American Bloods

 American Bloods is a long family saga that eventually gets to B.P. Blood. A reviewer* says:

At long last, the Blood family produced its own philosopher: Benjamin Blood. This Blood became a beacon of hope to none other than American pragmatist William James. “Not unfortunately, the universe is wild,” Blood wrote; “Nature is miracle all.” “Your thought is obscure — lightning flashes, darting gleams — but that is the way the truth is,” James responded. On his deathbed, James repaid the intellectual debt he owed Blood by recommending him as an “author of rare quality” and comparing him to Nietzsche.

From this motley crew of thieves, theorists, and seers, Kaag extracts a Blood family philosophy: “Ever not quite.” Whether they were stealing jewels, rejecting pieties, participating in John Brown’s unfinished project of racial reckoning, or helping America’s own philosophers learn how to be American, the Bloods were always, Kaag claims, guided by a “practical idealism — pluralistic, creative, dangerous.” It all makes a kind of wild, unruly sense. “Activity, heroism, and sheer willingness — bordering on madness,” Kaag writes, “is what all the Bloods, beginning with the jewel thief Thomas, were after.”

“Learn how to be American”... I’m still learning, I think. It’s a challenge these days, to embrace that identity. Isn't it?

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AMERICAN BLOODS: The Untamed Dynasty that Shaped a NationBy John KaagFarrar, Straus & Giroux, 273 pp., $28

*Lydia Moland teaches philosophy at Colby College and is the author of Lydia Maria Child: A Radical American Life

Boston Globe

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NOTE: This will be placed on reserve Jy '24 for MALA 6050, Americana: Streams of American Experience