TRAVELS with GEORGE: IN SEARCH of WASHINGTON and HIS LEGACY (audiobook) by Nathaniel Philbrick

Published in 2021 by Penguin Audio.
Read by the author, Nathaniel Philbrick.
Duration: 9 hours, 34 minutes.
Unabridged.

George Washington looked at the newly formed United States of America and saw what it had always been - 13 disunited states with nothing to bind them together. Washington may not have been the deepest-thinking founding father, but some things he just "knew" deep in his bones. What did he know in this case? He knew that they actually all did have something in common. They all had George Washington in common.

So, George went on a series of extended trips around the states until he had visited all 13 of them and he gave them a visible introduction/reminder (it depended on the state and the citizens) of what the new United States of America was all about. Travels with George is the story of those tours.

Each state had its own issues. For example, Rhode Island wasn't even a state when the started traveling - it was holding out. The Southern states, especially away from the ports, were always a little separate from the main political action between Virginia, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. Washington was aware of this and mostly traveled over rutted, muddy, rough roads south of Virginia. This also meant he was traveling in areas that were barely mapped. That had to be tough on a man in his late fifties.

This is not just a whimsical fanboy look at this tour - it discusses the dangerous politics of the time (Rhode Island was one of the dangers) and it discusses the uncomfortable topic of slavery thoroughly and honestly in my opinion. 

This is a thoughtful and enjoyable book. I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: TRAVELS with GEORGE: IN SEARCH of WASHINGTON and HIS LEGACY by Nathaniel Philbrick.

OUR FIRST CIVIL WAR: PATRIOTS and LOYALISTS in the AMERICAN REVOLUTION (audiobook) by H.W. Brand

 

Published by Random House Audio in November of 2021.
Read by Steve Hendrickson.
Duration: 16 hours, 31 minutes.
Unabridged.

When I read the title of this audiobook, OUR FIRST CIVIL WAR: PATRIOTS and LOYALISTS in the AMERICAN REVOLUTION, I was sure that I was going to be listening to an in-depth look at how the population of the young United States dealt with its neighbors and family that disagreed about the question of independence. The most famous example is Benjamin Franklin and his son William Franklin. William Franklin was the last royal governor of New Jersey and their relationship never recovered from the shock of the Revolutionary War. 

This book deals with more of these issues than most histories of the Revolutionary War era, but that is not particularly hard to do - most of them mention the Franklin family situation and use it as a stand-in for all families. But, it does not go in-depth into this concept of Loyalists vs. Patriots. For example, I learned more about this topic from this Wikipedia page than I did from this book. I should not learn more about the topic from 11 pages of text on a Wikipedia page then I did in a 16+ hour audiobook.

So what is this book, if not an in-depth study of how the American Revolution fractured families, cities and populations?

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) and William Franklin (1730-1813)

It's a very good political history of the Revolutionary Era that focuses especially on Benjamin Franklin, George Washington and, to a lesser extent, John Adams. The text hums right along and it was a very good listen. This is one of the few Revolutionary War histories that I've read that actually discusses the dilemma that slaves faced in the war and the offer of freedom that the British military offered for males slaves that were willing to leave their families and volunteer. He looked at the stories of two slaves - one who fought for the British and one who ending up fighting for both sides.

All of that being said, I am going to deduct one point from what would have been a 5 star review. This book does not adequately address what the title promises.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: OUR FIRST CIVIL WAR: PATRIOTS and LOYALISTS in the AMERICAN REVOLUTION (audiobook) by H.W. Brand.

FOR LIBERTY and GLORY: WASHINGTON, LAFAYETTE, and THEIR REVOLUTIONS by James R. Gaines

Published in 2007 by W.W. Norton and Company.

First a bit of traditional blogging. I was going through some old receipts because I had plenty of time on my hands thanks to the Coronavirus lockdowns. This pile of receipts was 12 years old. It included some golden oldies like a Blockbuster receipt. I also found a receipt for this book. I had gotten a great deal on For Liberty and Glory - and it sat in my To-Be-Read pile for 12 years.

I had no idea it was in that pile for that long. If you had asked me before I found the receipt, I would guess it had been 4 or 5 years at most. At that moment, this book moved to the top of my To-Be-Read pile. I should have read it long before now - it was an excellent read.

Originally, I picked up this book because I simply didn't know much about Lafayette. I've read plenty of biographies of Washington and histories of the American Revolution. Lafayette always comes into the story somewhere in the middle. There's always a build up, with the Stamp Act, the Boston Massacre, Paul Revere and Patrick Henry and so on and then this kid from France comes over. He and Washington bond, Lafayette makes a good showing and he helps bring the French military in to help fight the English. And, at some point Lafayette goes away and doesn't come back until 1824.

I knew Lafayette was involved with the French Revolution, but my interest in the French Revolution is not strong (to me, it's a story that starts out well and then, all of a sudden, mobs are carrying heads and body parts around screaming for more blood and ends with a dictator that attacks every country in Europe, parts of Africa and even Haiti). So, I simply lost track of him. I asked someone who was a French Revolution buff what happened to Lafayette and the short answer was: "It didn't go well for him" with no elaboration.

