American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant

 American Ulysses, you're bringing me down.

In fact, after waiting eons to read this book, I'm not going to finish it. Oh, Ronald C. White writes well enough, but he's never met a fact he didn't like and as a result American Ulysses is swollen until any sense of story is lost in the mists of a veritable dissertation. (One example, just one, from a description of weaponry in the Mexican War: "His special weapons this day were a pair of eighteen-pound cannon, heretofore used only for defense because their massive weight made it so difficult to haul them into battle. ...each cannon pulled by six yoked oxen across seven miles of open prairie...they employed canister, a tin can filled with up to twenty-seven lead balls stuffed in sawdust...they possessed a range of up to three hundred yards" (p. 73). By the time I've gotten to the range, I've nearly forgotten how we got there. Or why. And so it goes for many hundreds of pages.)

In addition to being a tome, bloated by excessive adjectives and extraneous facts, American Ulysses is a tad too worshipful for my taste. I'm not suggesting Grant wasn't admirable, but from White's descriptions - and I was deep into the Civil War before I gave up the ghost - it appears Grant can do no wrong. For example, White seems to completely dismiss the idea that Grant drank any more than any other soldier or officer in the Army. Maybe White's right, but given that none other than Sherman felt the need to comment upon his drinking - "Grant stood by me when I was crazy, and I stood by him when he was drunk, and now we stand by each other" - White's dismissal strikes me as disingenuous at best. (And if White included that telling little quote, he did so after I'd closed the book for the final time.)

I left off reading somewhere in the realm of Vicksburg, and therefore certainly before Grant's presidency. Admittedly, I was mildly curious as to what defenses White would presumably offer for the corruption and cronyism that are generally accepted to have been widespread during Grant's second term, in particular, though not curious enough to tackle the next 400 pages.

I did, however, read the epilogue, and I have to say, given White's hero worship of Grant, it's somewhat surprising that he concludes his work not with his own soaring assessment, but with the words of Theodore Roosevelt who "surveyed the landscape of American history and made his judgment: Mightiest among the mighty dead loom the three great figures of Washington, Lincoln, and Grant," (p. 659). I find this decision all the more intriguing in that White chooses to continue with Roosevelt's second rank, which includes Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and Andrew Jackson. The times they were a different then, but that anyone would rank Andrew Jackson so highly must call into question his overall judgment. (I've previously called into question TR's judgment, though, as I take the thoughts of America's greatest imperialist with more than just a grain of salt.)

Most surprising of all, White adds a concluding sentence or two following TR's thoughts that he has seized the opportunity to make Grant's story "accessible to the wider audience he deserves." Maybe he deserves it, maybe not, but the audience that will sit - and sift - through 650+ densely packed pages is not exactly wide. Or at least, I'm not an avid enough reader, non-fiction nerd, or history buff to appreciate it.

The Unexpected President: The Life and Times of Chester A. Arthur

I like books about interesting but generally forgotten episodes or individuals in history. A few years ago, Destiny of the Republic, chronicling the life, times, and assassination of Arthur's predecessor, James Garfield, captured my attention. The President is a Sick Man, in which Arthur's successor, Grover Cleveland, underwent secret surgery on a boat likewise intrigued me.  

 

The Unexpected President is a bit of both. Chester A. Arthur was the ultimate machine politician and a man whom virtually no one in the country (aside from his New York cronies) wished to see ascend the presidency upon the death of Garfield. As Scott S. Greenberger illustrates, once he was president, though, Arthur genuinely seems to have used the position to right past wrongs, implementing far reaching civil service reforms, and pushing - though admittedly without either force or success - for stronger civil rights laws. As he did so, he was urged on by the invalided Julia Sand who took it upon herself to be the voice of his conscience in a series of (honestly, rather long winded and presumptuous) letters.

Whether owing to Miss Sand's urging, his roots as an abolitionist's son, or a desire to honor the memory of his dearly departed wife, Arthur determined to be his own man. Perhaps this was also made somewhat easier by the knowledge that he was dying. Yes, dying. In the days before round-the-clock media coverage, presidents routinely hid any manner of personal details, from mistresses to mania, and so it was with Arthur who spent the better part of his presidency in the grips of Bright's Disease. 

