The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments, by Gertrude Himmelfarb

This book does a great job comparing and contrasting the differences of the Enlightenment as experienced in Britain, the U.S., and France.  It's like an introductory, comparative survey course of the various Enlightenment thinkers in the three countries, so do not expect in-depth or detailed analysis on any particular person.  This book is more to give you a general picture of the intellectual climate of those times.  The treatment of the American Enlightenment is the briefest of the three, which was fine with me because I am more familiar with the American founding fathers and the thinkers that influenced them than I am with French or British Enlightenment figures.

Caution:  Your to-read list will grow as a result of reading this book.

Tombeau de la Rouerie, par Michel Mohrt

Ce livre est à la fois une courte introduction à la vie d'Armand Tuffin, Marquis de la Rouerie, et une réflexion sur les parallèles entre sa vie et celle de l’auteur, Michel Mohrt, aussi Breton, soldat français pendant la 2eme guerre mondiale.  Le Marquis de la Rouerie n’est pas assez connu aux Etats-Unis pour son service dans l’armée de Washington.  C’etait dans les livres et les discours de l’historien et journaliste autrichien, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, que j’ai appris quelque chose de lui pour la premiere fois.   Le marquis était un homme qui aimait la liberté, et comme Edmund Burke, il reconnaissait que la révolution française a ete détourné par un mouvement qui n’avait rien à voir avec les idées libérales de la guerre d’indépendence américaine.  Avec le comte de Noyan, il fondait l’association bretonne pour sauvegarder les libertés de sa province, quelle association deviendrait plus tard la Chouannerie dont le but était de renverser le gouvernement révolutionnaire.

American Diplomacy, by George F. Kennan

This book consists of six Walgreen lectures Kennan gave in the 1950's about the major wars the U.S. participated in, including the Spanish American War, World War I, and World War II, and his observations about American foreign policy during that time.  Also included is the famous "Long Telegram," which he sent to the State Department during his service as an ambassador.  It is a concise explanation of the ideology of the Soviet Union, their motivations, and how best to deal with them--apparently given as the answer to the question of why the Soviets were becoming less and less cooperative after World War II.

One of the main ideas behind the book is the warning that moral considerations should not be relied upon too much when determining foreign policy or entering wars.  He favors the approach more common in the 19th century and earlier of pursuing national interests because it limits military engagements to the accomplishment of well defined goals, rather than the unconditional surrender and regime change that characterized 20th century wars.  He got a (figurative) black eye for this idea from Alexander Solzhenitsyn during the latter's 1978 Harvard Commencement Address.  While the narrow pursuit of national interest made sense during the 19th century, when there was a strong moral consensus among the nations, it may be inadequate when dealing with totalitarian regimes whose moral outlook (or lack of one) is very different from one's own and lies at the very root of the war.

A Train of Powder, by Rebecca West

A group I belong to was doing a challenge throughout the month of October to read books by or about people or places in Ireland.  Since Rebecca West, the journalist, travel writer, and novelist was part Irish and she was born in Kerry, this was one of the books I read for it.  As is probably obvious from the cover art, <i>A Train of Powder</i> is a collection of six articles she wrote while covering various criminal trials.  They read more like short stories than like magazine articles because the author really develops the characters, their background, the circumstances of the crimes, and also her own thoughts on the situations.

Three of the articles make up a series called <i> Greenhouse with Cyclamens</i>, where she relates her thoughts during the closing sessions of the Nuremberg Trials and the rebuilding of Germany, including her observations of the personalities of top Nazi leaders like Goering and Hess as they sat in the dock, differences between German and American/British law, growing tensions between the Soviet Union and the other three Allies who shared control of Germany, leading up to the Soviets’ attempt to isolate Berlin from the West and the resulting Berlin Airlift, and the nascent West German government’s insistence on a free market economy despite pressure from the occupying Allies to adopt a more statist model.

 <i>Opera in Greenville</i> is about a lynching in Greenville, South Carolina in 1947.  A mob of about 30 people, mostly cabdrivers, convinced the prison warden to hand over a young black man named Willie Earle, in jail on suspicion of having killed the disabled white cabdriver who was driving him home.  After some days of no results from the local police, the FBI was called in to find the perpetrators.  West does a good job of sketching out what life was like in 1940’s Greenville and situating the crime in a society undergoing a transition in its attitudes towards race relations and vigilante justice.  