So, this book looked like it would answer that question. It is a double biography of Washington and Lafayette as well as a double history of the American Revolution and the French Revolution. It is certainly not the definitive biography of either man or the definitive history of either revolution. But, it is immensely readable. I enjoyed it.

Turns out that I learned a lot about Lafayette. For example, his first name is Gilbert. Yeah, that seems trivial, but I've never heard him referred to as anything but Lafayette or the Marquis de Lafayette (almost like "Marquis" was his first name).

Lafayette was in love with the concept of the American Revolution from the

moment he heard of it. This teenager was so excited by the prospect of assisting in the war that he came here against the orders of the King's advisors - they had ordered all of the potential volunteers to stay in France. But, Lafayette and a few others crossed the border to Spain. Lafayette bought his own ship, sailed to South Carolina and eventually became an American hero - a Founding Father of sorts with more than 400 towns named after him. In my own state (Indiana) we have two cities and one county named after him.

Lafayette returned to France and was caught up in the French Revolution. The phrase "caught up" makes it sound like he was passive. Hardly. He co-wrote the most famous document of the French Revolution - the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. He created the modern French flag by combining the flag of Paris with the flag of the King of France. He helped save Louis XVI's life at one point and ended up languishing in a foreign prison for five years because of his role in the Revolution. He was offered the chance to be dictator at one point, and like his friend and hero George Washington, he turned it down. Bonaparte would not turn it down when he was offered that chance. But, Lafayette had a hand in Bonaparte's political demise in 1815 (after Waterloo). The luster of his name helped to carry the day.

Speaking of Bonaparte, Lafayette knew him personally. He knew so many big names in his life - George Washington, Victor Hugo, Marie Antoinette, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Victor Hugo, Louis XVI, Andrew Jackson, Alexis de Tocqueville, James Monroe, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and more.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. A must read if you are a student of the American Revolution and the early years of America's independence. Gaines has made this very approachable and writes in a lively manner.

It can be found on Amazon.com here: FOR LIBERTY and GLORY: WASHINGTON, LAFAYETTE, and THEIR REVOLUTIONS by James R. Gaines.

"I LOVE PAUL REVERE, WHETHER HE RODE or NOT" by Richard Shenkman

Originally published by HarperPerennial in 1991.

Richard Shenkman has written several books that show that many of the commonly-held beliefs about history are not quite true and some are absolutely false. The title comes from a quote from President Warren G. Harding when he was asked about a popular newspaper article that asserted that Paul Revere did not actually make his famous ride. Ironically, Paul Revere only gets two mentions: once on page 10 and the other on page 192. The mention on page 192 is simply the complete quote from Harding that inspired the title of the book. So, if you were thinking this was going to be a book about Paul Revere, you will be disappointed. 

Instead, Shenkman's I Love Paul Revere, Whether He Rode or Not is a reminder that there are always multiple views on history. Anybody that tells you that a certain group all believed a certain thing or they all did something for one reason is simplifying things and losing some of the nuance of how it really happened. 

The Boston Tea Party

Shenkman explores several different areas in 12 chapters including patriotism, religion, business, alcohol/drugs, and women. Typically, he brings up a "fact" that people commonly believe, such as the Puritans living in a theocracy, and then demonstrates that they the common belief is, at best, an exaggeration (government often told the ministers to mind their own business and ministers told the government to do the same -even early on. He cites an example from 1639 - just 19 years after Plymouth colony was founded).

But, sometimes he takes things too far in order to make a point. For example, on page 66-67 he discusses the common belief that the Civil War laid the foundation for a post-war explosion of growth. He looks at railroad expansion and notes that "Before the war, railroad track increased at a rate of about 200 percent a decade. In the decade afterward, the rate barely reached 75 percent." Comparing rate of growth to actual growth is a game people play with statistics but does not deal in absolute growth.

His discussion of the Boston Tea Party is similar in that it is completely factual, but does not include all of the facts in order to make a point about the men who led it. It's a valid point, but it is certainly not the only point.

This is an extremely readable book that makes the valuable point, as I've already noted, that history is seldom as simple as we tell one another. It's not always as simple as Shenkman makes it out to be, either. I do recommend this book, however. It teaches that the reader needs to do his or her own research and provides plenty of places to get started.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: "I LOVE PAUL REVERE, WHETHER HE RODE or NOT" by Richard Shenkman.

AMERICAN HERITAGE: GREAT MINDS of HISTORY interviews by Roger Mudd

Published in 1999 by Wiley and Sons.

Roger Mudd, formerly of CBS and NBC news, interviewed five historians about their special topics of expertise. They are all solid interviews that allow the historians to tell why their topics are important. Mudd does a great job of letting the interviews flow along a natural conversational path, but he does interrupt with questions that ask for clarification or challenge a point.

