Paul Revere’s Ride by David Hackett Fischer (ISBN: 0-19-509831-5) is an in-depth biography of the man whose famous horse ride and plan to warn the colonists of impending danger has largely withstood the test of time and has been passed down to the present day through prose, poetry, and visual art. Paul Revere’s father was a poor French boy when he arrived in the New World, but hard work allowed him to establish himself and provide a solid foundation for his family. Revere followed in his father’s footsteps by learning to silversmith. He added engraving to his repertoire along with being unafraid to try his hand at other things, including dentistry (not exactly the science we know today). He was also a master networker and communicator who felt and filled a large civic duty. He was a part of multiple civic organizations and participated fully in various local boards and commissions. People up and down the Massachusetts coast knew and trusted him. He did undertake his famous nighttime ride, but he was not alone, and it didn’t involve only the Old North Church. Revere rode one route while two other men took a different route. Revere’s was arguably more successful, as he made contact with more people than the other riders, but both played an important role. As they made contact in the towns and villages near Boston, other riders then carried the warning farther inland or farther north. Wildly, Revere was actually apprehended briefly by a British patrol, but they let him go after questioning. Ultimately, the other Massachusetts towns were warned in time to prepare for the coming of the British army. After the famous ride, Revere went on to continue his involvement in American politics, including making engravings that told the colonists’ side of the story and helped organize them around the revolutionary cause. Revere made many contributions above and beyond his famous ride to the revolutionary effort.I thought the book was really good. I was a little worried when, at the beginning, the author noted that he would tell a bit about British General Thomas Gage as well, but it turned out that didn’t distract from Revere’s story. Given the role Gage played in British efforts, it probably helped to know some of this background. There were a number of illustrations throughout the book, which I thought were interesting. The true story of Paul Revere’s ride, of course, doesn’t exactly match the famous poem; it’s likely better and doesn’t change at all the inspiration that the story provides us, encouraging us to sacrifice for a good cause. Revere provides an excellent example of what an involved citizen should be. He participated in local formal and informal bodies, contributing time, effort, skill, and means to the cause of freedom. He was willing to contribute himself to liberty’s cause.
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This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License and is copyrighted © MMXXI John Pruess. |
John Adams by David McCullough (ISBN: 0-684-81363-7) provides a deep and broad look at the second president and a man who is often credited as being the voice of independence. The book starts just a little before John Adams was born, telling the reader about his parents and lineage before getting into the details of the future president’s life. McCullough tells the Founder’s life story in great detail, in part because Adams left extensive diaries and letters to draw from. One learns about his schooling, his law practice, his family life, his farm in Massachusetts, and his ascendency onto the national stage, where he flourished. One learns about his shortcomings as well, including a propensity to get down on himself, a willingness to let others’ opinions of him matter (vanity), and a sometimes quick temper. Once Adams makes to Philadelphia to advocate for independence, the book goes into great detail, explaining his thinking and his actions and then follows his career. He was a diplomat, helping Benjamin Franklin in France and forging his own path in the Netherlands, where he, on his own, secured loans to help the American cause as the Revolutionary War dragged on. He was the new country’s first ambassador to England and then the country’s first vice president. In all of his positions, he advocated for what he thought was right. He didn’t back down and wasn’t afraid to take a little heat sometimes. The book paints him as a man of strong moral convictions based on a faith in God. During his time as president, he successfully kept America out of a war with France, which greatly helped America, a weak and fledgling nation, find its wings.
Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington by Richard Brookhiser (ISBN: 0-684-82291-1) provides a short overview of the original father of the country, George Washington. The book starts with an interesting discussion of modern history, which is history that often looks to break down the heroes of the past, find fault with them, and discount the stories that have been handed down for generations. Brookhiser claims he’s not looking to disparage Washington like other modern historians while being willing to set aside legend (“I cannot tell a lie,” for example) in order to give a clearer picture of the first president. The book then provides a basic overview of the major parts of Washington’s life, war, 
Miracle at Philadelphia: The Story of the Constitutional Convention May to September 1787 by Catherine Drinker Bowen (ISBN: 978-0-316-10378-7) takes an intimate look at the coming into being of the Constitution. The book starts by acknowledging that the Constitution is the result of a miracle. That is not necessarily the author’s conclusion — although it is; it is what those who attended the Constitutional Convention themselves asserted it to be. The case for that is then made by simply recounting the events of the convention and providing a detailed look at the circumstances surrounding the Constitution’s inception. Bowen relies heavily on James Madison’s notes since they were the most comprehensive, but also incorporates the notes and other writings of other Founding Fathers. The picture painted is thorough, deep, and intricate. The account focuses on the major arguments and compromises, which help show how the birth of the Constitution was a miracle. Many delegates wanted nothing to do with a federal government, some leaving early or protesting every vote. Slavery was famously a contentious issue. The nature of the executive branch and whether or not the legislative branch should be mono- or bicameral were fought over tenaciously by men who held deep-rooted positions based on experience or strong philosophical convictions. America itself, a newborn nation only eleven years old at the time of the convention, was already rapidly changing with internal and external forces influencing it course. Finally, once the Constitution was drafted, there was still a high chance of failure since the document had to be ratified, and there were still many convention delegates as well as everyday citizens who were strongly opposed to what the Constitution proposed. Ultimately, it was successfully ratified and has stood the test of time.
Finding God in the Gulag: A History of Christianity in the Soviet Penal System by Jeffrey S. Hardy (ISBN: 978-0-19-775167-1) is a book that gives readers a chance to know more about life in the Gulag. Unlike Solzhenitsyn’s based-on-a-true-story novel, this book is an academic look at Christianity in the Soviet camps from the earliest days under Lenin to the dying days of the Soviet Union under Gorbachev with a little post-script about a few things in the post-Soviet times. It catalogs both attempts by inmates to life and express their religions and attempts by the prison management to suppress religion. It was interesting to note that efforts to extinguish religion in prisoners was not uniform in the Soviet Union. It was more lax in some camps than in others. There wasn’t always a central policy that camp managers could look to, so they did it their own way. Sometimes that meant believers were beaten and spent time in solitary confinement. Sometimes that meant a Christian guard did nothing when a prisoner prayed or sang a hymn or made an icon. There was a short section on faith among thieves and other such common criminals, including a few paragraphs about the fascinating world of Russian prison tattoos. The book also catalogs people losing their faith, which was unsurprising, and one that is not judged neither by the author nor by most prisoners who are cited in the book. They tended to believe the camps were inhumane and that one should not be judged too harshly or even at all for what they did in the camps. There was also a little proselyting that happened in the labor camps. This was especially true of Baptists and Jehovah’s Witnesses, but Orthodox and Catholic priests also preached and even baptized people. Toward the end of the Soviet regime, religion was sometimes encouraged because it generally had a good influence on prisoners and mediated their violent behavior.
He Walked the Americas: The Trail of the Prophet by L. Taylor Hansen (ISBN: 978-1-939149-19-0) is a compilation of stories from North and South American Indians that relate to a so-called white or pale prophet. The stories tell about the arrival of the prophet, his activities, and then his departure. The legends describe the man, usually as wearing white garments (most often with small crosses on the hem), having brown hair, usually a beard, wearing sandals, and usually with cross-shaped marks in his hands. Sometimes he was accompanied by other white men. Other times he organized churches, established temples, and called people to continue his teachings after his departure. The arrival is usually on a ship in the legends, but one of the stories recorded by the author noted that the mysterious white prophet’s ministry started with his appearance at the temple. The man’s activities while visiting the ancient Indians included preaching peace, ending human sacrifice, healing sick and otherwise afflicted people, and controlling the wind and water. The last two were kind of important in the legends because this god was often referred to as the feathered serpent. Wind was often represented by feathers and the water by the snake. The organization of churches, usually with twelve men called to be leaders and teachers, and the establishing of temples was the other main activity of this white prophet in the legends. The stories then tell of his departure, usually with the people mourning his leaving and eventually forgetting his teachings and reverting to war and human sacrifice.
