They call Chesapeake—guess what?—"a sweeping historical novel." I think "whisking" is more apt. The sweep-whisk genre will take a pseudohistorical place or family and trace its/their progress from ice age to Tuesday last. (Michener has saved his ice age description for page 405—a risky and imaginative departure.) Sweep-whisk novels are usually written by people who haven't talent or idea enough to write a short book. The standard Chesapeake character, for instance, won't develop, he'll just change costume from century to century. Besides, Michener is more interested in hardware than people: ships particularly: Chesapeake has all that mizzen abaft poop to windward hard off the port centerboard and furl your bosun chair gibberish, which doesn't mean a Q-tip to any but 15 readers in America. (p. 1153)

The present-day sections of Chesapeake are tedious, idiotic, disjunct, pointless, phony, and offensive. Michener has written a lunch-box-sized, condescending children's book...