<i>Mr. Setty and Mr. Hume</i> is about a 1949 London murder case.   A man who enjoys hunting on weekends goes out in his boat to the marshlands at the mouth of the Thames hoping to bag some duck.  Instead, he comes across a bag full of a more grisly type of meat.  The remains turn out to be those of Mr. Setty, a shady businessman and member of a well-to-do immigrant family.  Mr. Hume is the ex-R.A.F. pilot with a checkered past charged with the murder and disposal of the body.

<i>A Better Mousetrap</i> is the story of an espionage case involving a young British radio telegraph operator employed at the Diplomatic Wireless Service suspected of passing information to a high official in the Soviet embassy.

Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography

Benjamin Franklin's <i>Autobiography</i> only covers up to the time when he was establishing himself as a printer in Philadelphia before his marriage, including a brief mention of his experiments with lightning, so if you are looking for an account of his activities during the War of Independence, Constitutional Convention, or as ambassador to France, this is not the book for you.  It's an interesting account of his early years, from his childhood, education, and apprenticeship in Boston, moving to Philadelphia, dealing with rivalry between the printing houses there, then becoming a business owner himself, starting a newspaper, traveling to England to procure printer's equipment, and his start in Philadelphia politics.

Throughout the <i>Autobiography</i>, Franklin emphasizes the lessons he learned along the way, including the high value of the qualities of thrift, resourcefulness, hard work, taking the initiative in one's own education, avoiding debt, refraining from the development of expensive habits, as well as how to get along well with others, especially how to debate in a reasonable and non-arrogant way.  These are definitely lessons on which we could all use a refresher course.  Despite being a rather vague and non-denominational Christian, Franklin was very interested in moral self-improvement, even developing a list of rules to live by that would be acceptable to any reasonable person of any denomination.

It's a shame he didn't get further along in writing the <i>Autobiography</i> than he did, but as we all know, he was a very busy man!

Economic Facts and Fallacies

Thomas Sowell takes several instances of false ideas about how the economy works and shows how they are not supported by real life evidence.  He also shows how political policies based on these ideas often backfire and aggravate the problem they were supposed to solve.  In many ways, this book is like a more modern version of Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson written in the mid-1940's.  Not that Hazlitt's book is outdated, as many of the economic misconceptions being examined are stubborn ones that keep recurring no matter how many times they are debunked.  Many of these misconceptions are ones that politicians love to use in their election platforms to manipulate the populace into voting for them, so this book is invaluable for people who wish to exercise their citizen duties responsibly.

Lincoln's Speeches, by Abraham Lincoln

Really enjoyed reading these speeches.  Lincoln was a fine writer as well as a great President, and a man of logic and good common sense.  A couple of speeches in this collection did get a bit dry in the middle--one of the State of the Unions, where he had to go into a lot of figures in the budget, but then there's no avoiding that when you have to go into detail.  The most inspiring ones for me were the one given at the Lyceum in Springfield, the House Divided speech, and of course, the Gettysburg Address.

Domestic Tranquility: A Brief Against Feminism, by F. Carolyn Graglia

Carolyn Graglia puts forth a thorough critique of the feminist movement.  Her arguments are logical, well organized, and reasonable, and they certainly are in accord with my own real-life observations and experiences.  She makes the point that women having the choice to go to work is one thing, but manipulating conditions so that women will have to go to work even if they would rather stay home to bring up their children is another thing entirely, and that in many ways the feminist movement has  been undermining women's interests.  Great read for those who are interested in women's issues.

Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline, by Robert Bork

In depth exploration of the ideas of modern liberalism (in the American sense), the political movements of the 1960's and how the people who believe in these ideas managed to gain ascendancy over institutions that shape American culture such as the courts, the media, the movie and music industries, and the universities.

If you've ever wondered why the professors at your university (particularly in the humanities courses) didn't make much logical sense, why their discussions seemed to have little to do with the book you were supposed to be discussing in class, or why modern movies and music are of much lower quality, as far as content goes, than vintage stuff, Slouching Towards Gomorrah goes quite a long way towards an explanation.

This Age of Fable: The Political and Economic World We Live In, by Gustav Stolper

Gustav Stolper has the ability to explain complicated concepts in clear concise language that is very accessible to the general reader who is not a specialist in politics and economics.  This book was published in the 1940's during World War II and some of the fables he debunks are still widely believed in today, particularly the ones about European colonialism, how capitalism works, the business cycle, and what really makes a "have" vs. a "have not" nation.  It's a great choice if you are a layman wishing to learn more about these topics (all listed in the book description above) or have a historical interest in what public opinion was like in the 1940's when the war was going on and its outcome was uncertain.

