Founding Rivals

Posted on March 16, 2012 by smellincoffee

Founding Rivals | Madison vs. Monroe: the Bill of Rights and the Election that Saved a Nation
© 2011 Chris DeRose
336 pages

In these days of contentious politics, where adversaries rip into one another with all the grace of beasts,  Chris DeRose’s Founding Rivals is downright heartening. It is the story of a friendship born of revolution and the struggle to create a more perfect union,  a friendship which helped define that union…and one which persevered even as the two friends found themselves running against one another for the same seat in the first Congress of the United States.

Madison and Monroe’s names stand tall throughout American history. Public servants for most of their lives, and eventually the fourth and fifth presidents respectively,  they began their careers in America’s most exciting time. They agitated for independence and drilled for war: during the conflict, Madison became a statesman while Monroe served in the Continental army.  While Madison and his colleagues attempted to bring together the selfishly quarreling colonies together in a common cause, and put together a functioning government amidst the chaos of war, Monroe was nearly killed in combat and served faithfully throughout the war, seeking  a place in the battle even when he had the opportunity to remain safely behind the scenes. After York Town, Monroe joined Madison in public office and the two were introduced through a mutual friend, Thomas Jefferson.

Together they agonized about the limitations of the Articles of Confederation, and through their letters DeRose offers readers a look into the early years of the Republic, at a time when the legislature of Virginia held more power than the Congress of the confederacy. The states are united in name only: their collective government has little power and only marginal influence.  In these troubled years, debt increases, rebellion sweeps through the backwoods, and the powers of Europe smile at the fledgling nation’s impotency. Spain, especially, sees America’s faltering as a promising sign that it will maintain control of the Mississippi.

The letters between Madison and Monroe are a delight to read. They possess an elegance lost today, and reflect a serious-minded approach to governance that our current candidates would do well to emulate. In preparing for a constitutional convention, Madison engaged himself in an exhaustive study of confederacies throughout history,  adding that to an already impressive political education to guide him in finding an effective form of government for the new nation — one which would be strong enough to defend against foreign foes and honor its debts, but not so strong as to crush the sovereignty of the people under one authority.  After an initial failure at Annapolis, Madison, Monroe, and others are finally successful in organizing a convention in Philadelphia. The two are never in Congress at the same time: when one is seated in the national council, the other is present in Virginia’s house of delegates,  and they work together for the common cause.  In Philadelphia, however, after Madison presents his ideas — a framework we know today as the US Constitution — their collaboration ends.

The nation falls into two parties, Federalist and Antifederalist.  Federalists like Madison advocate for the immediate adoption of the Constitution,  while the Antifederalists oppose it. Some, like Patrick Henry, appear to vigorously oppose the Constitution just to delight in the sound of their own voice. Others are concerned about the lack of a Bill of Rights protecting the people against the government overstepping its authority. Monroe in particular is concerned about the amount of power the Constitution gives the central government,  seeing its ability to directly tax the people as problematic at best and inviting tyranny at worst.  DeRose covers the raucous debate in Virginia’s House of Delegates, where the Constitution is just narrowly ratified. Virginia was arguably the most influential state in the union at this point, a fact lost to modern readers who are accustomed to the leadership of states like New York and California today.

Even though the Constitution is ratified, the Antifederalists are not content to accept defeat. Instead, they see the first congressional elections for the new state as an opportunity to put their men into office to maintain the status quo while they organize efforts to call for another constitutional convention — a prospect that Washington, Jefferson, and Madison are united in seeing as patently dangerous.  To oppose Madison, the author of the Constitution and its most eloquent defenders, the Antifederalists choose Monroe…and in the book’s penultimate chapter, the ‘election that saved a nation’ takes precedence.

