Category Archives: Books

A One-Man Army

It’s a good time to be Alexander Hamilton. The Broadway musical that bears his name was nominated last week for 16 Tony awards, this after winning a Pulitzer Prize for drama. The US Treasury department announced last month that Hamilton will remain on the ten-dollar bill. Andrew Jackson didn’t fare so well, being displaced by Harriet Tubman. Whether he deserved that fate or not is a topic for another day. Hamilton apparently survived the cut not because of his extraordinary contributions to the establishment of this republic—and they were extraordinary—but because of the enormous popularity of the musical. One wonders—at least this one does—how it could possibly have come to that. Yet here we are.

Why did it take his name in lights on Broadway and rendering his story through hip-hop for Americans to finally take stock of Alexander Hamilton? No other Founder has been treated with less national respect than Hamilton even as treating the Founders with disrespect has become de rigeour. How about this? Forget about taking him off the ten dollar bill—he should be on every single denomination of currency, starting with the penny and moving up from there. We wouldn’t have a currency without him, nor perhaps a country to go with it.

The musical is based upon Ron Chernow’s justly lauded 2004 book, Alexander Hamilton, the most recent—and most successful—attempt to re-position Hamilton in the national pantheon, building upon the work of previous Hamiltonian scholars: Broadus Mitchell’s two-volume Alexander Hamilton: Youth to Maturity, 1755-1788 (1957) and Alexander Hamilton: The National Adventure, 1788-1804 (1962); John C. Miller’s Alexander Hamilton: Portrait in Paradox (1959); Forrest McDonald’s quirky Alexander Hamilton: A Biography (1979); Robert Hendrickson’s quirkier The Rise and Fall of Alexander Hamilton (1981, based upon his 1976 two-volume work, Hamilton I: 1757-1789 and Hamilton II: 1789-1804); and Stephen Knott’s excellent summary of Hamilton’s ever-changing place in American culture, Alexander Hamilton and the Persistence of Myth (2002).

Chernow’s is a rather glowing portrait that I read recently (and largely agree with) but it is certainly not uncritical. He takes Hamilton to task for all manner of things, from his bad judgment in attacking John Adams in print just before the 1800 election to his horrendously bad judgment in carrying on an adulterous affair with Maria Reynolds and then confessing to it in print. No saint, this guy.

And yet, even if he’s only half the abolitionist or financial genius that Chernow says he was, as some recent critics have charged, he was still light years ahead of nearly every other one of the Founders on slavery and finance, and that’s saying something.

Why does Hamilton remain one of the most controversial figures in American history? Why has it been so hard to give him his due, and why among the Founders do we seem so reluctant to acknowledge his contributions and, yes, even to celebrate him?

Mainly because of that other guy. You know who I’m talking about. One is forbidden to talk about Hamilton without juxtaposing him with Thomas Jefferson. They are the Abbott & Costello of American history, inextricably linked in an eternal manologue about “Who’s On First” as it relates to the political culture of this country—large government vs. small, strong central government vs. states’ rights. Hamilton is always framed as Jefferson’s foil, as someone whose ideas had to be defeated so that Jeffersonian Democracy could reign supreme. I’ve written elsewhere about these two and their rivalry and how it still informs modern America.

From his own day to this, Hamilton has been accused of being elitist, a monarchist, out of step with America, hot headed, a plutocrat who cared nothing about ordinary people, enslaved to the monied classes and Wall Street. His speech at the 1787 Constitutional Convention in which he spoke favorably of a president for life is trotted out every so often to prove the point. It seems pretty clear to me, though Hamilton never expressly said so, that he gave faux support to an extreme view simply to make James Madison’s controversial Virginia plan look moderate by comparison (just as some believed that Donald Trump made Ted Cruz look reasonable). If Hamilton was a monarchist, why in the world would he have written 51 of the 85 Federalist Papers in a white heat in support of ratification? That most of these accusations about his supposed elitism came from slaveowners—and their subsequent supporters—who were somehow deemed more democratic than he should not surprise us. Hamilton’s story, like most, is far more complicated than that.

Until recently, most Americans were wholly ignorant of Hamilton and his contributions to American history, other than some vague and passing recognition of his image on the ten dollar bill. Even that was in jeopardy till Lin-Manuel Miranda made him a star. There is no Alexander Hamilton Memorial in Washington DC, and his home and grave in New York City suffered decades of neglect, though attendance at both are on the uptick, thanks again to the Broadway show.

Despite Hamilton’s small stature, when you try to come to grips with him there’s a lot to get your arms around. Jefferson is almost always introduced by his long list of accomplishments, and they are many. But Jefferson came from money, status, and connections. His mother was a Randolph, and he was given every advantage that an oldest son of the Virginia gentry could be given. It would have been almost criminal if he hadn’t reached great heights.

Hamilton’s grave at Trinity Church Cemetery in Manhattan.

Hamilton’s achievements are just as notable but were all attained without pre-existing advantages: born in poverty in the West Indies to an unmarried mother, he went on to become a student at what became Columbia University, a veteran of the Continental Army, captain of artillery, military aid to General Washington, battalion commander at Yorktown, New York legislator, member of Congress, attorney, member of the 1787 Constitutional Convention, signer of the Constitution, author of the majority of the Federalist Papers, first Secretary of the Treasury, founder of the American financial system that created the smoothly running machinery of a modern nation-state, founder of the bank of New York, and co-founder of the New York Evening Post newspaper. His time in the Continental Army–including starving and freezing at Valley Forge due in part to a weak national government–informed and shaped his nationalist thinking for the rest of his life. Jefferson wasn’t there.

Like Jefferson, he was a renaissance man as well: poet, essayist, abolitionist, educator, renowned orator, foreign policy expert, major general in the Army, voracious reader and writer. His writing achievements are staggering both in scope and volume. Though he died at 49, his collected writings and papers cover 32 thick published volumes running to 22,000 pages. His ability to turn out massive and articulate pamphlets and essays on incredibly difficult and complicated legal and financial subjects was nothing less than legendary. Hamilton never took any intellectual fortress by siege when he could attack it and overwhelm it head on. It was for good reason that his arch-rival Jefferson referred to Hamilton as a “host unto himself,” a one-man army. At the height of his powers no one could touch him, and the Sage of Monticello didn’t even try.

Another notable Hamilton difference from Jefferson: As I mentioned, Hamilton was born and grew up in the West Indies, where he witnessed slavery in all its brutality and cruelty first hand. In doing so he was no different than most of the other Founders. Unlike Jefferson, however, Hamilton loathed what he saw and became a pronounced opponent of slavery in a way that Jefferson never did. And yet it was Hamilton who was called elitist, not Jefferson. It was Jefferson who was called the champion of the common man, though he himself was never remotely common, while Hamilton raised himself up from poverty and never owned slaves.

