This winter was the winter of non fiction, for the most part. And, sadly, these are books we may find so painful that they are slow going. But they deserve our attention.
A lot of my first three months of this year were taken up by two non-fiction books.
1. The Cost of Free Land: Jews, Lakota and an American Inheritance, by Rebecca Clarren. Every page of this book was packed with a history I had never fully learned in school, despite taking a couple of courses in college on the Indigenous peoples who once inhabited all the land we now call the United States of America.
Rebecca Clarren tells the story of her great-great-grandparents, the Sinykins, who fled early 20th century Russia and its anti antisemitism, to settle on land in South Dakota. The 160 acres of land they were granted was land which had been taken from its original Indigenous inhabitants by means cruel and not surprising - a trail of broken treaties, deliberate starvation, and the forcing of the Indigenous people to abandon their culture and way of life. Various European centers were given (or sold cheaply) the land for homesteading, including the Sinykins.
The Sinykins, and other Jews, had come out west fleeing oppression and seeking opportunity, only to benefit from the oppression of the former Indigenous inhabitants.
Ms. Clarren asks: How does she deal with a legacy like that? This book documents her journey.
Ms. Clarren's attempts to answer that question and learn more about her family's story and the Indigenous peoples it is intertwined with is well worth reading.
Rating: Five out of five stars.
2. Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism by Rachel Maddow. This book is a chilling examination of how the Hitler government waged a well funded war of disinformation with the United States in the 1930's and 1940's, capturing the minds and loyalties of some of our elected officials, police chiefs, religious leaders, and famous, influential people. Our legal system failed in some spectacular ways.
I will state right here that no matter what your political leanings are, this is a history book you should read.
The large cast of characters include Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh and his wife Anne, Louisiana governor and later Senator Huey Long, the architect Phillip Johnson, Senator Burton Wheeler of Montana, and Congressman Hamilton Fish III. There were also the common citizens, working under dangerous conditions, to expose what was happening.
When I finished reading this book, I felt like our country dodged one very large bullet - a bullet that may have led us into becoming an ally of Hitler, if not worse.
And as for the relevance with today, I will leave that to you, dear reader, as this is not normally a political blog. But again, no matter where you stand on the political spectrum, I believe this is a must read.
Rating: Five out of five stars.
This month, I will be devoting myself to recovering from the Blogging from A to Z Challenge. My Reflections post will probably post on May 7.