DeRose may be over-stressing a point here — the claim is certainly dramatic — but the election is certainly worth considering. Having accomplished the great task of getting the Constitution ratified, Madison can now advocate for amending it with a bill of rights, to win over the two states which have not yet joined the union, and gain the support of those who accepted it only grudgingly, like New York and Virginia. DeRose sees the presence of Monroe as prompting this decision on Madison’s part, the younger forcing Madison to temper his defense of the Constitution. It is quite possible, considering that earlier — in Virginia — Madison staunchly maintained that no bill of rights was necessary to tell the government what it could not do, because nothing in the Constitution gave the government the right to interfere with civil rights in the first place.

Even though I’m not necessarily convinced that the election of Madison to a particular seat in the house of Representatives saved the nation, Founding Rivals is excellent history. These two extraordinary gentlemen lived lives of distinction, lives worth noting. Madison’s views on the hypocrisy of slavery are particularly impressive considering the time in which he lived.  DeRose’s account follows the lives of these two admirable men through some of the most critical periods of American history, giving readers an education on what the government was like between Revolution and the Constitution.  Moreover, the relationship between these two men is a standing reproach to the narrowminded, vicious, petty, and pathetically partisan politics of today. Witness here a friendship that survived political combat, and be reminded of the principles of good government — not just the rights we value through political philosophy, but our approach to people.  Though disagreeing on the Constitution, these two were united in their civil-mindedness, their tolerance of one another’s opinions, and their sincere commitment to the common good.

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This Week at the Library (14 March)

Posted on March 14, 2012 by smellincoffee

Reviews:

200 pages; © 2012

A family of four sits at a table in a nice restaurant, heads bowed. But they’re not pausing for reflection or prayer; they’re in the middle of a meal, and all attempting to check their email discretely. So much for family time. In Is It Just Me? actor and comedian Whoopie Goldberg takes on our age of declining social graces, where — self-absorbed by our gadgets — we give little thought to those around us. Goldberg writes conversationally; aside from the self-quizzes, where she invites readers to reflect on their own behavior, the text could very well be  collection of comedy sketches.Like all good comedy, Goldberg entertains us by pointing out the absurdity of it all…but behind the laughs, there’s a genuine point. Though addressing topics as diverse as dining and parenting, the common theme of responsibility and respect prevails. As someone who is very grumpy about the obnoxious ever-presence of cellphones, whose whines seem to fill the air everywhere (even in libraries…), and keen on manners in general, I’m the ideal audience for this kind of grousing..but there’s more substance here than I’d expected, especially in the section on parenting. Goldberg advocates treating children and teenagers with respect, instead of simply talking at them, but she’s not a fan of the “parent as friend” approach. Someone has to be the adult. I would have also never considered how big a nuisance the ever-connected world is to celebrities. If she decides to visit a local store, someone will tweet her about her presence, and within minutes a crowd has arrived. Privacy, the simple act of respect in giving people their personal space, is gone altogether.  Is It Just Me is fun and pointed.

Currently Reading: Founding Rivals, Madison vs. Monroe: The Bill of Rights and the Election that Saved a Nation; Chris DeRose; A People’s History of the Supreme Court, Peter Irons

Potentials: Murder in Vein, Sue Ann Jaffarian; as heard of on the Paralegal Voice. A…vampire mystery, but one which promises to be amusing based on the interview I listened to.

“I have discovered the secret of the philosopher’s stone,” [Law] wrote to a friend. “It is to make gold out of paper.”

– The Ascent of Money

The ceremony then moved into the Senate chamber, where Washington would deliver the first inaugural address. He spoke quietly from prepared remarks, reading nervously. […] Madison had to act interested and surprised while listening to a speech he himself had written. He had Washington’s confidence — an honor many men aspired to, but few had secured. Ironically, Madison was later asked by Congress to prepare a response to the president’s address. Washington, in turn, asked him to draft his reply to the response. Madison’s understated sense of humor was on full display in that reply, which included the line: “Your very affectionate address produces emotions which I know not how to express.” The first formal communications between the president and Congress were essentially Madison talking to himself.

xi-xii, Founding Rivals.

