Saturday’s Q&A at the electoral-vote site had some interesting Q’s and A’s and once again I’m stealing some of their content. But in the hope that you might decide to visit them, I’ll mention that some of the questions that I’m not stealing have to do with fighting Elon Musk, what’s wrong with the nytimes, rebranding the Democrats, the Democrats’ messaging, who might attend the funeral when the current president dies, who is the worst president, street naming conventions, recommendations for visiting LA and/or the Netherlands, and should Randy Rainbow be worried that the current administration might target him for being critical of the current administration.

If you’re interested in any of those responses, then you should visit their site here.

Here are the two questions that I’m stealing below:

F.S. in Cologne, Germany, asks: What are the 10 most influential novels in U.S. culture
before 1900?

(V) & (Z) answer: In chronological order:

• The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1820): One of the first great American works of fiction, and definitely the first to find an audience beyond America’s borders. It played a role in the development of a distinctly American artistic consciousness, and also had a none-too-small impact on the identity of New Yorkers.

• The Last of the Mohicans (1826): This runaway success helped implant some generally positive ideas in the minds of Americans, like the importance of rugged individualism. It also helped implant some less positive ideas, like the notion of the “noble savage.”

• Moby-Dick (1851): Not only did Herman Melville’s magnum opus help initiate a new era in literary realism, it also gave us what might be literature’s most famous metaphor.

• Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852): We chose not to rank this list, but if we had, this would clearly be #1. Few Americans were abolitionist, but by the time of the Civil War, many of them were anti-slavery, and this book had more to do with that than any other written work. As Abraham Lincoln himself said, on meeting author Harriet Beecher Stowe: “So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.”

• Little Women (1868): You can have female protagonists? And they can be interesting, and not stereotypes? Who knew? Louisa May Alcott did and, after this book came out, so did her readers.

• Mark, the Match Boy (1869): The first of the famous Horatio Alger books, which popularized the notion that America is a nation where one can go from rags to riches.

• The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873): The book not only launched the career of Mark Twain, it also gave the name to its historical era, and also put corrupt politicians under the microscope in a big way. For the next 40 years, presidents would run for office based on the promise that they would “clean things up.” Some were more successful than others.

• Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884): Ernest Hemingway said: “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn… All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.” The book also had a profound impact on American language and idiom, while also opening at least a few eyes to the problems of American racism.

• The Red Badge of Courage (1895): Maybe war is not such a good and exciting thing after all. Stephen Crane’s book is the starting point for a thread that runs through works like All Quiet on the
  Western Front and Catch-22, and that reached full flower with the literature, art, poetry and music of the Vietnam War era.

• The Awakening (1899): It’s not as well known today, but Kate Chopin’s book is arguably the first feminist (or, at least, proto-feminist) novel, as it critiques the restrictive gender roles of Victorian society. The heightening gender consciousness that it both benefited from and encouraged would power the suffrage movement to great heights, culminating in universal women’s suffrage a little over 20 years after the book was first released.

D.A. in Cincinnati, OH, asks: Which Black historical figures would you like to see more
people know? While most people can cite the more famous figures, like Martin Luther King Jr., or Thurgood Marshall, I’m
guessing there are a whole host of people that deserve more recognition.

(V) & (Z) answer: We’ll give you five answers, in chronological order (links are to their Wikipedia pages):

• James Forten: He was The United States’ first Black tycoon, making his money in shipbuilding, trade and real estate. And he used his funds to bankroll antislavery advocates and causes. Most famously, he paid the bills for William Lloyd Garrison, who could get way with much more extreme rhetoric than any Black man could. Forten also helped knock the legs out from under colonization as an equitable solution to the problem of slavery, correctly arguing that the plan was both unrealistic and racist.
• William Harvey Carney: He is the first Black person to earn the Medal of Honor, for his actions at the famous Battle of Fort Wagner on July 18, 1863.
• Ida B. Wells: She’s the most famous of the five we chose, but for those who don’t know her, she went into the lion’s den (the segregated South) in the 1890s and 1900s and did investigative journalism that proved that the victims of lynchings (almost invariably Black men) had NOT committed crimes against white womanhood, and instead were generally the most economically successful Black members of their communities.
• John Dolphin: Most people have heard of Motown founder Berry Gordy Jr. of Detroit. Dolphin was Los Angeles’ answer to Gordy. He ran a successful record label, record store, and radio station from the late 1940s until he was murdered in 1958. Not only did he aid the careers of many important Black artists, in genres including jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll, he also opened the eyes and ears of many white people to Black music. He was also leader of civil rights activism in Los Angeles.
• Mae Jemison: We thought we should include at least one living person. Jemison has an unbelievable résumé as a scholar, physician, technological innovator and activist, but she’s undoubtedly best known as the first Black woman to travel to outer space, having done so on the space shuttle Endeavour in 1992. The many readers who are Star Trek fans may also know that Jemison was inspired in her choice of career by Nichelle Nichols (Lt. Uhura on the original series), and that she herself appeared in a guest role on an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation (specifically, “Second Chances,” where second-in-command William T. Riker turns out to have been split into two identical copies of himself).

We wanted a wide range here in terms of chronology and in terms of contributions.

I’ll just add that I’ve only read two (or perhaps three, I’m not certain) of the ten books on that list. But at least five more (or possibly six) are on my to-do list.

And I think I’ve only heard of one of the people on the Black List. I mean the list of Black Historical Figures.