Book Review: Ordeal of the Union, Volume: Fruits of Manifest Destiny, 1847-1852 by Allan Nevins

Ordeal of the Union, Vol 1: Fruits of Manifest Destiny 1847-52 by Allan Nevins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The aftermath of a unpopular though very successful war suddenly put two sections of the victors against one another in arguments so serious that it could cause civil war, this is the United States after the Mexican-American War. Ordeal of the Union, Volume One: Fruits of Manifest Destiny, 1847-1852 is the first of Allan Nevins’ eight volume series on the lead up to and of the American Civil War with the focus being on the search for a compromise.

This book featured Nevins revealing to the reader various themes that interact with one another politically, economically, socially, and culturally. Nevins political analysis focused on how weak executives (Polk successful in war but unable to control the fallout of victory, Taylor unable to work with others, and Fillmore an accidental President) and a House of Representatives in chaos demanded the Senate to come up with a compromise to prevent the unraveling the country. Nevins looked how each section of the country—North and South—viewed slavery and treated African Americans along with how the two were economically situated in the early 1850s. Throughout the book, it became clear that many Southerners who preached secession were lying to themselves about the prospects of an independent South and given the 1947 publication date, this was definitely not a “Lost Cause” book. Now that I have brought up when this book came out, there is some word usage that today wouldn’t be used obviously and while it doesn’t need a “trigger warning” one needs to be mindful that different eras had different conventions. Overall, Fruits of Manifest Destiny was a fitting title as Nevins revealed the sweet richness of the new territory acquired from Mexico but the bitterness of the sectional divide that it caused while comparing and contrasting the two sections verbally battling on how to politically and economically organize it.

Ordeal of the Union, Volume One vividly portrays the political tumult of the aftermath of the war with Mexico and Allan Nevins describes it wonderfully while also giving the reader an in-depth overviews of each section of the nation at the beginning of the 1850s.

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Book Review: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The town of King’s Abbot loose two of important members of the community in the space of a day, but only one is a murder though it has a connection to the other death which relates to another earlier death. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie is the fourth book of her mystery series featuring Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, whose retirement in King’s Abott is abruptly ended by the murder of his acquaintance Roger Ackroyd.

Christie is rightfully considered one of best writers of the mystery genre and this book that “breaks all the rules” is one of the reasons why. I knew coming into this book that there was a twist, and it wasn’t until 90 pages left in the book that I realized what the twist was, looking back the main clue stood out and I should have realized it earlier since I already knew the conventional detective tropes would be turned on its head. As for the overall story, I enjoyed it, and I loved my first reading of Hercule Poirot (I imagined him speaking as portrayed by David Suchet) making interested in other books featuring him. This is my second Christie book—And Then There Where None—and I’ve enjoyed both very much which means that I’ll be exploring Agatha Christie more in the future.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd could be said to subvert tropes while also creating a trope, but however you classify it Agatha Christie wrote a great novel with a fascinating set up and interesting character in Hercule Poirot.

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Book Review: The Nation Comes of Age by Page Smith

The Nation Comes of Age: A People's History of the Ante-Bellum Years by Page Smith
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

With the Founders fading into history, a new generation of leadership took the helm of the United States, but they faced a problem they didn’t want to deal with and in the end, it would create the nation’s greatest crisis. The Nation Comes of Age: A People’s History of the Ante-Bellum Years is the fourth volume of Page Smith’s A People’s History series follows the deaths of Jefferson and Admas focusing on the expansion of the nation and how it resulted in the idea of the Union to grow in appreciation even as the morality of slavery increasing turned the North and South against one another until open war begins.

In the previous volume Smith introduced his view of the United States as schizophrenic in viewing itself against reality then extended it from how one section of the nation looked at the country against the vision of the other. This social-political schizophrenia during the 35 years covered in the book was centered on one issue, slavery which as I stated above quickly became a moral issue thanks to those reformers who abhorred it much to the surprise of Southerners who in their heart of hearts agreed. This wasn’t a completely political and military (Mexican-American War) only history, Smith takes over half the book to look at various social history elements from the status of women to culture (art, literature, etc.) to the reform movements and finally abolitionism; he also covered the exploration by Americans of the interior West and finding routes to the Pacific West following the adventures of such men like Jedediah Smith, Kit Carson, and John Fremont while following on their heels were settlers whose on experiences were covered as well. While Smith follows a lot of political figures, he ends the volume describing the rise of Abraham Lincoln and setting up the coming bloody crisis that would scare the nation. Overall this 1200+ page book covers a lot of things that happened in the United States over the course of 35 years even as Smith spread his narrative to give a very comprehensive he was focused on what everything was leading to and how everything shaped the coming conflagration.

The Nation Comes of Age is the critical volume in Page Smith’s history of the United States, the use of primary sources of ordinary people to help tell the story of the nation during these critical 35 years brings it alive and informs the reader with new facets of American history they might have not known fully before.

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Book Review: Lore Olympus Volume Five by Rachel Smythe

Lore Olympus: Volume Five by Rachel Smythe
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A relationship is ending, a relationship is beginning, a secret revealed to the audience, and it’s revealed to someone who is furious that the event happened and was hidden from him, oh and the female protagonist disappears. Lore Olympus Volume Five by Rachel Smythe finds Hades and Persephone begin a relationship after the former breaks up with Minthe but things get complicated when we learn how Kore became Persephone.

