Americanon: An Unexpected U.S. History in Thirteen Bestselling Books by Jess McHugh

One of the books in our library is my mother-in-law's copy of Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book. The volume show the stains and wear of fifty-nine years of hard use. 

Laura prided herself on her abilities in the kitchen, especially as a baker of cookies and pies. Any family gathering she would have two pies to choose from, served a few hours after a big dinner.

After reading the chapter on the Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book in Americanon, I took the cook book from the shelf and discovered Laura had a first edition!

The Picture Cook Book would have saved me loads of trouble as I learned to cook. Everything a new cook needed to know could be found in these pages, starting with the basics of measuring.

Jess McHugh writes that Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book was only outsold by the Bible, earning it a place in her list of books that form the American Canon, books that formed American's identity while enforcing the status quo of the white, European, upper class.

Betty Crocker was a fictional creation used to sell products and educate homemakers, but she became a friend in need to millions of her fans who wrote her revelatory letters. Her advice aided women through depressions and war rationing. And she promoted General Mills products, such as Bisquick, which was always in my mom's kitchen.

Other books in the 'canon' were as ubiquitous in American homes, inspiring and informing readers. The people who wrote these books did not always live in alignment with what they preached. The values Americans discovered in the books were traditional, not progressive. Women were domestic goddesses, immigrants were to be Americanized, LGBTQ were sick criminals, and people of color were ignored, marginalized, or downright thrust into racist stereotypes.

The most modern popular books are the self-help books that sell a kind of religion of the self, proposing that it is in our power to be healthy, wealthy, and happy. (Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography had a heavy dose of  such advice, as well.) The authors of these books had personal hobby-horses to promote. Many were unqualified to give medical, sexual, financial, or mental health advice. 

The language we speak and the spelling we use, our agreed upon social interactions, even our sexual life, have been based upon these books. For better, and often definitely for worse, they formed our national identity and character.

I received a free galley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Books in the Americanon include

• The Old Farmer's Almanac
• Webster's Speller and Dictionary
• Benjamin Franklkn's Autobiogrpahy
• The McGuffrey Reader
• A Handbook to American Womanhood by Catherine Beecher
• Etiquette in Society, in Buisness, and at Home by Emily Post
• How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnagie
• Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book
• Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask) ny Dr. Reuben
• 1980s Self Help Books

Americanon: An Unexpected U.S. History in Thirteen Bestselling Books
by Jess McHugh
PENGUIN GROUP Dutton
Pub Date June 1, 2021 
ISBN 9781524746636
hardcover $28.00 (USD)

from the publisher

Surprising and delightfully engrossing, Americanon explores the true history of thirteen of the nation’s most popular books. Overlooked for centuries, our simple dictionaries, spellers, almanacs, and how-to manuals are the unexamined touchstones for American cultures and customs. These books sold tens of millions of copies and set out specific archetypes for the ideal American, from the self-made entrepreneur to the humble farmer.

Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography, How to Win Friends and Influence People, Webster's Dictionary, Emily Post’s Etiquette: Americanon looks at how these ubiquitous books have updated and reemphasized potent American ideals—about meritocracy, patriotism, or individualism—at crucial moments in history. Old favorites like the Old Farmer’s Almanac and Betty Crocker’s Picture Cook Book are seen in this new way—not just as popular books but as foundational texts that shaped our understanding of the American story.

Taken together, these books help us understand how their authors, most of them part of a powerful minority, attempted to construct meaning for the majority. Their beliefs and quirks—as well as personal interests, prejudices, and often strange personalities—informed the values and habits of millions of Americans, woven into our cultural DNA over generations of reading and dog-earing. Yet their influence remains uninvestigated. Until now.

What better way to understand a people than to look at the books they consumed most, the ones they returned to repeatedly, with questions about everything from spelling to social mobility to sex? This fresh and engaging book is American history as you’ve never encountered it before.

Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rillke

I was just a year out of university when I was in a downtown Philadelphia book store and picked up a slender volume entitled Letters to a Young Poet. I read it over and over and the advice I found there helped me in my struggle through young adulthood. Forty years have passed, and I was curious to read this new translation and commentary of the Letters from the perspective of maturity.