The historians are: Gordon Wood discussing the American Revolution; James McPherson discussing the Civil War; Richard White discussing Westward Expansion; David McCullough discussing the Industrial Era; and Stephen Ambrose discussing World War II/Eisenhower/Nixon.

This was a lot like sitting down with a talented professor in a coffee shop and letting him/her go on about their favorite topic. They weren't lectures, but more like a conversation. I know the work of four of these five historians and have read quite a bit of McCullough, Ambrose and McPherson.

McPherson is my favorite of these three since he and I share a deep interest in the Civil War. I was surprised to learn that he came to study the Civil War later than I thought. McCullough's interview is interesting because of his wide-ranging interests. He discussed the Industrial Era, but he has done a lot of work outside of that time as well, including a great biography of Truman and a history of just the year 1776 during the American Revolution. Ambrose's interview very much felt like my previous impressions of Ambrose - great historian, occasionally a prickly personality.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. Very enjoyable read. It can be found on Amazon.com here: AMERICAN HERITAGE: GREAT MINDS of HISTORY interviews by Roger Mudd.

ALISTAIR COOKE'S AMERICA by Alistair Cooke

Published in 1973.

In 1973, undoubtedly to prepare for the upcoming 1976 bicentennial of the American Declaration of Independence, BBC reporter and author Alistair Cooke released a book and a television mini-series telling the history of the United States to the U.K. The book and the series came to America as well with the book selling nearly 2 million copies. This massive "coffee table" type book has 393 pages and weighs in at 3 pounds, 9 ounces (compare that to a random paperback book I weighed at just 5 ounces).

Photo by Lewis Hine

Cooke presents a straight-forward history of America, skimming over lots of details but getting the highlights. This has to be the case when you cover more than nearly 500 years of history in less than 400 pages. He focuses half of the book on the exploration/colonial/Revolutionary War/Constitutional era and it is by far the strongest part of the book.

This book is filled with beautiful, sometimes profound photographs. On pages 312-313 there is a two page spread of a lynching. Cooke claims that "no one knows who took this picture, or exactly when." (p. 311)   It was taken by Lawrence Beitler in Marion, Indiana on August 7, 1930. Beitler sold this photo for 10 days straight to sell as souvenirs of the lynching. Here is a link to a great book on the topic: A Lynching in the Heartland: Race and Memory in the Heartland by James H. Madison. Here is a link to the Wikipedia page on this lynching: Lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith.

The photograph of the girl working in a clothing factory in North Carolina is another great photograph in book full of great paintings and photographs. I have included it in this review.

It is very readable, but clearly a product of its time, and Cooke is a reporter, not an historian. The book has a bit of a racist feel to it. For example, when discussing where the United States lays on the globe (not too hot, not too cold), he notes: "...the United States spans the limits of the climates that white men can live and work in." Cooke mostly skips over the Native American civilizations that inhabited the Americas before Columbus. He spends almost as much time discussing entertaining but mostly nonsensical theories about the Phoenicians settling in the Americas as he does the actual Native American civilizations themselves. Cooke's reasoning is that he is covering a history of the United States itself, so Native Americans get the short end of the stick, except as an impediment to American expansion for the first 2/3 of the book.

Cooke does a similarly poor job dealing with African Americans, a group that he cringingly calls "the blacks" throughout. He does, however, clearly observe (in a clunky manner) that slavery and the continuing racial prejudice against African Americans is an ongoing open sore and has never been dealt with properly.

Final rating - 4 stars out of 5, keeping in mind that this history book is clearly old enough to be an historical artifact itself.

It can be found on Amazon.com here: ALISTAIR COOKE'S AMERICA by Alistair Cooke.

THE FIRST EMANCIPATOR: THE FORGOTTEN STORY of ROBERT CARTER the FOUNDING FATHER WHO FREED HIS SLAVES by Andrew Levy

Published by Random House in 2005.

Robert Carter holds a unique place in American history. He was a massively successful plantation owner in the Revolutionary War generation. He knew and worked with George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in the Virginia legislature. He was not particularly effective as a politician, but he was effective at something that all of the above failed at.

He freed his 450+ slaves while he was still alive and managed to keep his fortune and his property.

He did it over a series of years, but he did it. Thomas Jefferson thought that it couldn't be done and often wrote about the quandary he found himself in. A good student of American history will remember that Washington freed his slaves - but that was after the death of Martha Washington. Carter did it while he was alive.

Carter's motivations seem to have been a combination of religious ideals and political ideals, motivated by such things as the soaring rhetoric of the Declaration of Independence.

The problem is that history has forgotten Robert Carter. There is only one little historical marker that marks where he used to live but doesn't mention the emancipation of his slaves. One-fourth of the marker is about a tutor he brought in to teach his children. It's almost like everyone wanted to forget what Carter did with his slaves.

This book was a difficult read - partially due to the lack of information about Carter and partially because Andrew Levy tried to stretch that scant information out far enough to make a book. The book looks bigger than it really is - it has 195 pages of text and 105 pages of acknowledgments, notes, a bibliography and an index.

The book itself was not particularly well-written. I was immensely interested in this topic and it still felt like it was a slog.