Hamilton’s home in Manhattan, now the Hamilton Grange National Memorial.

It’s also worth noting that until Jefferson arrived in New York to become Secretary of State in March 1790, Hamilton filled that role as well. He easily became the Washington administration’s first and most influential foreign policy voice. It’s my belief that Hamilton could have filled all four of Washington’s cabinet positions—treasury, state, war department, attorney general—by himself. And served on the Supreme Court. None of the other cabinet officers could have done the same with nearly the expertise that he could. Remember too that he became Secretary of the Treasury at age 34. Imagine that happening now.

Jefferson from the first acknowledged and respected Hamilton’s enormous intellectual gifts. He called the Federalist Papers “the best commentary on the principles of government which was ever written.” As the workings of Hamilton’s financial system became better known, Jefferson’s unhappiness with it grew (though he never really understood it), and he and James Madison (Hamilton’s one-time ally) openly opposed it.

Lafayette, Hamilton, and Washington on Morristown Green, New Jersey.

Jefferson, unlike Hamilton, hated open conflict, and he let Madison do most of the heavy lifting when it came to taking up the pen of opposition in the newspapers. But nobody could match Hamilton when it came to words, and it was here that Jefferson acknowledged Hamilton’s superior skills as a one-man army, an intellectual battering ram that no one could deflect. Eventually they both carped and complained loudly to President Washington, who grew weary of the open warfare in his cabinet.

But Jefferson has never had to rely on a Broadway musical to keep his brand front and center in American culture. He commands our attention because of the soaring language of the Declaration of Independence and its appeal to the universal rights of man. It calls to us in a way that Hamilton’s political and economic treatises never will. Hamilton’s passages in the Federalist might still be quoted in Supreme Court decisions, but they don’t touch our patriotic and romantic heartstrings the way Jefferson’s Olympian pronouncements do.

It’s the nature of his achievements that has made it difficult for Hamilton to climb up on Mount Rushmore. It’s like celebrating your accountant—the work they do is invaluable yet easily overlooked. They’re hardly ever invited to the party. Yet nobody gets paid without them.

There’s also no getting around the fact that Hamilton was undoubtedly something of an arrogant jerk when he wanted to be. He married up—Elizabeth Schuyler of the politically powerful New York clan—and then broke the cardinal rule by forgetting that he did, dragging his wife and ultimately his reputation through the mire of his adulterous affair with Maria Reynolds. The manner in which he left Washington’s staff during the war, his inability to overlook even mild criticism, his touchy ego that was sensitive to slights, his defensiveness and combativeness that almost no other Founder had—all of it can be traced to his ongoing insecurity based on his shaky West Indian origins, most of which has only been discovered over the last century. Among his contemporaries—Adams, Washington, Jefferson, Madison—none of them knew all the circumstances of his humble birth and never understood how far he had risen.

Hamilton’s statue at the US Treasury building in Washington DC.

Hamilton’s achievements as the first Secretary of Treasury don’t sound like the stuff of legend today, but to an infant country trying to stave off financial bankruptcy and take its place among the great powers of the world, they were staggering. He seized the initiative in a way that startled everyone, and not surprisingly his enemies grew as fast as his reputation for genius.

Chernow says that Hamilton is the closest America has ever come to a prime minister, and it’s hard to argue with him. As America’s first president, Washington stayed above the political fray, believing himself head of state; Hamilton eagerly filled the void and became head of government. In a little over five combatively controversial years, he created from scratch the framework of the economic colossus that would one day bestride the world: a budget system, a funded debt, a tax system, a central bank, a customs service, and a coast guard.

Everything he proposed raised constitutional issues, some of which we’re still grappling with. The new Constitution wasn’t clear about a lot of things, and Hamilton seized the moment, insisting that the Constitution had the flexibility to meet the new nation’s needs, to create a national system necessary for economic growth. Having helped write and ratify the Constitution, he zeroed in on three of the document’s more nebulous clauses: the necessary and proper clause, the general welfare clause, and the commerce clause.

Hamilton’s statue in New York’s Central Park.

Of Hamilton’s great “reports” that he wrote during his tenure—among them the Report on Public Credit (40,000 words written in three months, complete with mathematical equations) and the far-seeing Report on Manufactures—none carried more weight for the future United States than his “Opinion on the Constitutionality of the Bank.” Get past the wonky title for a moment. Almost everything the United States government has done, from that day to this, that is not specifically spelled out in the Constitution but that speaks to a strong central government that can meet the needs of a vast and powerful people—from the Federal Reserve to the New Deal, from making sure that human body parts are not in the food you eat, to screening terrorists at the airport, from Medicare to Social Security–derives from the implied powers of Hamilton’s interpretation of the Constitution. Thank him or hate him for it as you please.

Hamilton statue, Cuyahoga County courthouse, Cleveland, Ohio.

None of Hamilton’s proposals raised more raised tangled constitutional questions than the proposed Bank of the United States, which would solidify the relationship between the national government and the business classes. Banks and the financial foundation upon which they function are such an established part of our daily lives that we forget how controversial they once were—though one need look no farther than Bernie Sanders’ campaign rhetoric and the financial meltdown of 2008 to help us remember.

Hamilton thought a national bank essential for the fledgling nation’s long-term health. The proposed Bank of the United States’ charter breezed through the Senate but met stiff opposition in the House, led by Madison, by then a full-throated ally of Jefferson and adversary of Hamilton’s. Was the bank constitutional? Madison, a strict constructionist who certainly knew a thing or two about the Constitution, said it was not, though he couldn’t prevent its passage in the House. The bill landed on President Washington’s desk, and opponents howled for a veto.

Washington found himself on unsteady ground and polled his cabinet on the bill’s constitutionality: Attorney General Edmund Randolph voted against. Jefferson of course opposed it as a monopoly and a charter similar to those granted by kings. As for necessary and proper, Jefferson said that Hamilton was mis-using the clause; a measure had to be really necessary, not just convenient; it needed to be indispensable. Washington then sent Randolph and Jefferson’s objections to Hamilton and asked for a reply.

Hamilton statue on Boston’s Commonwealth Avenue.

The One-Man Army met this challenge as he met all who opposed him: head on. In just over a week he penned a response that came in at 15,000 words, nearly 40 printed pages. It was a manifesto that would echo and re-echo through the Supreme Court opinions of Chief Justice John Marshall, down to the present day.

Hamilton said that the Constitution gave the government the means to attain the ends necessary to govern, otherwise government and ultimately society would dissolve. There were, he said, implied powers in addition to those enumerated in the Constitution, and that government had the right to employ all means necessary to carry out powers that were actually mentioned in the Constitution. The Bank, he said, was necessary and proper to the well being of the financial stability of the United States. To take Jefferson’s view would paralyze the government (remember here who had served and starved at Valley Forge and who had not), rendering the very idea of a national government a joke, much as it had been under the Articles of Confederation. The Bank, Hamilton said, would make it possible for the United States to do four things explicitly mentioned by the Constitution: collect taxes, borrow money, regulate trade among states, and support an army and navy. To do otherwise would cripple American business—and with it the American nation. Washington, staggered under the weight of Hamilton’s verbiage, spent a whole day pouring over the report, and signed the bank bill into law the next day in February 1791.

