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Monday, June 18, 2007

With Clive in India. G. A. Henty

With Clive in India.
G. A. Henty.
A. L. Burt, ca. 1900.

Henty is an author much sought-after by homeschoolers. He wrote historical fiction for teenage boys, although the writing style and vocabulary of this book far exceed that of most modern teen writers.

This book takes place in India around 1750, when England and France are battling for control of the country. Clie is the British officer who made many daring attacks against the French and helped turn the tide for the English. Henty, however, does not make him into a superhero, and points out emphatically that Clive's connivings in one battle were greedy, ungentlemanly, and one of the blackest moments in British military history.

The book flows quite smoothly and is interesting and humorous when describing the fictional adventures of Charlie Marryat (the main character), but becomes bogged down in military detail and jargon when the author describes some of the battles that took place -- his laudable concern for historical accuracy hampers the otherwise enjoyable prose. Overall, quite a good book and I would be interested in reading some more by Henty.

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Monday, June 11, 2007

Myths of Precolumbian America. Donald A. Mackenzie.

Pre-Columbian America: Myths and Legends
Donald A. Mackenzie.
Senate/Random House: 1923/1996.

This book was originally written when scholars were gravitating to the theory that America remained completely isolated until Columbus. MacKenzie doesn't believe this and attempts to disprove the theory by a comparison of American myths to those of Egypt, India, and Asia.

There are two major flaws to the book. First, I'm reading it 80 years late, and a lot of new information has come to light. Second, his writing style is lacking in proper structure which makes his rambling, unorganized thesis hard to follow sometimes. The main theoretical problem is lack of dating -- when did the Indian my of such-and-such arise vs. the first appearance in America? Whas there time for transference of ideas? Are the ideas separated by many centuries?

The book does a good job in bringing to light how much you need to assume is a natural psychological process for two cultures to develop similar ideas if they don't have any contact, e.g., why would Egyptians, Chinese and Aztecs associate colors with four cardinal points? Overall, the book is persuasive that there was at least some sort of contact between Old and New Worlds.

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The Proving Trail. Louis L'Amour

The Proving Trail
Louis L'Amour.
Bantam: 1979.

This is the first Western I have read. Centers around a young man whose "pa" has been killed after winning big at gambling. Mysterious men come after him -- turns out Pa's family back east isn't so nice. Our hero has to wander around the West -- mostly Colorado -- to avoid the bad guys. Along the way, he chats with a nice waitress. In the end, there's a shoot-out, the bad guys die, and the boy gets the girl.

The most annoying thing about this book is that although it is written in heavily accented and lingo'd first person, our 18-year-old narrator steps outside himself and starts teaching the reader how things were "in his day." There are other, slightly less obvious paragraphs where L'Amour is trying to teach us something about the Old West, but overall, the segments are indicative of a complete lack of subtlety in writing. Passable, but not a genre I want to get deep into.

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