Anita Barrows is a translator and poet, a professor of psychology and a clinical psychologist. Joanna Macy is a professor of philosophy and scholar of Buddhism, systems thinking, and deep ecology. Their commentary offers interesting psychological and social insights into the letters.

Rilke was himself a young poet of twenty-seven when cadet Franz Xaver Kappus wrote and asked him to read his poetry and for advice. Kappus had learned that Rilke had attended the his military academy and hoped for advice as he endeavored to be a poet while in the military.

Rilke had been sent to the academy because his father wanted to remove him from his mother's influence. She had given him a girl's name, Rene Maria, and put him in dresses. His father decided that he needed toughening up to prepare for a man's life.

Rilke responded to Kappus by warning that no one, nothing external, could advise him; he must look within for the answers, and in the process, he must embrace the unknown and that which is terrifying.

If his work and peers provided little inspiration, he told Kappus, "If your daily life seems to bleak--don't blame it--blame yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its wealth." And if all else fails, there was his childhood, "that deep well of memories."

Letter Four includes one of my favorite lines, "have patience with all that is unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like closed rooms, like books written in a foreign language." He continues to advise not to seek the answers, but to live into them. 

Rilke had been influenced by the sculptor Rodin who had taught the importance of solitude for the artist. Art required looking within and being separate. An artist does not need others:"Where there is no community among people, draw close to the things that present themselves around you; they will not abandon you. The nights are there, and the winds that blow through trees and over the lands..." 

Yes, solitude is difficult, but so is love. And love, he says, is not about "merging," the goal is a "more human love" that consists of "two solitudes that protect, border, and greet each other," a love that allows personal space and growth.

Fear of the mysterious and the unknown is also good, something we should be open to and embrace. "If our world has fears, they are our fears. If it has an abyss, it belongs to us. If dangers appear, we must try to love them...Perhaps every terror is, at its core, something helpless that wants our help." 

And he advises to "let life happen to you. Believe me--you can count on life in any case." 

Trust the process, embrace that which frightens you, learn to love the unknown, and do not look for romantic love to save you. 

Rilke's advice helped me as a young woman, and it helps me as I approach my seventh decade. For the questions have only become larger, the unknown closer.

The commentators point out that the first letter from Kappus arrived as Rilke was writing The Book of Hours, in which he "reconcieveing of God as not the image of perfection but as the sacred process of seeing the brokenness of the world as a sacred act."

They see Rilke's Letter 7, to love without merging, representing Rilke's relationship with his great love Lou Andreas-Salome, and demonstrating the Jungian concept of individuation (self-realization that rises above self-centeredness). Lou studied with Freud and became the first female psychoanalyst. 

Also, in Letter 8 ("the world has fears") they find Rilke's message foreshadowing Jung's concept of the collective unconscious (shared archetypes/symbols, not personal) which Jung wrote about twelve years later.  

Barrows and Macy have eliminating sections of the letters as pontificating, or not relevant to modern readers, or because the message was badly conceived. Those segments appear in the commentary.

The translation is clear and easy to understand. 

Every generation faces a world of terrors, every person struggles to forge a path to a whole and healthy life. I believe that the Letters are still relevant and have much to offer. 

I received a free galley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Letters to a Young Poet: A New Translation and Commentary

by Rainer Maria Rilke

Shambhala Publications, Inc.

Pub Date June 1, 2021  

ISBN: 9781611806861

hard cover $14.95 (USD)

from the publisher

A fresh perspective on a beloved classic by acclaimed translators Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy.

German poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s (1875–1926) Letters to a Young Poet has been treasured by readers for nearly a century. Rilke’s personal reflections on the vocation of writing and the experience of living urge an aspiring poet to look inward, while also offering sage wisdom on further issues including gender, solitude, and romantic love. Barrows and Macy’s translation extends this compilation of timeless advice and wisdom to a fresh generation of readers. With a new introduction and commentary, this edition places the letters in the context of today’s world and the unique challenges we face when seeking authenticity

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Rooted: Life at the Crossroads of Science, Nature, and Spirit by Lyanda Lynn Haupt

During this pandemic I have seen friends on social media share rejuvenating experiences in nature through daily walks or hikes into the wilds, views from windows from homes in cities and woods and moors, experiences with fox frolicking in suburban yards or wild birds landing on outstretched palms offering seed and suet.

