I Did It!

I finished Book 4 of the Oxford US History Series, McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom.

I know what you're thinking. Another Book Post. Super Duper. I'm including some random dinner pics just because I don't know why.

I've read well over 3 thousand pages covering the first hundred years of our nation's history. Or third hundred years, if you count the nearly two centuries between the Jamestown and Paul Revere's Ride.

The most interesting of the volumes was What God Hath Wrought (number 3) about the antebellum period between the War of 1812 and the Mexican War. This was a period of transition between the bizarre, alien world of the Founders, one we wouldn't recognize today, and the America that we know. During the antebellum period, they invented balloon-frame houses, working for hourly pay, travelling in winter, childhood, and democracy.

The most exciting was number 4, the Civil War one. I haven't read extensively on the Civil War since high school when my parents bought me the Time Life series. I read all of those lying on my bedroom floor. I'm not as limber as I used to be. Now I read on furniture. I also noticed my interests have shifted since then.

In high school, I was more interested in the Eastern Theater battles between the Lee's Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac. Now, I'm more interested in the effects of battles in the Western Theater, where the war was actually won.

Pickled Asparagus

And I'm more interested in the politics and society than in the battles themselves. Reading about terrified men and boys torn to pieces by low velocity rifle fire and canister shot, by the thousands, isn't quite as thrilling as it used to be. American military deaths in the Civil War add up to 12 Vietnams. In fact, if we lost the same proportion of soldiers to population over time in Vietnam as in the Civil War, the Vietnam War would have cost 4 million American lives. Two months ago the official POW/MIA numbers from Vietnam were updated to 1,643. The Union POWs who died at Andersonville Prison alone numbered ten times that.

And they say, well casualties in the Civil War were so high because you have Americans fighting Americans. Sure. If you allow for that, and account that the total casualties were roughly equal for both sides, the North and South each lost around 6 Vietnams worth of men in 4 years.

The sheer volume of slaughter is mind-blowing. So I prefer to read about Lincoln's political maneuvering to pass the 13th Amendment and the diplomatic loopholes of commissioning a blockade runner in a neutral, foreign country.

OK, on to less morbid subjects.

What's Next
These books:

Reconstruction
One does not slog through that much US History just to drop the subject and walk away. No. But here's the rub. There's a two volume sixty year gap between Battle Cry of Freedom and Freedom from Fear, the installment covering the Wall Street Crash of 1929 through the end of World War II. True story: almost half of that thirty years was the FDR administration.

Oxford University Press has tentatively promised that the volume covering the Progressive Era or Gilded Age, basically everything from the end of Reconstruction through the Wall Street Crash, is coming out this year. (Note: Gilded Age was the name that rich white men came up with because it sort of sucked for everyone else.) That still leaves me with a thirty year gap.

Pumpkin Pancakes

So I will fill that gap, in part, with Eric Foner's Reconstruction. Not an Oxford History book. But it's supposed to be the definitive work on the Reconstruction era.

Before I begin my next 800 page history book, I need to partake of a little literary junk food. A little light reading. Most days, I eat healthy, homemade from scratch, mostly vegan dinners. But once a week I need something gross and dirty like a bacon cheeseburger (actually, yesterday I made beef tacos). The same goes with books. I read literary masterpieces and masterworks of academic historians. But I need to get in some greasy pulp fiction from time to time.

The Dresden Files
Storm Front, book one of the Dresden Files series, comes highly recommended by a hermit I know in Central Texas.

Lucy, let me 'splain.

There are a myriad of subgenres within Fantasy. You're probably most familiar with High Fantasy, which encompasses Tolkien, Lloyd Alexander, Terry Brooks, Robert Jordan, Steven Erikson, George R. R. Martin (actually, Martin is Medievalist, but who am I to split hairs), and many more. It's epic, it has magic and swords and battles and all of that. Woot.

But it's only one of many. There's Steampunk and and Low Fantasy and Dark Fantasy and Historic Fantasy a bunch of others I would get too bored to list because they're basically all Fantasy with a different adjective.

