| “Half Moon: Henry Hudson and the Voyage That Redrew the Map of the New World,” by Douglas Hunter. This was one of those books that expanded what had been, for me, a tiny footnote in Early American History into a full blown tale of intrigue and adventure. It is really difficult to ignore Henry Hudson’s contributions towards the Discovery of the New World. His name, after all, is featured as one of North America’s most famous rivers (The Hudson River) and as one of its biggest nautical features (Canada’s Hudson Bay). But, other than those names and a faint memory of his crew’s mutiny, with him being set adrift and lost, I didn’t really have a very good notion of what he actually did as an explorer. Thanks to Mr. Hunter, I now know more than I probably ever wanted to about his voyages of discovery and their political setting. The author made great use of his nautical knowledge to supplement an amazing amount of research in original documents and maps. If there was a problem it was the author’s, maybe excessive, enthusiasm regarding the supporting data to the extent that I found myself occasionally struggling to keep all of the events/references straight. |
Jan 22
Jan 10
I have been working on the TimePage timelines a bit lately. The pages were of several different vintages and states of repair. I have now reduced all of the pages ( five cycle pages and 20 era timelines) to a common format. The data itself is still a bit ramshackle while I move it around and the links are still in deplorable shape but it is a start at least.
As part of the TimePage upgrade I am also gradually synchronizing the timeline entries with the “Today in History” entries in the TimeLog and adding some family genealogy to the page. Just for fun, I also have added a “All Generational Baseball Team” entry to the timelines. All of this is being added slowly over time but hopefully will be a little more fun when it is finally in place.
Jan 02
| I don’t quite know how to categorize this little book by Christina Thompson. The title, Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat you All: A New Zealand Story, certainly doesn’t help. It is partly a memoir of an American woman whose own life becomes intertwined with the culture of the South Pacific, specifically the Maori culture of New Zealand, when she meets and marries a man from that culture. It is also partly a history of the Maori people themselves and their dismal lot in the age of Western Colonization. In trying to tell both of these stories, however, the book jumps around a lot and in the end struggles to tie all of the colonial history of Western Europe together, for good or bad, to her own family story. On the whole, though, this touching reflection had enough interesting history and was written well enough that I must say I enjoyed reading it. |
