Middle Sister's Mid-Month Review: Revolution Song.

Read this book. Everyone, read this book!

I really enjoyed Russell Shorto's The Island at the Center of the World, so when I saw that NetGalley had his latest up for pre-publication review, I had to read it. Not only is he a fantastic researcher and eminently readable (easy, elegant, yet not overwhelming in his prose), the subject was the Revolutionary War, my favorite period of American History. Revolution Song was even better than I'd hoped, and I;d hoped it would be really good.

Mr. Shorto takes 6 figures from the Revolutionary War era, some famous, some not, some deserving to be better know than they are. Using exhausting and meticulous research, he traces the history of the trajectory to war and its consequences through the lives of these six. And being the contemporary historian that he is, he picked a powerful set of six people; George Washington, famous but yet never treated with as deft and thorough a history as here; Abraham Yates, well known in his lifetime in his home state but now my personal hero for his prescient and sagacious and wise trepidations about the revolution and the constitution; Cornplanter, an Iroquois leader, also prescient and in some ways the saddest figure of the six; Venture Smith, who is kidnapped as a boy in Africa, enslaved in America, and who earns his own freedom and perhaps understood that word far more intimately than the others, and certainly ore so than the readers; George Sackville Germain, an English nobleman and soldier who advocated for war from the safety of England; and Margaret Montcrieffe Coghlan, anAmerican by birth, an Englishwoman by marriage and choice, whose pitiable life demonstrates how the cruelty and indifference of men to women ruined entire lives, generations of lives, and continues to this day to be the norm in parts of the world.

A revolutionary American leader, a want-to-be English leader, a a wise Native leader, a prescient local leader, a freed man of strength, and an woman who was enslaved by her society--they represent large swaths of eighteenth century society and resonate with today's audience. Mr. Shorto makes them come alive. How they met and survived the war, and how it changed them and their worlds, is riveting reading.

But what I walked away with was, in his own words, not what Mr. Shorto himself admits he expected--the grave fears of Mr. Yates re: congressional overreach, party loyalty being placed above civic duty, the emergence of a would-be dictator enriching his own pockets while dismantling our government and the protections our forefathers (including my own great, great, great, great, great grandfather and his four brothers) expected government to provide the average American--they are so relevant to today, clearly enunciating what we see happening every day as reported in newspaper headlines, that I wonder what Abraham Yates would think if he were alive tp see what we did to this country, what we allowed to happen to this country. Actually, I think I know exactly what he would think.

"Secrecy... was the soil in which tyranny grew."
Political parties "...serve ...to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force--to put it in the place of the delegated will of the Nation, the will of the party."
"'The alternative domination of one faction over another... is itself a frightful disposition' which could lead 'to a more formal and permanent despotism."

Rough Hewer, we need your wisdom and your determination and courage again.

What an amazing book. It is the best book I have read all year, truly. Not only for the research and the writing, but the unexpected relevance to the United States of today, the reminder of how hard fought our freedom was, and the dangers our founding fathers tried to prevent.

Middle Sister's August Reads

I passed the dogs days of summer immersed in murder and mayhem.

Weycombe by G. M. Malliet  I've read and enjoyed other books by Ms. Malliet, so was excited to read her newest book. But it's a bit of a departure, and while the author may have enjoyed stepping out of her usual spot, I confess I didn't enjoy it very much. I didn't like the main character, Jill, from the beginning. She was in a very bad place in her marriage and I thought we were supposed to be either sympathetic or annoyed, and I was annoyed. As the book progressed, I began to actively dislike her. By halfway through, I knew who the murderer was, and now for confession 2--I was pissed off at having invested all that time in order to be hoodwinked. But because I was reviewing this for NetGalley, I persisted, only to be disappointed by the last two pages. I don't want to spoil this for other genre lovers, but I found the book exasperating and unenjoyable. (NetGalley)

Spider Woman's Daughter by Anne Hillerman This is the first of the Jim Chee novels written by Anne Hillerman after the death of her father, Tony Hillerman. While it was nice to revisit a series I've enjoyed for years (not the least because I know that part of the southwest well and can see the highways and the mesas and the sky in my mind as I read), I'm not sure I enjoyed this book as much as I'd expected to. Having both Jim and Bernie encounter people whose interest in them was clearly physical laid it on a bit thick and was not something I could imagine Tony doing. Revisiting a character from an earlier novel as a pivotal character in this one was clever, and the southwest does spin its magic over some folks and bring them back over and over. But Anne's style is flatter than her father's, which had more magic and a greater appreciation of the physical setting than this book had. A little tighter editing might have eliminated a few scenes that were unnecessary and distracting. But all in all, it's nice to visit with old friends, and I was kept on tenterhooks wondering what would happen to Joe Leaphorn, a situation I rarely find myself in with mysteries. (Audiobook)

A Knit Before Dying by Sadie Hartwell I enjoyed the first Dorset Falls mystery enough to try the second in the series. There's less physical description of the yarn store, the setting in Connecticut, and the town than last time. I did appreciate that Josie's character was growing a bit and beginning to enjoy her new life in unexpected ways. The mystery was not completely riveting, and i would have like it that much more if Josie's participation had been a little more inadvertent (a knitting clue? Seriously? That stretches even my incredulity and I happily suspend disbelief when reading.)--that would have made the series a bit more unusual and would save the author from the curse of Cabot Cove (which, if you've never heard of it, refers to the remarkable number of murderers and victims in the Murder She Wrote franchise who live in such a small town). But I enjoyed this quick read, and would recommend the series to cosy mystery lovers and knitters alike. (NetGalley)

The Best of Doctor Thorndyke Detective Stories by R. Austin Freeman I first discovered R. Austin Freeman's Dr. Thorndyke on manybooks.net. The Dr. Thorndyke series date to the early 20th century and number nearly 2 dozen novels, so I was excited to find a new Golden Age of Mysteries author with a large number of books to discover. Today we'd call Dr. Thorndyke a forensic scientist, and I enjoy seeing this kind of intuiting and detecting taking place without the conveniences of modern technology. Eight short stories are reissued in this anthology, and while there are elements that are dated or even a little cringeworthy when attitudes or words are used that are now out of date or unacceptable, this is a great introduction to genre lovers in search of a new and enjoyable series to dive into. (NetGalley)