Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford Published: 2024 Read from: 10 Aug to 20 Aug My rating: 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟
See, this is what happens when you procrastinate.
I've been putting off reviewing Cahokia Jazz, which I finished a couple of months ago, because I wanted to tie it in to knowing a teeny bit about Cahokia from The Dawn of Everything and my subsequent discovery of Red Plenty, also by Francis Spufford, which was a terrific read too.
And then I discover, today, because he rounded up all his reviews of the previous 12 months, that an internet God had read and reviewed it a year ago. Here's Cory Doctorow's lede:
Francis Spufford's Cahokia Jazz is a fucking banger: it's a taut, unguessable whuddunit, painted in ultrablack noir, set in an alternate Jazz Age in a world where indigenous people never ceded most the west to the USA. It's got gorgeously described jazz music, a richly realized modern indigenous society, and a spectacular romance. It's amazing
Read the whole thing, which is better then I would produce now. Perhaps the only thing I have in common with Doctorow, aside from loving the book, is this:
Most of what I know about Cahokia ... I learned from David Graeber and David Wengrow's brilliant work of heterodox history, The Dawn of Everything
I thought Cahokia Jazz might be Doctorow's No. 1 in popularity, but it is only the first one in his list. That means I have to look through the rest for some new reads for myself.
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