Rummage through a used-book store and you might encounter two forbidding volumes with the anodyne title “North America.” In his autobiography, the author of those books, Anthony Trollope (1815-1882), said that this work was not worth the time needed to peruse them. “I can recommend no one to read it now in order that he may be instructed or amused,” he said.
Trollope, who produced nearly 50 novels …