Very exhaustive study of Vedic literature
This is an excellent e-book that provides a bibliographical information of key words in Vedas, and Brahmanas. Readers doing research in Vedic and Post-Vedic literature may find this work very helpful. This is an exhaustive study that include references, elucidation or annotation to the hymns of Rigveda, Yajurveda, Atharvaveda and Brahmanas. The authors are well known scholars of Sanskrit and Vedic scriptures: Very highly recommended.
Saturday, October 26, 2019
Book Reviewed: A Vedic Index Meaning and explanation of some important Vedic symbols, words, images, and concepts in the words of Sri Aurobindo
Sri Aurobindo’ explanation of selected Vedic terms (Four stars)
The title of this book is somewhat misleading. I thought that this book is about Vedic terms from Rigveda, but this is about selected words and phrases from Vedic literature. The interpretation of Sri Aurobindo’s is somewhat metaphysical and does not include references, elucidation or annotation to the hymns of Rigveda. It refers to the page numbers of the Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo (CWSA). It is not as exhaustive as the book about Vedic Index by Arthur A. MacDonnell and Arthur B. Keith.
The interpretation of Vedic terms in this book is quite metaphysical. The Vedic literature interprets that Rigveda has little philosophy except for Nasadiya Sukta (Rigveda 10:129,1-7), but the author relates to the mind of Vedic seers. The post-Vedic scriptures like Upanishads are intensely metaphysical, which led to six schools of Hindu philosophical system unlike any other Abrahamic faiths. This could not have dropped out into the hands of Vedic Seers from nowhere. The preceptors of Upanishads were Vedic scholars knowledgeable about Vedic practices found metaphysical wisdom in early Vedic literature.
Mystical elements are associated with sacrificial performance of Vedic culture. This ritual was believed to please the Vedic gods and bless the performer with strength. It is said that the Vedic altar which is the seat of sacrifice is referred to as the farthest extremity of earth. Paro antah prithvyah (Rig-Veda I.164.35) as the nodes of Truth, Rtsya nabhih (Rig-Veda V. X.13.3). In some places the sacrifice is referred to as an entity with conscious activity, Tatramtsya cetanam yajnam te tanavavahai (Rig-Veda I.170.4) and the gods themselves perform conscious sacrifice, Cetanam Yajnam. Thus, sacrifice is deemed as a wheel for generating the power. Everything connected to a sacrifice has a symbolic meaning. Behind the external ceremony, there is an inner sanctum in which the sacrifice offers his material possessions to the higher powers with full devotion and dedication. It is a self-consecration with Agni who witnesses this journey to the inner sanctum. Agni is considered as the inner flame, a leader and the pathfinder.
In Rigveda 1.164.46, we find, “ekam sat viprah bhaudha vadanti,” translation; The Truth is One; Sages call it by different names. This sets the tone for very early metaphysical ideas that were later developed in Upanishads. The scribe of this hymn suggests that deities appear to be different and independent from each other, but they are manifestations of One Supreme God, referred to as Brahman in Upanishads.
According to the author, the Vedic Word or mantra is the expression of the intuition arising out of the depths of the soul or being. The Vedic hymns possess a finished metrical form, a constant subtility and skill in their technique, great variations of style and poetical personality; they are not the work of rude, barbarous primitive craftsmen but the living breath of a conscious being. The Vedic hymn composed by a Rishi sought to progress for himself and for others. It rose out of his soul and became a power of his mind; it was the vehicle of his self-expression in some important or even critical moment of his life's inner history. It helped him to express the god in him and to destroy the devourer and the expresser of evil. The core Hindu principles that dharmic practices lead to moksha and karma follows the evil deeds. Practicing bhakti-yoga and jnana-yoga lead to enlightenment.
