Books I’ve Read + Notes
1777: Tipping Point at Saratoga by Dean Snow. “Timeline” format does not really deliver, seems farfetched and also irrelevant. 1,000s of names introduced; confusing. [Purchased, Nov. 2020]
The Battle of Oriskany and General Nicholas Herkimer by Paul A. Boehlert. Self-published, sort of, and purchased from Herkimer County Historical Society, where he did some research. Telling mistake: He refers to the early governor himself as “Burnetfield” when it was just Burnet, the place was “Burnets Field.” Some good “daily life” sketching of the Herkimers. Makes me want to write my own biography of Uncle Nick [Purchased, May 2021]
Bloody Mohawk: The French and Indian War & American Revolution on New York’s Frontier by Richard Berleth, 2009. Really engrossing narrative history by a Brooklyn-based English major/amateur historian, full of info about my ancestors. [Purchased at NYS Museum of Military History, July 2021] More: https://shop.blackdomepress.com/
Champlain’s Dream: The European Founding of America by David Hackett Fischer, 2008. [Reco’ed by Ross Douthat in NYT; Borrowed from Saratoga Library, July 2021] From the intro: “After the delusions of political correctness, ideological rage, multiculturalism, postmodernism, historical relativism, and the more extreme forms of academic cynicism, historians are returning to the foundations of their discipline with a new faith in the possibilities of historical knowledge. This inquiry is conceived in that spirit.” Trying to find a third way after Indians = Savages, Whites = Saints and VICE VERSA. More nuanced view. And what was Champlain’s dream? “He envisioned a new world as a place where people of different cultures could live together in amity and concord. This became his grand design for North America.” Chapter “Iroquoia” has gripping description of battle at Ticonderoga.
A Description of New Netherland by Adriaen van der Donck (Edited by Charles T. Gehring and William A. Starna, Translated by Diederik Willem Goedhuys, Foreword by Russell Shorto) 2008. [Borrowed from Saratoga Library, July 2021] Donck has amazingly fanciful perceptions of space. First, everything is “forty miles”; second, “Below the falls [Cohoes] the water rushes foaming, frisking, and whirling over the stony ground for about the distance of a gunshot and a half, appearing bewildered, then it regains its composure and flows gently on.” p. 13
Dutch and English on the Hudson: A Chronicle of Colonial New York by Maud Wilder Goodwin, 1919. Though published as a history book by Yale, she weaves in a lot of fiction, such as using Diedrich Knickerbocker, a fictional character from Washington Irving, as a “source.” Lots of expected un-PC language (Indians are simply referred to generically as “savages” while blacks are negroes) but contains some good basic info about the contours of the patroonship and it’s cool to hear that 1919 writing style again, florid with lots of arcane word usage. There’s a chapter called “The Negro Plots” that I assumed referred to land, but it turns out “plot” means machinations by negroes in league with Catholics (!) to burn/destroy the white population of NYC in the 1700s. [Borrowed from Saratoga Library, May 2021]
Dutch New York: The Roots of Hudson Valley Culture by Roger Panetta (Editor), Russell Shorto (Foreword). Essays to accompany 2009 exhibition at Hudson River Museum. Illustrated. I find it hard to do without Shorto’s narrative style, but it contains interesting chapters. [Borrowed from Saratoga Library, Sept. 2021] Last chapter, about Dyckman House, introduced me to the concepts of “house museum” and “Colonial Revival” as well as the stereotypes furthered by Washington Irving of overfed, lazy Dutch.
The Fall of the House of Walworth by Geoffrey O’Brien, 2010. Mainly covers the murder by Frank of his father Mansfield Walworth. Note “back east” migration of Ellen Walworth (NY Homestead), her daughter Nelly’s book on Mohawk convert to Catholicism Kateri T., Ellen’s founding of DAR. Thanks Jamie P. in acknowledgments.
The Generals of Saratoga: John Burgoyne and Horatio Gates by Max Mintz. First part, dealing with backgrounds of the two men, is interesting. Second part, rehashing the battle itself, not as much. [Borrowed from Saratoga Library, May 2021]
The Island at the Center of the World by Russell Shorto, 2004. [Borrowed from Saratoga Library, July 2021] “There are two rival, hardened stereotypes that get in the way of understanding these people: the one that arose from the long cultural dismissing of Indians as ‘primitive,’ and the modern dogma that sees them as Noble and Defenseless. Both are cartoon images. …. [they] were biologically, genetically, intellectually all but identical to the Dutch, English, French, Swedish, and others who came into contact with them in teh beginning of the seventeenth century. The Indians were as skilled, as duplicitous, as capable of theological rumination and technological cunning, as smart and as pig-headed, and as curious and as cruel as the Europeans who met them. … It was later, after the two had separated into rival camps, that the stereotypes set.” pp.30-31. “Thus certain educated Europeans formed an idealistic image of these New World inhabitants [Indians], an image that wouldn’t seem out of place in, say, the 1970s.” p. 135 LOL “Stuyvesant had sent to Rensselaerswyck a seemingly innocuous proclamation declaring the first Wednesday of May a day of public fasting and thanksgiving throughout the colony. It was common of leaders in all Dutch communities, following storms, fires, invasions, or harsh winters, to set aside a formal day of thanks to the Almighty for seeing the inhabitants through the ordeal.” p. 189
Palatine Roots: The 1710 German Settlement in New York as Experienced by Johann Peter Wagner, by Nancy Wagoner Dixon. Another quasi-self-published, not-too-well-written but well meant, personal family book that found its way into the library. [Borrowed from Saratoga Library, June 2021] Quotes: “They had to be christened quickly, these 171h-century children, before they died.” Note: Common for wives to remain unnamed in church records.
Revolution Song: The Story of America’s Founding in Six Remarkable Lives, by Russel Shorto. [Purchased August 2020] Another amazing book by Shorto; the detailed descriptions of how slavery and race actually worked, the details of Sullivan’s Campaign, the desc. of British NYC — all uniquely eye-opening. The interweaving six lives are Cornplanter, George Washington, Albany Dutchman Abraham Yates, Miss Moncrieffe, Venture Smith, and Lord George Germain.
Saratoga: Turning Point of America's Revolutionary War by Richard M. Ketchum. Better than 1777 by Snow, more storylike. [Purchased January 2021]
Those Turbulent Sons of Freedom: Ethan Allen’s Green Mountain Boys and the American Revolution by Christopher S. Wren. Very compelling details of daily life, well written, but gets bogged down (for me) with tick-tocks of these endless battles and generals and places. [Borrowed from Saratoga Library, June 2021]
Turncoat: Benedict Arnold and the Crisis of American Liberty by Stephen Brumwell – Very well written, with a storyteller voice. Read his other books! Arnold was a renaissance man and possibly bipolar or something! [Borrowed from Saratoga Library, May 2021]
Tories: Fighting for the King in America's First Civil War by Thomas B. Allen – Read Chapter 12, “Indians Must Be Employed”: New York Frontier, Spring 1775–October 1777, good overview from Herkimer to Saratoga. [Borrowed from Saratoga Library, May 2021]