Greenberger has written a succinct and compact history of Arthur's term in office, as well as the factors that shaped him prior to the presidency. As he notes, the dearth of materials contributes to the volume's brevity: Arthur, perhaps ashamed of his pre-presidency machinations, burned almost all of his personal files and correspondence in the days before his death. That said, by its shortness, The Unexpected President perhaps lends itself to a wider audience than it would otherwise. Admittedly, this is still a bit of a history nerd's read. I am a proud history nerd and enjoyed it greatly; I can easily recommend it to my fellow history-lovers. 

Four stars.

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (DNF)

I judged Theodore Roosevelt harshly after reading The Imperial Cruise, (describing him as imperialistic, power hungry, and manipulative, among other adjectives) a view that was reaffirmed by The Path Between the Seas (when I noted "add Panama to the list of places Teddy Roosevelt took by storm" in my year-end review).

Still, it seemed only fair to withhold full judgment until I'd read Edmund Morris's biography, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. And I tried, I really tried. This is a man who, for all his riches, was chronically ill as a child, experienced the untimely death of his father while still in college, and then suffered the unspeakable double heartbreak of his mother and wife dying on the same day - and on Valentine's Day, at that.

Try as I might, I couldn't get past the pomposity and the bloodlust. In fact, I couldn't even get past 1886, 12 years before Teddy stormed San Juan Hill and a decade-and-a-half before he assumed the presidency.

Often when I can't finish a book, I blame the author for having written a book that is dry-as-dust or having simply written terribly. With The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, neither is true. Morris writes well and he writes engagingly. I was just tired of Teddy.

The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House

Kate Andersen Brower was attending lunch at the White House when, after noticing the "obvious rapport" between the First Lady and one of the butlers, decided to write a book about the White House residence staff and their experiences. Thus was born The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House.

Although Brower has taken a bit of flak, to say nothing of those who spoke with her, The Residence is far from a juicy, tell-all. For the most part, the recollections focus on the very personal experiences of the staff, from learning of the death of JFK, to experiencing Nixon's resignation. With the exception of one or two Lewinsky-related stories, virtually all of the stories that cast a president or first lady in the least negative light pertain to the dearly departed. Lyndon Johnson, who drove the staff nuts with his very particular (and peculiar) plumbing demands, comes off the least well of the presidents, although his wife, Lady Bird, seems to have been especially beloved. In comparison, Ronald Reagan was deeply admired by the staff, while Nancy seems to have been the most difficult of first ladies. The favorites, though, clearly were the elder Bushes.

What The Residence offers as much as anything is glimpse of American history. Kennedy's assassination, Nixon's resignation, Clinton's impeachment, 9/11: for better or for worse (mostly worse!) these are all seminal moments in the history of the American presidency and in the country's history. Brower is offering readers a unique perspective on all of these events, as well as many smaller moments that influenced or were influenced by these. At no point did I feel she or her sources lacked the appropriate respect for the presidency or first family. She has captured stories that would have otherwise disappeared, and provides a bit of history about the physical structure itself (which makes for an interesting comparison to the details presented in Empire of Mud).

Anyone with an interest in 20th century American history should enjoy this. Although it can fairly be called a "serious book," it's also light enough to read at the beach.

The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America

Ever hear of the wildfire of 1910? Me neither. But the fire, filed under "Great Fire of 1910" on Wikipedia, burned an area the size of Connecticut across Washington, Idaho, and Montana in August of that year. In The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America, Timothy Egan (whose Worst Hard Time was one of my best reads in 2012) reconstructs not only the fire, but the policy debate around the whole idea of national forests that preceded and succeeded the fire.

Essentially, Egan explains, the story goes like this: America in the gilded age was a boom or bust kind of place, and nowhere was this more evident than in the mining and railroad towns running across the northern spine of the country (one of the few remaining frontiers). What to do about undesirable resident prostitutes one early forest ranger asked another? Replace them with desirable ones, came the deadpan response. And why, you ask, were resident prostitutes an issue for forest rangers? Because in the early days of the U.S. Forest Service, any number of activities - including tremendous logging and also the construction of railroads - was permitted. It was one of the many compromises Teddy Roosevelt (who comes off much better in The Big Burn than in The Imperial Cruise) had to make in order to establish the badly underfunded forest service in the first place.

