This summer, as we feel the heat of the Great Recession, many of us are sweating about finances. My doctor says he’s never seen so much stress in his patients. And so the usual summer-reading suggestions of escape fiction would seem to hold special sway. What a fine summer to let books be our frigates and take us lands away.
Yet as enjoyable and worthy as novels can be, I’d like to suggest something different. I suggest that you read history and biography.
Why read history on the beach?
First, superbly written histories and biographies can be every bit as entertaining as formula page-turners. History can be the ultimate escape, actually, for it does not merely take us lands away, but to real lands and real times. As my favorite historian David McCullough says, histories give us time travel just as airplanes give us geographic travel. They make the past as interesting as it actually was.
The second reason has to do with perspective. The ideas of the great philosophers, says the contemporary philosopher Tom Morris, and the paths of prior civilizations and prior lives, implant in the eyes of readers new lenses through which to view our own place and time. Perspective is a kind of mental sunblock that, provided we apply it properly, prevents us from getting burned by past mistakes.
Even with my own limited reading of history, I’ve been awed by the parade of human misery: war, famine, disease, genocide, starving refugees, economic calamity. My reading has left me with the perspective that as bad as things are right now, our own time is relatively safe and secure for most Americans.
All it takes is reading a few biographies to learn that even those who seemingly had the most charmed of lives have typically confronted profound obstacles. Admiral Horatio Nelson, perhaps the most famous of England’s naval heroes, battled chronic seasickness. Teddy Roosevelt suffered from severe childhood asthma. Al Jolson, the “world’s greatest entertainer,” suffered debilitating stage fright. Churchill overcame a lisp and “black dog” depression to become one of the world’s greatest orators and leaders. The actor James Earl Jones, one of the most famous voice-over artists of our time, stuttered.
“Overcoming adversity is such a common part of achieving personal success that it’s nearly a universal companion,” says Tom Morris.
And here’s some bright financial news you won’t read in The Wall Street Journal: the nation’s stock of amazingly good histories and biographies has never been higher. This asset—far off any balance sheet drawn up for our economy—is a national treasure, if only we’d lift the lid of our communal treasure chest and dig in.
But who has the time these days to read history?
What would Clifton do?
The late famous advisor on American reading, Clifton Fadiman, used to say that the time to read the newspaper is when you’re walking by the newsstand. I shudder to think what the author of The Lifetime Reading Plan would say if he were back with us now. (He passed away in 1999.)
He would see how virtual newsstands have infiltrated our lives like some sci-fi plague. It’s harder to walk past the newsstand when it’s in our bedrooms and bathrooms on 24-hour news channels, when it’s forced on us at airport gate areas and wired in front of our noses in the airplanes. Worse, our phones have morphed into Web-enabled, emailing-spitting demons. Having chewed off the leashes that used to tether their predecessors to kitchens walls and office desks, our so-called smart phones yap incessantly in our pockets and purses.
If Clifton looked around today he’d see a nation of people gazing into their hands and the phones they hold, appearing for all the world like they were praying to fetishes.
Try sipping the good stuff
The truth is, most of what’s dished up as news isn’t that important. News and its variants is mostly distraction. History, on the other hand, distills the past into its meaningful essence.
News is grape juice; history is wine.
Now before you run me out of town, I’m not saying to give up completely on your news and captivating social networks. Giving up news is like giving up coffee or single- malt Scotch. As Mark Twain said, “Habit is habit, not to be thrown out the window but walked down stairs a step at a time.”
I have this simple suggestion: try cutting back this summer. Be your own parent and think of ways you might limit your own TV and computer time. Make up rules for how frequently you’ll check email, newsfeeds, Facebook and the like. Perhaps it will help if you train your mind so that every time you see the word “news” it substitutes “noise.”
Then give yourself a present: buy or borrow three books of history or biography and put them in your Library of Candidates—that library you build of books you think you want to read. This summer, commit to starting each of the three candidate books you’ve selected. Promise yourself to read to page 50; if you’re not hooked by then, fine—give up and switch to another history book candidate.
A tasting menu for you
To help out, I asked a few people in the know for their suggestions of ravishingly good histories.
Try Timothy Egan’s The Worst Hard Time, suggests Harold Augenbraum, the executive director of the National Book Foundation. This 2006 winner of the National Book Award tells the story of the people who stayed in the Dust Bowl in the 1930s and didn’t flee to California. “It uncovers the quiet despair and heroism of a generation of forgotten individuals,” says Harold.
Scott Eyman, the book editor of the Palm Beach Post, says Christopher Buckley’s Losing Mum and Pup is very good. “And I just finished a good book about the German and Austrian composers who washed up in L.A. after Hitler took over: A Windfall of Musicians by Dorothy Lamb Crawford,” he adds.
Morgan Entrekin, the chairman and CEO of Grove/Atlantic publishers, recommends The House of Morgan by Ron Chernow. “This book tells the story of the shift of the capital markets from London to New York and the rise of Wall Street, through the story of the Morgan bank from its founding in mid-nineteenth century London through the glory years under JP Morgan and up to the end of the 1980s. The book won the National Book Award and has become a classic.”
Morgan also recommends A Splendid Exchange, by William Bernstein. “This book looks at the history of mankind through the history of trade. Starting with the earliest evidence of trade in prehistoric times through the ancient civilizations of Egypt and the Mesopotamian basins, on up through the Age of European exploration and colonization to today’s globalization, trade has played a central role in the political, social, technological, cultural and economic development of human civilizations.”
To these expert picks, I’ll add three of my all-time favorites: William Manchester’s little gem, A World Lit Only by Fire, about Magellan and the medieval mind; Barbara Tuchman’s The First Salute, about the role of the Caribbean in the American revolutionary war; and A. Scott Berg’s captivating biography, Lindbergh.
I can also report being in deep book love with Waiting for Snow in Havana by Carlos Eire, another National Book Award winner. It’s about a boy’s bittersweet memories of Cuba before and immediately after Castro.
And (excuse my shameless commerce here) I’m happy to report that our own cache of Levenger Press offerings includes histories of three of the great ones: Lincoln, Churchill and Kennedy (who was influenced by both Lincoln and Churchill).
Let me know your thoughts, dear reader, if you decide to turn to history books this summer, and what you discover. Just click on the Comments link below. (If you’re reading this as an email, click here and you'll connect to Comments).
