Life is so good by George Dawson and Richard Glaubman: book review

In Life is So Good (2000) Glaubman, a high school teacher, has convinced Dawson, a 101-year-old Black American, to record his memoirs. Dawson was born in 1898 in Texas, in a time of slavery and segregation. He worked at a young age to support his family and missed out on schooling. He decides at 98 years of age to go to school every day to learn to read.

Glaubman captures Dawson’s voice and his view of history and the world. It is his eyewitness account of wars, presidents, inventions, and freedom. He recalls the moment when Jackie Robinson became the first black professional baseball player: “when Jackie Robinson started with the Dodgers, it was as if life had changed, at least for the colored”.

He recalls seeing his first car in 1913; it was a Model T Ford “all black and shiny” with “a big steering stick that came up out of the floor” instead of a steering wheel. When he drove it, he saw that the big cottonwood tree had “popped out” in front of him. He didn’t use the brakes “since the tree did such a good job of stopping the car”. When he traveled to see snow for the first time and got ‘wet through and cold”, his opinion was similar to mine: “I had to wonder why I came so far to see snow. I would rather look a Texan rattlesnake in the eye.”

He tells of Nixon and Watergate, the advent of cinema, air-conditioning and the aeroplane, prohibition, Bonnie and Clyde’s death, Kennedy’s assassination, the birth of the National Geographic magazine, and civil rights marches in the 1960s.

Dawson doesn’t want for anything, despite the hardships he endured. He saw the richness in everyday life: “People worry too much. Life is good, just the way it is”.

It’s a mild read, simple in its structure; philosophical in its message. It is also quite remarkable for Dawson’s reflections and insights into American history at its best and worst moments.

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