Book · Book · 1992
Pass it on
Unto the Sons
69Worth an evening.
A patient family history. The particular village matters more than the later reputation.
The review
This is how an ethnic history should be written when a novel would invent too much: follow one bloodline without pretending it is the whole people, and do not start with the famous crimes. Talese has the discipline to stay with work and kinship. The reader who wanted The Godfather will be bored. Good.
Read it as a model for your own family, whatever the nationality. A people is a set of names and jobs before it is a mood.
Journal
Keep Unto the Sons in the record.
No house has filed a sentence for this yet.
Live Historic number 69. Yours can differ.
The glance
Piety is the thin one.
Can conscience actually stop someone, or is reverence only in the shot so it can be mocked?
This phone is set for a grown person, just me. Change the ages.
Consider this
Foxfire
78 instead of 69
Foxfire is still a history book, and it scores 78 instead of 69. What you gain is industry: Hog dressing, cabins, looms, rifles, and the order of the work.
The eight
- 7Industry
Tailoring, mason work, and the trades the family actually practiced.
- 8Household
He is writing fathers and sons on purpose. The title is the assignment.
- 5Piety
The church is part of the village order, not Talese's sermon.
- 6Courage
The courage is mostly endurance and emigration, told without swagger.
- 6Republic
Italian towns in America, with their own ranks and obligations.
- 6Temperance
He does not turn the family into a crime opera or a success poster.
- 8Truth
Names, voyages, and work are specific.
- 9Stewardship
The book is itself the handoff he did not want lost.
Where to read
Finding the page.
Live Historic · Unto the Sons · 69IMDb
