Best Southern United States History
Berendt skillfully interweaves a hugely entertaining first-person account of life in this isolated remnant of the Old South with the unpredictable twists and turns of a landmark murder case. It is a spellbinding story peopled by a gallery of remarkable characters: the well-bred society ladies of the Married Woman's Card Club; the turbulent young redneck gigolo; the hapless recluse who owns a bottle of poison so powerful it could kill every man, woman, and child in Savannah; the aging and profane Southern belle who is the "soul of pampered self-absorption"; the uproariously funny black drag queen; the acerbic and arrogant antiques dealer; the sweet-talking, piano-playing con artist; young blacks dancing the minuet at the black debutante ball; and Minerva, the voodoo priestess who works her magic in the graveyard at midnight. John Berendt's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil has been heralded as a "lyrical work of nonfiction," and the book's extremely graceful prose depictions of some of Savannah, Georgia's most colorful eccentrics--remarkable characters who could have once prospered in a William Faulkner novel or Eudora Welty short story--were certainly a critical factor in its tremendous success. The book is also about the wealthy international antiques dealer Jim Williams, who played an active role in the historic city's restoration--and would also be tried four times for the 1981 shooting death of 21-year-old Danny Handsford, his high-energy, self-destructive house helper.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"I loved this book so much that I made my husband go with me to Savannah to visit the city and see the bird girl statue. John Berendt did a wonderful job in writing this book and I wish he would do another one."
"Finally read this book."
"This story held my interest in each and every character contributing their unique personality, and in the end leaving their spirit, on this place."
"I first loved the movie, then I loved the city and finally I overcame my apprehensions that after that the book would not be that great."
"What a fun, quirky group of characters set in the beautiful Savannah, Ga backdrop."
"I am glad that I read this book since people in Savannah made references to this book, However, I found a couple of characters that didn't relate much to the main story and was bored reading about them."
"The thing is it's told in such a interesting manner that you're deep into it before you realize you're learning a LOT of Savannah culture and history while being riotously entertained!"
"This book kind of draws you in with it's very unusual characters (which there are many) and the way it's written - it casts its own spell on the reader."
He summoned the famous landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted to tame the grounds, collaborated with celebrated architect Richard Morris Hunt to build a 175,000-square-foot chateau, filled it with priceless art and antiques, and erected a charming village beyond the gates. The story of Biltmore spans World Wars, the Jazz Age, the Depression, and generations of the famous Vanderbilt family, and features a captivating cast of real-life characters including F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Wolfe, Teddy Roosevelt, John Singer Sargent, James Whistler, Henry James, and Edith Wharton. The story of George and Edith Vanderbilt’s remarkable lives will stay with me for a long time to come.”. (Karen Abbott, New York Times bestselling author of Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy ). Yet only in the pages of Denise Kiernan's The Last Castle will they come to know George Vanderbilt, the bookish heir who began Biltmore in his 20s, and his determined widow, Edith, who kept it alive as a working estate and a time capsule of the Gilded Age. In the pages of The Last Castle , Kiernan serves up a true tale of American excess, generosity, and perseverance.” (Bill Dedman, New York Times bestselling author of Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune ). "This is as much a story about the creation of Biltmore House as it is a window into what it was like to be an American at the turn of the 20th century. Kiernan makes Edith and George Vanderbilt, among the wealthiest Americans at the time, feel like living, breathing human beings navigating life's obstacles in this magnificent book. In her well-researched and captivating book, Denise