Category Archives: Uncategorized

01.27.15
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BLIZZARDS FOR REAL

I am researching a book about life in a small Massachusetts Town and the current hysteria over the ” Blizzard of 2015″ caused me to want to share this passage from the 1700s near Boylston, Massachusetts.

” During the early 1700s New England winters were extremely severe with front arriving in October and heavy snowfall on the ground until early April. George Wright in his history of Boylston tells of storms that kept settlers in their homes for days before being able to dig out through the huge snowdrifts. Quoting from a letter written by Rev. Dr. Cotton Mather to a friend in England, Wright wrote in his paper Historical Phenomens from the Papers of George L. Wright: “On the twenty-third and twenty-fourth 1717 occurred the greatest snowstorm known in the history of New England. Rev. Dr. Cotton Mather in a letter to a friend in England has preserved a full account of this storm. In this letter Dr. Mather said there had been a heavy body of snow covering the ground through the winter. A terrific snowstorm came on the twentieth of February, which was so violent that all communication was stopped and people for some hours could not cross from one side of a street to the other.“

On the twenty-fourth day of the month came another storm, which buried the memory of the former. This storm came on a Sunday and no religious assemblies were held throughout the country. Indians there nearly 100 years old, affirmed that their fathers had never told them of any stories that equaled it. Vast numbers of a cattle, sheep, and swine perished; some of them were found standing at the bottom of snowdrifts weeks after the storm. One farmer who lost above 1100 sheep found two of them still alive twenty-eight days after the storm at the bottom of a snow bank sixteen feet high having sustained themselves by eating the wool of their dead companions. Hogs were found alive after twenty-seven days burial, hens after seven days, and turkeys after twenty-five days, in positions where they were utterly unable to obtain any food. Great damage was done to the orchards; the snow freezing to a crust as high as the branches broke and split them, and the cattle walking upon the crust greatly damaged them by browsing. Houses were completely covered with snow, not even the tops of chimneys being seen.” (Boylston Historical Society: Historical Phenomena from the Papers of George L. Wright, Transcribed by Amy Gilgis.

Perspective!

01.17.15
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SHORT NIGHTS OF THE SHADOW CATCHER

Author Timothy Egan in his book Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher  crafts a splendid and enjoyable biography of  world-renowned  American Indian anthropologist, photographer  and chronicler  Edward Curtis.

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Egan captures the epic story of Curtis’s extraordinary creation of the 20-volume The North American Indian, an incomparable photographic and narrative now considered a work of art, documenting the complex and tragic story of the vanishing Native Americans. Egan writes in extensive detail of the thirty years during which Curtis became a slave to the completion of the work, capturing the personal sacrifices and near death adventures necessary for the narrative to be “preciously”  Edward Curtis. “This was a place like no other he had seen through three decades of portrait foraging, ”  writes Egan.  ” Think of it,”  Curtis wrote in his diary, ” At last, and for the first time in all my thirty years work with the natives, I have found a place where no  missionary has worked.”

Edward Curtis

Edward Curtis

At the Little Big Horn  battlefield and only after extensively interviewing Sioux who were present  that day, Edward Curtis uncovers a very different story of what actually happened at Custer’s Last Stand. ” Let them fight, there will be plenty of fighting left for us to do.”  George Armstrong Custer as told to Curtis by Crow Scout White Man Runs Him overlooking the  battlefield where General Marcus’s troops were slaughtered.

The reader will meet those who inspired Curtis to pursue his dream including Teddy Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot, J.P. Morgan, George Bird Grinnell , Chief Joseph and Geronimo. Egan’s portrait of Curtis is explicit in that it would be impossible to find another American who sacrificed  to the extent of Edward  Curtis to pursue the documentation and preservation of the vanishing way of life of the first Americans.

More than a biography, Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher shares with the reader Curtis’s depth of knowledge and understanding of the widely different cultures, rituals, and beliefs of the various American Indian tribes.  It is also a wonderfully crafted story of how the creative work of those who possess incomparable talent and vision are often  lost in their own time only to attain rightful acclaim by future generations.

Before The Storm--Apache 1906--Edward Curtis

Before The Storm–Apache 1906–Edward Curtis

I commend Short Nights Of The Shadow Catcher to all who have interest in poignant literature surrounding our first Americans.

