Lafayette in the Somewhat United States

I am a fan of Sarah Vowell's, owning most if not all of her books. She is extremely knowledgeable but I must say her sardonic writing gets tiring after a while. Not everything about the American Revolution, George Washington, and one of his favorite "sons" Lafayette, is funny. It just isn't. And while we do need to lighten up and understand the quirky nature of history in general and American history in particular, Vowell's voice in this book simply gets tiring. I am not impressed with this one, although I do admire Vowell's brilliance and ability as a writer. Just hope she expands her horizons with her next effort. If she focuses on something like the American Civil War and tells us about it the same manner she does with this one, I'm going to return the book. Vowell needs to expand the way she tells her stories beyond being cynical or sardonic.

I'd heard about Sarah Vowell, but I was never interested in reading any of her books until I heard her being interviewed about this one. Something about what she said intrigued me, so I got it. It won't be the last book of hers that I read -- in fact, I've got another one on order already. She reminds me of Bill Bryson, though I've only read one of his books, in that she provides lots of history combined with contemporary wit and humor and a sense of the uncanny connections between historical events separated by generations. For example, she discusses a connection between the story of Lafayette and Herman Melville that I found intriguing, but there are quite a few other examples. She also makes some American icons (and their British counterparts) come alive in ways that traditional (i.e., often bland) history does not.I have only one criticism of the book, really: the story of Lafayette recedes in the background (sometimes out of the picture entirely) in favor of her retelling of key episodes in the Revolutionary War; I didn't really expect a history of the War and was disappointed that Lafayette vanishes at times. However, she does a very good job in describing the weird coincidences and serendipity that resulted in the defeat of the British.I also have a second complaint, but not against Ms. Vowell (well, not really). There was one instance where she talks about a solider named Stephen in one place and a few pages later he becomes Stephens (or maybe it was Steven and Stevens; I can't recall). As I often ask, where were the editors? If I caught this on a casual read, why didn't someone else catch it? Maybe having to do an index would have helped.

I thought I knew American history, but it turns out that there was a whole lot of stuff I didn’t know, and this book helped fill in some gaps. Vowell is always funny, but some of the material in here is dense, so you have to love history and nonfiction to enjoy this book.Vowell wrote part of this during the 2013 temper tantrum in Washington that shut down all nonessential government services and cost our country $24 BILLION. (So much for fiscal responsibility.) The fact that our country is constantly fractured is a theme throughout the book.One of the things I hadn’t realized was the importance of the French helping secure American independence, specifically Marquis de Lafayette, who was only 19 when he came over to fight on the side of the Americans against the British during the Revolutionary war. I also never realized that George Washington was fighting with an untrained army of hungry (sometimes to the point of starvation) troops who often didn’t have boots for the feet to fight in NEW ENGLAND (which, of course, gets a bit nippy in winter).This quote illustrates Vowell’s writing style: “The newly dubbed General Lafayette was only 19 years old. Considering Independence Hall was also where the founders calculated that a slave equals three-fifths a person and cooked up an electoral college that lets Florida and Ohio pick our presidents, making an adolescent who barely spoke English a major general at an age I got hired to run the cash register at a Portland pizza joint was not the worst decision ever made there.”The best quote of the book, however, is when she talks about Lafayette Square across from the capitol in DC, where innumerable protests have taken place over the years. In reference to a Klan rally held there she writes, “Freedom of expression truly exists only when a society’s most repugnant nitwits are allowed to spew their nonsense in public.”If only we could get rid of the electoral college and preposterous gerrymandering and we might actually get something resembling a functional congress.