Ron's View

On finishing Thomas de Waal’s The Caucasus three days ago, I thought I was done with books on countries or wars or travel or history of the Black Sea, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. Before The Caucasus was Orlando Figes’ The Crimean War and Colin Thubron’s Shadow of the Silk Road (see my posts here, here, and here, as well as here) Next on my reading list was Robert Caro’s latest LBJ tome The Passage of Power, just out.

But Caro’s book is so long. I wasn’t ready to immerse myself in it. Searching for an alternative, I found Charles King’s Odessa: Genius and Death in a City of Dreams. I suppose I was destined to read about Odessa before leaving this part of the world. It is, after all, my ancestral homeland, the 1893 birthplace of my grandmother, and a city I know little about.

Here is an excerpt from the description of the book at the author’s website:

Italian merchants, Greek freedom fighters, and Turkish seamen; a Russian empress and her favorite soldier-bureaucrats; Jewish tavern keepers, traders, and journalists—these and many others seeking fortune and adventure rubbed shoulders in Odessa, the greatest port on the Black Sea.

Here a dream of freedom inspired geniuses and innovators, from Alexander Pushkin and Isaac Babel to Zionist activist Vladimir Jabotinsky and immunologist Ilya Mechnikov. Yet here too was death on a staggering scale: not only the insidious plagues common to seaports but also the mass murder of Jews carried out by Romanian occupation forces during the Second World War. Drawing on a wealth of original source material, Odessa is an elegy for a vibrant, multicultural city as well as a celebration of the survival of Odessa’s dream in a diaspora reaching all the way to Israel and the United States.

I’m a little more than a third of the way through so far. It’s not a long book, and therefore not all that detailed either, but informative nonetheless. An opening chapter surveys the history of the Black Sea region from ancient times to the 1780s. Each of the next few chapters is built around one or two people of note in Russian and Odessan history.

First we learn about Potemkin, his relationship with Catherine the Great, war with the Ottomans, the arrival of John Paul Jones to assist with naval warfare, his dismal performance, and the saving of the day by José Pascual Domingo de Ribas. Among other successes, de Ribas took the small Black Sea village of Khadjibey from the Ottomans, leading to its incorporation into the Russian Empire in 1792. Subsequently, he received Catherine’s approval to build a new city, Odessa, on the site.

De Ribas and Catherine would both die before much progress was made. In the next chapter, we move on to the early 1800s, during which Richilieu carried through on the project, creating Odessa. The plague intervened in 1812, almost killing Odessa before it could reach adolescence, but Richilieu saved it through quarantine and fire.

On we go to Mikhail Vorontsov, his marriage to Lise Branicka, his appointment as governor-general of New Russia, the arrival in Odessa of the young Alexander Pushkin, his famous affair with Lise, and Odessa’s growth as a major international city attracting Italians, Greeks, Germans, Jews, Armenians, and many more.

Odessa’s role as a progressive port city made it especially attractive to Jews, for whom it provided a two-fold freedom: freedom within the larger culture to work in a variety of professions and live where they pleased, plus freedom within Jewish culture from the more traditional practices of the Pale. The chapter I’m now reading focuses on this growing Jewish community. King writes:

Jews emerged as the critical middlemen in Odessa’s commerce, linking up with peasants, immigrant farmers, and herders in the interior and forming an essential bridge to the large export concerns in the port city. Through their energy and social networks, Odessa became something that none of its early founders, from Potemkin to Vorontsov, could have imagined: the preeminent port of the Yiddish-speaking world. As a frontier city in need of both people and income, Odessa became one of the major urban centers of the Pale system, a modern and dynamic city where Jews could find economic prosperity and a degree of freedom within an otherwise constraining system. While Jews were viewed as competitors to Christian businesses in other corners of the empire — one of the reasons for legal restrictions on Jewish economic activity — their business contacts were seen as a boon in the growing city.

That’s my family he’s describing, a family I know close to nothing about. Not even when they would have arrived in Odessa. What I know is my grandmother’s stories of her childhood, the pogroms, and the Cossacks. Not that I had any idea what pogroms or Cossacks were, but I knew they were bad. And I knew that because Cossacks were attacking Jews (no doubt the 1905 Odessa pogrom that I will soon learn more about in the book), my grandmother’s family had to stay indoors to avoid danger. But they had to eat, and it fell to my grandmother to go out to buy food for the family.

In retrospect, the point must have been that she was the child most able to pass for a non-Jew. The language spoken at home was Yiddish, but she spoke Russian at school. Indeed, she studied French and was probably fluent in all three. Given how good her English would become, with less of the classic Yiddish accent of so many of her generation who came to New York, I would bet her Russian was that of a native. Whatever the reason, she was the family food procurer.

Not long after the pogroms, the family made their way to New York. My great-grandparents never did learn English or fit in. My grandmother did so quickly. It’s stunning to realize that she was equally at home in the world I’m now reading about and in late twentieth-century New York. What a woman!

Happy Mother’s Day, grandma.

In writing last week about Colin Thubron’s Shadow of the Silk Road, I quoted a comment I wrote a month earlier after finishing Orlando Figes’ The Crimean War:

Time and again, as I read the book, I would recognize the ground being laid for conflicts of the twentieth century. The Balkans. The Caucasus. Afghanistan. Recent developments such as the Chechen War and the 2008 conflicts between Russia, Georgia, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia all make more sense to me now. Not to mention that I know where they all are.

I then explained that since “I could finally picture the geographical relative positions of all the countries in Central Asia, it was time to learn more.” And that’s what led me to Thubron’s book.

Yet, I could just have easily have chosen to read more about the Caucasus. I was therefore delighted to open up the latest issue of The New York Review of Books a couple of weeks ago and find Tim Judah’s review of Thomas de Waal’s The Caucasus: An Introduction.

Unfortunately, Judah has nothing to say about the book. He takes the opportunity to write about his own travel in and views of Armenia — certainly a reviewer’s prerogative — but provides no enlightenment on de Waal’s work. Quite a ways in, Judah speaks of de Waal’s “excellent recent book,” including a quote to support his view. And the closing sentence returns to the book for another supporting quote. That’s it.