Other books I have posted on gordonsgoodreads by Timothy Egan include The Worst Hard Time and The Big Burn.  Utilize the search tab found here.

07.02.14
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WHAT WOULD EMMA LAZARUS THINK? THOUGHTS FOR THE FOURTH OF JULY!

 

 

If the Statue of Liberty were moved to America’s southern border, how  would the hundreds of children detained there react to Emma Lazarus’  famous 1883 sonnet  engraved on the base of the statue?

imagesThe New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

 

 

Or this famous quote from

Alexis de Tocqueville

“America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”

FROM GORDON’S GOOD READS

ALL GOOD FOOD FOR THOUGHT AS WE CELEBRATE INDEPENDENCE DAY!

 

 

 

 

 

 

05.21.14
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BUSINESS AS USUAL AT CREDIT SUISSE– WITH ADDED CEO AUDACITY!

An Article in today’s New York Times  Deal book by Jenny Anderson summarizes the impact of the U.S. Justice Departments handling  of the Credit Suisse settlement.

Credit Suisse Chief Executive Brady W. Dougan seems less than contrite.

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Quoting the New York Times article:

” A day after Credit Suisse pleaded guilty to tax evasion in the United States, the Swiss bank says that it is able to conduct its business as normal despite its criminal conviction. Swiss officials and investors seemed to welcome the fact that the resolution allows the bank to put the matter behind it.

On Tuesday, the Credit Suisse top management spread out around the world to calm employees and clients after its felony conviction. Mr. Dougan was in New York while Urs Rohner, the chairman, was in Switzerland and David Mathers, the company’s chief financial officer, was in London.

In call with media and analysts, Mr. Dougan again said the bank took full responsibility for its actions, but emphasized that it had seen little business impact as a result of the plea.

“We have found no instances where clients cannot do business with us,” he said. “Our discussions with clients have been very reassuring and we haven’t seen very many issues at all.”

Adds the NYT Article, “Mr. Dougan also said that he never considered resigning over the incident, even as opposition politicians continue to call for his ouster. “

Am I wrong or did Dougan really say Credit Suisse Clients  don’t give a dam about the banks felony conviction!  A good follow-up question: Does Dougan care?

I wonder how Eric Holder enjoyed reading this story this morning?

 

04.10.14
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THE CIVIL RIGHTS AND VOTING RIGHTS ACT FIFTY YEAR CELEBRATION

Watching and listening to today’s celebration of the Lyndon Johnson Presidency and the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts urges me to remind you of the great Robert Caro book The Passage of Power.  Every detail of these great accomplishments are presented in Caro’s incomparable fashion. See a brief overview at gordonsgoodreads.com.  This book is so extraordinary you too will have sat in a room with LBJ.

05.15.13
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Another Anya Seton Classic

British historical novelist Philippa Gregory in her foreword to Anya Seton’s Katherine  is correct in identifying Seton among those writers who  ” Dominated historical fiction  following World War II.”   In the opinion of Gordon’s Good Reads,  Seton’s historical novel  Katherine , a huge best seller in the 1950s ,  is perhaps her very best.  Katherine is without doubt a love story, a romantic novel indeed, but the attention to the detailed setting in  Medieval  England in the 1300s , gives this book high marks as a classic historical novel. Just as she did with Winthrop Women, Seton traveled to the novel’s setting and has marvelously recreated a world that only a novelist of her calibre could bring to life.

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Katherine , from rags to riches , Knights in shining armor ( John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster), serfs, England’s feudal system, bastard children, the Black Death,  kept woman, love triumphs!  All of the elements of a great romantic novel are here but with page after page the reader is placed in a time and place of Fourteenth Century squalor, chivalry and treachery amid riches , castles and jeweled crowns beyond imagination.    Arranged marriages enthroned Kings an Queens  including  12-year-old King Richard, while the lower classes begin an epoch march to freedom, long before Cromwell and Henry the Eighth dashed all hopes of equality.  Seton gets the history right and delivers the lesson  within the framework of a wonderful love story well outside the confining lines of a text-book. Add to this novel the poetry and presence of Geoffrey Chaucer!

Put Katherine on your reading list. Anya Seton ( 1906-1990), through all of the years will, never disappoint.  See my previous reviews here at gordonsgoodreads of Seton’s Winthrop  Women and Dragonwick.  Also by Anya Seton:  Avalon, Devil Water, Foxfire, Green Darkness and My. Theodosia.

