The Passing of the Techno-Mages: Summoning Light by Jeanne Cavelos

 The Passing of the Techno-Mages: Summoning Light

Jeanne Cavelos

This is book two of the Passing of the Techno-Mages, a trilogy of novels set in the Babylon 5 universe.  I reviewed the first book, and if you haven’t read that review yet, I encourage you to read it first.  Quick warning: there are spoilers for the first book after this paragraph, so you have been warned. 

This series of books delves into the Techno-Mages, a group of beings known for being able to create wonders. They only appeared in a single episode of the main show, although Galen, the main character of this series, is a major character in the Babylon 5 follow-up series Crusade.  The Techno-Mages are a secretive bunch with many astonishing abilities, so it’s no wonder they are even today a focus of fan interest.  

Book II picks up where Book I left off, with Galen and the universe around him in complete and utter shambles.  The Shadows, a race of aliens who’ve been in space longer than we’ve existed as a species, are returning.  A thousand years ago they plunged the galaxy into a maelstrom of war and death.  They were only fought back through a backbreaking effort by an alliance led by the Minbari leader Valen.  They are returning, and they intend to do it all over again to bring interstellar civilization crashing down in the name of their Social Darwinist ideology. 

They’re off to a good start, because they’ve managed to bring Galen’s life crashing down pretty easily. Galen had met the love of his life, Isabelle, and just as quickly lost her.  It’s made worse by the fact that she was murdered by the mage that Galen considered his closest friend, Elizar.  So in a very short time he discovered that civilization itself is at risk, his friend is a traitor to everything he believes is good and pure… and he has lost the one person who meant so much to him.  Compounding this is the fact that Galen is sure he could have saved her, but to do so would have meant forswearing his oath to the Circle, the governing body of the Techno-Mages. 

You see, in the first book, Galen was able to unlock the secret to a spell of incredible power, something that lets him destroy just about anything in range.  It terrified the council so much that they made him swear to never cast it.  He kept to that oath, refusing to cast it when his friend Elizar turned on him and Isabelle.  In that fight, Elizar murdered Isabelle with a slow and painful spell. This is one of many things that weigh heavily on Galen, and this book piles more weight on top of that. 

Meanwhile, his mentor Elric is also going through it.  First of all, there’s the anguish that he feels seeing Galen sink into depression, a depression that leads Galen to withdraw into himself and try to isolate himself from the people who still love him, including Elric.  Galen is the closest thing Elric has to a son, and the fact that Elric sent Galen on the mission that did so much harm to him is an extra twist of the knife. 

You would think that would be enough, but Elric is struggling with the results of a much more profound failure.  He is a member of the Circle, and he was the only one to vote for fighting against the Shadows when Galen and Isabelle found proof of their return. The remaining three voted to run and hide.  That failure is bitter, and this book never fails to pile consequences onto failure. 

Techno-Mages can create what they call places of power: by using parts of their implants, they intertwine themselves with entire planets.  Elric can see events on the other side of his adopted planet.  He can feel the fires at the planet's core, the air pressure in its upper atmosphere.  To leave, he has to destroy his place of power, and doing so injures him badly.  Reading the book and seeing the signs of his injuries feels like I’m watching a man trying to recover from a stroke, and he has to do this while engaging in a deep plan to make it look like the Techno Mages have been destroyed. 

This part of the book overlaps with the Babylon 5 episode Geometry of Shadows.  It provides a lot of depth and a sort of behind-the-scenes look at what was going on with this episode.  This gives us a showcase of what books can do that more visual media can’t; for example, this book gives us a greater look at events that the station staff was unaware of, and a deeper look into what Elric was trying to accomplish.  Which, all on its own, makes this book worth it for fans of Babylon 5.  That said, much like the last book, no greater knowledge of Babylon 5 is really needed to appreciate this story. 

Galen, on the other hand, accompanies another member of the Circle, Blaylock, to an outpost of the Shadows.  I find Blaylock interesting because he is an incredibly severe and disciplined character, but not a cruel or hypocritical one. He believes the Mages can only gain full control over their implants by embracing a monastic lifestyle of restriction and unrelenting discipline. He cannot pursue this lifestyle in a warzone, but he will take risks in order to protect the Mage order. 

