I doubt there is a greater perspective on Slavery than the July 4th, Oration by Frederick Douglass, delivered before an audience in Rochester, New York. Applewood Books of Carlisle, New York published the complete text, WHAT TO THE SLAVE IS THE FOURTH OF JULY? It is available of Amazon for $9.99. It is worthy of all American households.
I seem to have fallen into a pattern of reading novels whose protagonists are young people born into difficult if not impossible circumstances. Just last week I finished Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver and before that, Nickel Boys by Colin Whitehead. ( Search gordonsgoodreads). Now Charles Frazier of Cold Mountain fame comes along with his new novel The TRACKERS.
This time the protagonist is a young woman ( barely) living the life of a hobo, hopping fast freights, joining a grade B or even lower status cowboy band. Surviving during the Great Depression. Then suddenly catapulted into the lap of luxury!
What’s next? Enjoy.
I have read most all of Jeff Shaara’s historical novels and his ability to use the medium to awaken history sets a high standard. ( search gordonsgoodreads).
His latest, THE OLD LION, is a great overview of Teddy Roosevelt’s lifetime. Unlike the great biographies by Edmund Morris or David McCullough THE OLD LION moves quickly through the highlights of TR’s career.
This book is a good choice for a first round study of TR from his sickly childhood to the Rough Riders charge up San Juan Hill. After retirement from the presidency Roosevelt’s epic adventurous trip on the headwaters of the Amazon are captured by Sharra.
Enjoy
When i flipped the first pages of Gabrielle Zevin’s novel TOMORROW TOMORROW TOMORROW I hesitated. Why would I be interested in a young group of MIT stereotypes creating video games? The answer came quickly. The novel is MUCH MUCH MORE! Life is complicated and even more so among a group of brilliant young high achievers. There are love stories among the code writers and keyboard clicks that follow convoluted paths of happiness and sadness. My guess is that like me, you will be quickly drawn in by Zevin’s characters.
Put TOMORROW TOMORROW TOMORROW on your list. You won’t be disappointed.
As I finished the last chapter of Barbara Kingsolver’s latest novel DEMON COPPERHEAD, I reflected sadly that this could well be a work of nonfiction. Demon Copperhead ( David Copperfield of another generation) is born and raised into the institutional poverty that to this day prevails in southern Appalachia.
Kingsolver spares no evils of abject poverty upon the young. Children abandoned, often times at birth, through death and despair. Those surviving ( Demon Copperhead) face the blight of Foster Care, a failed educational system, ineffective social services, bad choices of relationships and the pervasiveness of the drug epidemic that today sweeps through the hills and hollers of the backcountry.
The New York Times review was correct in writing, Kingsolver creates images that stay with the reader.
No happy endings and no joy in this read but the NYT was on the mark about Kingsolver’s lasting images.
Gordon's Good Reads 