New Resource: American National Biography Online

by Don Allen

Being a part of the Norfolk Libraries network definitely has its advantages, and I wanted to take a quick second or three to highlight one of our newest: access to the American National Biography Online.

ANB has over “19,000 biographies of significant, influential or notorious figures from American history written by prominent scholars”. This number includes over 1600 biographies of people who were armed forces and intelligence personnel, from Henry Larcom Abbot (1831-1927) , a union soldier and engineer, to Elmo Russell Zumwalt Jr. (1920-2000), an admiral in the US Navy. (See what I did there? A-Z. Ha. I slay me.) Other categories include politics, law and crime, and sports.

It is available to anyone with a Norfolk Library card, either in the library or from a home computer or mobile device. I’ve had a browse through some of the biographies, and they are quite good. While most are relatively short, they are packed with information. Some, like the article on Abraham Lincoln, are longer, but still, when compared to a full book, get to the highlights pretty quickly. Any fan of American history will surely love this site, and I highly recommend it.

Access American National Biography Online from home using your Norfolk library card.  Enter NOR before the number when prompted (with no spaces).

New 2nd Air Division E-book Collection

The 2nd Air Division Memorial Library has a new selection of e-books available! These titles are on loan through the digital library website at digitallibrary.norfolk.gov.uk.

You must also be a member of the library to borrow any of the e-books and you can join by going to Norfolk Library Joining Page.

Browse through titles such as Liberator and The Mighty Eighth in WWII

This new collection aims to make more of our books accessible to the public and we look forward to expanding our digital selection in the future.

The Revolutionary

This post continues our series on the useful and eminent American National Biography. I’ve been supplying you with brief biographical sketches gleaned right out of said work, and you have been fruitlessly attempting to find the answers on Wikipedia.

Last we exchanged words I put to you this:

As a young man, this Bostonian autodidact saved money for books by flirting with vegetarianism. But having soon made a confounded nuisance of himself, he fled to a place far from anyone who knew him, set up shop, and made a comfortable living. Later, despite repeated attempts to settle in London, he ended up joining the American rebellion at the age of seventy.

And it’s possible that you have since guessed the name of the man, because he has been quoted recently in respect to the ongoing scandal of the American and British intelligence gathering practices. The answer, of course, is Benjamin Franklin, who said: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” This is now being used to suggest that those who clamor for a military-intelligence-legal complex capable of eradicating every terrorist threat (or perceived threat) to come shouldn’t wonder at the brutal, totalitarian regime they end up with.

The Americans won their revolution largely because it was a very expensive war for the British to fight.

Franklin, I might point out, said this in 1755 — as a colonial Englishman, not as an American. The historical context was that violent raids were occurring on the western frontier of Pennsylvania, and the people wished to raise money for the defense of the colony. The Penns, having abandoned their father’s Quakerism and returned to a spoiled life in London, were the largest landowners. They flatly refused to be taxed. (It was an example of the mighty operating outside the law and skirting any social obligation.) The local Philadelphia government set itself to pressing the Penns, but this was a dangerous game. The Penns could, if they wished, decide to remove some or all of the colonists’ ability to self-govern. In effect, the Penns had the power to operate as tyrants (or, perhaps more accurately, as powerful shareholders) if they felt it necessary to maintain control. So Franklin was saying that, since the frontiersmen had been armed already and had what they needed for their own defense, they did not wish the city politicians to pursue the matter further — at risk of incurring some legal wrath of the almighty Penns.

“The Colonies Reduced” — Franklin’s political cartoon showing what Britannia would be without her colonies.

The Penns proved to be rather intractable shareholders and within a few years Franklin was in London arguing that Pennsylvania should be taken from them and put under royal administration. I guess his thinking was that the king had an interest in the welfare of the empire, whereas the Penns cared only for themselves. As it turned out, Franklin misread the sentiment in London. Parliament had won a long, hard battle curtailing the power of the king, it wasn’t going to cede any back, and it looked arrogantly down on the backwoods settlers in the colonies. What funny ideas they had about colonialism: as if the colonies were in some way equal to the motherland! Franklin’s limited mission became a sixteen-year sojourn in the heart of the empire and ended with the outbreak of civil war — the American Revolution.

An Autodidact in London

“Alexis de Tocqueville is in the ANB. He was a French critic who wrote about America, but he was only here for a couple of years. Einstein is in the ANB, not because of his work as a physicist, but mostly because he became a figure in American public life. Pancho Villa, the Mexican rebel….” general editor John A. Garraty

Never mind that grease on Robert Frost’s entry. I dropped my croissant while admiring his attempts to woo the fair Elinor White.

The high school sweethearts, having secretly pledged their hearts to one another, went separate ways to college. This was the 1890s, mind, and not every girl took such steps to enrich her conversation, but pretty young Robert thought she might shun the opportunity to marry him. She did not, but he indeed dropped out of Dartmouth to pursue the career of a lamp trimmer. (How’s that for heartbroken?) It was not long, however, before Robert convinced himself that there were worse ways to spend his time than replacing spent filaments in light bulbs, and turned to making poems.

After publishing a quiet number in the New York Independent, the professional poet (as he now fancied himself) returned to Elinor’s window and met with — how to put this — a frosty reception. Feverish, he called in the cavalry and had produced a collection of five poems —  his, incredibly — calf-bound with gilt lettering. Only two were made. One he kept, and the other he presented nobly to his coy mistress: Twilight, he called it. Little did he know the same title would later set to racing the hearts of a million young girls. Not Elinor’s. And so, taking the lead on what might be considered a service to American literature, Robert Frost destroyed his edition of Frost — and my throat catching at such a happy thought, I deposited my baked item onto the pages of that well-thumbed volume of American National Biography.

What fond memories I’ll have next I peruse the later Fs and early Gs. Did you say something about Wikipedia? Ah yes, nails and coffins — you’re coming round. Another riddle:

As a young man, this Bostonian autodidact saved money for books by flirting with vegetarianism. But having soon made a confounded nuisance of himself, he fled to a place far from anyone who knew him, set up shop, and made a comfortable living. Later, despite repeated attempts to settle in London, he ended up joining the American rebellion at the age of seventy.

I mean the “Revolution” of course, or the “War of American Independence”, or — as our shelves prefer to style it, curiously but accurately — the “Civil War”. (There is a separate shelf for the American Civil War. Think not in binaries, and worlds will open to you.)

The answer, as you might have expected, will find its way to these electric climes in two complete swings of the hour hand.