{"id":15418,"date":"2016-12-21T08:16:46","date_gmt":"2016-12-21T15:16:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=15418"},"modified":"2016-12-26T08:14:40","modified_gmt":"2016-12-26T15:14:40","slug":"parretts-book-a-good-brisk-stroll-through-montana-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2016\/12\/parretts-book-a-good-brisk-stroll-through-montana-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Parrett’s book a good, brisk stroll through state’s history"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"parrett-book\"<\/a>Montana Then and Now<\/em>, by Aaron Parrett, Bangtail Press, 2014. 187 pages, $16.95.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I went into This House of Books, the new independent, cooperative bookstore in downtown Billings, determined to buy a Christmas present for somebody.<\/p>\n

Instead, I bought Aaron Parrett\u2019s \u201cMontana Then and Now\u201d for me. That\u2019s usually how my Christmas shopping goes. In this case I blame Parrett. I had read his \u201cMontana Americana Music<\/a>\u201d earlier this year and quickly became an admirer of his writing and his deep knowledge of this state.<\/p>\n

I hope that also explains why I\u2019m reviewing a book published in 2014. A good book is a good book, and if I get the urge to tell people about a book I\u2019m a little late in discovering, where\u2019s the harm in that?<\/p>\n

The premise of \u201cMontana Then and Now\u201d is simple enough, as so many good ideas are. Montana Territory was established in 1864, so Parrett set out to examine how it had changed, and what themes had remained constant, in the intervening 150 years.<\/p>\n

In fewer than 200 pages he somehow manages to touch on all the main points of Montana history, introduce the reader to dozens of public figures, characters and scoundrels worth knowing, and to convey with some depth what it actually feels like to live here.<\/p>\n

He has a generally progressive point of view\u2014but then so had Montana for much of its history\u2014and he rightly dwells on the new Montana Constitution of 1972, with its unique enumeration of the right to \u201ca clean and healthful environment\u201d and its explicit guarantees of the right to privacy.<\/p>\n

And though he doesn\u2019t shy away from the more unpleasant aspects of Montana history, neither does he fail to note how far we\u2019ve come as a people:<\/p>\n

\u201cOn hundred and fifty years ago, slavery persisted in at least half the country. Even in Montana, African-Americans were disenfranchised and American Indians were treated as hostile enemies. From the first decades of our existence as a territory we have moved from state-sponsored racism in miscegenation laws and Indian policy to a present day in which prejudice lingers but is no longer the foundation of law.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>Some battles continue, but in a new guise. \u201cEven though the struggle between miners and the corporation that eventually assumed nearly total control of the state\u2014the Anaconda Company\u2014is a thing of the past,\u201d Parrett writes, \u201ccorporations and grassroots coalitions of Montana citizens continue to fight over the future of the state. The battle has shifted from labor versus capital to development versus the environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

The book is full of such insights. It is also well larded with obscure, revealing yarns and short compelling digressions, mini-chapters of Montana trivia breaking up the larger narrative. My favorite digression was a two-page discussion on the name of Montana.<\/p>\n

Parrett says there is a widespread misperception\u2014and you can put me down as one of those holding that misperception\u2014that the name \u201cMontana\u201d is of Spanish origin. His examination of the subject is brief and compelling, the sort of thing you\u2019d want to read aloud at a gathering of Montanans.<\/p>\n

Another bit of Montana trivia is titled \u201cHow Did People Get to Montana?\u201d It begins with a look at migrations from the Old World to the New, and ends with this observation: \u201cIn 2014, Montana\u2019s relative inaccessibility remains one of its charms, or, depending on whom you talk to, one of its defects.\u201d<\/p>\n

In pursuit of a short, brisk read, Parrett often uses the device of raising and then answering his own questions. They include: \u201cHow many whites were in the territory in 1864?\u201d \u201cWhat did land cost in 1864 as compared to now?\u201d \u201cHow much did food and other sundries cost in the early 1860s in Montana?\u201d and \u201cHow do Montanans in 2014 spend their leisure dollars?\u201d<\/p>\n

That discussion of leisure spending, by the way, includes a good, compact history of alcohol consumption, live music and gambling in Montana, a frontier state that has always enjoyed its rough pleasures.<\/p>\n

After examining the changes and constants of the past 150 years in some detail, Parrett gets to the heart of the matter in a big-picture afterword.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat makes Montana so immensely valuable,\u201d he writes, \u201care all those things that you can\u2019t put a price on\u2014that comfort in relative solitude, that reassurance of knowing, as the little bumper sticker enjoins, you can still \u2018get lost in Montana.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Above all, he says, in a world that grows more homogenous by the day and where \u201cevery street in America looks the same in an unfamiliar way,\u201d we feel this \u201cdislocation\u201d less intensely in Montana because of our vast open spaces.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur story is so recent,\u201d he says, \u201cso shallow, that you hardly have to dig before reaching bedrock. Our proximity to the past here keeps us closer to each other than in other places, more in touch with 1864 than we might imagine.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Montana Then and Now, by Aaron Parrett, Bangtail Press, 2014. 187 pages, $16.95. I went into This House of Books, the new independent, cooperative bookstore in downtown Billings, determined to buy a Christmas present for somebody.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[4780,612,5302],"class_list":["post-15418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","tag-aaron-parrett","tag-bangtail-press","tag-montana-history","prominence-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15418\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}