not even a week after General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of North Virginia to General U.S. Grant, President Abraham Lincoln was murdered while attending a play at the Ford Theater in Washington, D.C. Backstage is an unusual history of the event, because it centers itself on the Theater itself and its cast and crew. The author opens with a look at the Ford Theater, and theater in general in the 1860s: I was surprised to learn how South-biased theater companies often were, but the author attributes this to the fact that southern men of means were often the theater’s leading patrons. John Wilkes Booth, who had ardent southern sympathies, was thereby not out of place when he talked politics — even in a Washington theater. He was well known as a former colleague to many of the members of the Ford Theater company, though before the assassination he’d declared he was giving up acting to pursue oil. The book captures the moments of the assassination very well, particularly the confusion — the darkness of the theater, the strange noise, Booth suddenly appearing on the stage from one of the upper boxes, and then disappearing amid confusion and then screaming. After setting the stage by introducing us to the cast and crew in the days leading up to the assassination, Bogar then follows the aftermath. Irrational mobs being what they were, some Washingtonians wanted to burn the theater on the very night Lincoln was shot. Bogar tracks the strange priorities of Seward, harassing stage-hands who Booth barely knew while ignoring his former colleagues with whom he’d spent years talking. Because of the nature of the crime, those who were arrested and accused with some connection to the plot were very poorly used: their homes ransacked, their possessions stolen, their persons consigned to solitary cells for weeks on end. The Ford Theater, too, was poorly used by the Union soldiers who seized it: the taint attached to Ford’s name undermined his future in dominating the theater scene, though he did receive a small consolation in being paid for the property by the US government. This was interesting little history, not merely for the backstage look but the look at 19th century theater in general.

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Short rounds, Read of England style

Posted on April 12, 2026 by smellincoffee

By luck of the draw, I’ve had a series of books too short to review properly, so I’ve bid them all wait until I had enough for a short round post.

First up was my first proper experience with Dan Jones — or perhaps I should append a question mark to that, because as histories go, this one is rather short, not like his girthy Plantagenet history. Specifically, it’s a history of the year 1215. If you’re up on your English history, you may recognize that as the year that John was forced by his barons to sign the Great Charter. This document which has been hailed as the foundation of English and thereby American liberty, by establishing the principle that the King is under the Law — even if he is in the position of making the law. A Realm Divided is not entirely about the political drama that led to the council at Runnymede, though, as it also includes several chapters on social matters in case one’s eyes start closing over the constant feudal squabbling. While the book is relatively short (in the area of 200 pages), it’s a read dense with facts and surprises, and it includes the Charter itself at the end as well as a few other documents. One minor surprise here was learning that John had contemplated going on a Crusade, which I found amusing. It’s hard to think of a selfish scoundrel like John facing the rigors of travel the way Richard and Frederick did. Another surprise was learning that there was a document that preceded the Great Charter, one which contained most of its clauses and which served as the basis for debates between the barons and the king. While I’ve read Jones’ historical fiction debute and his adaptation of a medieval ghost story, this is my first proper history by him. I like his style and will be reading more: I had thought to pair this and his book on the Magna Carta proper, since he was researching them at the same time, but unless I’ve been in the hospital I prefer to cap my short rounds at 3.

Next up, the first volume in Oxford’s History of Britain, opening with Roman and Anglo-Saxon Britain. This is an extremely cursory introduction, under 200 pages, and if you are vaguely familiar with either era there’s nothing much here for you, except (in my case) the observation that archaeology hints that the Anglo-Saxons were in Britain even before the Romans left, and not simply as mercenary guards. All the usual players — Claudius, Boudica, Alfred, Edmund, etc — make their appearances. If you know nothing at all about Roman Britain, or the early Anglo-Saxon period, this is useful; otherwise, it’s simply a reminder.

About The Peopling of British North America I can say even less, because it consisted of three essays that barely get to 150 pages altogether, all of them have strange names (“The Rings of Saturn” — what?), and the gist of all of it is “You know, it’s all very complicated and we really can’t figure out any exact patterns, people just wandered over to America in all kinds of ways. Can I have my advance before it hits the printers, please?”

The latter two were donated to my University library by my former professor of medieval Europe and English history, a man who claimed to be descended from Norman warlords and definitely looked the part. I can understand why he was willing to release them. They won’t be lingering long on my end, either.

Coming up this week..