A century later Henry Cabot Lodge called Hamilton’s doctrine of implied powers “the most formidable weapon in the armory of the Constitution, capable of conferring on the federal government powers of almost any extent”—words that to this day can strike fear or hope into the hearts of every American, depending on their political persuasion. Hamilton’s language found its way into John Marshall’s decision in McCulloch v. Maryland almost 30 years later, a decision that decidedly cemented the nationalistic powers of the federal government and that infuriated Jeffersonian states righters. Historian Clinton Rossiter went even further: “Hamilton’s works and words have been more consequential than those of any other American in shaping the Constitution under which we live.”

And yet. Despite his clear influence and achievements, Hamilton has somehow remained outside the mainstream of the America in which he lived and that he helped create. If the Reynolds affair didn’t kill his political career, then his party infighting with President John Adams during his administration did. His pamphlet attacking Adams on the eve of the election of 1800 (see below) sealed Adams defeat and ushered in the Jeffersonian Republicans—either Burr or Jefferson, the results at first weren’t clear—and ended his influence with the Federalist party. He spent the rest of his short life in New York legal circles feeling much like a man without a country—and has remained so in death. Political differences with Aaron Burr would lead him to that fateful meeting in Weehawken in 1804, another astoundingly bad decision by a man with a wife and 7 children depending on him. Burr’s bullet lodged in Hamilton’s spine, paralyzing him. With today’s medical care, he might have survived as a paraplegic, but he died in great agony on July 12, 1804, at the age of 49.

Strangely enough, Hamilton’s name is now being invoked by some Republicans in the context of the current presidential campaign as an example of leadership and political bravery rather than folly. Hamilton opposed John Adams’ re-election in the contest of 1800 because, Hamilton said, Adams wasn’t a true Federalist: “If we must have an enemy at the head of Government, let it be one whom we can oppose, and for whom we are not responsible, who will not involve our party in the disgrace of his foolish and bad measures.” Sound familiar?

Hamilton’s statue in Harlem, New York.

It gets better. After Adams’ defeat, and forced to choose between his old nemesis Jefferson and hated New York political rival Aaron Burr, Hamilton didn’t hesitate. He supported Jefferson as the lesser of two evils and encouraged other Federalists to do so as well. Jefferson might have different political opinions, he said, but at least he was an honest man with principles. Hamilton dismissed Burr as an ambitious, corrupt, immoral would-be tyrant who cared only for himself. Jefferson might or might not be a bad president, but Hamilton thought Burr would destroy the republic: “Mr. Jefferson, though too revolutionary in his notions, is yet a lover of liberty and will be desirous of something like orderly government. Mr. Burr loves nothing but himself – thinks of nothing but his own aggrandizement – and will be content with nothing short of permanent power in his own hands.” Some Republicans are channeling the ghost of Hamilton this year.

Did Hamilton unleash unbridled capitalism or ordered liberty? That debate will never be settled. The verdict at the moment is that Hamilton saved the fledgling United States from bankruptcy and laid the groundwork for a capitalist and a democratic revolution to grow side by side. That’s not a bad day’s work and it’s way past time that we acknowledged it. It seems silly at this late date that we are still compelled, as Andy Griffith once put it about football, to “commence to odd man” over Hamilton and Jefferson. It’s no small thing that Jefferson would call upon the doctrine of implied powers in defending the Louisiana Purchase less than 10 years later. There certainly was nothing in the Constitution that would have allowed the federal government to purchase three million acres from a foreign power. It’s also hard to imagine the Marshall court’s nationalist decisions that paved the way for the United States government to become the prime engine of emancipation, the Civil Rights movement, and America’s participation on the global world stage in the last and present centuries without the vision and leadership of Alexander Hamilton.

As the 2016 presidential contest begins in earnest, it’s clear that Hamilton’s interpretation of the United States Constitution—which he helped write and ratify and then breathed life into—is still at the heart of nearly everything we do and most of what we argue about. The doctrine of implied powers remains at the heart of our constitutional system, as controversial now as it was then. His ideas are as relevant and as contentious today as they were two centuries ago. This West Indian immigrant and his achievements, his failures, his vision, remains a vibrant part of the American landscape, whether we acknowledge him or not.

Hamilton’s statue in Chicago’s Lincoln Park.

Perhaps I was wrong. Instead of lamenting that there’s no Hamilton memorial in Washington, consider this instead: The Hamilton musical is netting a profit of $1.5 million a week. That’s a lot of money changing hands in secure and safe transactions, all backed up by the United States Treasury. Maybe we’ve acknowledged him in the best way possible in the country that wouldn’t exist without him.

Hamilton famously said near the end of his life that this American world was not made for him. He got that backwards: he was made for this American world. Alexander Hamilton is still a Host Unto Himself.

Book Sale Heaven

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For those who love books, there are few more exciting moments than stepping into a used bookstore, and the anticipation of what treasures might lie before you. On one day each year, the grand reading room of the Georgia Historical Society’s Research Center is transformed into such a place.

GHS’s Annual Book Sale takes place this year on Saturday, April 23, from 10 to 5. GHS members get a sneak peak for an hour beginning at 9. All proceeds are allocated strictly to purchase materials for the Research Center that strengthen GHS’s formidable collection of all things Georgia-related.

As a book lover, voracious reader, and avid collector, I can’t tell you how eagerly I anticipate this event every year (that’s me in the picture above). I love all manner of genres and varieties of literature, and I’ve bought every kind of title you can imagine at the GHS funfest over the years, everything from The Writer’s Manual to The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich to How to Be a Gentleman. When a book is priced at 50 cents or a dollar, you almost have to buy it. This is how your house becomes a library with furniture in it.

But as I’ve described elsewhere, I’m a sucker most of all for the multi-volume set. As my good friend Becky once said, all a publisher has to do to get me to buy a book is to put “Volume 1” on the cover. I’ve found many goodies of this variety at the GHS booksale through the years, a veritable smorgasbord of history and literature that someone like me just cannot pass up. As Henry Ward Beecher said, where is human nature so weak as in a bookstore? Or a used book sale?

Here’s just a small sampling of the some of the nuggets I’ve staggered home with over 18 years of GHS booksales:

American Heritage Junior Library: You have to love that post-WWII era in American history when publishers readily cranked out multi-volume sets on history, literature, art, poetry, or almost anything else, for the average reader—and their children—and paid some of the best writers of the period to contribute.