Kiernan tells the fascinating story of how a phenomenally wealthy Vanderbilt scion transformed a rural North Carolina town by building the ultimate rich man's folly and reveals the eccentricities, heartaches, and even money problems of these Social Register denizens and their friends and employees." (Meryl Gordon, author of Bunny Mellon: The Life of an American Style Legend ). "This is a timely and timeless American story of wealth and the responsibility and opportunity it carries. A passionately researched family saga of death and divorce, suicide and sickness, fortunes gained and lost, spanning two world wars and set at the crux of the Gilded Age yielding to the modern era, The Last Castle is ultimately a story of fortitude and survival. (The Wall Street Journal). “The book’s vitality lies in the details [Kiernan] reveals about the architects, writers, artists and peers of the Vanderbilts who spent time at Biltmore.” (The New York Times Book Review). “Evocative, meticulously researched. With plenty of famous characters sprinkled throughout, there is enough action and history to keep readers engaged and eager to turn the pages... Kiernan fans and those new to her work are sure to devour this latest volume.” (Library Journal). "The many diverting detours Kiernan takes make the book enticing for even those who will never set foot on Biltmore grounds." (Shelf Awareness for Readers) Denise Kiernan’s previous book, The Girls of Atomic City , is a New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and NPR bestseller , and was named one of Amazon’s Top 100 Best Books of 2013.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"In The Last Castle, Kiernan comprehensively describes how Biltmore House came into existence from George’s first purchase of land in the Asheville, North Carolina area to the final completion and opening of the Music Room in 1976 long after the home became a tourist destination. As I read about the process of building Biltmore House, I found it very hard to imagine undertaking such a project with little or no budget planning. While George had the idea to build Biltmore House and hired the various individuals to implement his idea, Edith is the individual who protected both Biltmore House and the Asheville area and ensured that her husband’s legacy would remain. Thankfully, Kiernan masterfully incorporates the history of both the Vanderbilt family and George’s wife Edith Stuyvesant Dresser’s family, events such as the sinking of the Titanic and the Lusitania, both World Wars, the development of Forestry Programs (such as the one developed at Biltmore House), and the impact of the Great Depression; I never found myself wondering why a topic was being addressed or how I was suddenly reading about some new subject. The highlights for me were the descriptions of John Singer Sargent painting various portraits at Biltmore House, the innovative refrigeration, wiring and elevator systems installed at the house, that Teddy Roosevelt was visiting Biltmore House when the idea for the teddy bear came about, and that Edith’s second marriage was to Elbridge Gerry, the individual who inspired the term “gerrymandering”."
"Part of this is that the time period is more interesting to me, but in addition, the book covers every angle imaginable for the Biltmore and the family behind its legacy."
"For a book purporting to be about this magnificent property, it should have included more archival photographs of the interior, perhaps a floorplan would also have been very welcome, and of course as in a book of this type, a family tree would have been immensely helpful."
"I enjoyed reading about this beautiful home I once visited."
"Since I've always been interested in the Vanderbilt's story, I was anxious to read more about Biltmore. "The Last Castle" tells plenty about the house, but as important to me, it tells more about George and Edith and the men who helped make Biltmore what it was, and is. Some of the chapters got into deep detail, which might not be interesting to some people, but since most of it was new to me, I found it interesting, because no other book I've read, including "Lady on the Hill" delved as deeply in the lives of people who, for the most part, were unknown to me-- not the famous, but the teachers and forrest workers who taught at the schools on the grounds."
"Too much detail about building the estate."
"Of GW Vanderbilt on Asheville and it's citizens and economy."
