Books in a Box

    When my wife said I have too many books lying around. I responded by saying they all fit in a box, honey. There you go again, she said, when are you going to stop calling our house a box?

     This didn’t really happen, I just like the joke. She has quite a collection herself. Between hers and mine they do fit in a “box.” Sorting them for donation elsewhere is an ongoing task, but numbers don’t decrease because more keep coming in. Barnes and Noble gets a fair share of our business, and we also find cheaply priced used books in various places. The libraries in Fargo and Moorhead have kept me well supplied  with many $1-2 books, and when they get overstocked with a used inventory, like now, they were charging only .50 apiece. 

     I recently bought, at full price from B&N, a new book called THE TRIALS OF HARRY S. TRUMAN. Its subtitle calls it The Extraordinary Presidency of an Ordinary Man, 1945-1953. He was president at that stage of my life when I started remembering. An unlikely president, FDR took him as his vice president for political reasons, and thought he couldn’t harm anything. FDR must have thought he’d live forever, but then he up and died leaving Truman to succeed him. 

     People didn’t expect much from Truman, but he went on to earn his “Give ‘em hell, Harry” nickname. His time was marked with dropping an atomic bomb on Japan, firing General MacArthur for insubordination, instituting the Berlin airlift, integrating the military, and more. He was just a common man from humble beginnings who rose to great heights. I have read David McCullough’s excellent history of Truman, but I want to read another historian writing of his life. The book promises incidents and facts of his presidency that I don’t know yet.

     Here are a few of them in the 50 cent category. DARWIN: PORTRAIT OF A GENIUS caught my eye. We still talk about evolution: is it legitimate or did God make it all in a week? Everyone has decided for themselves.  The author points to Darwin’s ancestors, many of whom possessed superior intellect; therefore, he inherited some genetic predisposition. Given only a month to prepare for a voyage of discovery expected to be two years in length, it lasted instead five years. Notes, specimens, new sites all steered him to the conclusions he made when he returned home.

     ALEXANDER HAMILTON: A BIOGRAPHY reminds me he was a founding father of the United States, fought in the American Revolutionary War, helped draft the Constitution, served as the first secretary of the treasury, and was the founder and chief architect of the American federal banking system. He died in a duel with Aaron Burr that his manhood seemed to dictate he had to take part in even though he was opposed to dueling. Up til that time, Hamilton had been a major player in the politics of the country, but as was noted, that event also killed Burr politically.     

     CATHERINE THE GREAT is a name well known in our household because of our membership in the Germans from Russia Association. It is she who invited our relatives in Germany to resettle in Russia and bring a bounty forth from the rich soil. The serfs prevalent among the Russian population were too primitive. She, born a German, knew Russia was backward and that the population needed to be infused with some progressive ideas.

     The last of the 50 centers to add here is A REPORTER’S LIFE: WALTER CRONKITE. The book outlines pretty much what you’d expect from this man who spent his career working with news of the day, but when he came to one point, I sat up to take notice. He attended high school in Houston, Texas where he’d started to notice racial injustice. The father of his girlfriend noted Walter had been making some deliveries for a drugstore in town. As they visited, the father remarked “Nigger boys deliver for them, don’t they?” He went on to add he didn’t know Walter’s parents but was surprised they would let him do that.

     It was a prevalent attitude among his crowd of friends of whom he remarked: “In those high school years I accepted the fact that my friends were inheritors of a culture built on slavery as an economic reality.” Upon reading that I immediately thought of this critical race theory that so much has been made of lately.

     So much to read, so little time! Then there is the book my wife thinks I should read, one I have no objection in doing: A LONG PETAL OF THE SEA by Isabel Allende. Several volumes by this author set on my wife’s shelves.  This one deals with the 1930s Spain that struggled with two forces of government: fascism and communism. It developed into a civil war where the autocratic fascist leader Franco prevailed. I know one person who tried to take up arms with the communist side but was denied participation because of his age. 

     Allende and her family experienced government upheaval in Chile when her family found themselves on the wrong side of the Pinochet military dictatorship. She made her way to the United States and has authored many popular books.

     Well, it’s obvious I’ve got plenty of reading material, so I’d better stop musing over the books and get started.

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