I rate this book 2 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE FIRST EMANCIPATOR: THE FORGOTTEN STORY of ROBERT CARTER the FOUNDING FATHER WHO FREED HIS SLAVES by Andrew Levy.

NEVER CAUGHT: THE WASHINGTONS' RELENTLESS PURSUIT of THEIR RUNAWAY SLAVE, ONA JUDGE (audiobook) by Erica Armstrong Dunbar

Published in 2017 by Simon and Schuster Audio.
Read by Robin Miles.
Duration: 6 hours, 45 minutes.
Unabridged.

Never Caught is the story of Ona Judge. Ona (Oney) Judge was Martha Washington's personal body servant - the person that brushed her hair, sewed her clothing and generally made sure she was taken care of as she went through her day.

The Washingtons were living in Philadelphia, the temporary seat of government for the fledgling United States while Washington, D.C. was being designed and laid out. The problem with Philadelphia (for the Washingtons) is that it was in the middle of a change. Pennsylvania had been a slave state, but it was becoming a free state. In fact, Pennsylvania was taking the first steps towards becoming an abolitionist stronghold. Technically, the Washingtons could keep their slaves, but after six continuous months of residence in Philadelphia they were technically allowed to start the process to become free people.

George Washington and his lawyers worked out a rotation schedule so that none of his slaves would reside in Pennsylvania for no more than six months at a time. But, Ona Judge had learned a lot about freedom in Philadelphia because there were so many free African Americans that she would have interacted with. And, she became aware of the nascent beginnings of an Underground Railroad.

The notice put out just after the escape of Ona Judge. Note that
George Washington kept his name out of the notice for
political reasons. He was well aware of the irony of  the
man who led the fight for America's freedom hunting down
a slave who escaped for her personal freedom.

When Ona learned that she would be given away to Martha Washington's granddaughter as a wedding present, she decided it was time to escape. And, the President of the United States decided that he had to bring her back...

This is a true story, but for most people it is an unknown one.  I know that I just learned about Ona Judge a little more than a year ago. It is ironic to have the first President of the United States searching for a person that just wants to have her freedom.

The book's primary fault is one that would be hard to overcome, no matter the author. There is just not a lot of source material on Ona Judge. To fill in the blanks, the author paints a picture of what her life (and the lives of all so-called "house slaves" of the time) must have been like, including detailed descriptions of the type of work she must have done as a slave and as a free woman. But, too many sentences start with phrases like "probably", "must have", "could have" as the author discusses possible thoughts, feelings and reactions to the events of her life. It is a powerful book, but it is not always authoritative.

Still, I gladly recommend this book. I rate it 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: NEVER CAUGHT: THE WASHINGTONS' RELENTLESS PURSUIT of THEIR RUNAWAY SLAVE, ONA JUDGE.

THE WAR BEFORE the WAR: FUGITIVE SLAVES and the STRUGGLE for AMERICA'S SOUL from the REVOLUTION to the CIVIL WAR (audiobook) by Andrew Delbanco

Published in 2018 by Penguin Audio.
Read by Ari Fliakos.
Duration: 13 hours, 40 minutes.
Unabridged.

Simply described, The War Before the War is an in-depth look at the slavery controversy in the United States from its very beginnings through the Civil War. I am an avid reader of books that explore American slavery and the Civil War. Anyone that denies that slavery wasn't THE issue that pushed America to Civil War is deluding themselves and simply has not read the statements that five of the seceding states (Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia) issued in 1860 and 1861. Slavery was the most discussed item in four of the five declarations (Virginia's brief declaration does not mention many specifics but does refer to "the oppression of Southern Slaveholding states").

As the reader goes through this book it is easy to see that slavery was always a difficult problem for every generation of Americans to deal with. The Founders wrestled with it and ultimately kicked it down the road for later generations to deal with. By the 1850's the problem had come to a head. Interestingly, the thing that brought it to a head was a problem that rarely happened - what to do with runaway slaves.

When compared to the total slave population, very few slaves actually escaped and almost none made it to a free state. But, when a slave was caught in a free state, the media made a story out of it. Who can blame them? It was a riveting story. What was more important - property rights of the individual slave owner or the rights of a man to have his day in court to prove that he was actually a free man in court before he was taken away into bondage? What was more important - the right of a state to protect the property rights of its slaveholders throughout the country or the rights of a free state to declare slavery null and void within its borders?

When a slave was caught in the north and the process started to take him or her back to slavery the political system would often boil over. Both sides came to out, protested, wrote letters to the editor, gave speeches in Congress and generally used the occasion to rally their bases. The author makes a valuable point when he points out this is the same thing that modern political movements do (Black Lives Matter, Pro- and Anti-Abortion activists, immigration, etc.).

The book also looks at what individuals did when confronted with these problems. I was particularly struck by the judge that returned slaves in his courtroom but allowed his home to be used as an Underground Railroad stop by his grown children. He didn't actively help - he just actively ignored the extra people sleeping in his house from time to time.

