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	# 2019-05-13 - The Last American by John Ames Mitchell

	I read this novel based on a recommendation from an online user.
	Surprisingly prescient considering the book was written in 1889. The
	story is set in the USA in the year 2951. At this time the USA
	empire has fallen due to several factors including climate change and
	inadequate education. It felt eerie that the book used "climatic
	changes", nearly the same term that we use today. It is an
	epistolary novel inspired by Persian Letters. In fact the story
	involves Persian explorers who come from a renaissance part of the
	world, coming out of the dark ages with bits of preserved historic
	knowledge, and observing but comically misinterpreting USA art and
	"culture."

	Below are a few notes i took from reading this book.

	Prosperity was their god, with cunning and invention for his
	prophets. Their restless activity no Persian can comprehend. This
	vast country was alive with noisy industries, the nervous Mehrikans
	darting with inconceivable rapidity from one city to another by a
	system of locomotion we can only guess at.

	Some of these appliances exist to-day in Persian museums. The
	superstitions of our ancestors allowed their secrets to be lost
	during those dark centuries from which at last we are waking.

	Climatic changes, the like of which no other land ever experienced,
	began at that period, and finished in less than ten years a work made
	easy by nervous natures and rapid lives. The temperature would skip
	in a single day from burning heat to winter's cold.

	How alike the houses! How monotonous!

	So, also, were the occupants. They thought alike, worked alike, ate,
	dressed and conversed alike. They read the same books; they fashioned
	their garments as directed, with no regard for the size or figure of
	the individual...

	Nofuhl says the religious rites of the Mehrikans were devoid of
	character. There were many religious beliefs, all complicated and
	insignificant variations one from another, each sect having its own
	temples and refusing to believe as the others. This is amusing to a
	Persian, but mayhap was a serious matter with them. One day in each
	week they assembled, the priests reading long moral lectures written
	by themselves, with music by hired singers. They then separated,
	taking no thought of temple or priest for another seven days.
	Nōfūhl says they were not a religious people.

	These vast fortunes soon dominated all things, even the seat of
	government and the courts of Justice. Tricks of finance brought
	fabulous gains. Young men became demoralized. For sober industry with
	its moderate profits was ridiculed.

	author: Mitchell, John Ames, 1845-1918
	detail: gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/The_Last_American_(novel)
	LOC: PZ3.M694 L14
	source: gopher://gopher.pglaf.org/1/7/4/8/7485/
	tags: ebook,fiction,sci-fi
	title: The Last American

	# Tags

	ebook
	fiction
	sci-fi