Pigeon Post

Historians and polemicists sometimes argue about just how consequential and distinctively unique the Ancient Greeks were. There are those who take the position that all peoples and cultures are equally valuable and who get particularly exercised by the implied hierarchy that some cultures are more successful than others. While all individual persons may be morally equal in value, I think that it is reasonably clear that different peoples and cultures are more or less consequential. Just like successful people in life, it is fair to argue whether their success is solely or largely due to their own efforts or solely or substantially due to luck; that is being in the right place at the right time. What is difficult to argue about is that, for whatever reason, the Ancient Greeks were astoundingly consequential. And consequential in many fields.

In referring to Ancient Greece, we are usually discussing the period from 1100 BC (The Greek Dark Ages), through the era of Classical Greece (5th and 4th centuries BC), through the conquests of Alexander the Great (3rd century BC) and up to the time of the Roman invasion in 146 BC. Even though Greece as a collection of independent polities ended at this point, the nature and influence of Greek culture, as expressed in Hellenism, was just beginning to really gather steam and pushed through the Hellenistic period into the Byzantine period and into the Renaissance and modern era.

I think one of the things which makes the Ancient Greeks stand out so is not just the depth of their achievements but their astounding breadth. Were we to only have the Odyssey and the Iliad, we would hold the Ancient Greeks in deep respect. Someone has said that all of Western Literature is a footnote and elaboration on these two works.

But that is not all that we have from the Greeks. We have the product of what might have been the most significant two centuries in the history of mankind's intellect: the 5th through 3rd centuries BC when figures such as Pericles, Socrates, Aristotle, Alexander the Great, Herodotus, Archimedes, Plato, Pythagoras, Thucydides and others strode a small corner of the Earth and whose shadows still fall upon us today, twenty-five centuries later. What is additionally sobering is the density of these bright lights. Athens, epicenter of much Greek cultural effervescence was probably a city of not much more than a quarter of million. The extended Greek population on the mainland and in the islands and colonies probably did not exceed much more than a couple of million.

So where else did the Greeks excel? They either founded or gave structure to virtually all our main streams of knowledge: Political theory, Art of War, Mathematics, Philosophy, Literature and Theater, Art, History as a field of study, Architecture, Astronomy, etc. It is hard to find a field in which they were not among the first. And their real knack seems to have been to systematize and make practical the results of deeply conceptual and abstract thinking. Others peoples and cultures also made major scientific and academic discoveries (though not as prolifically or in as concentrated a period of time). But as often as not, these discoveries did not get translated into real world applications or were not sustained over time. As an example, I came across an account a couple of years ago indicating that the Ancient Chinese had mastered the art of making steel somewhere back in the first or second centuries AD but that the technique never spread and died out after a century or two. Likewise, the Aztecs invented the wheel - we know because we have extant surviving wheeled toys for children. However, they never, as far as we can tell, used it for transportation or engineering purposes. The Greeks generated new ways of thinking about things, applied them to a real world and achieved new insights and applications that were then not only used by themselves but by their neighbors and cultures far afield and distant down the years.

They were a curious people, a trait with which we can relate. Their drive to systemize knowledge was a function of their desire to know and understand their world. Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon were all moved to explore their world, not only territorially, but also historically. They were the fathers of history as a means of comprehending not only the past but using that past to anticipate the future. And like much of the writing of the Greeks, it remains strangely accessible despite being written in a different language, culture and age.

These are the researches of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, which he publishes, in the hope of thereby preserving from decay the remembrance of what men have done, and of preventing the great and wonderful actions of the Greeks and the Barbarians from losing their due meed of glory; and withal to put on record what were their grounds of feuds. - Herodotus's opening lines to the Histories, explaining what and why he is recording this history.

There are so many great quotes and lines among the rich treasures of Greek writings. I love Herodotus, an inveterate purveyor of tales, gossip and sometimes downright slander, "I am bound to tell what I am told, but not in every case to believe it."

Similarly, Thucydides explained his motivation in his opening paragraph:

Thucydides, an Athenian, wrote the history of the war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians, beginning at the moment that it broke out, and believing that it would be a great war and more worthy of relation than any that had preceded it. This belief was not without its grounds. The preparations of both the combatants were in every department in the last state of perfection; and he could see the rest of the Hellenic race taking sides in the quarrel; those who delayed doing so at once having it in contemplation. Indeed this was the greatest movement yet known in history, not only of the Hellenes, but of a large part of the barbarian world- I had almost said of mankind. For though the events of remote antiquity, and even those that more immediately preceded the war, could not from lapse of time be clearly ascertained, yet the evidences which an inquiry carried as far back as was practicable leads me to trust, all point to the conclusion that there was nothing on as great a scale, either in war or in other matters.

