Reading 2017

Finished an interesting but slightly tedious Broadax and Bayonet: The Role of the United States Army in the Development of the Northwest, 1815-1860 by Francis Paul Prucha. There was a lot of good information there, but presented in a more academic way, with sections containing a premise and then examples confirming the premise. Still, worth reading if you are interested in the subject.

Also finished a short but interesting Pueblo Warriors & Spanish Conquest by Oakah L. Jones.

I just started What Hath God Wrought by Daniel Walker Howe.

Just finished an excellent Flames Across the Border: The Canadian-American tragedy, 1813-1814 by Pierre Berton.

Completed a very interesting Ziegfeld and His Follies: A Biography of Broadway's Greatest Producer (Screen Classics) by Cynthia Brideson and Sara Brideson.

Completed Walt Disney: An American Original by Bob Thomas.

Completed an interesting but rather technical Drills and Mills: Precious Metal Mining and Milling Methods of the Frontier West by Will Meyerriecks.

What Hath God Wrought. Another solid entry in the Oxford History of the United States series. I didn't know a lot about the antebellum period and this 900 page tome was very enlightening and never dull. From politics to technology and social and religious movements there was a lot going on in this 33 year period which had a momentous effect on later events. I learned how Martin Van Buren invented the political party and how really horrid a human being Andrew Jackson was (and how he reminds me in a lot of ways of Trump).

Finished The Long Surrender by Burke Davis. OK but rather drawn out.

Finished (finally!) Morgan: American Financier by Jean Strouse. Pretty good, although very long and at times pretty dry.

Completed an excellent Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War by Nathaniel Philbrick, covering the Pilgrim and Plymouth/New England experience from before the landing through King Phillip's War.

Finished on my Kindle a very enjoyable A Time to Stand: The Epic of the Alamo by Walter Lord.

Getting a lot of reading in this week... finished an enjoyable The Old West: The Gamblers by Robert Wallace (Time-Life Books).

I have been away a while, need to get back in the swing of things here. Reading Rogers M. Smith's "Civic Ideals" I have been wading through it since late January.

Finished an OK, but a bit all over the map When the Mississippi Ran Backwards : Empire, Intrigue, Murder, and the New Madrid Earthquakes by Jay Feldman.

Completed (finally, started a while ago) Volume I - Setting the Stage of Space Shuttle Developing an Icon 1972-2013 by Dennis Jenkins. Very, very good, but very technical. Also almost 500 pages of tightly packed two column text, although there is the relief of photographs and illustrations.

Finished an excellent history of the silent picture era, The Parade's Gone By... by Kevin Brownlow.

Finished Six Armies in Normandy by John Keegan which was a fairly quick overview of the Normandy invasion until the capture of Paris by focusing on six particular engagements, some lasting a few days and others a few weeks. While I picked up a thing or two, it makes me want to read a more thorough treatment of the invasion and since I've read the first two of Rick Atkinson's Liberation trilogy, I'll put The Guns at Last Light in my next military history slot.

Finally finished, and I've been reading this on and off for quite a while, Nuggets to Neutrinos: The Homestake Story by Steven T. Mitchell. Not exactly a page turner, but everything you might ever have wanted to know about the Homestake mine in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

Finished a fairly short but interesting book, Hollywood of the Rockies: Colorado, the West and America's Film Pioneers by Michael J. Spencer.

Finished our car book! Mouse Tales: A Behind-The-Ears Look at Disneyland by David Koenig. An interesting read.

Finishing reading (on the Kindle) The Ice Diaries: The True Story of One of Mankind's Greatest Adventures by Captain William R. Anderson. Maybe not one of mankind's greatest adventures, but certainly going from the Pacific to the Atlantic via the North Pole, underwater, was pretty interesting.

I recently finished America: A Narrative History by George Brown Tindall after finding it (first edition, first printing, in fine condition) at a library book sale for $2.00. While textbooks will never be near the top of anyone’s preferred reading, they are good to have for reference and for learning about less-familiar topics, and Tindall’s work is quite readable. First off, it is a book which is easy to hold—not the 8- x 10-inch anchor which most textbooks have become. Tindall’s scholarship is solid (yes, there are a few inevitable factual errors), his writing is engaging and often witty, and his treatment of particular topics frequently includes their historiography and historians, which the members of this group should appreciate. On the down side, the book is visually rather bland, at least in comparison with other textbooks, and this first edition has way, way too many typographical errors. But I would still recommend it or a later edition, particularly to those who are fortunate enough, as I was, to find an inexpensive copy.

Fever of 1721 by Stephen Coss. This book chronicles the events around the Boston small pox epidemic of 1721 concentrating on the stories of Cotton Mather, a Puritan preacher, Zabdiel Boylston, a doctor, James and his younger brother Benjamin Franklin, printers, and Elisha Cooke, a politician. In short, Mather convinced Boylston to perform innoculations, an unproven procedure at the time that involved placing the puss from a small pox victim into a cut made in the skin of an unaffected person, which for some reason usually results in a much milder course. Cooke led the opposition to the crown-appointed governor and was a mentor to Samual Adams who was born after the epidemic. The Franklins launched America's first independent newspaper which opposed the governor and innoculation.

