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There is great pleasure to be had in reading well-written, well-researched non-fiction books. I always learn so much and my horizons broaden.
Some non-fiction books may be dry, but so many sparkle with wit and provide interesting details not known before to the reader. The best of them end up on my best book list each year and I am surprised how much non-fiction I read.
Here are a few interesting and hopefully tantalizing quotations from some interesting non-fiction books I have been reading recently.
1863: The Rebirth of a Nation by Joseph E. Stevens
At Vicksburg:
Pg. 158
Lieutenant Colonel Wilson…was dazzled by the energy and inventiveness of these Mid-western troops. He watched in amazement as one outfit bridged a series of deep bayous with three three-hundred-foot spans, complex structures that professional engineers would have taken weeks to design and erect. “Those bridges were built by green volunteers who had never seen a bridge train nor had an hour’s drill or instruction in bridge-building,” he marveled. Grant was likewise impressed when he beheld this example of his troops’ handiwork. “The ingenuity of the ‘Yankee soldier’ was equal to any emergency,” he proudly wrote.
Porter’s ships are preparing to get by Vicksburg:
Pg. 159
One by one the darkened ships got under way, emerging from the shelter of the riverbank like a school of giant snapping turtles. They glided out onto the broad, smooth surface of the Mississippi, which gleamed like a sheet of burnished copper in the fast-fading twilight.
Goodbye to a River (The Brazos River in Texas) by John Graves
Pg. 22
Re: the blue heron flying down river screaming:
The pup, though, it being the pristine first heron’s Frawnk, frawnk! of his life, tenses and gruffs in the bottom of the bag. The rain has stopped; there is only a staggered drip from the leaves of the mesquite. A cardinal chits, and what lies outside the canvas wedge is no longer a void but a tentative stir of leaves and light, wings and water, and the ragged beginnings of breeze.
Pg. 23
Redbirds called weakly, and then a canyon wren, and a Carolina, and chickadees, titmice, killdeers, kingfishers, gulls. I saw none of them. As the wind picked up, it hushed them as wind does, and drove them to cover. Three or four thousand robins in a strung-out, undulating flock flew from around the mountain, barking, and disappeared into wet autumn-bright woods across the river. For me those great aggregations connote the bleak time, the bare months, and I supposed the weather was what I deserved for having started so late in the year. (November)
Pgs. 79, 80
I told him about a yellow catfish that had looked to weigh forty pounds had nearly torn the paddle out of my hands that morning. It was true; I’d been shooting a clear heavy run with yellow leaves dancing down the water all around me in the sunlight, steering with just the edge of the blade, when suddenly something grabbed it with a bump and a twist, and as suddenly let go. Then he rolled in the current ahead of me, golden sight-feeding as they sometimes do…
They run twice that big in the Brazos, some of them, though only a few are ever caught on hooks, and those by the patient catfish specialists. Some are wrestled ashore by the “grablers,” sturdy rural sportsmen who wade and tread water while they probe the recesses of the undercut banks with their hands, disregarding moccasins and game wardens and other dangers.
Pg. 151
I used to be suspicious of the kind of writing where characters are smitten by correct quotations at appropriate moments. I still am, but not as much. Things do pop out clearly in your head, alone, when the upper layers of your mind are unmisted by much talk with other men. Odd bits and scraps and thoughts and phrases from all your life and all your reading keep boiling up to view like grains of rice in a pot on the fire. Sometimes they even make sense…
The Passing of the Armies by Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (1864, 1865)
Pgs. 35, 36 (March 29th 1865)
He was hit in the breast and arm, and his horse had taken a bullet through its neck.
Everybody around thought I was “gone” indeed, and that is why a telegram went to the New York morning papers reporting me as killed. In the shock my cap had fallen to the ground, and I must have been a queer spectacle as I rose in the saddle tattered and battered, bareheaded and blood-smeared. I swung the rein against my horse’s wounded neck and lightly touching his flank with my heel, we made a dash for the rally of our right.
Pushing in among our broken ranks of our 198th Pennsylvania, the men might well have thought me a messenger from the other world. That rally was sharp work-and costly…(the loss of two officers). By such appeal and offering this gallant regiment, forced back by overpowering onset, straightened up into line again, and with a thrilling, almost appalling cheer, turned the tide of battle, and rolled it fairly back inside the enemy’s works.