As much as we know about the Ancient Greeks, we also know that there are large swaths of knowledge which they had that have disappeared into the dust of history. There are books by some of the great thinkers and philosophers which we know existed (see Umberto Eco's Name of the Rose) but which, tantalizingly have not survived. Every now and then something, such as the Antikythera Mechanism (http://blog.moonshadowecommerce.com/WEBLOG-NAME/Thing-Finder/2008/07/blind_trails.html), will turn up which tells us that the Ancient Greeks were even more knowledgeable and sophisticated than we thought they were.

They had a knack for putting incredibly complex ideas into easily understood concepts. Take as an example the conditionality of life. Herodotus, of course, that collector of tales near and far, relates the story of Croesus and Solon. We are still wrestling with understanding the degree to which our fortune is under our direct control versus the degree to which we are all subject to the whims of random fortune. Michael Macrone relates this in his It's Greek to Me! (out of print) as does Nassim Nicholas Taleb in Fooled By Randomness. Taleb recounts the story of Croesus and Solon as related through Herodotus.

Croesus, King of Lydia, was considered the richest man of his time. To this day Romance languages use the expression "rich as Croesus" to describe a person of excessive wealth. He was said to be visited by Solon, the Greek legislator known for his dignity, reserve, upright morals, humility, frugality, wisdom, intelligence, and courage. Solon did not display the smallest surprise at the wealth and splendor surrounding his host, nor the tiniest admiration for their owner. Croesus was so irked by the manifest lack of impression on the part of his illustrious visitor that he attempted to extract from him some acknowledgement. He asked him if he had known a happier man than him. Solon cited the life of a man who led a noble existence and died while in battle. Prodded for more, he gave similar examples of heroic but terminated lives, until Croesus, irate, asked him point-blank if he was not to be considered the happiest man of all. Solon answered: "The observation of the numerous misfortunes that attend all conditions forbids us to grow insolent upon our present enjoyments, or to admire a man's happiness that may yet, in course of time, suffer change. For the uncertain future has yet to come, with all variety of future; and him only to whom the divinity has [guaranteed] continued happiness until the end we may call happy." . . .

Yet the story of Croesus has another twist. Having lost a battle to the redoubtable Persian king Cyrus, he was about to be burned alive when he called Solon's name and shouted (something like) "Solon, you were right" {again this is legend}. Cyrus asked about the nature of such unusual invocations, and he told him about Solon's warning. This impressed Cyrus so much that he decided to spare Croesus' life, as he reflected on the possibilities as far as his own fate was concerned. People were thoughtful at that time.

Hence the famous line - Call no man happy until he dies!

This is another area in which the Ancient Greeks are kept close to us - in daily language. We are perhaps aware of it when we use words that are clearly of Greek origin such as democracy, epicurean, laconic, olympian, cynic, hedonist, meander, etc. Less aware we might be that some of our common adages, concepts, sayings, and idioms reach back those thousands of years: a wolf in sheep's clothing, the golden mean, the sword of Damocles, rich as Croesus, cutting the Gordian knot, a Trojan horse, don't count your chickens, the siren song, caught between Scylla and Charybdis, the Hippocratic oath, the Muses, if you want peace prepare for war, speak well of the dead, man is the measure of all things, the philosopher king, the unexamined life is not worth living, nothing in excess, Deus ex Machina.

Look around day to day, listen to the words and phrases we use - the Greeks are still among us, perhaps laughing at our unexamined lives.

How to introduce our children to these living dead who stalk our every footstep? Well of course, to start with, there are Aesop's fables, the various versions of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and the Greek myths and legends as a critical foundation, not only for understanding the Ancient Greeks, but to some extent, understanding ourselves today. You can find a more complete listing in some of booklists, but we have included selections in this booklist as well.

We have also included stories about some of the events of the period, the battles, the inventions, the invasions, the heroes, the villains, etc. There are also, particularly at the Young Adult level, retellings of some of the ancient stories in either a more contemporary structure or even, in a couple of cases with some fantasy elements to give the familiar story a new twist. We hope that your children will gain both a comprehension of the impact of the Ancient Greeks as well as an interest to know more about these amazing people.