Steven Coss weaves these threads into a captivating story about the political environment that started America on the road to independence.

Completed reading a rather in-depth and slow Dunmore's War: The Last Conflict of America's Colonial Era by Glenn F. Williams.

I have completed the two volumes of what was once projected as a trilogy by Walter A. McDougall: Freedom Just around the Corner: A New American History, 1585–1828, and Throes of Democracy: The American Civil War Era, 1829–1877, both lively and well-written, but still often frustrating, books. In a review, Michael Beschloss sums them up by referring to an earlier McDougall work as “iconoclastic” and “a showcase for (his) many strengths as a historian, starting with vast reading, a sure sense of the importance of his material and a deep understanding of American art and literature and their relationships to politics, economics and science” (Washington Post, June 6, 2004; I quote his review because I agree and couldn’t say it better myself!). McDougall opens with a discussion of Herman Melville’s novel, The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade, as a way of introducing his own overarching theme, that of the American as the quintessential hustler, in both its positive and negative connotations: dreamers and builders, but also swindlers and even killers. He relies heavily, perhaps a bit too heavily, on David Hackett Fischer’s identification (in Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America) of Puritan, Cavalier, Quaker, and Scots-Irish subcultures in early America. Yet another suggestive theme is the importance of Freemasonry to the Founding Fathers and in the political culture of the early Republic. These are all valid interpretations and insights; they become problematic, though, when McDougall continues to come back to them, over and over throughout both volumes, until they all overstay their welcomes, and one begins to suspect that they might have figured too prominently in his selection and rejection of material (allowing, of course, for the fact that it is impossible to cover everything and choices do need to be made). This almost necessarily leads him to give short shrift to African Americans, who do not fit into his and Fischer’s cultural framework, and it causes him to downplay change, as opposed to continuity, over the three centuries which he covers.

That said, I still recommend both volumes, not least because there is not a whole lot of competition. As some previous discussions on these forums have lamented, there is a dearth of good surveys of American history, at least those not written by political ideologues. Also, I have long thought that it is not possible to understand American history without an acknowledgment of the role of both race and religion in shaping that history, and McDougall’s treatment of the latter, if not the former, is a strength of his work, as he makes his way from Bradford, Winthrop, and the Mathers to the emergence of an American civic religion which, nevertheless, always coexisted with an evangelical Protestantism, seekers such as Joseph Smith and the Mormons, and, in time, a Roman Catholicism strengthened, especially, by Irish immigrants. And yet, they all shared one commonality: all were hustlers!

Also, it needs to be said: McDougall is, at heart, a contrarian: it feels sometimes as if he takes a position for little reason other than that it contradicts previous historians’ consensus on that particular matter. While, as I said above, it can be frustrating, sooner or later you get used to it, and it actually, curiously, starts to pique your interest in what is to come, even as you remain skeptical of some (or many) of his conclusions. And then there are his endnotes, which total 235 pages of small type. I challenge anyone to read through them and not come up with at least a couple dozen books which he or she had never heard of and now would like to read! It is a shame that these two volumes were not better sellers: sadly, their disappointing sales caused the bean counters at HarperCollins to cancel the concluding volume(s).

Finished a rather disappointing Apollo 8: The Thrilling Story of the First Mission to the Moon by Jeffrey Kluger.

Also completed our latest car book, The Girls of Murder City: Fame, Lust, and the Beautiful Killers who Inspired Chicago by Douglas Perry. Not bad at all, although it was stretched out a bit.

Also read a rather long and gossipy John Wayne: The Life and Legend by Scott Eyman.

Finished an interesting if rather of limited interest book, Bankers and Cattlemen by Gene M. Gressley.

I recently finished, and can heartily recommend, Casey Stengel: Baseball's Greatest Character by Marty Appel. Other than a revealing look at a fascinating life in baseball, the book provides a great window into the world of baseball in the earlier decades of the 20th century.

>31 rocketjk: Thanks for posting about this, it sounds like an interesting book.

>32 jztemple: Yes, it's quite good.

Finished a very enlightening A Little Revenge: Benjamin Franklin at War With His Son by Willard Sterne Randall. The son comes across just as interesting as the father and I learned quite a lot.

Completed a surprisingly engaging Roosevelt the Reformer: Theodore Roosevelt as Civil Service Commissioner, 1889-1895 by Richard D. White Jr.

Completed The Remarkable Mr. Jerome by Anita Leslie. Interesting in parts, but often relying too much on reproducing entire letters, it is the story of Leonard Jerome, financier, man about town and grandfather of Winston Churchill.

Finished an excellent Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson's Lost Pacific Empire: A Story of Wealth, Ambition, and Survival by Peter Stark,

Completed an interesting Beast: The Top Secret Ilmor-Penske Engine that Shocked the Racing World at the Indy 500 by Jade Gurss. This race mentioned was the 1994 event and the secret development of the engine made for a good story.

