of fiction and nonfiction. Citing a few celebrity best sellers can't actually exceed the whole glut of books that are released each year, can it? Citation needed.

Of course we have to keep up with current fiction. But biographies are always in demand, right up there with the best sellers. When we take our selection courses, we learn how to select biographies for our readers. This may not be a citation, but it was always true in my experience.

I grew up surrounded by colonial homes and furniture. I did restoration work on both the homes and later some furniture.
Following the shipwrights, carpenters and then cabinet makers taught me a great deal more about America than I found in the history books.
Having been in the Adam's homes early in my childhood, I had a penchant to learn more about John and his wife and son.
The first biographical materials were enlightening, but mostly admiration. As time went on, the biographies become more telling.
Same for the other prominent Americans. They are in our soul and we learn about ourselves by reflecting on how their humanity shaped our society.
It is not pleasant to realize Andrew Jackson as fallible when we all remember Johhny Horton memorialized the Battle of New Orleans.
Biography, warts and all, is a view through the eyes of our history not welcomed by our citizenry happy with the myths of their childhood skim of what made America great.
Appreciate your dive into Hudson.

what is called History in high school classes would more accurately be called 'patriotism.'

There is a preference now for primary source materials -- diaries, logs, court documents, personal letters. I find that stuff much more enlightening than summaries of it. Researching history is often like solving a crime. You have to look for motivations, for what's missing and for what detractors had to say.

Two books I read recently are excellent in this respect:

1. Soul by Soul -- uses correspondence, ads, oral testimonies and business records to present an unflinching look at slavery in America.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/390812.Soul_by_Soul

2. A reprint of Louis Legrand Noble's "The Life and Works of Thomas Cole", first published in 1853 -- Remarkable for its use of Cole's diary entries and personal letters which provide a very modern, primary source, window onto Cole. As a writer currently obsessed with the genre and impact of biographies, the format of the book was as interesting as its subject. My knock is that Noble's interpretation and bridge materials often repeated what you could read for yourself more directly from Cole. To his credit, Noble does not soften or excuse some of Cole's rougher edges and allows the reader to take it all in. Cole presents himself very differently to clients, patrons, his parents and his landlord. It is a fascinating read and very modern in sensibility.

Interestingly, I found a Cole like South American painting, sadly unsigned, that I kept when downsizing.
I bet that is an interesting expose of a Cole with which I lack familiarity.

It relays his racist and elitist attitudes but it was written in 1853 so the author is equally unenlightened.

This was my review with some excerpts:

I knew relatively little about him before reading a reprint of Louis Legrand Noble's "The Life and Works of Thomas Cole", first published in 1853. The book is remarkable for its use of Cole's diary entries and personal letters which provide a very modern, primary source, window onto Cole. As a writer currently obsessed with the genre and impact of biographies, the format of the book was as interesting as its subject. Noble's interpretation and bridge materials often repeated what you could read for yourself more directly from Cole. Noble does not soften or excuse some of Cole's rougher edges.

Cole sees himself as English; he was born there and the USA may have seemed a temporary entity, especially before and during the War of 1812. This is not unique to Cole -- before the War of 1812 the term "Americans" referred only to Indigenous Americans. His anglophile mindset comes across most strongly in letters written to his parents. I was reminded of an observation made by Michael Myers, the Canadian comedian / actor, 'No one is more English than English expats.' Cole writes from Rome, March 4, 1832:

>...in this land of milk and honey, where you have to pass day after day without being able to get either of them, and to travel through countries where coffee is known only in name, and tea utterly unknown; where shepherds of the hills wear skins, and are no more civilized than Indians, and somewhat more stupid and superstitious....There is as much safety in traveling here, as in America or England, and the peasants are infinitely more civil and obliging.
...
You would laugh heartily to see modern Roman labourers "at work". They have wheelbarrows that hold about a good shovel full; these they load half full...lifting slowly about a spoonful of earth at a time, resting some five minutes between each effort.<

He was banished from Florence for "breaking his cane across the flanks of a horse [of a mounted Dragoon ] that came too close". Cole is more careful and likable in his letters to clients. He specifically mentions the building of the railroad which is 200 yards from my home.

>They are cutting down all the trees in the beautiful valley on which I have looked so often with a loving eye. This throws quite a gloom over my spring anticipations.< -3/26/1836

>After I had sealed my last letter, I was afraid what I had said about the tree-destroyers might be understood in a more serious light than I intended. My maledictions are gentle ones, and I do not know that I could wish them any thing worse than that bareness of mind, that sterile desolation of the soul, in which sensibility to the beauty of nature cannot take root...[some trees are to be saved] ...Thank them for that. If I live to be old enough, I may sit down under some bush, the last left in the utilitarian world, and feel thankful that intellect in its march has spared one vestige of the ancient forest for me to die by.< -3/28/1836

Cole is a contemporary of Washington Irving (1783-1859), who was similarly obsessed with the Catskill Mountains. While Cole champions American landscapes, Irving is first American to make a fortune writing fiction and remains far better known.

Overall the book provides a unique look not only into Cole but into the era and places he lived in. He comes across not as altogether likable or unlikable but as an artist chasing perfection and compelled to create. # # #

"Literature is a description of the life of the time during which it is written." While I have never forgotten it, I have modified it somewhat in, "the writings of the times are an author's attempt to interpret what they've encountered and share to the best of their ability."
During my antiquing years I developed a fondness for ephemera. I bought the remnants of an estate of a Rowena Huthchinson formerly of Salem, MA.
In it was her collection of correspondence with the diaspora of her family, descendents of Samuel, a great, great grandfather.
The letters were shared during early telephone times, but I suspect privacy was a necessity; justifying pen and ink.
Many letters were 30 pages or longer. Letters can be rewritten, as you noted, so I thought deeply about the intimations unexpressed as these shared conversations were very diplomatic.
Your attention to the transition of Americans to becoming truly American doesn't happen until maybe Emerson and Thoreau.
I bet you are enjoying your studies and I'm happy you shared.

you learn not only about the subject of the book, but about his or her contemporaries.

The alternative view of history, eras and cultures is high level -- averages, "normal", big events, "great men" -- none of which is all that relatable or true for individuals.

I also tend to read multiple biographies of the same person (for example, Fitzgerald, Kerouac, Nancy Mitford). I do not like when the author tends to conflate the subject of the biography with what the author's written. That comes off more to me like a book report (I don't mean that the author's works should be absent from the biography, quite the contrary, but for example, there is a biography of Edith Wharton by Hermione Lee that at times doesn't even seem to be about Edith Wharton).