The Times of Their Lives: Life, Love, and Death in Plymouth Colony (2000) by James Deetz and Patricia Scott Deetz.
James Deetz, one of the founders of historical archaeology and author of the classic In Small Things Forgotten: An Archaeology of Early American Life (rev. 1996), died the day after Thanksgiving. Ironically, this last book of his begins by deconstructing our American myth of the Pilgrims and their first Thanksgiving. It then goes on to summarize the social history (witches, women, sex crimes, violence, and death) and archaeology (including housing and furnishings) of 17th-century Plymouth. Deetz is an authority here, for before leaving for the University of California in 1978, he developed Plimoth Plantation's living history village exhibit, and in 1996, while at the University of Virginia, he began a seminar on the historical ethnography of Plymouth Colony. (See the resulting Plymouth Colony Archive Project at http://www.people.Virginia.EDU/~jfd3a/.) This is vintage Deetz, being both interesting and informative, while including his typical, oddball references to contemporary popular culture.
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In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex (2000), by Nathaniel Philbrick.
This is a great book to escape into. It's a retelling of the true story of the sinking of the whaleship Essex by a whale in the early 1820s. Melville later used the event as the basis for his Moby Dick. The writing features a nice blend of maritime and New England history with some compelling story-telling. Although the reader knows what's going to happen, Philbrick's sense of detail and his timing of the narrative are what keeps the book so readable. The image of sailors alone in the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean in small whaling boats after the sinking of the Essex and the extremes to which they go for survival will stick with the reader for a long time to come. This book is flat-out impossible to put down.
Beethoven's
Hair: An Extraordinary Historical Odyssey and a Musical Mystery Solved
(2000), by Russell Martin.
A young musician clipped a lock of hair from Beethoven's corpse and preserved it inside a framed locket. Telling its history through three generations of his family, its reappearance at a Sotheby's auction, and its eventual scientific testing provides the structure for this engaging book. Martin vividly discusses Beethoven's medical history, social circumstances and personality. He also explores the quiet heroism of Danish resistance, for the locket changed hands under mysterious circumstances during the Nazi occupation. Martin has constructed a superb mystery and given us a historical account that breathes life into the characters. Lovers of Beethoven's music will enjoy this book and find the scientific results revealing, for the hair contains clues to Beethoven's illness and treatment. People who are interested in Holocaust history and forensics will also enjoy the book.
The Railway Children (1906) by Edith Nesbit and At the Back of the North Wind (1871) by George MacDonald.
In light of the Harry Potter phenomenon, let me suggest a couple of books which predate J.K. Rowlings' by many years, but which are in the same spirit of fantasy and wonderful British writing, and are perhaps lesser known than the Chronicles of Narnia or The Lord of the Rings. First, The Railway Children, is the first of the series of children's books by E. Nesbit. She is funny but deals with serious issues, and the children, whose father is mysteriously arrested for a crime that he did not commit, are strong and resourceful. Edith Nesbit herself, by the way, had quite a colorful life, and there are some interesting biographies of her. The other suggestion is At the Back of the North Wind, or any of the other children's books by George MacDonald (a contemporary and friend of C.S. Lewis). This book addresses the hopes of a poor child and the love in nature, personified by the beautiful North Wind. Both books display a style of writing characteristic of British children's literature, which does not talk down to children or make them seem stupid. Good reading for a winter afternoon!
Dubose Heyward: A Charleston Gentleman and the World of Porgy and Bess (2000) by James M. Hutchisson.
Biographical and literary treatments of Dubose Heyward are traditionally delivered in broad brush strokes that thinly cover an air of apology, as if Heyward and Charleston were agent and heir of a second class literature. Most deal to a large extent on Heyward's observation and representations of Charleston's Gullah culture and his zeal to elevate the literature of the South, but choose not to venture much below the surface of either his literature or his life. In this latest treatment, James Hutchisson, so successfully exposes former omissions that it is much like a new frontier opening into a barely familiar Charleston, and a fine southern writer that you probably will not recognize. The research invested in this effort is first-rate and spun into a narrative that feeds off of the energy bound up struggles between talent, time, place, and race. The settings range far and wide, but there is a poignant cultural lesson here that is Charleston's own for all of us. Live drama sprung from the intersection of aesthetic culture and ethnic culture could hardly be better staged or cast.
