November HistoryCAT: Events

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In November, the focus for this CAT is on any historical event. Feel free to choose an event of interest to you.

Some options:
- World War II (or any war)
- Salem Witches
- French Revolution
- Jack the Ripper (and other true crime “events”)
- Titanic (and other disasters)
- Spanish flu (and other medical “events”)

Some Suggestions:
- The Day the World Came to Town / Jim DeFede (9/11)
- To Sleep With the Angels / David Cowen, John Kuenster (fire)
- Endurance: Shakleton’s Incredible Voyage / Alfred Lansing (shipwreck)
- In the Kingdom of Ice / Hampton Sides (shipwreck)
- Unbroken / Laura Hillenbrand (WWII)
- The Longest Day / Ryan Cornelius (WWII: D-Day)
- Isaac’s Storm / Erik Larson (hurricane)
- Columbine / Dave Cullen (school shooting)
- H.H. Holmes: The True History of the White City Devil / Adam Selzer (true crime: serial murders)

Don’t forget to post to the wiki: https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/2021_HistoryCAT#November:_-_Theme:_Event...


"World War II Wellington bombers (2 of 2)" by whatsthatpicture is marked under CC PDM 1.0. To view the terms, visit https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/

I think I will read The Great Quake by Henry Fountain, about the 1964 earthquake which struck Alaska and was the strongest earthquake ever recorded as occurring in the US.

I think that I will read about the kidnapping of Charles and Anne Lindberghs' son from a different angle than usual. The book is Little Lindy Is Kidnapped: How the Media Covered the Crime of the Century by Thomas Doherty. Earlier this year my husband and I heard a presentation by Mr. Doherty, and my husband immediately bought the book, which I have not yet gotten around to reading.

I am going to read David McCullough's Americans in Paris which is a non-fiction read about Americans traveling to Paris from 1837-1890's. Some of the personages: Elizabeth Blackwell, James Fenimore Cooper, Samuel Morse, Mary Cassat, and Charles Sumner, just to name a few.

I am going to read about the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918 with As Bright as Heaven by Susan Meissner.

The Longest Day, by Cornelius Ryan, is my pick for this challenge.

>6 rabbitprincess: I loved it when I read it! I hope you do, too.

Ok, I'm reading this one for sure (and I may have more that I read for this):

On Desperate Ground / Hampton Sides (Korean War)

Requested and received The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris by David McCullough the same day; so read "early." As usual, McCullough did a great job, even if there were 100+ characters in this book (the only downside). 531 pages 4 stars.

I've got a few options for this one. I might go with Fools and Mortals which is set around the first performance of A Midsummer's Night Dream.

I'm going to read Anne Perry's take on the Whitechapel murders, The Whitechapel Conspiracy.

Pale Rider: the Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World by Laura Spinney

Published in 2017, I ordered this book at the end of 2019, before anyone had heard of the new pandemic or Covid-19. It arrived on my doorstep just days after the first cases became known at the beginning of 2020 but has been passed around and just arrived back with me last month. One good thing about reading it after the worst of our present pandemic has passed is that I can see the issues and similarities and understand them better. This is an excellent history book, well-written and well-researched.

Korean War

On Desperate Ground / Hampton Sides
4 stars

This is about the Korean War. The Marines were ordered to come in to North Korea from the water, then over mountains during the coldest time of the year (in what turned out to be one of the coldest winters). There were a lot of stupid decisions made by two people higher up in the chain of command (sorry, I don’t know the military well enough to remember titles and who outranks whom), though the next in that chain knew they were stupid decisions and he did his best to follow orders, but to find ways to keep damage to a minimum.

I really liked this; it was really interesting. I know very little about the Korean War, and not only did this tell the stories of these Marines and how they (most? some? of them) got out of a bad situation, but I got a bit of insight into how the war started.

Finally, I have a reading challenge to pull the book 24 Days off my shelves and read it! I definitely read The Smartest Guys in the Room but this one shows how very short the time was to uncover what went wrong.

