A bit over seven years ago, my friend, Mike, asked me to join a history book club. He described how he had felt his brain thirsting for something challenging, and reading and discussing history books was his prescription.

I had hated history in school.  It consisted mainly of memorization of dates, which I did not excel at, nor did I find it particularly interesting.  I also hate sound-bites.  Life and its challenges are almost always more complex than a 30-second segment I hear on the news.  I thought that a history discussion could provide an opportunity to look at events in detail and to begin to understand them in context.  I readily joined.

Our discussion group is an eclectic bunch.  Mike works in human resources.  Bob and John are attorneys.  Another Dave is a handy man and Bill a teacher.  A second Mike works in commercial real estate.  Peter was in pharmaceutical sales.  I worked in mental health and drug abuse treatment.  It’s always been a men-only group.  The ground rules of the group are pretty simple.  We meet every other month to discuss a book.  We take turns picking the book and hosting the meeting.  The books can be about anything historical, with preference for actual history rather than historical novels.  We are to remain respectful of one another’s opinions.  We can agree or disagree, and we oftentimes do plenty of both.  Some clearly have deeper knowledge of history, and we appreciate their perspectives.  But no one seems reticent to speak.  Our membership spans the traditional conservative-moderate-liberal scope of opinions.

As of the summer of 2017, the group has discussed something over 40 books. It has been eye-opening for all of us.  Mike chose two sociological studies.  Why is the Dominican Republic thriving while Haiti is not, despite the fact that they share the same island?  We learned that, at some point, the ruler in Haiti wanted a massive palace made of wood.  Haiti’s forests were leveled.  Topsoil no longer had roots to hold it into place and much of the topsoil blew into the sea.  No top soil, no food.  No food, poor economy.  A similar event occurred in several South Pacific islands.

John tossed in a book about epidemics and governmental responses to disease outbreaks.  I felt pretty smart that meeting, as I’d worked at a health department.  I could describe the system we had in place to assure rapid distribution of prophylactic antibiotic medications. The group was comforted to know that someone was thinking and planning to handle large disease outbreaks.

Mike had us read a book about George Washington’s revolutionary war spy ring.  Six individuals in New England spied in plain sight against the British and helped turn that portion of the war.  Most of us had no clue of this phase of the American Revolutionary War.

I believe that most of us think of Prohibition as a puritanical movement against the evils of alcohol.  While there certainly was some of that, the reality at the turn of the century was that beer was served routinely in factories starting in the late morning—a recipe for disaster.  There were no safety standards for what we typically call ‘hard liquor,’ leaving many poisoned or dead after consumption of bad batches of brew.  Per capita consumption of alcohol was 2-3 times today’s rate.  Something had to be done—Prohibition makes much more sense in this context.

Bill, our resident historian, tossed in a book on the portion of history where Great Britain controlled India.  At one point, it used India as a wedge to battle against Russia.  Most of my school-based history only discussed foreign life as it related to U.S. history.  Looking at history from the perspectives of Britain, India and Russia was an eye-opener.  Dave, the handy man, selected General George Rommel, the German ‘desert fox’ who was initially very successful in northern Africa during World War II.  He also brought us Hannibal’s battles against imperial Rome.

Did you know that British tea was essentially stolen from China?  The Brits actually sent a botanist secretly to China to steal hundreds of seedlings.  Charles Lindbergh was an amazing pilot and inventor, but had many shortfalls as husband and father.  Ty had us read about the U.S.-led overthrow of the democratically elected government in Iran in the 1950’s.  In our sound-bite world, we wonder why Iran hates us wonderful democracy-focused Americans.  It has only been with the recent declassification of CIA documents that we learn why we’re not on their Christmas card list.

It has been interesting to learn that U.S. presidents assist one another in what one author called ‘the presidents’ club,’ and party affiliation is largely irrelevant. Sometimes this has meant that former presidents assist in diplomatic travels representing the country; sometimes it has meant calling for public support and financial donations related to humanitarian needs; and sometimes it has simply been a phone call or visit. Regardless of the expertise of staff in each White House administration, there’s nothing like talking through a difficult issue with someone that has faced it previously.

Two books I brought to the group discussed the Civil War Battle of Gettysburg and the building of the Panama Canal.  In both instances, I’d visited the locations shortly before the gatherings, and so I was able to add pictures and video to the discussion.  This helped get a more complete understanding of the stories behind the history.  Gettysburg lasted just three days, and primarily a foolish decision by Southern generals to charge through open fields against the North turned the tide.  The Panama Canal was started by the French, who unfortunately had more political than engineering knowledge.  A large sale of stock meant that a large number of French citizens had supported the unsuccessful effort to build the canal.  Fortunately, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was more successful.

