History Mini-Reviews: You Never Forget Your First and Caste

These two books on American history seem to have little in common. 

Caste by Isabel Wilkerson is a history of American society based on a caste system that dehumanizes and devalues African Americans. 

You Never Forget Your First demythologizes George Washington. Both offer new ways of interpreting America, past and present.

Alexis Coe's entertaining biography of George Washington, You Never Forget Your First encompasses a wide consideration of the man. One of the most sobering considerations looked at the enslaved people he owned, including a reading of the slave schedule. The reader is fanatic. A good first biography due to its entertaining nature, sure to appeal to younger people and those who don't usually delve into biographies. I borrowed an audiobook through the local library.

You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington
by Alexis Coe

Brittany Pressley (Narrator)
ISBN: 139781984842527

from the publisher

As the first woman historian to solely write an adult biography on Washington in more than a hundred years, Alexis Coe combines rigorous research and lively storytelling that will have readers--including those who thought presidential biographies were just for dads--inhaling each page.

In You Never Forget Your First, Washington's wild ambition is encouraged by his single mother and solidified by Martha Washington, the young, wealthy widow he marries. After the Revolutionary War, Washington is unanimously elected to the presidency, twice, and readers finally understand why his more educated, wealthy, and outwardly hungry Founding Fathers knew he was the only man for a seemingly impossible job. Washington loved to dance, offered unsolicited romantic advice, lost more battles than he won, and was almost felled by a life-threatening disease and a backstabbing cabinet. But he emerged successful, establishing values that ensured the survival of the United States of America to this day. Yet presidential biographers have always presented him in the same, stale way.

In a genre overdue for a shake-up, Coe highlights juicy details and skillfully differentiates between the legend and the man--and confirms she's a historian to be reckoned with

*****

Wilkerson argues that American racism has all the hallmarks of Hindi caste. She lays out her argument logically and illustrated with a multitude of examples from history, American slavery and Nazi Germany and the Hindi caste system. 

It’s heart-wrenching stuff. I am sick and disgusted by our history and current conduct as a society and as a political system. I have had to put this away for a bit. Brilliant, horrifying.

I purchased an ebook.

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
by Isabel Wilkerson

Random House 
Published August 4, 2020  
ISBN: 0593230256 (ISBN13: 9780593230251)

from the publisher

The Pulitzer Prize–winning, bestselling author of The Warmth of Other Suns examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions.

“As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power—which groups have it and which do not.”

In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings.

Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people’s lives and behavior and the nation’s fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people—including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball’s Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others—she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their out-cast of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity.

In the Hurricane's Eye by Nathaniel Philbrick

The defeated British army trudged out of the ruins of Yorktown to the slow beat of a drum, surrounded by the American militia on one side of the road and the French on the other. The British General and his army showed their disdain of the Americans, giving their attention to the French. How could a barely clothed army of ill-fed and unpaid country yahoos defeat their magnificence? Only the French were worthy enemies.

And yet somehow General George Washington had achieved the unthinkable. Yes, he needed the French navy to do it. He knew this battle would be fought on water. And even if the French generals often ignored Washington's directive and did what they wanted, they were pivotal.

It all started with hurricanes in the Caribbean. The French were forced to move their ships to safer latitudes. The rest is history. The history Philbrick covers In The Hurricane's Eye.

Maps show readers the battles that are the focus of this installment of Philbrick's history of the Revolutionary War. There is no focus on one big personality, like Benedict Arnold was in Philbrick's previous volume Valiant Ambition. This is an ensemble cast of characters--British, French, and American.

But some things stand out. Washington for his ability to reign in his passions to keep a cool head. A favorite story is how Washington deceived the British by building ovens to bake the fresh bread the French army found a necessity on a route to New York City while the army headed south.

Readers are reminded of the plight of the common American militiaman, who after six years at war are released without recompense, worn out, to an uncertain future. 200,000 men had served. The escaped slaves who served the British with hopes of freedom were left without protection, starving and diseased, preyed upon by Southerners rounding up their property.

At war's end, America consisted of individual states unwilling to work together. They would not agree on taxes to pay for the war, and now they all vied for their own concerns. Anarchy threatened.

This narrative takes readers on a journey into an understanding of our past that will challenge the simplistic vision of America's beginnings encountered in school textbooks. Was victory at Yorktown all because of hurricanes? Or Washington's superior leadership? Was it because the French funded the war that Americans refused to support financially? Or the missteps of British generals?

Near the end of the book, Washington is quoted from a letter written to the French Admiral de Grasse: "A great mind knows how to make personal sacrifices to secure an important general good." I was appalled by the war crimes and suffering described in the book, but I was also inspired by Washington's ability to always chose what was right for his country. If only our leaders today would channel the Founding Father's vision of personal sacrifice and self-control, to do what was right for the many and the country.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

In the Hurricane's Eye: The Genius of George Washington and the Victory at Yorktown
by Nathaniel Philbrick
PENGUIN GROUP
ISBN: 9780525426769
PRICE: $30.00 (USD)