American Nations was a very informative non-fiction book about how and why the different regions of America developed their unique attitudes, dialects, political views etc. We had a long, in depth discussion so I won't waste space with my puffery. Onto the discussion summary:
The book mentions most every country that was represented were of people who were escaping war,
famine, oppression of the “mother” country. So we are a country full of people escaping a bad situation in search of a better life and opportunities. And that image of America still exists since we are the "Land of Opportunity".
We also noted how the colonies were not as united against the British as what is “taught” by our history classes in school. Particularly, the northern colonies kind of let it slide that the southern colonies kept slaves. If the northern colonies had put their feet down and tried to force the southern colonies to abolish slavery, then the southern colonies would have sided with the British, and the revolution may have failed or turned out quite differently.
The Midlanders were passive during the revolution
Even today, we can see the foundation of religious beliefs from the groups that emigrated here so long ago.
Some interesting parts of the book that our club noted were: Trail of Tears (Jacksonian period a very rough period politically), What if Mexico/Cuba had been included in America early on?, Yankeedom was afraid of the South having too much power (political move), the different southern regions looked at slavery differently (different treatment of slaves), different government view points among all the different regions, Yankeedom has high opinion of government, Appalachian region has no trust of government or any outsiders, Tidewater folks look out only for themselves (is it a coincidence that I spent part of my life in the Tidewater region??? hmmmm), the Vanderbilt family father came as an indentured servant and that family became one of the richest in America.
Cat posed a question to the group: In all of our travels did any of the attitudes promoted by the book ring true? Here is a summary of our answers:
Deuce: El Norte/Far West (California)-people kept to themselves and not very friendly people; Yankeedom (Wisconsin)-more friendly people; El Norte/Appalachian/Deep South (Texas)-nothing she liked. (Note to self: must cancel the Texas vacation)
Baron: Texas-had a very better than everyone attitude
JB: California-everything very in place,
Deuce: Appalachian people not wanting to be bothered; friendly if your one of them, (clannish) Yankeedom: very smart remarks (Is that smart like "Smart allick" or smart like "Intelligent"?)
Indy: vocabulary/dialect varies and hard to understand
JB: trip to England, each cousin had married a man from different parts of England; although speaking the same language hard to understand
Baron: can tell a difference in speech of Eastern/Western North Carolina
Unknown who said this: New York very accepting people and very diverse
The book had a lot of good information but it was possible the author let some of his own biases slip into his analysis. Also, it read like a textbook somewhat. But it is a non-fiction so I guess that is to be expected. Overall, we learned a lot about our country's history pertaining to our own regional attitudes etc. That was really cool to learn about all that.
Until next time Novel Spirits!
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