In the deep green woods, photo by my brother

My brother walks every weekend with his girlfriend, through every weather. They seek out the lonely places, the empty dirt roads, the parks only populated in sunshine. 

A lonely view by my brother

I have the local city park filled with towering oak trees and black squirrels hopping across the grass, a hawk watching overhead, or the protected woods were trillium carpet the forest floor in spring.

Trillium in suburban Tenhave Woods

Even my own patio, sitting under the apple trees, offers a daily respite, watching the robins joyously splash in the bird bath, the sparrows flitting in and out of their nesting box, while bee and butterfly visit the herb garden and zinnia, perhaps oblivious to the rabbit who sneaks in to steal leaves from the rose bush.

in my own back yard

How does anyone get through a week without communing with nature? A glimpse of flowering tree or autumnal glow of color across the grass? The raucous call of the Blue Jay or the hoot of an owl in the night?

Oak tree in the city woods

Lyanda Lynn Haupt writes that being rooted in nature is a spiritual practice. She shares her personal stories of walking barefoot and alone in the forest, camping and walking blind at night, healed, and sometimes afraid, by the experience. 

The spirituality of oneness with all the earth is ancient, the connectedness of all life part of religious experience found in many faiths, including Christianity. But modern humans live in houses and work in rooms and Western society buys and uses and discards; we have lost wonder and respect and stewardship for Earth.

Haupt's witness shows us how to regain the sacred, how to claim sisterhood with all living things, how to embrace the darkness, and how to heal the earth and ourselves.

I received a free galley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

I previously read the author's book Mozart's Starling, which I reviewed here.

Rooted: Life at the Crossroads of Science, Nature, and Spirit
by Lyanda Lynn Haupt
Little, Brown Spark
Pub Date May 4,  2021 
ISBN: 9780316426480
hardcover $27.00 (USD)

from the publisher

Deepen your connection to the natural world with this inspiring meditation, "a path to the place where science and spirit meet" (Robin Wall Kimmerer).

In Rooted, cutting-edge science supports a truth that poets, artists, mystics, and earth-based cultures across the world have proclaimed over millennia: life on this planet is radically interconnected. Our bodies, thoughts, minds, and spirits are affected by the whole of nature, and they affect this whole in return. In this time of crisis, how can we best live upon our imperiled, beloved earth?

Award-winning writer Lyanda Lynn Haupt’s highly personal new book is a brilliant invitation to live with the earth in both simple and profound ways—from walking barefoot in the woods and reimagining our relationship with animals and trees, to examining the very language we use to describe and think about nature. She invokes rootedness as a way of being in concert with the wilderness—and wildness—that sustains humans and all of life.

In the tradition of Rachel Carson, Elizabeth Kolbert, and Mary Oliver, Haupt writes with urgency and grace, reminding us that at the crossroads of science, nature, and spirit we find true hope. Each chapter provides tools for bringing our unique gifts to the fore and transforming our sense of belonging within the magic and wonder of the natural world. 

The Genome Odyssey: Medical Mysteries and the Incredible Quest to Solve Them by Euan Angus Ashley

 

I have been interested in genome research since I first heard about it. As a genealogy researcher, I am curious about what we inherit from our ancestors. I seek out family resemblances and inherited traits, finding my eyes in one relative, my body type in another. 

I wonder what health issues I inherited, or did not inherit. My mother had autoimmune diseases, and so do I. My grandfather had horrible ragweed allergies, and so does our son. My father had non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and so does my cousin. My aunt and her two children struggled with alcoholism. Two grandfathers (aged 52 and 68) and an uncle (age 34) died of heart attacks. 

For some people, their genes are secret time bombs. A healthy athlete suffers a sudden heart attack and dies. A baby's normal progress stops, and even regresses. 

What if there was a test that could warn us of impending or likely health issues so doctors could be prepared to remedy or even cure them? What if it was affordable for everyone? What if if was part of our normal preventative health care insurance?

This could be reality.

The Genome Odyssey is a fascinating narrative of Dr. Ashley's research in genome sequencing and how it was applied to solve medical mysteries. 

