Alex > Recent Status Updates

THANK YOU for covering the Olive Branch Petition—a detail too often omitted from Revolutionary history because it does not quite fit with the image of brazen Americans standing tall with chests out and chins up, daring the Brits in utter defiance. (Btw the telling the *whole* story in no way diminishes the Founders’ reputation—it enhances it!)

Making headway on this hulking biography. Enjoyable thus far.

Strength: Exceptionally clear portrayal of Jackson’s personality and principles.

Weakness: The narrative lacks drama.

Big pages and small print make for slow going as measured by page count. But pace is irrelevant when you’re into a good one, and so far, this is a good one.

Just past halfway. It’s engaging enough that I’ll see it through, but I’m convinced there are more entertaining chronicles of the American Revolution out there.

Well the pace is…let’s call it unhurried…but to Simon’s great credit he is eminently fair to both Marshall and Jefferson.

50 pages left. I’ll miss having a daily meeting with Monroe.

One mark of a great history/biography is when you know how an event will turn out and yet you’re still completely riveted to the action.

Phenomenal blow by blow account of the Louisiana Purchase, including a scene where Napoleon cannonballed into his bathtub in a rage, soaking his brother but also effectively ending their argument. It’s a fantastically funny anecdote that shrinks and humanizes the man who is often portrayed as august and unapproachable, stony and remote.

Captivating book. Jumps right into action with Monroe as a bright-eyed soldier in Washington’s army. McGrath excels in battle narrative. The storytelling is straightforward but engaging—enough flourish in the pen to make it entertaining but nothing superfluous or gaudy. Pure substance.

How did I never know this gem of a tidbit about the 1787 Constitutional Convention?? // "Benjamin Franklin, in constant pain from kidney stones, was carried to the State House in a sedan chair, borne by four convicts from the Walnut Street prison."

I planned on reading another book next, but while I was waiting for it to arrive I decided to crack this one open. I was only gonna flip a few pages to pass the time but now I’m kinda into it. So I’m in a pickle.

“Huntington was a force of nature driven to make himself a man above others at almost any cost. Railroads were his path to wealth and power, but he would have become an aquarium magnate if that had offered a better path.” // lol

"Very few have fortitude enough to tell a tyrant they are determined to be free." -Samuel Adams

“Adams denied that a friendship with Jefferson ever existed. Then he went on to describe the almost constant personal interaction between the two men.” // lol

“He recommended that governments establish checks…[as] a byproduct of the..incessant operation of his own internal checks and balances…A state constitution was not just an agreed-upon framework of social customs and laws. It was a public replica of one's internal order or constitution…his political commitments were projections onto the world of his own personality.” / VERY interesting hypothesis from Ellis

This book is so good that I’ve already gifted it to two people.

This is wild: The Selective Service Act was set to expire in Sep 1941. If it lapsed, the small army the US had built (still only 1/5th the size of Germany’s) would disappear. Marshall thought this would be “fatal” for the US military. An Act to extend the Draft passed in Aug by a vote of 203 to 202. That single vote—one vote!—was the difference when Pearl Harbor was attacked just over three months later.

On the day WWII started with Germany’s invasion of Poland, the US only had the 19th largest army in the world—a mere 170,000 troops—just ahead of Bulgaria. Wow.

“In what was arguably the greatest personnel decision with the most far-reaching consequences ever made by a United States president…Franklin D. Roosevelt paired Stimson up with Marshall in the summer of 1940…these two giants of the twentieth century, with the exception of FDR himself, were more responsible than any other Americans in contributing to the defeat of Hitler and his armies.”

Just crossed the photo pages. That’s always a milestone I look forward to. One of the simple (and yeah, dweeby) pleasures of reading a physical book.

Expected a biography but am instead getting blow-by-blow coverage of the practical issues encountered in Jefferson and Madison’s administrations. Quite interesting.