Book Fever
By Marcia Loy June 27, 2008 San Miguel de Allende

More history to peruse

All history is really fiction.
—John Scherber

I continue my journey through historical nonfiction with a war, an ocean voyage and the story of a nation.

The Civil War, Shelby Foote, 1958. The late Shelby Foote wrote a three-volume narrative history of the Civil War, which was the first set of books I checked out of the library when I moved here three and a half years ago. It didn’t disappoint. One of the few works written by a Southerner, he’s an objective writer. These are brilliant books. They run nearly 2,400 pages and not a dull one among them.

Excerpt: Disaster came in various forms this spring, and it moved to various tempos. In the West it came like fireworks, looming after a noisy rush and casting a lurid glow. Whole states, whole armies fell at once or had large segments broken off by the tread of the invader. Kentucky and Missouri, most of Tennessee, much of Arkansas, North Alabama and North Mississippi were lost in rapid succession, along with 30,000 fighting men, dead or in northern prison camps, and finally New Orleans, Memphis, and the fleets that had been built—or, worse, were being built—to hold the river that ran between them. That was how it reached the West. In the East it came otherwise: not with a gaudy series of eruptions and collapses and attendant pillars of fire, but with a sort of inexorable hover, an inching-forward through mist and gloom, as it were conserving energy for an even more spectacular climax: the collapse of the national capital, the destruction of the head and front of Government itself. On damp evenings, such as 
the one that fell on May Day, the grumble of McClellan’s guns at Yorktown, faintly audible from Richmond’s hills, reached listeners through what seemed to them the twilight of the gods.

Two Years before the Mast, Richard Henry Dana, Jr., 1840. I first read this book 40 years ago and at the same I thought it one of the best nonfiction books I’d read. I haven’t changed my mind. Dana was a young Harvard student when a bout of the measles impaired his eyesight. He was unable to keep up with his studies and felt fresh air, hard work and plain food might help. He had a unique opportunity to live the life of a seaman, which in those days was inhumane.

His book did much to raise the consciousness of the American public and the plight of merchant sailors. And it gave us a fascinating and articulate account of life at sea, crossing Cape Horn and a look at California in the early days.


Excerpt: Monday, November 19. This was a black day in our calendar. At seven o’clock in the morning, it being our watch below, we were aroused from a sound sleep by the cry of ‘All hands ahoy! A man overboard!’ This unwonted cry sent a thrill through the heart of everyone, and hurrying on deck, we found the vessel hove flat aback, with all her studding-sails set; for the boy who was at the helm leaving it to throw something overboard, the carpenter, who was an old sailor, knowing that the wind was light, put the helm down and hove her back. The watch on deck were lowering away the quarterboat, and I got on deck just in time to fling myself into her as she was leaving the side, but it was not until out upon the wide Pacific, in our little boat, that I knew whom we had lost. It was George Ballmer, the young English sailor, whom I have before spoken of as the life of the crew. He was prized by the officers as an active and willing seaman, and by the men as a lively, hearty fellow, and a good shipmate. He was go

ing aloft to fit a strap round the maintopmasthead, for ringtail halyards, and had the strap and block, a coil of halyards, and a marline-spike about his neck. He fell from the starboard futtock shrouds, and, not knowing how to swim, and being heavily dressed, with all those things round his neck, he probably sank immediately. We pulled astern, in the direction in which he fell, and though we knew that there was no hope of saving him, yet no one wished to speak of returning, and we rowed about for nearly an hour, without an idea of doing anything, but unwilling to acknowledge to ourselves that we must give him up. At length we turned the boat’s head and made towards the brig.

The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America, 1932-1972, William Manchester, 1973. Here’s a two-volume history that covers 40 years in American life, from the Great Depression to Richard Nixon. In highly readable style, Manchester covers World War II, the Berlin Airlift, the Kefauver crime hearings, the Beatles US tour, the Civil Rights movement, Watergate and everything in between.

Excerpt: It was the year of the Hong Kong flu and Hair. The 121-year-old Pennsylvania Railroad and the 114-year-old New York Central merged, and service was twice as bad. First-class postage went from five cents an ounce to six. Helen Keller, Edna Ferber, and John Steinbeck died. Mia Farrow divorced Frank Sinatra. The American ambassador to Guatemala was assassinated.

In Washington the Willard Hotel, where at least seven Presidents, beginning with Franklin Pierce, had been guests at one time or another, went bankrupt. Red China, as it was still called then, exploded its seventh atom bomb, France its first hydrogen bomb. Hitler’s bones turned up in Russia.

Next month: More fiction. Happy reading.

Marcia Loy is a member of the steering committee of the Authors’ Sala and a volunteer at the Biblioteca Pública. She can be contacted at marciabookfever@hotmail.com.