By the time the brutally dry summer of 1910 rolled around, Teddy had been out of office for the better part of 18 months and it fell to Howard Taft to "manage" the burning west - or at least read the reports on it - but Teddy's shadow loomed large over the events surrounding the fire. Still, The Big Burn is as much about the likes of Gifford Pinchot (American's first forester) and William Clark (crooked copper magnate and U.S. Senator) as it is about Roosevelt. All-in-all, this is an interesting read, although not nearly as engrossing as Worst Hard Time.

Coolidge

Calvin Coolidge appears to have been all things that modern presidents rarely are: unfailingly humble, forged by circumstances that can only generously be called modest, and genuinely decent. At least that is how Amity Shlaes portrays the 30th president in his aptly-named tome, Coolidge.

Unfortunately, Coolidge's rise through Massachusetts politics and to the White House is, with all due respect to Amity's research and prose, rather dull. Or at least would not seem to require 500+ pages. I read diligently, closely event, for 250 or 300 pages and then decided life is too short to become bogged down in the minutiae of, for example, the Teapot Dome Scandal. (My patience was perhaps especially short having just slogged through another too-long bio - on the life and times of Jane Franklin.)

For those who wish to become intimately acquainted with Calvin Coolidge, you could not ask for more than what Shlaes delivers here. For those interested in a snapshot of the Coolidge administration, Bill Bryson's One Summer: America, 1927 does an excellent job of providing just that and laying the groundwork for all that was to come - namely, Hoover and the Great Depression.

The President Is a Sick Man: Wherein the Supposedly Virtuous Grover Cleveland Survives a Secret Surgery at Sea and Vilifies the Courageous Newspaperman Who Dared Expose the Truth

The President is a Sick Man by Matthew Algeo has been on my reading list since early summer - I finally had a chance to read it over the Christmas holidays and am happy to report that I much enjoyed it. The extent of my knowledge about Grover Cleveland prior to reading this book was that he is the only man to be elected to the office of president twice, in non-consecutive terms. I was unaware that he was renowned for his honesty to such an extent that he was known for having once said, "tell the truth," which struck the citizenry as completely remarkable. (And says something about how little we have progressed in the last century, as least as regards the trustworthiness of our politicians.)

So, here's the deal: Grover Cleveland discovers a rough spot on the roof of his mouth. Ultimately, it needs to be removed, but at the height of the then-worst depression in the country's history, all parties are concerned that news of the president's health crisis may accelerate the tailspin. Thus, the operation must be top secret, especially as the doctors believe Cleveland to have a cancer of the mouth (this at a time when the word "cancer" is rarely uttered aloud - for more on that, check out The Emperor of All Maladies). Also the public is especially spooked by cancer of the mouth, as that is the form of the disease to which General-cum-President Grant has recently succumbed.

At just over 225 pages, this is a quick read about an almost unknown episode in the presidency of a little remembered president. It is also a book that will cause most readers to consider not only how medicine has changed (which is obvious), but how our thinking about medicine and illness has changed - as well as how the expectation of privacy, particularly for public figures, such as the president - has been reshaped by this thinking and by technology. There are probably few readers out there who will want to add The President is a Sick Man to their "must read" list, but those who do read it should come away with a better sense of President Cleveland, and perhaps even of the Gilded Age.

Mrs. Kennedy and Me

A friend recently told me she read a biography of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis which left her conflicted: in awe of the life she led and what she managed to accomplish, but also put out with the manipulative, prima donna that she so often seemed to be. My friend couldn't particularly recommend the book she'd read - it was poorly organized and focused a little too heavily on JFK's many affairs for her taste. Our conversation was still on my mind when I had a few hours to kill in an airport recently and so undertook a pretty intensive browsing of the bookstore. Mrs. Kennedy and Me by Secret Service agent Clint Hill jumped out at me and I figured: why not?

It's a relatively short book, with a casual, conversational style, and plenty of photographs throughout. We meet Mrs. Kennedy - and Mr. Hill - in November 1960, just after the election and before the birth of JFK, Jr. In the course of the book, the reader travels with Mrs. Kennedy and the ever-present Mr. Hill from Pakistan to Greece and Italy to Morocco. The travels, the descriptions of these exotic lands circa 1960, are a high point, along with the visits to the various Kennedy homes and the even grander Newport pile where Jackie Kennedy grew up. My only real complaint with the book came at the end, in the chapter about the trip to Texas, where the reader is treated to - or bored with - seemingly every word spoken from the time the presidential party left for San Antonio until the hours after JFK's assassination.