The book appears to be out of print, which is a shame.  The edition I was able to find is a vintage hardback one from 1942.

At a Century's Ending, by George F. Kennan

This book is a collection of essays, articles, and speeches written by historian George F. Kennan in the 80's and 90's at the tail end of the Cold War. He was in the U.S. Foreign Service from the 1920's to the post WW2 era and even served briefly as American ambassador to the USSR. His views on the USSR, Eastern and Central Europe, the Cold War, American foreign policy, and the sometimes baleful effects of the American political process on foreign policy are very interesting, sometimes surprising. Great read for those interested in Cold War history. Also particularly educational for people who may have lived through the 80's or 90's as children, vaguely remember newscasts and commentary about these events but weren't old enough to understand much of it. I learned a lot reading this book. Since each chapter is a self-contained article or speech, the book lends itself well to reading in short spurts, and the chapters don't have to be read in order.

La Victoire Du Nord Aux États-Unis (The Victory of the North in the United States), by Charles de Montalembert

I saw and heard references to Montalembert in various books and lectures as one of the prominent liberal thinkers of the 19th century so I decided to look him up on Google books. When I saw this title I was immediately interested. As an American residing in the South I learned quite a bit about the reasons behind the Civil War in school from the perspective of Northerners & Southerners but almost nothing about how the war was perceived abroad. If you are curious about this subject, this slim little book is a great read.  The original French text available here, and an English translation is available here.

Montalembert wrote this after Lincoln's assassination and apparently there were many in Europe who mourned him as a great man. The author saw the Civil War and the resolution of the issue of slavery as a test to see if the American people deserved to be ranked among the great peoples of the world. The outcome of the war and resulting abolition of slavery led him to conclude that we passed with flying colors.

Montalembert includes a detailed refutation of the idea that any other issue besides slavery was the main cause of the war. Living in the South I have certainly heard this idea before--that the Confederate states seceded over of tariffs, protectionism for Northern industries, states' rights and other political issues. Montalembert makes a good case that even when disputes arose about those other issues, the dispute could in the end be traced back to slavery. Despite this, he does not demonize Southerners, notes that the valor and moral character they displayed in wartime were equal to those of Northerners, and acknowledges that many probably did go to war for reasons other than the maintenance of slavery. But they put their gifts in the service of a bad cause.

Another part I found interesting is when he contrasts how victorious American (and British) generals use their influence--that is, with humility, to help preserve the peace and stability of their countries rather than to seize as much power as they can for themselves. He compares Grant and Wellington favorably to Napoleon.

Of Plymouth Plantation, by William Bradford

This is a firsthand account of the founding of the Plymouth settlement in Massachusetts by the pilgrims who came over in the Mayflower. Reading (or rather, listening to the audiobook) it really brought home to me just how difficult it is to settle a new land, especially given the conditions back in the 1600's. Like any other ambitious group enterprise there was politics, intrigue, and all the ups and downs of getting along with one another, dealing with people's foibles, keeping the investors financing the enterprise interested, cultivating alliances with local Native American tribes, and so forth.

There are times when the book drags as Bradford will occasionally go into painstaking detail over things I wasn't too interested in, like exactly what was the cargo on a particular ship or what the terms of a particular agreement were, but this was written as a straightforward record of the settlement's founding, not a novel for readers' entertainment, so I won't quibble over that.

You'll have a new appreciation for what Thanksgiving is all about after reading this.

Alexander Hamilton, by Charles Conant

If you know little to nothing about Alexander Hamilton and his achievements as one of the American Founding Fathers and want to get a general introduction about him, you can't go wrong with this book.  It gives a good biographical overview, from his early life in the West Indies, education at Columbia University (then King's College of New York), growing involvement in the American independence movement and military service, to his service as Washington's secretary of the Treasury, disagreements with Thomas Jefferson's views and death in a duel with Aaron Burr.  Some chapters are dedicated to particular achievements, such as his contributions to the Federalist Papers, participation in the writing of the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution, his role in establishing the Bank of the United States and Congress's power to fund the national debt incurred during the war.

It's not a very long book but it is packed with information and is clearly and concisely written.  

I listened to the <A HREF="https://librivox.org/alexander-hamilton-by-charles-a-conant/">LibriVox audiobook</A> version of this title rather than reading the edition pictured on this page.