Why I love historical nonfiction

I've been reading biographies of colonial- and revolutionary-era leaders for the past year or two. Hamilton, Arnold, the first four presidents... all have been consumed to some extent by yours truly.

I'm working my way through a James Monroe biography--I started it an embarrassingly long time ago, but with the life stuff that's got in the way I haven't had the motivation to pick up the ~600 page, pretty dry piece.

But I'm back into it, and I read a paragraph that just encapsulates much of what I love about reading this sort of book. Here's the paragraph portion:

On arriving at Highlands in August, Monroe was cheered to find his wife and Maria Hester in good health. He had little chance, however, to look after his plantation, for he had been home only a few days when he was knocked from his horse by a tree limb, suffering a bruised shoulder and a deep cut on his leg which confined him for nearly a month.

OK. So why did this pair of sentences stick out to me? Because there are so many interesting things that indicate how different things were then. Listing some of them:

• His estate was called "Highlands". Not enough places have names nowadays in my book (although maybe all estates do, and I just am not exposed to enough estates). But it's not even "The Highlands". Seriously classy name.
• He didn't know whether his wife and daughter were healthy. While I think we're all pleased to see our relatives "looking good" when we visit them, it's so bizarre to me that the uncertainty over health matters was so serious then... communications moved so slowly.
• Monroe, who was Secretary of State at the time of his visit, was planning on managing his estate during his return visit. The US was on the brink of war with Great Britain, but the guy had to make sure that the crops were on schedule and the slaves were managed properly. I know that George Bush goes to a ranch to, like, clear brush or something, but Monroe's financial health was dependent on the efficiency of his land, and it's amazing that he had so many domestic responsibilities at the time he was helping steer the entire country.
• He was knocked to the ground by a tree limb? This is a guy who grew up riding horses. He presumably knew his estate well, too. But he gets knocked down by a branch? I'd be interested to know the deets here, but he sounds like a bit of a clutz.
• He was confined for a month. Again: this was probably the second most powerful man in the USA. The year was 1811. Even non-students of history should remember the general timeframe of the War of 1812, and it wasn't a huge shock that conflict was coming. But in spite of the dark clouds on the horizon, the only option to treat Monroe was a month of bed rest. Damn.

I read this type of book to satisfy my curiosity (I knew very little of what distinguished Monroe from Madison (other than the Federalist Papers, of course) before reading about the two men, and now they seem as different as night and day), but I also do it because it requires some mental discipline. Every page, every paragraph, every sentence has a variety of mental ratholes that I could explore if I let myself... and I don't have a year to read a book (it wouldn't satisfy my curiosity quickly enough). At the same time, I can't just gloss over the stuff that's foreign or strange to me, because some of it might be important to the next chapter/page/paragraph/sentence. Compared to the other activities I've currently got going on in my life (spending too much money on clothes, spending lots of effort going out, and spending too much time on MySpace) I always get a good feeling when I chip away on my history books. Plus they make a marvelous sleep aid, to be honest.