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The Ascent of Money

Posted on March 14, 2012 by smellincoffee
432 pages; © 2008 Niall Ferguson

Money makes the world go ’round. In today’s globalized economy, this is a statement that’s never been more true. Considering the importance of trade in human history, writing a financial history of the world seems like a staggering challenge, especially considering how dense and complex the language of high finance is. How many average people can read the newspaper coverage of the financal crash in 2008, or of the crisis in Europe, and really understand it? Niall Ferguson attempts to address average obliviousness by focusing on five pillars of the global economy: the birth and evolution of currency, from coins to cards;  the bond market, through which governments finance large projects and wars;  stock exchanges, real estate, and globalization. The book is smartly organized, but while it makes plain the influence finance has played on human history, the execution is not quite as thorough as I had expected. The origins of each concept are easy to grasp, but as they become more integral parts of human history, the complexity intensifies. Ferguson describes what happens, but doesn’t necessarily explain it, leaving the uninitiated no better off except for knowing the fundamentals. For instance, he refers to a given government buying bonds to inject liquidity into the market. I could figure this out — the government is redeeming the loan it took out, paying the bond owner back in full, leaving the owner with more cash to spend — but that’s only because I happened to be familar with the concept of liquidity. I’m not confident that I’m understanding the sentence correctly, however.  Though I didn’t take in all the author attempted to communicate through the book, it is a foundation for further reading.

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This Week at the Library (7 March)

Posted on March 7, 2012 by smellincoffee

I recently finished Superfreakonomics and A Brief History of Thought, neither of which generated enough mental chatter to merit a full review. Suffice it to say, Superfreakonomics is simply an addition in the same vein as Freakonomics: the authors use economic principles like incentives to understand issues not normally considered matters of economics. The result is that the reader is entertained with unexpected answers to odd questions (Why are prostitutes like shopping mall Santas?) while accidentally learning about economics. For instance, in the section on global warming solutions, the author explains the concept of externalities — consequences of our actions that other people end up paying for (or benefiting from). For instance, if a large shopping complex decides to set up shop on a given highway and becomes popular, traffic on that highway increases and so to does the wear and tear on the highway.The local government then has to address the consequences of the complex’s setting up shop. Recently after reading the book I listened to an interview between two economists, and one mentioned the role of the government in “pricing in externalities”, and so help me if I didn’t understand what he meant. To follow up on my example, the government ‘prices in the externality’ by imposing an impact fee on the shopping complex. The fee goes to pay for the increased wear and tear on the road.  The book was thus diverting and mildly informative.

I also read a new release, Luc Ferry’s A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living, which sounded wildly attractive to a philosophically-inclined guy like myself. Ferry holds a PhD in philosophy and is concerned with the fact that philosophy has become an irrelevant subject of academia instead of a way of understanding and responding to the world, but I don’t know that his book will do much to change that. It starts out badly, with Ferry introducing philosophy as a way of obtaining salvation without God. Although Ferry professes no religious worldview, his stance seems rooted in a religious worldview, biased in favor of itself.  Not all religions are concerned with death, and certainly not all of them seek to unite people with their loved ones after death the way Ferry generalizes that they do. I’m stunned that someone with a doctorate in philosophy would reduce it to something so trivial.  He uses Stoicism to demonstrate how expansive and cohesive philosophical worldviews used to be, and while not not a practicioner of Stoicism he nontheless admires it. Later chapters address why in the west, religion prevailed over philosophy only to lose ground to it again in the Enlightenment. Again, Ferry’s conclusion is simple: philosophy and reason didn’t offer an escape from death, and Christianity did. The chapter on the rebirth of philosophy and humanism in the Enlightenment is a bit better, but I began losing interest with post modernism and by the time I’d reached his last chapter on “Post-Deconstructionism”,  even I was bored with the subject. Philosophy became less about life and practice, and more about ideas and abstract understanding with seemingly little relevance to modern life. Socrates Cafe, on philosophical inquiry, and Plato’s Podcasts are far superior advocates for philosophy in general, and A Guide to the Good Life: the Ancient Art of Stoic Joy on one particular philosophy’s value to everyday living.