The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haidt (ISBN: 978-0-593-65503-0) explores why anxiety and other so-called mental health problems have exploded over the last fifteen years. The author believes that most of the blame lies with smart phones. He doesn’t deny that there are good things about smart phones, but he points out that because they allow unfettered access to the Internet and social media in particular, children and teenagers who spend time on the Internet lose out on formative experiences that steel them against anxiety and other mental problems while increasing their likelihood of being negatively affected. Haidt first argues that children need to be exposed to a certain level of risk while they are young to attune the body’s natural response to risk. Throughout history, kids have generally done this by playing outside with other kids, usually unsupervised. A culture of safetyism (eliminating all risks even when the positives of some risk are considered) encourages — in some places, usually more liberal places, forces — parents to keep their kids indoors and only let them out when they or other adults can supervise. This tends to make kids view the world around them as a large and constant threat. The perception of a constant threat is just what so-called clinical anxiety is. Additionally, without being exposed to little risks (the risk of falling off a swing or the risk of being rejected by a peer) that come with interacting with others while outdoors conditions kids to be comfortable only when there is no risk. The second half of Haidt’s argument is that social media exasperates these feelings in most people. Social media generally presents only the good side of things, which is something people on it then worry about it. It is also designed to be addictive (people experience hormone-induced positive sensations when their posts are liked, for example), so it’s a cycle of doom where people endlessly scroll, looking at the supposedly perfect lives of those around them while the post themselves, hoping to feel the dopamine-caused high of the next like or comment. If those are few and far between, the anticipation of the next like keeps people scrolling, all the while increasing negative feelings toward oneself. Haidt notes that girls are particularly prone to this type of activity. Boys are also negatively affected by constant time online. They are less likely to be anxious about social media, but video games and pornography easily engage the young male mind, pulling them away from reality. Since it’s relatively easy to exist in a world where you don’t have to engage in real-world situations that may have negative consequences, boys withdraw into these virtual worlds and try to not emerge. The book ends with some ideas on how to overcome the problems caused by smart phones. He has ideas for governments and for individuals, led by eliminating smart phone exposure for those under fourteen and limiting it for those over, both in school (complete bans on smart phones at schools are his preferred option) and at home. He also advocates letting kids get out and play and do other things on their own, like run simple errands, do chores around the house, and other things that are relatively safe, but still have distinct negative consequences for not accomplishing them.
The Freedom Line: The Brave Men and Women Who Rescued Allied Airmen from the Nazis during World War II by Peter Eisner (ISBN: 0-06-009663-2) is a book largely about big things undertaken by people in Belgium, France, and Spain to do what they simply considered their part in fighting the Nazi regime. The book tells the story of the Freedom Line, a group of people that moved downed Allied airmen from occupied territory to Spain, where they could link up with American or British diplomats and be safely taken home. The Freedom Line was not a huge operation, with no more than a couple dozen figures aided by scores of friends and confidants, but was fairly effective and managed to smuggle between 650 and 700 Allied soldiers out of harm’s way. While there were a few routes that escapees used, the main one was the Comet Line, run mainly by Dédée de Jongh, her father, Jean-François Nothomb, Florentino Goikoetxea, Kattalin Aguirre, and Elvire de Greef. These Belgians, Frenchmen, and Basques worked together to rescue Allies troops from the invaders. It was dangerous work, and many of the resistance members running the Comet Line ended up in prison, concentration camps, or dead, either executed by Germans or perishing along the treacherous smuggling routes through the Pyrenees Mountains. They had a network of safe houses between Belgium and Spain, but there was always the chance traitors would infiltrate the line, and one notorious traitor — Jacques Desoubrie — did so, resulting in the deaths of many Allied airmen and the death or imprisonment of many resistance members. The main figures running the Freedom Line preferred to control their own destiny despite British intelligence’s efforts to exert some control over the operation. British assistance was welcomed, but not necessarily with open arms. The book mainly follows the journey of a crew of Americans, piloted by Bob Grimes, shot down over Belgium from that fateful day to their eventual freedom. That approach provides insight into how the line operated and who the main players were. Sometimes, details from other escapees’ stories are included to complete the picture or provide fun anecdotes like the American pilot passionately kissed on a train by a woman he barely knew only as his guide from one safe house to the other in order to avoid having to show any papers to Nazi soldiers on the train.
