Posted on by rjonakait

First Sentences

“This was me when I was 10 years old. This was in 1980.” Marjane Satrapi, The Complete Persepolis.

“This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it.” William Goldman, The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern’s Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure.

“’Is this the home of Tony Horwitz?’” Geraldine Brooks, Memorial Days.

“The year that Buttercup was born, the most beautiful woman in the world was a French scullery maid named Annette.” S. Morgenstern, The Princess Bride.

“Even now, nearly a century after her death, Marie Curie remains the only female scientist whom most people can name.” Dava Sobel, The Elements of Marie Curie: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science.

“Fezzik chased the madman up the mountain, the madman who carried the most precious thing, for Fezzik, ever to be on earth, the kid herself, Buttercup’s Baby.” S. Morgenstern, Buttercup’s Baby: S. Morgenstern’s Glorious Examination of Courage Matched Against the Death of the Heart.

“I was performing since I was just a little boy.” Al Pacino, Sonny Boy.

“I must have died, the woman thought.” Dan Brown, The Secret of Secrets.

“On July 27, 1791, some four months after Alexander Hamilton and Federalist-dominated Congress passed ‘the Whiskey Tax,’ the frontier offered an organized response for the first time.” Brady J. Crytzer, The Whiskey Rebellion: A Distilled History of an American Crisis.

“Lucrezia is taking her seat at the long dining table, which is polished to a watery gleam and spread with dishes, inverted cups, a woven circlet of fir.” Margaret O’Farrell, The Marriage Portrait.

“The story begins with sheep.” John Butman & Simon Targett, New World, Inc.: The Making of America by England’s Merchant Adventurers.

“Lilacs, rain, a hint of bitter chocolate: Stella sniffed the air as she entered the small shop, enjoying the soft golden light that enfolded her.” Ruth Reichl, The Paris Novel.

“It looked like war.” Jon Meacham, American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House.

“The day Ruthie went missing, the blackflies seemed to be especially hungry.” Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers.

“On January 21, 1989, the day after George H. W. Bush’s inauguration, David Duke, the former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, a neo-Nazi, and the head of an organization called the National Association for the Advancement of White People, finished first in an open primary for Louisiana’s eighty-first legislative district.” John Ganz, When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s.

Posted on by rjonakait

A Day for Presidents

Ulysses S. Grant liked to say that he knew two songs. One was “Yankee Doodle” and the other was not.

John Ganz in When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s (2024) says that George H.W. “Bush was the representative of a class bred to govern, not to lead.”

Grover Cleveland vetoed more bills in his first term than all previous presidents combined. (Many, however, were private pension bills.)Troy Senik, A Man of Iron: The Turbulent Life and Improbable Presidency of Grover Cleveland.

Lincoln said about General Phil Sheridan, who had a distinctive body, that he was a “chunky little chap, with a long body, short legs, not enough neck to hang him, and such long arms that if his ankles itch, he can scratch them without stooping.”Scott W. Berg, The Burning of the World: The Great Chicago Fire and the War for a City’s Soul (2023).

Warren Harding, when President, privately said that his vote for World War I was a mistake. Adam Hochschild, American Midnight: The Great War, A Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis (2022).

Nicole Hemmer in Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s summarizes President Ronald Reagan as being fueled by anticommunism, which gave him “a preference for more-open borders and higher immigration levels, for fewer tariffs and a stingier social net. Anticommunism mattered more to him than democracy or small government. He wanted a sharp increase in military spending, a more aggressive posture toward the Soviet Union, and more extensive aid to right-wing illiberal regimes in place in South and Central America and Southern Africa.”

Hemmer also reports that Reagan’s 1980 presidential race was the first with a partisan gender gap.

Jill Lepore in These Truths: A History of the United States (2018) reminded me that Reagan, in response to Black Panthers, said there is no reason why anyone should carry a loaded gun on the streets.

Joshua L. Powell writes in Inside the NRA: A Tell-All Account of Corruption, Greed, and Paranoia within the Most Powerful Political Group in America (2020) that gun owners voted for George W. Bush by 25 points over Al Gore.

Al Gore is younger than Donald Trump.

Ted Widmer in Lincoln on the Verge: Thirteen Days to Washington (2020) refers to a historian who said that to discuss Millard Fillmore was to overrate him.

One modern president who was religious believed strongly in the separation of church and state. Jonathan Alter writes in His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, A Life (2020) that when he was the Georgia governor, Carter canceled a weekly worship service for government employees because it violated separation of church and state. President Carter did not allow religious sermons in the White House because of separation of church and state.

Jill Lepore states in These Truths: A History of the United States (2018) that Lyndon Johnson had broad support among evangelicals in 1964.

Something that would not happen today: Doris Kearns Goodwin reports in An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s that she thought that she would lose her position as a White House Fellow in 1967 because she had co-authored a piece in The New Republic titled “How to Remove LBJ in 1968.”

Jonathan Alter maintains that Jimmy Carter had a photographic memory for names, which reminded me of a story a former colleague told me. Ed grew up in a small Arkansas town where his parents had a modest, but successful, business. When Bill Clinton ran for state attorney general, Ed’s parents attended a fundraiser in their hometown for the candidate. Eight years later, when Clinton was out of office between his non-consecutive gubernatorial terms, Ed’s parents were in Washington, D.C. They spotted Clinton on the opposite sidewalk. They debated whether they should go up to him because of their one meeting. Before they had made a decision, Clinton strode across the Georgetown street, stuck out his hand, and greeted Ed’s parents by their first and last names.

This is not the first time we have had an administration with strange opinions about vaccinations. Jill Lepore in These Truths: A History of the United States (2018) states that Dwight Eisenhower and his Health Secretary said that the free distribution of the polio vaccine was socialized medicine.

According to Timothy Snyder in The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America (2018), Trump in 2016 did best in counties with a public health crisis, especially where the suicide rate and opioid use was high.