This is my final week of schoolwork for this term, and I have a 6 page paper due Friday so I may not be reading as much as I’d like. At least, not reading what I want to. I have to re-read my textbook and various articles from this term for said paper. I’ve got Dan Jones’ second historical fiction book at the ready, and his aforementioned piece on the Magna Carta. Still trying to get into Rebecca but I suspect I won’t make progress until after I submit this paper. My leisure read at the moment is Clouds of Glory, a biography of Robert E. Lee by Michael Korda: I’ve had it checked out for a bit (had planned to pair it with my Ulysses Grant biography), but it’s a beefy boy and not until this present weekend did I have time to really sink my teeth into it. I was dogsitting at a house with no internet or electronic distractions, so I got to settle in with ol’ Marse Robert the last few days. I’m 200+ pages in and just arrived at 1860. So far it’s been a delight: who knew General Lee had a penchant for watercolor and loved flirting?

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The Shaping of England

Posted on April 9, 2026 by smellincoffee

The Shaping of England is an older (1960s) Asimov history written about early England, beginning with speculation about the Beaker people and moving through the Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons etc to wrap up with the establishment of the Magna Carta. Like Asimov’s other histories, this is written for a general audience, with text accessible enough for a literate middle schooler but with facts and wit enough to please an adult reader. While I assume older parts of it are dated at this point (archaeology has presumably had much more to say on the Beaker, Celtic, and Anglo-Saxon periods), it’s a lovely narrative with Asimov’s usual charm and critical eye. I’m generally familiar with the subject matter and largely read this to enjoy the dear doctor’s writing again — he dominated the early years of this blog until I ran out of books by him to read — and found few discrepancies but a few surprises. His treatment of the Roman invasion of Britain, for instance, attributes Caesar and Claudius’ attentions there to Britain simply existing: seizing it meant overcoming the dangerous mystery of Oceanus, and thus driving Rome not simply past a geographic limit but past limit in general — imperium sine fine! All modern scholarship I’m familiar with stresses the connections between Celtic Britons and Celtic Gauls, and how Rome’s aims towards consolidating power in Gaul meant ending the outside interference.

I was wholly surprised by the assertion that the Scilly islands were visited by the Phoenicians. This is something I’ve never heard of, and after digging around I think it was just speculation that was common in the 1960s which is now wholly ignored. The earliest reference I can find for it (1924) comes from an article that also mentions Aryans and the Sumerian origins of English. Asimov doesn’t pursue a single-track narrative: he often follows powers and personalities who intersect with Britain and then England proper’s story. While this can appear distracting at times (why am I reading about the Norse in Vinland?), it helps maintain some flavor of the period we are in — and sometimes, to better appreciate the actual subjects by direct comparison. Robert Guiscard and William the Bastard are compared together, for instance, as forgers of stable Norman empires from far more chaotic source material. This narrative was my first time really getting into the civil war between King Stephen and Matilda, despite the fact that my name should give me an obvious interest. (Amusingly, King Stephen managed to both win and lose the civil war with Matilda: he ruled during his lifetime, but allowed her son Henry II to assume the throne and begin plantagenting all over Europe. The Angevin empire and its drama are a large part of this book’s final third, and proved interesting given that Asimov is not impressed by the lionization of Richard or the demonization of King John. Sure, Asimov writes, he wasn’t great — but Richard wasn’t exactly the bee’s knees from a character perspective. One of the men Richard arrogantly dismissed during the Third Crusade wound up getting the last laugh, being instrumental to the capture of the Lionheart in Europe and creating all manner of trouble for Europe as John was pressed to raise a literal king’s ransom.

This is dated, but fun: doubtless it’s surpassed by modern scholarship (I’m thinking of following this up with Dan Jones’ work on the Magna Carta itself), but given my longstanding affection for all things Asimov I got a kick simply from ‘hearing’ his voice again.

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Controversial Polemics

Posted on April 8, 2026 by smellincoffee
One of the first experiences I had was meeting a guy on the side of the highway about an hour south of Portland on I-5 who convinced me to go to what turned out to be an AA meeting—this is ironic—and then got me to steal a car with him. We didn’t get far before being pulled over by police.

