Ruminations: Two Remarkable Books

I want to recommend two books that I believe you will enjoy reading. They both score, at least in my opinion, as 10’s in terms of Entertainment and Education.

By John A. Schwarz

I want to recommend two books that I believe you will enjoy reading. They both score, at least in my opinion, as 10’s in terms of Entertainment and Education.

The first book is “April 1865” by Jay Winik. The author makes the case that April 1865 was the most important month in the history of the United States. When you finish it, you realize he is absolutely right. It’s a quick read for two reasons. First, it is not a tome. Second, you can’t put it down! You will not believe what you learn in this short history.

I’ll give you two facts that blew me away.

Fact 1. I have always considered General James Longstreet to be one of the top four generals in the Civil War, with General Robert E. Lee being the greatest. President Lincoln, naturally, went to Lee to lead the Union armies at the outset of the war. Lee, however, couldn’t bring himself to fight against his family and friends in Virginia. The other two great Civil War generals were Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman.

At the Appomattox Farm House, Lee was waiting for Grant to arrive so he could surrender. Longstreet went out to greet Grant and to escort him into the house. 

Are you sitting? Longstreet was Best Man at Grant’s wedding. 

Longstreet, after Lee, was the most popular and admired general in the Confederate Army. After the war he became a pariah south of the Potomac River for two reasons: a) He became a Republican, and b) he converted to Catholicism. (Personally, I’ve always thought that those were two great career moves.) Three years after the war, Grant sent Longstreet to Turkey to serve as our Ambassador.

Fact 2. I always thought the surrender at Appomattox on April 9, 1865 was the official end of the Civil War. By reading this book, I learned that two and a half weeks later General Joseph Johnston surrendered a very large army to General Sherman at Durham Station (now Durham), North Carolina. Sherman was in Raleigh and Johnson was in Hillsborough, about 37 miles apart. They met several times there, and the surrender took place at Bennett Farm House in Durham on April 26, 1865.

I spent four years at Duke as an undergraduate and have spent an incredible amount of time at Duke since then. Duke is about two miles from the Bennett Farm House and yet I didn’t learn that the Civil War ended in Durham 17 days after the surrender at Appomattox on April 9, 1865 until I read the book. I could have walked there in 35 minutes! It’s an extraordinary book.

My second recommendation is “Proof of Heaven,” which is currently at the top of the non-fiction bestseller list. It may stay there for years, maybe forever, for all I know. The author is Eben Alexander, who grew up in Winston-Salem. He graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1976. He then went to Duke University Medical School. After receiving his degree, Dr. Alexander interned at Duke and then spent many years teaching and performing surgery at Harvard. He is one of the top neurosurgeons in the country, probably one of the best in the world.

In his account, Dr. Alexander writes that he was an Episcopalian of the C & E (Christmas & Easter) variety. Being a scientist, he was always skeptical of the NDE’s (near-death experiences) he would hear about from time to time. I won’t ruin the read by going any further.

Everyone thinks about what happens after life ends on earth. Most of us believe in heaven. No one knows exactly what it’s like, of course, and there is always that lurking feeling that creeps into your consciousness from time to time that maybe we are wrong. We always immediately disregard that thought, but it is unsettling to say the least. 

The people who have reported experiencing an NDE can frequently be dismissed as wackos, publicity seekers, and/or outright charlatans. Dr. Alexander is none of the above, far from it. As you approach the end of the book you, at least I did, realize that this is the most important book you’ll ever read. From this point forward, anyone who reads “Proof of Heaven” will be comforted for the rest of his or her life when those doubts arise regarding life after death. There is a God, and he’s prepared a wonderful existence for you for eternity, writes Dr. Alexander.

If you, for some reason, only read one book the rest of your life, read “Proof of Heaven.”