  Blaylock wants to gather more information, and Galen is hoping to find Elizar and kill him. They find more than they bargain for, and Galen learns the secret of the Techno-Mages.  Their implants were not the invention of a wondrous, now extinct alien race of benign scholars, but rather the creation of the Shadows, gifted to a fractious and warlike race that destroyed itself because of those implants.  Finding this brings Galen to the very edge of destruction; he believed that the Techno-Mages were sages, dream makers, and delvers of mystery.  Instead, they were always meant to be brutal weapons for destruction and chaos, and the Circle, the leaders of the Mages, knew the whole time.  

Which means that Elric knew.  Elric knew and kept the secret from him.  Elric knew the Shadows were never entirely gone, and sent him on the mission that almost ripped out his soul.  Galen is left even worse than when we started, as now his loyalties are pushed to the breaking point, and everything he has ever hoped for in life is reduced to ash in his mouth.  This story brings Galen and Elric to their lowest point, while stressing them greatly, not just as individuals but also in their relationship to each other and to the Techno-Mage order as a whole.

Despite this, the book does end on a slightly hopeful note: the Mages, despite heavy losses, manage to escape. Instead of surrendering to the Shadows, they decide to accept the risk of the order going extinct, as the Shadows will cut them off from any new implants and make it impossible to create new Techno-Mages.  Galen and Elric make choices that seem small at the time but will have great implications later: Elric refusing to leave Galen behind during a battle, for example, and Galen choosing to save a life when he could have easily protected himself by doing nothing. 

The middle book of this trilogy takes us to a dark point, but leaves us with hope that our characters can find a way out into better places. It’s an interesting and tense read, and because many of the characters here don’t appear in the main show, there’s no safety net.  Almost any of these characters can be lost, and indeed, Mages do suffer heavy and grievous losses.  This is a great book if you’re interested in the Babylon 5 universe, but also a good book if you just enjoy science fiction. It might be difficult to find, as the books are no longer in print. Still, if you can pick up a copy, I think you’ll enjoy it. 

The Passing of the Techno-Mages Book I: Casting Shadows By Jeanne Cavelos

 The Passing of the Techno-Mages Book I: Casting Shadows

By Jeanne Cavelos

Jeanne Cavelos was born in the United States on May 26th, 1960.  Inspired by Charlton Heston’s character in Planet of the Apes, she decided to become an astrophysicist. She graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Astrophysics from Michigan State University in 1982. She taught astrophysics at Michigan State University and Cornell, as well as working with the Astronaut Training Museum, but grew dissatisfied with her work.  So she decided to try her hand at writing after getting a Master of Fine Arts from American University. 

She worked as a senior editor for Bantam Doubleday Dell but left in 1994 to pursue writing her own books.  She would write The Science of Star Wars, coining the phrase " May the 4th be with you” and The Science of the X-Files. She also wrote The Shadow Within, a novel set in the Babylon 5 universe, along with the trilogy Passing of the Techno Mages, and it’s the first book of that series that we’re reviewing today. 

The main character of the novel is the Techno-Mage Galen, who never appeared in the main series but was a major character in the short-lived follow-up series, Babylon 5 Crusade. The novel takes place in 2258, during the first season of the television show and before the Techno-Mages' only appearance in the main series, in the episode Geometry of Shadows in season 2. The novel covers the end of Galen's apprenticeship and his progression to being a full Mage, along with the Techno-Mages' discovery of the return of the Shadows and how the Techno-Mages reacted to the Shadows' return.

Galen was the child of a pair of Techno-Mages who died in a fire while he was a child.  He was raised and taught by the Techno-Mage Elric, the only Techno-Mage to appear in the television series.  That loss is one of the reasons Galen is isolated even from his fellow Techno-Mages. Another reason is that he struggles to really understand people and has a lot of difficulty expressing his emotions. 

He is, however, able to form relationships, such as forming a deep relationship with a fellow Techno-Mage student, Isabelle.  He also has a distant friendship with Elizar, who is also a Techno-Mage student.  Elizar and Galen bonded over shared ambitions but don’t really understand each other. Isabelle, on the other hand, is a very insightful young lady who seems to understand Galen better than he understands himself, which is good given how much Galen struggles to find ways to express himself and his emotions. 

This inability to express himself appears in his “spell language,” as we learn that each Techno-Mage has an individual way of visualizing and expressing their spells and powers. Galen’s language is very much like a computer programming language or a series of math equations. Other Mages have spell languages that lend themselves more easily to metaphor and art, allowing them to express themselves in their spells.  Galen’s language doesn’t really allow for individual self-expression, but it does allow him to break spells down to their components very easily in order to replicate the spells of other mages. 

