Songs of America by Jon Meacham and Tim McGraw

Oh, I so enjoyed reading this book! From the beginning with the beautiful and inspirational Overture on The History of Music by Jon Meacham, I did not want to stop reading this history of America through music.

Music brings a deep association with the events and places I have experienced. When I hear a song I can place myself in a specific place and point in time. The Green Berets by Barry Sadler came out when I was fourteen. It had pride of country and was an appealing march. I bought a ceramic green beret pin at a drug store counter.

But the patriotic support of the war was short-lived and the backdrop of my teenage years was filled with anti-war music including Turn, Turn Turn, Where Have All the Flowers Gone? and Give Peace a Chance. 

The music of my life tracked the social changes going on. The songs about women waiting for men became feminist anthems. Love of country was replaced by calls for justice and equity. Love songs were still popular, but cooler were the protest songs for social change with messages of universal love, peace, inclusion, anti-authority, and dropping out of the system.

The music of patriotism is inevitably the music of protest, Meacham writes, adding that history is not just read, but is something we also hear. And he notes that history is a continual process. He holds hope that we "can overcome fear, that light can triumph over darkness, that we can open our arms rather than clench our fists." Music reminds the nation of where we have been and points to what we can become.

The authors begin with pre-Revolutionary songs such as John Dickinson's 1768 The Liberty Song which rallied the colonies to unite in a righteous cause and move through history to Bruce Springsteen's protest anthem Born in the U. S. A. Each song placed in its historical and cultural setting.  

Over There was George Cohen's "bugle call" 

evoking the American Revolution's Yanke Doodle in its patriotism.
"Johnny get your gun...show the "Hun" you're a son-of-a-gun"
"And we won't come back till it's over, over there."

The music discussed by Meacham and commented on by McGraw includes the well-known and well-beloved but also lesser-known songs that were influential in their day. They all represent America at a specific historical era: The Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, slavery and abolition, the Civil War, minstrel shows and racism, WWI and WWII, the social movements of Civil Rights and equal rights and voting rights, the reactive rise of the Klan and Jim Crow, the cultural division of the 1970s, and the political divisions of the last fifty years.

WWI saw patriotic music like America, Here's My Boy 

with a mother offering her 'boy' to the cause... 

and anti-war protest music like I Didn't Raise My Boy to be a Soldier.

McGraw's contributions are inserted in text boxes. He addresses the songs from a musician's viewpoint and from a personal, emotional response.

Sinatra was one of McGraw's idols

Songs of America is a book of history, filled with stories that trace the complicated American experiment in democracy.

In 1938 Irving Berlin's God Bless America was debuted on Kate Smith's CBS radio show. Woody Guthrie's This Land Is Your Land was originally titled God Blessed America and questioned the inequality behind the American promise.

History is an argument without end, Meacham shares. Americans have argued and fought, and dissent and protest continue, but this book offers the promise that "America is not finished, the last notes have not yet been played," and calls us to lift every voice and sing in the continuing great national conversation.

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

Songs of America: Patriotism, Protest, and the Music That Made a Nation
by Jon Meacham; Tim McGraw
Random House Publishing Group - Random House
Pub Date 11 Jun 2019
ISBN 9780593132951
PRICE $30.00 (USD)

All sheet music photographed are from my personal collection.

Helen Korngold Diary: June 2- 8, 1919

Helen Korngold, December 1919, New York City

100 years ago a Washington University student kept a diary. I found it in an antique shop in 2001. I was so taken by the author that I spent years researching her, her family, and the people and places she wrote about. This year I am sharing weekly posts from Helen Korngold's diary along with my research.

June finds Helen busy preparing for final exams.

June

Monday 2
Home – tired- study

Tuesday 3
Study for Shakespeare

Wednesday 4
Shakespeare. Slept.

Thursday 5
Study for Ed & Shakes. [Shakespeare]

Friday 6
Exams in Ed & Sh. Pretty fair.

Saturday 7
Exam in Hist., Ed. & Geol. I’m almost dead – downtown – dressmaker’s- Emil phoned – Milliners.

Sunday 
Sunday School. Swimming with Bernard in afternoon at Highlands – Had a wonderful time – to Satellites with Emil Winkler in evening. Big row over elections – they don’t suit us.

Notes:

Helen was busy preparing for final exams but managed to spend time at Highlands Amusement Park.

June 7, 1919 St. Louis Post-Dispatch notice

Helen did not have time to see Mary Pickford in her new movie.


In the news, the last WWI soldiers returned home are celebrated in a parade.

President Wilson congratulated the ladies on getting the vote.

