A conversational tone and lots of pictures make this a quick read. Gottschall makes the case that storytelling is what makes us human. When we read, our imagination supplies most of the details, filling in the missing information. The writer is like a screenwriter and the reader is the movie director. Of course, stories appear not just in books, but also in video games, TV, jokes, urban legends, and in song lyrics.
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John Adams smoked tobacco since he was eight. He received a Harvard education and after being a teacher for a short time, he became a lawyer. At one point, the wealthy John Hancock was put on trial for smuggling and John Adams represented him, succeeding in getting the charges dropped. He started courting his future wife Abigail when she was 15 and he was 25. He stopped seeing her, but they met again years later and married when he was 29 and she was 20.
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When an short story anthology calls itself “the best” without specifying which genres it is (e.g., horror, fantasy, romance, western, etc.), you know it’s got to be literary fiction, which doesn’t consider itself a genre, even though it is.
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George Washington not only raised, trained, and led a militia against the greatest superpower in the world, he also refused payment for leading the army. (It helps that he was rich.) He surprised the world by giving up power after winning the American Revolution. He set precedents like having a presidential cabinet and only serving two terms.
Continue readingEx-Presidents
Al Carroll’s book has an appendix examining what presidents did after they were no longer president. Some presidents died in office or shortly after leaving office. Some, like Truman, lived decades after leaving office but didn’t do anything of note. Others accomplished quite a bit.
Continue readingWhat If
Carroll includes a fascinating section hypothesizing what would happen if different people had become president. Any of these scenarios would make for a fascinating alternate history novel.
For example, Jackson was nearly killed in the Creek War, but a Cherokee warrior named Junaluska saved his life. Had this not happened, John Quincy Adams would have been president instead and the Trail of Tears would not have happened.
Continue readingFranklin Roosevelt
Franklin Roosevelt did not allow Jewish refugees to the US, condemning many to death in the Holocaust. He also could have lessened the atrocity by attacking Germany sooner than he did. (Incidentally, Henry Ford owned the best selling newspaper in the country and used it to spread anti-Semitism. Ford Auto company was also a haven for Nazis and he promoted their views on company grounds. Ford even received a special award from Hitler.)
Continue readingBill Clinton
Clinton not only didn’t try to stop the Rwandan genocide, he pushed for the UN to withdraw and denied a genocide was happening. Clinton could have saved 300,000 to 600,000 lives if he’d sent just 5,000 US troops to intervene.
Right-wing terrorists murdered at least 288 people from 1995 to 2012 and attempted to assassinate Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama. Clinton’s mishandling of the Branch Davidians, Randy Weaver, and the Republic of Texas militia led to more recruitment for right-wing terrorists.
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When presidents of the United States are ranked from best to worse, they’re generally judged on subjective things like leadership, charisma, etc. and the lists end up merely being a popularity contest, often based on the politics of the person doing the ranking. George Washington is often listed as one of the best presidents, not because he did anything particularly noteworthy while president, but simply because he was the first.
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I quite enjoy Amazon’s short story collections, but I wish they’d publicize them more. I only found out about Trespass recently even though I’ve read these collections in the past. All of the stories this time around are worth reading. I think the theme that ties them together is each features human’s relationship with wildlife.
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Mania Delight 