This 41-volume set was published by American Heritage between 1960 and 1970 and was aimed at the junior-high level and above. When you read them now, you realize how much was expected of a junior-high reader in the 1960s. Forget the junior-high bit: These books are all well written and grounded in the primary sources, and they’re perfect for adults who love history. The titles pull you in immediately: To the Pacific With Lewis and Clark, Thomas Jefferson and His World, History of the Atomic Bomb, Pirates of the Spanish Main, Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill, and The Many Worlds of Benjamin Franklin, to name a few. Many acclaimed historians of the day contributed, including John Garraty, Marcus Cunliffe, Stephen Sears, and Bernard Weisberger. Bruce Catton wrote a volume on The Battle of Gettysburg. This and all the series below were priced to sell, usually at $25 or less. I boxed them all up and made off like a bandit.

Horizon-Caravel Library: This series is a companion to the one above, focused instead on world history. It’s a terrific find, 35 volumes in all, covering everything from Alexander the Great to King Arthur (written by the renowned British historian Christopher Hibbert) to Shakespeare to Captain Cook to Beethoven to the Russian Revolution. The narratives flow, are abundantly illustrated, and great fun to read.

Gateway to the Great Books: This 10-volume series was originally published by Encyclopaedia Britannica in 1963 and edited by Mortimer Adler and Robert Maynard Hutchins, the dynamic duo most responsible for the EB’s publication of the Great Books of the Western World eleven years earlier. This set includes selections by many of the authors in the larger series through short stories, plays, essays, letters, and extracts from longer works. Here you’ll find Plutarch, Bacon, Darwin, Hume, Dante, Melville, Dostoevsky, Rousseau, Hume, and more than a hundred others in bite-sized morsels. As a bonus there’s a classic essay introduction written by Hutchins, who always sang the siren song of the downfall of Western civilization unless people kept reading.

Volume 2 alone has extracts from Defoe, Kipling, Victor Hugo, Maupassant, Hemingway, Walter Scott, Joseph Conrad, Voltaire, Oscar Wilde, Poe, Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson, Dickens, and Gogol, a literary feast if ever there was one. Volume 7 (“Man And Society II”) contains among other things Jonathan Swift’s essay, “A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country.” How do you resist a treasury like this? I couldn’t, especially when the whole set cost only $15. Box it up and drag it home!

The Life History of the United States: Life magazine published this 12-volume set in 1963-1964. This hardcover series starts with The New World: Pre-history to 1774 and ends with The Great Age of Change, 1945-present, the present, of course, being the mid 1960s. Some of the best consensus-era historians wrote these volumes, including Richard Morris, T. Harry Williams, and William Leuchtenberg (who’s still writing at age 93—see his recent tome on The American President). These are all done in the classic Time-Life motif, with great illustrations and flowing narrative.

Great Ages of Man: A History of the World’s Cultures: Another Time-Life series from the 1960s, this one comes complete with an introductory pamphlet entitled “What Man Has Built” written by the great Columbia University historian Jacques Barzun. These magnificent 21 volumes are gracefully written and splendidly illustrated and allow you to browse your way from Ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, over to India, China, and Japan, all the way through the Reformation, the Enlightenment (written by the renowned Freud biographer Peter Gay) and age of Exploration, right up to the mid twentieth century. Again, I picked this one up complete in mint condition for less than $30.

American Heritage magazine: The biggest catch I ever landed at the GHS booksale was a complete run of American Heritage magazine. I first subscribed to AH as a junior at the University of Georgia in 1985. It was typical of those wonderful family of Forbes magazines published before the advent of the Internet, thick with full-page illustrations and great writing by some of the country’s leading historians. Imagine my delight when one year, just days before the book sale, a family in Savannah donated a complete run of the magazine, from the first hardback issue in December 1954 through the switch over to softcover in 1980, up to the present, over 300 issues across 50 years. I bought the whole thing for $200 and then had to buy a new set of bookshelves for my house just to hold them all. But I now own a complete run of the magazine from December 1954 through 2012 (when it suspended publication), and I’ve spent countless pleasurable hours perusing its pages. The advertising alone was worth the price.

I just pulled down a random volume, this one from October 1970, and there are articles by the great Richard Hofstadter, Barbara Tuchman, the Wartime Journals of Charles A. Lindbergh, and an essay by Willa Cather. Multiply that out by hundreds and you get some idea of the riches to be assayed in the pages of this now-defunct slice of American literary culture.

Other Gems: One year I bought 20 volumes published by Easton Press—they of the leather hardbound covers and moiré endpapers and beautiful binding—for $150, including the 3-volume collection of the complete Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. Another year I gobbled up the Oxford Illustrated Dickens, 21 volumes of Charles Dickens complete novels, stories, and sketches, all for only $20. Other goodies include six volumes of American humorist Will Rogers’ writings, two volumes of George Orwell’s essays, and six volumes on The Great Age of Western Philosophy ($6).

These are just the multi-volumes sets. I could go on and on about the individual volumes I’ve bought, countless treasures that I grabbed for $2 or less, boxed up, lugged home, and then puzzled over where the heck to fit them into a house already overflowing with books. It’s a yearly ritual, like buying a Christmas tree, and one I wouldn’t do without.

But Stan, you say, I could care less about all those dull multi-volume sets and would never clutter up my house with such garbage. Well of course you wouldn’t, those are what I buy—I left the stuff you like sitting right there on the table for you to find.

The GHS booksale has something for every discerning palate, be it coffee table books on art and architecture, or volumes on gardening, cooking, sculpting, painting, novels of every stripe and genre from Homer to Jonathan Franzen, mysteries, non-fiction, self-help, poetry, philosophy, religion, short stories, rare books, children’s books, and of course history, biography, and Georgia history. It’s a veritable feast.

Remember too, you can donate books right up to the sale, to make room for all the good stuff you’ll take home. If you love books or only have a passing acquaintance with them, don’t miss out on this annual tradition: Saturday, April 23, 9 a.m. for members, 10 a.m. for everyone else.

This may finally be the year I spot that rare set of the complete writings of Irving Forbush. Just don’t be standing in front of me when I do.

Higher Ground

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Come all you no-hopers, you jokers and rogues
We’re on the road to nowhere, let’s find out where it goes
It might be a ladder to the stars, who knows?
Come all you no-hopers, you jokers and rogues.
Port Isaac’s Fishermen’s Friends, “No Hopers, Jokers, and Rogues”

Hello again. As long-suffering and loyal readers of this blog (both of them) well know, it’s been eight long months since my last entry. There are many reasons for that silence, some of which I’ll write about in the New Year—my involvement in the national discussion about Confederate memorials and iconography in public spaces, three glorious Rolling Stones concerts this summer, not one but two GHS public programs about Leo Frank in the summer and fall, the Georgia History Festival Kickoff lecture in October on the real Mad Men and the world they created, and a host of other things that make my job so interesting. As the year draws to its close, it seemed like a good time to say a quick hello and goodbye to 2015, to take stock of the year, take a peek at what might lie ahead, and to set a few goals for the New Year. A few musings at the end of the year, in no particular order:

Sports: In a blog post from last January, I praised the high-flying Atlanta Hawks and wondered how far they’d go. The answer turned out to be the Eastern Conference finals, farther than they’d ever been, and in which they got swept by the far-better Cleveland Cavaliers. They’re looking good this year too, but the lack of a true big man may yet be their undoing. Stay tuned.