Our group membership seems to remain at between 8-12 members, although the make-up of the group changes over time.  And while we’ve covered a hodge-podge of stories, we can see that we’ve filled in many blanks on our historical journey.  I have found the history discussion a personally enriching experience.  History is no longer dry and dusty and filled with dates.  It has complexity and challenge—things I always guessed were present all of the time.  And while our membership comes with a wide range of knowledge and background, I believe that our collective wisdom has made us all smarter historians.

My my wife, Kath, and I have our schedule, dutifully returning to downtown Chicago on Sunday afternoons, hoping we’ve left early enough to avoid the heavy traffic that invariably heads downtown and hoping against hope that we can catch the express lanes, but today after smooth sailing through the incessant freight train tracks of Des Plaines, we’re slowed at the River Road toll booth, giving us a chance for a five miles-per-hour ‘up close and personal’ encounter with our fellow travelers, but fortunately we have good air conditioning and a radio to help us pass the time of day as we hum along to some of my favorite songs, when, with little warning, both of us break into song with ‘Taking Care of Business’ by Bachmann Turner Overdrive (BTO), reminding me of my days in summer camp in southwest Ohio, probably the first crank-it-up-real-loud-and-roll-down-the-windows song that I remember,

“You get up every morning From your ‘larm clock’s warning

Take the 8:15 into the city

There’s a whistle up above And people pushin’, people shovin’

And the girls who try to look pretty”

and I feel younger again even as I feel like my grey hair is growing faster than my progress on the Kennedy Expressway, and Kath remembers all the words to the song, adding that she remembers hanging with friends in Evanston when BTO was big, and that our lives were nothing like the song where the band never adheres to a regimented work schedule like we have because they “can love to work at nothing all day” while both Kath and I have managed work and family, but our nostalgia is broken a bit when we hear that we can ‘save big money at Menards’ with their big spring garden sale, and out-of-the-blue I experience the exhilaration of my Camry hitting 25 mph as we near Foster Av and I wonder about hearing loss in the driver next to me whose base is making his car vibrate, but my thought of complaining about it is sidetracked as Simon and Garfunkel begin to sing, reminding me of my tumultuous late teen years, when their Bridge over Troubled Waters was popular, and we again join in, “When you’re weary, feeling small” and I recall that the mood of many of my friends whose emotions vacillated from day to day and sometimes minute to minute, and how we all felt we could save one another as we belted out “if you need a friend, I’m sailing right behind,” loving a song with some depth to it at a time when so many songs were about unrequited love and drug experimentation, and I don’t even care if the folks in the cars next to me think I have a screw loose as I belt out “like a bridge over troubled water, I will ease your mind,” as now, at long last, we creep through the Edens-Kennedy merge at Montrose, but then, commercials seem to have taken over the airwaves until, on the eighth radio button, I run across the Clancy Brothers and I again join in song,

“A gypsy rover came over the hill,

Down through the valley so shady,

He whistled and he sang ’til the green woods rang ,

And he won the heart of a lady”,

 

and Kath asks how I know an Irish drinking song since I’m of German extract, knowing full well that she and the girl I’d dated before her, both ladies of my dreams (sequentially, not concurrently!) are Irish, and that I’d become acquainted with the Clancy Brothers through trips with each to the ‘Emerald Isle’ which was somewhere downtown, and that over the years I’d been well indoctrinated into being an honorary Chicago Irishman, and as the song concludes,  Tommy Makem encourages us to sing the chorus along with the band, and I oblige,

“Ah-dee-doo-ah-dee-doo-dah-day,
Ah-dee-doo-ah-dee-day-dee, 
He whistled and he sang ’til the green woods rang
And he won the heart of a lady, “

while at last I find myself at the Ohio Street exit ramp and progress at moderate pace across Ohio toward our downtown home, continuing to punch buttons and settle on one of my favorite karaoke songs, one with some good advice from Kenny Rogers and The Gambler,

You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em,

know when to fold ‘em,

know when to walk away,

and know when to run.

You never count your money
When you’re sittin’ at the table
There’ll be time enough for countin’
When the dealin’s done,
As our building’s garageman smiles seeing us belt out along with Kenny, grateful that what should have been a 40-minute trip downtown only took 90 minutes on this warm Sunday afternoon, and grateful that we’ve enjoyed a trip down memory lane as we traversed once again between the suburbs and our home downtown.

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And in case you’re wondering:

“Takin’ Care of Business” is a song written by Randy Bachman and first recorded by Canadian rock group Bachman–Turner Overdrive (BTO) for their 1973 album Bachman–Turner Overdrive II.

Bridge over Troubled Water is from an album of the same name, the fifth and final studio album by American duo Simon & Garfunkel, released in January 1970 on Columbia Records.

The Gypsy Rover, is a ballad composed and copyrighted by Dublin songwriter Leo Maguire in the 1950s.

The Gambler is from an album of the same name, the sixth studio album by Kenny Rogers, released by United Artists in 1978