This is an amazing book. I didn't think I could really learn a lot more about this topic. This will be my 108th review of a book that will be tagged "civil war" and the 77th book that will be tagged "slavery". But, seeing it all laid out in one big sweep is powerful. A great follow-up would be this book: Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865.

The audiobook was read by Ari Fliakos who did a fantastic job.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. Strongly recommended.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: THE WAR BEFORE the WAR: FUGITIVE SLAVES and the STRUGGLE for AMERICA'S SOUL from the REVOLUTION to the CIVIL WAR by Andrew Delbanco.

DECLARATION: THE NINE TUMULTUOUS WEEKS WHEN AMERICA BECAME INDEPENDENT, MAY 1 - JULY 4, 1776 by William Hogeland

Published in 2010 by Simon and Schuster

When you read the history books, it seems obvious that the colonies steadily worked their way up to declaring their independence without much of a hitch.

The beauty of William Hogeland's Declaration is that he shows that it was a lot closer than the history books usually portray. Samuel Adams and his cousin John Adams maneuvered many of the representatives to the Continental Congress into voting for independence and certainly manipulated the government of Pennsylvania. In fact, you could make the case that they toppled the government of Pennsylvania through a powerful media campaign combined with timely advice and political pressure and installed a pro-independence government just in time for the fateful vote.

But, this new (to me) information was marred by a difficult to read text. The book just bounced around - the writing style just never got into a flow. I found it hard to read more than a page or two at a time.

Samuel Adams (1722-1803)

On top of that, there are 56 pages of end notes with commentary. If this book were published back in the "bad old days" when typesetting was labor intensive, I would understand why it was done as end notes - it was a pain to work out all of the foot notes. But, in today's world, almost all of the complicated work of footnotes is done by a computer. If it is worth the author's time to make 56 pages of commentary in your end notes, it is worth turning them in to foot notes so that people will actually read them.

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5 - interesting information, poorly presented.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Declaration: The Nine Tumultuous Weeks When America Became Independent, May 1 - July 4, 1776.

FOLLOW the RIVER (audiobook) by James Alexander Thom

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 settlements on the extreme frontier, like Drapers Meadows, Virginia, were exposed - even if they had only the faintest idea there was a war going on.

In 1755, a group of Shawnee warriors attacked Drapers Meadows, a settlement of just a few families and killed or kidnapped about half of the inhabitants and took them to a large Shawnee town near the Ohio River in what is now northeastern Kentucky. One of the victims was Mary Draper Ingles (pronounced Ingalls) and this novel is the fictionalized story of her capture (along with her children), her life among the Shawnee and her escape with a fellow female captive who spoke mostly German. Mary had watched as she was taken to the Shawnee village and she realized that all she had to do was simply follow the river system back to her home. If only it were that simple. It turned into a 42 day walk back to an English frontier cabin across some of the roughest terrain in the Appalachians. They left in mid-October and arrived on December 1, 1755.

Photo by DWD

Their escape covered more than 500 miles and crossed an estimated 145 rivers or creeks, with little or no food. Oftentimes, they had to get soaked in water, climb cliffs or rockfalls and starved as they walked and the temperatures dropped. This terrain is difficult nowadays with modern equipment. Their accomplishment is astonishing when you consider their physical condition and almost complete lack of tools, equipment, nutrition and warm clothing. This book was thoroughly researched by the author who walked as much as their route as he possibly could. You can tell - the landscape is as much a character in the book as any single character.

Follow the River is an amazing book. It is not a happy book - how can it be when it is full of suffering, violence, death and tragedy? But, James Alexander Thom told the story so well that I felt like I was along for the whole tragic trip. It is sobering and compelling. It is all the more tragic when you consider that she left her children behind with the Shawnee because there was no way that they could survive this extremely difficult trek.

The audiobook was read by David Drummond. He does an excellent job with the accents throughout the book (the area was quite international considering how hard it was to get there) and the rest of the book overall. I do think it was a bit odd to chose a man to read the book considering that most of the dialogue of the book is spoken by women. A great deal of the book also deals with the internal thoughts of Mary.

This was a re-read for me, although it had been 26 years between readings. I remembered it as an excellent book and I am pleased to say that I still think it is excellent.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Follow the River by James Alexander Thom. 

HERE IS WHERE: DISCOVERING AMERICA'S FORGOTTEN HISTORY (audiobook) by Andrew Carroll

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 comfort of working in the Mount Vernon plantation home, she said she would prefer to be poor and free. 

Carroll also found the birthplace of the man who created a great deal of the vaccinations that the world uses today and had a hand in literally saving millions of lives. And, on the other side of that coin, he tracked down the probable origins of the "Spanish Influenza" (in the American West, not in Spain).

How about the location of the earliest DNA samples in North America that re-wrote the history books? The site of a million graves on a New York City's Hart Island that serves as a giant Potter's Field? The place where the first two-stage rockets were built and fired? Or the place where the modern elevator was built? Carroll talks about all of these and even more.

