Commuting in D.C. is very compatible with listening to audiobooks, and at just under 40 hours, Battle Cry had been my faithful companion for around two months. Though focusing a little more singly on military history than I was expecting after David Walker Howe's What Hath God Wrought (the preceding volume, covering 1815-1848, in the still not-yet-completed Oxford History of the United States series), Battle Cry was especially readable in D.C., given its helpful ability to breathe life into the area's statues and placenames. (I will now forever think of Farragut North as the "Damn the Torpedos!"-Metro Stop, for instance. "Full speed ahead!")Double-bonus, the book also contained some pretty solid explanatory trivia--it's 1861 and the North needs thousands of new military uniforms; you're in the textiles business, but you're short on wool. What do you do?
To fill contracts for hundreds of thousands of uniforms, textile manufacturers compressed fibers of recycled woolen goods into a material called "shoddy." This noun soon became an adjective to describe uniforms that ripped after a few weeks of wear, shoes that fell apart, blankets that disintegrated, and poor workmanship in general[.]" (p. 324)And just like that, a new word is born.
Beautiful.
that hunk of wool looks like a rhino
ReplyDeleteHmm...I think that's a picture of my living room floor, Bill. I need to vaccuum this weekend.
ReplyDeletewas "What Hath God Wrought" good? i've read the two Ellis books about the founders and wanted to jump to the next chapter in US history.
ReplyDeleteIt's very good---it actually does a much better job than Battle Cry at covering the social and cultural history of period, in addition to filling in all of the political details of the (somewhat murky) post-Jackson, pre-Lincoln period. Some find it a little heavy on religion in the early chapters, but it was the Second Great Awakening, right?
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