Washington Post reporter Monica Hesse first drove down to the reeling county to cover a hearing for Charlie Smith, a struggling mechanic who upon his capture had promptly pleaded guilty to sixty-seven counts of arson. Over a year of investigating, Hesse uncovered the motives of Charlie and his accomplice, girlfriend Tonya Bundick, a woman of steel-like strength and an inscrutable past. Though it’s hard to believe today, one hundred years ago Accomack was the richest rural county in the nation. Hesse brings to life the Eastern Shore and its inhabitants, battling a punishing economy and increasingly terrified by a string of fires they could not explain. An Amazon Best Book of July 2017: A passionate love affair is often described as an “inferno,” but in 2012 and 2013, boyfriend and girlfriend Charlie Smith and Tonya Bundick turned the metaphor into reality as they lit 70-plus fires in derelict buildings across Virginia’s Accomack County. Monica Hesse’s spare but memorable prose sketches the true story of a once-prosperous county now in sharp economic decline, its derelict buildings easy targets for Smith and Bundick. When Smith and Bundick set fire after fire—sometimes several a night—the exhausted volunteer firefighters in Accomack County band together to stop the arsonists putting a match to their way of life. Hesse can do with a handful of words what other writers do with paragraphs, and as she traces the intersecting paths of the amateur arsonists and the authorities determined to capture them, she reveals that every crime has its own personal, sometimes inscrutable DNA. The book has the brisk diligence of big-city journalism (Hesse writes for the Washington Post ) and the languid chattiness of the small town where she lived while researching it. “Accomack County, Virginia, is utterly unique, but not completely atypical of America’s forgotten places: bypassed by progress on the wrong side of Chesapeake Bay, dotted with houses rotting into literal tinder. Hesse forgoes paint-by-numbers suspense, revealing the culprits early on before backing up into their hard-knock love story, their eventual arrest, and perceptive snapshots of an unusually vivid corner of drug-racked Red America.”. - Boris Katchka, Vulture. “ American Fire is not only a twisted love story but also a portrait of Accomack County, Virginia, a once-wealthy farming community crumbling from economic hardship.”. - Nora Horvath, Real Simple. She tells the story of the fires and of the Eastern Shore and the people she got to know there with an earned familiarity that, at the same time, speaks of the unknowability of a vast, rapidly changing nation.”. - Annie Bostrom, Booklist, starred review.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"I remember standing in my living room watching the fire burn the mountainside across the river. My husband spent the days outside, wearing a mask against the smoke, prepping our property in case the embers started flying and caused the fire to jump the river. Imagine living in a small community that has perhaps seen its best times but continues to struggle along and suddenly houses start burning. Many of those fire companies are struggling as the young people move out of rural areas and the population ages. The area is very rural, the houses were mostly abandoned; they authorities tried to predict where the arsonist would strike but there were just too many possible targets. Now, I do live with a fireman and he’s been answering calls for the entirety of our marriage so I am sure that played a role."
"Read it first for a compelling story."
"A little long in spots, but an interesting story that gives a flavor of life on Maryland's Eastern Shore."
"The bios of the two people. She captured their essence. Well written account of the area. Local scenes local firefighters etc."
"It is a written book about arson and its effects on all involved."
"Good story about a small town with a big problem."
"Very good, interesting, well written book."
"I usually cannot put a book down if I find it compelling."
Best Southwestern United States History
In the tradition of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, a stunningly vivid historical account of the forty-year battle between Comanche Indians and white settlers for control of the American West, centering on Quanah, the greatest Comanche chief of them all. They were so masterful at war and so skillful with their arrows and lances that they stopped the northern drive of colonial Spain from Mexico and halted the French expansion westward from Louisiana. Gwynne’s exhilarating account delivers a sweeping narrative that encompasses Spanish colonialism, the Civil War, the destruction of the buffalo herds, and the arrival of the railroads—a historical feast for anyone interested in how the United States came into being. In this engrossing chronicle, award-winning journalist Gwynne traces the rise of the Comanche people from their roots as primitive bands of hunter-gatherers to their mastery of the horse and emergence as the feared power brokers of the area. will leave dust and blood on your jeans.”-- New York Times Book Review "In Empire of the Summer Moon , Sam Swynne has given us a rich, vividly detailed rendering of an important era in our history and of two great men, Quanah Parker and Ranald Slidel Mackenzie, whose struggles did much to define it."
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"She told of how afraid of the soldiers they were as children on the reservation near Fort Sill. I was a child hearing these stories, not really understanding... My family (white settlers) had settled in Oklahoma Territory from the Llano, Texas area before the turn of the century. We HIGHLY recommend this book to anyone wanting to know the true history of the west from both sides."
"The whole thing of the Europeans settling in the "new world" and subjugating and defeating the Indians. The horrible tit for tat, slaughter back and forth when the whole time the native Americans were doomed from the start. It is frustrating too that most if not all books on this subject come from research that was written by the hands of the white man. What if from the very beginning the native Americans had said, speaking to the white man, "We will join your society, worship your God and pursue the same education!""
"The life of Quanah Parker, a Comanche chief, is the focus of the book, and deserves to be."
