The white man made the mistake of letting me read his history books. He made the mistake of teaching me that Patrick Henry was a patriot and George Washington – wasn’t nothing non-violent about old Pat or George Washington.
History Books
In 1965, when I was fourteen, I read my first adult novel; it was a historical novel about Katherine of Aragon, and I could not put it down. When I finished it, I had to find out the true facts behind the story and if people really carried on like that in those days. So I began to read proper history books, and found that they did!
To me, it was a sad fate to have been born into a period and a world where everything was in tip-top order, and the only real excitement was to be found in history books and occasionally also in the paper.
The people who read the history books tend to have a natural zeal and are alarmingly well-read.
I think of an intellectual as just being bookish, being interested in history books, utopian ideas, that kind of thing.