Reading 2015

Gave up on An Empire Divided: The American Revolution and the British Caribbean by Andrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy after finishing about two thirds of it. It's not a bad book, it's just not very much fun to read.

Now reading Conquering Gotham: A Gilded Age Epic: The Construction of Penn Station and Its Tunnels by Jill Jonnes, which I am enjoying a lot more.

My current reading is What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 by Daniel Walker Howe.

Finished Conquering Gotham: A Gilded Age Epic: The Construction of Penn Station and Its Tunnels by Jill Jonnes, a very, very well done book.

Started but gave up on Outposts on the Gulf: Saint George Island & Apalachicola from Early Exploration to World War II by William Warren Rogers. Sadly it was very, very dull.

Now reading In the Hands of Fate: The Story of Patrol Wing Ten : 8 December 1941-11 May 1942 by Dwight R. Messimer.

Finished another couple of books (besides my own reading, my wife will read out loud in the car as we drive). They are The Napoleon of New York: Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia by H. Paul Jeffers and Sealab: America's Forgotten Quest to Live and Work on the Ocean Floor by Ben Hellwarth. Both very good books.

Finished with the book by Daniel Walker Howe, and I've started Smuggler Nation by Peter Andreas.

#6 - I read about half of Howe a few years ago. I need to get back to it.

Working on Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee for my American Indian History grad class. Also reading Almost a Miracle for my American Revolution class. I'm writing thesis papers on Samuel Adams and the US Dakota War so I'm reading books for those and getting ready to write the papers.

#7 - Those are both good books. Where are you going to grad school?

Finished Doomed by Cartoon: How Cartoonist Thomas Nast and the New York Times Brought Down Boss Tweed and His Ring of Thieves by John Adler.

Just starting The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism by Doris Kearns Goodwin.

Finished Gemini: Steps to the Moon by David J. Shayler.

I'm currently reading The Bill of the Century: The Epic Battle for the Civil Rights Act by Clay Risen.

I've finished The Bill of the Century, which I can highly recommend, and have started Privileged Son: Otis Chandler and the Rise and Fall of the L.A. Times Dynasty by Dennis McDougal, which as a former Los Angeles area resident I am naturally interested in.

Finished General John Burgoyne by Richard J. Hargrove. A bit lackluster in the quality of the writing, but interesting never the less.

#8-Sorry. My 20 page papers were due last month. A in my American Revolution class and A- in my American Indian Wars class.

Studying at American Military University

Finished Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow.

Finished The Gate: The True Story of the Design and Construction of the Golden Gate Bridge by John Van Der Zee.

I am in the middle of Lincoln's Boys by Staton Rabin. So far it is pretty good. Like I said, I am only about 1/2 done so I'll reserve total judgement until I am finished, but I am not unhappy about the purchase.

Finished American Iron, 1607-1900 (Johns Hopkins Studies in the History of Technology) by Robert B. Gordon. Excellent book, especially if you are a technology history buff like I am.

#19 That is good to know, I have the book on my shelf waiting for a chance to read it.

Finished Supplying Custer: The Powder River Supply Depot, 1876 by Gerald R. Clark.

Finished The Talkies: American Cinema's Transition to Sound, 1926-1931 by Donald Crafton.

I have recently finished the book on Otis Chandler and also Clouds of Glory by Michael Korda. I've now started American Dreamer: A Life of Henry A. Wallace by John Culver and John Hyde.

Finished Crossing the Deadly Ground: United States Army Tactics, 1865-1899 by Perry D. Jamieson. Rather dull, rambling and not very informative. Not recommended.

I've just finished Exploring the Moon: The Apollo Expeditions (Springer Praxis Books / Space Exploration) by David M. Harland. The writing is excellent, the photos fantastic, but unlike you have a deep, abiding interest in lunar geology you might want to give this one a pass as it's very, very scientifically oriented.

Finished Rivers in the Desert: William Mulholland and the Inventing of Los Angeles by Margaret Leslie Davis. Excellent book and quite appropriate for the current conditions in California. Ironically when this book was published in 1993 Los Angeles, as the author notes, was in the seventh year of a drought, mandating lawn watering and car washing restrictions, among other new regulations. Things haven't changed very much.

Finished The Eagle Aloft: Two Centuries of the Balloon in America by Tom D. Crouch.

Finished The Age of the Moguls by Stewart H. Holbrook. Excellent book, interesting and informative, written with style and panache.

Finished The Hudson Through the Years by Arthur G. Adams.

I celebrated the beginning of baseball season by pulling Jimmy Breslin's wonderful Can't Anybody Here Play This Game? down off my shelf, where it had been waiting patiently for my attention for many years. This is Breslin's look at the very first season of the New York Mets. Those 1962 Mets set a record for futility, losing 120 of their 162 games. But in the process, they created a sensation, becoming much beloved in New York City, which had been starved for National League baseball since the Giants and Dodgers had left for California in 1957. Breslin has a breezy, Runyonesque writing style, and since the book was written and published in 1963, before the team even began their second season, it really is a time-piece.