As you well know, the Falcons started out 5-0 and yet will not make the playoffs for the second straight year, having squandered that glorious start by losing six straight games. But let’s give Dan Quinn time to build his own team; better things ahead here.

As hard as it is to believe, I think the same is true of the Braves. They’ve traded everyone on the team who had talent except for Freddie Freeman, and they played stink-ola baseball for most of last season and undoubtedly will again in the one to come. But some analysts are now predicting that the recent trades—as painful as they’ve been—are setting the Braves up to be the next Kansas City Royals or Houston Astros, young teams on the rise and winning championships. Cheers to that. I lived through the not-too-shabby years in the 1970s and have no desire to do it again.

Finally, there’s the Mark Richt firing/mutual parting. I’ve been as vocal as anyone that it was high time for a change at UGA, but after the Dogs finished 9-3 this year I thought there was no way it would happen. But it did, among much angst and hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth. As is required whenever discussing Richt, we must first say that he is a nice guy. A great guy. A man who’s done great things at the University of Georgia. But I’ve always maintained that there are lots of coaches who could take Georgia’s talent and win 9 or 10 games. Let’s see if we’ve finally got one who can win 12 or 13.

And with the college football playoffs beginning tonight, as an unabashed SEC fan I say: Roll Tide.

Books: I’ve read many great books this year that enlightened, informed, and entertained. Here are just a few of the ones I’d recommend:

Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason (1794-95): Thomas Paine was an 18^th-century equivalent of Donald Trump, a bomb-thrower extraordinaire who in just a few words could set the settled order of nature on its ear. Unlike Trump, Paine was a disciple of the Enlightenment and a fervent believer in breaking the chains that had bound men in body and mind since time immemorial. Whether in Common Sense, The American Crisis, or The Rights of Man, Paine was a caustic critic of anything that smacked of orthodoxy. This book, published in several parts beginning in 1794, was one of his last great works, but instead of kings and governments, he chose the biggest target of all: religion.

It is not for the faint of heart, a literary broadside against the belief in revealed religion and what he calls a “superstitious” belief in a supernatural being who created the Earth in seven days and continues to dabble in our daily affairs. He throws down the gauntlet right at the beginning: “I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.” Institutionalized religion, Paine argues, are “human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.”

Paine’s ideas weren’t new, but his engaging style of writing brought Deism down to the level of the common man and made it all the more dangerous and radical for that. His ideas are still terrifying to many people. After more than two hundred years, Paine’s ideas are still extremely unpopular and considered dangerous in much of the America of 2015 that fervently believes that this is a Christian nation and that our elected leaders should be Born Again. At a time when we’re having a broad discussion about the place and role of religion in our national lives, this is a great and timely read. Whatever your beliefs, it will, like all great books, challenge you to stand on new ground. I highly recommend it.

Charles Dickens, The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1836-37). You can never go wrong with Dickens. One of the great glories lying ahead of me in my life is the pleasure of reading all of his works, fiction and non-fiction alike. I’ve read Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities, David Copperfield, and of course many of his Christmas stories. Unencumbered by the thought process, as our NPR friends Click and Clack used to say, I think this one is the best of them all. Unlike many of Dickens’ books, it’s not depressing—except for the fact that he could write so well and with such penetrating insight into the human condition at the tender age of 24—and in fact is hilarious. Here are the exploits of Mr. Samuel Pickwick and his companions Tracy Tupman, Nathaniel Winkle, and Augustus Snodgrass—and the irrepressible and singular Samuel Weller—as they travel around England, meeting some of the most interesting characters ever conceived along the way—Alfred Jingle, the residents of Dingley Dell, Joe the Fat Boy, Mr. Wardle, and many others. This one is a feast that I’m still working on and not anxious to finish.

Clayton Rawson, Death from a Top Hat (1938): A classic locked-room mystery, the first of four featuring the Great Merlini, a magician and amateur sleuth. It’s exactly what it sounds like: a body is found in an apartment with all the doors and windows sealed. He was strangled but how did the murderer leave? One of the best locked-room mysteries ever and great nightly bedtime reading. The classic Dell paperback is hard to find but this and the others in the series are all available on Kindle. A great way to drift off to the land of Morpheus.

Washington Irving, Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists (1822). I first dipped into this book sitting in my favorite swing by the side of Lake Trahlyta at Vogel State Park on a warm August afternoon, but I saved it for the cooler days and darker nights of November, for which it’s better suited. It’s a collection of Irving’s short stories published under his pseudonym Geoffrey Crayon and supposedly collected when Crayon visited his friend Frank Bracebridge for his wedding in England. It follows up The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, which first introduced the Bracebridge family (and which featured Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle as bonuses), and preceded Tales of a Traveller.The collection contains some of the classic descriptions of the English countryside and the people who live there that made Irving famous and features some of his best stories—”The Stout Gentleman,” “The Haunted House,” “The Storm Ship,” and “Dolph Heyliger” among them. As lauded as Irving is for “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” his other writings go mostly unread today, and they shouldn’t. When the leaves turn golden in November, I always reach for him.

Yes, I read history and biography too, fear not. In preparing for the Georgia History Festival Kickoff Lecture on “The Birth of the American Dream” and the real Mad Men who created it, I reread David Halberstam’s The Fifties (1993). Halberstam is above all else a reporter and storyteller, and his descriptions of the people and events of that decade are exceptional. For a more detailed historical study, I turned to a volume in the Oxford History of the United States series, James Patterson’s Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 (1996). Both of these books clock in at over 800 pages, so they aren’t light reading, but they’re both well worth your time. You can’t hurry through them and you don’t want to. Linger in the land of Lucy, Elvis, and The Bomb.

Reaching back to an earlier period, I also read Edward Larson’s The Return of George Washington, 1783-1789 (2014), coupled with the first volume of James Thomas Flexner’s classic multivolume biography of Washington, George Washington: The Forge of Experience, 1732-1775 (1965). Surprisingly, given the fame of Flexner’s set and his authoritative position in the Washington canon, I preferred Larson’s elegant and graceful prose, covering a period of Washington’s life that is often overlooked, the years between the American Revolution and his presidency. Larson convincingly argues that without Washington’s backing there never would have been a Constitution, demonstrating the enormous influence he had on the final document just by his presence in the room. Highly recommended.

