Cynthia Crossen’s “Dear Book Lover” column in the Weekend section of The Wall Street Journal is always an interesting read. Today she responded to a reader’s inquiry about whether a book can really change someone’s life.
Crossen quotes writer Sherwin R. Nuland (author of How We Die and The Soul of Medicine) who said Ah, the Cave Man was his life changer. Nuland was seven years old when he discovered this first non-Dick-and-Jane-type book. He says, “I had no idea that reading could be fun, that a boy could be transported to another place and time, and become so engrossed by descriptions and characters that he lost all consciousness of his surroundings, his worldly concerns and the very hour of the day.”
I can’t recall a particular book that changed me but I can certainly identify with losing all consciousness of suroundings while reading - the back seat of our 1950 Chevrolet on long trips to visit relatives; dinner tables where I was the only child surrounded by adult conversation; any dairy in Kentucky or Southern Indiana while Dad made another “just-for-a-minute” stop to talk to a customer.
Is there a book that changed your life?
Life Changing Books
Perspective
As cold weather chills my bones and my stomach churns over finances, this tidbit from my research files reminds me that I have a comfortable existence. The 1874 payroll record for government employees at the Los Pinos Indian Agency, Colorado, reports total pay for the period January through March. The pay was probably good for the times since these employees received housing (log buildings with no running water, indoor plumbing, or central heat) and some food provided by the agency. The living and working conditions, however, were challenging. The agency for the Ute Indians was located in a cold and remote spot near the top of Cochetopa Pass on the Continental Divide. The name comes from a Ute word meaning “pass of the buffalo.” The men who managed the herds that supplied meat for agency employees lived solitary lives in crude quarters near their grazing animals. (Source: National Archives and Records Administration #8878, Expense Reports, 1874)
$250.00 MT [Margaret] Adams, Teacher
$375.00 Charles Adams, Agent
$189.50 Alonzo Hartman, Carpenter
$189.50 Geo. Hardman, Blacksmith
$250.00 Steven Dole, Blacksmith
$150.00 James Downer, Laborer
$ 53.33 Charles Eberley, Cook
$150.00 James Kelley, Herder @ Gunnison
$150.00 H.F. Lautter, Herder @ Los Pinos
$150.00 Sidney Jocknick, Herder @ Gunnison
$225.00 Herman Leuders, Chief Herder