Nonetheless, interest piqued, and then making slow progress through the China portion of Thubron’s journey, I downloaded the free opening portion of the book (from Amazon) to read. Then, three mornings ago, after arriving with Thubron in Antioch (Turkish Antakya) and concluding what turned out to be an extraordinary journey, I downloaded the rest of de Waal’s book. I’m now two-thirds through it. Here’s the Oxford University Press blurb:

In The Caucasus, de Waal provides this richer, deeper, and much-needed appreciation, one that reveals that the South Caucasus–Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, and their many smaller regions, enclaves, and breakaway entities–is a fascinating and distinct world unto itself. Providing both historical background and an insightful analysis of the period after 1991, de Waal sheds light on how the region has been scarred by the tumultuous scramble for independence and the three major conflicts that broke out with the end of the Soviet Union–Nagorny Karabakh, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia. The book examines the region as a major energy producer and exporter; offers a compelling account of the Rose Revolution in Georgia, the rise of Mikheil Saakashvili, and the August 2008 war; and considers the failure of the South Caucasus, thus far, to become a single viable region. In addition, the book features a dozen or so “boxes” which provide brief snapshots of such fascinating side topics as the Kurds, Turkish-Armenian rapprochement, the promotion of the region as the “Soviet Florida,” and the most famous of all Georgians, Stalin.

The Caucasus delivers a vibrantly written and timely account of this turbulent region, one that will prove indispensable for all concerned with world politics. It is, as well, a stimulating read for armchair travelers and for anyone curious about far-flung corners of the world.

For someone ignorant, like me, de Waal’s book is indeed what Judah says: excellent. But it is no more than what it claims to be, an introduction. It provides a whirlwind tour through history, with the briefest of mentions of centuries before the nineteenth; a closer look at Russian dominance during the nineteenth; a bit of a pause in the 1918-1922 years, when the status of the South Caucasus entities was up for grabs; and a review of the changing status of the various republics during the Stalin years. From there, we get to the heart of the book, an examination of the conflicts just before and after the Soviet Union’s collapse (which I’m reading about now), then a jump to the more recent conflicts.

Mike King’s map accompanying Judah’s review gives some sense, if you don’t have a geographic picture in view, of the complexity of the region.

The account of the complexities of the political situation facing Armenia, Azerbaijan, and the Soviet Union/Russia in the late 80s and early 90s is illuminating, as are the subsequent accounts of the war at that time between Georgia and South Ossetia, and the war that began just as that ended between Georgia and Abkhazia. The map doesn’t go quite far enough west. Missing is a view of the Black Sea coast, with Turkey, the region of Ajara, Georgia, and the region of Abkhazia. And the fact that there are all these regions, each with a history of independence as well as a history of consolidation within the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and Georgia only begins to suggest how complicated the mixing of peoples, languages, and cultures is. Sorting this out for the novice is de Waal’s principal accomplishment.

Still awaiting me is de Waal’s treatment of the 2008 war between Georgia and South Ossetia and the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict as well. Who can forget John McCain’s assurance to Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili at the height of the war in South Ossetia that we Americans are all Georgians? Oh, here we go. There was an op-ed piece in the WSJ on August 14, 2008, with the title, “We Are all Georgians.” And that same day, the Foon Rhee of the Boston Globe reported:

The United States should stand with the democratic government in Georgia, he said, adding that he had offered Americans’ prayers and thoughts in a conversation with Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili.

“He knows that the thoughts and the prayers and support of the American people are with that brave little nation as they struggle today for their freedom and independence. And he wanted me to say thank you to you, to give you his heartfelt thanks for the support of the American people for this tiny little democracy far away from the United States of America. And I told him that I know I speak for every American when I say to him, ‘Today, we are all Georgians,’ ” McCain declared.

To think that McCain portrayed himself as the foreign policy expert. Like Romney now, he just wanted to posture that he would stand up to Russia, regardless of the actual history of the conflict.

Anyway, I’m finding this quite a useful primer. Now I need a companion for the North Caucasus. I wouldn’t mind knowing more about Chechnya and Dagestan. Plus, the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics will be upon us soon, with skiing in Krasnaya Polyana. I better bone up before then so I’ll have an understanding of the local tensions.

I haven’t written about any books in weeks. What’s going on? Well, partly, I’ve been unable to decide which of several books to concentrate on, and partly, I haven’t been able to build up much momentum in the book that won the battle. I haven’t felt committed to it. But that has changed at last, and I anticipate finishing it this weekend.

Four weeks ago, I was struggling to figure out what books to have on my Kindle before we headed to New York and North Carolina. I had begun Candice Millard’s book about James Garfield’s assassination, Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President, and anticipated (correctly) that I would finish it during the trip. What to read next?

In the background, I knew two books would be coming out this month that would command my attention: the fourth volume of Robert Caro’s monumental LBJ biography, The Passage of Power (out yesterday, with a review now online by Bill Clinton that will appear in the Sunday NYT), and the second historical novel in Hilary Mantel’s trilogy, Bring Up the Bodies (out next Tuesday, though reviewed by Janet Maslin in today’s NYT).

It turns out that I have yet to read Wolf Hall, the first installment of the Mantel trilogy, and a book I just had to have a couple of years back. (I have some old posts about it, dealing for instance with my desire to read it on our trip to Europe in the fall of 2009, except that it wasn’t available on Kindle and I didn’t want to carry the hardcover around). One option a month ago, then, was to read Wolf Hall at last. Or, I could read a massive history I had bought just before deciding to read the Garfield book, Norman Davies’ Vanished Kingdoms: The Rise and Fall of States and Nations. (I’ll have more to say about it another time.) And there was John Jeremiah Sullivan’s collection Pulphead: Essays, which I had bought for Joel a few months ago and therefore could read as well on my Kindle.

But I had a different idea. I was determined to find something to read about Central Asia. Why? Well, that’s the topic for a massive post in its own right. The short version is that, with no particular plan in mind, I seem to keep reading history or travel books that treat regions near Central Asia without actually reading about Central Asia. For example, going back to the early months of Ron’s View, in December 2008 I wrote about Judith Herrin’s Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire, which I never did finish, owing to terminal boredom.

Two years later, I read Ian Frazier’s Travels in Siberia, and since then, Ted Conover’s The Routes of Man: Travels in the Paved World, Peter Hessler’s Country Driving: A Journey Through China From Farm to Factory, Eliza Griswold’s The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam, Miranda Carter’s George, Nicholas and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I, Max Egremont’s Forgotten Land: Journeys Among the Ghosts of East Prussia, Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, and Orlando Figes The Crimean War: A History.