Pending Reviews: If Walls Could Talk, Lucy Worsley. I also re-read a couple of Grisham novels recently, though I’m not sure if I’ll review them or not. They were A Time to Kill and Runaway Jury.

Currently Reading: The Age of Voltaire, Will Durant.

Potentials: Recently I’ve gotten interested in understanding finance and law, so I’m starting The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson and A People’s History of the Supreme Court by one Peter Irons.  I’ve heard that Ferguson is an advocate of imperialism, so he may prove amusing.

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What the conquistadors failed to understand is that money is a matter of belief, even faith; belief in the person paying us, belief in the person issuing the money he uses or the institution that honours his cheques or transfers. Money is not metal. It is trust inscribed.

p. 39, The Ascent of Money. Niall Ferguson.

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Anatomy of a Murder

Posted on March 3, 2012 by smellincoffee

Anatomy of a Murder
© 1958 Robert Traver
448 pages

A woman is raped at the gates of her neighborhood, but her cries for help register too late. By the time her husband, one Lieutenant Frederic Manion of the US Army, realizes what has transpired, the rapist has fled for the safety of the local bar…a bar which he owns.  Undeterred, the Lieutenant enters the bar, calmly empties his Luger pistol into the man’s chest, and leaves to deliver himself into the hands of the closest deputy-sheriff.  Paul Biegler is a former prosecuting attorney with congressional ambitions and a struggling practice. While Biegler is a potent lawyer, a more bombastic rival in town attracts most of the criminal defense work. A call from Manion seems like a dread godsend: while a victory could establish and spread his reputation, a defeat might make him a laughingstock. The prosecuting attorney is a man who has already defeated Biegler once at the polls, and who has an eye on the same congressional seat as Biegler.   This seems like a simple case: a decorated war hero killed the man who raped his wife. But it isn’t enough that a jury might sympathize with Manion morally:  how can he be defended legally?

The American Bar Association includes the dramatization of this book on their list of “25 Greatest Legal Movies”, and that list drew my attention to the book in the first place. While I’ve been reading legal thrillers by John Grisham for the last fifteen years, I’d never heard of this 1950s-era novel.  Despite the dramatic start, Anatomy isn’t a ‘thriller’; it strikes me as a more mature novel. The author was a practicing attorney and a judge, and wrote the novel based on one of his own cases. The judge’s lifetime of of experience is on full display here, talking with the reader through Biegler’s conversations with Manion and others about the nature of law itself: its uses, its shortcomings. Anatomy is thus a philosophical novel, and I for one found the musing just as provocative as any nonfiction read. The trial remains an interesting mystery throughout, as there proves to be more to the story than a hotel owner deciding to attack Mrs. Manion. Traver (John D. Voelker’s pen-name)’s best talent lies with dialogue. The aforementioned philosophical conversations are fascinating, of course,  but the on-going banter between Biegler and his law partner never failed to delight.  In short, Anatomy of a Murder is a richer legal novel than any I’ve read, and I wish my library carried more by the author. I also intend on watching the movie, but that’s a given considering it stars James Stewart.

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The Plot Against America

Posted on March 2, 2012 by smellincoffee

The Plot Against America
© 2004 Philip Roth
400 pages

Mister Charlie Lindbergh, he flew to old Berlin,
Got ‘im a big Iron Cross, and he flew right back again
To Washington, Washington. 


