Books and Ideas (15)

I read for ideas. Here are some of the ideas I have found in books.

Robert Kennedy and His Times. Vol. 1. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
Why read it? To realize the opportunities the world has lost because of Robert Kennedy’s assassination. Schlesinger divides the topics in the book among RFK’s growing up; his shyness and feelings of inferiority to his brothers; his physical exertions; his mixed achievement in school; his work in Congressional investigations, including those concerned with corrupt unions; his work in organizing his brother’s Senatorial and Presidential campaigns; his work as Attorney General and his battle with institutional inertia, particularly the FBI and J. Edgar Hoover; his work with his brother on Civil Rights; his trips to foreign, unfriendly countries in which he confronted aggressive criticism of the United States, especially from the young; and his work with his brother during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Robert Kennedy and His Times, Vol. 2. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
Why read it? Robert Kennedy was a “profile in courage.” The second volume of this biography of RFK covers the period of the assassination of his brother, his stormy relationship with LBJ, becoming the Junior Senator from New York, considering the vice-presidency under LBJ and, finally, when the he realizes that Vietnam is tearing American society apart, the run for the presidency that is halted by his own assassination.

Roughing It. Mark Twain.
Why read it? Mark Twain’s impressions of the “wild West” are sometimes hilarious, sometimes vivid and always interesting. Twain describes pioneering in the West, riding in a stage coach; the Pony Express; the Mormon Bible (“chloroform in print”); the “scholarly” Indians in The Last of the Mohicans; a landslide; a character who knows everyone he meets or a relative; the colorful idiomatic language of the West; lawyers—“First and last aim…was to defeat justice”; the belief that everything that happens is good if we wait long enough to find out—“Prov’dence don’t fire no blank ca’tridges, boy”; the missionaries who converted the natives of Hawaii to Christianity and made them permanently miserable; and Brigham Young and polygamy.

The Roots of Heaven. Romain Gary.
Novel. Why read it? The slaughter of the elephants will lead to man’s slaughter of mankind. Morel, the idealistic defender of elephants, is the moral of this story. Opposed to the slaughter of the elephants in Africa, and laughingstock to most of the people around him, he mounts a campaign to gather signatures to stop the slaughter of the elephants. However, he is not just defending the elephants, who are a symbol of freedom, man’s freedom. He is trying to show men that they can be the sensitive, moral, compassionate creatures that they are in potential. His selfless obsession for saving the elephants attracts a number of people who have other agendas—but their agendas fade as Morel’s quest to save the elephants takes on a higher purpose—to save men from their own self-destruction. For what they do to the elephants, they will do to themselves. Morel is confident that he will achieve his goal, so confident, so sure, that he fears not for his safety. He is the exemplar of what he wants men to become.

Saints and Strangers. George F. Willison.
Why read it? The author set out to separate the myths and the truth about the Pilgrims. The author found that much of what he thought he knew about the Pilgrims was wrong and learned that he did not really know much about them. The Pilgrims, “Separatists” from the Church of England, had emigrated to Leyden, the Netherlands, and then sailed on the Mayflower to found Plymouth Colony in 1620. While the Leyden group held the power and were the motivating force behind the voyage, the majority of the group consisted of “strangers,” non-Pilgrims. This story is as much about the “strangers” as the “Saints.”