Welcome to Litsy!

As she mentions at the start, this is a political history of the US. Some of it is how I learned history in school, but some definitely has a different focus, for which I am grateful. It‘s long but really worthwhile. Every time I dive into US history, it reminds me that none of the stupid shit happening now is new. And we got to better spots after those previous times, so that gives me hope.

Started this. It‘s about Benedict Arnold and George Washington‘s relationship during the Revolutionary War. It covers four years, starting in the spring of 1776. So far, so good. I‘ve read Philbrick‘s “Bunker Hill” and “Mayflower” and enjoyed them both.
#RevolutionaryWar #history #colonialhistory

Read & listened to this simultaneously because I knew it was gonna take some effort. (Doing the same thing with the Anti-federalists too 😅.)

In America, there has always been this push & pull about what the Founders intended. Now, I can‘t say this book makes it obvious, partly because I believe Hamilton was insincere, but I feel most people can walk away from this wondering why in the hell the Supreme Court has such a problem understanding.

“On a hot, almost windless afternoon in June, a seven-year-old boy stood beside his mother and looked out across the green islands of Boston Harbor.”

That 7-year-old was John Quincy Adams, and they were witnessing the Battle of Bunker Hill from at least ten miles away.

#history #RevolutionaryWar #BunkerHill
#FirstLineFridays

@ShyBookOwl

Deep dive into the lead-up and start of the American Revolution. So far, so good.
#history #AmericanRevolution #TBR #TBRstack

Having graduated nursing school, I wanted to read a bit into the history of American nursing. It is a shame that this book is so well-researched but still reads remarkably dry. The bibliography/source material (regarding the Mormon nurses of the Latter Day Saints, African American nurses navigating segregated hospitals, Civil War workers on the front lines, US Army Corps of Nurses) looks to be a lot more interesting than the book itself.

This was okay. Reading about how state borders came into existence was way more boring than expected. These facts were so obscure they‘ll never even show up on Jeopardy. Worst of all, the book was organized in alphabetical order instead of by region, so there was a lot of repeat information. For example you learn about the border between North and South Dakota when you learn about all of North Dakota‘s border and then again when you get to SD.

This is the story of how a swampy area of MD and VA ended up as the US capital. The story seems perfect for a Cohen brothers movie with incompetency, corruption, stubbornness, and dumb luck eventually resulting in Washington DC becoming a reality. The whole process was quite the shit show, from being selected over various locales in PA (take that Columbia), to its design, to getting funding and then built, burnt to the ground and built again!

This book feels old now since we are living through a time where the news is constantly changing, with headlines, reels and photos more horrible than the last thing we saw just 5 minutes ago. The author goes through a time lapse of attitudes and events in the American political landscape from the last 10+ years. We are in the fight of our lives in this new era. If every single one of us doesn‘t pull together, white supremacy will destroy us all.

This book tells the history of the US national anthem. The highlight is the story behind the song and Francis Scott Key‘s retelling of the attack on Fort McHenry. It was also interesting to learn about how the song evolved to include verses being added/subtracted to attempts to standardize it. The problem was the book never found a happy medium. The first half was too exhaustively detailed at times while the latter half had too much filler.