This ability leads him to trouble, as he can create a spell stripped of everything but a single component. It is a spell made up of a single word, and that word is destruction. This spell lets Galen destroy just about anything or anyone he can see. This power frightens his elders so much that they make him swear an oath to never use the spell, even if the alternative is dying. This spell clearly scares them more than the Shadows do. 

The Shadows do, however, frighten the Mages deeply. When an unpopular Mage discovers evidence of the Shadows' return, a faction of the Mages doesn’t want to believe it.  So Galen is dispatched with fellow new Mage Isabelle to a remote space port near the rim of known space to find proof of the Shadows’ return.  What they find is terrifying. 

Because while they don’t know much about the Shadows, the Shadows know a lot about the Techno-Mages, and the Shadows are determined that the Mages will either serve them or be destroyed. Galen and Isebelle will find evidence not just of the Shadows but of secrets within the ranks of the order of Techno-Mages, as well as proof that the Shadows are gathering followers and weapons to plunge the galaxy into a maelstrom of war and destruction.  Some of those followers know the Mages all to well. 

As Galen and Isebelle struggle not just to gather evidence but to escape alive with everything they learned.  Elric, Galen’s teacher, is struggling to keep secrets and politics from tearing the order apart.  He is one of the five members of the Circle, the leaders of the Mages.  The order is split into factions, each with a different vision of what the Mages and their place in the world should be. On top of that, the one person who can unite these factions is keeping secrets, and his plans to counter the Shadows have already gone awry. 

Casting Shadows is a story of misplaced faith and loss. The Techno-Mages will find themselves with ineffective leadership when they need it the most, and, as usual, it’s not the leaders who suffer the heaviest consequences for their failures. It is also a story of how the most unlikely people can do the right thing and rise above themselves if given some faith, some encouragement, and just the right push.  So it’s not an entirely grim story, as it does have a bit of hope in it, but as fits with this point in the greater Babylon 5 storyline, it’s a dark story. 

This novel tells us a lot about Galen as a person and the Techno-Mages as a group.  We learn what motivates Galen, his desire to truly understand what the founders of the Techno-Mages had created, and to do justice to their works while helping people. His trouble with emotions and with really communicating and understanding others also makes him a bit autistic coded in some ways, but I don’t think that was intentional.  I think that was more to reflect that Galen is a very repressed person who, due to the early loss of his family, doesn't want to confront or understand his own feelings. 

 As for the Techno-Mages, while they are a very learned and powerful group of people, they are still very fallible and, for lack of a better term, human.  We learn a lot about their history and a fair bit of how their powers work. They were created 1000 years ago by a now extinct alien race, and they use that alien race’s technology as well as cybernetic implants created from that technology to make themselves capable of amazing feats of power and knowledge almost comparable to what individual Vorlons can do.  We also learn that much of their magic is just education on how to present things and how to read and communicate to people to get their desired ends, as well as an education in sleight of hand and other skills to enhance the mystery of their abilities.  

While the Techno-Mages were honestly a minor part of the overall story of Babylon 5, they are a fascinating part of it. They never fail to draw interest, and Ms. Cavelos does an admirable job of telling a compelling story. It is somewhat constrained, however, by the greater universe.  We know Galen and the Techno-Mages will not be able to announce to the galaxy that the Shadows are coming, and we know they will not take part in the war in any great measure.  That said, she is able to tell a good story within those constraints.  

I can’t help but wonder if the Techno-Mages were able to be their own story, how it would go, but this is a Babylon 5 story.  It’s one I greatly enjoyed, and I would recommend.  Because of its distance from the main cast and focus of the setting, I think it’s also a novel you can read without having any prior experience with Babylon 5 and still enjoy.  I’m giving Casting Shadows a B+;  it is a good story, and I think any fantasy or science fiction fan would enjoy it. 

The Lost Wall of Alexander the Great: Prison of Gog and Magog

 

https://youtu.be/8SyS24Hm9aM?si=xmu_KJoEKUQSL358

Today, I explore some of the strangest and most fascinating legends in mythology and ancient history: the lost wall of Alexander the Great and the terrifying myth of Gog and Magog.

