Booklog: Yamada and Ellis

[nebroadwe]

山田 典枝 [Yamada Norie] and よしづき くみち [Yoshizuki Kumichi] (tr. Jeremiah Bourque and Hope Donovan), Someday's Dreamers 1

In a Japan where a magic user is just another kind of civil servant, Kikuchi Yume comes to Tokyo from her home in the countryside to complete an apprenticeship in the craft with Oyamada Masami. Her arrival is filled with mishap: she gets lost, is nearly run over in the street, and then discovers that her mentor isn't the woman she expected, but a man. Gradually, however, she settles into her new life and begins to develop her confidence as well as her skill. I'd seen the anime version of this title; the manga is appears much the same: mahou shoujo meets slice-of-life, with the focus on the protagonist's negotiation of the tricky shoals of a helping profession (how do you help? when? how much? and what if you can't help ... or make things worse?). The manga makes a bit more of the possible perception of the magic user as an oddball or cheat, particularly by adolescent peers, which is interesting. The art is pleasant; the backgrounds, in particular, are quite realistic when drawn in full. A light diversion.

Joseph J. Ellis, American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic

Brief popular history of Revolutionary and early Republican America, focused around six "founding moments" which represent the good (the adoption of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution), the bad (the failure to properly address the status of Native Americans and slaves, particularly in the wake of the Louisiana Purchase), and the ugly (the winter of Valley Forge and the development of a two-party system) sides of the American experiment. Ellis writes deftly, as long as you keep him away from sweeping generalizations about twentieth- and twenty-first century history and historians (e.g. his work is obviously informed by the cultural historians he derides, so it's odd to hear him describe them as people coming to Fenway Park with lacrosse sticks). Not a lot of depth here, but the breadth is held together nicely by Ellis's use of theme, such as the push-pull between centralized and decentralized conceptions of government. A swift read.

The thing about reading history books is that it makes me want to read more history books. Next up: a military historian's take on the career of George Washington (since I can't seem to find a really good brick of a biography about the man, a là Ron Chernow's Alexander Hamilton. If anybody has one to recommend ... ).