June 7, 1919, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Make Me a City by Jonathan Carr

"But if what survives of our legacy is a patchwork of threads, I believe the historian has a duty to try to stitch them together." ~the ficitonal Mr Winship, Professor of American History at University of Chicago, in Make Me A City by Jonathan Carr

As a family genealogy researcher, I have delved into many turn-of-the-century place histories in which people still living recollected earlier days. Make Me A City is patterned in part on these late 19th c. volumes. Central is a fictional history of Chicago's first hundred years, offering an alternative narrative of its founding families. Interjected are other fictional primary sources. The overarching narrative is the development of the city, but the stories of these characters drives the book.

Jonathan Carr offers a French-born mulatto trader as the first European to settle at Echicagou where the Illinois River meets Lake Michigan. Jean Baptiste Pointe de Sable built his family an admirable home before an unscrupulous man determines to take it from him.

We follow Jean and his descendants through the century, along with the stories of men who built Chicago, the visionary engineers and the immigrant workers, the con men and the idealistic journalists.

The story keeps weaving back to Jean and those early days when all was set in motion--the disenfranchisement of people of color, the anti-immigrant prejudice, the powerlessness of women.

Toward the end of the book, Antje Van Voorhis Hunter, whose lineage traces back to Jean, travels to see a statue erected by Pullman to commemorate the Massacre at Fort Dearborn. Her grandmother survived that massacre and her version of history has been recorded by Prof. Winship.

The statue portrays a white woman and a baby on the ground with a scantily clad Native American raising a tomahawk overhead. Another Native American stands with his hand out to stop the massacre; this man is taller and wears buckskin trousers. The civilized Native heroically is stopping the violence. No soldiers appear in the scene.

Antje and her husband discuss the implications of the statue's version of history, "like using perfume to cover up a bad smell." The myth portrayed in the art has become an accepted and shared truth.

"If you take on somebody more powerful than yourself and play by the rules and beat them, they annul the result," Antje thinks, adding, "Then nothing has changed. "It's in our blood," Mr. Winship believes, referring back to the first violence committed against Jean.

I made a family tree to keep the families straight.

 Read an excerpt here.

I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Make Me A City
by Jonathan Carr
Henry Holt and Co.
Publication: 03/19/2019
$30.00 hardcover
ISBN: 9781250294012

The Electric Hotel by Dominic Smith

I could not stop reading Dominic Smith's new novel The Electric Hotel. I was transported back in time to the heady early days of film, disturbed by a trek into the horrors of WWI, and enthralled by the vivid characters and their stories, especially the tragic story of unrequited love.

Claude Ballard's cutting-edge, notorious 1910 film The Electric Hotel had impelled audience to high emotion. It was his highest achievement, but it came crashing down when Thomas Edison sued his company for copyright infringement--as he did all his competition, seeking a monopoly on the film industry.

Claude has not seen a movie since 1920 when in 1962 a grad student in filmography seeks him out. He realizes he has been "pickling" himself for thirty years, holed up in a hotel filled with other aging film industry has-beens, his hoard of film decaying from vinegar syndrome.

"He'd witnessed and photographed the passing of a golden, burnished epoch." from The Electric Hotel by Dominic Smith

As Claude answers Martin's questions and shares his hoard of decaying canisters of film, he revisits his early life and ascent from a French farmer's son who in 1895 was mesmerized by the early Lumiere films, how he became a noted movie maker, then while bravely filming WWI he was taken by the German army, always haunted by the film actress who broke his heart.

"When I dream of that old life I see it like a strip of burning celluloid. It smokes and curls in the air, but it's impossible to hold between my fingers." from The Electric Hotel by Dominic Smith

Sabine Montrose had beauty but no heart. She arrived in Paris as a teenager and fled when men pursued her. She learned to act and to use men but never would give her heart. Claude became one of her victims when the older woman took him into her bed for one night only. Claude was caught in her web, filmed her and made her an international star, forever hoping that Sabine would allow him into her life once again.

"Loving a woman was like that...was chasing smoke." from The Electric Hotel by Dominic Smith

The son of a failed nickelodeon owner, Hal was the theater owner who ran Claude's films; the small, spunky boy Chip was the burning man in a circus act when he joined the company as a stuntman. Sabine's mysterious mentor Pavel was always at her side.

The mystery of what happened pulled me along like a magnet, but I cherished every sentence of the gorgeous writing and would not skip a line.

Smith was impressed by the quality and art of the early movies he viewed during his research. What treasures have been lost? The Electric Hotel is an actual 1908 film recently rediscovered. I viewed it online here. A couple take a room in a hotel in which stop-action animated luggage takes itself up the elevator and unpacks itself. Brushes clean the traveler's boots. I can imagine the impact on audiences over 100 years ago!