Some of the locations aren't particularly historical in my mind, but this was an interesting, rambling look at obscure history that often tied in to the some of the biggest historical events of the last two hundred years. Carroll looks into why some of them are forgotten. Many times it is because they are embarrassing, such as Washington's runaway slave or the hospital in California that sterilized more people than any other hospital in the country as part of a pre-World War II eugenics movement. Other times there is no particular reason why they are forgotten - they just get lost in the shuffle of history.

Carroll ends the book with a roundabout reminder that our own lives are filled with personal histories of our friends, neighbors and relatives that we should not let get lost like those other stories have.

I listened to this book as an audiobook. It was read by the author, a fact that I didn't know until I began writing this review. I think that says all you need to know about his performance - he was so solid that I had no idea that a professional reader was not reading the book.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: HERE IS WHERE: DISCOVERING AMERICA'S FORGOTTEN HISTORY by Andrew Carroll.

STRUGGLE for a CONTINENT: THE WARS of EARLY AMERICA (The American History Series) by John Ferling

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 is now the states of Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia and Western Pennsylvania.

Time and again the colonies are brought into wars that started in Europe. The colonies became a sideshow to the war and many times their hard won gains were given away on the bargaining table in order to make a peace treaty work for Europeans.

Ironically enough, the last of these wars, the French and Indian War, was clearly started by a young colonial soldier named George Washington who stumbled into a group of French soldiers while leading troops in Western Pennsylvania and was forced to surrender them at Fort Necessity. This fight led to the removal of France from Canada and sowed some of the seeds that became the American Revolution.

This is a very informative, concise volume. Well done.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5 and it can be found on Amazon.com here: STRUGGLE for a CONTINENT: THE WARS of EARLY AMERICA.

THOSE TURBULENT SONS of FREEDOM: ETHAN ALLEN'S GREEN MOUNTAIN BOYS and the AMERICAN REVOLUTION (audiobook) by Christopher S. Wren

Published by Tantor Audio in May of 2018
Read by Peter Berkrot
Duration: 7 hours, 4 minutes
Unabridged

I pounced on this history because Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys have always been a mysterious presence in my readings on the Revolutionary War. They show up during the early days of the war and add a zest of mystery and frontiersman derring-do that blunts British momentum. And then...they just disappear from the typical history.

Those Turbulent Sons of Freedom follows the timeline history of the American Revolution, going back and forth between a series of the Green Mountain Boys. My fleeting impression of them was that they were some sort of super-patriotic mountain men. The reality, on the surface, seems more nuanced. But, in reality, I think that I was right. They were super-patriotic mountain men, but their loyalties did not lie with the United States - their devotion was to Vermont and only Vermont. 

Vermont was not a colony when the Revolutionary War started. At best, it was the beginnings of a colony, but it was claimed by New Hampshire and New York - especially New York. Before the Revolution, the Green Mountain Boys were already fighting a low-level insurgency against the colonial government of New York in an attempt to make themselves a separate colony.

When the Revolution began, many Vermonters looked at the confusion of the was an opportunity to break away from New York, especially if Vermont could prove itself useful to the 13 colonies as an ally. But, repeated attempts to officially become the 14th state were rebuffed and some of the Green Mountain Boys began to court the British in an attempt to play both sides against each other. The goal was always the same - an "independent" Vermont. There were three options: 1) become the 14th state, 2) become a colony attached to Canada but with its own government, 3) become an independent country (not seriously considered by many, but it was always a thought on the back burner).

Ethan Allen (1738-1789)

Ethan Allen tried all of these options at one point. Some of the Green Mountain Boys dedicated themselves to just one course, and if their course failed, they were forced to move away or suffer other consequences.

There was not as much detail to the book as I would have liked. Sometimes, it seemed like the author was skimming the surface, bouncing back and forth as the narrative moved forward. 

I "read" Those Turbulent Sons of Freedom as an audiobook. The reader, Peter Berkrot, has a beautiful voice for audiobooks, but his presentation was too dramatic. He made every sentence sound like it was the most dramatic moment of the book - even mundane sentences like lists of supplies that were captured in forts and crops sold by Vermont to Canada. There were certainly plenty of dramatic moments in this book, but the overall effect is weakened when so much of the book is presented as a dramatic moment. It made the book tiresome rather than enjoyable.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Those Turbulent Sons of Freedom.

BUNKER HILL: A CITY, A SIEGE, A REVOLUTION (audiobook) by Nathaniel Philbrick

Published in 2013 by Penguin Audio
Read by Chris Sorensen
Duration: 12 hours, 58 minutes
Unabridged

Nathaniel Philbrick's Bunker Hill: A City, A Siege, A Revolution is misnamed. While the battle is in the book, it is only a part of the story. In reality, this book is a history of Boston from the 1750s and 1760s right up to the Declaration of Independence.

In a lot of ways this book is much more of a biography of Dr. Joseph Warren, one of the leaders of the Sons of Liberty movement, along with Samuel Adams, John Adams and John Hancock. Warren is often overlooked nowadays because he died at Bunker Hill (which was really mostly fought on Breed's Hill). The excessive focus on Warren was, in my mind, one of the great weaknesses of the book. Philbrick spent too much time worrying over Warren's alleged personal failures and not enough time getting on with the story. It just bogged things down.

