Book Review: A Century Turns
I received A Century Turns from Thomas Nelson’s BookSneeze book review service — basically, free books in exchange for reviews. Here comes the review!
Being a Canadian living in the USA, I am perhaps more acutely aware of the different ways that history can be presented than most. Take the War of 1812 as an example: In Canada, to the best of my recollection of 4th grade history classes, in the War of 1812 the Americans tried to invade Canada in a land grab. The Canadians beat the Americans senseless, marched all the way to Washington, set fire to the White House and left when they finally begged us to stop. We’re nice, so we said “Let’s just go back to the way things were,” and the war was over. In America, they teach that it was a war of resistance to British imperialism. Any attempts at land grabbing were expressly to gain leverage to get the British to cooperate. Since the British eventually were forced to cooperate, the victor was obviously the USA. (Note: that’s a gross oversimplification of the views from both sides… and I’m more and more inclined to fall somewhere in the middle of the debate. Also, we had Maine and they had Windsor/London Ontario and we traded back!? Seriously? Shoulda kept Maine! I digress…)
To the victor go the spoils, and also the right to record history. A Century Turns is a view of American history in the last 30 years or so from the perspective of Bill Bennett, a conservative talk show host. (I will state as a disclaimer that I am sometimes, perhaps even often, on the same side of issues as Bill Bennett.) This is an unabashedly American book. It tracks minutiae of the way politics developed through the late 80s, 90s and 2000s. It was a genuinely interesting read for me for several reasons: I’ll give you three, plus the two reasons the book aggravated me:
- My understanding of American politics between 1950-1996 is woefully thin. Getting some of the details of the latter part of that period filled in was fascinating.
- I don’t think I’ve ever engaged in reading an attempt at a historical accounting of events that I’ve lived through. I think that’s probably a reflection of my age. But, it was interesting to read how someone else saw events that I lived through. I didn’t always agree, but getting a different perspective was helpful.
- Bill Bennett is obviously a smart person and understands the details of how Washington operates at a very high level. Getting a window into that world was beneficial, even if just to confirm for me that politics is not something I aspire to.
Now for the aggravations:
- Bill constantly has footnotes that tell anecdotal stories from his experience that attempt to fill in details about the people involved in the events. In spite of his disclaimer that it’s not intended to be self-aggrandizing, that’s exactly how it feels — kind of like MadTV’s Stewart saying, “Look what I can do!”
- This is a distinctly conservative book. For the most part, Republicans get either an even-handed or light treatment while the Democrats mentioned are given the gears. Clinton’s problems are flogged while George W Bush’s are excused. If the Republican party “wins” in the long term, this will probably be how histories of this time read in a hundred years. If the Democratic party prevails long term, these sorts of accounts will be discounted as obviously partisan.
You should read Bill Bennett’s book, if you have the time, if for no other reason than to better understand what you’re getting when you read historical accounts of any kind. In this book, with events that are easy for me to remember, it was easy to see where the writer’s personal biases came into play. The reality of writing is that biases are likely in play in the ancient histories I read as well — I simply don’t know the events or players well enough to see them. All in all, an interesting experience.
Very interesting review. Now for some serious reflection on the last fifty years or so. How many NHL teams were located in the lower forty-eight states in 1950? Look at the slow, but steady progress of US imperialism in that field alone! We have Maine, we have hockey in Florida and California. There.
Oh wait. Maybe it is rather Canadian colonization!
Anyway very interesting article.