The Nasadiya Sukta, the Hymns of Creation, Rigveda 10:129,1-7 describes the cosmos in highly metaphysical terms; it describes the essential features of quantum reality. It may also have contributed to furthering metaphysics in Upanishads. The first and last hymns reads as;
1. Then even nothingness was not, nor existence,
There was no air then, nor the heavens beyond it.
What covered it? Where was it? In whose keeping?
Was there then cosmic water, in depths unfathomed?
7. Whence all creation had its origin,
the creator, whether he fashioned it or whether he did not,
the creator, who surveys it all from highest heaven,
he knows — or maybe even he does not know.
The title of this book is somewhat misleading. I thought that this book is about Vedic terms from Rigveda, but this is about selected words and phrases from Vedic literature. The interpretation of Sri Aurobindo’s is somewhat metaphysical and does not include references, elucidation or annotation to the hymns of Rigveda. It refers to the page numbers of the Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo (CWSA). It is not as exhaustive as the book about Vedic Index by Arthur A. MacDonnell and Arthur B. Keith.
The interpretation of Vedic terms in this book is quite metaphysical. The Vedic literature interprets that Rigveda has little philosophy except for Nasadiya Sukta (Rigveda 10:129,1-7), but the author relates to the mind of Vedic seers. The post-Vedic scriptures like Upanishads are intensely metaphysical, which led to six schools of Hindu philosophical system unlike any other Abrahamic faiths. This could not have dropped out into the hands of Vedic Seers from nowhere. The preceptors of Upanishads were Vedic scholars knowledgeable about Vedic practices found metaphysical wisdom in early Vedic literature.
Mystical elements are associated with sacrificial performance of Vedic culture. This ritual was believed to please the Vedic gods and bless the performer with strength. It is said that the Vedic altar which is the seat of sacrifice is referred to as the farthest extremity of earth. Paro antah prithvyah (Rig-Veda I.164.35) as the nodes of Truth, Rtsya nabhih (Rig-Veda V. X.13.3). In some places the sacrifice is referred to as an entity with conscious activity, Tatramtsya cetanam yajnam te tanavavahai (Rig-Veda I.170.4) and the gods themselves perform conscious sacrifice, Cetanam Yajnam. Thus, sacrifice is deemed as a wheel for generating the power. Everything connected to a sacrifice has a symbolic meaning. Behind the external ceremony, there is an inner sanctum in which the sacrifice offers his material possessions to the higher powers with full devotion and dedication. It is a self-consecration with Agni who witnesses this journey to the inner sanctum. Agni is considered as the inner flame, a leader and the pathfinder.
In Rigveda 1.164.46, we find, “ekam sat viprah bhaudha vadanti,” translation; The Truth is One; Sages call it by different names. This sets the tone for very early metaphysical ideas that were later developed in Upanishads. The scribe of this hymn suggests that deities appear to be different and independent from each other, but they are manifestations of One Supreme God, referred to as Brahman in Upanishads.
According to the author, the Vedic Word or mantra is the expression of the intuition arising out of the depths of the soul or being. The Vedic hymns possess a finished metrical form, a constant subtility and skill in their technique, great variations of style and poetical personality; they are not the work of rude, barbarous primitive craftsmen but the living breath of a conscious being. The Vedic hymn composed by a Rishi sought to progress for himself and for others. It rose out of his soul and became a power of his mind; it was the vehicle of his self-expression in some important or even critical moment of his life's inner history. It helped him to express the god in him and to destroy the devourer and the expresser of evil. The core Hindu principles that dharmic practices lead to moksha and karma follows the evil deeds. Practicing bhakti-yoga and jnana-yoga lead to enlightenment.
The Nasadiya Sukta, the Hymns of Creation, Rigveda 10:129,1-7 describes the cosmos in highly metaphysical terms; it describes the essential features of quantum reality. It may also have contributed to furthering metaphysics in Upanishads. The first and last hymns reads as;
1. Then even nothingness was not, nor existence,
There was no air then, nor the heavens beyond it.
What covered it? Where was it? In whose keeping?