Philbrick does not gloss over the warts of our Founding Fathers, noting that some had mixed motives and some profited from the independence movement. There is plenty of emphasis on the British side of things, something I admire about the book.  

The arrival of Washington in Boston, sent by the Continental Congress to take command and in effect nationalize the militias that surrounded the British troops in Boston, is not explained well. Philbrick does not go much into the goings on of the Continental Congress besides noting that certain people left Boston to attend. Because of this, Washington's arrival comes with very little explanation (much like it may have seemed to some of the militiamen). As the narrative continues, Philbrick does not give Washington much credit for anything around Boston but bad ideas, impatience, a negative attitude and lucky timing.

Chris Sorenson's reading of the audiobook was excellent. 

In short, while there are things to admire about this book, there are problems as well - not problems with the research but problems with choices about what was included (excessive focus on Warren's personal life) and what was left out (the Continental Congress).

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: Bunker Hill: A City, A Siege, A Revolution.

VICTORY at YORKTOWN: A NOVEL (George Washington Series #3) (audiobook) by Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen

Published in November of 2012 by Macmillan Audio.
Read by William Dufris
Duration: 12 hours, 2 minutes
Unabridged

Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen conclude their Revolutionary War-based trilogy with an up-and-down look at the final year of real action in the war (October of 1780 to October of 1781).

The actual battle descriptions are quite good in the book. The book is absolutely great with its explanation of the strategies employed to maneuver Cornwallis into the Yorktown fortifications, the coordination between the French and American forces and demonstrates just how narrow this victory really was. 

However, the audiobook starts out with a two hour overwrought description of the execution of Major Andre. Andre was the British officer that conspired with the infamous American traitor Benedict Arnold. While this scene was used referred back to often throughout the rest of the book, the scene itself was very repetitious and entirely too long to make it's point. I nearly quit the audiobook completely after an hour of it.

William Dufris did a great job with all of the accents the book, especially the French officers.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found at Amazon.com here: VICTORY at YORKTOWN: A NOVEL (George Washington Series #3).

THE FORGOTTEN FOUNDING FATHER: NOAH WEBSTER'S OBSESSION and the CREATION of an AMERICAN CULTURE (audiobook) by Joshua Kendall

Published by Penguin Audio in 2011
Read by Arthur Morey
Duration: 12 hours, 45 minutes
Unabridged

Referring to Noah Webster (1753-1848), the creator of the famed Webster Dictionary, as a Founding Father is generous, to say the least. He did live serve in the Connecticut militia, even deploying at one point, but he never saw much action. He did know many of the Founding Fathers and actually stayed in the homes of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, but they had frequent guests so it would not be fair to characterize those friendships as particularly close friendships. He did advocate strongly for the adoption of the Constitution and for a short time was actively involved in partisan politics as a newspaper editor in New York City. But, when people think Founding Father they are usually referring to far brighter lights than Noah Webster.

A 1958 stamp featuring Noah Webster

If I were naming this book I would have dropped the Forgotten Founding Father angle and kept the rest of the title "Noah Webster's Obsession and the Creation of an American Culture." The impression left by this biography is that Webster was an obsessive and difficult man who often retreated to making lists when life became difficult. He had list of the numbers of homes in towns, distances between towns, how people died in cities - you name and he loved to categorize it, rank it, alphabetize it, write it down and stick it in a book, newspaper or magazine. In a way, his dictionary project became his ultimate list because it literally covered everything.

The Forgotten Founding Father: Noah Webster's Obsession and the Creation of an American Culture is frustrating for two reasons. The first is the subject himself. It is clear that Webster was a difficult man and this book reflects that. His letters, speeches and comments are often biting, even to his own friends and family. He creates detractors and even outright enemies throughout the book because of his obtuse ways. 

The second reason is the style of the book itself. It often dwells on obscure details and is written in a style designed drive people away from the book. Don't get me wrong, I had no problem following the book, but when you use to the word "impost" instead of tax, I'm not sure what your goal is, except to demonstrate the command of a large vocabulary. I hate to make this a jeremiad against the author, but then again he did use the word jeremiad many, many times throughout the book and I started to wonder if the author even had access to a thesaurus. According to the modern website of Webster's dictionary, he could have used much more common words like rant, tirade and harangue and made his point all the more clear to a greater part of the population. If a point could be made on one or two sentences, the author seemed bent to say it in 5 or 6 sentences instead. It was very easy to drift away from this audiobook for a minute or two and not worry about having missed much.

On a positive note, the book is well-researched and thorough. I don't regret having listened to it, but as I listened I was reminded of the David McCullough quote, "No harm's done to history by making it something someone would want to read." The obtuse nature of the book was a lot like Webster himself and perhaps that is most appropriate.

I enjoyed Arthur Morey's reading of the The Forgotten Founding Father. He added a nice touch by reading quotes from Webster and other recurring people with different voices.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: The Forgotten Founding Father.