"The book offers exceptional depth and detail of cultures, economics and tactics."
"This book is a terrific, if ultimately a sad read and I strongly recommend it!"
"While this book sometimes threatens to sink under the weight of detail (and runs out of material towards the end), it is a fascinating story about the last unconquered Native Americans and the Comanche way of life."
"He was the last chief of the Comanche, and when he finally surrendered and moved to a reservation, he quickly took to the white man's ways and became a financial success and a genuine celebrity."
Best Western United States History
Included are the ten legends featured in Bill O'Reilly's Legends and Lies docuseries -from Kit Carson to Jesse James, Wild Bill Hickok to Doc Holliday-- accompanied by two bonus chapters on Daniel Boone and Buffalo Bill and Annie Oakley. Heavily illustrated with spectacular artwork that further brings this history to life, and told in fast-paced, immersive narrative, Legends and Lies is an irresistible, adventure-packed ride back into one of the most storied era of our nation's rich history. The iconic anchor of The O'Reilly Factor led the program to the status of the highest rated cable news broadcast in the nation for sixteen consecutive years. He was a national correspondent for CBS News and ABC News as well as a reporter-anchor for WCBS-TV in New York City among other high profile jobs. He holds a history degree from Marist College, a masters degree in Broadcast Journalism from Boston University, and another masters degree from Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Love all his books, especially if you like history."
"While it was pretty interesting, some parts dragged on a bit or were pretty dry so I did skip a few parts."
"Very informative book about hero's and villains of the old west.Easy to read and understand the truth about the way things were back then in the growing of America."
"It was a gift."
"great new condition."
Best New England United States History
Living in a tent even through brutal winters, he had survived by his wits and courage, developing ingenious ways to store edibles and water, and to avoid freezing to death. It is a gripping story of survival that asks fundamental questions about solitude, community, and what makes a good life, and a deeply moving portrait of a man who was determined to live his own way, and succeeded. Though the ‘stranger’ in the title is Knight, one closes the book with the sense that Knight, like all seers, is the only sane person in a world gone insane—that modern civilization has made us strangers to ourselves." —Jennifer Senior, The New York Times "Michael Finkel has done something magical with this profound book… [His] investigation runs deep, summoning…the human history of our own attempts to find meaning in a noisy world."
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Not only is this story of Chris Knight one of the most compelling that I have read in some time, but the lengths that you went to, to research his venture into the woods of Maine, to understand him, to get to know him, clearly better than anyone else has, and to represent him with such dignity, astounds me. While some, especially those whose homes were burgled, might still never understand what would cause a person to want to live in such extreme conditions let alone in solitude, far removed from the ‘regular’ world, after reading the book, while I will never spend a night, let alone an hour in the woods, what drew Knight makes sense to me now. It’s not to say that after reading THE STRANGER IN THE WOODS that every reader will feel compelled to pick up and leave their jobs, families, and the comfort of modern society behind, but it sure does offer food for thought."
"Many of us dream of secluding from the busyness of modern living—the fast-paced, noisy, cyclical nature in which life has become; yet many of us do not have the courage or tenacity to pursue such a dream, much less achieve this dream for the amount of time that Knight did. On a practical level, Michael Finkel has written this biographical account excellently."
"I wanted to read this book as the Maine woods have been a part of my life and I was unfamiliar with this story until I saw this book. I realized from the start that at the core of this story was an important topic I already have been worrying about that I feel American society either is unaware of or is purposefully ignoring: the neuro-atypical person and the challenge of how they will live (not thriving but suffering) in modern America. Knight was content and found peace in living that life until he was caught with the help of sophisticated surveillance equipment while robbing food from a nonprofit camp for disabled children (including kids on the Autism Spectrum). The heartbreaking part of this story is that the suffering that Knight endured was due to square pegs not fitting in the round holes of modern American society, his relief and contendedness was found living in isolation in nature, but this is not really allowed in America, and when possible it's only available to those who are able to financially support themselves due to an inheritance or some income stream that they are lucky to find that meshes with their talents and abilities. But this book provides more food for thought, for me at least, than just Knight's hermit years story. I hope this book is a catalyst for Americans to think about this issue, with the rising rates of Autism and mental illness, we have more people this decade than ever before who are not fitting in with the mandatory American public school system and who are not fitting in to work jobs as adults enough to support themselves independently let alone the issue of if a person is happy or content."
