DWD's Reviews

Published in 1997 by Publications International, LTD. At first glance, The Blue and the Gray: The Conflict Between North and South is a typical coffee table book about the Civil War. There are tons of them - I ought to know, I own several myself. They are all over-sized, hardback and full of great pictures. Most have lots of details about the battles and the strategies of the war and a little about topics such as the daily life of the soldier, medicine of the time, the use of spies or daily life in camp. This book is set up exactly in the reverse. It is all about those other topics, discusses the overall strategy and offers very little about the specifics of any actual battles. There are literally no battle maps. But, that doesn't stop this from being a great book. It is a great book precisely because it doesn't treat those other topics as interesting filler - it treats them as topics that can stand alone and are worthy of exploration.  Every page is colored either blue or g...

Published by Tantor Audio in 2010. Book originally published in 1981 by Ballantine Books. Read by David Drummond. Duration: 16 hours, 10 minutes. Unabridged. As the American frontier pushed ever-Westward during the Colonial Era, there were multiple major conflicts between the new White settlers and the various Indian groups. The last, and the biggest, was the war that Americans know as the French and Indian War (1754-1763). It was truly a global war involving not only France and England, but also a variety of countries around the world such as Prussia, Austria, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, Russia and the Mughal Empire in India. The war began as a power struggle between French and English colonists along with their Native American allies. Technically, a young Virginia militia leader named George Washington started the war when he tried to remove French Canadians who were building a trading post in what is now western Pennsylvania. The entire frontier was soon at war and little settlem...

Published in 2018 by Random House Audio. Read by Fred Sanders and the author, Jon Meacham. Duration: 10 hours, 55 minutes. Unabridged. In The Soul of America , Jon Meacham takes a look at Presidential leadership from the Civil War onward, particularly the power of the President to lead the country to "do the right thing" in a time of crisis. He has a particular focus with how the President deals with people who want to abuse the rights of others. Well, to be completely honest, Meacham does not have a complete clear thesis in this book and I am not 100% sure what his overall goal was. What it turned out to be was an interesting, rambling work that looked at several crisis points in American history and how the politicians, mostly presidents, responded. He looked at Lincoln (the source of the title), Grant during Reconstruction and the rise of the KKK, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Eisenhower, JFK and LBJ. There is a little discussion...

Published in 1998 by Enslow Publishers, Inc. How many books have been written about Abraham Lincoln? NPR claims more than 15,000 - more than anyone except Jesus Christ. This book enters an already crowded field with only one distinct thing going for it - it is aimed at middle school students. That means, I need to review this book with that fact in mind. To Somerlott's credit, he generally hits the reading level of middle school students and he does keep his focus on the threats to Lincoln and Lincoln's lackadaisical attitude towards his own personal security. It's not always gripping reading, but it is generally accurate and includes a lot of illustrations and some primary sources in special pull-out sections. The only quibble I have with the book is the rather simplistic way it deals with Lincoln's attitude toward slavery and African American civil rights. Lincoln was politically liberal on this topic for his day, but the cherrypicked quote provided on page 18 mak...

Published in 2017 by Blackstone Audio. Read by Peter Berkrot. Duration: 11 hours, 45 minutes. Unabridged. Just a few months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Hollywood actor Jimmy Stewart was a new recruit in the U.S. Army angling for the chance to fly a bomber in combat. At the time, he was the reigning male actor in Hollywood, having recently received the Oscar for Best Actor . But, deep down, Jimmy Stewart wanted to continue the family tradition of military service. The Army tried to divert Stewart to a non-combat role, aided by some string-pulling by his movie studio. But, Stewart pulled some strings of his own and eventually found himself training to fly bombers, despite the fact that he was easily at least ten years older than all of the other trainees. Stewart and his men flew their bombers to England and joined the massive collection of planes involved in the bombing campaign in November of 1943. Stewart's age and extensive pre-war flying experience played a part in hi...