04.18.13
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Senate “NO” on Gun Control May Be The Tipping Point Toward Victory!

Readers of this blog know of my personal love of history. That perspective led me to look for the precedent of a major national event that changed history in favor of an issue popular with the citizenry but blocked by special interests.  Few would argue that special interests, mainly the National Rifle Association, derailed widely publicly supported legislation to introduce background checks into the process of gun purchasing.  The  Senate defeat, coming on the heels of the tragedy in Newtown,  has resulted in a public outcry with President Obama leading the charge. While the examples I will reference ( Newtown and The Big Burn) differ in many ways, both issues rose to the level of acute public passion.

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Just over a  century ago in 1910, America witnessed a devastating  national disaster that many historians have compared with the force of an atomic bomb. In August of that year a wind-driven forest fire raged through the states  of Washington, Idaho and Montana destroying  3 million acres of drought stricken timber lands, wildlife, dozens of frontier communities, and  killing 78 firefighters, many of them young college students volunteering on behalf of their belief in the newly created National Forest Service. No one alive in 1910 had seen anything like what author Timothy Egan describes in his book The Big Burn.

It is the back story here that begs for comparison with the fight for stricter gun legislation. There existed prior to the fire a bitter fight between President Theodore Roosevelt  and his Chief Forrester Gifford Pinchot and  the special interests  of the timber and mining industries. As  Egan describes it, ” The Robber Barons fought Roosevelt and Pinchot to the bitter end,  time and again derailing progressive legislation to protect the forests from the timber barons and the open lands from the copper mining interests.” Senator Weldon B. Heyburn of Idaho, the leader of the anti-conservationists  was a strident foe of any legislation to protect the land and it was his own law-firm ( no conflict of interest here)  that was the chief paid lobbyist for the timber and mining interests.  Quoting again from The Big Burn, Heyburn called federal forest reserves, ” an expensive, useless burden to the public.”

Following the fire, Roosevelt , now out of office,  seized the disaster as an opportunity  to try again to pass legislation creating national forests in  the West. In his effort to block the creation of any additional public land Heyburn  used  arcane Senate rules  to keep the executive branch from designating new federal forest land without congressional approval. Two years later, in 1912 , Heyburn was dead after suffering a stroke while ironically delivering a filibuster on the Senate floor. ( No 60-vote rule in 1910 a, just hours of talking to prevent a vote)

The Idaho, Montana, Washington inferno of 1910 became the tipping point on the public lands issue, what Egan calls, “The Fire That Saved America.”   Out of this  disaster came forth the enormous support for “public lands,” a National Parks System and  the conservation programs that are in place in America today.  Heyburn, his senate co-conspirator  Montana’s Senator William Clark and the timber and mining lobby were in their day comparable to the Senate opposition in today’s fight over gun legislation.   As a political lobby, Heyburn’s  law firm was the equivalent of the NRA.

If history repeats itself the hell-fire and public out cry created by  this weeks defeat of gun legislation in the U.S.Senate may be the Big Burn  of public indignation that results in the final passage of  even stronger  gun legislation.  Following the fire of 1910 , even though out of office, Roosevelt used his power to rally public support for public lands . Doris Kerns Goodwin’s forthcoming book on Presidents Teddy Roosevelt and  Robert Taft will further detail the enormous impact of the Bully Pulpit  on public policy.

After hearing  President Obama  and the father of one of the children killed at Newtown speak on Wednesday evening at the White House, there is little doubt that dedication, passion and leadership weigh heavily upon the likelihood that the public tipping point of public indignation has been reached on gun legislation and like the Big Burn,  will likely to be grasped from the jaws of defeat.

12.01.12
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BACK TO BLOOD-MIAMI-PAINTED BY TOM WOLFE

I opened Tom Wolfe’s Back To Blood  on Thursday afternoon!  It is now Saturday afternoon and every word on each of the 704 pages has been digested!  I guess I could simply end my overview with that!  However, it can not go unsaid that Tom Wolfe engages the reader from the first page whetheimages-2r it be Bonfire of the Vanities or my favorite Wolfe novel, I am Charlotte Simmons.