Best Midwestern United States History eBooks
Burnham overcame tremendous obstacles and tragedies as he organized the talents of Frederick Law Olmsted, Charles McKim, Louis Sullivan, and others to transform swampy Jackson Park into the White City, while Holmes used the attraction of the great fair and his own satanic charms to lure scores of young women to their deaths. In a short period of time, he was forced to overcome the death of his partner and numerous other obstacles to construct the famous "White City" around which the fair was built. His efforts to complete the project, and the fair's incredible success, are skillfully related along with entertaining appearances by such notables as Buffalo Bill Cody, Susan B. Anthony, and Thomas Edison. He devised and erected the World's Fair Hotel, complete with crematorium and gas chamber, near the fairgrounds and used the event as well as his own charismatic personality to lure victims. The passages about Holmes are compelling and aptly claustrophobic; readers will be glad for the frequent escapes to the relative sanity of Holmes's co-star, architect and fair overseer Daniel Hudson Burnham, who managed the thousands of workers and engineers who pulled the sprawling fair together 0n an astonishingly tight two-year schedule.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"I will be absolutely honest and admit that I purchased the book because I was interested in the weird story of H.H.Holmes, American con-man, psychopath and serial killer. I've never read anything by Erik Larsen before, but I know that he has a good number of books on the history section shelves and I’ve seen this book in passing for years. I listened to this as an audiobook, and my initial reaction was that there was an awful lot about the 1893 World’s Fair, especially the architecture of the World’s Fair, than I was expecting or interested in. However, about half-way through the book, I found my interest shifting as I was sucked into the world of the Fair and the strangeness of the world right on the cusp of becoming the world we know, with lights and Cracker Jacks and Ferris wheels, but still possessing the instincts and customs of a more genteel and trusting age. One narrative follows the twisted path of Holmes; the other follows the life of the fair. There is no doubt that the Holmes’ narrative starts out in the lead because of the natural human interest in evil, and Holmes was evil. Larsen describes Holmes as America’s first serial killer in an age when the language did not have the term “serial killer” to describe Holmes. In Chicago, he bought a pharmacy from a widow, who he probably conned, married a second wife, deposited the wife and his child in a suburb of Chicago, and then came up with the idea of transforming land he had purchased into a hotel in time for the upcoming Fair. On the other hand, Larsen presents the “White City” of the Fair as the world that was dawning. The idea that the architects are the heroes of the book seems strange since architects rarely play the role of hero, but Larsen manages to invest tension throughout the story arc about the Fair. Thus, there is tension in whether the architects will get the Fair built in time, and then there is tension about whether the Fair will turn a profit in the face of the economic depression gripping the country. My first term paper in history was one I wrote as a Junior in High School about Eugene V. Debbs and the Pullman Strike of 1894, so it was something of a home-coming for me to read about the events that were occurring just before that strike, and to think that Debs and Darrow probably visited the Fair, maybe they ran across Holmes and Burnham. Larsen writes: // Ten thousand construction workers also left the fair’s employ and returned to a world without jobs, already crowded with unemployed men. The White City had drawn men and protected them; the Black City now welcomed them back, on the eve of winter, with filth, starvation, and violence.//. Holmes’ story closes out with Holmes’ finally getting tripped up in an insurance swindle and an intrepid Pinkerton detective following the clues to prove that Holmes was a child-killer among his other sins. In that way, Holmes’ story arc concludes as a true crime story about a true crime story."
"I will admit, the author thoroughly researched both topics, but it was clear to me his focus was on the architecture of the World's Fair. Holmes, you may want to read a different book."
"The author's use of background pertaining to the building of this exhibit reads like historical fiction, even though this book is about true events and people; the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago and H.H."