The science is very accessible in presentation, so that even non-medical folk like myself can understand how genes and sequencing works. The personal stories of those whose lives were changed through genome sequencing  and genetic therapy are affecting. For some, simple OTC supplements changed their life.

The author addresses the current Sars-CoV-2 pandemic, telling how the scientific community swung into action even as governments floundered, and explaining how vaccines was developed and how the different kinds work on the virus. 

"Could even more widespread use of genomics have gotten us further ahead of this pandemic to begin with?", he asks. He notes that wastewater can predict which community will have the next rise in infections. If we systematically tested wastewater the way we test drinking water, we could be prepared to prevent disease flareups.

In a capitalist, profit-driven health system, the question is who will pay. Will the rich only benefit, or those victims of rare diseases who are covered by research grants? Another issue to be addressed is the privacy of genome information and its use. Ashley adds, "Just because we can, doesn't mean we should. Nor does it mean that we can afford it."

Yet the possibilities of what doctors will be able to do in the future are endless.

I received an ARC from the publisher through Bookish First. My review is fair and unbiased.

The Genome Odyssey: Medical Mysteries and the Incredible Quest to Solve Them 
by Euan Angus Ashley, MD, PhD
Celadon Books
Publication Date: February 23, 2021

hardcover $26.99; ebook $14.99
ISBN 9781250234995

from the publisher

“This wonderful page-turner captures the excitement, peril, wonder and anticipation of the so-called “genomics” era — the era that has begun us to allow us to sequence the entirety of DNA carried within our bodies, and to understand the functions of parts of this genome. Dr Ashley, one of the pioneers of gene sequencing technologies, writes with authority, elegance and simplicity to enable an in-depth understanding of the most exciting scientific developments of our times. Every curious reader must read this book.” —Siddhartha Mukherjee, Pulitzer Prize-winning and #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Emperor of Maladies and The Gene

In The Genome Odyssey, Dr. Euan Ashley, Stanford professor of medicine and genetics, brings the breakthroughs of precision medicine to vivid life through the real diagnostic journeys of his patients and the tireless efforts of his fellow doctors and scientists as they hunt to prevent, predict, and beat disease.

Since the Human Genome Project was completed in 2003, the price of genome sequencing has dropped at a staggering rate. It’s as if the price of a Ferrari went from $350,000 to a mere forty cents. Through breakthroughs made by Dr. Ashley’s team at Stanford and other dedicated groups around the world, analyzing the human genome has decreased from a heroic multibillion dollar effort to a single clinical test costing less than $1,000.

For the first time we have within our grasp the ability to predict our genetic future, to diagnose and prevent disease before it begins, and to decode what it really means to be human.

In The Genome Odyssey, Dr. Ashley details the medicine behind genome sequencing with clarity and accessibility. More than that, with passion for his subject and compassion for his patients, he introduces readers to the dynamic group of researchers and doctor detectives who hunt for answers, and to the pioneering patients who open up their lives to the medical community during their search for diagnoses and cures.

He describes how he led the team that was the first to analyze and interpret a complete human genome, how they broke genome speed records to diagnose and treat a newborn baby girl whose heart stopped five times on the first day of her life, and how they found a boy with tumors growing inside his heart and traced the cause to a missing piece of his genome.

These patients inspire Dr. Ashley and his team as they work to expand the boundaries of our medical capabilities and to envision a future where genome sequencing is available for all, where medicine can be tailored to treat specific diseases and to decode pathogens like viruses at the genomic level, and where our medical system as we know it has been completely revolutionized.

Conversations with RBG by Jeffrey Rosen

I admit my knowledge and understanding of the Supreme Court is barely adequate, based mostly on headline news and gleanings from my readings in history and biographies.

With some trepidation, I proceeded to read Conversations with RBG, worried it would be 'over my head.'

I was immediately pleased to find Jeffrey Rosen's book was informative, with a good sense of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg's personality and ideas about "life, love, liberty, and law," and yet accessible to a general reader like myself. Most of the cases discussed were quite well known, although in Rosen's chapter introductions there were references to cases outside of my knowledge.

Each chapter is a transcript of a conversation between Rosen and RBG that took place over time, focusing on one aspect of her life or career. The conversations consider landmark Supreme Court cases but also consider the present and future of the Court.

