Brindle Media

Posts Tagged ‘James Fenimore Cooper’

In this book, I learned about the author, James Fenimore Cooper and creator of the Morse Code, Samuel F. Morse in school but I never knew that they were best buds in Paris when they were young. I never knew that Cooper would walk the 25 miles from New York City each week to his weekend house upstate. I never knew that Morse actually started out as a painter. These are some of the insights provided by David McCullough as he does his usual terrific job of helping us understand and develop a relationship with people who’ve shaped our history.

My youngest daughter attends Emma Willard School in Troy, NY. Turns out that Emma was one of the young Americans who traveled to Paris along with folks like Cooper and Morse in the early 1800s and that the things she learned and saw there helped to shape the kind of education that my daughter receives today. In fact, McCullough got this book’s title from a comment which he read in one of Emma Willard’s letters home.

Recently, McCullough told Charlie Rose that he had the most fun he’s had writing a book when he wrote about these Americans in Paris. Whether you read the book or listen to the audiobook (read by Edward Herrmann who also voiced the John Adams book), you’ll learn something you didn’t know and have a good time doing it, too