There are a couple of poems that bear reflecting upon in considering what we think of the Ancient Greeks and just what we can really know about them. One is the provocatively emotional Sailing to Byzantium by William Butler Yeats and the other is The Gloomy Academic by Louis MacNeice. Both evocative of these ancient peoples, and of how close and yet how distant we are from them.


Picture Books

	Aesop's Fables by Aesop and illustrated by Michael Hague Recommended
	Aesop's Fables by Aesop and illustrated by Lisbeth Zwerger Recommended
	King Midas and the Golden Touch by Charlotte Craft and illustrated by Kinuko Craft Recommended
	The Classic Treasury of Aesop's Fables by Aesop and illustrated by Don Daily Suggested
	Aesops Fables by Aesop and illustrated by Charles Santore Suggested

Independent Reader

	The Children's Homer by Padraic Colum amd illustrated by Willy Pogany Highly Recommended
	Ingri and Edgar Parin D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths by Ingri D'Aulaire & Edgar Parin D'Aulaire Highly Recommended
	The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan Highly Recommended
	Black Ships Before Troy by Rosemary Sutcliff and illustrated by Alan Lee Highly Recommended
	The Wanderings Of Odysseus by Rosemary Sutcliff and illustrated by Alan Lee Highly Recommended
	Bulfinch's Mythology by Thomas Bulfinch and illustrated by Sabra Moore and Richard P. Martin Recommended
	The Golden Fleece by Padraic Colum and illustrated by Willy Pogany Recommended
	Cupid and Psyche by M. Charlotte Craft and illustrated by Kinuko Craft Recommended
	The Echo of Greece by Edith Hamilton Recommended
	The Greek Way by Edith Hamilton Recommended
	Mythology by Edith Hamilton Recommended
	Perseus by Geraldine McCaughrean Recommended
	Theseus by Geraldine McCaughrean Recommended
	Favorite Greek Myths by Mary Pope Osborne and illustrated by Troy Howell Recommended
	The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan Recommended
	The Battle of the Labyrinth by Rick Riordan Recommended
	The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan Recommended
	The Titan's Curse by Rick Riordan Recommended
	Goddess of Yesterday by Caroline B. Cooney Suggested
	The Fire Thief by Terry Deary Suggested
	Greek Gods and Heroes by Robert Graves Suggested
	The Librarian Who Measured the Earth by Kathryn Lasky and illustrated by Kevin Hawkes Suggested
	Odysseus by Geraldine McCaughrean Suggested
	The Odyssey by Homer and Geraldine McCaughrean and illustrated by Victor G. Ambrus Suggested
	The One-eyed Giant by Mary Pope Osborne Suggested
	The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner Suggested
	Men and Gods by Rex Warner and illustrated by Edward Gorey Suggested

Young Adult

	Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae by Steven Pressfield Highly Recommended
	The Landmark Thucydides edited by Robert B. Strassler Highly Recommended
	The Landmark Herodotus edited by Robert B. Strassler Highly Recommended
	The Sand-Reckoner by Gillian Bradshaw Recommended
	Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea by Thomas Cahill Recommended
	The Peloponnesian War by Donald Kagan Recommended
	The Isle of Stone by Nicholas Nicastro Recommended
	The Afghan Campaign by Steven Pressfield Recommended
	Last of the Amazons by Steven Pressfield Recommended
	Tides of War by Steven Pressfield Recommended
	The Virtues Of War by Steven Pressfield Recommended
	Fire from Heaven by Mary Renault Recommended
	The Last of the Wine by Mary Renault Recommended
	The Praise Singer by Mary Renault Recommended
	The Mask of Apollo by Mary Renault Recommended
	Ilium by Dan Simmons Recommended
	Archimedes and the Door to Science by Jeanne Bendick Suggested
	Achilles by Elizabeth Cook Suggested
	The Ten Thousand by Michael Curtis Ford Suggested
	Troy by David Gemmell Recommended

What was a great river of memories is narrowing to a stream, soon to be a creek and then to dry up completely. What has been called the greatest generation, those that lived through the Second World War, experienced the privations of the home front or served on its battlefields, is slipping from our grasp leaving only the books and the family stories. But what stories they are.