One I find wildly compelling is Contemporary Fantasy (which overlaps heavily with Urban Fantasy). Contemporary Fantasy is fantasy that takes place in our world and our time. The most notable examples are pretty much anything by Neil Gaiman or the TV shows Supernatural, Buffy, Once Upon a Time, etc.

Only, when you get to Contemporary Fantasy novels, most of them are either Young Adult or Paranormal Romance or both. Harry Potter is a good example. Twilight is a bad one.

Black Bean Sweet Potato Tacos

Then you have the Dresden Files. Which is one of the few (if only) adult Contemporary Fantasy series that doesn't deal extensivly with moping teenage girls dating vampires. In many ways it's like Supernatural. It combines the noir private detective genre with monsters and zombies.

The Problem of Fantasy
I could go on at length about my issues with High Fantasy. Don't get me wrong. I started there. I cut my teeth on Tolkien. We all did. But grave sins are committed in the name of Fantasy, and it's time to give the genre an overhaul.

OK, the quickest of explanations.

Fantasy traces its roots to the old myths and legends, Beowulf, The Odyssey, Le Morte D'Arthur, etc. Those stories, however, weren't set in ancient times or made up lands. They unfolded in settings contemporary to their original listeners/readers. Beowulf has characters that wield swords and hang out in mead halls because at the time it was composed, people wielded swords and hung out in mead halls.

Carrot Soup with Lemon Tahini Dollop and Roasted Chickpeas

The other issue is society. Tolkien and CS Lewis wrote for an audience that took nobility and royalty and privileged birth for granted. We had those once in America, but then we fought two wars to make them go away.

Today, the Fantasy Industrial Complex still churns out fiction set in ancient times with an aristocratic society. Because that's how Fantasy started. Sort of like how the Catholic Clergy still wear clothing (and those hats!) contemporary to the Byzantine Empire because that's when they got started.

Beef Picadillo Tacos with Homemade Salsa

Everyone is still playing in Tolkien's sandbox. But it's time for a Contemporary American Fantasy. That's my soapbox. And it's just my opinion. There are obviously plenty of people out there still buying books about swords and high kings and prophecies and elves and orcs.

And true, there's been this new wave of dystopian fiction. Hunger Games, Divergent, etc. But they're still, really, playing in Orwell's sandbox. 1984 was a Cold War novel and last time I checked, the Cold War was over. The danger to freedom no longer comes in the form of a despotic government regime.

In this respect, Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake is probably the best vision of the dystopian future now available to us.

Star Wars EU
So, after Return of the Jedi, people started writing a corpus of Star Wars books. The Extended Universe novels are all officially sanctioned and licensed by the chinless George Lucas himself.

You may say, that's not very nice. Well, I hold Lucas solely responsbile for the fourth Indiana Jones. And that movie is unforgivable. Also Jar Jar Binks.

Says Lucas: "But let me say here once and for all: He was the best damn character in any of the six movies. He was by far my favorite."

Thanks, Chinstrap. Now, please stop making movies.

Back to the EU. The most revered trilogy, by serious Star Wars fans, and by serious Star Wars fans, I mean the people who dress up like Boba Fett and go to conventions, is Timothy Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy. It takes place five years after the Battle for Endor. This Trilogy is very nearly canon. The people who have Rebellion bumper stickers and X-Wing tattoos and the original 1977 C-3PO action figure still in the package consider Thrawn as important to the mythos as the movies.

Since there's a new movie coming out in the wake of the Chinless Master selling the franchise to Disney and since there's considerable controversy in the fanbase because the movie is projected to diverge from the Zahn narrative, I thought I'd give it a look see.

The Fault in Our Stars
I don't have to tell you the title is a reference to Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. We all know that. Yawn.

I've been a super fan of John Green and his brother Hank Green for quite some time. John does the Crash Course series for history and literature and Mental Floss on Youtube. Hank does Crash Course for science and he does Sci Show. Together they do Vlog Brothers. Both very smart, very entertaining, very funny guys. I could go on but it would get weird.

Unless it already did.

I found out recently that John Green wrote a handful of books, one of which, The Fault in Our Stars, is soon to be a Major Motion Picture at a theater near you. One of my favorite things to do is read the book before the movie comes out and then forget to watch the movie. I plan to do that with this one.