As for the protagonists, I have to say that I concur with my friend's opinion of Jackie Kennedy. In fact, the more I read of the book, the less I liked her. From the beginning of JFK's presidency, she was determined, essentially, that she would not be the first lady. She regularly would agree to host or attend an event in her official capacity and then back-out, to the point that the social secretary did eventually resign. She made no bones about hating the White House and spending as little time there as possible. I couldn't help but think it was no wonder JFK was having all those affairs since he never even saw his wife. (Which isn't to say that perhaps the reason she didn't want to be at the White House is because she knew what was going on.)

In any case, the portrait of Jackie Kennedy that emerges is not an especially pretty one - and JFK doesn't come off all that well, either. The longer I read, the sorrier I felt for the agent, Mr. Hill, who was clearly wrapped around her finger and dedicated to his Mrs. Kennedy to the point of rarely seeing his own family. Did she lead a fascinating life? Absolutely. Would I want to have dinner with her? Probably not.

After Appomattox: How the South Won the War

I don't remember when or where I first heard of After Appomattox, by Stetson Kennedy, but I most definitely thought that it examined the North-South cultural divide and, pardon me, but what feels to be the growing presence and influence of southern, and especially southern redneck, culture/values. In other words, Honey Boo Boo, anyone?

I was wrong. After Appomattox is the story of the Reconstruction years, 1865-1876, and how ultimately the North lost the enthusiasm for and interest in the promises made to southern blacks during and immediately after the Civil War. Or, as Kennedy puts it so succinctly, "The nation had evidently made up its mind that, so long as the South remained inside the Union and did not go back into the business of buying and selling blacks, it could do what it damned well pleased with them" (p. 237). Certainly there would be no 40 acres and a mule.

Indeed, After Appomattox is the sobering (and sordid) story of complicity and outright racism at the highest levels of government and the inheritance such individuals bequeathed this country for generations to come. Andrew Johnson, in one of his finer moments (of which there were to be enough for Congress to impeach him), sent a messenger south to inform the generals stationed there that the president was "for a white man's government, and in favor of free white citizens controlling the country" (p. 45). Although General Grant - and later President Grant - fought such men doggedly, the tide of racism throughout the country and into the highest reaches of government was simply too strong. In 1876, in a deal that secured Rutherford B. Hayes the presidency by a single electoral vote, the highest and mightiest in the land reached a deal by where the federal government would, essentially, no longer intercede in state matters. The result, Kennedy notes, was as though it was Grant who had surrendered to Lee at Appomattox and not the other way around. To say nothing of the fact that the deal of '76 also set the stage for nearly a century of the repression of and brutality against blacks.

The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War

First things first: I must confess that I opened this book expecting it to detail Commodore Perry's 1853 voyage to Japan and the subsequent opening of that country. I was disabused of this notion quickly, in the second paragraph to be precise; The Imperial Cruise refers to yet another voyage to Japan - as well as elsewhere in the Pacific - this one in 1905 and headlined by then-Secretary Taft and President Teddy Roosevelt's oldest daughter, Alice. It is in the context of this cruise that Bradley revisits American imperialism of a century ago, giving us a blow-by-blow account of the wrongs committed against each of the nation's the cruise visited, and some that it did not.

As James Bradley notes in the opening lines of the book, he researched and wrote this book in an attempt to understand the root of World War II in the Pacific. Like Flyboys, this book is beautifully written, complex, and forces the reader to think deeply about history and the generations-long ramifications of seemingly small words or actions. The protagonist of Imperial Cruise is Teddy Roosevelt, whom history generally teaches was one of this nation's greatest presidents - he saved the cute little "teddy" thus giving all stuffed bears his name, he is the father of our national parks, he charged gallantly up San Juan Hill in his days as a rough rider - why he even has his face carved on Mount Rushmore alongside Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln. Bradley's take on Roosevelt is a bit different: Bradley's Roosevelt is imperialistic, power hungry, manipulative, and believes unabashedly in the absolute superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race over all others.