Published by Random House Audio in 2013. Read by the author, Andrew Carroll. Duration: 14 hours, 2 minutes. Unabridged Why are some things remembered in our shared historical memory and others are not? Why do we commemorate some things but others are only remembered by a few hard-core local historians? For Here Is Where , Andrew Carroll compiled a list of historical locations that he felt have been overlooked. Inspired by the little known-but-true story of how Abraham Lincoln's son was saved from being pushed off of New Jersey train platform by John Wilkes Booth's brother one year before Lincoln's assassination, Carroll decided to hit the road and look at similar locations all over the United States.  Among the locations he found were the home of a house slave that ran away from President George Washington. Even though she ended up dying in poverty in a rough cabin, she was still an inspiration. When asked if she would have been better off living in the relative comf...

I tried. I really did. Published in 2017 by Tantor Audio. Read by Johnny Heller and Jo Anna Perrin. Duration: 8 hours, 58 minutes. Unabridged. The premise of American Civil Wars is interesting. The idea is to place the American Civil War in the context of the currents of the politics of the larger world of the time in order to show how the war changed the politics of other areas (prime examples are the Dominican Republic and Mexico - both were invaded by European powers while the United States was unable to enforce the Monroe Doctrine) and how those outside political forces influenced the Civil War. One of the stated goals is that teachers read this book and try to bring these insights to their students in the classroom. Don H. Doyle is the editor of this book. I think that it more accurate to say that he "collected" a series of essays by experts in non-American history that focused on how the Civil War affected their regions. I wish he had been a true editor because th...

Published by Random House Audio in 2013. Read by the author, Bill Bryson. Duration: 17 hours, 3 minutes. Unabridged. Bill Bryson's  One Summer: America, 1927  is an immensely interesting book, as would any book that featured Charles Lindbergh, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Sacco and Vanzetti, Jack Dempsey, Gutzon Borglum, Charles Ponzi, Al Capone, Al Jolson, Zane Grey, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Henry Ford, several Hollywood stars and more. Boxing champ Jack Dempsey (1895-1983) The book starts out with the story of Charles Lindbergh and the other flyers that were attempting to cross the Atlantic in a non-stop flight to claim the $25,000 Orteig Prize. Bryson moves on to tell the stories of the other people I named above - often cleverly lacing them together with the story of Charles Lindbergh. We learn about baseball, boxing, Hollywood (there's a hilarious story about Jack Dempsey with a starlet), the beginnings of "talkies" and the movie ...

Published by Tantor Audio in 2016. Read by Guy Bethell. Duration: 7 hours, 20 minutes. Unabridged. The entire history of the world is less than 7 and 1/2 hours? Yep, that's what Christopher Lascelles purports to offer in his A Short History of the World . He acknowledges that this is not a complete history - he never intended it to be. Instead, his aim is to connect some of the dots that the average reader may have picked up in history class, movies and History Channel documentaries (and hopefully spark a bit more interest). Lascelles does succeed in hitting many of the high points and certainly does a better job at not being as Eurocentric as other short world histories have been, such as A Little History of the World by E.H. Gombrich. Lascelles spends quite a bit of time discussing China, Japan, India and Mongolia. All that being said, there are entire civilizations that are ignored or get nothing more than a passing nod. That is always the problem when writing a history o...

Published in 1993 by Harlan Davidson, Inc. This unique volume looks at the near-constant state of war that existed in one part or another of the English colonies, from the first attempt at colonization in 1585 until the end of the French and Indian War in 1763. The first quarter of Struggle for a Continent deals with the frequent wars that erupted between the English and the Native Americans that they encountered. Similar patterns emerge as disagreements and misunderstandings become full-fledged brutal and desperate wars of survival in colony after colony, with the exception (at first, at least) of Pennsylvania.  The rest of the book is devoted to the English struggle against other colonial powers, namely the Spanish and the French. Spain was already a declining power at this point so they posed a minor threat when compared to the ever-growing French Empire. A great part of the book is spent discussing the French threat emanating from Canada towards New England and what ...