In my post on Figes’ book, I commented:

Time and again, as I read the book, I would recognize the ground being laid for conflicts of the twentieth century. The Balkans. The Caucasus. Afghanistan. Recent developments such as the Chechen War and the 2008 conflicts between Russia, Georgia, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia all make more sense to me now. Not to mention that I know where they all are. I have a complete picture for the first time in my life of the geography of the Black Sea (which happens to be where my grandmother was born and spent the first part of her childhood, in Odessa). And for good measure, I’ve extended my picture eastward past the Caspian Sea into Central Asia, inspired in part by the book and in part by attending the Central Asian ikat exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum two weeks ago. Indeed, I can now name and locate all 15 former Soviet republics.

Now that I could finally picture the geographical relative positions of all the countries in Central Asia, it was time to learn more. Plus, that ikat exhibit left me with thrilling images of the architecture in Samarkand and Bukhara. I wanted to know about Uzbekistan (Herman Cain’s proud ignorance notwithstanding) and Turkmenistan and Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. Kazakhstan too, though that I thought I knew a little about (and not just thanks to Sacha Baron Cohen).

What to read? After a little searching, I was led the famous British travel writer Colin Thubron, who wrote about all five former Soviet republics of Central Asia in The Lost Heart of Asia shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, and who more recently covered some of the same ground in Shadow of the Silk Road.

Before heading to New York, I downloaded the opening portions of both books from Amazon. The narrower focus of the earlier book more closely matched my specific interest. But I feared that it would dwell too much on the conditions in the five countries in the immediate aftermath of their independence. The alternative, Shadow of the Silk Road, has the following description from the publisher’s website:

To travel the Silk Road, the greatest land route on earth, is to trace the passage not only of trade and armies but also of ideas, religions, and inventions. Making his way by local bus, truck, car, donkey cart, and camel, Colin Thubron covered some seven thousand miles in eight months—out of the heart of China into the mountains of Central Asia, across northern Afghanistan and the plains of Iran into Kurdish Turkey—and explored an ancient world in modern ferment.

My fear with this book was that I wasn’t really looking to read still more about China. The table of contents suggested that Thubron would take a long time to get out of there. Also, in passing from China to Afghanistan, Thubron traveled through only Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. Nonetheless, this seemed like the better bet. On the eve of our departure for New York, I downloaded it.

I have to say, Thubron really does take forever to move on from China. Every time he left a city, I thought, great, he’s going to get to the border. But no matter how far he traveled, the border never seemed to get closer.

Which has something to do with why I moved slowly myself. A few pages here, a few pages there. The book doesn’t have narrative drive, a lesson I was slow to accept. Now, at last, I have learned to be content with Thubron’s pace. And we’ve made some headway in recent nights: through Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, across the Amu Darya, and into Afghanistan.

Thubron isn’t much for filling in the history in big doses. He goes for drips instead, the picture slowly emerging of peoples and religions and cultures and languages and goods working their way slowly back and forth across the vast distances of Asia, national boundaries falling where they may, through accident or force but not logic.

Here are some passages I’ve marked that give some small sense of Thubron’s writing. From somewhere in China:

I listened to the river, and felt the traveler’s old excitement. The early Silk Road seemed to enter Central Asia as into somewhere wild and opaque. The great empires to east and west — China, Persia, Rome — petered out in its silence. The illusion was of a dark transition. But in fact this black hole in Asia’s heart nursed a delicate interdependence of nomad and settler. A distant turbulence at one end of the road trembled along its length like an electric current, so that the pressure of pastoral tribes along the Great Wall, in a relentless chain reaction, might unleash the Huns over Europe. A disaster could not occur in Asia, wrote Cicero, that did not shake the Roman economy to its foundations.

From Tamerlane’s grave in Samarkand:

The tsarists, and the Bolsheviks after them, entered a land without nations, where a state was only the outreach of a ruler. Its heart was not an abstract institution, but a living dynasty. Its frontiers were blurred opinions. Craving order from this multilingual soup, Moscow prescribed labels, tinkered with languages, allotted suitable heroes and carved out countries as best it could. By the time Uzbekistan lurched to independence in 1991, the nation was a full-blown Russian invention. Its rulers, part of the myth themselves, discovered legitimacy in the Soviet fantasy of a pre-existing Uzbekistan, embracing the glory of Tamerlane now, and fading back into an indefinite past.

Still in Samarkand:

You climb a stairway of intricate splendor. Its hexagonal stones are mellow underfoot. Here and there a willow brushes the path, or a swallow chirrups from a cupola. On either side the tomb facades converge in waterfalls of pure faience, sometimes only twelve feet apart. Their colours are turquoise and kingfisher blue, often on a dark blue field, tinged by olive or Pompeian red. Half close your eyes and you imagine this a street of the living, lined with mansions of inexplicable richness, their doors open. Sometimes their porches are lined by six or eight vertical bands of glazed terra-cotta, perforated with a spider’s delicacy, so that the whole building seems to glisten in a skein of blue lace. Over them a gallery of fifteenth-century ornament unfurls, interlocked flowers, a dusting of stars, tears, wheels, a lexicon of scripts. To the illiterate eye, calligraphy and foliage intertwine, words become leaf-stems, creepers blossom into letters.

I love that last image.

I will continue on my journey with Thubron. It may not be the journey I was looking for. And I don’t have the enthusiasm evinced by Christian Caryl in his New York Review review or Lorraine Adams in her NYT review, both from 2007. But I’m hooked at last.

Caro beckons. And Mantel. Though I may detour through Pulphead, Sullivan’s essay collection. A couple of weeks back, when I was bogged down in China, I dipped in a little and found his essay on Michael Jackson improbably thrilling. (Yes, Thriller/thrilling. I know. But that’s what was most thrilling, Sullivan’s discussion of the making of Thriller.)

Back to Afghanistan tonight.

I received my new issue of The New York Review of Books yesterday. The previous issue had come while we were away. In getting caught up on other fronts (including writing a series of posts on our time in North Carolina), I had failed to get far in that old issue. Fortunately, last night Joel mentioned that it contained an interesting article about Eisenhower, and this morning I read it first thing. I recommend it highly. (Alas, it’s behind the NYR paywall.) The article is a review by Thomas Powers of two recent books: Eisenhower: The White House Years, by Jim Newton, and Eisenhower in War and Peace, by Jean Edward Smith.