The Alexander Romance: From King to Myth

 https://youtu.be/ggtZ9vI2YPM?si=zxrg_ciBq69rLZlW

Welcome to the strange, fascinating world of the Alexander Romance, the collection of myths that transformed Alexander the Great from a historical figure into a myth. From a mystical birth to journeys into a land of forever night, this is how Alexander went from a warlord to a legend that crossed cultural and religious boundaries for millennia.

Alexander the Great: The Man Who Became a Myth

 https://youtu.be/X06NaOOoqHo?si=LoPg7JhgMGewEWax

The man who conquered the greatest empire of his time, who never lost a battle, and who was only defeated by his own army. The legend, the myth, the man who was worshiped as divine, from Italy to Afghanistan. Who was he really? Before we look at the myth of the Alexander Romance, let’s look at the facts.

Frigid Reads: The Lost City of Ys

 
https://youtu.be/A2WUd5ERNlA?si=yD03FG6plLitK-BP

Today, I'm going to take a look at the haunting and fascinating sunken City of Ys. The lost city of Celtic and Breton Folklore. From its origins in medieval France to its transformation through centuries of storytelling, the legend of Ys is a story of myth, legend, doomed princesses, magical queens, and struggling saints.

The Unofficial History of the Shadows

A look at the Unofficial History of the Shadows as presented in the Mongoose Publishing book Darkness and Light.

https://youtu.be/fgw0O7-F18k?si=_0cSvhl8zzIhzO8O

The Official History of the Shadows (Babylon 5)

 https://youtu.be/LHqFlo3vT5Q?si=YPfe9sVZnZmbSXXS

A look at the Shadows, their history, techonology and servants.

Psychic Powers, False Realities and Philip K Dick

 https://youtu.be/CD_3gyGXAUg?si=-elUrwcvMESrfZrE

Psychic powers have haunted science fiction writers for over a century, why? In this video, we explore the history of psychic powers in science fiction, from 19th-century spiritualism and early parapsychology to the strange and reality-bending works of Philip K. Dick.

Frigid Reads: Willy's Wonderland

 https://youtu.be/qQbEZnpZNdU?si=BPyFj8b5Q0VhnUix

The 2021 comedy horror movie with Nicolas Cage as an utterly silent protagonist battling against haunted, homicidal animatronics in a small town. We look at how it was written, produced, and how it did, my opinions on the movie, and of course, a bunch of wild fan theories.

Frigid Reads: Next (2007)

 

https://youtu.be/XMTsMDgmpko?si=QbcNeWxZjtMJdPwz

We look at the movie adaptation The Golden Man, the 2007 movie Next starring Nicolas Cage, Julianne Moore, and Jessica Biel. Does it hold up as an adaptation? Is it any good as a standalone story?

Frigid Reads: The Golden Man by Philip K Dick.

 https://youtu.be/8SXDDKIxuEM?si=qTJQ_Vu3il9-ffym

Welcome to Dick Month, where we look at works by the science fiction author Philip K Dick that have been adapted to other media. This month, we're looking at The Golden Man, a short story published in 1954.

Deadlier Than Dragons: The Basilisk and Other Monsters From Ancient Bestiaries

 https://youtu.be/_tTlC5m-WcE?si=nnhpXDu9uEyicoCh

We take a look at the intertwined legends of the Basilisk, Cockatrice, Yale, and Ichneumon. 4 mythical creatures, or is it 3?

Empowered By Warren Adams

 Empowered

By Adam Warren

Adam Warren was born in New Hampshire in 1967.  After high school, he started attending the Kubert School, a private school in Dover, New Jersey that teaches comic book art and commercial illustration. Warren almost dropped out, but over one Christmas Break, he got a hold of some anime and manga, most notably some issues of the series Dirty Pair.  This not only renewed his commitment to becoming a comic book artist, but it was also when he met the art style that would forever dominate his destiny. 

In fact, writing and illustrating an American Dirty Pair comic would be Mr. Warren's first major project after graduating; he would continue producing comics and graphic novels throughout the 90s. He also wrote the limited Marvel comics series Live Wires and Iron Man: Hypervelocity.  He started writing and illustrating Empowered in 2007. 

Empowered got its start in a series of commissions where someone requested art of a superheroine who was tied up and gagged. From there, Mr. Warren started to come up with a backstory for the superheroine, and things seem to have snowballed from there.  Now, just a quick note, the Omnibus combines volumes 1, 2, and 3, and I haven’t read any further.  Considering the series is still ongoing, and is somewhere past volume 12, there’s a lot more going on. 

