This is a biography of a woman I had never heard of, although I was familiar with her husband’s name. Nothing unusual there, especially since this woman lived in the late 19th century. And the reason I had heard of her husband is also the reason she was able to become wealthy and well-known.in her Read More
Author: Julie Crain Miguel
The Trees, by Conrad Richter
I had never heard of this book, which I find a little surprising, as it is very reminiscent of the “Little House” series. I think one reason that this has not had the same amount of interest is that the family detailed in this book is not as “photogenic” as the Wilder family. Also, this Read More
The Cause, by Joseph J Ellis
The subtitle is “The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783”. This book is somewhat of an overview of some of the people involved in the Revolution, without going into too much detail about specific battles. This author discusses the major players in the time period instead. He spends much of the book, understandably, on George Read More
The Santa Claus Man, by Alex Palmer
The title makes this sound like a cheerful Yuletide story, but the holiday is not the focus of this book. The focus is a man called John Duval Gluck, who started out trying to make sure poor New York City children had at least one gift for Christmas, but at some point, his goals shifted. Read More
Home Fires, by Sean Patrick Adams
The subtitle of this “How Things Worked” book is How Americans Kept Warm in the Nineteenth Century. The author starts by discussing how even before the American Revolution, in the larger East Coast cities, wintertime could bring a shortage of fire wood. The heating method, and cooking method, at the time was a hearth using Read More
A Square Meal, by Jane Ziegelman & Andrew Coe
The subtitle of this book is “A Culinary History of the Great Depression”, which is what tempted me to read it. I was assuming that there would be recipes. Well, you know what they say about the word “assume”. There are a several recipes from that era, very few of which I would want to Read More
Middling Folk, by Linda H Matthews
This book tells the saga of one family, the Hammills, through several generations. Matthews starts her story in Scotland, moves to Ireland, and then brings her ancestors into the American colonies, before the Revolution. The title refers to the fact that the people she writes about were neither very rich and at the top of Read More
The Poisoner’s Handbook, by Deborah Blum
The subtitle is “Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York”. What I did not expect was for a book with that subtitle to begin with a discussion of the Periodic Table of Elements. But it all fits together as you go through the book. In the early Twentieth Century, scientists Read More
Mrs. Lincoln’s Sisters, by Jennifer Chiaverini
Much has been written about Abraham Lincoln. Much less has been written about his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln. During her lifetime, especially during her husband’s years as President, she was frequently maligned. Some of the bad press she garnered was at least somewhat justified; she did spend quite a lot of money redecorating the White Read More
The Edge of Anarchy, by Jack Kelly
It’s amazing to me all of the things that were so impactful to people, and our county, when they happened, that we have forgotten about today. This is a book about one of those things – the railroad strike in 1894. Also, as I was reading it, I kept wondering if this was something I Read More