Everyday Life in Early America Review

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(More customer reviews)The only genuine problem with this excellent book is that it does not compare favorably with some of the other books in this series. For instance, if one turns to this after reading Schlereth's amazing VICTORIAN AMERICA, one is scaled down the book seems in comparison. This is not the fault of author David Hawke. The problem is the paucity of details in everyday life in 17th century America compared to the late 19th. Unfortunately for Hawke, the life of Americans in the 17th century was rudimentary and, of necessity, simple. What makes VICTORIAN AMERICA such a delight is the almost overwhelmingly amount of delicious detail.
Nonetheless, life in 17th century colonial America is apt to be less familiar to most readers than that of late 19th century America, and this book performs an enormous service in providing a concise, well-written overview of what that life was like. Hawke is especially good at exploding various myths that have evolved over the years concerning colonial life. Unlike the later volumes in the series, Hawke deals, by dint of necessity, of the larger historical situation.
Some of the topics that Hawke takes up include the structure of towns and villages, the nature of farms and the crops grown, houses and the types of objects found within them, the health of the settlers and treatment of illness, social stratification, indentured servitude and slavery, relations with Native Americans, and various superstitions. If the book was somewhat less exhilarating than some of the later books in the series, it nonetheless is quite informative. I highly recommend it to anyone wishing to learn more about the nuts and bolts of colonial life.

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"In this clearly written volume, Hawke provides enlightening and colorful descriptions of early Colonial Americans and debunks many widely held assumptions about 17th century settlers."--Publishers Weekly

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The Radicalism of the American Revolution Review

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(More customer reviews)I first read the work of Gordon Wood in graduate school a quarter century ago, especially his magnificent and massive 1972 book, "The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787." This study, "The Radicalism of the American Revolution," is essentially a continuation of that earlier work, probing the intellectual underpinnings of the era. It, too, is a magnificent work and fully deserving of the Pulitzer Prize that it received. While covering some of the same ground as Bernard Bailyn's "The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution" (Harvard University Press, 1967), this book develops a more detailed, rigorous, and compelling portrait of a society transforming itself from one of feudal relationships to one predicated on republicanism, democracy, and market-driven capitalism.
At a fundamental level, Wood argues, the American Revolution was truly a radical episode in world history. He comments that "The republican revolution was the greatest utopian movement in American history. The revolutionaries aimed at nothing less than a reconstitution of American society. They hoped to destroy the bonds holding together the older monarchical society--kinship, patriarchy, and patronage--and to put in their place new social bonds of love, respect, and consent. They sought to construct a society and governments based on virtue and disinterested public leadership and to set in motion a moral government that would eventually be felt around the globe" (p. 229). They advocated ensuring equality as the first task of society; Wood calls this "the single most powerful and radical ideological force in all of American history" (p. 234). And all Americans, he argues, embraced the idea of equality as manifested in labor and accomplishment. He notes, "Perhaps nothing separated early-nineteenth-century Americans more from Europeans than their attitude toward labor and their egalitarian sense that everyone must participate in it" (p. 286).
Wood closes "The Radicalism of the American Revolution" with this, "No doubt the cost that America paid for this democracy was high--with its vulgarity, its materialism, its rootlessness, its anti-intellectualism. But there is no denying the wonder of it and the real earthly benefits it brought to the hitherto neglected and despised masses of common laboring people. The American Revolution created this democracy, and we are living with its consequences still" (p. 269).
Above all, Wood argues that ideas and ideological issues matter in the context of American history. Self-interest is very real, but ideas and ideals serve as powerful motivations for actions. This is a stunningly significant book that must be read by all who seek to understand the origins of the United States.

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Thought to Exist in the Wild: Awakening from the Nightmare of Zoos Review

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(More customer reviews)One need only read the title to know that this handsome book is not a celebration of zoos. It is, rather, a full frontal attack on them. Jensen provides a poetic text written from the heart, and while his bibliography excludes some important writings on zoos, his criticisms are piercing. "Zoos are about power," he says, meaning our power over animals and our control over nature (or at least the illusion of it). He describes the clicking of a grizzly bear's claws on the concrete floor of her cage as she paces back and forth rhythmically, neurotically. This stereotyped pacing will be familiar to practically anyone who's spent time at a zoo, and it's symptomatic of what's wrong with these institutions. "Zoos are a manifestation of this civilizing process: the foreclosure of options, the enclosure of freedoms... A bear is simplified to meat in a sack of brown fur, and not the relationships, desires, and behaviors that make a bear. She becomes a BEARTM." Zoos are first and foremost commercial enterprises, and the animals' interests invariably play second (or third, or forth) fiddle to the quest for profit. Large, charismatic species are reduced to mere shells by the interminable boredom and lack of stimulation. Average life expectancy is actually short; those statistics of animals living longer in captivity are based on the rare elders who beat the odds, not on average life span. Jensen also rightly rebukes humanity's hypocrisy in romanticizing wildness while simultaneously extirpating any wild creature that gets in the way of our commercial developments. And zoos have precious little to show for their self-aggrandizing claims of benefiting species survival.Tweedy-Holmes's black and white photos show the dignity and grace of animals despite their artificial surroundings. The images are poignant without any hint of being manipulative. Fittingly, the zoos where the photos were taken are not recorded; instead the species name is accompanied by a list of countries (sometimes only one) where they still cling to a wild existence. I noticed a couple of errors here: the American "Black bear" on page 117 is actually an Asiatic black bear, and I suspect the "Rhesus monkey" on page 76 is a White uakari. This book will change your next visit to a zoo, if you decide to go at all.

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Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam Review

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(More customer reviews)This book consists of letters written by American soldiers during the Vietnam War. It's extremely heart-breaking to read these letters as they gives "voices" instead of a mere figure. A lot of times, the figure of how many were killed, wounded, missing, etc but it does not portray any "emotions" the soldiers felt. At the end of each letter, the editor includes a few sentences on what happened to the author. It's extremely sad to read how many of those killed were just 19 year-olds, 20 year-olds, and these soldiers were just kids! It makes you think how wasteful, stupid, unnecessary wars are, and the sacrifices that has to be made.
The last chapter of this book speaks a lot. It is chronologically listed and you can see the evolving sentiments of the soldiers. At the beginning of the war, the soldiers were proud to fight against the Communists, how they think the war will be over soon. Towards the end of that chapter, most soldiers were scared, depressed and just wanted to get out of the war... alive! This shows why many Vietnam War veterans suffered from postwar depression as the horror of the war, how their friends, buddies were killed or wounded in front of their own eyes and how many could not possibly forget these horrifying images.
I highly recommend this book as this book speaks a lot. To me, the important message that it is trying to convey is the unnecessary sacrifices that these soldiers have to make, to fight a war that is not theirs, and the horror and bloodiness of the war is vividly described by these soldiers.

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"An overwhelmingly eloquent book of thepurest and most simple writing onVietnam."-David Halberstam
More than twenty-five years after the official end of the Vietnam War, Dear America allows us to witness the war firsthand through the eyes of the men and women who served in Vietnam. In this collection of more than 200 letters, they share their first impressions of the rigors of life in the bush, their longing for home and family, their emotions over the conduct of the war, and their ache at the loss of a friend in battle. Poignant in their rare honesty, the letters from Vietnam are "riveting,...extraordinary by [their] very ordinariness...for the most part, neither deep nor philosophical, only very, very human" (Los Angeles Times). Revealing the complex emotions and daily realities of fighting in the war, these close accounts offer a powerful, uniquely personal portrait of the many faces of Vietnam's veterans. Over 100,000 copies sold.

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