November was a very busy month with travels, Thanksgiving
and kicking off the December holiday season.
But busy or not, I still read.
Some food for thought for Thanksgiving and Christmas -
- Although he disregards the difference between the Pilgrims and the Puritans who colonized New England, Philbrick presents a nuanced history of the complicated relationships between Native Americans and the first English settlers in New England. That complicated relationship resulted in King Philip's War (1675-1678) which is considered by many to be the greatest calamity to occur in 17th-century New England. The economies of the Plymouth and Rhodes Island colonies were ruined, and both the English and Native American populations were decimated - with captive Native Americans shipped to the Caribbean as slaves.
The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits by Les Standiford
- Last year's film "The Man Who Invented Christmas" was enjoyable and worth seeing - but this book is a much more serious biography of Charles Dickens and - part history, part literary analysis - is very different from the film. Standiford explains Dickens's rise to fame and his declining popularity before A Christmas Carol while giving insights into the 19th century publishing industry.