Was there then cosmic water, in depths unfathomed?
7. Whence all creation had its origin,
the creator, whether he fashioned it or whether he did not,
the creator, who surveys it all from highest heaven,
he knows — or maybe even he does not know.
Saturday, October 12, 2019
Book Reviewed: Incredible Journeys: Exploring the Wonders of Animal Navigation, by David Barrie
The animal instinct for migration
Animals make use of a range of navigational cues, including the sun, earth's magnetic field, olfaction and vision. Birds such as the Arctic tern, insects such as the monarch butterfly and fish such as the salmon regularly migrate thousands of miles to and from their breeding grounds. Monarch butterfly employs an internal clock, calendar, compass, and map to commence and measure the two-thousand-mile annual journey to Mexico with a very tiny brain. The homing pigeon depend on a global positioning system (GPS) to let them know where they are. Avian migratory behavior is a well-studied phenomenon in biology and the author could have presented some scientific basis for this deportment. I am disappointed, this is just a description of animal migratory behavior without any discussion of biological basis. This is disengaging and fail to motivate readers.
Animals make use of a range of navigational cues, including the sun, earth's magnetic field, olfaction and vision. Birds such as the Arctic tern, insects such as the monarch butterfly and fish such as the salmon regularly migrate thousands of miles to and from their breeding grounds. Monarch butterfly employs an internal clock, calendar, compass, and map to commence and measure the two-thousand-mile annual journey to Mexico with a very tiny brain. The homing pigeon depend on a global positioning system (GPS) to let them know where they are. Avian migratory behavior is a well-studied phenomenon in biology and the author could have presented some scientific basis for this deportment. I am disappointed, this is just a description of animal migratory behavior without any discussion of biological basis. This is disengaging and fail to motivate readers.
Book Reviewed: The Science of Interstellar, by Kip Thorne and Christopher Nolan
Flying along the perils of a black hole
In a recent 2019 paper published in journal Nature, astronomers glimpsed the blackness of a black hole with an event horizon, the perilous edge against a backdrop of swirling light. This is the gate of hell and the end of spacetime. At a distance from the event horizon, the radio waves emitted by plasma of matter spiraling towards the black hole bends while orbiting the black hole. The resulting light ring is referred to as ‘photon ring’. This is very exciting about a black hole, and you will learn from the best, Caltech Professor Kip Thorne who won the 2018 Nobel prize in physics for his work on gravitational waves.
When the movie Interstellar was released in 2014, this book was also published on the same day. But many physicists rushed to comment on the movie erroneously. Looking back at their comments, I wished they read the book first. Author Kip Thorne discusses the physics behind the path to black hole, Gargantua. Warping of space is the key in the story. The existence of the wormhole connecting the solar system to the far reaches of the universe where Gargantua exist. The distortion of space around the wormhole and Gargantua creates a path for the flight to the distant part of the universe.
Black holes can spin just like earth, and a spinning hole drags space around it into a vortex-type, whirling motion. Like the air in a tornado, space whirls fastest near the hole's center, and the whirl slows as one moves outward, away from the hole. Anything that falls toward the hole's horizon gets dragged, by the whirl of space. But where does space bend to in a black hole? Physicists conjecture that space bends inside a higher-dimensional hyperspace called "the bulk," which is not part of our universe! How do we visualize this? Suppose if we look horizontally along the Sun's equatorial plane, it would appear as a two-dimensional surface, a two-dimensional membrane (brane), and at Sun’s core space bends slightly downward in a higher-dimensional bulk. This is extremely small for a star like Sun but very large for a black hole. When Professor Brand works with equations of relativity, he discovers the possibility of gravitational anomalies triggered by physical fields that reside in the bulk. In fact, the bulk is known to contain much of the gravity that belongs to our universe.
