My new favorite book. Timothy Egan’s A Fever in the Heartland is a historical expose that reads like a true crime thriller. It’s very disturbing, and pretty hard to put down. If you’re a sucker for both history and courtroom drama like I am, then this is a good book for you. The story concerns the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in 1920’s America. … Continue reading A Fever in the Heartland by Timothy Egan
You might think Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World would count as advanced reading. It sounds like a difficult book, a history of philosophies looking for evidence that Atheism existed as an accepted point of view in classical Greece and Rome. It probably sounds fairly dry at first glance. (“Sounds” at “glance”? Does that count as a mixed metaphor?) While I can’t qualify … Continue reading Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World by Tim Whitmarsh
One thing that makes reading history fun, for me at least, is finding out what really happened. So often what we know, or think we know, has been influenced by forces outside the facts: racism, sexism, classism, nationalism, all the ‘ism’s plus time. Time passes and history changes. Then, periodically, someone comes along to set the record straight. It makes for interesting reading. In the … Continue reading Forget the Alamo by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson and Jason Stanford
This book may be illegal in your state. If you live in Texas, Florida or any assorted U.S. states with Republican governments, it may be difficult to find Four Hundred Souls in your public library, school library, even at your local college or university library. This is just the sort of book Texas Governor Abbot and Florida Governor DeSantis have in mind when they complain … Continue reading Four Hundred Souls, edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N Blain
History is problematic. American history is very problematic. I only recently started reading American history seriously. During the last three years of my teaching career, I kept trying to get an 8th grade history position. If I had, I might still be teaching. The closest I came was teaching it via Zoom during lockdown. Prior to that my historical interest was ancient and Medieval, largely … Continue reading Blood and Treasure: Daniel Boone and the Fight for America’s First Frontier by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin
When I say that When the Reckoning Comes by LaTanya McQueen is an airplane read, I don’t mean that as an insult. Not at all. I value good airplane reads. I want an airplane read to do is to keep me entertained for the duration of the flight, which When the Reckoning Comes definitely did, or would have had I been on a plane, probably … Continue reading When the Reckoning Comes by LaTanya McQueen
A Jewish family sits together peacefully in their home. It is an ordinary night. After dinner. Mother, father, six children, the oldest still under ten years. Suddenly, agents of the Inquisition are at the door, there to take away Edgardo, age six, claiming he was secretly baptized by one of the family servants, therefore a Christian, therefore in need of Christian parents. The panicked family … Continue reading The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara by David I. Kertzer
I bought this book by mistake. I thought it was a collection of essays about Salmon Rushdie’s terrific novel Midnight’s Children, one of my all-time favorites. Midnight’s Furies then sat on my TBR shelf for nearly five years. Five years is the maximum I allow. After that, it’s time to admit I’m just never going to read it and pass it along to a nearby … Continue reading Midnight’s Furies: The Deadly Legacy of India’s Partition by Nisid Hajari
Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony Marra is a lot of fun. I can’t say that it’s great literature, or that it has changed my life, but I had a terrific time reading it and I highly recommend it. The story concerns the behind-the-scenes workers at a poverty row film studio in 1940’s Hollywood. Before the war the studio survives on money made from making Italian … Continue reading Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony Marra
I come to this book by way of the recent television series. Both are very good. The television series, while based on a true crime, is largely fiction. The producers created entire characters and storylines to flesh out the historical plotline into multiple episodes. The book fleshes out its true crime story with a fascinating history of Mormonism focused on the religions violent past and … Continue reading Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer
Don’t be afraid of reading history; it’s not just a learning experience. At least not in the case of Cuba: An American History by Ada Ferrer. This is one of the most entertaining books I’ve read in a while. I couldn’t put it down, as they say, much of the time. At nearly 500 pages, some parts are more interesting at others, but reading it … Continue reading My New Favorite Book–Cuba: An American History by Ada Ferrer
I’m going to assume that you know the basic story of the Donner Party. Just in case, here is the Wikipedia article; it’s fantastic. I also had a pretty good grasp of their story before reading Michael Wallis’s recent book about them, The Best Land Under Heaven. So, did I learn anything? Was the book worth reading? Yes, and mostly yes. The full extent of what … Continue reading The Best Land Under Heaven: The Donner Party in the Age of Manifest Destiny by Michael Wallis
May Contain Spoilers 