Finished an interesting The Floor of Heaven: A True Tale of the Last Frontier and the Yukon Gold Rush by Howard Blum

Completed an absolutely brillant San Francisco's Jewel City: The Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915 by Laura A. Ackley. The book is very well written and is a fantastic quality production. Exquisite illustrations, beautifully laid out and a nice balance between excellent text and nicely done (if sometimes a bit small) photographs.

Finished an interesting Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America by T. J. Stiles. In spite of the subtitle it actually covers Custer's time in the Civil War in detail as well as the post war period. It is more than just a simple biography as it does a pretty decent job of looking at Custer's character and motivations. Not for everyone, but worth the effort if it is a subject you have an interest in.

Completed an interesting You Must Remember This: Life and Style in Hollywood's Golden Age by Robert J. Wagner. Wagner is of course that Wagner of the TV series Hart to Hart, etc, but was living in Hollywood since his youth in the 1930s and knew personally many of the people he writes about.

Completed our car book, Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Medicine, Madness and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard.

We finished a couple more car books on our 25 day road trip...

Dodge City: Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and the Wickedest Town in the American West by Tom Clavin and The Prince And The Lily: The Story of Edward VII and Lillie Langtry by James Brough.

Got about two-thirds of the way through but gave up on Fierce Patriot: The Tangled Lives of William Tecumseh Sherman by Robert L. O'Connell. It is actually written at three biographies packaged together and that didn't work for me very well. Also the author spent too much time trying to analyze Sherman in my opinion.

Finished a most excellent Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America by David J. Silverman. Well written academic study of how Native Americans obtained, traded and used firearms. Very readable and highly recommended.

Completed our latest car book, Lillian Russell: The Era of Plush by Parker Morell.

Finished a fun and fast paced Car Crazy: The Battle for Supremacy between Ford and Olds and the Dawn of the Automobile Age by G. Wayne Miller. The book is really more about the early American automobile scene than just Ford and Olds, but is enjoyable never the less.

Completed listening to (as an Audible book) The Victory with No Name: The Native American Defeat of the First American Army by Colin G. Calloway.

My knowledge of American History was always limited when compared to what I knew of world history. Then I married someone who was just the opposite. He's taught me a lot but I've not been able to get as interested in it until now. Reading about Hamilton (biographies and historic fiction), listening to the musical soundtrack in repeat mode, reading Burrs biography, well lets just say that I am really wanting more. So I have finally picked up Joseph Ellis's Founding Brothers. About time...

Completed a very interesting William Clark and the Shaping of the West by Landon Y. Jones.

Finished Founding Fathers which I thought was interesting and illuminating. Happened upon Lafayette by Harlowe Giles Uger cheap at a local used store. Read the intro and think this is not the book for me. It reads like a hagiography! Anyone know if he continues to write like this, or if there is a better bio out there on Lafayette?

I looked at both the Reader’s Guide to American History and The Oxford Companion to United States History and was surprised to find that neither has an article about Lafayette. (Their articles generally have recommendations for further reading.) The Wikipedia article about Lafayette does include a rather long list of works cited, but some of them are quite old, and I did not see any more recent works by historians that I am familiar with and could recommend. But you might look at that list yourself and possibly check reviews of some of the newer works.

The Wikipedia entry did pique my interest, as I had never known much about Lafayette, apart from his connection to American history, and I see that he had quite an interesting life.

I see, by the way, that the touchstone in my previous post to the Reader’s Guide to American History does not link to the work to which I am referring. It was published in 1997 and edited by Peter Parish. Although now a little bit dated, it's a great book to have for reference.

Re: Lafayette, and in a somewhat different vein, we have Lafayette in the Somewhat United States.

Here is the NY Times review: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/books/review/sarah-vowells-lafayette-in-the-s...

From the review:

In her latest, “Lafayette in the Somewhat United States,” Vowell wanders through the history of the American Revolution and its immediate aftermath, using Lafayette’s involvement in the war as a map, and bringing us all along in her perambulations — with occasional side trips to such modern phenomena as Colonial Williamsburg, the many protesters who have flocked to Lafayette Square across from the White House and Vowell’s curious fascination with, and fascinated curiosity about, Quaker historians. She encounters one of the breed while visiting the Brandywine Valley, where Lafayette once served with distinction even after having been wounded, and Vowell uses the episode to give a shrewd précis of what she’s about generally.

“Having studied art history, as opposed to political history, I tend to incorporate found objects into my books,” she writes. “Just as Pablo Picasso glued a fragment of furniture onto the canvas of ‘Still Life With Chair Caning,’ I like to use whatever’s lying around to paint pictures of the past — traditional pigment like archival documents but also the added texture of whatever bibs and bobs I learn from looking out bus windows or chatting up the people I bump into on the road.”

>56 cindydavid4:
Oh I love her books -quirky and always interesting. Will have to take a look at that one, thanks!

Finished an interesting but a bit laborious The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America by Andrés Reséndez.

Finished a very long but fairly interesting High Performance: The Culture and Technology of Drag Racing, 1950-2000 (Johns Hopkins Studies in the History of Technology) by Robert C. Post.

Also finally finished our latest car book, Dark Invasion: 1915: Germany's Secret War and the Hunt for the First Terrorist Cell in America by Howard Blum. Very good book.