notanotherbookreview

What did the Founders intend for a future United States? While no historian, I began reading biographies in lock-down for insight into our fractious nation. It's oddly comforting to learn of similar divisions in colonial times--a political split between the east and north (which wanted a strong Fed) and the south and west(which wanted power invested primarily in the States). During the Continental Congress, some representatives were more interested in keeping their British trading partner than war. After winning independence, there were rebellions against government authority. The Whiskey rebellion (against a tax) had to be quelled in-person by Washington and Hamilton with troops. I wondered if the optimism and unity of post WW2  America, when I grew up, was a historic aberration--result of a boom economy built on war production. Perhaps factional discord is the norm? Is our time more dire--can the center hold against the assaults on democratic ideals?  Can anything solid...

      For some perspective on women's rights in the U.S., which were derived from English law--changed in Britain in 1839. Black men in the U.S. had the right to vote in 1870. White women in 1920 and black women not until the voting right act of 1965. Women's rights had little precedent in English law until Caroline Norton set a new precedent in 1839 (during Victoria's reign) with a mother's legal right to have access to her children. Before that time, Caroline, like all women, was a legal nonentity. Husbands and fathers represented them. (Spinsters, who could inherit if no male relatives, had more status then married women) Nonentity means no legal precedent existed for women's rights in England. If a man beat his wife or broke her arm (like Caroline's husband), the matter was not considered a crime. Unless a woman was killed, domestic violence was private. Some men thought it helped woman's behavior to be "knocked around." Wages or inherited mone...

4/21, New York Times Book Review on NOTORIOUS BEN HECHT. Quite an even-handed look. CONGRATS to Purdue University Press and Julien Gorbach!!   https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/17/books/review/adina-hoffman-julien-gorbach-ben-hecht-biography.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/movies/ct-ae-ben-hecht-biographies-0331-story.html?fbclid=IwAR1I7Q0AECpxtvA3CkjHoVxoeOaL8441guvKrUNbKJcHWqKp33EXOsXIRFs Congratulations to Julien Gorbach on the publication of NOTORIOUS BEN HECHT on March 15, 2019. A wonderful in-dept look at a man whose career spanned reporting on corruption on Chicago, writing Broadway hits like Front Page i n NY, as a famous wit of the Algonquin Roundtable, winning an Emmyfor the invention of the modern gangster movie in Hollywood, where he wrote Scarface and Notorious, Hecht organized entertainers to save Europe's Jews and later joined forces with notorious gangster Mickey Cohen to fight for a Jewish stsate. Writer, thinker, famous in his time,...