From Our Library

Now that autumn is in full swing, why not take a break from your busy schedules and pick up a good book?  Our Book Review chair Lynne Saginaw shares her thoughts on a few good ones here.  Thank you, Lynne, for this very helpful list.

What I Read This Summer
Now that I’ve retired, I’m a full-time reader. Here is a partial list of Revolutionary War titles I read over the summer; they will make good reading for those fast approaching cold autumn evenings.

Pulitzer–Prize winner Joseph Ellis’ excellent Revolutionary Summer: The Birth of American Independence is just out in paperback from Vintage ($15.95). Those risky, dramatic days are brought vividly to life in a short, snappy text you’ll find hard to put down, even though you already know how it comes out. The summer of 1776, culminating in the Battle of Brooklyn, makes for thrilling reading. Originally published by Knopf at $26.95.

From great events to what the women of the era made of them: turn to Dear Abigail: the Intimate Lives and Revolutionary Ideas of Abigail Adams and her Two Remarkable Sisters by Diane Jacobs. You may never have heard of Mary Cranch and Elizabeth Shaw Peabody, the older and younger sisters, respectively, of Abigail Adams, but they lived lives of substance. All three were devoted correspondents, and their letters illuminate the times with an intimacy that is by turns touching and instructive.

This volume, published 2014 by Ballantine Books, suffers from some inconsistent editing, including a few wince-making spelling errors by the author (I don’t mean the oddities of Colonial–era spelling, well known to history readers), and some of Ms. Jacobs' conclusions strike this reviewer as naïve, but the life stories of the principals are so compelling that you shouldn’t let these lapses stop you from enjoying this book.

One of my favorite essayists, Simon Winchester, tackles the history of America’s infrastructure in The Men Who United the States. The colonial and immediate post-revolutionary periods are not a big part of this eccentric and charming volume -- part memoir, part history, part travelogue -- but you won’t want to miss Winchester’s section on George Washington’s efforts at canal-building. (HarperCollins, 2013)

When I was a kid, there was a saying: “make new friends but keep the old.” One old friend they’ll have to pry out of my cold dead hands is David McCullough’s classic John Adams. Published by Simon and Schuster in 2001 (at $35.00), this is a brilliant compendium of everything you need to know about this Founding Father, written with clarity, depth, and love for this difficult man. McCullough is rightly deemed the dean of popular historians. Even the most history-averse will fall for this one, assuming its heft doesn’t scare them off. Make it a dare, and win twice over.

Another past winner revisited was Richard D. Blackmon’s Dark and Bloody Ground, published in 2012 by Westholme ($29.95), a solid niche publisher of American history. This book was a finalist of ARRT’s book award that year. Not for the general reader, it details with exhaustive care the war along the southern frontier among Native peoples, colonists, and Europeans. If you are interested in the war in the South or in the beginnings of American policy towards the first Americans, this should be on your shelf. Otherwise, any one of the other books cited will serve you better.

Get thee to a library.
 Preview of Coming AttractionsPotential reviewers are hereby alerted that the October 7^th meeting will feature these four books for review. Only members not currently on assignment are eligible.

The Return of George Washington, 1783-1789 by Edward J. Larson
American Spring: Lexington, Concord and the Road to Revolution by Walter R. Borneman
Brandywine: A Military History of the Battle that Lost Philadelphia by Saved America, September 11, 1777 by Michael C. Harris
Band of Giants: The Amateur Soldiers Who Won America’s Independence by Jack Kelly (a Round Tabler himself!)
 
Hope to see many of you on Tuesday at our October 7th dinner meeting!