Still reading the Henry Wallace biography and I am also nearly finished with Hall of Mirrors: The Great Depression, The Great Recession, and the Uses--and Misuses--of History, by Barry Eichengreen.

Finished Entrepot: Government Imports into the Confederate States by C. L. Webster III.

Finished Entrepreneurs of the Old West by David Dary.

I'm now started with The Last Great Senate by Ira Shapiro.

Finished Fraud of the Century: Rutherford B. Hayes, Samuel Tilden, and the Stolen Election of 1876 by Roy Jr. Morris. Well written and lively reading.

Finished The Age of Edison: Electric Light and the Invention of Modern America by Ernest Freeberg

Finished Blood on the Water : the Great Lakes during the Civil War by Frederick Stonehouse. Not very good, I can't recommend it.

Finished Flickering Empire: How Chicago Invented the U.S. Film Industry by Michael Glover Smith.

I've just started Our Times: The United States 1900-1925 - Part IV, The War Begins 1909-1914 by Mark Sullivan (touchstones not working for this book). Sullivan was a journalist and, evidently, hob-nobber with presidents and other big wigs. In 1930, he began publishing a 6-volume series on the social/political history of the U.S. from, as the title suggests, 1900 through 1925. Somewhere along the line I picked up the fourth volume of this set. Given the title, I guess I assumed it was a history of World War One. This volume begins on June 28, 1914, the day Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated. Sullivan describes the normal day in America, with Americans completely oblivious to the fact that this assassination in such a far away and alien land would lead to events that would irrevocably change life in American, and across Europe (at the very least). The book has lots of artwork, photos and political cartoons. The whole thing looks like an interesting portrait of America, one full century ago, now.

Finished Hunt and Kill: U-505 and the U-boat War in the Atlantic by Theodore P. Savas. Picked it up at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. Sadly when we arrived they had already given away all the tickets for the actual U-505 tours for the day, but the rest of the exhibit is pretty awesome too.

Finished Inventing American Broadcasting, 1899-1922 (Johns Hopkins Studies in the History of Technology) by Susan J. Douglas. Interesting, but written in a rather academic style. Still, recommended if you have an interest in the subject.

Finished John Jay: Founding Father by Walter Stahr. Pretty good biography.

I've just started reading The Power Broker by Robert Caro.

Finished Red Blood & Black Ink: Journalism in the Old West by David Dary. One of his better books, well worth reading if it is in your area of interest. Also finished Mornings on Horseback by David McCullough which was excellent.

Finished Fly Low, Fly Fast: Inside the Reno Air Races by Robert Gandt. Somewhat interesting book, but the author's writing style detracts from the content.

Finished Shamrock and Sword: The Saint Patrick's Battalion in the U.S.-Mexican War by Robert Ryal Miller. Very interesting book.

I finally finished Our Times: The United States 1900-1925 - Part IV, The War Begins 1909-1914 by Mark Sullivan (touchstones not working for this book). In 1930, journalist Mark Sullivan published a 6-volume history of the United States from 1900 through 1925. This, obviously, is the 4th volume. Sullivan was a confidante of Theodore Roosevelt and seems to have known Howard Taft, as well. So the final chapters of this volume, dealing with the end of Roosevelt's presidency, his strong friendship with Taft, and the events that brought about the end of that friendship and ultimate emnity, make the most detailed and interesting reading in the volume.

Otherwise, there are some interesting parts and some tedious sections. The profiles of Henry Ford and Andrew Carnegie are both very interesting, at first, but both drag on too long. The sections about changes in fashion, dance and music styles drone on to very little interest, indeed. Sullivan's casual racism comes through most strongly in the section about music, especially about ragtime, and his description of the evolution of jazz into a mainstream music is just flat out wrong. I'm glad I read this, but there are other books on the period, I'm sure, more focused and enjoyable over all.

Fiinished Exploration and Empire: The Explorer and the Scientist in the Winning of the American West by William H. Goetzmann. Less interesting than I hoped. Too much information packed into one book.

I've started The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789. This is the newest book by Joseph Ellis, who also wrote Founding Brothers, among other works

Finished The Inventor and the Tycoon: A Gilded Age Murder and the Birth of Moving Pictures by Edward Ball. Interesting book, but the author chose to mix up the chapters, jumping back and forth in the chronology of the two main characters, which made it a bit maddening at times.

Finished The Aviators: Eddie Rickenbacker, Jimmy Doolittle, Charles Lindbergh, and the Epic Age of Flight by Winston Groom. Good story telling, but marred by numerous errors and the haliographic writing style.

I finished, devoured, I should say, The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789 by Joseph J. Ellis. This is a wholly admirable history: fascinating, informative and very well written. Ellis is also the author of the very popular Founding Brothers. The Quartet is the story of the drive to move the 13 colonies away from the Articles of Confederation and into a more binding arrangement within a much stronger central federal government, a drive that eventually led to the creation and ratification of the U.S. Constitution. The four main drivers of that movement, the Quartet of the title, were George Washington, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay. I haven't bothered posting a review on the book's title page, as a quick perusal of the reviews previously posted show that I've nothing new to add to them. But you can read my more in-depth thoughts on my 50-Book Challenge thread, if you're interested.

