The Worst Hard Time, by Timothy Egan

You might think a book about the people who lived through the 1930’s in the Dust Bowl would be rather, well, dry (sorry, couldn’t help myself), but Timothy Egan manages to bring the era to life. He tells the story not just through research at local museums and contemporary newspaper articles, but through interviewing people Read More

The Ghost of Gold Mountain, by Gordon H Chang

This book is about the unnamed Chinese immigrants who helped build the western part of the Transcontinental Railroad. While their achievements were praised at the time, their names and histories have been, for the most part, lost to time. Chang’s book is an attempt to recover some of that history. In the mid-1800’s, the Central Read More