It is difficult to comprehend the encompassing and titanic nature of this conflict, which for our children today, seems to be almost ancient history. After all, it is way before the War on Terror, or the earlier Gulf War or even that distant conflict the Vietnam War. Putting the Second World War into numbers and facts can at first seem to be too clinical and almost desensitizing or even demeaning. Without those facts and numbers, though, it is too easy to lose hold of the magnitude and consequence of this conflict. There have been earlier "world wars", specifically World War One (of which it is often claimed that World War Two is merely an extension), and then earlier, the Napoleonic Wars (1790's to 1815).

So how do we quantify this as a World War? First there is simply the magnitude of the human impact. In martial terms, it was the largest conflict ever, involving 100 million soldiers (16 million in the US military). Nearly 100 nations were involved either because of battles or operations in their territories (fifty-five countries) or as members of either the Axis or the Allies.

70 million people were killed, the majority, nearly 50 million, being civilians and the majority of those (28 million) being civilians in China and Russia. In fact China and Russia accounted for 43 million (civilian and military) of all deaths in World War II. In terms of mortality, after Russia (23.1m representing 13.7% of the population) and China (20m representing 3.9% of the population), the countries next most affected by World War II were Germany (7.3m dead, 10.5% of the population), Poland (5.6m and 16.1% of the population) and Japan (2.7m and 3.8% of the population). The US and UK respectively suffered 418,000 and 450,000 deaths during the war, overwhelmingly military deaths though the UK did lose 68,000 civilians to the extensive bombing of Britain early in the war. US civilian deaths (just over a thousand) were individually tragic but comparatively minor in number, consisting primarily of citizens interned by Japan during the war but also including 68 civilians in Hawaii as a result of the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, and, generally little known, 6 civilian deaths from the balloon bombing campaign conducted by Japan against the mainland US.

The major countries involved in the conflict were, among the Axis; Germany, Italy, Japan, Hungary, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Romania, (and at various times the Soviet Union, Finland, Thailand, and Iraq). Among the Allies were the US, UK, the Commonwealth, France, China, USSR, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Kenya, Poland, Norway, Denmark, Netherlands, Central America, Philippines, Brazil, Mexico, and towards the end of the war virtually all the countries of South America.

Land battles occurred in all inhabited continents save South America and even there, there were instances of sabotage and intrigue. Little in Europe remained untouched by the destruction of war and North Africa, the Middle East, the Far East, South East Asia, and the Pacific all saw extensive and prolonged military campaigns.

The duration of the war, while not of the scale of, say, the Napoleonic wars, still was prolonged. For China, with Japan's invasion in 1936, the war lasted eight and a half years, for the UK for six and a half years, and for the US three and a half years.

The range of the conflict is part of what is so astonishing and is often the source of some startling and little known tales of the conflict. Among the lesser known and more remote corners touched by the war were the Azores Islands, Iceland, Madagascar, East Timor, the Aleutian Islands, Greenland, etc.

During the war there were all sorts of peculiar twists and turns in alliances. The Soviet Union was an ally of Nazi Germany at the beginning of the war with the invasion and partition of Poland, but then became the victim in turn of German invasion and consequently an ally of the Western Alliance. Western-oriented Finland became an ally of Germany as a consequence of being opportunistically invaded by the Soviet Union and having to turn to Germany for support (the subsequent Winter War being one of the most remarkable David and Goliath contests ever). The Kingdom of Thailand became an ally of the Japanese as part of the effort to throw out the colonial powers from South East Asia. Vichy France fought against the Allies in North Africa, Madagascar, the Middle East and elsewhere. An independence group in India, the Indian National Army, mustered troops to fight with the Japanese.

At the end of the war, countries disappeared completely (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Manchuria) or had their boundaries substantially redrawn (Poland, Soviet Union, and Germany), or were called into existence (South Korea, East Germany, etc.).

The economic, scientific, political, cultural and philosophical ramifications of World War Two continue to unfold even today. Just as after the titanic contest of the Napoleonic Wars, there was nearly 100 years of peace, increasing prosperity and a tighter binding together of the regions of the world, so there has been so far sixty odd years of global peace (at least among the major powers), increased prosperity, and integration of the peoples and economies of the globe. Long may the trend continue.

