Siri Hustvedt, The Sorrows of an American *** 1/2

What I appreciate most about Hustvedt as a writer (of both fiction and non-fiction) is her rational approach to fundamentally emotional subjects. She and her characters gain empathy through understanding how others feel and why. As one reviewer said, "She takes unapologetic delight in intellectual characters who understand their lives through far-ranging reading and lively conversation."

The Sorrows of an American doesn't really have a story. The first page suggests that the book will be about a family uncovering secrets about the newly deceased patriarch, but the narrator shows very little urgency in pursuing the mystery of "Lisa" who sent his father an enigmatic letter, and when they track down the answer his sister says, "It was a secret, all right, kept for years and years, but it doesn't explain much about Pappa, does it?"

The theme of the book is how a person's secrets are simultaneously the part that is missing from his or her life story and the part that influences his or her motivation. The narrator is a psychoanalyst, so it's not surprising that he believes we can overcome our discontents though talking about it. The emotional stakes remain low, because the characters are not suffering from trauma but are merely discontented.

Sam Munson, Dog Symphony ** 1/2

I recovered from the dense door stop Reconstruction with this short atmospheric novel. An American professor of prison studies travels to Buenos Aires to speak at a conference. When he arrives, he can't locate his sponsor and manages to lock himself out of his room at the B&B. He notices that each home has a pair of bowls at their front doors, one with water and the other with raw meat. As night falls, he sees quiet packs of dogs roaming the streets.

Dog Symphony establishes a foreboding mood whose elusiveness contrasts with details that make the story feel Argentinian (references to Borges and Cortazar; surprisingly clear geographical descriptions). But the transparently allegorical story doesn't go anywhere. It's like Munson built his world but forgot to populate it.

Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution 1863 - 1877 *** 1/2

I am attracted to stories about the aftermath of cataclysmic change. How does a society reconstruct itself when everything is destroyed? Earlier this year I read Embracing Defeat, about post-WWII Japan; other examples include Ten Days that Shook the World and Red Star Over China.

Reconstruction is the name given to the period immediately after the Civil War, when the country had to grapple with the question of how to re-integrate the Confederate states into the Union. As in Japan, the victors had to determine how to deal with those who had been in power during (and before) the war and how to modernize the decimated economies. They had the further issue of how to support the newly freed slaves and integrate them into society.

Reconstruction presents the period largely as an attempt by the North to prevent the South from returning to its plantation society, for both moral and economic reasons. Reconstruction ended when economic considerations no longer pulled in the same direction as the moral ones, due to a deep depression in the mid-1870s. Traditional Southern society retrenched at that point, a process they referred to as Redemption.

It was a fascinating time in history. The Republican and Democratic parties are reversed from their positions today, with the Republicans being the radicals who want equality for blacks and the Democrats being the conservative voice for state's rights. (The Republicans are still the party of capital, though, which explains their policy shift once white unions start making demands.) Reconstruction also brought a huge expansion of federal power.

Foner calls out the major currents driving events forward, from a liberal perspective. Unfortunately, he is also an academic attempting to write the definitive account, which means he buries his themes under a wealth of detail that can make the book a slog to read. His account of the last few years is particularly dense as tactical political maneuvering replaces larger goals. Nonetheless there is a lot of great material in here that illuminates the original sources for discussions we're still having today about state's rights, civil vs societal equality, and interpreting the intent of the writers of the Constitution.