Gordon Community Library & Museum

The Civil War Awakening

By Adam Goodheart

I’ve never been a Civil War buff.  My eyes just blur over when I see the lists of battles and dates and the numbers killed in each battle.

But last year I got hooked on the “Disunion” blog in the New York Times, which follows the Civil War as it unfolded 150 years ago.  Goodheart was one of the contributors and his piece on Major Anderson’s Christmas night move from Ft Moultrie to Ft Sumter in Charleston Harbor captured my imagination.  That piece is included in this book, along with further developments in Charleston Harbor, up to the firing on Ft Sumter.

This is a history told from the Northern perspective.  It’s a story about how the mood of the country swung from complacency and conciliation to a mood where recruiting offices were besieged with a million men ready to enlist.

Along the way we meet some interesting characters. Goodheart doesn’t write much about the usual characters but explores some of the more obscure figures, some of whom loomed large at the time but have since faded away.

This is a fascinating book.  It is a social history rather than a book about warfare, and it ends just as the war itself starts. I can attest to the fact that you will find it interesting even if you don’t ordinarily have any interest in the Civil War.

Read more about the book, including an excerpt, in this NPR story. 

The subtitle of this book by Hampton Sides is “The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin”  which pretty much sums up the action.

This is a suspense thriller which also happens to be a true story.   In 1968 the escaped convict and assassin James Earl Ray managed to elude the FBI for over two months as he fled across numerous states and four countries. It was called the most extensive manhunt in the history of the FBI. In addition the man managed to escape not just once, but twice, from maximum security prisons.

If you enjoy reading crime thrillers you are bound to enjoy this.  In addition it provides an insightful look at the civil rights movement and America in the late 60′s.

Just Kids by Patti Smith is a love story, a rags-to-riches tale and a memoir of a certain time and place all rolled into one.

When Patti Smith got off the bus in New York City almost the first person she met was a beautiful boy with a mass of curls.  Not long afterward she was on a date with an older man and trying to find a way to escape.   She spied the boy with the curls walking toward her and she ran up to him and asked him if he would pretend to be her boyfriend.

He said yes, and thus began the relationship of Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe.  They were not quite starving artists but they slept in unheated lofts and had to share a hot dog at Coney Island  because they didn’t have the money to buy two.

They had talent, but more than that they had ambition and focus.  They also had each other.  They were each other’s best friend who believed in and supported each other at a time when they had no other friends and no one one else believed in them.

Soon however they did have friends.  They began to make their way in the art world, and the world of rock and roll.   They found  other artists and supporters who were kindred spirits.  The best part of the  book are the many tales of the denizens of the Chelsea Hotel, Max’s Kansas City and the East Village scene of the 70′s.  Some of them are household names and others are lost to history but Patti writes about all of them in the same breathless admiring style.

Eventually Patti and Robert went their own ways and achieved their own successes but they remained friends and supporters until Robert’s death in 1989.

This book also has many interesting photos, some taken by Robert Mapplethorpe.

Just in time for the holidays the library has received several new books on Christianity and the Bible.

The Woman Who Wrote the Bible is a first novel by Mary Burns which imagines a rich and captivating life for the woman scholar J who lived in the Solomonic Courts. In this novel J becomes the fictional character Hokhma Janaia, the eldest daughter of King David, a woman who defies stereotypes and experiences intense visions of both present and future events.

Triumph of Deborah is a novel which tells tells the story of Deborah, Asherah, and Nogah, three women who must find their true path despite the difficulties that fate has dealt them.

The Gospel of the Beloved Companion: The Gospel of Mary Magdalene by Jehann de Quillan is the first English translation of a previously unpublished first-century gospel of the same name. Originally written in Alexandrian Greek, and brought from Egypt during the early to middle part of the first century, this exceptional manuscript has been preserved within the author’s spiritual community since that time. This extraordinary book brings us a luminously poetic yet starkly objective insight into the man called Yeshua and the philosophy that he taught, that is starkly different from the religion we today call Christianity.

Christianity: The First 3000 Years is an admirably well narrated story about the development of Christianity in which the author traces its roots in Greece and Rome 1000 years before the Common Era.  Where does Christianity begin? In Athens, Jerusalem, or Rome? How did the early creeds of the church develop and differentiate? What was the impact of the Reformation and the Catholic Counterreformation? How have vital Christian communities emerged in Asia, Africa, and India since the 18th century? Award-winning historian Diarmaid MacCulloch  attempts to answer these questions and many more in this well written history.

One Who Walked Alone by Novalyne Price Ellis

This is a true story of a tragic love affair which took place just a few miles from us in the small town of Cross Plains in the 1930′s.

Robert Howard was a successful author of the popular Conan the  Barbarian stories who attracted the attention of a young wannabe writer who moved to Cross Plains to teach at the local school.

But Robert Howard was not an ordinary man.  He led a solitary existence and had trouble negotiating the simple aspects of day to day life.  But there was something else too.  Something that would eventually doom his relationship with the young woman.

She spent a career teaching high school English and did not publish her story until she retired. It’s not great writing but is well worth reading.

There is also a movie made from this book  called “The Whole Wide World” with Renee Zellweger and Vincent D’Onofrio.

Together, Alone: A Memoir of Marriage and Place by Susan Wittig Albert

If you are a mystery reader, you already are familiar with the name Susan Wittig Albert.  She is the author of the popular China Bayles series, as well as many other books.

In this volume she lets us in on some of her personal life, starting with her decision in 1985 to give up her career as a college administrator and homestead a small patch of land in the Texas Hill Country with her new husband. There for over twenty years she has  made a living writing novels while learning to connect with the natural environment around her.

To a large extent this is a  “back to the land” chronicle.   But the author is also concerned with making a marriage work and dealing with solitude as well as working together.  The essays are prefaced  with excerpts from her personal journals.

Never in a Hurry: Essays on People and  Places by Naomi Shihab Nye

You think you know all about Texas, but here is another perspective .

“Never in a Hurry” is not a new book – it was publlished in 1996 – but it is one of the new acquisitions the library has been receiving this summer. It is a book that not many people probably have heard of, but you’ll be delighted once you give it a try.

Ms Nye was born in 1952 and grew up in St Louis, the child of immigrant Palestinian-Americans who ran a hotel gift shop. Now she lives in San Antonio, in a Mexican-American neighborhood, with her photographer husband.

Her short essays describe the people and places of her childhood,  her visits with her relatives in the old country of Palestine,  her travels around the world  with her husband,  and the everyday people doing everyday things in her own neighborhood.

The writing style is refreshing and accessible, and the stories engaging as well as insightful.  She has a unique perspective and a knack for getting involved with odd characters.