Out of the massive destruction of World War Two and consequent rebuilding, (Europe and Japan lost much of its existing capital of factories, shipping, and transportation and had to replace nearly all of it; the US created a vast industrial infrastructure in the space of three years that had not existed before), came new prosperity and productivity. Whole fields of science were exponentially expanded (physics, medicine, surgical technology, chemistry, materials engineering, electronic measurement and detection, etc.) and industrial engineering and management techniques were either newly pioneered or applied to a whole different magnitude (the coordination and transportation of materials to support the manufacture of tens of thousands of tanks, planes, ships, etc. in a short time frame) and remarkable feats of engineering and manufacturing were accomplished such as being able to produce a completed (Liberty) ship forty days after laying the keel.

In politics and philosophies, the idea that the various forms of totalitarianism and the naïve hope that centralized decision making could be a force for good took a heavy knock, reinforced forty years later with the fall of the Iron Curtain. It took some thirty or forty years to throw off some of the constraining regulatory regimens put in place for war purposes around the shipping, trucking, railroad, airline, telecommunication, and financial industries. Who was it that said that there is nothing so permanent as a temporary government program?

For our purposes, World War II also saw an explosion of cultural productivity particularly in terms of writing. These ranged from straight-forward autobiographical accounts such as William Manchester's Goodbye Darkness, E.B. Sledge's With the Old Breed, George MacDonald Frazer's Safely Quartered Out Here to biographical vignettes about specific adventures in the war such as W. Stanley Moss's Ill Met by Moonlight and Ted W. Lawson's Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo. There is some magnificent history to be had in first-person reporting such as John Hersey's Hiroshima or from historians such as Cornelius Ryan and his A Bridge Too Far and The Longest Day. Regrettably, as the years have advanced, some of those wonderful accounts by actual participants and direct observers have drifted out of print.

There are some wonderful contemporary books of those distant events. Louise Borden's The Little Ships: The Heroic Rescue at Dunkirk in World War II, illustrated by Michael Foreman is a great example of momentous occurrence rendered in a fashion comprehensible and also moving to young minds. Carmen Agra Deedy's The Yellow Star: The Legend of King Christian X of Denmark, illustrated by Henri Sorenson, is another example. There are many, many perfectly adequate Independent Reader level fictional renditions of actual events; it intriguing though that they should be so popular currently when the actual accounts are even better without the transmogrification through the stereotype blender and the stock-plot cooking pan.

The real treasures remain among the books at the advanced Independent Reader and the Young Adult levels and those that were written nearer to the time of the events. Twenty and Ten; Run Silent, Run Deep; The Great Escape, The Snow Goose; The Caine Mutiny; Going Solo; the list is wonderfully long.

As always when reading of war, there is the treacherous path to tread - attempting on the one hand to honor the service and recognize the courage and heroism of those caught in the circumstances of war while at the same time attempting not to glorify the tragedy that is war. For some sensitive spirits, these events are too much. There are shadings as well - I enthusiastically enjoy World War II literature but find Anne Frank's Diary of a Young Girl almost impossible to re-read. Once was enough. Not because it is badly written. On the contrary, it still feels almost contemporary and I find the enormity of the tragedy almost overwhelming.

The literature of the Holocaust warrants its own list booklist. There is a disproportionate plethora of books, many of them of solid quality, covering the internment of Japanese-Americans during the war. We have included a sampling of both these specializations in the list below. Our main objective though, is to cover the broader picture of this horrifically awesome event which affected a whole generation of people across the globe. People who are grandparents and great-grandparents today. In particular, by bringing attention to their stories, we seek to acknowledge the debt we collectively owe to so many who served, and who served heroically.

Let us know which World War II stories you share with your children.


Picture Books

	The Little Ships by Louise Borden and illustrated by Michael Foreman Highly Recommended
	The Yellow Star by Carmen Agra Deedy and illustrated by Henri Sorensen Highly Recommended
	The Greatest Skating Race by Louise Borden and illustrated by Niki Daly Recommended
	Across the Blue Pacific by Louise Borden and illustrated by Robert Andrew Parker Suggested
	Sadako by Eleanor Coerr and illustrated by Ed Young Suggested
	Journey To Topaz by Yoshiko Uchida and illustrated by Donald Carrick Suggested
	The Bracelet by Yoshiko Uchida and illustrated by Joanna Yardley Suggested

