Football in History: Kansas vs. Missouri

Aside from American History, one of my other big loves is watching college football.  Being from Hawaii, naturally I always root for the Warriors; and being that my girlfriend is a USC alumnus, I'm also a big Trojan supporter by association.  However, I also love the history and rivalries behind the teams and the regional pride that flames the passion for each team.  Anyway, today is one of the last days of the season in college football, one in which many team rivalry games occur.  One of the longstanding rivalries in college football is between the Missouri Tigers and the Kansas Jayhawks.  The two teams played against each other again, this morning, in one of their many wars dating back to 1891.

While this rivalry isn't as high profile as say Michigan/Ohio State or Oklahoma/Texas I did stumble across a really interesting article that connected the Missouri/Kansas rivalry to the 19th century skirmishes between slaveholding Missouri raiders and abolitionist Kansas settlers.  It's worth a read.

USA Today article:  Rivalry between Missouri and Kansas traces its roots to Civil War period

Whether it's a reach or not, I do love that the author had the thought to trace this connection and possibly turn some sports fans on to history. Of course, after reading this the big question you must have is, "Who did you root for?"  Well, given the context of this post, I would have to say Kansas.  I mean, it just seems the "right" thing to do.  Unfortunately, today, the bad guys won.

Reading Now: Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell

Aside from the usual Hawaiiana fare, what I'm reading currently for my personal love of American History is Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation.  So far, I'm on page 91 of this 255 page book, and I am enjoying it very heartily.  More than anything this book makes me want to take a vacation to the mainland and visit all of the great historical sites in our country.  I've already gleamed a few potential book reads for the future, the most notable so far being Henry and Clara by Thomas Mallon. 

Actually, the biggest reason that I wanted to read Sarah Vowell is because of my connection with Hawaii Book Blog.  I saw her appear on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, talking about her latest book The Wordy Shipmates and found out she was the voice of the sister in one of my Top-3 Pixar movies: The Incredibles.  The thing that most intrigued me, however, was the research she was doing for her next book.  She told Jon that her next book was probably going to be about Hawai'i.  So, in anticipation of her future release, I wanted to get familiar with her work.  Turns out, she is a big history geek (like me) and now I am very greatly anticipating her take on the 50th state.

To-Read: The Imperial Cruise by James Bradley

I'm going to use this blog as a way to make a list of the U.S. history books I want to read, as well as a way to list other things I've read.  I think I covered the bulk of that in my post below.  So, keeping with this idea I would like to eventually read this book:

The Imperial Curse by James Bradley.

The stimulus for this desire is from a New York Times article I read about the book.  The link can be found here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/19/books/19book.html

And also this excerpt from the book, also from the NY Times.  It's an interesting thesis.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/19/books/excerpt-imperial-cruise.html?_r=1&pagewanted=1

No longer a doormat!

For the longest time I've used this blogger page as a quick doorstop on the way to Hawaii Book Blog (for anyone who happens to check my profile).  I primarily signed up to Blogger so that I could more easily follow and comment on various blogs that were on here and hopefully interest a few people to check out Hawaii Book Blog (forever now known as HBB). 

Recently, I've been doing a lot of Hawaiiana reading for HBB.  Admittedly, prior to blogging about Hawaiian books, I must admit that my knowledge of this specific niche was very vague and scattered.  It's been a great experience for me to slowly immerse myself in the literature of the Islands, and learn even more about the culture of the people and locations where I grew up.  However, this isn't my only interest.  One of my personal loves is History.  This is one reason I can attach myself to Hawaii books so easily, as Hawai'i has a wonderful history dating back to the settling of the islands by Polynesians, through the missionary period, the tragic overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom, Territory Days and modern Statehood.  But I am especially fond of American History, and while I'm not trying to do anything specific with that here, I thought it might be nice (primarily for myself) to catalogue my journey through learning more and more about U.S. History. 

So, I will be using "Speaking Ill of the Emperor" to talk about the books I am reading; any interesting web sites I come across; wild tangents from books that lead me to more books, more literature or more websites; any rare instances of travel where I get to experience American history firsthand; random musings; and really anything else that comes to fruition.  What brought this on, you may ask?  Well, I was reading one of my Presidents books (one which I'll cite later when I have it with me), and glancing through one of the more lesser known Presidents, I came across a timeline of events which had a bunch of interesting "wars," skirmishes and other political battles that I hadn't retained or never heard of--and I wanted to learn more about them.  There's so much out there that I want to learn about, but a lot of times I tend to forget them, or I read something and then lose it.  This blog ideally will be a way for me to put all of my thoughts together, all of my notes, my learning, and potential education into one place where I can easily reference it with the proper labels, a quick search, and just to keep a diary of my progress in the education of this, the greatest country on God's green Earth.

Hawaii Book Blog

I would like to take this opportunity to invite you to visit Hawaii Book Blog! Our goal is to spread the word about Hawaii's books, authors and literary events to not only readers in the 50th state, but book-lovers all over the world. By focusing on Hawaii's authors we hope to spread the Aloha of our literature abroad and help people to better understand Hawaii's culture and its people.

We are always interested in networking with people, in and out of Hawaii, who are interested in books. Visit the site or drop me an e-mail at aalba@hawaiibookblog.com.