Misses Charlie Lindbergh, she come dressed in red,
Said: “I’d like to sleep in that pretty White House bed
In Washington, Washington.”
(“Lindbergh”, Woody Guthrie)

The normal proceedings of the 1940 Republican Presidential Convention were interrupted when Charles Lindbergh, the heroic aviator adored by millions for his pioneer solo flight across the Atlantic, arrived at the last moment and swept the convention, winning the Republican candidacy for president. As Britain continued to struggle to hold its own against Hitler’s Luftwaffe, Lindbergh denounced President Roosevelt as a warmonger influenced by Jews,  and won a staggering victory; the course of history changed. The Plot Against America is an alternate history novel about the Jewish experience during the Nazi-friendly Lindbergh administration. While grimly fascinating at first,  the novel goes off the rails of plausibility 4/5ths of the way in and doesn’t so much as conclude as simply comes to a stop.

Roth makes the usual move of writing himself and his family into the plot: a young Phillip Roth is the viewpoint character, and the novel is presented as a memoir of his coming of age in a dark time for his family. Roth’s alternate tale concerns social and cultural change, chiefly; the war in Europe plays only a background role, and judging by the novel’s ending, comes to the same end as it did in reality. Where Roth succeeds is in believably portraying the slow growth of fascism in an American context. Lindbergh doesn’t swap his suit and tie for a colonel’s uniform and turn the United States into a slightly different version of an Evil Empire; he works instead on a more insidious level — concealing fascism perfectly behind the flag and cross. While Jews in the United States are understandably alarmed by his election, there seems to be a genius behind Lindbergh’s machinations. Rather than making overt moves against them,  he waits for their sustained agitation to cause them to lose sympathy among the Christian majority..and then ever so-subtly fans the flames.  It reminds me of the tactics of anti-labor politicians in the Gilded Age, who would manipulate strikers into taking forceful action and then send in the troops to brutally put down the uprest. The middle class then blamed the strikers for being violent against the state. More fascinating than this is the psychological tole the subtle war takes on the Jewish community. This is very much the heart of The Plot Against America. Not only are members of the Roth family turned against one another, but they begin to doubt themselves, and their love of country is slowly battered by the increasing climate of fear in which they must live.

Unfortunately, the novel’s end doesn’t do it justice. As the horror  seems as if it can’t get any worse, Roth writes that “just like that, it was over” — and then quickly tells what happened in brief. Here he teases readers with a revelation that puts Lindbergh’s entire political career into a more understandable context, but the revelation rather beggars belief. This would seem an appropriate time for a conclusion, but the faux memoir continues for almost another hundred pages, with seemingly no little point other than to tuck in a minor thread. The effort is appreciated, but seems out of proportion.

Probably worth your while if the alternate social history catches your attention: that story is definitely moving, but the ending is problematic.

Related:
“Lindbergh”/”America First” by Woody Guthrie, in which Guthrie decries isolationist Lindbergh’s America First organization.
In the Presence of Mine Enemies, Harry Turtledove. (Here the US also doesn’t enter WW2.)

SPOILER:
The ultimate premise of the plot against America is that Hitler kidnapped Lindbergh’s baby in 1932 and raised him in Germany as a hostage; in exchange for his continued safety, the Lindberghs had to enter public office. Hitler  thus engineers his entire political career and turns Lindbergh into a puppet for his own ambitions.

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Teaser Tuesday (28 February)

Posted on February 27, 2012 by smellincoffee

The last teaser of February? Time flies!

“Anthropologically speaking it was only yesterday that men ceased to club and ravish on the spot any female that attracted their passing whim.”
“Yes, I suppose, Doctor”, I said, “Life must have been one merry chase in those relaxed and informal old times. ‘Nice day, madam. I love you madly. CONK! Oops-a-daisy, my little penguin.'”

p. 337, Anatomy of a Murder. Robert Traver

“No!” was the word that awakened us, “No!” being shouted in a man’s loud voice from every house on the block. It can’t be. No.

