Big Things Come in Micro Packages!

I found Kierner's Scandal at Bizarre to be an absolutely scintillating read.

As an aspiring historian, it is fascinating and inspiring that such a powerful, broad, and entangled work of history can be derived from one single event involving just three people on a single evening in rural Virginia.  From that single point the story personally touches a President, First Lady, Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, and revolutionary hero Patrick Henry to name but a few.  While these participants give it a celebrity factor, they are but the icing on the cake.

The elements of social history are covered in both bredth and depth to include, race, gender, economics, politics and class.  The exploration of the use of language and various forms of communication, including gossip, letters, the press and popular novels, provides a deeper understanding of the vast reach and impact of this singular event.

In Kierner's own words her primary purpose was to use, "...the Randolph's story to gain insight into the complexity and contradictions of American society and culture in a crucial transitional era." While the book explores numerous points of "transition" the ones I found most significant were those involving power.

For example, the foundation's for the Scandal start with the pre-revolutionary gentry society of Virginia with one system of hierarchy and authority.  This system begins to unravel as the result of another transition of power, that of the independence of the colonies from the British empire.  As the story moves along, you continue to see various other examples of power transitions, including the weakening of slavery, North versus South, Federalist versus Republican, and the slow but steady closing of the gender power gap to name just a few.  The opportunities to extrapolate these transitions revealed through Scandal at the Bizarre  are extensive and a testament to the potential power and impact of a micro history.

As inspiring as this book was, it is also daunting.  One only has to take a look through the exhaustive bibliography to realize that micro must not be mistaken for little.  Micro works can be great works!