[It’s been a while since I shared a series on scholarly books I’ve had the pleasure of checking out recently, and for this latest iteration I wanted to highlight recent reads that have offered inspiration in these very tough times!]
The next two books I’ll be highlighting in this series are especially meaningful to me, as they were my sons’ very thoughtful Father’s Day presents for me this past June (yet another example of how much I continue to learn from the boys!). Without our ever having talked about them, the boys chose two books that I had been meaning to check out for a while, and that was especially the case with today’s subject: Ned Blackhawk’s The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History (2024). In this long-ago post I highlighted Ronald Takaki’s book A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America (1993), which as much as any single work I’ve read shifted my perspective on America’s foundational identity and community. I genuinely don’t think any work I’ve encountered since has achieved that goal as fully and potently as did Blackhawk’s book—while of course I know a good deal more about American history and identity than I did when I first read Takaki, I still learned so much from Blackhawk’s book, about both histories that I did have a sense of already and those that he added to my understanding (such as the attacks on California Native Americans by federally funded militias in the early days of the Civil War). This book is truly, in every sense of the phrase, a must-read for all Americans.
Next recent read tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you think? Recent reads you’d share?
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