p. 16, The Plot Against America; Philip Roth

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Sharpe’s Regiment

Posted on February 25, 2012 by smellincoffee

Sharpe’s Regiment
©  1986 Bernard Cornwell
416 pages

The year is 1813, and the Allied army stands upon the Pyrenees awaiting the invasion of France and victory. Napoleon’s empire is shrinking: he once stood as master of Europe, but Wellington’s army and shrew diplomacy have stripped the Iberian peninsula from his influence, and the eastern members of the allied Coalition are increasingly restive. Now even Austria seems ready to enter the war against Napoleon.  For Richard Sharpe, this should be a proud, happy moment. Wherever Wellington has triumphed in this campaign, Sharpe and his chosen men have been nearby — in the thick of the fight, perhaps, storming a fortress, or perhaps engaged in a bit of quiet skulduggery.  These triumphs have come at a price, the ever-increasing butcher’s bill of casualties. The South Essex has suffered dearly, and needs reinforcements — reinforcements that are long overdue. Sharpe, temporarily commanding the regiment while awaiting a new superior officer to be appointed, is dismayed to learn that the brass is considering breaking up his regiment, dividing his men up to strengthen other units. To Sharpe, this is a tragedy and an outrage. His men, who fought together throughout Portugal and Spain, who have seen their colors flying through the worst battles of the war, deserve to invade France at one another’s side.  Taking advantage of a temporary armistice, Sharpe and Harper decide to undertake a mission in Britain — to find their lost reinforcements and save their regiment. They find that the unit is imperiled not by administrative bungling, but subtle malice: the South Essex is the victim of a racket, its soldiers being sold to other regiments — and like any racket, danger awaits those who seek to expose it.

I appreciate Sharpe’s series most for its variety; though military action predominates, Cornwell often treats readers to smaller-scale action — sending Sharpe on little missions into cities, in the interests of diplomacy or espionage. Regiment is in this vein, although Sharpe isn’t sneaking through a foreign city but his homeland, and those interested in killing him wear his own uniform. It reminds me in part of Gallows Thief, as Sharpe is stealing through the land attempting to solve a mystery: where are his reinforcements? They exist on paper; they draw rations, but they seem to be nowhere at all. Sharpe and his faithful sergeant (now a Regimental Sergeant Major) decide to track the path of new recruits by following it: by assuming false names and joining up.  Thus we get  to experience through Sharpe the mustering-in process for young soldiers, something we missed earlier given that the series starts with Sharpe as a veteran soldier (both in Sharpe’s Tiger and in Sharpe’s Eagle).

As ever, humor and plot twists abound, and a romantic thread from the past is finally plucked up and will become part of future stories…though sadly, there aren’t too many more left. From the Pyrenees,Waterloo isn’t far distance. Between there and here, though, adventures await!

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The Age of Louis XIV

Posted on February 23, 2012 by smellincoffee

The Age of Louis XIV
© 1963 Will and Ariel Durant
816 pages

To read Will Durant is to feast from the smorgasbord of human history. Before the reader lies the full scope of human concern, frailty, and accomplishment, like so many varied dishes. The chef is a master: Durant’s supple use of the English language seasons even the most mundane of subjects to the point that they sound exotic and entertaining. After positively binging myself by reading The Age of Faith, The Renaissance, The Reformation,  and The Age of Reason Begins during the summer and fall,  I was absolutely stuffed with the heritage of the west. Now after a wintry break, I’m looking forward to digging in again…and did so with The Age of Louis XIV, a tome covering the bloody retreat of religion and the rise of some of Europe’s most famous or infamous leaders — the Sun King in France, Peter the Great in Russia, and Cromwell in England.