The Tesseract is an enormous, hyper-cubic, grid-like structure and a means of communication for the bulk beings to express action through gravity with Earth. Copper lands in tesseract that is placed by bulk beings near Gargantua, and he is carried into the bulk. The bulk beings can perceive five dimensions including the time dimension; every moment in the past, present, and future. They can influence gravity within any of those time frames.
Director Christopher Nolan wanted the Miller's planet circling Gargantua where one hour is seven years on Earth. Thorne figured out a way out, a black hole can have a maximum spin rate. When a black hole spin is one part in 100trillion smaller than the maximum possible, then that black hole has difficulty capturing objects that orbit in the same direction as the hole rotates. This will get the extreme slowing of time on nearby Miller's planet and such a black hole will not have any harmful jets of radiation streaming through the sky. In addition, the Ranger spacecraft gets a gravitational slingshot maneuver at such an extreme gravity to fly toward Edmund planet.
Life is made of atoms and molecules. Atomic structure evolved in three-spatial dimensions to create specific atomic orbitals in space that leads to the valence structure, like carbon has sp, sp2 and sp3 hybridizations that result in specific spatial orientation leading to various molecular structures. Exposing atoms to four-spatial dimension will destroy the three-dimensional molecular and atomic shapes, and instantly collapses life in the a four-space world. Kip Thorne argues that Cooper is confined to reside in one of the tesseract's three-space-dimensional faces, and he does not experience the tesseract's fourth spatial dimension. This is highly speculative!
Another interesting fact you will learn is that If it is not possible to go backward in time. But you can only do so by traveling outward in space and then returning to spacetime at starting point before you left. You cannot go backward in time at some fixed location, while watching others go forward in time. You can’t engineer your own salvation or exclude your existence by causing the demise of your parents before you were born. That physical reality is strongly favored by the existing laws of physics.
Thorne is a top-notch writer and a narrator of the physics behind the movie “Interstellar.” This book is highly engaging, but some segments may be rough going. That's the nature of real science, it requires thought, but thinking is rewarding, or you may skip rough parts. Thorne explains the fact of this book in three parts, some are science-truths, others are educated guess, and some speculation. The 2019 Nature paper essentially confirms the black hole we saw in the movie Interstellar, and this is described in significant detail in this book.
In a recent 2019 paper published in journal Nature, astronomers glimpsed the blackness of a black hole with an event horizon, the perilous edge against a backdrop of swirling light. This is the gate of hell and the end of spacetime. At a distance from the event horizon, the radio waves emitted by plasma of matter spiraling towards the black hole bends while orbiting the black hole. The resulting light ring is referred to as ‘photon ring’. This is very exciting about a black hole, and you will learn from the best, Caltech Professor Kip Thorne who won the 2018 Nobel prize in physics for his work on gravitational waves.
When the movie Interstellar was released in 2014, this book was also published on the same day. But many physicists rushed to comment on the movie erroneously. Looking back at their comments, I wished they read the book first. Author Kip Thorne discusses the physics behind the path to black hole, Gargantua. Warping of space is the key in the story. The existence of the wormhole connecting the solar system to the far reaches of the universe where Gargantua exist. The distortion of space around the wormhole and Gargantua creates a path for the flight to the distant part of the universe.
Black holes can spin just like earth, and a spinning hole drags space around it into a vortex-type, whirling motion. Like the air in a tornado, space whirls fastest near the hole's center, and the whirl slows as one moves outward, away from the hole. Anything that falls toward the hole's horizon gets dragged, by the whirl of space. But where does space bend to in a black hole? Physicists conjecture that space bends inside a higher-dimensional hyperspace called "the bulk," which is not part of our universe! How do we visualize this? Suppose if we look horizontally along the Sun's equatorial plane, it would appear as a two-dimensional surface, a two-dimensional membrane (brane), and at Sun’s core space bends slightly downward in a higher-dimensional bulk. This is extremely small for a star like Sun but very large for a black hole. When Professor Brand works with equations of relativity, he discovers the possibility of gravitational anomalies triggered by physical fields that reside in the bulk. In fact, the bulk is known to contain much of the gravity that belongs to our universe.