Whenever I think of Eisenhower, I recall the single most boring book I ever read, his memoirs. Looking him up in Amazon, I see that it must have been The White House Years: Mandate for Change, 1953-1956, from 1965, although I don’t recall that it only covered Eisenhower’s first term. What I remember is a frightfully thick paperback. And I remember learning about several events from my infancy and toddlerhood that I hadn’t read treatments of before, such as the end of the Korean War, the McCarthy hearings, and the Suez crisis. This wasn’t the place to learn the basics, which I would only make sense of years later. I don’t entirely remember what made the book so tedious. For that, I would need to have a new look.

In any case, back to the biographies and Powers’ review. Early on, Powers describes how Eisenhower acquired

a learned understanding, firmer than that of perhaps any other president, of the nature of the power wielded by nations—that thing, described by Thucydides, which explains why “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” Eisenhower himself would never have described what he knew in language so plain, but it is what marks the mind of the man who emerges from two new biographies.

… The education of Dwight David Eisenhower began with books—the tales of Hannibal and Caesar he loved as a child, the deeper study under [General] Fox Conner—but more important was his experience of war, which came late.

Powers continues with an overview of Eisenhower’s World War II experience and its lessons, a survey of Eisenhower’s handling of assorted international crises, and a concluding passage that captures Eisenhower’s greatness:

Eisenhower’s special gift was not for practice of the traditional military arts but for sensing the inertia of war—why it is so difficult to back away from threats of force, once issued, and almost impossible after shooting starts.

Respect for the danger of this inertia, deep enough to make a difference, seems to come only from direct personal experience. Even President Clinton’s secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, who had lived long enough to know better, thought armies could apply useful pressure. “What’s the point of having this superb military you’re always talking about,” she said once, “if we can’t use it?”

Eisenhower was surrounded by people who believed roughly the same thing, but he had learned respect for modern war as an all-or-nothing game. During his eight years in the White House he never seemed to get the big things wrong, but in the decades that have followed horrible examples abound. For all their differences, American presidents since Eisenhower seem to share an abiding temptation—they can’t let peace alone. They wish to look bold; defiance makes them pugnacious; and the military leaders promise quick victories with little pain.

We may imagine Eisenhower’s response, if he had been sitting in the room when Kennedy’s advisers told him they planned to overthrow Fidel Castro’s government by invading Cuba with a thousand men, or when they told him later to send a few thousand American soldiers to stave off defeat in Vietnam—but not too many, and as “advisers” only. Would Eisenhower have told Lyndon Johnson, oh yes, certainly, send hundreds of thousands of soldiers to do what Kennedy’s few could not? Would he have encouraged Johnson to help the Air Force pick bombing targets in North Vietnam? Would he have advised George W. Bush that seizure of Kabul and dispersion of the Taliban into the mountains were victory enough in Afghanistan? Would he have backed the urging of Cheney and Rumsfeld to send an army to invade Iraq, but not too big an army? What would Eisenhower say now about Iran?

The successors of Robert Taft share the dead senator’s views on cutting federal spending and celebrating the Christian religion, as well as his sullen dislike of such measures as Social Security, but (save Ron Paul) they are full of appetite for threatening Iran with America’s superb military. Mitt Romney was briefly in his youth a member of the Boy Scouts, but his time in uniform ended there. He avoided the Vietnam War through student deferments and thirty months as a Mormon missionary in France. But Romney supports tough action to back up tough talk on Iran, and once suggested that continued Iranian defiance on nuclear matters would merit a sharp rap “in the nature of blockade or a bombardment or surgical strikes of one kind or another.”

Hearing this, Eisenhower might have asked himself: Where do you begin?

I am, of course, no fan of Mitt Romney. Eisenhower surely would have much to teach him. But I have no illusion that Obama (or Hillary Clinton) is much better. Indeed, Romney’s dishonest attacks on Obama’s foreign policy notwithstanding, the essentials of their war strategies are likely to differ little, whichever is elected. We search in vain for a new Eisenhower, a voice of wisdom and maturity who can change our direction.

I’ve been writing a series of posts about our time in North Carolina last week. Thursday was Raleigh day, and I’ve already written about our visit to the State Capitol, built in 1840, as well as the state’s Legislative Building, which opened in 1963. The Legislative Building is two blocks north of the capitol building, with the North Carolina Museum of History, the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, and Bicentennial Mall occupying the intermediate block. As I have mentioned in several posts, the natural sciences museum is currently closed for two weeks in preparation for the opening of a new wing this Friday. Following our tour of the capitol, we headed to the history museum, which you see above with the Legislative Building beyond.

We entered a well-lit atrium running the length of the lobby, with exhibits straight back and on the floors above. From my review of the website a couple of weeks ago, I was most eager to see an exhibit called The Story of North Carolina. We stopped at the information desk, where the helpful guide unfolded a museum map, pointed to it on the map and to its opening behind her, then warned us that we could get spend the whole day there. The second floor has museum offices only, and there are more exhibits on the third floor, plus the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame.

We never did make it to the third floor. One definitely can spend the day in The Story of North Carolina. We contented ourself with two-and-a-half hours, cutting our time short since we had hopes of eating and getting to the North Carolina Museum of Art. Thus, the only part of the museum I can write about is that one exhibit.

Here are excerpts from the exhibit description at the website:

The Story of North Carolina, the largest exhibit ever produced at the N.C. Museum of History in Raleigh, opened to rave reviews in 2011. This permanent exhibit traces life in North Carolina from its earliest inhabitants through the 20th century. …

More than 14,000 years of the state’s history unfold through fascinating artifacts, multimedia presentations, dioramas, and hands-on interactive components. Additionally, two full-size historic houses and several re-created environments immerse museum visitors in places where North Carolinians have lived and worked. Yet the heart of The Story of North Carolina focuses on the people — both well-known and everyday citizens — who shaped the Tar Heel State.

Gilbert Waters’ 1903 Buggymobile (prototype automobile) is one of several objects in The Story of North Carolina that speak to the entrepreneurial spirit of Tar Heels.
…

Highlights in the first part of The Story of North Carolina include American Indian life, European settlement, piracy, the American Revolution and early 1800s farm life. The exhibit continues through the antebellum era, the Civil War, the rise of industry, the Great Depression, the two World Wars, and the Civil Rights movement.