Published in 2001 by Enslow Publishers, Inc. Matthew Brady is most famous for being THE photographer of the Civil War, but he had quite the career before the war. He was arguably the most famous photographer in the world before the war and the war cemented him in the historical record. Every American has seen his team's handiwork - one of his photographs of Lincoln was the model for Lincoln's image on the penny. But, if you are a student of the Civil War, you have seen Brady's handiwork over and over again - such as his picture of Lincoln conferring with McClellan in a tent at the Antietam battlefield, his portrait of Lincoln with his son Tad, and his picture of Robert E. Lee taken right after the war. This biography is intended to be a supplemental reading in a fifth grade or higher classroom. I am a voracious reader of just about anything about the American Civil War (this is my 100th book I am reviewing with a Civil War theme) and I found this slim volume to be quite in...

Published in 2015 by Eastern National A year and a half ago I visited the Lincoln home at Springfield, Illinois (a great place, by the way) and in the visitors center I found this book. I was intrigued for three reasons: 1) the Park Service books are always beautifully put together, like a National Geographic with lots of color pictures; 2) I knew nothing about any Asian participation in the Civil War - I figured there had to be some because the war was so vast and involved so many people - but I knew nothing about them; 3) This was the physically largest book in the series - even bigger than the books on the Underground Railroad and American Indians in the Civil War - two areas that are well documented. This book continues in the tradition of being beautiful visually. It is written as a series of articles, each telling a part of the overall story and each article is illustrated with high quality photos. However, the articles are often overlapping, with mentions of some of the same m...

Originally published in 1996. With Black Profiles in Courage , Kareem Abdul-Jabbar presents a look at American history through a different lens than you usually see. This book follows from even before the arrival of Columbus through Rosa Parks receiving her just accolades in the 1990's. His underlying theme, as explained in the title, is that African-Americans have been contributing in important ways the entire time, but they are often "whitewashed" from history. Abdul-Jabbar is best known for his time as a top-level basketball player. But he is not just a jock (if you are a fan, you know he never was JUST a jock.) He is also an amateur historian - and quite a thoughtful one. Clearly, he was inspired by the book Profiles in Courage by John F. Kennedy but this book is not structured in any way like that classic. The book starts with its weakest proposition from a historical perspective. There are historians that assert that African peoples were heavily involved in Meso...

A Review of the Audiobook Winner of the 1957 Pulitzer Prize Originally Published in 1955 Published by HarperAudio Duration: 3 hours, 10 minutes Read by John F. Kennedy, Jr. Abridged President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) If you have not read Profiles in Courage , it is comprised of 8 short biographies of Senators that JFK found to be inspirational in some way or another. Those Senators are: John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, Thomas Hart Benton, Sam Houston, Edmund G. Ross, Lucius Lamar, George Norris and Robert A. Taft. Each of these men's stories were very well done, even if some of them, like John Quincy Adams' biography, actually seemed very short compared to what these men actually accomplished. But, then again, this is just a look at one point in time, not a complete list of each man's accomplishments and an abridged version of that short look on top of that. This audiobook version of JFK's classic work is read by the President's son, John F. ...

Published by Gildan Media, LLC in 2012 Read by Sean Pratt Duration: 18 hours, 54 minutes Unabridged James Oakes takes a unique look at the Civil War in Freedom National - through the lens of the anti-slavery movement. I have read more than 200 Civil War histories and almost all of them cover this part of the story - but, just in bits and pieces. Oakes looks at the anti-slavery movement from its roots in the Revolutionary War era and moves forward with the different Abolitionist arguments until they finally stumbled upon the concept of "freedom national". The argument is over the standard, default setting of the slavery issue. Was slavery legal everywhere, except where it was specifically abolished, or was it illegal everywhere, except for where it was specifically made legal? Or, in shorthand - was it "freedom national" or "slavery national"? This book puts the lie to the idea that the Civil War was over taxes, tariffs or anything else but slavery....