Durant opens on France and England, as France emerges as Europe’s cultural leader. The bloody religious wars are not over: religion is still quite relevant to the European mind, but happily its desperately violent attempts to hold on to power continue to ruin its credibility among the peoples of the continent. As the power of the church declines, those of the state rise, and no autocrat epitomizes this more than the Sun King, who built Versailles as a monument to the State and himself, and whose example was an inspiration to every other king in the continent. The growing strength of mechanized industry and commerce allow for the consolidation of power: the king’s traditional enemy is not his people, but the rest of the aristocracy, and these men who base their strength on agricultural potency are being out-spent by the growing middle class, who for the moment see the king as their route to power. England proves an exception, beheading one king and attempting to institute a commonwealth…only to find itself enduring the regime of a miserable Puritan dictator, then returning to monarchy — but this time, of a decidedly limited sort. In this work, the English king is losing influence — and the House of Commons is gaining it. Soon, I suspect, I will be reading not of the Hanoverians but of prime ministers, of Tories and Whigs.

Although religious persecution is alive and well, religious thought is increasingly impotent. Durant is an author generally kind to religion in general, seeing it as an essential part of the fabric that holds societies together, but here the philosophy of the hour is concerned not with theology, but of humanity. Thomas Hobbes and John Locke’s works receive the attention formerly given to religious treatises, and Isaac Newton merits his own chapter. Durant curiously underplays Newton, whose work constituted a veritable revolution in the mental landscape,  introducing the idea that the universe is a rational place knit together by laws which can be understood. This is his legacy, not the beliefs of the man himself — Newton wrote extensively on theology and even dabbled in quackery like alchemy.  For scientifically-minded readers, Louis XIV is a welcome relief from the constant religious debate of previous books.  Like the rest of this series, the book is a comprehensive history which covers not only politics, science, and philosophy, but literature, the arts, and trade as well. Economics doesn’t seem to be very well represented here, but Durant may be saving full elaboration  on early industrial economies until the arrival of Adam Smith and his Wealth of Nations.

The Enlightenment is on its way, and I for one am looking forward to what lies ahead. As Alexander Pope wrote in his An Essay on Man — “Go, wondrous creature; mount where science guides!”

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This Week at the Library (22 February)

Posted on February 22, 2012 by smellincoffee

Pending Reviews: The Age of Louis XIV, Will Durant; Sharpe’s Regiment, Bernard Cornwell; If Walls Could Talk, Lucy Worsley. The latter is badly overdue, but I’ve been waiting until the publishment date drew closer. I also didn’t want to post it so soon following after Bill Bryson’s At Home.
Currently Reading: At the moment I’m nibbling on a variety of books but I haven’t gotten into any of them. I’m re-reading John Grisham’s A Time to Kill: I probably haven’t read it in ten years. I had high hopes for Steam, but it focuses exclusively on the race to build the first functioning steamboat and is not a history of steamboat traffic in general, and it does not touch on railroads.
Potentials:  I have a stack of potentials: The Age of Voltaire, Will and Ariel Durant; The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; Sharpe’s Siege, Bernard Cornwell;  Energy Victory by Robert Zubrin; and The Twentieth Century by Howard Zinn, which I’ve owned for two years now but which has just inexplicably caught my interest. (It’s one of my reserve books, unread titles which I like to have in case I go into a dry spell at the library.)

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‎”I need these men, otherwise a Regiment dies. I have to do something,” he paused, looking for the right word, “dramatic.” 

“He means foolish, Miss,” Harper said helpfully.

Sharpe’s Regiment, p. 252. Bernard Cornwell.

‎”‘The application of science to nature’, said Fontenelle in 1702, ‘will constantly grow in scope and intensity, and we shall go on from one marvel to another. The day will come when man will be able to fly by fitting on wings to keep him in the air; the art will increase, ….till one day we shall be able to fly to the moon.”

From “The Scientific Quest”, The Age of Louis XIV, Will Durant.

‎”History is a fragment of biology — the human moment in the pageant of species. It is also a child of geography — the operation of land and sea and air, and of their forms and products, upon human desire and destiny.”

Durant, “The Struggle for the Baltic”.

‎”Like the French dramatists, Milton indulges a passion for oratory; everyone from God to Eve makes speeches, and Satan finds hellfire no impediment to rhetoric. It is disturbing to learn that even in hell we shall have to listen to lectures.”

Durant, commenting on Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’.

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