As wonderful as the exhibit was — and it was — I have to say that there wasn’t much on the Civil Rights movement. Unless we missed a turn. Every so often as we made our way around, I would say to Gail that we’re only up to the Civil War, or 1900, and there’s still all of the Civil Rights movement to go through near the end. But then we got to the end and it wasn’t there. The exhibit ended with the Greensboro student sit-in at the Woolworth’s lunch counter.

No big deal, since we had gone to Greensboro two days earlier and seen the International Civil Rights Center & Museum , which fills that very Woolworth’s. And we really did need to eat and move on. Still, I was surprised.

As for what we did see, there were so many highlights. The houses you could walk through or look into were interesting, especially the slave house that was moved to the museum when a road was built that required its move. This was part of a whole section on the pre-Civil War North Carolina economy and slavery. There was good description of the tar and turpentine industry, making use of the local pine trees to serve the shipping industry. This included a tar spill and tar footprints leading off from it, across the main floor, with a sign explaining why North Carolinians are called tar heels. As for the slave house, several signs described the inhabitants and the lives they would have led.

I have failed to mention a key feature of the exhibit: classes and classes of school kids, coming in waves. They would race through, one group wearing red shirts, another some other identifying feature. Here’s a wave that must have a school assignment requiring photos, because every time you want to read a sign or examine an exhibit, another one cuts in front, holds up his or her cell phone, and takes a shot. Or a sequence of shots, panning the space. There’s a wave that has discovered how to trip the warning beepers in the houses. The slave house, for instance, can only be seen through two windows and a door. Put your arm far enough in through a window and you set off the alarm, which screams for 15 seconds. And then there are the families with the kids who use the signs as leaning posts: put both hands on the sign I’m trying to read, then lean way in to see the slave house better.

Oh well. Patience. They don’t stay long.

From antebellum North Carolina, one enters a room with a video about the start of war. NC was slow to join the Confederacy. But once shots were fired at Fort Sumter and Lincoln wanted to send troops through to South Carolina, North Carolina seceded. Exiting the video room (which one class decided to enter 3/4ths through the movie), one comes to the Civil War exhibits.

Perhaps the most powerful exhibits had to do with Reconstruction and its aftermath.

One whole room is devoted to what amounted to a coup by the Democratic Party in Wilmington in 1898 — the Wilmington Insurrection. The signs and photos told the story well. The video was powerful.

Then, on to the development of the twentieth-century North Carolina economy, based on the triad of textiles, tobacco, and furniture.

Again, excellent displays. An underlying theme was the change in the agricultural economy after the Civil War, the lack of opportunities other than sharecropping (a virtual indentured servitude), and the resulting rush of whites to cities to take factory jobs. There’s a depiction of a factory town, the owners imagining that they are taking care of white people with the company school, church, stores, etc. We then jump to the 1920s and enter the textile mill below to learn how the story developed. Longer hours, declining wages, child labor, union busting, deafening roar, damaged hearing and lungs, no health care. From indentured servitude to hell.

The factory floor you see is enhanced by mirrors. It’s surprisingly realistic in its sense of space. And there’s a button to push that gives you about 45 seconds of noise and vibrating floor, recreating the conditions you read about.

Next up: World War I, the Depression, World War II. Oh, regarding WWII, there’s a big map showing the German U-boat attacks on ships off the coast of North Carolina and a button to push to hear the story.

Soon, we’re staring at a portion of the Greensboro Woolworth’s lunch counter, and then, in one final room, there’s a continuous loop video about the post-war state economy. From there, out to the blindingly bright lobby. For us, time to go.

We headed down a floor and out to Pharoah’s Grill, a semi-fast-food restaurant that is built into the museum building but accessible from the Bicentennial Mall. Not the greatest lunch, but an interesting menu, and maybe we didn’t choose well.

Next up: our visit to the North Carolina Museum of Art.

North Carolina Capitol, Raleigh

I’m slowly writing a series of posts on our trip to North Carolina last week. I’ve written about our dinner last Monday at Lantern; our visits last Tuesday to the Duke Homestead and Nasher Museum of Art in Durham, our visits last Wednesday to the Greensboro Historical Museum, the International Civil Rights Center & Museum, and the Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro; and dinner last Wednesday at Crook’s Corner in Chapel Hill. Next: more posts, on the places we visited during our Raleigh outing last Thursday.

We arrived in Raleigh a little after 10:00 last Thursday morning, coming in from the west past the Carolina Hurricanes hockey arena, the North Carolina State Fairgrounds, and the NC State ag school. Pretty open spaces, no urban feel. The transition was sudden, and in moments we were passing by the north side of the main NC State campus, with lots of traffic, coming in on Hillsborough.

The State Capitol occupies a square block in the center of the city, with streets from north, south, east, and west deadending at the block. Hillsborough is the street coming in from the west. I imagined we would see the capitol from afar, but between its modest scale and the trees, it emerged only when we were two blocks away.

We had some trouble finding a parking lot. All the visible lots were marked for employees only. Eventually, as we widened our search, we found a private garage, circled up to a high level, and parked. Once we found the elevator and came down, we found that we had exited just a half block south of the capitol. (We also discovered that what we had exited from is called a parking deck, not a parking garage. I’d be curious to know just how broad a regionalism this is.)

The main entrance to the capitol is from the east. A couple of school groups were lining up to enter. We squeezed past them, went through the east door, and got in line at the security desk behind a family of three from England. When it was our turn, the security guard asked for ID from one of us. I gave her our license and wondered what systems her computer tied into. Could she log into the NSA files and review my email and bills? I suppose not, but I know she spent a good half minute doing something at her computer before okaying us. We went through the metal detector, beyond which was a counter and a woman offering information. She gave us a guide to the building and a brief orientation, telling us to come back if we had questions.

I soon realized that tours were only available for classes, of which there were several working their way around the building. Looking at the website now, I see that tours for the general public are given only on Saturdays. Since Gail wanted to use a restroom and the women’s room was one floor up, that’s where we started our tour.

While Gail was touring the restroom, I proceeded to the central atrium and looked in on the legislative rooms to north and south, the Senate and the House. They were beautiful.

