Why am I calling my blog “Geneature”? I plan to combine two of my favorite things – books and genealogy (I couldn’t figure out how to work in chocolate!). When you do genealogy, you learn some things about your ancestors. You learn where and when they were born, got married, lived, and died. But the Read More
Geneature
The Revolutionary Samuel Adams, by Stacy Schiff
This book is a deep dive into the days leading up to, during, and after the American Revolution. Focused, of course, on Samuel Adams and his role in all of this. And his role in all of these things was considerable. Apparently, he did not want this to be widely known, since he burned most Read More
Fifth Blogversary
Fifth Blogversary This is the fifth anniversary of when I started this blog. When I started, I don’t think I had thought about how long I would be doing this. It doesn’t seem possible that five years have gone by already! Why am I doing this? Since we are trying to learn what we can Read More
In the Founders’ Footsteps, by Adam Van Doren
The subtitle of this book is “Landmarks of the American Revolution”. Van Doren is an artist, not a historian. But he obviously has an interest in our shared history. He has visited a number of well-known, and several lesser known, sites relevant to the Revolution, and painted his impressions of these sites. With each watercolor Read More
Declaring Independence, by Edward J Larson
The subtitle of this book is “Why 1776 Matters”. Larson spends the entire book looking in detail at the year 1776. And it was a momentous year, not just because of July 4th.Season by season, Larson looks at how the mood shifted from late 1775, when, despite the battles at Lexington and Concord, many people Read More
The Downstairs Girl, by Stacey Lee
This is a work of historical fiction, which describes the life of a spirited young Chinese woman in 1890’s Atlanta. As you might expect, since she is not White, she faces basically the same discrimination as the African Americans she works with. At the start of the novel, she is employed at a millinery shop, Read More
Heaven’s Ditch, by Jack Kelly
The subtitle of this book is “God, Gold, and Murder on the Erie Canal”. Much of the books is about how the Erie Canal went from being a far-fetched idea to a reality. But interspersed with the story of the canal are stories about others who lived near the route of the canal in that Read More
Cemetery Citizens, by Adam Rosenblatt
In late October, 2025, I joined a group of people in Oak Grove Cemetery in Wyandotte County, Kansas, to learn now to clean headstones. The program was hosted by the Wyandotte County Historical Museum, and there were folks from the county Parks and Rec Department to show us what to do. It was chilly and Read More
How the Post Office Created America, by Winifred Gallagher
This is a case of something being so ubiquitous that we hardly notice it anymore; in fact, we pretty much take for granted that our mail will be delivered six days a week. Has it always been this way? Well, not quite. Probably during our grandparents’ lifetimes, mail could be delivered more than once a Read More
The Road That Made America, by James Dodson
The subtitle is “A Modern Pilgrim’s Journey on the Great Wagon Road”. So this is part travelogue, part history lesson. Personally, I’m more interested in the history, but Dodson does make the journey itself interesting. While he has obviously planned ahead, and set up meetings with various experts along the way, he also serendipitously encounters Read More
American Midnight, by Adam Hochschild
This book discusses the years just before, during, and after The Great War. The subtitle is “The Great War, A Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis”. Hochschild starts with the entry of the United States into the War to End All Wars, and it was a little messier than we probably realize. Many people wanted Read More