Parting Shot
You weren't going to eat... all of that beef... were you?

What should we blog about next?

Pizza and Prose

So, we've done quite a few pizzas in the month or so since the last post about pizza. I intended to save the pictures and write a blog post devoted entirely to pizza. We loved all of them though. So no suspense. I realized that a blog post about pizza would be boring to read. I realized the thought of writing it bored me. So we're going to switch things up. I'm going to show you all the pizza pictures, but I'm going to talk about books.

I know. You're excited. Here we go.

Mango Black Bean Pizza

As you know, I've started to work my way through the Oxford US History Series. The idea for this series was born in the 1950s. A couple prominent historians wanted to produce a multi-volume history of the US explaining the development and change of politics, culture, and social movements. They wanted a series that appealed to the general reader and that had lasting value. A definitive work of US history that generations to come could read beside a fire on a cold winter night.

They got to work with the writing of the thing, but by the 60s they way we study history changed. It became more scientific, relied as much on chemistry and technology as on written texts, and as a result, what we know about history changed. By the 70s, the books written for the series were already out of date, so they went back to the drawing board. The first published book of the series (3rd chronologically) came out in 1982. The next one (number 6 in the series) came out in 1988.

So far, 8 of the 12 books have been published, with one (book 8) on the way next year and three more in planning. I started with book 3, The Glorious Cause by Robert Middlekauff, about the American Revolution. The first book, about America before the Europeans, and the second, about Colonial America, are yet to be published. I plan to read at least through book 6 (Civil War). Book 7 about Reconstruction isn't finished.

Each book covers a roughly 30 year span. Three of the books won Pulitzers, two more were finalists, one won the Bancroft Prize, and one the National Book Critics Circle Award. Each weighs in at around 800 pages long. Large pages. With very small writing.

Indian Spice Pizza

Remember how your high school history book made you feel. Dry writing with lists of names and dates. Reading it made you want to gouge your eyes out with a freshly sharpened number 2 pencil. That's how Middlekauff made me feel. I've read a fair amount of very engaging historical writers: Tom Holland, Joseph Ellis, Alan Taylor, David McCullough. Middlekauff was not one of them.

I'm not saying it wasn't thorough, well-researched, and historically accurate. I'm saying I didn't care. I almost didn't make it through. I kept my eye on the prize, though. Eventually, I'll make it to the McPherson Civil War installment, Battle Cry of Freedom. It's supposed to be the best single volume history of the civil war and the best of this series.

Middlekauff wrapped things up after the Constitutional Convention and I needed a little break from history. I needed something completely different. I needed a slice of chocolate cake after finishing all my steamed Brussels Sprouts. You know what I'm talking about. Few things in the literary world are as chocolate cake as Fantasy. Last year, I read the first three Song of Ice and Fire books and loved them.

Side note: Everyone needs to read Game of Thrones (the first book of Song of Ice and Fire), at least. Forget that it's an HBO miniseries. Forget that it's technically fantasy. Think of it more as a Medieval Political Thriller. If you like interesting characters, decent dialogue, and a good story, then you'll like this book.

Those in the know say, if you liked Game of Thrones and want to take the next step, read the Malazan books. So I did. Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson. It committed all the sins of fantasy. Also, on top of flat characters and cartoon dialogue, the plot was ridiculous.

Spinach Feta Calzone

So, you have the Malazan Empire on the march to conquer the known world. The last free city resisting annexation is Darujhistan. The book starts well enough. You don't have to slog through backstory getting to know the characters or the political situation. Erikson drops you in the middle of the action. It's more than a simple story of an Empire trying to conquer a city. There are rival factions within the Imperial ruling class, within the Imperial Army, within the city under seige. There are neighboring peoples and gods and demons and religious crusaders. Everyone has a different agenda and it all comes to a head in this single city. Sounds good, right? Well, it doesn't so much come to a head as it comes to a weak plot resolution.