Originally published in hardback book form in 1991. Published by Simon and Schuster Audio. Read by the author, David McCullough Duration: 11 hours, 19 minutes Unabridged Brave Companions: Portraits in History  is a collection of previously published articles and speeches. It's a smattering of this and that - sometimes it's about art, sometimes about scientists, sometimes about politicians and sometimes it's just some musings from McCullough about history. It doesn't matter, almost all of it is interesting and well-told. McCullough understands the value of telling history as a story - as always he is very approachable. My favorite entry was the story of the railroad that preceded the Panama Canal. It was an amazing story of the power of human will against nature. McCullough reads this audiobook, which is great because McCullough has a fantastic speaking voice and is well known for his voice work. I envy both his writing ability and his talents as a speaker. My fav...

Published in 2015 by Blue River Press Not many people know about the horrible story of the Sultana , a paddlewheel steamboat that sank into the Mississippi River in April of 1865. It is the worst maritime disaster in American history but was largely overshadowed by the events surrounding the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and his dramatic funeral train tour from Washington, D.C. to Springfield, Illinois. The Sultana  was grossly overcrowded. It was designed to carry 376 passengers, but it was carrying 2,155 passengers when three of its boilers exploded in the early morning hours of April 27, 1865.  Most of its passengers were survivors of the infamous Andersonville prisoner of war camp that were being shipped home.  This book is technically a sequel to Saint Patrick's Battalion . It continues the story of a boy who traveled with an American army during the Mexican War. In Fire in the Water , that boy has grown up and become a famous war correspondent. He is travelin...

Published by Random House Audio in 2009 Read by Don Leslie Duration: 13 hours Unabridged I am an avid reader of Civil War era histories (I own more than 100 and who knows how many that I have read from the library) and it is rare for me to find a book that covers new territory for me. This book did. I knew as an abstract fact that there were thousands of white Union soldiers that came from the Confederacy. They are mentioned in many histories, but they are rarely a focus. The State of Jones focuses on the family of Newton Knight, an unwilling Confederate soldier who was forcibly drafted, fought in multiple battles and eventually went AWOL.  Newton Knight was not afraid to fight and kill for what he believed in. When the government tried to force him back into the military he  started an anti-Confederate insurgency movement centered in Jones County, Mississippi. Those renegades tied up Confederate military assets and virtually stopped in-kind tax collections that were ne...

Published by HighBridge, a Division of Recorded Books in February of 2017. Read by Jonathan Yen Duration: 10 hours, 24 minutes Unabridged In The Not-Quite States of America , Doug Mack takes his readers on a sometimes serious, sometimes humorous tour of America's territories: the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and Puerto Rico (in that order). Mack goes into a little history of each territory and sets off to experience a more in-depth tour than the typical tourist might normally take. He meets with local leaders, well-known personalities, mainland Americans who have moved to the territory and goes out of his way to meet talkative locals who are willing to discuss the relationship between that territory and the United States government (which is usually riddled with strange rules that cause all sorts of unintended consequences). Along the way Mack visits a restaurant that allows its guests to feed beer to pigs in the U.S. Virgin Islands, ...

Published in 2015 by Cumberland House 273 pages including end notes and a bibliography Lincoln's Gift: How Humor Shaped Lincoln's Life and Legacy is an excellent short biography of our sixteenth president with a special focus on his legendary storytelling abilities. When one considers who integral Lincoln's humorous stories were to his successes both as an attorney and as a politician, I felt that this biography is one of the few biographies or histories that gave me much of a sense of Lincoln as a man. Leidner wisely chooses to provide a lot of detail about Lincoln's life before he became a national figure - these stories give the reader a feel for the man long before he became president and give a frame of reference for his reactions and his stories while he was in office. Very few of his stories are truly laugh out loud funny, but he often told humorous or rustic tales to make his point or distill a complicated idea into something very simple. A classic example...