Hide Your Children: Exposing the Marxists behind the Attack on America’s Kids by Liz Wheeler (ISBN: 978-1-68451-391-8) provides a look at how the education system has deteriorated further since the 1980s. The book starts with an overview of just who the Marxists the subtitle is talking about and then gives specific examples of how attacks on the nuclear family, endless accusations of racism, critical theory, queer theory, and attacks on homeschool, a proxy for attacks on personal responsibility and liberty, fit into the Marxist program meant to destroy society. Each chapter gives some history of where the modern Marxist threat originated and, using specific examples, how it became more mainstream than it ever should have. The historic sections are followed by a discussion of how it is today and the threat that presents to America, a country built on the idea that it survives only if the people who inhabit it are a moral people. The book ends with a chapter providing some suggestions on how to change the tide and fight back against the Marxist wave that has overpowered our educational system since it’s much easier to change the minds of the impressionable young than older people more set in their ways. The author’s suggestions include fighting the culture war, working to ban critical theory from public institutions, homeschooling whenever possible, fighting for school choice, working against ESG and DEI, remembering that local politics have an outlandishly large impact on our lives, returning to religion, and protecting the innocence of our children. Finally, there were some appendices with the Constitution and papal encyclicals that discussed the dangers of Communism.
The Airmen and the Headhunters: A True Story of Lost Soldiers, Heroic Tribesmen, and the Unlikeliest Rescue of World War II by Judith M. Heiman (ISBN: 978-0-15-101434-7) tells a fascinating story from the Pacific. As the Allies tried to claw their way toward Japan, while a ground invasion was still a potential plan, territory in what is now Indonesia was of strategic importance to the belligerents. Japan held what was then referred to as Borneo because of its oil reserves. The Allies wanted to cut that off. During a bombing mission against Japanese forces and industry in Borneo, a few U.S. planes were shot down. The occupants of one met death, either in the wreck or at the hands of the Japanese. Two other planes, though, had survivors who avoided capture. While this was initially thanks mostly to good luck, later capture was avoided because of the efforts of the natives, some of whom were formerly formidable headhunting tribes. The case of characters involved Malaysians, various highland jungle tribes, and the Americans. Later, Australian forces joined made it to the jungle and helped the natives fight the Japanese and the Americans get home. In the six months between the downed planes and the exfiltrations, though, the natives and the Malay helped the Americans avoid detection by the Japanese. They provided the Americans with hiding places, food, and taught them some of their ways to help make survival in the jungle a little easier. It wasn’t easy and involved sickness, insects, leeches, and injury, but the downed American soldiers eventually made it back home. In fighting the Japanese and keeping them off the Americans’ trail, the natives brought back their age-old tradition of headhunting. It might not have been exactly the same since it was revitalized out of necessity, but it served its purpose and aided in keeping the Japanese out of the interior jungles.
The Forgotten Founding Father: Noah Webster’s Obsession and the Creation of an American Culture by Joshua Kendall (ISBN: 978-0425-24545-3) tells about how that “big, red book” came to be thanks to another person who was very interested in words and language. The book chronicles Webster’s life from boyhood to death, taking a very detailed look at the parts of his life that led to his creation of the famous dictionary, part of Webster’s desire to make America its own unique country. Somewhat unusual for his day, Webster went to college even though he came from a farmer’s family. He then pursued a career tied to literature. He wrote extensively, including many essays, letters, and pamphlets in support of American independence and then in support of a federal republic. While his writings are not as well known today as those of others like Hamilton, at the time, there were many leading Americans who believed Webster’s efforts were essential parts of swaying public opinion. Webster initially made his name by publishing a speller, a book that helped schoolchildren learn to read and write. This book provided him with a foundational income throughout his life. He also worked as a lawyer, editor, and publisher. What he realized he loved doing, though, was more similar to the speller: compiling, organizing, and ordering information. This led to his interest in dictionaries. He found flaws in extant dictionaries and decided to improve on them by publishing his own. One motivation he had for this was that he believed a uniquely American language would help create and uphold a uniquely American culture, one that was needed to help the nascent nation maintain its distance from its former imperial overlords and move forward. While his ideas on government changed over the course of his life, his belief in America did not. The dictionary took much more time and money than he thought it would, but it was eventually published and created a new standard as well as codifying much of what was then a unique American language with new words expressing the new ideas embodied by the new nation.
