{"id":2110,"date":"2015-12-11T17:56:34","date_gmt":"2015-12-12T01:56:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=2110"},"modified":"2015-12-11T17:56:34","modified_gmt":"2015-12-12T01:56:34","slug":"review-lafayette-in-the-somewhat-united-states","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=2110","title":{"rendered":"Review: Lafayette in the Somewhat United States"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I love to read history and I love to read Sarah Vowell.\u00a0 I expected to love reading <em>Lafayette<\/em>. And I enjoyed it a great deal, but I didn&#8217;t love it.<\/p>\n<p>Probably the aspect of Vowell&#8217;s writing that I love the most is her enthusiasm for her topics &#8211; especially when it&#8217;s America and history.  Her first book that wasn&#8217;t a collection of columns, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/BBC\/mouldering05.html#m05-i\"><i>Assassination Vacation<\/i><\/a> was full of excitement and gleeful asides.  I had the impression that finding out everything she did was so exciting and so much fun that she couldn&#8217;t control the desire to <em>tell everyone<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Better than that, she clearly could control that desire and turn that excitement into a wide-ranging, beautifully written book.  It includes delightful historical facts, a sincere paean to the National Parks Service, and a dozen other merits.  One of those merits is an ability to connect history and modern times with a brilliant turn of phrase.<\/p>\n<p>All of these are present in <i>Lafayette<\/i> as well, but not to the same extent.  There is a lot of the book that reads like a well-researched, well-written popular treatment of Lafayette&#8217;s time in America and its effect on our nation.  That&#8217;s a great accomplishment, and we need more books like it.  And yet, I miss the sparks that fly from every sentence in <i>Vacation<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>Recommended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I love to read history and I love to read Sarah Vowell.\u00a0 I expected to love reading Lafayette. And I enjoyed it a great deal, but I didn&#8217;t love it. Probably the aspect of Vowell&#8217;s writing that I love the most is her enthusiasm for her topics &#8211; especially when it&#8217;s America and history. Her [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2110"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2116,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2110\/revisions\/2116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}