You see, Adjunct Lorn, on behalf of Empress Lazeen, travels to the hills outside Darujhistan to awaken the Jaghut Tyrant, and ancient monster, who will destroy the city. You're waiting for it the entire novel. She finally makes it there, awakens the monster, who starts rampaging across the plain toward the city. This seven foot immortal guy named Anomander Rake, of the Tiste Andii, unleashes his three pet dragons to battle the Jaghut Tyrant. Meanwhile in the city, as espionage/assassin subplots are unfolding at this huge yearly festival, they can hear the monster battles on the plain. The Jaghut is putting a serious smack down on the dragons and draws ever nearer to the city gates. This is it, you think. Some epic-ness is about to happen in a serious way.

Nope.

Another character, who was secretly the most powerful wizard of all time, appears on the plain. Poof. He kills the Jaghut. Zap. So much for that. Well, Adjunct Lorn apparently has a powerful demon in a bottle or something that also has the power to destroy the city and she unleashes it. Then there's a massive wizard battle and the good guys win and the bad guys lose.

Boo.

Spinach Artichoke Pizza

Some of you may have already read my thoughts on the state of American Fantasy writing. Here it is in a nutshell. Most Fantasy is aristocratic literature. It reflects a British history, worldview, and culture. American Fantasy needs to be more democratic. It needs to be about rugged individualism. It needs to be more man versus nature. Basically, American Fantasy needs to be more like the Western.

Also, big pet peeve. Enough with the stupid names. Stop. Anomander Rake? T'lan Imass? Yes, Tolkien made up his own names. Tolkien was a linguist. He also made up several complete languages for his books. All the languages and place names and people names followed strict grammatical and phonemic rules. He didn't just throw together some letters because they sounded good. Oh, it's a good guy? More N's, M's and D's. Oh, it's a bad guy? More T's, K's, and S's. It should sound exotic? Put an apostrophe somewhere in it.

Stop. (Look at Game of Thrones: Ned Stark, Jaime Lannister, etc. They sound like real names. They don't sound like something from D&D.)

Sweet Potato Kale Pizza

After sidearming Gardens of the Moon across the room, I started my 2nd (their 4th) Oxford book. Empire of Liberty by Gordon Wood (of Good Will Hunting fame). I like two things about Gordon Wood: he's a good writer and he looks like Carl from the movie Up. This book covered the Jeffersonian Republican Era. It starts during the first Washington administration and goes through the end of the War of 1812. Wood uses a lot of quotes from letters and articles and such from people during the period. It gives the book this documentary feel, where the interviewees are describing the events in their own words. With this book, you don't feel you're reading history so much as you're hearing it.

When you think of American exceptionalism (not always a bad word), egalitarianism, democracy (not always a good word), rugged individualism, these ideas about ourselves came from this period. Also started during this period: gouging out eyeballs during fistfights, county fairs, and wearing pants.

One annoying thing Wood does, though, and he does it often: writing long lists in the middle of paragraphs. He does this sometimes twice in the same page. Wood loves lists. Here's an example about the beginning of clubs and "voluntary associations":

There were mechanic societies, humane societies, societies for the prevention of pauperism, orphan asylums, missionary societies, marine societies, tract societies, Bible societies, temperance societies, Sabbatarian groups, peace societies, societies for the suppression of vice and immorality, societies for the relief of poor widows, societies for the promotion of industry, indeed, societies for just about anything and everything that was good and humanitarian.

Potato Leek Rosemary Pizza

Yeah. If it rhymed, it would have sounded like Dr. Seuss: They had societies for the poor, for the drunks and for some whores, they made societies and made some more, they loved societies down to their cores. As annoying as it sounds, in the very next paragraph, he talks about being buried alive. So Wood keeps you on the edge of your seat. Definitely a refreshing installment after Middlekauff. Sitting on my bedside table is the next in the series, What Hath God Wrought by Daniel Walker Howe about the Jacksonian Period, which takes us from the War of 1812 through the Mexican War of the 1840s.

I needed a little break from history though, another slice of chocolate cake. I decided never to read anything else written by Erikson. Also, he's Canadian. So I turned to the epic fantasy series by one of the most prolific writers of all time, America's Horror Laureate, Stephen King. A few popular writers have written more titles than Stephen King, like Agatha Christie, Isaac Asimov, R.L. Stine. (Apparently, listing is infectious.) But I don't think any of them can match him in word count. So, you can love King or hate him (I do both), but you can't ignore him. A thousand years from now when some alien race is studying Ancient American Culture, they'll be reading Stephen King as much as Hemingway. Probably more.

