Quiet Valor
Unsung Architects of the American Promise
Through its brief portraits of remarkable individuals, Quiet Valor issues a compelling argument for rethinking whom society chooses to remember.
Larry Nouvel’s illuminating biographical compendium Quiet Valor celebrates a selection of twentieth-century American figures.
The central fifteen chapters, each devoted to a single individual, are compressed biographies of people from a variety of professions and circumstances. They include scientists who advanced their fields without public acclaim, legislators who reshaped American life, community leaders with radiant local influence, and women who stood up for their beliefs, like Claudette Colvin, who stood firm in moments of moral conviction. Understated heroism is attributed to each subject. Each person’s life is also placed in broader historical context, with notes about scientific innovations and struggles for workers’ rights and civil rights playing in. Their personal accomplishments and the ongoing legacies of their deeds play out against these concise backdrops.
Written in the present tense, the prose is immersive and narrative in style. This sometimes jars against the compressed structure of the mini-biographies, though—some of which hinge on single, decisive acts. Further, some of the selected subjects are quite familiar, despite the book’s focus on lauding undercelebrated figures: Fred Rogers, the creator and host of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, is included, as is Henrietta Lacks, about whom much has been written elsewhere.
But because the book resists a single definition of heroism, its collective suggestion that valor can be intellectual, moral, physical, or accidental is compelling, as is its implication that recognition is neither the aim nor the measure of a person of valor. Indeed, because of its thematic flexibility, its disparate portraits are made to coexist quite well, united by its overall tone and purpose. Its work is also well supported by credible references to archival records, contemporary journalism, and scholarly histories; its end notes include helpful clarifications and brief elaborations on particular points.
Though its prose is accessible and informative on the whole, it is impeded throughout by clipped sentences and occasional one- or two-word lines that disrupt its flow. Still, through its brief portraits of remarkable individuals, the book issues a compelling argument for rethinking whom society chooses to remember. Its celebratory work is somewhat undermined by its conclusion, though, which lists another twenty figures deemed worthy of lifting up but who are treated in a quite brief and perfunctory manner.
Quiet Valor is a collection of concise biographies devoted to twentieth-century Americans whose lives are said to embody heroism.
Reviewed by
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