This past year certainly hasn’t lacked for materials for the historian who plies his trade in the public realm. From the ISIS atrocities that bore eerie similarities to events in this country a century ago when African Americans were burned alive, mutilated, and lynched, to the mass shooting in Charleston that led to a national discussion of the role of Confederate iconography in American life, to the rise of Donald Trump, an egomaniacal “strongman” with echoes in Huey Long, Joseph McCarthy, and George Wallace, there has been plenty to comment on and write about as we try to sort out and make sense of the events in our daily lives and their historical antecedents. This next year will bring more of the same no doubt, as we enter a presidential election year that promises to be one of the most interesting and pivotal in our nation’s history. More on all of this anon.

Turn off your engines and slow down your wheels
Suddenly your master plan loses its appeal
Everybody knows that this reality’s not real
So raise a glass
To all things past
And celebrate how good it feels.
Port Isaac’s Fishermen’s Friends, “No Hopers, Jokers, and Rogues”

Next Year: For the New Year, I certainly have goals, if not resolutions. Any time of the year is a good time to set a goal (just like any day is a good day to start a diet), but since the New Year is the traditional time for clean slates, we’ll play along.

In 2016, I want to be more patient, especially with my daughter but also with everyone in my life, including the jerk in the car in front of me who’s driving too slow, or the maroon (as Bugs Bunny said) in the car behind me who wants me to drive faster.

Next year I hope to be more empathetic and sympathetic towards other people and their daily struggles and concerns. In memory of my friend Will, I need to pay more attention to the silent sufferings of other people.

Next year I’d like to find the courage to spend at least one hour every week visiting people that I don’t know in nursing homes and assisted living centers. They are among the most depressing places on Earth and are usually shunned by everyone who doesn’t need to go there. It’s hard to go there. And that’s one reason I’d like to start trying, to visit and spend time with people who have no one to talk to. I hope I have the courage to do it, and having written it down here in this public blog, perhaps I will. It’s a goal for 2016.

I’m so glad that he let me try it again
Cause my last time on earth I lived a whole world of sin
I’m so glad that I know more than I knew then
Gonna keep on tryin’
Till I reach my highest ground
Stevie Wonder, “Higher Ground”

I have the usual goals next year that I have every year: Exercise more. Run more. Read more. Write more. Listen more. Hike more. Bike more. Talk less. Eat less. Complain less. Argue less. Get angry less. Watch TV less (except for “Better Call Saul,” “Fargo,” and the upcoming “X Files”). To pick up the phone and talk to someone I haven’t talked to in a long time. To renew friendships and make new ones. To try on a daily basis, as Thomas Jefferson so eloquently put it, to take life by the smooth handle. To meet life and its challenges and opportunities with stoicism. To try, as Marcus Aurelius said, to arise each morning and remember what a precious privilege it is to be alive.

To one and all who have read a single word or every word of this blog since it began on October 15, 2013, and who have supported me along the way and given me a word of encouragement, thank you. I’ll see you here much more frequently in 2016. Cheers to you all.

We Salute You, and Farewell

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We at GHS are mourning the loss of a good friend, Elizabeth Brown Pryor, a gifted writer and historian, killed in a car crash in Richmond, Virginia, on Monday, April 13.

Elizabeth was the author, most recently, of Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee Through His Private Letters, which received the prestigious Lincoln Prize among many other awards following its 2007 publication. It was a landmark book that, as fellow historian Kevin Levin says, “was a major kick in the [rear] at just the right time.” Elizabeth tapped into a vein of Lee documents stashed away for decades and gave us an entirely new and provocative way of viewing the controversial Confederate chieftain. She came to Savannah and spoke to a packed house in 2007 and returned in 2010 to take part in a four-week GHS Summer Seminar on new viewpoints on the Civil War.

She came to Savannah not only to discuss Lee, but also her book, Clara Barton, Professional Angel, with K-12 teachers in several Teaching American History workshops . An eloquent speaker with a rare combination of charm and scholarly rigor, she was always gracious with friend and critic alike, and there were many who took exception to her portrait of Lee. Generous with her time, she won converts as only a seasoned former State Department diplomat could.

In 2014, the Georgia Historical Society began a new GHS Distinguished Fellows program to recognize scholars of national repute for their accomplishments and scholarship, and for their service and friendship to GHS. Elizabeth was on our list to receive this honor.

Her untimely death is a tragedy for her friends and family and for all who love history. For those of us who aspire to make a difference in the world through the written and spoken word, her loss as a role model—and friend—is deeply felt. Ave atque vale.

Autumn Reading

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“Aprils have never meant much to me,” says Truman Capote in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and I agree with him. I was made for autumn. Give me, as Ray Bradbury wrote, “That country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay.”

If you’ve been paying any attention at all—and you have—then you know I love this season more than any other. November particularly, but December too, and yes, December is fall in Savannah—and technically everywhere else till winter officially arrives on December 21. But December truly is autumn here, and as I’ve said elsewhere, it’s the best month of the year to be in this lovely little burg.

Why? Just take a casual walk in any direction and you’ll see and feel it. The students are on winter break, and tourists are few. Parking is plentiful. There’s no waiting in restaurants and bars. Temperatures are in the 50s, there are no sand gnats or mosquitoes, the sun is low on the horizon, the leaves are changing, and the deafening roar of summer’s cicadas is gone for another season. The quiet you hear walking through the squares is almost startling. The city’s beauty is on full display in the lengthening shadows of the slanting afternoon sun. The sultriness of summer is gone, the St. Patrick’s Day mob and the gawking tourists of spring are still three months away, and for now nirvana reigns supreme. Draw near the fire on a cool and dark December twilight in your favorite downtown pub and have a glass of cheer. In December Savannah really is Charm City.

The return of December means several other more unpleasant things, however, besides the fact that you’re behind on your holiday shopping. For UGA fans it means settling for another 9-3 season that should have been much better, while wrapping yourself in what has become an annual December ritual: telling yourself it’s okay because “Mark Richt is such a classy and nice guy.” Unlike that Jackass in Columbia or that Stiff Guy in Tuscaloosa Who We Wish We Had or that Other Jackass That Wears a Visor at Auburn. Who cares if we’re playing in a Bowl Named for a Department Store rather than a playoff game. We’ve got the Last Nice Guy in Sports coaching our team, by golly, and we’re gonna keep him. Okay, Stan, move on, enough of that.

What else? For Falcons fans December means bracing for yet another disappointing season while being pleasantly surprised that a 5-8 record gets you tied for first place in the NFC South. Might there be January football in Atlanta after all? Perchance to dream.

December might bring the melancholy end of college football season but this year it also brings the anticipation of the first-ever four-team playoff. Then you realize that it’s yet another glorious way for the NCAA to avoid choosing a real and undeniable college football champion the way it does in basketball and every other sport—except for the most popular one in America.