When he was twenty-three, Michael Mohr read On the Road and decided to pursue the life of Sal Paradise himself. He hit the road for a life of drinking and adventures, but by the end of his twenties had lost enough to alcohol that he went sober and began writing. There’s something immediately captivating about that—young people reading a book, feeling it deeply, and being so fired up they want to throw themselves into the fray. Mohr is a reader who feels and writes with intensity, and like his favorite authors he is not one who can be thrown into a box — tidily labeled and dismissed. I happen to be very fond of those authors, myself — authors whose feelings and thinking cut across party lines, whose thought is honest and earnest and not prepackaged. They make me sit down to truly consider them, and that’s always a more rewarding experience than reading the latest political polemic that says ‘Hoo-ray for our side’.

This work is a mix of essays on politics, culture, and literature. While it was politics that first drew my attention to Mohr’s writing (he’s a lifelong Democrat who hates the way the party has gone since Obama retired), the latter third is all about different authors and the role of their art in unearthing truths about the human experience. These essays are extremely varied: to pick three at random, there’s a critique of the Democratic party’s platform and candidates in the 2024 election, a rumination on how Alcoholics Anonymous is not monolithic, and a tribute to the life of Charles Bukowski. I especially enjoyed the literary essays as someone who takes books and authors seriously — especially authors like Bukowski or Ed Abbey, unique personalities. Reception to the political section will vary, I think: as a former college progressive who became disaffected and then bitter and contemptuous toward the Democratic party during the same period Mohr is writing about here, I was all on-board for their getting roughed up here. That’s not because Mohr is a conservative or libertarian writer; he says he’s never read anything from conservative writers, and he has a visceral contempt for Trump. He realizes, though, that Trump’s anti-elite messaging works because the Democratic Party has become elitist and condescending, and that the legitimate needs of voters across demographics are not being met by business as usual. (The fact that Trump picked up voters in every demo in the last election except for black females is telling on that part, but I strongly doubt the Dems will take it seriously.)

In both his political and literary writing, Mohr reveals himself to be the kind of writer America used to produce amply: the impassioned individualist who hates tribal thinking, and not simply the other side’s tribal thinking. He doesn’t want himself or any other serious writer or person to be put in a box and stored away neatly. I was reminded of how when I was studying Ed Abbey that I realized Cactus Ed was too unruly for the easy label of ‘environmentalist’. The real man was far more complex and interesting — and contradictory! This collection, too, is complex and interesting. I think Mohr’s enthusiastic reading does have oversights , but I admire and appreciate his active attitude toward learning. When people accuse Trump of being a new Hitler, he reads a biography of Hitler; when people talk about cultural Marxism, he reads a biography of Marx, and in both occasions he writes down his thinking. He doesn’t just react to identity politics as shallow: he creates an essay on the Buddhist idea of no-self and how it applies. I think that kind of dedicated digging-in is fairly rare these days: we find it so easy to accept other people’s summary judgements.

All told, this was a fun collection to read through — sometimes easy, sometimes prickly, but always interesting…and more important, real.

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WWW Wednesday & When I was a Kid

Posted on April 8, 2026 by smellincoffee

Today’s prompt from Long and Short Reviews is: what were you like as a kid? But first, WWW Wednesday!

WHAT have you finished reading recently? The Shaping of England, Isaac Asimov. And, technically, Public Libraries and their Communities, one of my textbooks for this semester.

WHAT are you reading now? When the Earth Had Two Moons. Also looking through a collection of substack essays published as an e-book.

WHAT are you reading next? Trying to get into Rebecca by du Maurier.

What was I like as a kid? Well, some things haven’t changed. I used to read through stacks of books every week: the children’s director joked that I’d read every book in the library at one point. Lots of history and nature books, of course, but I also enjoyed ghost stories and regular kids’ novels. I was raised in a home without television, so reading was my main entertainment — but I also spent a lot of time outside, telling stories with my toys and using whatever I had on hand as props. To use my G.I. Joe base as an example: some of it was cinder blocks, but the chrome panels of a fire engine, with all their dials and such, were the ‘controls’ of the base, and I used an empty wrapping paper tube so my Joes could slide to the ‘motor pool’. I also enjoyed jumping on a trampoline for hours on end, as well as shooting hoops when I got older. Although I did play outside with friends — we’d explore the woods, play ‘war’, play basketball together — I was fairly comfortable being alone. I’d also read outside, of course, and one of my fondest memories is using plywood and cinder blocks to ford my way across a swamp to a wooded area beyond where I remember reading Redwall. What I didn’t realize at the time was that I could have simply walked around the swampy area and gotten into the woody area from behind. Fording was a lot more fun, anyway. (I lived near two vacant lots that were used to store piles of sand, gravel, and cinderblocks. Young me yoinked these as he pleased, and he also tore ribbons off of trees that had been marked for being removed.) As you might guess, my parents were not helicopter parents: after school we’d be outside until dark, and on Saturdays and summers I was basically feral, drinking from a water hose and coming inside only to get a sandwich around lunchtime. I’d be covered in bites and scratches! Because of my odd religious background, I was an outsider at school and got on well mostly with other outsiders: my personality changed completely once I was home, as my best friend found to his surprise in middle school. He was startled to find that quiet bookworms can morph into class clowns in the blink of an eye.