For this CAT, I just finished a charming World War II novel, Yours Cheerfully by AJ Pearce. It's the second in a series, though, and I'd definitely recommend reading Dear Mrs. Bird first.

I read Revolution und Revolutionsforschung, a collection of ten short articles about the November Revolution of 1918 in Kiel. The most interesting piece was a reprint of a contemporary essay by Ferdinand Tönnies which gives the best insight to the mindset of the time.

I have completed my read of As Bright As Heaven by Susan Meissner. The details about the Spanish Flu Epidemic certainly reminded me of things we are going through today with Covid. But instead of being depressed by this, I took heart in the fact that this epidemic ended so, hopefully, will ours.

I have finished a biography of Joseph Fouché who started his career in the National Assembly of the French Revolution. The book is a bit dated and the lack of proper citation frustrating.

I read James Leasor's The Plague and the Fire, about London's Great Plague of 1665 and Great Fire of 1666.

I looked it up. The Children's Crusade did actually happen, so that's my "event" for this book.

Sylvia / Bryce Courtenay
3.5 stars

It’s the 13th century in Germany. Sylvia was young when her mother died and her father abused her. When he died, she was driven from her mother’s home and land by the local people. As she travelled, she met up with Reinhardt, who played lovely music on his flute that often caused rats and other animals to follow him; he called himself the Pied Piper of Hamelin. They travelled together and with her angelic voice and his flute, they entertained people (and/or he drove rats away) to get food to eat and shelter. Sylvia had additional (to the singing) gifts of her own, that when combined with the fish birthmark on her back, people tended to believe she was an angel and miracles happened when she was around.

Eventually, Sylvia and Reinhardt met up with a child, Nicholas, who seemed to have a gift for preaching (at least, when he partook of the mushrooms Sylvia showed him how to consume). Nicholas drew other children to him with his preaching and he decided (well, he was told by Jesus) there would be a “Children’s Crusade” from Germany to Jerusalem.

This was good, but long. A lot of religion in this one, and it seems some of it (but what?) was historically accurate. Unfortunately, the author only included acknowledgments at the end, so the fact that some of this really happened was mentioned but not expanded on, as I was hoping. I assume what really happened was the Children’s Crusade, but I will have to look that up to find out. This is long – almost 500 pages of small font (in the physical book).

I read Titanic, the Canadian Story Centennial Edition by Alan Hustak, one of the few complete electronic books I've read. As one can guess from the title, this account is centered on the Canadians or passengers going to Canada. It begins with background information to wealthy Canadians who sailed on the Titanic. The book covers all aspects of the Canadian experience including what cabins some of the passengers were in, their experiences on board and of being rescued or not, the coverage of the sinking by Canadian newspapers, and brief biographies of the survivors including their lives after the Titanic and when they died. Appendices give lists of the Canadian passengers according to their class on board; those who did not survive are in bold print. The wealthy Canadians often included whole families traveling together; some of the lower class people were immigrating to Canada. Many of these passengers were young being the adult children of the wealthy or immigrants coming to join relatives already in Canada.

I read HHhH (by Laurent Binet) - A historical fiction about the very specific event of the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, Nazi German Pro Tem Protectorate of Czechoslovakia. The narrative is shaped by the author's writing of the book itself (I'm not clear what the "fiction" part of this book is!)

This evening I finished the last 20 pages of Stories Untold: Oral Histories of Wives of Vietnam Servicemen -- by Charlotte McDaniel. I had heard Charlotte McDaniel talk about her experiences writing this book several weeks ago at our local library and bought the book. Her talk was much more interesting than the book turned out to be; in her presentation Charlotte was very enthusiastic about her topic and told wonderful stories. The book basically tells the women's stories in their own words, and contains a lot of repetition, even within the same story.

I am late to posting, but I finally finished 24 Days by Rebecca Smith and John Emshwiller. It was the title that grabbed my interest and "forced" me to buy this book. While The Smartest Guys in the Room is the more famous book (and movie), this book is the journalists' work to uncover this story. There is a graph of what stories were published, starting on October 16, 2001, and the 24 days that led to the fall of this behemoth of a company.