Kale Mushroom Red Onion Pizza

When King started out to write the Dark Tower series, he wanted to do something as big and epic as Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, but with the look and feel of a Spaghetti Western. He cites the opening scene of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly as his inspiration.

The first book, The Gunslinger, pulls it off. Here's the first line:

The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.

He plops you into the action and you don't put the book down until it's finished. Everything you expect from Stephen King, the rambling backstories, pointless dialogue, description when you want action, incessant Dylan references, large excerpts you can skim out of boredom without missing much, none of that was in this book. This is the most un-stephen-king of any Stephen King book I've read. The writing is clean and crisp, the dialogue flows. He starts you at a jog and only gives you backstory when you need it. It has this Spaghetti Western, post-apocalyptic feel. Like Road Warrior. Like Book of Eli. Like Outlaw Josey Wales. There's a shootout in a small town, radioactive mutants, deserts, brawls, good versus evil. It does have some aristocratic elements, but it's the closest thing to what I'm talking about when I talk about American Fantasy. If you only read one Stephen King, read this one. The end is satisfying.

I need about a month between Oxford books. You know, to cleanse my palate. I can tear through the books in this series at a rate of one per week, so I'm on the third. The second book, Drawing of Three, lapsed into classic King, losing all of the feel and ambiance of the first book. On the other hand, it introduces the rest of the characters and the overarching plot is supposed to begin with this third one, The Waste Lands, so we'll see. The fourth is supposed to be the best of the series, so I'm going to give him through four before I decide whether I'll finish the series or not.

Moroccan Pizza

That's all. Here's your take away: Read Game of Thrones. Read The Gunslinger. Don't read Middlekauff.

Pizza Links
Mango Black Bean Pizza
Indian Spice Pizza
Spinach Feta Calzone
Spinach Artichoke Pizza
Sweet Potato Kale Pizza
Potato Leek and Rosemary Pizza
Kale Mushroom Red Onion Pizza
Moroccan Pizza

Parting Shot
On one end of my apartment complex, there are deep puppy prints in the parking lot where a dog ran through freshly poured concrete. In the fall, these fill with yellow leaves from the Honey Locusts that line the road and they look like festering sores.

Here's my favorite picture from the Wood book: 19th century Shakers doing an early rendition of Michael Jackson's Thriller.

Societies for founding zoos, baking cakes, and brewing brews, societies to play the barrumbazoo. Societies for petting dogs, shoveling bogs and wrestling hogs. Societies for chopping logs. They had groups for bathing suits, coat and tie, and fluting flutes. They had societies, it's true, for tooting toots and scooping poops. They had societies of every kind, you see, from North to South and Sea to Sea. 

Life's Been Cheddar

The Results Are In
My time for the Run4Raley 5k: 25:57

Which means I ran a 8.4 minute mile. Which isn't very fast. But it was pretty fast for me. Now we're gearing up for the Pumpkin Classic 10k in Morton. Last week, I totalled 17 miles. This week, I'm hitting 21.

Thanks, Fanks
I gave up on Dr. Fankhauser. His instructions were rambling, inconsistent and lacking in vital information. The good doctor uses well water and cultivates his own rennet from calf guts to make cheese, so he doesn't spend much time on explaining the intricacies of using store bought milk for apartment dwellers.

After ruining 4 or 5 gallons of milk in pursuit of hard cheese, I bought a book.

On the right. Cheesemaking by Ricki Carroll. She started the New England Cheesemaking Supply Company, from whom I bought the rennet and the calcium chloride. From what the rave reviews say, she kickstarted the homemade cheese revolution. She writes instructions for those of us who don't milk goats.

(On the left, you'll see Empire of Liberty by Gordon Wood about the period between the ratification of the Constitution through the end of the War of 1812. I finally finished the dry ramblings of Dr. Middlekauff.)

The first thing I read was NEVER USE TAP WATER to dilute your rennet and calcium. Chlorine in tap water cripples the rennet and gives you a weak break. Also, she says, NEVER USE IODIZED SALT. The iodine kills the bacteria that give your cheese flavor.