"People wanted escape, sure, but first they wanted the shock of recognition." from The Electric Hotel by Dominic Smith

I previously read Smith's novels The Mercury Visions of Louise Daguerre and read and reviewed The Last Painting of Sara DeVos.

Read an excerpt at  http://www.dominicsmith.net/pdfs/excerpts/Eletric_Hotel_Excerpt.pdf

I was given access to an egalley through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Electric Hotel: A Novel
by Dominic Smith
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Sarah Crichton Books
Pub Date 04 Jun 2019
ISBN 9780374146856
PRICE $27.00 (USD)

Grace Will Lead Us Home: The Charleston Church Massacre and the Hard, Inspiring Journey to Forgiveness by Jennifer Berry Hawes

It was about fifteen years ago that a stranger came to church and after worship service was directed to the young adult Sunday School class. He sat quietly during the discussion. Then he spoke up, asking what the church believed about a divisive social issue. There was a stunned silence for a few seconds before I was inspired to answer.

I explained the official denomination's Social Principles. And I explained the wide range of personal beliefs that our community included. As we broke up, the man asked to see the pastor and asked him the same question.

The pastor was my husband. He explained the church doctrine and he gave his personal belief. The man nodded and said it was clear that the church was under the leadership of Satan.

He was a quiet-spoken man and I do not recall any high emotion from his face or voice as he told us that he would return the following Sunday to proclaim to the world that this was a church lead by Satan.

My husband conferred with church leaders and word got to a church member who was our state Senator. Her family were active members of the church and she reported the incident to the Capital police and the local police were also contacted. They knew this man and said he was likely 'off his meds.' The church asked for a restraining order to keep the man off the church property.

It was a fretful week. I was concerned that the man would return through the open doors and wreak havoc. Would he be violent? Would he have a gun? I pictured him walking up the aisle of the church, backlit by the summer sunshine coming in through the open double doors of the church, the risen Christ in stained glass above the entry.

Sunday came and the police arrived and kept the man across the street.

As the man shouted out his condemnation our church family drew strength and solidarity, from the teenagers to our septuagenarian WWII veteran whose wife restrained him from crossing the street to confront the man.

Churchs have conflicts and splits and bickering and disagreements. They are human institutions and filled with imperfect people. But the idea of a stranger entering and threatening lives was appalling.

Yet it happens too often. Recently, there have been attacks on African American churches and a synagogue. It happened this past week in Sri Lanka and as I finished writing this a California synagogue was victimized by a hate crime attack.

Our places of worship should be--are expected to be--safe havens for the church community and for the strangers who they welcome.

Jennifer Berry Hawes wrote Grace Will Lead Us Home to "convey the sheer scope of devastation that mass tragedies sow in the lives of everyday people."

The Charleston Church Massacre is a haunting tragedy. A stranger came to a Bible Study and murdered nine people. The reason Dylann Roof gave for his crime was that he "had to" do it. Indoctrinated by white supremacist website propaganda, Roof felt propelled to do something to reverse integration.

The impact on the personal lives of the congregation was devastating. Hawes tells the story of the survivors and the families of the deceased; we get to know them as people we care about.

For these people of faith, forgiveness is a Christian requirement they took seriously, forgiving Dylann Roof. What did that cost them to say those words! And what freedom was gained in letting go?

The narrative power of the book was overwhelming, even if sad and disturbing. Set within the larger picture, I learned about Charleston's history of slavery, the birth and decline of Emmanuel AME Church, the history of racism and the backlash against segregation. It took this tragedy to retire the Confederate flag from the courthouse. The portrait of Dylann Roof was mystifying. His social intelligence allowed him to manipulate his parents and yet he could not make friends and avoided eye contact. Was he autistic?

The massacre was horrific and tragic. And I was sorely disappointed by the lack of compassion and support offered from the AME church leadership. As Emmanuel's pastor was a victim, an interim pastor was appointed. His abuse of power was unimaginable.

Grace Will Lead Us Home is a moving portrayal of a community in crisis and recovery.

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

Grace Will Lead Us Home: The Charleston Church Massacre and the Hard, Inspiring Journey to Forgiveness
by Jennifer Berry Hawes
St. Martin's Press
Pub Date 04 Jun 2019 
ISBN: 9781250117762
PRICE: $28.99 (USD)

Helen Korngold Diary: May 26-June 1, 1919

Helen Korngold, December 1919, New York City

One hundred years ago Helen Korngold kept a diary that documented her senior year at Washington University in St. Louis, her social life, and trips she took across America. I found the diary and researched Helen and the places and people she wrote about. Every week this year I am sharing her diary and my research.