Back to Blood catapults the reader into the political and social structure of Miami.  There is little left out of this vivid painting. A WASP publisher of the Miami Herald seeks to avoid controversy at all costs. Add to the mix a young aspiring  reporter, A black chief of police, a Cuban mayor, and a police officer, also Cuban, who with great consistency finds himself in the middle of  two huge stories that threaten the delicate balance between all of the competing constituencies within this cosmopolitan melting pot. There is also plenty of  humor, bringing back images of Lucky You by Carl Hiaasen, another Miami based novel.

With great skill, Wolfe introduces the ethnic beauty of the women of Miami who play a major role adding to the complexity of relationships as played out by the protagonist police officer Nestor Camacho.  There are dozens of contemporary themes as a video of a police drug take down goes viral, a local psychiatrist specializing in pornographic addiction becomes a high-profile TV Doctor, a stunning light-skinned Haitian woman of French heritage is a love interest.  Miami Art Basel and a new Miami Art Museum become a focal point in a fake painting fraud perpetuated by a Russian Oligarch and his entourage.   Wolfe carefully  and with great creativity brings all of these factions together in a tumultuous conclusion.

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Place Back to Blood on the Christmas gift list for friends who enjoy a good read.  Pick up the hard cover as any Tom Wolfe novel is worth a permanent place in a book lovers library. Luckily, Back to Blood arrived when the family was traveling and I only had my dog to offend with my face in a book for two days. What pleasure great writing can bring and the new Tom Clancy novel Threat Vector is on the way December 4th!

11.26.12
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Timothy Egan’s Fascinating Read For Those Who Watched Dust Bowl on PBS

The Ken Burns PBS special Dust Bowl could well have been based upon Tim Egan’s book The Worst Hard Time. Although Egan appeared in the  television special, his book takes the reader on an even more vivid journey.  Of course it is also in the Dust Bowl that begins Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath.

The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan dramatizes remarkable similarities between the Great Depression of the 1920s and the 1930s and the Great Recession of 2008-2011. The land grab in the High Plains, the breaking of the virgin sod, and the rampant speculation in wheat by homesteaders and suitcase farmers alike all fueled by easy money.  Sounds a lot like no income check mortgages home equity loans!

If you interchange  a few names: Housing Bubble for High Plains land, wheat speculation for Mortgage Backed Securities and suitcase farmers for real estate and Wall Street speculators Tim Egan could have very well been describing today’s financial crisis.

Egan wrote The Worst Hard Time in 2005 and uncannily described exactly what was coming in the next Worst Hard Time! 

Another fine Tim Egan book is The Big Burn which includes many additional lessons on what happens when financial speculation and politics trumps common sense. It is all about Teddy Roosevelt, the environment and our National Parks.

Both books are timely reads.

09.18.12
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HEART OF DIAMONDS! FAST PACED WEEKEND READ

I worked with Dave Donelson years ago, long before he wrote his first novel, Heart of Diamonds.  His connection with the media business is apparent in the development of the story and principal characters in his book.  This is the type of novel that you may pick up now knowing what to expect, with no national reviews and no best seller listing.   Had the author not handed me this book on a chance meeting, it would likely have not come to my attention.  I am glad that it did!

Here is the list of ingredients for this extremely fast paced thriller!  A beautiful female network reporter who is passed over for the coveted anchor chair, complicated by the fact that she is the girl friend of the network’s Washington News Bureau Chief.   A war-torn African Republic of the Congo ruled by your typical despot. A young and handsome doctor who has eschewed a prestigious NYC hospital assignment for a clinic serving the malnourished who are also victims of the violence among the warring Congo factions. A diamond mine in the Congo owned by a famous television evangelist who is a public supporter of the President of the United States, and who through an elaborate scheme, is skimming the diamond mine’s profits  without the knowledge of his partner,  the despotic president of the Congo Republic!

You guessed correctly if you placed Valeria Grey, seeking a big story to offset her disappointment over losing the anchor chair to a male talking head, literally in the middle of  this complex mix of violence, subterfuge, death, and high stakes potential political fall-out. Could the President of the United States be so foolish as to become involved in the scheme?  It certainly becomes a life and death struggle for Valerie Grey and those who seek to support her exposing this incredible blockbuster story!

As I referenced earlier, Heart of Diamonds was a surprise which I opened and completed in a day and a half. Alarmingly insightful and an enjoyable page turner indeed!