Experimental Blog #28

Comments on 2 books

"A Is for American" - Letters and Other Characters in the Newly United States by Jill Lepore

This original American historian demonstrates how much can be investigated and written about language, and its several cognitive aspects, and how important it all is to individual and national identity.
Jill Lepore's narritives of seven people include prominent known Americans, as well as an American Indian named George Guess, but better known as Sequoyah; and an African named Abd al-Rahman Ibrahima, who was brought to America to be a slave when he was about 26 years of age, but obtained his freedom about 40 years later, and went back to Africa of his own accord.
All of these people left their mark in the world as thoughtful, mentally active, and productive individuals.


"Conspirator" - Lenin in Exile by Helen Rappaport

It seems that Vladimir Ulyanov was a consistent, lifelong, and conscientious student and scholar; but before he was 20 years old he was already getting into trouble with the Okhrana, the Department for the Protection of Order and Public Security.
Vladimir, and his wife Nadya, would spend their entire adult lives repeatedly moving to avoid arrest, or in exile in Siberia{about 3 years}, or in many places in Europe{England, Switzerland, Finland, France, Poland, Germany}from about 30 years of age{for Vladimir}, in 1900 to 47 years of age, in 1917.
This book describes in remarkable detail the many events and people of those years, and in the process describes and uncovers a more believable and human story.
The amount of Lenin's collected works, at least 45 volumes, is truly extraordinary.