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Teaser Tuesday, 1066 Edition

Posted on April 7, 2026 by smellincoffee

That one battle had swung the pendulum. What the Saxons had won in a century of warfare against the Britons; what they had saved in a century and a half of warfare against the Danes; they now lost to the Normans in a single battle in one morning and afternoon, in which the cream of the Saxon nobility was destroyed. THE SHAPING OF ENGLAND, Isaac Asimov

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The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy

Posted on April 6, 2026 by smellincoffee

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce was one of my favorite books of 2024, and I’ve been meaning to read its sequel for some time now. I thought Read of England as appropriate an occasion as any. Love Song is a mirror book to Unlikely Pilgrimage: just as Harold’s unplanned walk across England to visit Queenie on her deathbed was a way for him to sojourn with his past, so too do the series of postcards from him force Queenie to face her own. It’s a past that is shared in part, and separate in part — and sometimes both at the same time. It’s a story told across time, as we follow Queenie’s life inside the nursing home as she waits for death or Harold — whichever arrives first — and her ruminations on the past that Harold’s trip is inspiring. Because her story is set in a home filled with the aging and those approaching death, reflections on death, dying, and meaning are a strong part of this story. As it happens, it’s been so long since I read Unlikely Pilgrimage that I’d forgotten their story aside from Harold making the journey to see her, so I was largely experiencing this afresh. I don’t want to go into too much detail because of spoilers, but let’s say that beyond their close friendship as former coworkers, Harold and Queenie shared a connection he wasn’t fully aware of—one that led to tragedy, remorse, and Queenie’s long retreat. Until being diagnosed with an aggressive and terminal cancer, in fact, Queenie had been living in a sea-cottage. Instead of being a recluse, though, she’d found meaning in trying to create beauty amid desolation, and in her connections to the people in the village nearby. This thread of her life is beautiful in its own right — though of course, having read Unlikely Pilgrimage, I was waiting for Harold’s arrival with breath just as bated as hers and her fellow residents of the care facility. This proved to be as wise and sweet as the original, but it adds a lot to the original because we’re seeing Harold from outside himself, and his intense grief over the parts of the past — a grief that expresses itself in rage as well as sobs — surfaces here in a way that it didn’t, quite, in the original, but now Queenie’s pain and love are added to it for a sad, but lovely, story.

Quotations

So I said to the bindweed, You want to be in my garden and I don’t want you. I can’t dig you out. If I poison you, I run the risk of poisoning the plants I want to keep. We have a problem that will not go away. Something needs to change. Beside every bindweed stem, I pushed in a hazel stake. About twenty in all. The bindweed shot up these supports and rewarded me with lilac trumpets of flowers striped with white. I wouldn’t say I loved the bindweed. I certainly didn’t trust it. It would have scrambled all over my pinks the moment I stopped offering new stakes. But sometimes you have to respect the fact that even though you don’t want bindweed you have it, and you’d better get along side by side. It was the same with Napier.

We write ourselves certain parts and then keep playing them as if we have no choice. But a tardy person can become a punctual one, if she chooses. You don’t have to keep being the thing you have become. It is never too late.

Now that I’d stopped my work, I noticed that the doctor of philosophy was dressed in sensible walking gear and a red spotted bow tie. It was as if the walking clothes were saying one thing about him and the tie was shouting another. I liked that.

“Don’t try to see ahead to the nice bits. Don’t try to see ahead to the end. Stay with the present, even if it is not so good. And consider how far you’ve already come.”

“What do you do with a thousand followers?” He settled in the chair beside mine. “I had a wife and a best friend. That was all I needed.”

I accepted that sometimes you cannot clear the past completely. You must live alongside your sorrow.

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