Between Books

Last week I finished reading a long book, and I’m trying to find a new one. So far, no luck.

I’ve got several dozen book samples on my Kindle, but none of them seems to be grabbing me. I keep switching back and forth between different books until my interest latches onto it. I guess that’s the nice thing about the Kindle, though: I can carry more than one book with me at a time.

I’m switching back and forth among Diarmaid McCulloch’s Christianity (a history book), Richard Evans’s The Third Reich in Power (I read the first book in his trilogy, The Coming of the Third Reich, a few years ago), and Erik Larson’s In the Garden of Beasts, also about Nazi Germany. But I’ve reached the end of the sample of that last one, and I can’t seem to get myself interested enough to pay for the whole book.

Why such depressing subject matter? I don’t know. I just find it interesting. But apparently not interesting enough to latch onto right now for a full read.

Maybe I need a break from reading the Kindle screen? Maybe I miss old-fashioned paper books?

I don’t know. I’m sure some book will call out to me soon enough.

The Story of Britain

I’ve been reading The Story of Britain, by Rebecca Fraser. It’s a survey history of Britain from ancient times to the present, and I’m enjoying it. I took a British history course in college, but I’d forgotten a lot of it.

My college course was a year-long class, and I had wildly different professors in the fall and spring. The fall professor, who covered English history up to 1688, was old-fashioned and histrionic. All I really remember is him telling us the tale of the princes in the tower in this wildly over-the-top and dramatic manner.

The second half covered British history from 1688 to the present, and I enjoyed it much more – in part because I found the modern era more interesting, and in part because the professor was much more sane and coherent and analytical.

This book is bringing it all back, and filling in the gaps I’d missed. It focuses more on the monarchs in the first half, but once it gets to the 18th or 19th century, it turns into a more general history. I’m about 70% through the book, up to the middle of the Victorian era.

One great thing about reading this book is that I’ve finally memorized the order of the English monarchs from William the Conqueror to the present. I was already mostly familiar with the Tudors onward, but everything before that just seemed like a mishmash of Henrys, Edwards and Richards. No more; now it all makes sense. Along with the book, this Wikipedia page has been pretty helpful in getting things straight, particularly this simplified family tree.

Also, since I’m much more familiar with American history, it’s always interesting to see it from the British point of view. The American Revolution is a pretty big deal. The War of 1812 is barely mentioned; although it was a major milestone in the formation of an American national identity, the British were much more occupied at the time with Napoleon’s takeover of Europe (although they did manage to burn the White House to a shell). The U.S. Civil War matters because of its effect on the cotton trade. It’s kind of like those books or movies where you encounter the same events from wildly different points of view.

I love history so much. I don’t know why. I’m kind of addicted to learning, although sometimes my brain capacity is too small for my ambitions: I can’t read as fast as I’d like to, and I can’t remember as much of what I read as I’d like to, either. Still, I love it.

Why the Dems Kept the Senate

Here’s why the Democrats kept the Senate tonight:

And to ensure that the Senate could protect the people against themselves, the Framers armored the Senate against the people. …

And around the Senate as a whole there would be an additional, even stronger, layer of armor. Elections for senators would be held every two years, but only for a third of the senators. The other two-thirds would not be required to submit their record to the voters (or, to be more accurate, to their legislatures) at that time. This last piece of armor made the Senate a “stable institution” indeed. As a chronicler of the Senate was to write almost two centuries after its creation: “It was so arranged that while the House of Representatives would be subject to total overturn every two years, and the Presidency every four, the Senate, as a Senate, could never be repudiated. It was fixed, through the staggered-term principle, so that only a third of the total membership would be up for re-election every two years. It is therefore literally not possible for the voters ever to get at anything approaching a majority of the members of the Institution at any one time.”

— Robert Caro, Master of the Senate

If all 100 senators were up for election every two years, the Republicans would have romped tonight. But two-thirds of the Senate is immune to public repudiation in any particular election.

By the way, the link above takes you to the entire first chapter of Caro’s masterpiece. Essential reading if you want to understand the U.S. Senate.