Aware of some confusion near the sawdust pile I thought it fitting to return to my place at the center. I was astonished at the greeting of cheers which marked my course. Strangest of all was that when I emerged to the sight of the enemy, they also took up the cheering. I hardly knew what world I was in.
By the time I got back to the center the loss of blood had exhausted the strength of my horse, and his nose came to earth. I had to send him back and become a foot soldier. It was a critical time there, with much confusion. Glenn was having a hard time at the sawdust pile, and I worked myself forward in the crowd to get at the state of things in front.
By a sudden backset I found myself surrounded by Confederates, who courteously lowered their muskets and locked their bayonets around me to indicate a reception not easily to be declined, and probably to last some time. The old coat was dingy almost to gray; I was bareheaded, and rather a doubtful character anyway. I thought it warrantable to assume an extremely friendly relation.
To their exhortation I replied: “Surrender? What’s the matter with you? What do you take me for? Don’t you see these Yanks right onto us? Come along with me and let us break ’em.” I still had my right arm and my light sword, and I gave a slight flourish indicating my wish and their direction. They did follow me like brave fellows,- most of them too far; for they were a long time getting back.
On April 12th, 1865, Chamberlain is the one who is put in charge and who has his men salute the surrendered Confederates and watches as they lay down their arms and battle flags. He reviews the men and battles he has fought with them as they pass by him.
pgs. 193, 194
With what strange emotion I look into these faces before which in the mad assault on Rives’ Saliet, June 18th, 1864, I was left for dead under their eyes! (he was shot through both hips). It is by miracles we have lived to see this day,-any of us standing here.
Now comes the sinewy remnant of fierce Hood’s Division, which at Gettysburg we saw pouring through the Devil’s Den, and the Plum Run Gorge; turning again by the left our stubborn Third Corps, then swarming up the rocky bastions of Round Top, to be met there by equal valor, which changed Lee’s whole plan of battle and perhaps the story of Gettysburg.
Ah, is this Pickett’s Division?-this little group left of those who on the lurid last day of Gettysburg breasted level cross-fire and thunderbolts of storm, to be strewn back drifting wrecks, where after that awful, futile, pitiful charge we buried them in graves a furlong wide, with names unknown!
Met again in the terrible cyclone-sweep over the breastworks at Five Forks; met now, so thin, so pale, purged of the mortal,-as if knowing pain or joy no more. How could we help falling on our knees, all of us together, and praying God to pity and forgive us all!
Thus, all day long, division after division comes and goes, surrendered arms being removed by our wagons in the intervals, the cartridge-boxes emptied in the street when the ammunition was found unserviceable, our men meanwhile resting in place.
The Thousand Mile Journey by Colin Fletcher
Pg. 103
All day I sat and watched Death Valley. Nothing very much happened, I suppose. But snow had fallen overnight on nearby peaks, and again it kindled that odd excitement. All around, immense upended rock strata cut across the mountains in a pattern the mind could grasp. Clouds chased each other across the Valley floor. Colors changed.
And once, as I stood on a precipice, two swallows plummeted past, inches apart, tearing the air. Holding position as if clamped together, they dipped over the precipice and swooped toward a sheer and jagged rock spire. Just as it seemed they would smash into its face, they surged up together in a great unexpected arc of freedom that carried them far out over the immensity of Death Valley and up at last to vanishing point in the blue desert sky.
Newton and the Counterfeiter by Thomas Levenson
Pgs 142-144
Newton deployed the same empiricism on his men as on his machines. At the height of recoinage, in late 1696 and through 1697, Newton commanded about five hundred men and fifty horses to drive the giant rolling mills. To ensure that this army wasted none of its efforts, he conducted perhaps the first time-and-motion study on record…Eventually, Newton identified the perfect pace: if the press thumped just slightly slower that the human heart, men and machines could stamp out coins for hours at a time. That pounding set the rhythm that Newton used to drive the entire Mint.
Newton’s drumbeat got results, fast…Under Newton’s control, where once the sum of 15,000 pounds per week had been thought unattainable, soon the presses were turning out 50,000 pounds a week. By late summer of 1696, the Mint’s men and machines achieved a record output of 100,000 pounds in six days-an unprecedented number, not just for the English Mint, but for Europe…
The swift and ample transfer of silver coins from the Tower into public hands, beginning in the autumn of 1696, quelled the deepest fears of the day. There were no currency riots. The poor of London did not rise up to demand the return of good King James. King William continued to complain about the lack of money, but he was able to keep his army in the field, and by September 1697, after it was clear that the recoinage would be completed satisfactorily, he even achieved a a peace with Louis XIV…
Everyone knew who deserved the credit. At the conclusion of the recoinage, Charles Montague said that the enterprise would have failed without the presence of Isaac Newton at the Mint.