North Carolina Senate, 1840-1961

Gail joined me and we went back and forth between the two, walking in as far as was accessible. There are plaques on the wall listing the members during the 1840 and 1961 sessions. Had I read the pamphlet I was holding, I would have realized this, but the legislature moved out of the building after 1961. My other clue was the fact that there is a new Legislative Building two blocks north, which we had driven past in our search for a parking deck.

There are public galleries on the third floor. We couldn’t enter them, but could look through the doorways and down on the two meeting rooms. Also on the third floor, to the west, was the meeting space for the state supreme court, and to the east, the state library. The court moved out of the building early on, with the space converted to storage for the state geological collection. A sign explained that the state hired a geologist to survey the state and look for economic opportunities. The collection has since been moved to UNC, but representatives remain in the room.

State Capitol 3rd floor, geology collection

I’ve failed to explain that the earlier state capitol building had burned in a fire in 1831. The replacement was built between 1833 and 1840. The state library had gone up in flames with the building, except for the books a particular legislator had taken out that were a year overdue, or so the sign explained. His books and a donation from former president Madison formed the nucleus of the new collection.

State Capitol 3rd floor, state library

The supreme court moved out, the legislature moved out, but the governor remains. Back on the first floor, we looked down a closed off hall to current-use offices. Across the way, a class of kids was looking into a room. We joined the line, then had the space to ourselves, staring into the array of furniture, not yet understanding that this was the real, live governor’s office. A sign explained that this and the not-visible room beyond were the offices of the governor and governor’s assistant, with the governor in the room beyond until, more recently (the 1940s? I don’t remember) the governor switched them at which point this room became the governor’s office. It has a pair of doors that swing open when the governor isn’t in, revealing the doorway we were standing at and looking through. To the left of what you see below is a large desk and additional furniture that it was difficult to make out.

North Carolina governor's office

We completed our tour by chatting with the woman who had given us the still-unopened pamphlet at the start. She was extremely knowledgeable, and funny. She said something about giving tours on Saturdays, which I now realize makes sense, since those are the days of public tours. She also filled in some of the gaps in our understanding. We learned about the construction, all stone. None of that pine that burned down a few years earlier. And we learned that the old House and Senate rooms are available for rent. I asked if we could hold parties there. No. No food or drink. Just meetings.

Here are two of the many stories she told: In the early years, there was of course no indoor plumbing. To use bathrooms, those working in the building had to head outside to a privy in the far corner of the property. In particular, that meant those poor judges on the third floor had a long ways to go and a hard climb back. No wonder they moved out early! And those books that President Madison donated? Well, you know, Dolley was a NC native. After the fire, she was so sad. Every night — our guide imagined — Dolley would look at James in just the right way, with just the right voice, and ask if he wouldn’t want to give some of his collection to the state. You know, the way women do. Until he said yes, sure. I suggested that maybe the guide wasn’t supposed to let me in on the secret ways of women. Too late.

The block immediately north of the capitol connects the capitol to the legislature. Picture this intermediate block as three north-south stripes. The stripe to the east, running north-south, is the North Carolina Museum of History. The stripe to the west, also running north-south, is the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. In-between is a walkway called the bicentennial mall, connecting the capitol and legislature blocks. It’s a lovely arrangement. See below for views north through the mall to the legislative building

North Carolina Legislative Building

and back south through the mall to the capitol, with the museums to the sides.

North Carolina Capitol

From the capitol, we would spend a couple of hours in the history museum. Then we went into the legislative building, pictured in closeup below.

After checking in, we walked up along staircase that leads directly to the third floor. To east and west are the public galleries for the House and Senate. They were locked, but we could look through the glass and down to the legislative spaces on the second floor. They lack the elegance of their 1840 counterparts, but were more attractive than I anticipated.

I skipped over our time in the North Carolina Museum of History. More in the next post.

Historic Woolworth's, site of Greensboro's civil rights museum

[Photo by me]

I just wrote about the first stop of our visit to Greensboro, North Carolina, last Wednesday, the Greensboro Historical Museum. This was a warmup for our day’s principal destination, the International Civil Rights Center & Museum. It is on the site of the Woolworth’s where four North Carolina A&T students staged their historic lunch counter sit-in in 1960. As I explained in writing about the museum two months ago, we had seen a portion of the lunch counter two years ago at the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., and I was eager to see the rest.

One can visit the civil rights museum by guided tour only. Three weeks ago, I called to reserve a 1:00 PM tour. It emerged that this was unnecessary. We arrived around 12:45 PM, went into the store, and stood in line behind a family of three and a man. They bought tickets for the tour, I announced that we had a reservation, the woman at the counter nodded her head, and sold us two tickets. A few minutes later, the six of us being the lone guests, our tour began.

The guide was a stern taskmaster. She lectured us on the house rules — no photographs, no touching, etc. — then led us down the escalator from the lobby to the basement. Over the next 75 minutes, she would take us into a sequence of spaces, all of which was designed to allow for unescorted study, but we had to glance quickly at any of the written explanations, for she would give us her version of the story and hurry us on. Not that she did a bad job. In fact, she was an excellent guide. The problem with this arrangement was simply that there was so much more to see and read about than we were given the time to do.

Here’s a brief rundown of the tour.

1. At the foot of the escalator is an orientation space. Our guide spoke about slavery and we could see, through the clear wall, a scene with shackles where slaves would be auctioned. On another wall was more orienting information, I can’t remember what. I tried to walk closer to one object, but was told to stand back or I would trigger the opening of the door to the next room.

2. We entered the Hall of Shame. Well, first, our guide told us we would enter it and warned us of graphic images. She looked sharply at the parents of the family of three, seemingly expecting them to offer to skip it, then she asked if they were prepared to enter. They said sure. It has graphic images indeed, from a black man burned in Nebraska some time in the 1800s to Emmitt Till. We stopped at a few, received the guide’s commentary, then moved on.

3. We took seats in the next space to watch a video enactment of the evening before the Woolworth’s sit-in, with the four young men in a dorm room discussing their plan. They go over the reasons for it, the risks they would be taking, then commit to proceeding. Three, we learn, were locals, with the fourth from New York. As the video ends, the wall on which it was projected fades away and we see into a re-creation of their room. The NCA&T dorm that they lived in was demolished, but first some furniture was salvaged and is on display in this exhibit. But before we could walk closer for a look, we were taken to a long hall, our guide explaining that as we walk it, we should imagine the walk the four students took from their dorm to the Woolworth’s.

