I don’t know who has written the book on Grover Cleveland, but I don’t think this book is it. It’s an insightful appraisal of the man, and an informative snapshot of the era, but it isn’t nearly detailed enough in the latter respect to be able to draw much of a parallel to current affairs, and the subject perhaps isn’t interesting enough to safe the former respect. I liked the book, but it’s a fairly middling biography, for a president often ignored and little taught […]
Outgunned, outmanned, outnumbered, outplanned….
I’ve long been interested in the American presidency. I’ve read, perhaps, more about the various men to have served that role than any other particular historical subject. Over the last 2+ years participating in the Cannonball, I’ve read about 20 biographies of various presidents. I have books on the office itself, not just the men who’ve sat in it. I’ve read countless articles and think pieces. And in all of this, Jefferson Davis, one and only president of the Confederate States of America, is never […]
A 200 year old forgotten war that inspired more thought than I’d expected.
This is a fairly difficult book for me to review, because I quite enjoyed it but have some serious complaints about not only its content, but the views of its author. The book itself is well researched, and the subject was interesting, being an area and an era with which I’m fairly unfamiliar. The time between the American Revolution and the Civil War, the antebellum years, has always been a bit out of reach for me. I can never really remember which president served at […]
What even happened here?
Here are three things I know: 1. The Puritans were weirdos. Everything with them was witches. Everything. My notes are missing. IT WAS A WITCH. My daughter is moody. SHE’S A WITCH. My dog barfed on my rug. WIIIITCH!!!!! 2. The airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow (European) is roughly 24 miles per hour. 3. I did not like this book. I really don’t want to spend much time talking about this book because, a) I started (and finally finished) it so long ago that […]
From Appalachia to Yankeedom, This Land Was Made From Eleven Nations
I first learned about this book in an article, probably this one, which shows how long it sometimes takes me to actually get around to reading my nonfiction books, since that article is dated November 2013. The concept interested me as someone who has lived in various states and lived outside the U.S., which gave an interesting perspective looking back at my own homeland. Now that I’ve read this book I can see that I’ve lived in probably five of the North American nations posited by Colin […]
Capital Dames
This review is for the audiobook version of Civil War Dames. I enjoyed listening to this book, but I did have a hard time following the timeline. It was difficult to know when she was quoting the women and when she was summarizing. I also had a hard time keeping track of whose story she was telling. I understand the need to go back and forth between the women as time progressed, rather than telling each story fully and repeating the benchmark events, but […]
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