The Tesseract is an enormous, hyper-cubic, grid-like structure and a means of communication for the bulk beings to express action through gravity with Earth. Copper lands in tesseract that is placed by bulk beings near Gargantua, and he is carried into the bulk. The bulk beings can perceive five dimensions including the time dimension; every moment in the past, present, and future. They can influence gravity within any of those time frames.
Director Christopher Nolan wanted the Miller's planet circling Gargantua where one hour is seven years on Earth. Thorne figured out a way out, a black hole can have a maximum spin rate. When a black hole spin is one part in 100trillion smaller than the maximum possible, then that black hole has difficulty capturing objects that orbit in the same direction as the hole rotates. This will get the extreme slowing of time on nearby Miller's planet and such a black hole will not have any harmful jets of radiation streaming through the sky. In addition, the Ranger spacecraft gets a gravitational slingshot maneuver at such an extreme gravity to fly toward Edmund planet.
Life is made of atoms and molecules. Atomic structure evolved in three-spatial dimensions to create specific atomic orbitals in space that leads to the valence structure, like carbon has sp, sp2 and sp3 hybridizations that result in specific spatial orientation leading to various molecular structures. Exposing atoms to four-spatial dimension will destroy the three-dimensional molecular and atomic shapes, and instantly collapses life in the a four-space world. Kip Thorne argues that Cooper is confined to reside in one of the tesseract's three-space-dimensional faces, and he does not experience the tesseract's fourth spatial dimension. This is highly speculative!
Another interesting fact you will learn is that If it is not possible to go backward in time. But you can only do so by traveling outward in space and then returning to spacetime at starting point before you left. You cannot go backward in time at some fixed location, while watching others go forward in time. You can’t engineer your own salvation or exclude your existence by causing the demise of your parents before you were born. That physical reality is strongly favored by the existing laws of physics.
Thorne is a top-notch writer and a narrator of the physics behind the movie “Interstellar.” This book is highly engaging, but some segments may be rough going. That's the nature of real science, it requires thought, but thinking is rewarding, or you may skip rough parts. Thorne explains the fact of this book in three parts, some are science-truths, others are educated guess, and some speculation. The 2019 Nature paper essentially confirms the black hole we saw in the movie Interstellar, and this is described in significant detail in this book.
Friday, October 4, 2019
Book Reviewed: Agents of Influence: A British Campaign, a Canadian Spy, and the Secret Plot to Bring America into World War II, by Henry Hemming
Fake news, disinformation and World War II
Disinformation is as old as humanity. Although the rise of social media has made disinformation even more pervasive and pernicious, but news-outlets and diplomatic channels have always used the system to manipulate the political outcome. In this decade terrorist organization like ISIS and Russian government used the same playbook: ISIS sought to globalize Islam and Putin wanted to influence the outcome of 2016 presidential elections in the United States.
During WW II it was imperative for German and British to serenade the support of United States. With Britain enduring intense German bombing, its only hope for survival was getting the United States to enter the war with only 7% in favoring in 1940. For British spy agency MI6 operative William Stephenson, it was crucial to get U.S involved. President Franklin Roosevelt’s sent Ambassador Bill Donovan to communicate with British government. The American political atmosphere was not conducive for British. American leaders like Charles Lindbergh was one of the main obstacles. Lindbergh, who addressed huge crowds at anti-war rallies and justified Nazi aggression due to economic imbalance. He was fed wrong information by German spy machinery. But William Stephenson managed to get full confidence of Bill Donovan who together built an extensive propaganda drive ever directed by one sovereign state at another. They also used forgeries, organized protests, and wiretaps and hacked into private communications. Similar strategies were used by CRP, the Committee to Reelect the President during Nixon administration.