But thank goodness December also brings wood-burning fires, Christmas tree smells, Old Fezziwig Ale, Holiday Porter, bourbon eggnog and pumpkin spice coffee creamer. It is indeed a downright glorious time to be alive. It’s also time to take stock of our autumn reading while planning what lies ahead to read during the long nights of winter. Here’s what I’ve been reading this fall, broadly defined as Labor Day to Thanksgiving:

Philosophy and History: Did he really say “philosophy”? Indeed I did. Long-suffering followers may recall that in the summer I was reading Nature’s God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic by Matthew Stewart (Norton, 2014). If Jefferson and Hamilton are the pole stars of the continuing political differences in this country—how big should government be and what should it do?—then the other eternal conflict and tension has been between the Enlightenment and the Reformation—reason vs. religion.

The titanic struggle between rational thought (philosophically defined) and emotionally charged revealed religion is still alive and well in American culture, politics, and society. Recent polls continue to show that Americans would give fewer votes to an avowed atheist than to another fictitious politician of almost any religious stripe, including presumably Muslim. Some states still have religious tests on the law books expressly forbidding atheists from holding office. Was the United States in fact founded by infidels, free thinkers, skeptics and outright atheists, as Stewart asserts, and if so, doesn’t that give the lie to this being a “Christian nation”? He makes a convincing argument but as I’m fascinated by this subject, I wanted to dig a little deeper. I read two other books, one a classic and the other new, to provide a little more context.

The Enlightenment can be defined as a belief system built upon the premise that we understand nature and man best through the use of our natural faculties—as opposed to a belief in the supernatural and revealed religion. It’s another way of exploring the age-old questions, What is the nature of the universe and man’s place in it?

Henry F. May’s The Enlightenment in America was first published in 1976 (Oxford University Press), and his conclusions, as you might expect, are much less bold than Stewart’s even as he is more careful with the evidence. He divides the Enlightenment in America into four overlapping periods:

The Moderate Enlightenment, 1688-1787, characterized by the defense of balance and order in all things, a belief, May asserts, that is still deeply imbedded in American institutions (or at least it was in 1976).
The Skeptical Enlightenment, 1750-1789, the Enlightenment of Voltaire and David Hume, characterized by skepticism about religious dogma, which May writes was the least influential in America.
The Revolutionary Enlightenment, 1776-1800, the Enlightenment of Jefferson, Paine, and the French Revolution, the belief in the clean sweep and the new start, characterized by the optimism that men would be more free and morally better in the future. Jefferson firmly believed that all Americans would eventually be Unitarians. Instead Unitarianism became the religion of the upper class of eastern Massachusetts.
The Didactic Enlightenment, 1800-1815, relying heavily on the Scottish Enlightenment, with a firm belief in moral values, the certainty of progress, and the importance of culture, particularly literature.

None survived far into the nineteenth century intact, and all ran headlong into the anti-intellectualism and religious enthusiasm of the Second Great Awakening and advent of Jacksonian Democracy. In the end, if our Founders were indeed freethinkers, as Matthew Stewart contends—and undoubtedly many if not most of them were—then there is a curious disconnect between our own intellectual heritage and the world we’ve somehow created. Understanding it and explaining it will continue to provide fertile ground for philosophers and scholars for years to come.

The Pursuits of Philosophy: An Introduction to the Life and Thought of David Hume by Annette C. Baier (Harvard University Press, 2011) is a more recent analysis of one of the most controversial thinkers of the 18th century. The man lauded and damned as an infidel and outright atheist in his own time was at heart really just an agnostic who subscribed to the “live and let live” theory. Hume didn’t know if God existed; He might, and He might not. Hume understood the human need to believe in an all-knowing, all-powerful supernatural being who controlled and supervised everything we do. But he argued that no one could prove that deity’s existence definitively one way or the other, and therefore no one should ever force that belief on other people, particularly using the power of government or laws. And unlike most people, Hume was content with not knowing. Even downright happy. He didn’t try to change his Christian friends’ minds, and he asked them not to try to change his. As Baier writes, “He valued his friendships more than he cared about his friends’ agreement with his views.” Good advice for all of us in this age of Facebook rants.

Hume also rejected the notion of original sin, repulsed by the idea that men should be ashamed of what were natural human impulses, such as sexual desires. From that day to this Hume’s ideas have been denounced as heretical, revolutionary and downright dangerous. Samuel Johnson detested Hume, and that fact alone makes him worthy of our respect and attention (for more on Johnson, keep reading). It’s worth noting that Hume the confirmed agnostic met his death with stoical calm and peace; Johnson the confirmed Christian was terrified of what lay beyond and clung tenaciously to his last breath.

At 144 pages of text, this book is a nice short introduction to one of the great minds of the 18th (indeed any) century. Read this before moving on to a more doorstop-sized biography like Ernest Mossner’s The Life of David Hume (Oxford, 1980).

Jefferson and Madison: The Great Collaboration by Adrienne Koch. This book was first published in 1950 and is a very lucid and readable introduction to one of the great friendships in American history. The Jefferson-John Adams friendship is more famous for the correspondence carried on by those twin titans in their last years, but the Jefferson-Madison partnership was more influential across Jefferson’s lifetime in shaping his ideological convictions and the political thought and policies that evolved from them. Madison grounded Jefferson in some of his more theoretical notions, like his idea that the Earth belongs to the living, and that therefore debts should be cancelled every 19 years or so. Maybe so, Madison said, but when do you start counting? And what do you do about debts that are sometimes contracted for and that benefit posterity, like wars? Besides applying the brakes to Jefferson’s philosophical whims, Madison was also simply a good and caring friend. It was for good reason that Jefferson told him, just months before his death, “to myself, you have been a pillar of support thro’ life. Take care of me when dead, and be assured that I shall leave with you my last affections.” Koch wrote extensively about the thought of the founders in a career cut short (she died in 1971 at age 59), and this one is well worth reading.

The Great Books: Wuthering Heights by Charlotte Brontë (1847), Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (1813), and The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane (1895).

The first two books were written by two of the most prominent authors of the nineteenth century, and all three of these offerings (like most good novels) have been variously plundered by Hollywood. Having seen the 1939 version of Wuthering Heights starring Merle Oberon and Lawrence Olivier—and never having read or seen any dramatized version of Pride and Prejudice—I was anxious to read both.

I liked Brontë’s much better. My only memory of the movie is Heathcliff and Catherine sitting on the moors, the night wind blowing through Oberon’s hair. Their literary counterparts are much darker and disagreeable people than I remember them being on screen, but perhaps I need to watch it again. Heathcliff and Catherine are two of literature’s most famous lovers, yet they are dismally unappealing characters whose relationship is not a linear progression but is instead a twisting, page-turning tale of friendship, obsession, revenge, cruelty, sometimes implacable hatred, and deep and abiding love. The Brontës were a brooding and somber lot, and this book fully embodies that. Perfect autumn reading.