Yet, this book is not merely a portrait of President Roosevelt. It is an examination of an America that believed wholeheartedly in manifest destiny and Monroe Doctrine, marauding in Cuba and Puerto Rico, stealing away the Kingdom of Hawaii, and massacring some hundreds of thousands of Filipinos in a matter of a few short years (as Bradley notes, few remember that more Filipinos died on the first day of battling American forces than Americans died on D-Day). It was the need to "civilize" the Philippines, in fact, that gave rise to such tactics as waterboarding, repeated statements at home that "the war is already over" or "the thing is already over" and "the insurrection ended some months ago." Yes, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Bradley's criticisms of Roosevelt are harsh as he builds the case that Roosevelt almost singlehandedly laid the groundwork for World War II by green-lighting Japanese expansion elsewhere in Asia (Teddy "should like to see Japan have Korea," but not the Philippines, please) while also managing the neat trick of building resentment against the United States. Bradley is fair, however, is his judgment that Roosevelt, while perhaps more imperialistic than other politicians of his day, was nevertheless a product of his time and class. He certainly was not alone in seeking to exploit Asian nations for his own gain; the British Empire and its young queen so depended on the profits from the illegal sales of opium in China that Bradley notes (rather smugly, I might add) that "Queen Victoria stands as history's largest drug dealer."

Four stars.

Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President

Destiny of the Republic chronicles the life, times, and assassination of James A. Garfield, 20^th President of the United States. In many ways, Garfield is a man who never wanted to be president, did not seek the nomination, did not actually campaign once nominated, and was ultimately president for only 200 days (nearly half of which he spent languishing in a sick room). This is also the story of the barbarism of nineteenth century medicine, on the eve of the transformation of the operating room from a stinking, vile place to a sterilized one and the story of a political era so ripe with corruption that Rutherford B. Hayes stated that, should the Republicans nominate him for a second term as President, he would refuse the honor outright.

I liked James Garfield. I found him to be a fascinating, smart, highly likable man; I was sorry to see him assassinated, all the more since he never sought the presidency and was a very reluctant candidate, at best. Garfield became the president of what is now Hiram College at age 26, then served as a Union general before spending over a decade in Congress.That it was the decisions of his doctors, rather than his assassin’s bullet, that ultimately killed him made me all the sorrier.

In addition to liking Garfield, I very much liked this book. In many ways it reminded me of The Devil in the White City: there is murder and mayhem, but also the undercurrent of ideas, inventions, and glimpses of the future. The parallels between Guiteau and Prendergast are unmistakable, as are those between the centennial fair in Philadelphia (where Alexander Graham Bell first demonstrated the telephone) and the World's Fair in Chicago. Millard does a fine job tracing the interwoven stories of Garfield, Guiteau, and Bell, bringing to life figures about whom I previously knew very little. At times the book is prescient, as on page 184 when Millard describes the transition from an open access White House to one guarded by armed men writing, "the nation had changed not just suddenly, but fundamentally and irretrievable." (The statement harkened me back to my first time in an airport post-9/11.) At other times the book is nearly laugh-out-loud funny, particularly the courtroom scenes during Guiteau's trial. Clearly, if ever a man were insane, Guiteau were that man.

Sheepishly, I have to admit to feeling a jolt of nerdish excitement at the mention of New York City's 1888 blizzard (thank you, Isaac's Storm), and - also nerdishly - took pleasure in adding to my bank of random trivia that Garfield's was the first presidential library created (thanks to his adoring wife and tireless personal secretary) and that Robert Todd Lincoln is the only individual to have been present or in the immediate vicinity of three presidential assassinations (Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley, in 1865, 1881, and 1901).

Travels with Henry

A colleague suggested (and loaned) this book to me because she thought I would find it interesting. She’s right. Travels with Henry is Richard Valeriani’s telling of his time as part of the traveling press while covering Henry Kissinger in the 1970s. Not only was it frequently laugh-out-loud funny, but I found this book interesting on many different levels:

1) The travelogue. From Vatican City to Saudi Arabia to the Kremlin and the jungles of Africa, Valeriani documented many places that not only are off-limits to many travelers, but in some cases (the Soviet Union or 1970s China) will never again exist in the contexts in which he discovered them. The travails he and his colleagues experienced – with plumbing, communications, transportation, and the rest – add tremendous color and keep the book lively for the duration of its 400 pages.