"I love Erik Larson's exquisite prose and the way he weaves the story of the building and design of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair in with the ghoulish story of H. H. Holmes and his murder castle."
"Mr. Lynch shows what is really happening by taking his cameras and audience beneath the grass, giving a true close-up at the level of the earth and its bugs. You'll learn about the beautiful, classic architecture designed for the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago, ultimately called "The White City." One of my favorite chapters discusses how a Philadelphia detective took a multi-city tour, retracing Mr. Holmes' steps, in order to find the missing children of one of the killer's minions. A while back I watched "The Gray Man," an underrated yet macabre film that I highly recommend, and the work by the detective who caught Albert Fish in similar fashion. Sure, still a recommendation, but even though I'm going five, mostly due to tremendous research and even better writing -- one could argue the author's storytelling skills are unmatched -- I still would have preferred to read a little more about one H. H. Holmes myself."
"It is a must read and is very interesting for people who like architecture and also people who like crime stories."
Best Mid-Atlantic United States History
Burnham overcame tremendous obstacles and tragedies as he organized the talents of Frederick Law Olmsted, Charles McKim, Louis Sullivan, and others to transform swampy Jackson Park into the White City, while Holmes used the attraction of the great fair and his own satanic charms to lure scores of young women to their deaths. In a short period of time, he was forced to overcome the death of his partner and numerous other obstacles to construct the famous "White City" around which the fair was built. His efforts to complete the project, and the fair's incredible success, are skillfully related along with entertaining appearances by such notables as Buffalo Bill Cody, Susan B. Anthony, and Thomas Edison. He devised and erected the World's Fair Hotel, complete with crematorium and gas chamber, near the fairgrounds and used the event as well as his own charismatic personality to lure victims. The passages about Holmes are compelling and aptly claustrophobic; readers will be glad for the frequent escapes to the relative sanity of Holmes's co-star, architect and fair overseer Daniel Hudson Burnham, who managed the thousands of workers and engineers who pulled the sprawling fair together 0n an astonishingly tight two-year schedule.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"I will be absolutely honest and admit that I purchased the book because I was interested in the weird story of H.H.Holmes, American con-man, psychopath and serial killer. I've never read anything by Erik Larsen before, but I know that he has a good number of books on the history section shelves and I’ve seen this book in passing for years. I listened to this as an audiobook, and my initial reaction was that there was an awful lot about the 1893 World’s Fair, especially the architecture of the World’s Fair, than I was expecting or interested in. However, about half-way through the book, I found my interest shifting as I was sucked into the world of the Fair and the strangeness of the world right on the cusp of becoming the world we know, with lights and Cracker Jacks and Ferris wheels, but still possessing the instincts and customs of a more genteel and trusting age. One narrative follows the twisted path of Holmes; the other follows the life of the fair. There is no doubt that the Holmes’ narrative starts out in the lead because of the natural human interest in evil, and Holmes was evil. Larsen describes Holmes as America’s first serial killer in an age when the language did not have the term “serial killer” to describe Holmes. In Chicago, he bought a pharmacy from a widow, who he probably conned, married a second wife, deposited the wife and his child in a suburb of Chicago, and then came up with the idea of transforming land he had purchased into a hotel in time for the upcoming Fair. On the other hand, Larsen presents the “White City” of the Fair as the world that was dawning. The idea that the architects are the heroes of the book seems strange since architects rarely play the role of hero, but Larsen manages to invest tension throughout the story arc about the Fair. Thus, there is tension in whether the architects will get the Fair built in time, and then there is tension about whether the Fair will turn a profit in the face of the economic depression gripping the country. My first term paper in history was one I wrote as a Junior in High School about Eugene V. Debbs and the Pullman Strike of 1894, so it was something of a home-coming for me to read about the events that were occurring just before that strike, and to think that Debs and Darrow probably visited the Fair, maybe they ran across Holmes and Burnham. Larsen writes: // Ten thousand construction workers also left the fair’s employ and returned to a world without jobs, already crowded with unemployed men. The White City had drawn men and protected them; the Black City now welcomed them back, on the eve of winter, with filth, starvation, and violence.//. Holmes’ story closes out with Holmes’ finally getting tripped up in an insurance swindle and an intrepid Pinkerton detective following the clues to prove that Holmes was a child-killer among his other sins. In that way, Holmes’ story arc concludes as a true crime story about a true crime story."