4. The hall has large photos on the walls, the last ones being Gandhi on one side and Martin Luther King on the other. We stopped at the end as the guide recited the names of the photographed people, all from the US civil rights movement other than Gandhi.

5. From the hall, we took an escalator up, arriving at the Woolworth’s. Or rather, a large space that had been the Woolworth’s, with a long lunch counter running along two perpendicular walls. I don’t recall ever seeing such a huge lunch counter. The two runs of seats were each at least 25 seats long, perhaps 30. Re-created on the walls were prices of items, 5-cent Pepsis and 85-cent turkey club sandwiches. The seats alternated in color between green and orange. We were told that three sets of four seats had been removed, one in the Smithsonian, one in the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh, the third I didn’t catch where. But we saw no gaps. Had they been filled with seats from other Woolworth’s? Were these the original seats? It’s all a puzzle.

We watched a video on the wall behind the counter that told the sit-in story, with actors re-enacting the scene. The four students sitting down, being refused service, but staying put. An imaginary African-American waitress urging them to leave so they don’t make trouble for everyone. An imaginary white waitress being nasty. A white woman sitting amongst them who expresses support for what they’re doing. More students joining in subsequent days, bringing their books to study and staying all day, with men shown leaning in with unfriendly faces. The store manager studying his books and deciding this was bad for business. The decision to integrate.

I’ve skipped over some of the background. Everyone could shop in the store. It’s only sitting at the counter that was closed to blacks. They could order food at one location in the counter, receiving it and having to stand around in the store to eat it.

6. This was the highlight of the tour, and I thought the end, but through the next door lay a detailed exhibit on the Jim Crow south. There were sections on travel by bus and train, staying in hotels, schools, medical care, voting, … . Each had photos and signs, buttons to push for narratives. I think one could spend a good two hours going through it all. But once again we were raced around by our guide, who highlighted some of the photos and history from each section. For instance, we got to see the test that potential voters would have to pass to be allowed to vote, a hopeless test. I asked what about whites who failed, and the guide explained that children of voters had the right to vote, so they wouldn’t have to take the test. It’s new voters who had to pass, excluding many blacks and some whites.

7. Lastly, there was a room with photos of civil rights efforts worldwide. I entered it prematurely, setting off the video that plays along one wall. The guide made some closing remarks, then we came out to the lobby.

If only we had the leisure to wander on our own. But still, a great visit.

I got off to a good start in blogging about our New York-North Carolina trip last week (for instance, writing about the Duke Homestead and Nasher Museum of Art), which we visited in Durham on Tuesday), but then stopped dead. Let me try to get Ron’s View re-started here.

On Wednesday, we drove the not-quite-fifty miles from Chapel Hill west to Greensboro, with the principal goal of visiting the International Civil Rights Center & Museum. We had reserved a 1:00 PM tour and arrived early so we could explore Greensboro ahead of time. As we drove around the downtown area, we passed the stadium of the Greensboro Grasshoppers minor league baseball team, the principal downtown office buildings, and then, rounding a corner, a grouping of log-cabin buildings in a small park.

That last item caught our eye. We parked in the first available spot on the street, walked back, and on reading the sign for a nineteenth-century home, realized that this collection was part of the Greensboro Historical Museum. Indeed, we had driven past the museum moments before spotting the house. It was the large brick building just behind us, and the park contained their collection of historic buildings.

In Mary Lynn Richardson Park, see sculpture and stroll the walkways around the Francis McNairy House, originally located near today’s Guilford Courthouse National Military Park. Inside, discover furnishings and decorative arts from the late 1700s and early 1800s. Built as a log house, it now looks much as it would have in the 1820s, when the family renovated their home and added clapboard siding.

The Hockett Blacksmith and Woodworking Shops were once part of a flourishing family farm south of Greensboro. Open for scheduled tours and during special events, the buildings serve up a helping of historic crafts that were essential to and every community.

Realizing that we had stumbled on the history museum, we left the park and entered. A kindly older gentleman with a local accent gave us a museum map and oriented us a bit. There wasn’t much on the main floor. The lobby. Restrooms and offices. A century-old cadillac. We climbed the stairs, at the top of which was a display of the Metcalf-Cooke Silver Collection and an adjacent display of some clothing of Dolley Madison:

Before suffragettes and feminists revolutionized the American landscape, one local woman influenced the flavor of our nation.

Icon. Fashionista. Heroine. Guilford County native, and the only First Lady born in North Carolina, Dolley Madison is one of the area’s most celebrated native daughters. Wife of our 4th president, James Madison, Dolley led a life filled with love and acclaim, but also with hardship.

Let Dolley’s personal possessions, collected with care through the years, introduce you to the part of her life marked by privilege, parties and high tea. A calling card case and pair of silk slippers will transport you into the social swirl of her time as First Lady.

Then, discover why Dolley spent her final years in near-poverty and how her possessions, first sold at auction, were later donated to the Greensboro Historical Museum.

Beyond these is a large semi-circular space three historical rooms from North Carolina homes re-created on the outer semi-circle. I’m not seeing a link to them at the museum website. Two, a living room and dining room, were from a wealthy person’s home, circa 1850. The third was an all-purpose room from a home, circa 1800. They were well done, and I imagined them to be the museum highlight. Gail had drifted off to look at the pottery in the interior of the semi-circle. It was an exhibition of Jugtown Pottery:

In the Piedmont region of North Carolina, the words “Jugtown” and “pottery” are practically synonymous. Nearly 100 years ago a couple from New York City visited the nearby community of Seagrove, North Carolina, and stepped in to save what was then a dying tradition of handmade pottery. Then, almost 50 years later, local collectors Joanne and Arthur Bluethenthal visited Seagrove’s Jugtown Pottery and, with a discerning eye, began to purchase a range of beautifully handcrafted clay pieces. The decorative and functional designs illustrate the rich artistic heritage that is a source of pride for Greensboro, the entire state and the nation.

Oh, I didn’t mention Otto Zenke’s miniature rooms, wonderful furnished rooms made by the prominent interior designer back around the 1930s. I thought we’d seen everything on the floor after the pottery, so we headed to the stairway for the top floor and the Civil War collection, only to see a doorway leading to what turns out to be the museum’s centerpiece, the exhibition Voices of a City. We spent over an hour going through it, would happily have stayed longer.

