Current Reading September 2021

Haven't posted in awhile... here's some books I've read, well, parts of them I skimmed through.

NC 12: Gateway to the Outer Banks by Dawson Carr. A social history of the North Carolina Outer Banks with a focus on the highway NC 12 which runs through them. Lots of old photographs. I saw a review which criticized the book for not being more of a tourist guide which is unfair since the author makes the point that this is a history of how the highway got built, not of the Outer Banks themselves.

Abraham Lincoln's World: How Riverboats, Railroads, and Republicans Transformed America by Thomas Crump. An odd sort of a book. Sort of like describing an automobile by giving the history of the parts, like how the steering wheel came to be. If you aren't very conversant with antebellum America you'll probably find it interesting, otherwise it's pretty much just of an overview of everything from how often Congress met to why riverboats operated like they did. Lots of facts, but not really a connected narrative.

Ride the Big Red Cars: The Pacific Electric Story by Spencer Crump. A social history of the Los Angeles area trolley system, how it came to be, how it operated and how it disappeared. I was hoping for more of a technical look at the system, but as a social history it does a good job. Lots and lots of good pictures and illustrations.

Samuel Adams: A Life by Ira Stoll. I learned a lot from this book. I didn't know to what a degree Sam Adams was involved in the Revolution and especially the Continental Congress. Unfortunately the author uses extensive quotes from Adams and his contemporaries and I find those passages off-putting to read. This is one of those few times I can compare writers and styles discussing contemporary figures. I think of how much I enjoyed John Adams by David McCullough while finding this book such a drag to read. It's not a bad book, it is just a rather dry book.

And finished another book, A Tower in Babel (A History of Broadcasting in the United States to 1933, Vol. 1) by Erik Barnouw. Very enjoyable, readable history of the development of early radio, networking and broadcasting.

Read What is Life Worth? by Kenneth Feinberg This was a non-fiction read that explained the difficult process that was derived at for compensating the victims of 911. Feinberg was asked by President Bush to head a committee to disburse the millions of dollars in relief money to the families of victims. Oh my, he ran into some unsolvable problems and was hailed as both a hero and a demon. There was no right or wrong side to this process; it was all just very personal and I understand that each person thought they had suffered more than the next. 241 pages 4 stars I realize that some would say this was too "new" to be history, but I included it anyway as it's a primary source that won't change.

I gave up after getting about half way through Temple Houston: Lawyer With a Gun by Glenn Shirley. I was so impressed with Shirley's book about Pawnee Bill that I thought this one might be equally as good, but the author kept wandering off on side discussions and histories of this Texas Panhandle town or that Texas state senator. There wasn't really a lot of Temple Houston in it.

I finished The Giants and Their City: Major League Baseball in San Francisco, 1976-1992 by Lincoln Abraham Mitchell. This is a mostly fun book that traces the history of the San Francisco Giants, and the history of the city itself, during the era when the team was owned by real estate tycoon Bob Lurie. Mitchell's account is book-ended nicely, as it begins in 1976 with Lurie stepping in the buy the Giants in a last-minute act that kept the team from purchased by folks in Toronto who were going to move the team there, and ends in 1992 with Lurie's almost consummated sale of the team to moneyed interests in Tampa, before grocery store magnate Peter Magowan stepped forward at, once again basically at the last second, to save the team once again for San Francisco. Mitchell deftly weaves the team's up and (mostly) down fortunes on the field with descriptions of the political climate and events in San Francisco that led to the defeat of four separate voter referendums aimed at providing public funding for a new stadium to replace the horrid from its opening Candlestick Park. There are times when Mitchell's writing seemed a bit less than professional, and he definitely needed a better copy editor. But all in all this was a well done history. I moved to SF in 1986, so a lot of the ground covered here was familiar to me. It was fun and interesting to revisit some of those events.

Read In The Heart of the Sea about the sinking of the whaleship Essex.

Finished:
The Mayflower Compact original document--always good!
The Battle with the Slum by Jacob Riis a follow up to his Pulitzer photo journal "Shame of the Cities."

>7 Tess_W: I didn't even know there was a sequel to Riis' first book! Thanks for posting about it.

I finished Death of a King: The Real Story of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Final Year by Tavis Smiley. Smiley's book about MLK is interesting, indeed. It is also a sad book. That final year of King's life almost exactly encompasses the speech in which he strongly and unequivocally condemned the Vietnam War and the Johnson administration's execution of that war. King was strongly condemned both within and without of the Civil Rights movement for this action. The FBI stepped up their campaign of hounding King and executing their disinformation campaign against him. And at the same time, more radical Blacks in the Panthers and SNCC criticized King from the left, accusing him and his insistence on non-violence of becoming increasingly irrelevant. In all, Smiley portrays King's final year as harrowing and disheartening. King began to muse ever more frequently on his own death, which he assumed was coming soon. And yet King never did fully lose heart, according to Smiley. He continued pushing for his March plan, and insisted on going to Memphis to help out with the long and bitter strike being waged by the garbage men's union there.

All in all, I thought this book was very much worth reading, though frequently depressing. I had tended to think of King's live as mostly single-toned, if that makes sense. King was just King, the great man who sometimes had his missteps but was consistent in the long run. Understanding the that the enormous pressures of the times--the discord, hatred and doubt--had on King during his last year only adds to my esteem for his life and what he was able to accomplish.

I read Of Plimouth Plantation by William Bradford. Bradford was among the 102 Separatists that landed in Plymouth in 1620. He was elected governor every year through 1647. I loved reading his first hand accounts of the Native Americans, the sicknesses, and the near-starvation like conditions. Bradford certainly had a Calvinist world view and that does creep in many times. However, I did not read the book to argue or debate theology. It's obvious that Bradford was a very learned man as he make references to Seneca and and previous French actions (which he does not explain) of selling weapons to the wrong country. I think all Americans should read this truthful account of the "Pilgrims." There are some amusing parts (to me), such as the trial of a 16 year old who had sex with a donkey, horses, a turkey, a cow, etc. Sadly, this young man was found guilty and executed. (this part was not funny) I feel this is a very honest rendering of conditions in Plimouth from 1620-1647. A very important primary source. 111 pages This was written in what is described as "Puritan Plain" language, although Bradford was not a Puritan. My guess is that he was educated by a Puritan in England.

>10 Tess_W: Thanks for the information about William Bradford's book. According to www.geni.com Bradford is a (very) distant cousin ... we share a 19th Great Grandmother in the person of Princess Estrid Margrethe Svendsdatter, of Denmark.

>11 Rood: Small world! You can read it for free on Gutenberg.

Ah .. Thanks, Tess, but a copy will arrive within days.

I finished Indian Summer by Effie McAbee Hulbert. This memoir, written as a fictional narrative, describes the author's girlhood growing up during the late 19th century and into the early 20th century in the Yorkville and Anderson Valley region of Mendocino County, California, and about her constant, loving interactions with the native tribes of the area.

The book begins with a brief history of the local native tribe and an imagining of their experience of the first coming of Europeans to the valley. The valley is surrounded by what were then relatively inaccessible mountains and is located generally in a remote part of northern California, so white settlers were relatively late arriving and few in number. That didn't last long, however. At any rate, Hulbert grew up in a prominent early land-owning family in the region, raised by her parents and grandparents. Her grandfather, particularly, had a strong empathy for and friendships with their Indian neighbors. Hulbert herself was back and forth constantly between the family ranch and the Indian villages and made life-long friendships there.

If interested, you can find my somewhat more in-depth comments on my 50-Book Challenge thread.