In the 1970s my father, mother, sister and I moved from Boston, MA to Los Angeles. Our mode of transportation was a Ford Country Squire station wagon that, if it had seatbelts, were not used. Hopefully it goes without saying that there were no car seats even though I was three and my sister six. The real problem wasn’t the lack of safety features in the car, but that it had no air conditioning. And we drove west in the summer.
The relatively primitive standard of living in the 1970s is a regular driver of conversation with my six-year old daughter and three-year old son today, simply because they have no idea. The world they’ve entered into is another century in the literal sense, but it’s similarly other in the figurative sense.
The conversations with my kids came to mind a great deal while reading Washington Post columnist David Von Drehle’s excellent new book, The Book of Charlie: Wisdom From the Remarkable American Life Of a 109-Year Old Man. Though people of all ages have and will enjoy the book (it’s selling very well), Von Drehle wrote this slim accounting of an amazing life, one “bereft of wizards, crime-solving orphans, time travel, or empathetic talking spiders,” for his kids. While it’s “not the book they asked for” as evidenced by what’s not in it, “it is a book they will need.” By knowing a little about the life of Charles Herbert White, Von Drehle’s kids will know better how to approach the inevitable highs and lows of the human existence that can’t be wished away or made to vanish via technology. Von Drehle gave his kids, kids in general, and people in general a how-to on life, and an important look back to the way life used to be. Hopefully it will alert them to how good they have it now. And is life ever good now. Read The Book of Charlie to see why.
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