Nonfiction November -- Week Two

Week 2 November 9-15 - Nonfiction Journeys - This week choose a book that reflects a journey for its author or for the reader or both.  This can be a physical journey,  an emotional, psychological or spiritual journey or a combination of these.   Any nonfiction title that leaves its author/protagonist and/or reader in a different place at the end from the start point is good for this challenge.   

Hosted by Frances at volatilerune.blog   

This past summer my husband and I took a rode trip to visit two national parks: Grand Teton NP and Yellowstone NP, both in Wyoming. As we were driving through the bleak parts of Eastern Idaho we listened to an audiobook of This Land is Your Land by Beverly Gage.

Beverly Gage, a Pulitzer Prize winning historian, embarked on a series of thirteen road trips around the U.S.A. to highlight important moments in the country's history. Gage visited museums, roadside attractions, reenactment sites, even souvenir stores. Some of the places she visited are well known sites (Independence Hall) and others are much more obscure (spending the night in a missile silo turned into an Airbnb). She doesn't try to tell a sanitized story of only heroic moments but also uses her road trips to point out places and events that highlight our country's challenges and mistakes. The words of the Declaration of Independence that gave birth to a new nation in 1776 have been consistent touchstones over the years since, but various people and groups have embraced the Declaration and molded its powerful words to fit a particular viewpoint or support causes across the political spectrum. Gage shows that Americans can honestly face their history -- the good, the bad, and the ugly -- and still love their country.

As Don and I listened to accounts of each of her thirteen road trips, covering the whole history of the USA from colonial time to the current day we were both struck by our messy history and yet we have held together for 250 years. During the time of our listening our country was preparing itself for a celebration of those 250 years. However we were learning that our President was messing with the plans, trying to make the event about him. For example, Trump was planning a UFC event on the lawn of the White House, which people would have to say exurbanite amounts to attend. And what do mixed marital arts have to do with our history, anyway? Everything he was doing and planning seemed to divide the country more than it already was. Few people I know even bothered to celebrate the milestone event on July 4th. Everything about his plans disgusted us. Both Don and I were old enough to remember the bicentennial celebrations in 1976. Every town had a parade and one felt proud to be an American. Not this year.

As we finished the audiobook, Don turned to me and said he wished everyone in our country could listen to or read this book for the country's 250th birthday. Gage had helped us see, through history, that we can endure these current times, when a president is only interested in enriching himself and dismantling a constitution. She said, "I also discovered that it’s very hard to know in our own historical moment how to judge what’s happening around you. One of the things that history does is give us some measures against which to judge our own time."

Sometimes I find myself wanting to hide within fiction, where there is a likely happy ending to the story. But this summer, the book that helped me the most by gaining a historical perspective was This Land is Your Land by Beverly Gage.

-Anne