The Measure of a Man by Sidney Poitier
en.wikipedia.org/...
Poitier credits his parents and his childhood on tiny Cat Island in the Bahamas for equipping him with the unflinching sense of right and wrong and of self-worth that he has never surrendered and that have dramatically shaped his world. "In the kind of place where I grew up," recalls Poitier, "what's coming at you is the sound of the sea and the smell of the wind and momma's voice and the voice of your dad and the craziness of your brothers and sisters...and that's it." Without television, radio, and material distractions to obscure what matters most, he could enjoy the simple things, endure the long commitments, and find true meaning in his life.
Uncompromising as he pursued a personal and public life, Poitier aimed to honor his upbringing and the invaluable legacy of his parents. Just a few years after his introduction to indoor plumbing and the automobile, Poitier broke racial barrier after racial barrier to launch a pioneering acting career. Committed to the notion that what one does for a living shows who one is, Poitier chose to play forceful and affecting characters who said something positive, useful, and lasting about the human condition.
Becoming Nicole by Amy Ellis Nutt
www.goodreads.com/...
…Becoming Nicole chronicles a journey that could have destroyed a family but instead brought it closer together. It’s the story of a mother whose instincts told her that her child needed love and acceptance, not ostracism and disapproval; of a Republican, Air Force veteran father who overcame his deepest fears to become a vocal advocate for trans rights; of a loving brother who bravely stuck up for his twin sister; and of a town forced to confront its prejudices, a school compelled to rewrite its rules, and a courageous community of transgender activists determined to make their voices heard. Ultimately, Becoming Nicole is the story of an extraordinary girl who fought for the right to be herself…
From my Best Book List last year:
The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal
Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard by Laura
Bates
The Pursuit of Italy: A History of a Land, Its Regions, and their Peoples by David Gilmour
Hell Is so Green: Search and Rescue over the Hump in World War II by Lt.
William Diebold
The Great Northern Express: A Writer's Journey Home by Howard Frank
Mosher
The Republic of Imagination by Azar Nafisi
The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Future of the Mind by Michio Kaku
The Half Has Never Been told: Slavery and the Making of American
Capitalism by Edward E. Baptist
Brocade River Poems: Selected Works of the Tang Dynasty Courtesan Xue Tao trans. by Jeanne Larsen
Between the World and Me by Ta–Nehisi Coates
Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea by Charles Seife
What are your favorite nonfiction books? Do you like adventures, travel, biographies, memoirs, or essays best?
Diaries of the Week:
Write On! Raindrops on the window pane.
By SensibleShoes
www.dailykos.com/...
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Morning Open Thread - The Diary of Samuel Pepys: 17th Century NSFW?
By Queries
www.dailykos.com/...
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Contemporary Fiction Views: 'Oh yes, that's as it should be' in novels and real life
By bookgirl
www.dailykos.com/...
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The Hill Country Ride for AIDS is coming up fast. I am so proud of this lady!!
A completely positive, completely non-election related diary
By anotherdemocrat
www.dailykos.com/...
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Note: I have a bad cold and if I go to bed early, please keep chatting and I will get back to you in the middle of the night or tomorrow. On top of that, we have thunderstorms going on...sigh.
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Readers & Book Lovers Series
Schedule Day Time EST/EDT Series Editor(s)
Sunday 6:00 PM Young Reader's Pavilion The Book Bear
(last Sun of the month) 7:30 PM LGBT Literature Chrislove
Monday (occasional) 8:00 PM Books! Susan Grigsby
Tuesday 5:00 PM Indigo Kalliope: Poems from the Left Kit RMP, ruleoflaw
8:00 PM Contemporary Fiction Views bookgirl
Wednesday 8:00 PM Bookflurries Bookchat cfk
Thursday 2:00 PM Self-Publishing 101 akadjian
8:00 PM Write On! SensibleShoes
(once a month) 2:00 PM Monthly Bookpost AdmiralNaismith
Friday 8:00 PM Books Go Boom! Brecht
Saturday 9:00 AM You Can't Read That!
Paul's Book Reviews pwoodford
9:00 PM Books So Bad They're Good Ellid
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