On Oct. 27, 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt took the stage at The Mayflower Hotel in Washington, DC, to speak in honor of Navy Day. With Britain under Nazi siege, Roosevelt wanted the United States to join the fight. The American public was not convinced. “I have in my possession a secret map made by Hitler’s government. It is a map of South America and part of Central America, as Hitler proposes to reorganize it,” Roosevelt told the shocked assemblage. The president then revealed another German document that pledged to eliminate the world’s religions. The reaction was explosive, but the facts were not.
Hans Thomsen, the senior diplomat at the German Embassy in the U.S. was also active in keeping Americans out of WWII. He fed pro-German material to sitting members of Congress, and bribed newspapers to publish false material.
The book is well researched and referenced; it is engaging for readers interested in the history of WWII. The story flows well but the role played by German spy agency in creating their own misinformation has not been well documented.
Disinformation is as old as humanity. Although the rise of social media has made disinformation even more pervasive and pernicious, but news-outlets and diplomatic channels have always used the system to manipulate the political outcome. In this decade terrorist organization like ISIS and Russian government used the same playbook: ISIS sought to globalize Islam and Putin wanted to influence the outcome of 2016 presidential elections in the United States.
During WW II it was imperative for German and British to serenade the support of United States. With Britain enduring intense German bombing, its only hope for survival was getting the United States to enter the war with only 7% in favoring in 1940. For British spy agency MI6 operative William Stephenson, it was crucial to get U.S involved. President Franklin Roosevelt’s sent Ambassador Bill Donovan to communicate with British government. The American political atmosphere was not conducive for British. American leaders like Charles Lindbergh was one of the main obstacles. Lindbergh, who addressed huge crowds at anti-war rallies and justified Nazi aggression due to economic imbalance. He was fed wrong information by German spy machinery. But William Stephenson managed to get full confidence of Bill Donovan who together built an extensive propaganda drive ever directed by one sovereign state at another. They also used forgeries, organized protests, and wiretaps and hacked into private communications. Similar strategies were used by CRP, the Committee to Reelect the President during Nixon administration.
On Oct. 27, 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt took the stage at The Mayflower Hotel in Washington, DC, to speak in honor of Navy Day. With Britain under Nazi siege, Roosevelt wanted the United States to join the fight. The American public was not convinced. “I have in my possession a secret map made by Hitler’s government. It is a map of South America and part of Central America, as Hitler proposes to reorganize it,” Roosevelt told the shocked assemblage. The president then revealed another German document that pledged to eliminate the world’s religions. The reaction was explosive, but the facts were not.
Hans Thomsen, the senior diplomat at the German Embassy in the U.S. was also active in keeping Americans out of WWII. He fed pro-German material to sitting members of Congress, and bribed newspapers to publish false material.
The book is well researched and referenced; it is engaging for readers interested in the history of WWII. The story flows well but the role played by German spy agency in creating their own misinformation has not been well documented.
Wednesday, October 2, 2019
Book reviewed: American Radicals: How Nineteenth-Century Protest Shaped the Nation, by Holly Jackson
The network of dissent after American Revolution
A new network of dissent appeared in the New World about fifty years after American Revolution. They were men and women, black and white, fiercely devoted to causes that pitted them against mainstream America. One of them was heiress Frances Wright, whose critiques of religion and the institution of marriage led to calls for her arrest; the radical Bostonian William Lloyd Garrison, whose commitment to nonviolence would be tested as the conflict over slavery pushed the nation to its breaking point. Henry David Thoreau, a philosopher, espoused the need to morally resist the actions of an unjust state. Thoreau was a leading figure in the movement along with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Bronson Alcott, Abagail Alcott, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. They were illustrious sons and daughters of Massachusetts. One of the highlights of Alcott family including author Louisa May Alcott was their belief that all people are born equal. They were ardent abolitionists and fighters for equal rights. The future of suffrage movement that paved the way for the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that granted American women the right to vote, a right commonly known as women's suffrage was born out of passion for equality in Alcott household. Another figure which I liked in this book was about Frances Wright. In the late 1820s, Wright was the first woman to speak publicly before men and women about political and social reforms. She advocated for universal education, the emancipation of slaves, birth control, equal rights, sexual freedom, legal rights for married women, and liberal divorce laws. She expressed against organized religion and capital punishment. William Lloyd Garrison and Susan B. Anthony fought against slavery, racism, gender equality in family and labor laws. They were firebrand hippies of the 1960s era but operating in middle of 19th century America.
