The Greater Journey is the most recent offering from my favorite historian, David McCullough. If you are not familiar with him and his works, you are missing out. He is an amazing storyteller. But you have heard me rant and rave about him before. As usual, he does not disappoint. In this book, he tells the story of the hundreds of Americans who went to Paris in the nineteenth century; not as tourists, and not as diplomats, but for the first time ever, as students. Whether they went to study architecture, medicine, literature, painting, sculpture, education, music, dance, or simply to learn about life, Paris was the best place to go. The journey across the Atlantic may have been long, arduous, and even perilous, but the time they spent in Paris and the things they learned there were The Greater Journey. Mr. McCullough has once again taken the acts of seemingly ordinary people, and related them in an inspiring and entertaining way. Once again, I highly recommend it.
Here is a sample paragraph from the book, one I found particularly interesting:
A group of aspiring young Mormon painters who called themselves "art missionaries" arrived from Utah, many to enroll at the Academie Julian. Their expenses were being provided by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in return for work they would later contribute, painting murals in the Temple at Salt Lake City. As one of their leaders, an especially gifted painter named John Hafen, said, their motivation was the belief that "the highest possible development of talent is the duty we owe our creator."
That is the full extent of his discussion of John Hafen, Lorus Pratt, and John Fairbanks (although hardly his first encounter with Mormons). I found this paragraph very interesting and did a little more digging on my own about these three men, and for some reason I find it very interesting and want to know more about them. I remember David McCullough has said many times how he chooses the topics for his books: he finds a topic he would like to learn more about and sees if anyone has written a book about it. If they haven't, he writes it himself. Maybe I've found a topic for a book of my own!
P.S. I moved recently. Just FYI.
1 comments:
Wow, Mike, I'll have to read that one, it looks super interesting. So I just finished Undaunted Courage, by Stephen E. Ambrose because I was getting really tired of seeing Lewis and Clark monuments everywhere and not having any clue what they were about. I was amazed by this book. I know you're biased, but have you ever read Ambrose's books? If so, should I switch to McCullough instead? I'd like to read a lot more of these American non-fictions, and don't want to drink beer when there's wine available. What say you?
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