May

Monday 26

Tired!

School. All dolled up for May Day & then it rained. Tough luck! Have to study at last! Final Exam tomorrow in Ed. 18.

Tuesday 27

School – practiced dancing with Eva – rotten. Keod Tea. Athletic Meeting- banquet – Farewell to Miss Grant – Won Baseball Honors & song for Senior Contest Honors.

Wednesday 28

School – Rehearsal with Eva in evening – junk – I’ll stay out of that dance.

Thursday 29

School – Rehearsal with Corrine. Home – To concert with Summer – lots of fun. Saw Mr. Miller – fair proposition.

Friday 30

School. Home – study

Saturday 31

School – downtown. Grandma’s – Uncle Joe leaves for Colo. & Grandma for Oaksville – Don’t like my new dress.

June

Sunday 1

Home – Rehearsal. Vaudeville was perfectly marvelous. We were all so thrilled & had such a glorious time. Also a big financial success. Some class to celebrate.

Notes:

May 26

Ed. 18 course description: Contemporary Educational Problems. Recent experiments on making schools more efficient will be discussed. Investigations will be made and reports prepared by members of the class. Three hours a week. Credit 3 units. (Wells)

May 27

Keod was the woman’s senior honor society at Washington University. 

Helen was active in sports. Her senior yearbook shows she was on the rowing team as a 'coxswain' and the hockey team. She wrote about playing baseball and basketball in her diary. 

          

May 28

Final Examinations Week was May 29 through June 6 

May 29
Perhaps Summer and Helen went to the opening Park concert

May 31

Joseph Frey (1884 to 1962) was Helen’s maternal uncle. His WWI draft card shows he had black hair and eyes and was of medium height and build. On the 1930 Census, he was boarding with Louis Lieberman in the home of his sister Jeannie Frey Rosenbaum. Lou was a pharmacist and Joseph a newspaper editor who started The Modern View, a weekly Jewish newspaper. In 1940 he was living with Jeannie and worked as a collector for a hospital. His WWII draft card showed he worked in Hot Spring, Arkansas and traveled nine states, and used his sister's address as a contact.

Oaksville is located just south of St. Louis, along the Mississippi River.

June 1

The Satellites Vaudeville

from The Jewish Voice, May 30, 1919

June 1, 1919, St. Louis Post-Dispatch article

Articles and ads from the newspaper that week:

May 27, 1919 St. Louis Post-Dispatch ad

May 29, 1919 St. Louis Post-Dispatch photo Soldan H. S.
'boys...who gave up their lives in the war"

St. Louis Post-Dispatch photograph of Memorial Day Parade

From the May 29, 1919 St. Louis Post-Dispatch

June 1, 1919, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

The Ministry of Truth: The Biography of George Orwell's 1984 by Dorian Lynskey

In January 2017, Sean Spicer claimed that the crowd gathered to see President Trump take the oath of office was the "largest audience to ever witness an inauguration." When accused of misrepresentation Kellyanne Conway said her statement was "alternative facts." Over the following four days, sales of George Orwell's novel 1984 rocketed to number one bestseller.

Dorian Lynskey writes that more people know about 1984 than know 1984. It's catchphrases have entered the common language. Big Brother. Doublespeak. Newspeak.

In his book, Ministry of Truth, Lynskey examines the novel's origin, development, and influence in its time and its afterlife. Lynskey shows how Orwell's values and experiences shaped the novel and Orwell's purpose and intended message of the novel.

The book is in two parts, first telling the story of Orwell's life and beliefs, his world, the history of utopian and dystopian novels. In the second part, Lynskey covers the novel's influences, interpretations, and uses since its publication.

Since January 2017, dystopian novels have topped the best-seller lists and newly published ones find a ready audience. 1984 was not meant to be prophetic, but a warning based on Orwell's experience.

"What you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening," Trump proclaimed in a July 2018 speech, echoing the 1984 lines, "The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command." Orwell feared that objective truth "is fading out of the world." Seventy years later, we still share that fear.

Upon its publication, some thought it was a book that would only speak to one generation. Sadly, it has proven resiliently evergreen.

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

"The moral to be drawn from this dangerous nightmare situation is a simple one," [Orwell] explained in a press statement after the book came out. "Don't let it happen. It depends on you." quoted in The Ministry of Truth by Dorian Lynskey

The Ministry of Truth: The Biography of George Orwell's 1984
by Dorian Lynskey
Doubleday Books
Pub Date 04 Jun 2019
ISBN 9780385544054
PRICE $28.95 (USD)