Austen, I must confess, disappointed me. This is obviously an important book in the history and development of the novel as a literary art form, but I am utterly confounded as to how it has provided so much fodder for both the big and small screen. I understand the tension between Elizabeth and Darcy, but almost nothing happens in these pages of any consequence. There’s a lot of letter-writing, talking, drinking tea, and heart-fluttering over whether Mr. Darcy or some other charming but equally dull fellow has feelings for someone, followed by someone thinking about writing letters, talking, drinking tea, or heart fluttering. (I found the Heathcliff-Catherine relationship much more compelling.)The most interesting character to my mind was Mr. Bennett, Elizabeth’s father, in part because he had a nice study in which to retreat from the rest of the members of his family, most of whom he can barely tolerate and from which he needed to escape, and often.

As to Crane’s much-lauded book about the essence of personal courage, somehow I avoided having to read this in K-12. Most poor souls did not. I can see now why so many people hate reading once they graduate from high school. The book’s most redeeming quality is that the covers are not very far apart.

Autobiography: Pride and Negligence: The History of the Boswell Papers by Frederick Pottle (McGraw-Hill, 1982) and Boswell’s London Journal, 1762-1763, ed. by Frederick Pottle (McGraw-Hill, 1950).

“I am lost without my Boswell.” So says Sherlock Holmes about Dr. Watson in “A Scandal in Bohemia.” James Boswell is most famous as the author of the monumental biography, The Life of Samuel Johnson, first published in 1791 and never out of print. I bought a nice Easton Press edition in three volumes a few years back and loved it. Boswell is best known as Johnson’s biographer, but he was a fascinating and complex man in his own right, well worthy of our attention, and his published journals are just the place to start.

Boswell would be well at home in today’s world of social media. He kept extensive journals throughout his life, covering the most intimate details of his private goings-on and detailed transcriptions of his conversations with the great men of eighteenth-century Britain, including Georgia’s founder James Edward Oglethorpe, Samuel Johnson of course, the artist Joshua Reynolds, actor David Garrick, writer Oliver Goldsmith, the aforementioned David Hume, Voltaire, and many, many others. And just like today’s most avaricious Tweeters and Facebook-posters, he held nothing back, even when he probably should have. He wrote about everything: politics, art, literature, court intrigues, his sexual and sensual escapades (including cavorting with London’s prostitutes and contracting and living with an STD), the peccadilloes of his friends and associates, falling out with his father over his chosen career, his fear of ghosts, and everything else you can imagine. He was an inveterate sinner who feared damnation but would walk out of a church and have sex with a prostitute. Sometimes he would miss the sermon because he was lusting over a woman in another pew. It is about as good a revealing snapshot of everyday life in eighteenth-century Britain—and a man driven by and forever at war with his passions—as we are ever likely to have, and it is all fascinating, a ripping good read.

Boswell died in 1795 at age 54, leaving behind a wealth of personal papers and journals that he hoped would one day be published. His family, however, had other ideas. Generations of his descendants thought his writings inappropriate and scandalous, detailing as they did his every whim, fancy, and indiscretion. They were also ashamed of their association with a man whom they considered to have lowered himself by acting the sycophant to the overbearing and boorish Johnson simply to obtain material for his biography.

Boswell’s descendants didn’t exactly lose his writings, but it’s safe to say they put them away and mostly forgot about them as they passed from generation to generation. They were “rediscovered” in the 1920s and 30s in a croquet box at Malahide Castle in Ireland and in a stable loft at the home of a Scottish laird at Fettercairn House near Aberdeen. The story of the Boswell Papers’ disappearance and re-discovery is told in fascinating if sometimes excruciating details in Frederick Pottle’s Pride and Negligence: The History of the Boswell Papers. Pottle was a lifelong Boswell scholar and edited, in the Boswell Factory at Yale, all but one of the thirteen volumes of the popularly published journals that begin with the London Journal.

When Boswell’s London Journal, 1762-1763, was first published in 1950, it was a surprising best seller and one can see why. It’s racy and titillating, gossipy and erudite, introspective and philosophical, witty and just plain fun. There are two famous scenes in these pages: Bozzy’s first meeting with Johnson on May 19, 1763, of course, but also the memorable day when he confronts his girlfriend Louisa as to whether she knowingly gave him a venereal disease: “Madam, I have had no connection with any woman but you these two months. I was with my surgeon this morning, who declared I had got a strong infection, and that she from whom I had it could not be ignorant of it. Madam, such a thing in this case is worse than from a woman of the town, as from her you may expect it. You have used me very ill. I did not deserve it.” Louisa protested her innocence, but to no avail. Boswell stormed out and ended the relationship. Later in a quieter moment he confessed to his journal that he’d had this same disease twice before, but if he ever apologized to poor Louisa, the journal is silent.

Boswell kept on writing till his last days, and though his father scolded him for keeping “a register of his follies and communicat[ing] it to others as if proud of them,” we are the ultimate beneficiaries. There are twelve other volumes after this one and I look forward to reading them all.

Bedtime Reading: Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural, ed. by Herbert A. Wise and Phyllis Fraser (Modern Library, 1944). October’s darker days and the coming of Halloween always put me in the mood for stories that explore that tenuous ground between light and shadow that Rod Serling made so famous, that creepy place where we’ll encounter, as the editors write in their splendid introduction, the “rips or gaps in the impalpable curtain that divides the natural world of our experience from all the tremendous mystery that lies beyond.”

I’ve written at length about the genre, and this year I dipped into this fine compendium that comes in at over a thousand pages. The first part, the Great Tales of Terror, comprises almost a third of the book, and includes some real gems: Ambrose Bierce’s “The Boarded Window” with its chilling twist ending; Thomas Hardy’s “The Three Strangers,” a weird tale of 19 people gathered in a shepherd’s cottage and what happens when three unknown men wander in off the moor; “The Interruption” by W.W. Jacobs, about a man who poisons his wife and then lives in fear of his housekeeper, who knows he did it; Geoffrey Household’s “Taboo,” a tale of the ancient fear of werewolves; and the forgotten classic by Carl Stephenson, “Leiningen versus the Ants,” first published in Esquire in 1938, about what happens to a man who refuses to abandon his plantation in the face of an invading army of voracious insects. This section contained other tales by H.G. Wells, Conrad Aiken, and, surprisingly, Faulkner and Hemingway.

The editors caution the reader that “too generous a ration of horror may defeat its intended purpose, and succeed only in creating a surfeit instead of a feast.” They were right. Preferring to save the supernatural for next October, after feasting on the tales of terror, I stopped.

Which it’s time to do with this column. Next up: War and Peace. Turn the page and enjoy the upcoming winter.