American History

Today in the NYTimes I read an interview with Woody Allen. Actually, it's pretty surprising that I read anything to do with Woody Allen since I've avoided his movies ever since he married his daughter and anyway the recent movies I've seen--reluctantly, I swear--of his have been pretty lame. (On the other hand, maybe I should be more tolerant since love does make people do some weird things.) Anyway I digress.

One line in the interview stuck out for me.

"...it's hard to beat sitting in bed or in a comfortable chair turning the pages of a book, putting it down, and eagerly awaiting the chance to get back to it."

That's just what I've been doing this past week with the truly massive (almost 800 pages) tome I've been reading, "The Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic 1789-1815 by Gordon Wood. To me, reading a well written history book is as exciting as reading a great novel. And this book is exceedingly well written and I've been taking it up and putting it down with great pleasure. Plus I'm learning so much given the fact that I haven't studied American History since Yeadon High School and that was pretty long ago and pitifully basic. I mean a requirement of the curriculum was Pennsylvania History where you had to memorize each county in the state and its county seat. Please tell me how that would be useful in later life. It was taught by Mr. Lord, whose full time job was teaching shop and who definitely was not a master of political theory or prone to any nuance in his thinking.