This week, Lucius Flatley, the eminent professor, presented the coffee-shop gang with a list of a few books he cherished. These selections would not please an English teacher as examples of the great American novel. There is no “Catcher in the Rye” or “Huckleberry Finn” – wonderful and groundbreaking as they were. This list is simply one person’s ideas of pleasure mixed with knowledge.
History is “heavy” here, because history is “heavy” in understanding the present.
“The Best and the Brightest,” David Halberstam. By far the best written, most accurate and wisest history of the American experience in Vietnam. No other book on this sad experience comes close.
“To Kill a Mockingbird,” Harper Lee. Brilliant and sensitive – the reader can put his or herself inside the characters, understand them and love them. A tour through one’s own childhood through the mind of a bright, sensitive, 6-year-old girl. The writing would make Sam Clemens or Charles Dickens envious.
“Proud Tower” or “Distant Mirror,” Barbara Tuchman. Either and you’ll be her fan for life (she has several more). She is the best – and most readable – historian in print. She relates history to life and shows the heritage of decisions made in one period on following periods. All educated Americans should be acquainted with her.
‘Cod,” Mark Kurlansky. A history of the North Atlantic codfish and a simply marvelous short book that should be read by people with any concern for the effect of man on nature – especially on a great natural food source. It is also valuable as a teaching example of how a book should be researched, organized and written. He has not only story to tell, but also he informs and entertains.
“Truman,” by David McCullough. A smoothly written tale of a great American at a critical period in U.S. history that painlessly teaches a college course on the American presidency. If you find that you like the book, you have the benefit of several others he has written with the same skill and style, e.g., “John Adams” or “The Path Between the Seas” (Panama Canal).
“The Beans of Maine,” by Carolyn Chute. A short, unvarnished look at Maine that expresses a view of the old Pine Tree State not shared by most Maine boosters. The Beans are Maineiacs who live and struggle in the shadows of rural poverty. They are neither valiant, clear-eyed lobstermen nor taciturn Yankee philosophers. Read it in an evening.
“The Path to Power,” “Means of Ascent,” “Master of the Senate,” The Passage of Power” – the four books on President Lyndon Johnson by Robert Caro (the last one just now being released). All are superb examples of what biography should be, and also perhaps the best study ever done on the acquisition and use of power in America. Like him or lump him (and Caro clearly dislikes), Johnson was a towering president. All four would require a few months, so perhaps the third volume, “Master of the Senate,” would be enough for one season.
“On Human Nature,” by E. O. Wilson. First published in 1978, shortly before the sunlight of Ronald Reagan was to rise on American thought, the book is vital to an understating of humans. Science is stated in crystal-clear language. Get the revised edition, published in 2004, while Dick Cheney and his wars were obscuring reason and human values. Once you finish this beautifully written groundbreaker, you will be ready for some of his extensive later works, such the recent “Consilience,” a study that one of Maine’s leading political scientists, Al Pease, calls, “an intellectual antidote to the selfish doctrines of politicians from Ayn Rand to libertarians.”
And finally, Elmore Leonard. He has written more than 50 crime stories, told with unmatched skill. Some early ones are in a western setting. Take any of them at random. They are candy for the mind, a sheer joy to read and better than an ice cream sundae. Leonard can draw a better character or situation with two or three words than most scribblers can in a paragraph. As the New York Times said, “astonishingly good, superb craftsman, pure pleasure.”
Thought for the week
“Anybody who would build a coastal city 5 feet below sea level in a hurricane zone and fill it with Democrats who can’t swim is a genius.”
Columnist Rodney Quinn, a former Maine secretary of state, died Oct. 27. The Tri Town Weekly will occasionally run one his columns that previously appeared in other Current Publishing newspapers.
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