Covering episodes #103-126 of her webcomic, Smythe zeros in on Persephone’s backstory both from a brief glimpse from her point-of-view but other investigating her life before Olympus. However, the two protagonists don’t take a backseat as Hades attempts to figure out how to deal with his feelings and Persephone tries to continue to figure out things, Smythe’s continual work on deepening the characters really pays off in this volume because as the two most important characters gain layers it allows secondary characters to get more layers as well strengthening the overall piece. Once again Smythe’s artwork and choices to denote the different types of immortals—nymphs, gods, Olympians, Titans—makes the worldbuilding better and the colorizing choices allow the reader to realize something is up when a character’s shading darkness or lightens or completely changes for a few panels. Unlike the last volume, this one—though honestly, I was reading it on and off for a month—resonated better. I can’t tell you the reason why because frankly I don’t know why I had the issue with Volume Four, but things clicked for me in this one better maybe more things happening allowed me to appreciate the two protagonist’s struggles more because I knew other things were going actively without them knowing about it.

Lore Olympus Volume Five by Rachel Smythe continues with compelling characters, expanding the narrative out but keeping it from bloating, and great artwork. To say the least the way the volume’s ending has me interested in what is next.

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Book Review: The Book of Job by Richardo Graham

The Book of Job by Ricardo Graham
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The story of his suffering and wondering why has fascinated believers of both Judaism and Christianity, but Job’s struggle to understand is only one of many that is touched up in the oldest book of the Bible. The Book of Job is the supplementary book of the Adult Sabbath School Bible Study (4th Quarter 2016) by Richardo Graham covers the major themes of he believes it is important to bring out over the course of 14 chapters. Covering 117 pages, Graham goes over several themes that come to mind when one talks about the Book of Job: Why God allows bad things to happen to good people, God and human suffering, and is suffering the result of sin (i.e. retributive punishment)? But Graham also covers such Adventist topics as the Great Controversy and making connections between Jesus and Job not only in their innocent suffering but also if Job knew his Redeemer. The one thing I disagreed with Graham on was his characterization of Elihu, which given how God handles Job’s other friends at the end of the Book of Job seems to contradict Graham’s thought. However this minor quibble doesn’t mean this isn’t a great book overall.

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Book Review: The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Twins long separated after the death of a cousin and a family scandal reunite, but the sorrow doesn’t go away. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, retells the childhood experience of a set of twins in which seemingly insignificant things shape behavior in unexpected ways in the backdrop of postcolonial India and the lingering effects of casteism.

Roy’s debut novel relates events in 1969 and 1993, with backstories for each, in a disjointed narrative that while taking a little bit getting use to overall didn’t hurt my understanding of events as many times they were explained before we saw them unfold. The antagonist, or the character who is the most villainously influential in conjunction with the societal norms that negatively impact the two protagonists, is hard to miss because of how ugly she is though seen through the eyes of one of the traumatized twins turned adults it could be influencing the description of said individual. There is sexual situations that run the gambit of healthy to bad, very bad which could be off-putting to some readers and frankly when I read the one of them I wish I hadn’t even though I knew a head of time it would be alluded to but didn’t know I actually read it as it happened. Overall, I’m a bit conflicted about the book, I appreciate that Roy showed the societal conflicts of postcolonial India, the characters were interesting, but some of the situations that “we see” I somewhat wish we were told instead. To me personally this is a one-time read, but this is not a book I would re-read.

The God of Small Things looks into how a culture tries to keep its traditions in a time of increasing globalization through the eyes of children and their grown up selves recounting how what appeared as insignificant things impacted their lives dramatically one awful night.

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Book Review: The Federalist by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay

The Federalist Or, the New Constitution by Alexander Hamilton
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The United States was in dire need of a form of government that worked better than the Articles of Confederation, in the summer of 1787 a convention in Philadelphia produced what would become the Constitution of the United States but its ratification wasn’t guaranteed especially by the most important states in the Union. The Federalist is a collection of 85 essays written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay to convince the citizens of New York to support the ratification of the Constitution that also explained for the historical record what two of its framers believed how the government it created would work and why.

The essays making of The Federalist are a look into both political theory, as three men expound how the proposed government would work in practice and refute allegations against it, and also political history as with two of the Constitution’s Framers and another prominent Founding Father defending it we see how important in the time and day they believed this document was. This is the culmination of almost a quarter century of political writing since the start of the tax dispute with Britain in which the arguments of political thinkers Locke and Montesquieu were prominent as they were within the writings of Hamilton, Madison, and Jay. There are several famous essays known by their numbers (#10, 14, 39, 51, 70, and 78) that become the standards of American political thought to this day. While students of political history and readers of political theory read The Federalist to understand the arguments for the Constitution and to glimpse the thinking that lay behind the document, was it’s intended purpose successful? While New York ratified the Constitution, it was the last of the big four and the overall eleventh state to do so, the Constitution was operational, and the state convention was packed with opponents but being left out of the new government was too much to handle. It could be argued that the essays didn’t sway New York, political reality did, but why is this collection famous? Hamilton and Madison, two young men instrumental in getting the Constitutional Convention called, attended and debated, and then influenced the new government they created over the course of the next quarter century.

The Federalist is a collection of 85 essays planned out to show the need for and defend the Constitution sent to the 13 states to be ratified and create a new government. Written by three prominent Founding Fathers, these essays are in the words of history Richard B. Morris, “a classic in political science unsurpassed in both breadth and depth by the product of any later American writer.”

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