Independent Reader

	Run Silent, Run Deep by Edward Latimer Beach Recommended
	Twenty and Ten by Claire Huchet Bishop and illustrated by William Pene Du Bois Recommended
	The Greatest Skating Race by Louise Borden and illustrated by Niki Daly Recommended
	Going Solo by Roald Dahl and illustrated by Quentin Blake Recommendation
	House of Sixty Fathers by Meindert De Jong Recommended
	The Snow Goose by Paul Gallico Recommended
	Lily's Crossing by Patricia Reilly Giff Recommended
	Collins Atlas of World War II by John Keegan Recommended
	When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr Recommended
	Thirty Seconds over Tokyo by Ted W. Lawson Recommended
	Day of Infamy by Walter Lord Recommended
	Good Night, Mr Tom by Michelle Magorian Recommended
	Escape from Warsaw by Ian Serraillier Recommended
	The Cay by Theodore Taylor Recommended
	The Devil's Arithmetic by Jane Yolen Recommended
	The Book Thief by Markus Zusak Recommended
	Graveyards of the Pacific by Robert D. Ballard and Michael Hamilton Morgan Suggested
	The Journey That Saved Curious George by Louise Borden and illustrated by Allan Drummond Suggested
	Spying on Miss Muller by Eve Bunting Suggested
	Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene Suggested
	Number the Stars by Lois Lowry Suggested

Young Adult

	Hiroshima by John Hersey Highly Recommended
	The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors by James D. Hornfischer Highly Recommended
	Goodbye, Darkness by William Raymond Manchester Highly Recommended
	Empire Of The Sun by J. G. Ballard Recommended
	Flags of Our Fathers by James Bradley and Ron Powers Recommended
	Flyboys by James Bradley Recommended
	The Great Escape by Paul Brickhill Recommended
	Das Boot by Lothar-Gunther Buchheim Recommended
	Memoirs of the Second World War by Winston Churchill Recommended
	Halsey's Typhoon by Bob Drury and Thomas Clavin Recommended
	The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, Otto H. Frank and Mirjam Pressler Recommended
	The Great Escape by Anton Gill Recommended
	Catch-22 by Joseph Heller Recommended
	We Die Alone by David Armine Howarth Recommended
	The Second World War by John Keegan Recommended
	Incredible Victory by Walter Lord Recommended
	Love & War in the Apennines by Eric Newby Recommended
	A Bridge Too Far by Cornelius Ryan Recommended
	The Longest Day by Cornelius Ryan Recommended
	With the Old Breed by E. B. Sledge Recommended
	Mila 18 by Leon Uris Recommended
	Iron Coffins by Herbert A. Werner Recommended
	The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk Recommended

American children's literature is rich in stories about the interaction between early settlers/pioneers and the Native American peoples already in place. What makes this arena of storytelling so fascinating is that we have not collectively yet settled on a narrative structure. We don't know how the story goes or even how we want it to go.

It is easy in hindsight to believe that our present is the ineluctable result of the past. It did not appear so to those at the time though. Some of our most popular narratives, current and recent past, are simply poor didactic fictions crafted from an inability to imagine what life was like then.

Folktales, biblical stories and classical texts were more deeply and pervasively known then than now and helped shape an interpretation of all new encounters. On the other hand, current information of what was going on around them was notably sparse and slow to disseminate. In fact, the population of knowledge was pretty much just the opposite of today when one can count less and less on people sharing a common literary or cultural knowledge but can anticipate much greater awareness of the score of last night's game or the latest twist in some Hollywood celebrity's love life. We bring to our view of people of the past an expectation that we know how they thought and judge them by our current standards without allowing for our privileged position of knowing how particular stories ended.

In the very earliest days of the settlement of the America's there was a tendency to demonize Native Americans. They were the element out there beyond the settled boundaries where danger lurked. They raided settlements, butchered settlers and carried off women and children. They were savage and unpredictable.

Later, by the middle of the last century, these savage devils had morphed in popular representation into two dimensional characters in head-dresses and smoking peace-pipes. No longer relevant or a present danger, they were not represented in a malicious way or demonized; simply dismissed as quixotic, amusing, and irrelevant.

In the past twenty-five years, this imaging has morphed yet again, this time, either intentionally or accidentally, representing Native Americans as victims of a concerted ethnic cleansing. There is a greater inclination to attempt to understand this period of history from the Native American perspective, which is a worthwhile counterbalance to what came before which was mostly from the pioneers' perspective. It is ironic, though, that this contemporary storytelling is as ethnically insensitive and stereotyping as its predecessors but equally blind to that fact. In the modern telling, the Native Americans still lack agency - the capacity to demonstrate that they are individuals responsible for themselves and capable of crafting a life of dignity that may or may not, like everyone else, be marked with the outward trimmings of success.

