I’m reading this book, which I bought about four years ago and have been meaning to read ever since. It was the last book on my meaning-to-read list, so once I finally started it I decided to go out and spend some gift certificates on new books.
Last weekend I went over to Page One and spent the remainder of a gift certificate that I had been slowly drawing down for a while. Since Page One has both new and used books, I decided to use that gift certificate to get used books. I ended up getting 1491, which I’ve heard good things about, these two books which I saw and thought looked interesting, and this Natick dictionary which I’d had my eye on the last few times I’d gone over there, and which was considerably less expensive than the copies that seem to be available through online booksellers.
Today I went over to Borders to spend the gift cards I got as graduation presents. I got King Leopold’s Ghost, which is another book that people often recommend, Diarmaid MacCulloch’s history of the Reformation, another book by Alan Taylor, a previous book of whose I liked a lot, and this book, which had been sitting on the shelves there for years and years, and which I would always consider buying when I saw it there but then decide to buy something else instead.
There’s a pretty clear pattern to these purchases, and they give a good idea of the sorts of books I like. I’m now set for reading material for a long time.
The Iroquois book looks interesting, although the top two Amazon reviews are not terribly helpful.
Have you read Regeneration through Violence?
Comment by Witt — November 12, 2007 @ 10:48 am
No. What’s it about?
Comment by teofilo — November 12, 2007 @ 2:56 pm
I read the Jennings book when it came out. I think it was my least favorite of the trilogy, but that’s not saying much: I really liked both the first and third books, and if I was going to suggest that someone read only one, it’d be the third, I think. Overall, it’s an amazing story, and one never feels the same about Penn, Franklin, and the rest. Or Parkman, obviously.
Jennings’ biography of Franklin is wonderfully subversive.
Comment by CharleyCarp — November 14, 2007 @ 11:11 pm
And on the subject of the Natick book, are you familiar with Roger Williams’ Key into the Lanugage of America?
Comment by CharleyCarp — November 14, 2007 @ 11:19 pm
3: Interesting. I didn’t realize it was part of a trilogy when I bought it (like I said, I just saw it on the shelf there), but if I like it I may well look for the other two. It sounds like the kind of book I can’t get enough of. I was at the library (not to be confused with The Library) on my lunch hour today and I noticed that there were two copies of it on the shelves. I guess someone must like it.
4: I’ve heard about it, but never read it.
Comment by teofilo — November 14, 2007 @ 11:23 pm
I only know Jennings’ work from historiography stuff - reviews, review essays, etc. - and haven’t read any of it myself. As I understand it his work was considered pioneering at the time, but is now sort of dated. The Taylor book you read previously - and which, like Jennings, I haven’t read, but which, unlike Jennings, I’m planning to read some day - is in dialogue with a lot of the work that Jennings helped make possible, but which is critical of his interpretations.
I’m obviously biased towards my grad school training, though.
Comment by eb — November 15, 2007 @ 12:51 am
EB — I agree that the first of the trilogy has been largely overtaken by events. I don’t have that perception of the 2d and 3d — because they’re more about what happened than about the historiography.
Comment by CharleyCarp — November 15, 2007 @ 5:46 am
I’m not sure that “what happened” and “the historiography” are quite that separable. Anyway, the Taylor book covers a slightly later period than the trilogy, and if it addresses any of Jennings’s work directly it’s probably this.
Comment by teofilo — November 15, 2007 @ 9:17 am
What I meant is that more recent work doesn’t entirely agree with Jennings about what happened, but I’m only aware of those disagreements from reading a little bit about Jennings, not from comparing his work with later work. I’m sure people in his field still read his work, though.
Comment by eb — November 15, 2007 @ 1:49 pm
8 — I don’t care a lick about Parkman, really. Johnson, though, matters. That’s the distinction I was going for.
Comment by CharleyCarp — November 15, 2007 @ 4:39 pm