A DISEASE in the PUBLIC MIND: A NEW UNDERSTANDING of WHY WE FOUGHT the CIVIL WAR (audiobook) by Thomas Fleming

Published in 2013 by Blackstone Audio.
Read by William Hughes
Duration: 11 hours, 42 minutes.
Unabridged

Thomas Fleming readily admits that he mostly writes about the era of the American Revolution (such as his excellent book Liberty! The American Revolution) but he felt compelled to make a long commentary on the origins of the Civil War by writing A Disease in the Public Mind.

Fleming's take on the causes of the war are based on a comment from James Buchanan's that the furor over slavery was a "disease in the public mind."

Fleming is quite confident that this disease was mostly caused by the North. Shelby Foote alludes to this, in a way, in the Ken Burns Civil War documentary when he notes that there was a war "because we failed to do the thing we really have a genius for, which is compromise...our whole government's founded on it and it failed."

An exhibit at the Lincoln Museum in Springfield, Illinois.
Photo by DWD

Foote meant that both sides had to give in to make an agreement. Fleming clearly identifies the North as the side that refuses to compromise and causes the crisis. He compares the North to the Puritans that prosecuted the Salem Witch Trials and Joseph McCarthy. The difference between the Salem Witch Trials and the Abolitionist attacks on slavery is that witchcraft and magic are not real so there were no witches but slavery, slaves and slave masters were all very, very real. 

Fleming excuses the fact that slave families were broken apart on a regular basis through estate sales by pointing out that Washington did not do this sort of thing. He goes on to use Washington as an archetype of what could have been if the Abolitionists had not started pressing the South. If you had to be a slave, being George Washington's slave was about as good as you could hope for. Washington refused to break up families or dump older slaves who couldn't really work. He also freed his slaves when he died.  Fleming writes at length about how Washington was pressed by his own personal abolitionist - his Revolutionary War comrade the Marquis de Lafayette. Lafayette's efforts were worthy and good but, somehow, the efforts of American abolitionists were the equivalent of the Salem Witch Trial.

Fleming tries to defend slave owners against the charge of taking sexual advantage of their female slaves, saying it was very rare. But, as his narrative continues he points out any number of slaves and former slaves who were mixed race. If it was so rare, how did these people exist? He also completely ignores the story of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings. This "look at this Founding Father as a great example, but not at that one because he doesn't make my argument" type of cherry-picking is pretty typical throughout the book. 

What Fleming does best is point out that there was a genuine paranoia among Southern Whites about the possibility of a race war like Haiti experienced when its African slaves overthrew the French government. When you look at the political cartoons of the era, like this one that decries the evils of the Emancipation Proclamation, you see evil influences upon Lincoln: multiple representations of the devil, a picture of a sainted John Brown and a large painting glorifying the violence in Saint-Domingue (Haiti). Clearly, this was a worry and not without some justification. There were slave revolts from time to time and this was the stated goal of John Brown's raid on the arsenal at Harper's Ferry.

But, Fleming uses this fear to justify every action the South made to defend slavery, such as refusing to let people petition the Congress concerning slavery - a right established in the First Amendment of the Constitution. The First Amendment! Not one of those pesky rights with the bigger numbers that get lost in the jumble. Plus, the governments of the South searched the mail for newspapers that they did not like and destroyed them. Clearly, another violation of the First Amendment. But, he excuses it because the White Southerners were scared of the power of the Abolitionist press on its slave population.

Fleming never really formulates a thesis beyond that the Abolitionists were pushing the Southerners too hard. Many historians try to argue that slavery was on the way out in the South and that slave owners were searching for a way to safely end slavery. Fleming does not even make this argument. He acknowledges that there was an attempt to expand slavery to the territories and to new states, but he denies it was organized. He completely ignores the fact that Southern politicians (and even John Quincy Adams, for a while) openly proposed conquering Cuba for the express reason of making it a slave state to keep the balance of free state/slave state power in the Congress. James Buchanan himself authored a proposal to take over Cuba before he became President and had it as a goal when he became President in 1857. There were also proposals to take parts of Mexico and Central America and make them slave states. William Walker invaded both Mexico and Nicaragua with that goal. The pre-Civil War pro-slavery group Knights of the Golden Circle advocated making more than 25 slave states out of Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean islands.

There is more, but this is enough to demonstrate that this is a deeply flawed book, albeit an interesting one. Fleming's reminder of the deep-seated fear of a race war like the one in Haiti is an important one. Fleming's argument ends up leaving the American slave population in the untenable position of being involved in a never-ending, ever-expanding slave economy that was, as Fleming himself points out, evolving from a plantation-based system to a factory-based system in some areas and showed little sign of ending. But, if you protested this system from the outside you were in the wrong and most certainly caused the Civil War. These are the reasons that I rate this book 2 stars out of 5.

This audiobook was read by William Hughes. He did a great job of reading at a brisk, easy-to-understand pace. 

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: A Disease in the Public Mind.