What I'm Reading: Sweary History
My life could have been very different if I had a history teacher teaching like this in High School. C'est la vie.
Look, I hated history in high school. It was boring. You memorized names, places and dates. And while I lived in the heart of the burgeoning Silicon Valley where we had arguably enviably high-quality schools and curricula, there were still gaps, especially in US history.
So, I mostly tuned it out. I memorized what I needed to pass, but no spark was there, thus that knowledge was shoved into the oubliette of time, lost forever.
In college, I had a weird first year, being selected to be part of a “Humanities” program that would in 3 semesters cover all your general education reqs giving you essentially an extra semester’s worth of freedom to explore the minor and major you chose.
But that program and I didn’t gibe. I dropped out after the first semester, and that really fucked up my progress on my general ed requirements.
That was how in my 4th year I was taking a bog-standard US History course. In a lecture hall filled with people who were mostly 4 years younger than me (freshmen). In a way, it wasn’t fair, I had a LOT more experience in university, and most of the starry eyed high school recent grads struggled. But I shone, even though I was not a liberal arts sorta dude. No, I was hard STEM (B.Sc. Physics, minor Mathematics) so it was a class I shouldn’t have done well in.
But I did. It was fascinating. I still retained some of my high school US history knowledge, enough to know that holy fucking shit, they LIED to us. Not merely obfuscating some of the unpleasantness, but really sweeping many circumstances under the rug, anything that didn’t adhere to a vision of “American Exceptionalism1”, somewhat surprising 40 years in the rear-view mirror, that the filthy whitewashing of the Civil war, and the narrative of the lost cause, promoted and propagated by the Daughters of the Confederacy that reached even the lily-white ‘burbs of Silicon valley (in high school, we had exactly one African American young lady, who I talked to at my 30th reunion, and she was a lovely person whom I just never knew in the early 80’s.)
The college level US history class awakened a desire to know more. Much more. I discovered some writers I liked (you should read the three books by former Librarian of Congress, Daniel Boorstin, they are very approachable, and they will ROCK your world) and since then I have been an at times avid consumer of history2.
That gets me to my post today.
A couple months ago, while browsing the Subsstack app. I stumbled across James Fell’s ‘stack, “Sweary History”.
Salty Language? - Check
Accurate telling of key historical events and facts? - Check
Enjoyable read? - oh fuck yeah.
He posts often, and damn if I don’t click on those posts immediately.
Today, his topic is “Bleeding Kansas” and its preview of the US Civil War that would happen a half decade later. I mean, it opens with this:
Half a dozen years before the U.S. Civil War, the Kansas Territory—it wasn’t a state yet—was a harbinger of things to come. That’s why they called it “Bleeding Kansas,” a regional civil war over the subject of, you guessed it, slavery.
There was some other shit people were disagreeing over too, but slavery was the big one. Just like the Civil War was largely about treating humans like things and not what those coal-rolling Confederate flag–waving fuckwipes claim was “a war of Northern Aggression” where the South was fighting for “states’ rights.” States’ rights to do what, exactly? TO DO WHAT?!
Factually correct. Entertaining. And he calls modern apologists “Confederate flag-waving fuckwipes” What’s not to love?
Check his ‘stack out, and maybe give him a follow. He is totally worth it!
Every time I hear that phrase come out of the mouth of a politician, I know they are either lying (they know the truth), or they are dumber than a box of rocks.
I should add that studying physics and mathematics in Uni made me aware of how math and physics often were historically linked, prompting me to buy and read many books on the history of both. Fascinating topics if you’re a geek
That was a great post. I put James’ book on my ever expanding Amazon wish list. I’ve been reading a lot of history books lately. Been mostly interested in Rome and Greece and just started SPQR by Mary Beard.
I did recently read First Principles by Tom Ricks tho that filled in a lot of gaps on the Revolutionary War and the good and the bad of our first four presidents. Also, now know what a Fabian strategy of fighting battles is which corresponds nicely with the study of Roman history. That’s a lot of what the Ricks book is about is those 4 men and their study of the ancients. Not so ancient for them.
Just read Demagogue by Larry Tye, too. It came out in 2020, so he does give a few mentions to Trump. I learned a lot about McCarthy I didn’t know, tho. Actually, I knew just about nothing. Ike and Republicans of that era enabled him as much as current Republicans have enabled Trump.
McCarthy died 5 days before I was born. I came into a happier place.
Done and done. Thank you for bringing him to my attention.
Like you, my high-school history experience was dismal. All my history teachers were football coaches, and they seemed as bored as we students were. My sole university course wasn't much better (except the prof did care more). It wasn't until my first term in graduate school, when one of my professors (who became my mentor) started his course with a deep dive into the philosophy and history of psychology. Fascinating stuff to me; and it explains why the field is mostly a fucking mess still.