It is all in how you view things. Most people are now aware that Leif Ericson and other Vikings made it to North America in 1000 AD and established an early, albeit in the event, temporary, settlement in Newfoundland. In fact, temporary settlements scattered along the northwestern coast of Canada continued for more than a decade before contact eventually dwindled away. While there were many likely reasons that this initial European discovery of and early settlement in North America failed, one significant reason is clear from the Vikings own writings; the resistance of the native skraelings, Native Americans. I think most people simply dismiss this first interaction as a simple false-start of settlement by Northern Europeans and think no further of it. The other way of considering this particular historical interlude is to view it as the first successful defeat of a new migratory invasion into North America. The Vikings were at the tail end of horrendously long "supply" line of several thousand miles. The technology differential between Native Americans and Europeans was not as dramatically wide in 1000 as it would be in 1500. Never-the-less, the Vikings were no pushovers. Viking raids, conquests and settlements extended over much of Europe (the British Isles, Russia, France, Germany, Poland, into Spain, etc.). The resistance and effective casting out of the Viking invaders from North America is a little recognized accomplishment in the pioneer history of North America.

The later discovery and settlement of North America by Europeans was a messy and uncoordinated affair with many cultures (on the European side) encountering many cultures (on the Native American side) and elements within each group seeking to align with elements of the other to wrest advantage over their traditional enemies: British seeking alliances with Native American tribes to contest incursions by the French and vice versa. Likewise between the British and the Spanish. Various elements of the Algonquin tribes sought alliances with the British against other traditional Native American tribes. Everyone viewed the other players as pawns to continue the battles with which they were already familiar.

Further, there was the complication of not only nationality but religion also. Protestants versus Catholics in this New World and even sect against sect such as Protestant Calvinists versus Church of England Protestants. The interaction between Plains Indians and settlers was not simply that between Native Americans and Europeans but the still more ancient contest between nomads and farmers.

Native Americans were decimated by the hidden enemy of new pathogens introduced into the continent by the new arrivals: smallpox, tuberculosis, diphtheria, cholera, measles, etc. all took their massive toll. The technological gap was a gulf this time around compared to the 1000s. The numbers were different too - and they had to be for history to have taken the course it took.

We too quickly forget the simple numbers. Mortality rates of 10-30% per voyage by the early settlers were not unusual. Annual mortality rates in most settlements were 30-70% in the early years. Native American tribes, devastated as they were by diseases, were frighteningly effective in their early and continued resistance. They demonstrated remarkable flexibility in trying to navigate the tumultuous political waters created by the new invaders. The Indian Massacre of 1622 (resurrected in Ivan Noel Hume's book, Martin's Hundred), fifteen years after the settlement of Jamestown, repulsed English settlement in the vicinity for another generation.

King Phillip's War in 1675, effectively a coordinated alliance between numerous previously contentious Native American tribes to reverse the tide of immigration, was disastrous for both sides, but might easily have succeeded given slightly different circumstances. Native American raids on New England settlements were still occurring with some regularity into the middle 1700s.

Similarly, we lose perspective on time as we move west. Custer's Last Stand is so iconic that it is hard to realize that it occurred in the lifetime of grandparents of people alive today. The last Native American to come out of the hills, Ishi, did so as recently as 1911.

The interactions between Native Americans and Pioneers/Frontiersmen were complex and occurred in vastly different circumstances and time periods. When you begin thinking about it, we have all sorts of sub-narratives including:

* The almost completely overlooked but frequently fascinating interactions of Native Americans and the Spanish in the 1500 -1700s in the Southeast and Southwest
* The traditional New England fighting and trading in the 1600 and 1700s
* The cooperative but delicately contentious interactions of the mountain men and fur traders in the 1700s
* The contending but respectful foes a la Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett in the 1700 and 1800s
* The often overlooked frontiers and settlers of the Midwest in the 1700 and 1800s and,
* All those corresponding interactions in Canada, Mexico and Central and South America.

The history of the world is one of different groups of people intruding themselves for various reasons into the territories of others. The consequences of those intrusions span the spectrum of obliteration of the invader or the invaded, the establishment of both groups in some tense but stable symbiosis, the peaceful absorption of one group by the other (it not always being predictable as to which will occur; think of the successfully conquering Vandals in Spain and North Africa or the Normans in Britain, each militarily successful but each being subsequently subsumed by their conquered population), etc. The globe is a big place and the corners only finally got filled up in the past five hundred years or so (with the Maoris settling in New Zealand in the fourteen hundreds as being perhaps the last significant land mass to be reached.)

