Following up on the last post about unforgetable books, I’m writing today about hard books–books that tackled challenging subjects and changed the way I think.
I haven’t reread any of them.
They’re simply too difficult, emotionally, to revisit, but they were very helpful. Click to Tweet
The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer–led off the last list and remains at the top of this one. The requirements Bonhoeffer described made for a hard book, even as a vigorous twenty year old and while several points have stayed with me ever since, I’ve not been eager to revisit.
I’m working my way up to a reread.
The Harvest of Sorrow by Robert Conquest
This book starts out with a staggering concept: every letter in the book represents the death of twenty Ukrainians in a famine manufactured by the Soviet government in the 1930’s.
The outrage from that first stat starts the 1986 book and doesn’t let up for the entire 430 pages. I read it on a vacation and was numb the entire time.
I kept seeing myself as a kulak, the focus of hatred of people who wanted me dead because my life style–owning a few chickens–might get in the way of their political power.
My heart seizes, even now, when I think of the Ukraine and their political famine.
But it made me quite knowledgeable when discussing local politics with people from Moldova several years ago.
Empire of the Summer Moon by S. C. Gwynne
I read this one while attending a writer’s conference and was a total basket case every time I opened it.
The story, basically, of genocide against Commanches in Texas by the Texas Rangers, horrified me and challenged long understood truths.
I couldn’t believe native Americans were hunted down like prey and slaughtered. I have Texas ancestors, good, Godly people, preachers among them. How could they have countenanced such behavior?
Texas Rangers were not heroes and I shudder, now, when I read stories about them.
Gulag by Anne Applebaum
My husband thinks I tend toward the negative, sometimes, when discussing history. But when I learn of fine books on subjects that interest me, I read them–even if they are as gruelling as this one.
Someone has to bear witness to history. Click to Tweet
Someone has to know what really happened.
You all know the adage, “those who do not study history are condemned to repeat it.”
What do you know about the Soviet gulags? What sort of crimes sent so many people there?
Behavior I never give a second thought while doing. 🙁
(To be fair, I also spent a sunny afternoon on a Hawai’ian beach reading The History of Siberia.
My take away from that one is, did you know in the 19th century, the biggest export from Siberia was ivory? Taken from the tusks of the wooly mammoths they dug out of the melting permafrost.
The Siberian peasants thought the mammoths were some sort of underground animal digging toward the surface when they died . . . so, not all is grim.)
Life and Death in Shanghai byNien Cheng
I’ve long been fascinated by the question of how people survive in a totalitarian government with their souls intact. Click to Tweet
Cheng’s book detailed how she endured the changes in China which ultimately forced her into prison for six years. I learned a lot about The Great Leap Forward and other aspects of Chinese modern history which served me in good stead while visiting China and hearing the guide’s very different take on his country.
A Little Humor with the Horror
In a different vein, Tony Horwitz also provides interesting takes on American history, with offbeat and wry descriptions of other terrible events. I particularly appreciated two of his books: Confederates in the Attic and A Voyage Long and Strange.
Confederates in the Attic is the story of Civil War reenactors, a seemingly benign topic full of irony and humor. But he tells the tale of people going to extremes to provide verisimilitude during their (usually) CSA battle reenactments.
In the process, Horwitz provides us with plenty of insight into the hardships real soldiers went through 150 years ago. Poignant, funny as anything, but also hard to read at times.
A Voyage Long and Strange has a lengthy subtitle: On the Trail of Vikings, Conquistadors, Lost Colonists and Other Adventurers in Early America.
I’ve read a lot of history in my time, but this book contained stories I’d never heard –tales of the search for The Fountain of Youth, and of ziggurats in the southern corner of the United States.
He talked about De Soto and others horrific marches across the desert and, once again, encountering native Americans in the natural.
A lot more civilization was going on prior to 1492 then I ever knew. Click to Tweet
That’s what made A Voyage Long and Strange important to me.
There are more I could list, but this is sufficient.
I’ve read one of these (Life and Death in Shanghai) but surely the fact that I read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago counts for something. 🙂
Of course it counts! 🙂
Have read several of these…and read them again!