"I will admit, the author thoroughly researched both topics, but it was clear to me his focus was on the architecture of the World's Fair. Holmes, you may want to read a different book."
"First of all, let's remember how Amazon describes this book: "A compelling account of the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 brings together the divergent stories of two very different men who played a key role in shaping the history of the event--visionary architect Daniel H. Burnham, who coordinated its construction, and Dr. Henry H. Holmes, an insatiable and charming serial killer who lured women to their deaths." But after reading it, my impression is that other than these two events happening at about the same time, in geographical proximity of each other, there is no reason why these two stories benefitted from being explored in the same book. In a subtle way, it touches on a multitude of interesting themes: I learned tidbits about how technology influenced architecture and urbanism, about how the financial crisis of the time affected everyday life, about the motivations and behavior of the American elites, and about the logistical, financial, regulatory challenges that come with a project of this magnitude, among other themes. As far as I can tell, if this portrayal is really accurate, the Devil would have been a rather dull person: less a predator and a monster, than a narcissistic and opportunistic con man who just happened to need killing lots of people in order to pull off his numerous scams."
"If and only if you are into Chicago will you put up with pages recounting conversations and deals among architectural heavyweights such as Burnham, Olmstead, McKim et al and various official personages of the city."
Best Pacific Northwest United States History
The #1 New York Times –bestselling story about American Olympic triumph in Nazi Germany and now the inspiration for the PBS documentary “The Boys of ‘36” For readers of Unbroken , out of the depths of the Depression comes an irresistible story about beating the odds and finding hope in the most desperate of times—the improbable, intimate account of how nine working-class boys from the American West showed the world at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin what true grit really meant. It encompasses the convergence of transcendent British boatmaker George Pocock; the quiet yet deadly effective UW men’s varsity coach, Al Ulbrickson; and an unlikely gaggle of young rowers who would shine as freshmen, then grow up together, a rough-and-tumble bunch, writes Brown, not very worldly, but earnest and used to hard work. In doing so, he offers a vivid picture of the socioeconomic landscape of 1930s America (brutal), the relentlessly demanding effort required of an Olympic-level rower, the exquisite brainpower and materials that go into making a first-rate boat, and the wiles of a coach who somehow found a way to, first, beat archrival University of California, then conquer a national field of qualifiers, and finally, defeat the best rowing teams in the world.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"But by taking every sliver of hope, and mixing in superb craftsmanship (from George Pocock), excellent coaching (Al Ulbrickson), and these nine perfectly attuned young men learning together........the result was perfection. It is nice to learn something you never knew, but is common knowledge to an entire set of other people. Concepts from Daniel Brown to consider that are mixed into the story to teach all of us: 1) One of the fundamental challenges in rowing is that when any one member of a crew goes into a slump the entire crew goes with him. The speed of a racing shell is determined primarily by two factors: the power produced by the combined strokes of the oars, and the stroke rate, the number of strokes the crew takes each minute. There are other great ideas to ponder in this epic almost 400 page, could-not-put-down story."
"Astonishing tales of Joe's upbringing and resilience; the unbelievable drive of every member of the rowing teams, their coach Al Ulrickson and boat builder George Pocock; the rivalry between West Coast universities; and then the astonishment of the East Coast clubs and schools confronting the Seattle crew."
"This book tells the true story of the nine young men from Seattle, Washington, then a far west, rustic town, who won the rowing championship for the United States in the infamous 1936 Berlin Olympics, presided on by Hitler."
"I am sitting here, just having finished the book, with tears drying on my face. I have just spent the last hour turning the last pages the book and sobbing. These boys lived this life, this dream, this dedication, this passion, this experience. Thank god we have men like these, who have daughters like this, who work with story tellers like this one."