The world has been filled for centuries with contiguous migrations within continents but that is a somewhat different affair. The cultural, technological, political, economic, and biological (pathogens) differences are more a matter of degree than of kind when the migration is from within a confined area. The less familiar and difficult story to tell is that more recent one of the past five hundred years where migration has been freed from contiguous movements of people to the transformative shifts in populations from continent to continent and where the gulf of differences can be so great. We have some fascinating object lessons out there such as Abyssinia, Lesotho and the Kingdoms of Swaziland and of Thailand all managing to maintain their independence in the face of European colonization when others all around fell. We have seen some migrations (Europe into North America, South America and Australasia) succeed while corresponding movements into Africa and South Asia failed.

This is fascinating material from an historical and sociological perspective. Fascinating, in part, because we still don't know quite what to make of it. Who were the "good" guys, who were the "bad"?

So we continue to struggle collectively to figure out what kind of story to tell our children of our own past. We now know that European settlement into North America succeeded at the expense of the Native Americans but it was not always obvious that it would succeed and many had reason to believe that it couldn't succeed.

The three major trends of describing Native Americans (and particularly their interactions with pioneers), characterized as demonization, shallow stereotyping and victimization, all have deep flaws, most especially that they do not capture anywhere near the diversity and particularity of those interactions.

Below are a number of stories in which we hope a flavor of some of that variety of experience comes through. Reading about particular periods such as Thanksgiving, Westward Expansion, the Colonial Period, all have elements that capture some of the complex interactions between pioneers/frontiersman and Native Americans. This booklist is an attempt to gather some of that wide range into a single place to give a bit of the feel of complexity that actually existed.

Let us know which books you might recommend for children to learn about and experience through their imagination this particularly fascinating event.


Picture Books

	A Picture Book of Sacagawea by David A. Adler and illustrated by Dan Brown Suggested
	Children of the Wild West by Russell Freedman Suggested
	This Land Is My Land by George Littlechild Suggested

Independent Reader

	Caddie Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Brink Highly Recommended
	Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder Highly Recommended
	Paddle to the Sea by Holling C. Holling Recommended
	The Sign of the Beaver by Elizabeth George Speare Recommended
	Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George Recommended
	Pocahontas by Joseph Bruchac Recommended
	Geronimo by Joseph Bruchac Suggested
	Squanto, Friend of the Pilgrims by Clyde Robert Bulla Suggested
	Morning Girl by Michael Dorris Suggested
	Guests by Michael Dorris Suggested
	The Birchbark House by Louise Erdrich Suggested
	The Porcupine Year by Louise Erdrich Suggested
	The Life and Death of Crazy Horse by Russell Freedman and photographs by Amos Bad Heart Bull Suggested
	Indian Chiefs by Russell Freedman Suggested
	The Talking Earth by Jean Craighead George Suggested
	Death of the Iron Horse by Paul Goble Suggested
	The Ledgerbook of Thomas Blue Eagle by Gay Matthaei and Jewel Grutman Suggested
	Moccasin Trail by Eloise Jarvis McGraw Suggested
	Rachel's Journal by Marissa Moss Suggested
	Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell & Ted (ILT) Lewin Suggested
	Streams to the River, River to the Sea by Scott O'Dell Suggested
	Standing in the Light by Mary Pope Osborne Suggested
	Mr. Tucket by Gary Paulsen Suggested
	Sequoyah by James Rumford Suggested
	Rain Is Not My Indian Name by Cynthia Leitich Smith Suggested
	Trappers & Mountain Men by Anastasia Suen Recommendation
	Bound for Oregon by Jean Van Leeuwen and photographs by James Watling & James Suggested
	Night of the Full Moon by Gloria Whelan and illustrated by Leslie Bowman and Tony Meers Suggested

Young Adult

	The Unredeemed Captive by John Demos Highly Recommended
	A Voyage Long and Strange by Tony Horwitz Recommended
	Give Your Heart to the Hawks by Winfred Blevins Suggested
	Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Alexander Brown Suggested
	Jim Thorpe, Original All-American by Joseph Bruchac Suggested
	Across America on an Emigrant Train by Jim Murphy Suggested
	Native American Testimony edited by Peter Nabokov Suggested
	Crooked River by Shelley Pearsall Suggested