Empowered is the story of Elissa Megan Powers, aka the superheroine Empowered. Often called Emps, to the point that her birth name isn’t revealed til the end of issue 3, Elissa attempts to be a superhero, but struggles with the weaknesses of her powers and the lack of respect from everyone.  You see, she gets her powers from her suit, a hyperthin membrane that grants her the strength of 10 to 15 men, and the ability to toss around bolts of energy.  However, if the suit is damaged, then her powers are drastically reduced, often to the point of her being just another young lady. This leads to the villains overpowering her and tying her up. 

These villains don’t go any further than this due to the unwritten rules of Capes, which is you don’t kill a Cape, and you don’t take any liberties with subdued Capes.  I don’t know who is enforcing these rules, but they must be deeply terrifying because most villains show real fear at the idea of anyone even thinking they might be breaking the rules. 

As a result, her teammates on the superhero team, the Superhomeys, treat her either as a joke or as a little sister they need to protect, while the villains flat-out laugh at her, and the public is rather cruel. Despite this, Emps gets up, puts on her suit, and runs into situations that could get her vaporized because she wants to help and do the right thing, even if no one ever gives her credit for trying. 

Now, she isn’t alone: in volume I, she meets Thugboy.  Thugboy was working as a minion for a villainous organization, but rapidly switched sides due to falling in love with Emps. He is her number one fan, and, frankly, he might be the smartest guy in the series.  He’s definitely one of the more complicated ones as we quickly learn about his rather horrifying past.  

For example, we learn he used to be a part of a group called the Witless Minions, who specialized in signing up to work for supervillains and then robbing them blind.  This ended the way you would expect, as it seems the unwritten rules don’t apply to minions who betray their supervillain employers, and Thugboy is carrying some unresolved trauma as a result.  There’s the matter of what he was doing before being a Witless Minion, but I’m going to encourage you to read the comic and find out about it that way.

There’s also Ninjette, a lady ninja who fled her clan and met Emps by trying to kidnap her.  When the kidnapping went wrong, the ladies started drinking together and became best friends. Both these girls are big fans of the other, which I like, and their relationship is interesting as both these girls are carrying a boatload of issues.  

The tone of the comic is comedic, but it has its serious moments.  While Emps is often the butt of the joke, the story manages to balance this out with her winning victories and saving lives, even if she loses dignity in the process.  I should also note this comic is a bit raunchy, as Warren's right up to the line on what you can show and do without turning it into an “adult” graphic novel, so this is something you want to keep out of the hands of children. Still, it was a  fun read, so I’m going to give it a B+

Arguing About Slavery: John Quincy Adams and the Great Battle in the United States Congress By William Lee Miller

 Arguing About Slavery: John Quincy Adams and the Great Battle in the United States Congress

By William Lee Miller 

Today, we’re going to look at a book that covers a half-forgotten part of history.  Arguing About Slavery covers the Gag Rule, which was one of the first major legal and social battles over slavery.  This nine-year-long struggle did a lot to propel the debate over slavery to the center stage of America. Before I get to in depth on that, though, let’s talk about the book and the author. 

The book itself was published in 1998 by Vintage Books, a division of the ever-present Random House, the massive publishing company that prints nearly 1 out of 4 books printed in the United States. So if you own more than 5 books and if any of them are nonfiction, odds are you’ve bought one of their books. Arguing About Slavery was written by William Lee Miller; let’s talk about him for a bit. 

William Lee Miller is an American who was born in Bloomington, Indiana, on April 21st, 1926.  He was the son of a minister, and so lived in a number of states growing up, which I can relate to.  After finishing high school, he attended the University of Nebraska and then Yale, ending up with a PhD from Yale University in Religious Social Ethics. 

 He would work as a journalist from 1953 to 1965, contributing to the Reporter, a biweekly American news magazine.  He also served as a speechwriter for Adlai Steveson in 1956. He would teach at Smith College, Indiana University, and Yale, with his last teaching post being at the University of Virginia, where he started in 1982.  He started writing history books in the 1960s and continued writing and publishing until the year of his death in 2012.  He left behind a sizable body of work and taught hundreds, if not thousands, of students.  With that, let’s turn to the book in question. 