2) The foreign policy perspective. Given his close proximity to Kissinger and other diplomats, elected officials, sovereigns, and even the occasional dictation, this book serves as a crash course in the hows and whys of foreign policy and diplomacy. This book also underscores the intractable nature of the problems in the Middle East and provides unique perspective on America’s identity crisis in the post-Vietnam, middle-of-Watergrate years.

3) The journalism as a profession perspective. However idyllic Charlie Gibson, Bob Schieffer, and Diane Sawyer may have made journalism – and television journalism, in particular – seem to me years ago, Valeriani has undone. Coming hard on the heels of Foreign Correspondence, I have a new appreciation for how incredibly hard the job of foreign correspondent is. That’s not to say it doesn’t sound fascinating or exciting (or come with plenty of perks, as when Valeriani visited an otherwise-closed Taj Mahal with Nancy Kissinger or toured Petra with the Jordanian Prime Minister), the sheer lack of sleep alone would be enough to do me in.

This is an obscure book that I never would have found on my own, but I’m glad to have had it recommended to me, as it was well worth the read.

The American South: The Non-Fiction

After highlighting the books I've read set in the fictional South, it seems to follow that I should next review the books I have read that were set in the real South. There are three of them, although the first one, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, I have to confess I read in late 2010, following a trip to Savannah. I will start with that one, however, as it is the best of the three.

A New York journalist moves to Savannah in the 1980s out of a love for the food, the architecture, the Spanish moss, the essence of the city. In the midst of documenting his experiences in this quintessentially Southern city, murder, intrigue, and scandal erupt. The result is one of the best stories, and best books, I have read, possibly ever. In my experience it is relatively rare for a non-fiction to read like a novel, but this book does. John Berendt brings to life not only the major players in his story, but virtually every person he encounters. One of my personal favorites is the woman he overhears excitedly describing the bloodlines of her soon-to-be...daughter-in-law. And if, "a good time, not yet had by all" is not one of the best lines in modern literature, I don't know what is. The cherry on top is that Berendt beautifully brings to life the city of Savannah: his descriptions of the city are true to life; turning the pages, one can almost hear the rustle of live oak leaves and Spanish moss as a soft sea breeze slips through the squares.

If Midnight in the Garden... is the micro-version of the South, Dominion of Memories: Jefferson, Madison, & the Decline of Virginia is the macro-version. Focused largely on the early nineteenth century, this book sets the stage for the American Civil War. Laying open the vast difference of opinion on the extent of state's rights even among the founding father's, one has the feeling while reading this that such bloody conflict had been inevitable for at least two generations. Further, reading of the state of Virginia's railways and roads (often impassable even to the best addresses), one sees the futility of the Southern cause: clearly, clearly, no army could move efficiently through this state, saddled as it was with unmatched railroads, muddy, rutted "roads" and a white population essentially at war with itself. (Not only in the traditional brother-against-brother sense of the Civil War: in Virginia, wealthy aristocrats from the Tidewater area had resisted so much as giving the vote to less wealthy whites from present-day West Virginia; the latter successfully created their own state in the midst of the Civil War after contemplating as much for decades.) In the end, I came away with the sense that the founding fathers were united only against the British, therefore, setting up a fledgling nation for inevitable internecine conflict.

The Plantation Mistress covers a similar time and place: the ante-bellum South of the early- to mid-1800s. This past spring Ben and I had the opportunity to visit two plantations just outside of Charleston, one of which was celebrating Women's History Month (March) by highlighting the role and work of the plantation mistress. To learn more, they recommended reading this book, in which one learns that, contrary to being Scarlett O'Hara, the overwhelming, vast majority of Southern women wished to be Scarlett. Make no mistake, there were wonderfully wealthy women in the Old South who sat on their porch drinking mint juleps and gossiping the afternoon away. Most women, however, were more likely to be found nursing a sick child or up to the elbows in pickling brine or checking the cellar stores or, or, or. Where a woman would not be found, however, is basically anywhere other than home: travel for women was greatly restricted, to the extent that many describe feeling trapped, especially when the husband was traveling and the children (if there were any) were away at school. In those cases, the plantation mistress, often far removed from her family and sometimes as young as 16 or 17, might be the only white woman for miles around, leaving her in state of utter isolation. The result of this isolation is a treasure trove of personal letters to husbands, mothers, sisters, and friends; this book is all the richer for the generous portions of these letters that pepper the pages.