I've started reading Henry Clay: The Essential American by David and Jeanne Heidler.

Finished Sam Houston by James L. Haley. Very good and highly recommended.

Finished The Saltworks of Historic Cape Cod: A Record of the Nineteenth Century Economic Boom in Barnstable County by William P. Quinn.

Finished Final Jeopardy: Man vs. Machine and the Quest to Know Everything by Stephen Baker and A Bohemian Brigade: The Civil War Correspondents Mostly Rough, Sometimes Ready by James M. Perry.

Finished Ernst Lubitsch: Laughter in Paradise by Scott Eyman. Pretty good book, although some background in film history is recommended for the best appreciation of it.

Finished When the Astors Owned New York: Blue Bloods and Grand Hotels in a Gilded Age by Justin Kaplan. Very interesting, if a bit short.

I finished Before the Machine: the Story of the 1961 Pennant-Winning Cincinnati Reds by Mark J. Schmetzer. For baseball fans only, this is a fun quick read about the 1961 Reds, a team of relative unknowns and over-the-hills who somehow found the team chemistry to win the National League pennant in 1961, several years before the Reds coalesced into the powerhouse known as the Big Red Machine.

Finished Duet in Diamonds: The Flamboyant Saga of Lillian Russell and Diamond Jim Brady in America's Gilded Age by John Burke

Finished South Pass: Gateway to a Continent by Will Bagley.

I have been reading The Road to Disunion: Secessionists at Bay by William Freehling.

Finished War of Words: A True Tale of Newsprint and Murder by Simon Read. Very enjoyable.

Finished Blown to Bits in the Mine: A History of Mining & Explosives in the United States by Eric Twitty. Interesting and very well written, although aimed at a rather niche audience.

Finished Myth Legend Reality : Edwin Laurentine Drake and the Early Oil Industry by William R. Brice, although I admit I skimmed quite a bit. It's a beautifully produced book, all color pages, tons of illustrations, but the author after a good start got bogged down in a lot of detail about corporation records, financial histories and tangential discussions.

Finished Enola Gay: The Bombing of Hiroshima by Gordon Thomas & Max Morgan Witt.

Read and enjoyed Then and Now: An Anderson Valley Journey by Donald Smoot and Stephen Sparks.

I live in a place called Anderson Valley, in Mendocino County, California, USA. This valley is about 55 miles long and has a population of about 3,000. These is one two-lane "highway" running through the valley from Highway 101 to the Pacific Ocean. Mostly, the place is rural, with a lot of wine grape vineyards, with a few fruit orchards (the place used to be mostly all orchards) and some small farms and cattle/sheep ranches. The European population dates back to the late 19th century. Smoot and Sparks, two Valley historians, came up with the idea of producing a book of "then and now" photographs of 60 or so spots along the road. They only used spots for which they could provide historical photographs ("then") as well as current photos ("now"). Each spot gets its own short chapter, with a brief explanation of the history and owners of the original buildings and locales, at least as well as is now known. Some of the old buildings are still standing. At any rate, this slim volumes provides an entertaining time travel through the history of this valley I've called home since 2008.

Just finished Conquest of the Skies: A History of Commercial Aviation in America by Carl Solberg. Pretty interesting, although dated.

Finished a couple of books: The Siege of Washington: The Untold Story of the Twelve Days That Shook the Union by John Lockwood and Alice Roosevelt Longworth by Carol Felsenthal.

Finished, or rather finished skimming, Across the Reef: The Amphibious Tracked Vehicle at War by Victor J. Croizat. I had higher hopes for it, but mostly it's just a retelling of WW2 amphibious operations, not that much about the amtracs.

I recently finished Quest for the Presidency 1992 by Peter Goldman, et. al., and have started Jacksonland by Steve Inskeep.

Finished an excellent Misadventures of a Civil War Submarine: Iron, Guns, and Pearls by James P. Delgado.

Finished The Hidden White House: Harry Truman and the Reconstruction of America's Most Famous Residence by Robert Klara. Very interesting and well written.

Finished The Steamboaters: From the Early Side-Wheelers to the Big Packets by Harry Sinclair Drago. Unfortunately not enough about steamboating to make it worthwhile.

Finished On the Backs of Burros: Bringing Civilization to Colorado by P. David Smith

A short book but a very interesting one, Japan's World War II Balloon Bomb Attacks on North America by Robert C. Mikesh.

I am now reading America Aflame by David Goldfield.

Finished the superb Florida's Great Ocean Railway: Building the Key West Extension by Dan Gallagher. Although rather short, it is filled with over two hundred photographs (most taken during the actual construction) and illustrations. The book doesn't address the social, financial or political history of the extension and instead focuses on the actual building. And it does this very well.

Currently reading Our Declaration by Danielle Allen.