Arguing about Slavery covers the fierce debate over the Congressional Gag rule that was in effect from 1836 to 1844. Now, before we get into the book, let me provide some context here.  After the Revolution, most of the Northern states abolished slavery, with New Jersey being the last in 1804.  While most “Yankees” considered slavery distasteful, they also thought that they had no right or ability to meddle in the affairs of Southern States. 

Abolitionists were unpopular, seen as moralizing busybodies, and, to be blunt, Southern propaganda was in full swing, convincing Northerners that slavery wasn’t that bad and most slaves were happy.  Plus, everyone was sure that eventually slavery would die away, being an archaic institution that belonged to the past.  So why rock the boat? 

Abolitionists knew better, but also found themselves ice skating uphill. So they decided on a three pronged strategy, first focus on countering and disproving Southern propaganda, second on writing slave owners directly and trying to convince them to free their slaves and lastly petitioning Congress to ban slavery and the slave trade in Washington D.C feeling that the capital of a nation that was supposed to been founded in liberty was no place for a slave market. 

It’s that last tactic that concerns us the most, because these petitions outraged Southern Congressmen so much that they compelled the House of Representatives to pass a gag rule in 1836, a rule that automatically prevented any petition requesting any limitation on slavery from being even considered. Now, back then, the right of petition was a much bigger deal because of the limits on communication technology; it was harder to be heard by the federal government, but anyone was allowed to send a petition to their Representative and be assured that Congress would at least spend a couple of minutes on it, even if they decided to tell you no. 

But now this right was being curtailed to protect the feelings and interests of one part of American society over the rest. This did not sit well with many Congressmen, among them John Quincy Adams. Now, John Quincy Adams is himself somewhat forgotten despite being one of the most distinguished and perhaps talented civil servants America ever had. He served as an ambassador to almost every great European power, Secretary of State, and even as President before being elected to Congress.  His father was John Adams,  the second President of the United States. He was also, at this point, a cranky old man who was done with everyone else’s crap, and it shows in this book. 

The Honorable Representative Adams would make it his personal mission to either have the gag rule rescinded or ensure that every Southern Congress member regretted its existence.  He did this with the kind of single-mindedness and sly intelligence that only a learned man with decades of experience can pull off.  He wasn’t alone in this; other representatives like Joshua Giddings and William Slade, men all but forgotten, would close ranks with him and fight in bitter debates and endless parliamentary maneuverings

Twice, the Southern members of Congress would try to get Adams censored, which back then meant you would resign from Congress, and once they tried to remove him from heading the Committee on Foreign Relations.  That last one was especially galling to a modern reader as the allegation was that he was too soft on brown-skinned people. Both these attempts failed miserably as Adams outmaneuvered them. They did get Giddings censored, making him resign his seat, but his district was so enraged by this that they sent him right back to Congress with a crushing majority. 

That basically reflects the Northern reaction to the gag rule: while Northern Congressmen would yield to Southern demands in the name of keeping their political parties viable on a national level, the Northern voter grew increasingly upset and angry at this gag, viewing it as a restriction on their rights in the name of Southern comfort. This ironically made Northerners more open to abolitionists' arguments as the undercurrent of “If they’re willing to do this to us now, what else are they willing to do?” bubbled under every debate.  

This is especially ironic, as the Southerners were dead certain that banning discussion in Congress would kill the debate and end any anti-slavery discussion in society.  Which, forgive my bluntness, is so incredibly stupid you wonder just what was in the booze they were swilling back then? 

Now the book itself clocks in at about 577 pages in paperback, although the main text only goes to page 515, with the rest being notes and index. It is a dense and, at some points, dry read as well.  Although there is a bit of dry humor that runs through the book. Dr. Miller is incredibly thorough in covering the background and context of all stages of this battle in American history and in covering the backgrounds of all the key players.  So if you’re not ready for a deep dive into an often glossed-over part of American history, this isn’t your book.  This is not light reading. 

On the other hand, if you want to learn more about John Quincy Adams, the abolitionist movement of the 1820s and 1830s, and the various players in the drama that fought over the gag rule, some of whom would later emerge as key figures in the American Civil War, this is the book for you. It’s also an interesting look at how Southern actions turned the Northern people against slavery through their overbearing demands that they be held above judgment or reproach. I would encourage readers to think about how making demands like that can backfire. 

So, for someone who is a serious reader of American History and is looking to dive deep and learn, this book is an A.  For anyone else, this book would likely come in at C.  So know what you’re getting into before you pick this book up, but I would consider it a good book for those who want to get serious about their history.  

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