Why I Stand by Jonathan Isaac (ISBN: 978-1-956007-06-0) is a book that exists because of one of those moments. After the protests and riots that occurred after George Floyd’s death, many athletes used their position (“platform” being the buzzword everyone liked to use) to advocate for a message they believed in. One of the more controversial ways they did this was to kneel during the national anthem. Jonathan Isaac, a very promising NBA player, chose to buck the trend and stand during the national anthem. He stood out even more because he did not choose to wear the Black Lives Matter apparel that most others did. Like most things, his decisions in that matter were not just sudden, spur-of-the-moment thoughts. They were based on a lifetime of experiences and a large body of personal beliefs. The book recounts Isaac’s childhood, high school and college experiences and rather meteoric rise in the sport of basketball from a no-name kid playing inconsistently in high school to a top-10 NBA draft pick. It also discusses Isaac’s struggles with anxiety and belief in his own worth, which were ultimately helped more than anything by a spiritual journey that led to a firm belief in God. He writes about going to church as a kid, but not really knowing why and not applying what was being taught. Like many people, he had some negative experiences with organized religion along the way, and by the time he was playing in the NBA as a rookie, he was connected to religion in name only. A neighbor who was a church leader and a few setbacks in his basketball career provided opportunities for Isaac to re-evaluate his relationship with God, and his honest approach to that led to a conversion that led to action that ranged from feeding the poor to becoming a pastor in his church. Ultimately, those convictions led him to stand while his teammates knelt during the national anthem, but he believed that incident was just one instance of standing for truth and right and that God asks that of His followers in many other situations, too.
Ravished Armenia: The Story of Aurora Mardiganian, the Christian Girl Who Survived the Great Massacres by Aurora Mardiganian (Arshalyus Mardiganyan) is an autobiographical account of the Turkish oppression of the Armenian people in the Ottoman Empire starting in 1915. The Mardiganian family, relatively wealthy financiers, are warned by their shepherd that he had a dream about the Armenians’ imminent destruction, but his prediction is dismissed. Soon, though, it comes true, as the family is driven from their home, along with all the other Armenians. Occasionally, leniency is shown to those who will renounce their Christian faith and adopt Islam, but even then, the freshly converted Armenians are killed by their Turkish and Kurdish oppressors. Aurora, like most of the women and children, is driven from place to place, guarded by Turkish policemen. Those who are too slow to keep up during forced marches are dispatched quickly and usually cruelly, although Mardiganian’s account does point out a few instances of decency and humanity from guards or locals in the places the Armenians were marched. Her story, like many of those who lived during this time, is made all the more tragic because she was there to see the deaths of her father, mother, a sister, and a brother. She was sold multiple times to be a harem girl. This never worked out for the buyer because Aurora was never willing to accept Islam. It really didn’t work out for her, either, though, because her refusals were usually met with abuse and deprivation. After wandering the Ottoman Empire under the care of the Turkish police or as the property of various rich Turks, having seen so much killing, rape, and pillaging, her old shepherd friend, then working for a Turk trying to get Aurora to submit to Islam before being fully accepted into his harem, helped her escape. She stayed with friendly Kurds before eventually being helped by Americans in the region and then making her way to Russian-controlled territory and under Russian and Armenian military oversight, made her way to Tbilisi, then Russia, and then the United States.
Avenue of Spies: A True Story of Terror, Espionage, and One American Family’s Heroic Resistance in Nazi-occupied Paris by Alex Kershaw (ISBN: 978-0-8041-4004-1) is one story of underground activity during the Nazi occupation of France. It is about an American, Dr. Sumner Jackson, his Swiss-born wife, Toquette, and their son, Phillip, who lived on the same street as many of the leaders of the occupying Germans, but aided the French resistance and paid the ultimate price for that patriotic effort. Jackson was a surgeon at an American hospital in France and used both his residence and the hospital as venues for fighting the Germans. Toquette and Phillip were also happy to be involved. Phillip couldn’t do much as a teenager, but understood what his parents were involved in. The house was used as a place to pass documents and information, the hospital was used to make Allied soldiers disappear once they had been adequately treated. Many were able to escape to neutral Spain and then back to England. The Nazis were next door and across the street and in houses all along the street, but the Jackson family was able to aid the resistance for quite some time before eventually being rounded up with other patriotic Frenchmen and sent to concentration camps in Germany. The entire family survived the camps. Toquette was extricated from one by the Swedes (reminded me a tiny bit of Raoul