Socialists of early America deeply believed that the new nation was heading in the wrong direction. This part of American history with its fragile political and economic system was breaking away from its experiments of throwing British out of the country. The American dream was rapidly disappearing; only a few privileged families had this for real. Very few dared to question this as the political and economic climate was developing into a catastrophe.
Professor Manisha Sinha of UConn documents the influence of the Haitian Revolution and the centrality of slave resistance in shaping the ideology of abolition in the Unites States. Her work takes a much broader look at its impact since it was a successful anti-slavery and anti-colonial insurrection against French colonial rule. However, it was an expensive experiment since European colonists retaliated against Haiti with economic isolation.
In this book, University of Massachusetts Professor Holly Jackson walks us through these pages about liberals and antiestablishment figures who fought to change the American institution. Professor Jackson teaches American literature and antiestablishment movements in early America at UMASS, Boston has a smooth and engaging style of narrating her story. I strongly recommend this book to readers interested in American history and social movements in 1800s that was dominated by abolition, suffrage, and equality.
A new network of dissent appeared in the New World about fifty years after American Revolution. They were men and women, black and white, fiercely devoted to causes that pitted them against mainstream America. One of them was heiress Frances Wright, whose critiques of religion and the institution of marriage led to calls for her arrest; the radical Bostonian William Lloyd Garrison, whose commitment to nonviolence would be tested as the conflict over slavery pushed the nation to its breaking point. Henry David Thoreau, a philosopher, espoused the need to morally resist the actions of an unjust state. Thoreau was a leading figure in the movement along with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Bronson Alcott, Abagail Alcott, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. They were illustrious sons and daughters of Massachusetts. One of the highlights of Alcott family including author Louisa May Alcott was their belief that all people are born equal. They were ardent abolitionists and fighters for equal rights. The future of suffrage movement that paved the way for the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that granted American women the right to vote, a right commonly known as women's suffrage was born out of passion for equality in Alcott household. Another figure which I liked in this book was about Frances Wright. In the late 1820s, Wright was the first woman to speak publicly before men and women about political and social reforms. She advocated for universal education, the emancipation of slaves, birth control, equal rights, sexual freedom, legal rights for married women, and liberal divorce laws. She expressed against organized religion and capital punishment. William Lloyd Garrison and Susan B. Anthony fought against slavery, racism, gender equality in family and labor laws. They were firebrand hippies of the 1960s era but operating in middle of 19th century America.
Socialists of early America deeply believed that the new nation was heading in the wrong direction. This part of American history with its fragile political and economic system was breaking away from its experiments of throwing British out of the country. The American dream was rapidly disappearing; only a few privileged families had this for real. Very few dared to question this as the political and economic climate was developing into a catastrophe.
Professor Manisha Sinha of UConn documents the influence of the Haitian Revolution and the centrality of slave resistance in shaping the ideology of abolition in the Unites States. Her work takes a much broader look at its impact since it was a successful anti-slavery and anti-colonial insurrection against French colonial rule. However, it was an expensive experiment since European colonists retaliated against Haiti with economic isolation.
In this book, University of Massachusetts Professor Holly Jackson walks us through these pages about liberals and antiestablishment figures who fought to change the American institution. Professor Jackson teaches American literature and antiestablishment movements in early America at UMASS, Boston has a smooth and engaging style of narrating her story. I strongly recommend this book to readers interested in American history and social movements in 1800s that was dominated by abolition, suffrage, and equality.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)