Today on Martin Luther King day, I received an email from the Library of America with a link to their publication of Charles W. Chesnutt’s Stories, Novels, and Essays.

Charles W. Chesnutt was a African American writer who wrote about the time during and after Reconstruction in the American South.

The Marrow of Tradition

The Conjure Woman

So, I checked him out. There was an interesting one called The Conjure Woman and I also found that he had written a historical novel, called The Marrow of Tradition, surrounding fictional events that commented on the spread of propaganda and sensationalism which help lead to the race riots that occurred in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1898.

A race riot had occurred in Wilmington, North Carolina? I live in North Carolina, visited Wilmington, and this was news to me. Amazingly, it was only in 2006 that the official report of the Wilmington Insurrection of 1898 was completed. The only instance of a municipal government being overthrown in US history.

The chilling account of the Raft of the Medusa is called Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 by J.B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard.

Another great book for free download in Google books is Memoirs of Vidocq: Master of Crime by Francois Eugene Vidocq. Publisher is H.G. Bohn, 1853. Francois Vidocq was a thief, army deserter, grifter, convict, and private detective. He is also mentioned in the book Moby Dick.

One of the reasons I like the B&N eReader is that you can download easily Google books that are in the public domain. A great book to read on your iPhone, which I have not been able to download for free on any other ebook reader, is Autobiography of a Super-Tramp by William Henry Davies.

This is the book that inspired Christopher McCandless to change his name to Alexander Super-Tramp. If you don’t know who Christopher McCandless is, I suggest you check out the book Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer. Into the Wild was also made into an equally terrific movie starring Emile Hirsch and directed by Sean Penn.

After reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy, I was looking for another book about survival, facing incredible odds, and cannibalism. I found it in a book called In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick.

The book tells the true story of the tragedy at sea that inspired Herman Melville to write Moby Dick. In 1820, the whaleship Essex had the tables turned when a sperm whale became the aggressor. The sperm whale rammed the ship not only once, but twice, sinking the ship and forcing the crew to make an attempt to reach South America in the remaining small open boats. The story is a gripping tale of survival.

Here’s an excerpt:
“First they saw the bones – human bones- littering the thwarts and floorboards, as if the whaleboat were the seagoing lair of a ferocious man-eating beast. Then they saw the two men. They were curled up in opposite ends of the boat, their skin covered in sores, their eyes bulging from the hollows of their skulls, their beards caked with salt and blood. They were sucking the marrow of their dead shipmates.”

Along with the exciting narrative, the book is speckled with very fascinating tidbits such as :

• Dr. Ancel Keys (the K-ration was named after him) conducted a WWII study on starvation using conscientious objectors. The study was used in aiding POW’s and concentration camp victims.
• Pablo Valencia survived almost seven days without water in the Arizona desert – “His lips had disappeared as if amputated, leaving low edges of blackened tissue; his teeth and gums projected like those of a skinned animal, but the flesh was black and dry as a hank of jerky.”

The book was a great read.  It would be a terrific companion book to read along with Moby Dick.  The notes in the book also lead me to another wonderful discovery Desperate Journeys, Abandoned Souls: True Stories of Castaways and Other Survivors by Edward E. Leslie and Sterling Seagrave.