Touching America’s History: From the Pequot War through WWII by Meredith Mason Brown (review)

BOOK REVIEWS SUMMER 2013 93 environmental perspectives of valley residents yet again, linking their livelihoods back to the rhythms of “wet land” (194). The reconnection of people with the river occurs with more force in Morris’s final chapter , with 2005’s Hurricane Katrina presented as a moment when a “repressed wet nature returned to the lower Mississippi Valley with a vengeance” (204). While Morris notes that Katrina inspired some people to imagine ways that Americans could begin to adapt to water “because they have no choice” (224), much of The Big Muddy tells a different story, of people with wealth and political power choosing to have water adapt to them, while shifting the costs of this adaptation to other people—largely working class people of color— who had little opportunity to influence the outcome . In a twenty-first century of growing income disparities, voting rights shifts, and extreme weather, the overall sweep of Morris’s narrative should prompt readers to ask how, when it comes to water “adaptation,” the lower Mississippi River Valley’s future balance sheet may read differently than the balance sheets of earlier eras. Matthew A. Axtell Princeton University Touching America’s History: From the Pequot War through WWII Meredith Mason Brown In Touching American’s History: From the Pequot War through WWII, Meredith Mason Brown traces his personal ancestral history by examining a series of objects he owns and placing them in a particular historical context. Brown calls this method the “reliquary approach” (2), and argues that it makes history “come alive” (xi). Brown’s method has produced a fascinating mix of military history, memoir, and family lore. Each chapter focuses on a surviving relic, illustrating his family ’s exploits in skirmishes with Native Americans, in frontier Kentucky, in the Civil War, in the Philippines, and on the beaches of Normandy during World War II.To a certain degree, Brown’s name itself signifies a kind of tributary relic, eulogizing the explorers, war heroes, and writers populating his personal history. While each chapter offers a kind of “microhistorical ” perspective by focusing on the context of a particular object, the 1861 and 1862 diaries of Brown’s great-grandfather, John Mason Brown, are unique. These detailed, written records provide Meredith Mason Brown. Touching America’s History : From the Pequot War through WWII. Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 2013. 288 pp. ISBN: 9780253008336 (cloth), $30.00. BOOK REVIEWS 94 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY more intimate views of pre-Civil War Kentucky life than such material objects as weapons. In 1861, John Mason left Kentucky for Montana, recording what he saw along the way, “the reservations , the annuities, the violence, the killing of the game, the quest for gold…[and] the split loyalties of the Kentuckians” (98). He learned the sign language common among “Plains Indians,” hunted extraordinary amounts of game, dabbled in gold prospecting, and even wrote an article for a New York magazine describing his journey. His diary records the growth of Catholic missions, the widespread violence perpetrated by both settlers and local tribes, and intertribal land grabs between the Crow and Piegan, Assiniboine, or Sioux. John Mason believed that the Plains Indians would have to sacrifice their traditional ways as waves of white settlers entered their historic tribal lands and prospecting accelerated. Like many of his contemporaries , John Mason thought Native Americans unsuited to “civilized” life, arguing that “they possess little they can turn to practical account” (106). When delayed reports of the Confederate invasion of John Mason’s home town of Frankfort finally reached him, he anxiously wanted to get home and took a stagecoach to shave a week off the journey. Still, geographic distance from the conflict lessened personal tensions among his traveling party: “out in Indian country, instead of trying to kill each other, the polarized Americans were making friendly wagers” (118). On the back pages of one diary, John Mason recorded these wagers, showing three men “rooting for the Confederates,” while two others bet on Union forces (118). The diaries also document his journey from adventurer to Union soldier—in 1862, he enlisted in the 10th Kentucky Cavalry regiment—while providing a unique perspective on the ways news of the internecine conflict traveled...