“What would a city say if it could speak?” asked the writer O. Henry. Indeed, what would Greensboro’s generations have to say about the place, its people and events? Through Voices of a City: Greensboro North Carolina, you will discover new interpretations from more than 300 years of local history.

What may seem like ordinary objects tell extraordinary stories. An ornate shell necklace traded centuries ago by one tribe to another. An illuminated German Bible essential for worship by non-English speakers. A rifle fired during a 1781 battle for independence. A desk used by a newspaper editor who decried slavery publicly yet owned slaves through marriage. A loom that wove denim for apparel worn around the world. A seat from a civil rights sit-in that changed the nation. A flight attendant’s handbook that survived the crash of United Airlines Flight 93 on September 11, 2001.

The exhibit does a great job of laying out the human history of the region, from the Native Indian life to today. The wagon route down from Philadelphia through the Piedmont area of North Carolina to Augusta, Georgia, that brought settlers from 1800 onward; the principal settler groups — Quakers, Scots-Irish Presbyterians, Germans, and of course enslaved Africans; Civil War and reconstruction; the growth of the textile industry (denim overalls, Wrangler jeans); Vick’s Vaporub (invented in Greensboro); mills.

See the photos below (and at top) from the gallery photo tour.

There was so much to see, read, and learn. What a superb local history museum!

Bonsack Machine and operator, c. 1880's

[General Negative Collection, North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh, NC]

I wrote last night about our arrival yesterday in Chapel Hill. This morning we drove over to Durham to see the Duke Homestead State Historic Site and the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University.

We arrived at the Duke Homestead at 10:30. From the website, I knew there’s a 15-minute video shown every half hour and a tour of the grounds once an hour. Plus, there are people on the grounds in period dress, whether to demonstrate the workings of a tobacco farm or to answer questions, I wasn’t sure. That all may be, but not today. We arrived to an empty building. After a minute, a woman appeared from somewhere and, after a long pause during which she figured out that we didn’t know the routine, asked if we were first-time visitors. I said yes, and said that if I understood from the sign, we were in time for a 10:45 am showing of the video and an 11:15 tour. Well, yes, she explained that would be true if she weren’t the only person working there today, but with her alone, there would be no tours. However, we could have the self-guided tour pamphlet and walk the grounds on our own. The only thing we would miss was a tour of the inside of the Washington Duke home.

No tour. No Duke home. No people in period dress. That was disappointing. But admission is free.

We proceeded past the building’s entry into the tobacco museum and began to view the exhibits. Soon it was time to sit in the auditorium for the video.

The video turns out to be something of a tease. It introduces and races past a sequence of enticing topics. Tobacco and Indians. Tobacco and colonists. Tobacco and World War I. Tobacco and the history of advertising. Tobacco and Washington Duke, Civil War POW returning to his old property to start a farm, only to adopt a new cigarette rolling machine and build the greatest tobacco company in the world. The Duke family and the start of a university. Tobacco and auctions. Tobacco as the heart of the Durham economy. Tobacco, the 1964 surgeon-general’s report, and a changing industry. Declining tobacco and Durham, city of medicine. Declined tobacco and Durham revitalized with factories and warehouses converted to condos and stores. The End.

Wow! What a story! A 500-page book could hardly do it justice. A 15-minute video? More please.

The museum awaited, and filled in some of the gaps. A little space was set up like a 1950′s American living room, complete with old TV and a 1957 McCall’s Magazine. Push a button and cigarette ads start playing on the TV. Lucky Strike, with the message pounding away that Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco, or LSMFT. Winston: Tastes good like a cigarette should. Marlboro: horses, the Marlboro Man, and Marlboro Country. Despicable products, but those sure were fantastic ads.

What made Washington Duke a success was the adoption his son urged upon him of James Bonsall’s automated cigarette rolling machine, and the museum doesn’t disappoint: it has one on display. Plus several other machines. And more buttons to push to have old-time cigarette industry workers tell their stories. The museum space is small, yet full of excellent displays. But the outdoors beckoned.

We headed out, walked about 100 yards, and came to a row of buildings briefly described in our pamphlet. The curing barn, circa 1870. The packhorse. The first factory, a reconstruction. The third factory, used from 1869 to 1874, at which point Duke moved to what became downtown Durham. The house, built in 1852 and expanded in 1860. The smokehouse. The 1860 well house. The grape arbor, which looked fairly new The ash hopper.

The pamphlet explained that when the Dukes moved in 1874, they sold the house, but in 1931, Washington Duke’s granddaughter Mary Duke Biddle bought it back She donated it to Duke University, which gave it to the state in 1974, thereby allowing us to visit today.

I reached the halfway point in the book I’m currently reading, Candice Millard’s Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President, as we began our descent into JFK yesterday. It’s been on my mind to read since Janet Maslin’s enthusiastic NYT review last September. And then she put it at the top of her 2011 top ten around Thanksgiving, calling it a “staggering tale about the American presidency, adding that Millard

zeroes in on what other historians overlook. Ms. Millard digs deeply into the turmoil that got James A. Garfield elected, the lunacy that got him shot and the medical malfeasance that turned a minor wound into a mortal one. Her story is so full of outsize figures — not least of them the unexpectedly noble Garfield — that Alexander Graham Bell is only a bit player.

It’s a short book, 260 pages. I would have welcomed more details on Garfield’s time in Congress, or his duties as president of the university that is now Case Western Reserve, or the 1880 election. But Millard isn’t writing a biography, and doesn’t claim to. Indeed, the title does a perfectly good job of describing what Millard is writing. And so far, she’s doing a fine job of it.

As evidence of that, I was so caught up in the stage she had set for Garfield’s shooting that I kept hoping for a change of route, an alteration of circumstance, that would prevent Guiteau from firing the gun. Alas, Millard failed to change history and the shots went off on schedule.

This morning I got a few pages into the second half of the book, learning of the medical attention Garfield received at Washington’s Baltimore and Potomac train station in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. Perhaps as further evidence of Millard’s story-telling prowess, I put my Kindle aside with the thought that I may be just as happy not reading further. The medical mishaps are already too painful to learn about, to say nothing of the pain they caused Garfield.

I’ll keep going. I’m eager to learn more about Chester Arthur. I’ve already learned what a mediocrity he was before the vice-presidency was thrust on him. The book is a valuable reminder of the immense importance of the vice-presidential selection process, and none too soon, as another round soon waits us. (I wonder anew what McCain was thinking.)