Rosen and RBG bonded over a shared love of opera. Classical music and opera are RBG's passion, bringing beauty, joy, and therapeutic escape into her workaholic life.

I appreciated learning about her early cases working with the American Civil Liberties Union and the Women's Rights Project.

RBG endeavored for laws that were neutral in regards to sex, so that men and women had the same, equal protections.

I think that men and women, shoulder to shoulder, will work together to make this a better world.~RBG quoted in Conversations with RBG

All the landmark cases are addressed from RBG's landmark cases to her dissenting votes. A very interesting chapter concerns RBG's meeting with Margaret Atwood. Also discussed is how RBG became a cultural icon, memorialized in opera and social media memes.

Rosen asked, "What's the worst ruling" the current Court has produced, and she answered Citizens United. "I think the notion that we have all the democracy that money can buy strays fo far from what our democracy is supposed to be."

I read in the newspaper today that Virginia passed the Equal Rights Amendment, which RBG had supported. Last night I had read about Rosen asking if the ERA might be revived in correlation with the 100th anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment. RBG replied that because some states withdrew their ratification "it would be better to start over."

I appreciated RBG's philosophy of the court being "a reactive institution." She believes the Court should respect the legislative judgment of Congress.

RBG is hopeful, understanding that the American democratic experiment is an ever-evolving process.

"I am an originalist; I think we're constantly forming a more perfect Union, which is what the Founders intended. As bad as things may be, there are better than they once were. These are not the best of times, but think of how many bad time's I've experienced in my long lig.e Starting with the Second World War...then Senator Joe McCarthy...Then Vietnam. Somehow, we have gotten over the worst of times."~RBG in Conversations with RBG by Jeffrey Rosen

I won a free book from the publisher through LibraryThing. My review is fair and unbiased.

Read an excerpt here.

Conversations with RBG
by Jeffrey Rosen
Henry Holt and Co.
Publication: 11/05/2019
hardcover $28
ISBN: 9781250235176

The Man Who Walked Backward: An American Dreamer's Search for Meaning in the Great Depression

Plennie Lawrence Wingo is not a household name, although he went to great lengths endeavoring to achieve fame.

A string of bad luck had hit Plennie, thanks to the Depression. Nearly penniless, he hit on an idea. People were doing all kinds of crazy things to break records in a quest for fame. With fame comes money. It seemed as if everything that could be done had been done. Except...no one had walked around the world backward.

Plennie became obsessed. Every day for six months he practiced walking backward. He bought a map and sunglasses with mirrors to see behind him. He was given a cane. He put on his steel heeled shoes and a suit and tucked a notebook in his pocket, and in 1931 he left Texas, walking backward down Main Street on his way toward Dallas. He had picture postcards of himself to sell for income and hoped to find a commercial sponsor.

The Man Who Walked Backward by Ben Montgomery is Plennie's story, which is entertaining and interesting. He meets with great generosity and falls victim to scammers. He is a dreamer and a go-getter, fated to hit brick walls. He is harassed by cops and jailed in a foreign land. An affable man, he made friends who offered him shelter and meals and sometimes cash.

As readers travel with Plennie, we experience the misery and poverty of the Depression. We learn the story of America's growth through the history of the places he passed through, and how we used up and destroyed our vast riches.

Famous events and people are mentioned: the destruction of the buffalo as part of Native American genocide; the destruction of the prairie; towns that boom and bust; lynching and the Klan; Bonnie and Clyde and Al Capone; the kidnapping of Charles Lindberg's baby; the rise of Hoovervilles and the Dust Bowl; the growth of the beer industry and Prohibition.

And we travel with Plennie to Germany to experience the rise of Hitler, and across Europe to Turkey. It is unsettling how 1931 America is so familiar: ecological disaster, the destruction of the working class, the rise of a man who knew how to work the crowd, "tailoring his speeches to his audiences" and promising to make Germany great again. "People loved him. those who didn't were scared of those who did."

I found the book fascinating.

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

THE MAN WHO WALKED BACKWARD: An American Dreamer's Search for Meaning in the Great Depression
Little, Brown Spark
by Ben Montgomery
On Sale: September 18, 2018
Price: $14.99 / $18.99 (CDN)
ISBN-13: 9780316438049