So we did it for real this time. I got to the curd cutting phase of the cheese process.

I cooked the curds.

And drained them.

Then I salted and spooned the cooked curds into the cheese press Dad made.

I had plenty of assistance.

I pressed the curds overnight.

The next morning I unwrapped the hunk of cheese and let it air dry for 2 days.

At which point I waxed it.

I now have a waxed hunk of cheese in my fridge. In four weeks, On September 18th, I'll cut into it and taste the deliciousness of my very first cheddar.

Easy As Pie
We're still doing a homemade pizza once a week. It's actually one of the easiest and fastest dinners to make if I remember to throw some flour in the breadmaker on time. The last two have been utter successes. The first I found randomly on the internet, the second I copied from a local restaurant.

Potato, Asparagus, and Feta Pizza

Pear, Feta, and Pine Nut Pizza

It's a Citrus, Khaleesi
Pitaya. Dragon Fruit. This fruit, from a night blooming cactus, comes from South America and Asia.

You just cut it in half and scoop out its guts. It had the texture of a pear and a very mellow flavor. Too mellow. It almost didn't taste at all.

Erin Go Bragh
Or at least until the first sip. We made Irish Coffees. Only, we didn't have cream, so I guess they were Black Irish Coffees.

Aine didn't finish hers.

(And, yes, under my wallet and phone, you see the Bernard Bailyn introduction lectures to his Peopling of British North America series. If Wood is the Obi Wan of early American history, Bailyn is the Quigon Jinn.)

Home Invasion
The other morning a small spider, the size of your pinky nail, crawled to the middle of my office ceiling. It was just hanging out. Minding its business.

Then Piglet saw it. She just wanted to rip it into small pieces. Frustrated at the spider's inaccessibility, she started mrowing at it. Alarmed by the commotion, Crankles rushed in to save the day.

Then he saw the spider. And he started whining.

They have a good time hunting roaches and flies together, but this distant spider completely stymied them. She mrowed. He whined. And that noise lasted for the first twenty minutes of my work day.

Parting Shot
Life in Illinois seems precarious at times.

But this does not alarm us.

August in Champaign

Independence Day Again
Yesterday, August 2nd, was the anniversary of the actual signing of the Declaration of Independence. I'm currently reading The Glorious Cause by Robert Middlekauff.

Chronologically, it's the first available book of the Oxford History of the United States series. Started in the 1950s, it was intended to be a comprehensive history of the United States for a general audience. Three of the books have won Pulitzers and two have been finalists. Each covers roughly a 30 year span. All of them are really long. We'll see how far I make it.

I realized reading this that the colonial era comprises one of the largest chunks of our nation's history. The time span from the founding of Jamestown to the battle of Lexington and Concord is about as long as Lexington and Concord to the end of World War II. About 170 years. Full of crazy stuff they just glossed over in school. For instance, did you know that New England alone saw 8 wars and 1 rebellion between the mid 1600s and the mid 1700s? Georgia was a penal colony: Britain colonized Australia because they lost Georgia in the American Revolution. The more I read about America before 1790, the more bizarre and exotic it seems.

Also, thanks to Benedict Arnold's actions at Saratoga, Horatio Gates' army defeated the British under Burgoyne. The victory at Saratoga convinced the French to declare war on the British, which more or less sealed America's fate. So, before defecting to the British, Benedict Arnold won the war for the Americans.

Run for Raley
I ran the 6th annual Run for Raley 5k in Philo. Proceeds are donated to researching Mitochondrial Disease, a disease in which your body is unable to convert food into energy. The charity run was started by the Kirbys in memory of their daughter.

My Before and After:

I ran the Freedom 5k in Champaign in 29:30. I finished the Raley 5k at 26:00.

Now I'm just tired and hungry.

Another Weird Pizza
Chicken Tikka Masala Pizza garnished with chopped cilantro. This combined two of our favorite things to eat. Indian food and Pizza.

You can find the recipe at Rasa Malaysia.

Coming Soon
Sweet Corn Festival 2013
Maybe Hard Cheese