This is a very detailed description of the early days of the railroads in the western United States. The subtitle is “America’s Race to Bring the Railroads West”. Borneman discusses the numerous railroad companies, and the men who ran them. There were fortunes to be made, if you could get your line through to the Read More
Geneature
Daughter of Boston, edited by Helen R Deese
This is the edited transcription of a diary written by Caroline Healy Dall in the 1800’s. The editor has also added introductions to each chapter, which each cover a year or two in the life of Caroline Dall. Deese has also added footnotes that identify most of the people Dall mentions in her diary. And Read More
The Lion and the Fox, by Alexander Rose
The subtitle of this book is “Two Rival Spies and the Secret Plot to Build a Confederate Navy”, and it does read somewhat like a spy thriller. Most of the action happens in, of all places, Liverpool, England. The American Consul assigned to Liverpool, which had a number of companies who were very good at Read More
Democracy’s Data, by Dan Bouk
This book is a little different from most of the books I have reviewed. You can tell by the subtitle: “The Hidden Stories in the U.S. Census and How to Read Them”. Bouk looks primarily at the 1940 census, but he looks at much more than that. He wanted to look deeply into a census Read More
Triangle, The Fire that Changed America, by David Von Drehle
I remember hearing about this fire, which occurred in 1911, in my Social Studies class, which was long enough ago that it obviously made an impression, since I can still remember it now. That was only a paragraph or two, and this is an entire book. Obviously, the story is even more memorable when you Read More
Team of Rivals, by Doris Kearns Goodwin
This book is not a weekend read, or a beach book. But if you are interested in Lincoln’s presidency, and the Civil War era, it is a book you should read. This book is not just about Lincoln; as the title suggests, Kearns also discusses the members of his cabinet, some of whom were his Read More
The Oregon Trail, by Francis Parkman
This is one of the few books I have reviewed that is historical non-fiction, that is, a book that was written in a specific time frame that covers then-current events. In 1846, Francis Parkman set off from St. Louis to explore the west. Although he was a young man, he had some health issues, so Read More
The Reckless Decade, by H W Brands
The subtitle of this book is “America in the 1890’s”, and Brands does a good job of describing many of the major issues of the decade. And it was a tumultuous ten years. I have read about several of the events from this decade separately, and some events have entire books written about them. That Read More
Our First Civil War, by H W Brands
The subtitle of this book is “Patriots and Loyalists in the American Revolution”. The title makes the point that before the war, colonists considered themselves to be British. That is one reason they were upset when they felt their rights as British citizens were being slighted by those in charge back in England. The subtitle Read More
Over My Dead Body, by Greg Melville
The subtitle of this book is “Unearthing the hidden history of America’s cemeteries”, and that is basically what Melville accomplishes with this book. Each of the seventeen chapters discusses at least one cemetery, and sometimes more when he compares and contrasts other, sometimes nearby, cemeteries. For example, the (previously) whites only cemeteries, compared with the Read More