Tag: history

The Irish Americans: A History by Jay P. Dolan

The Irish Americans: A History by Jay P. Dolan

Posted on by Jack

The Irish Americans is one of those books that although written for the general reader is detailed enough and sufficiently referenced to be useful to those seeking more depth. I think over the years I have read quite a bit of Irish history and the history of Irish Americans because of my interest in Irish-American genealogy to be somewhat knowledgeable on the subjects. Yet I was not bored at all and found the book very interesting and informative.

My family came from Ireland to New York. So I was particularly interested in the discussion of New York Irish. There was much I had read before but here is was put in the context of the larger Irish American experience. That is, I was more interested in the discussion of Irish American politics and so forth in New York but reading about the similarities and differences in Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia and other cities was valuable in putting it all in perspective.

Dr. Dolan is a scholar in the fields of Irish Americans and American Catholicism. He is a Professor Emeritus of History at Notre Dame. This book clearly benefits from his years of scholarship on immigration and ethnic studies (including 18 years teaching Irish American history).

This is a complicated story and Jay P. Dolan tells it well. The big Irish migration came with The Famine in Ireland and after. Most of these were Catholic and so the author’s background studying American Catholicism is extremely helpful in explaining how these immigrants fit into American society. The authors does not ignore non-Catholics or those who came before the great influx but discusses similarities and differences and the uneasy relationships among various groups. In a few generations the Irish have moved from one of the lowest rungs of the social ladder to move upward considerably.

Destiny of the Republic By Candice Millard

Destiny of the Republic By Candice Millard

Posted on by Jack

Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President
By Candice Millard

I had read a book about President Cleveland and in a discussion of medical care, the shoddy medical care of President Garfield which resulted in his death was mentioned. By chance I ran across a favorable review of Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard and figured I would like to learn more about this. So I requested the book for my local library and waited. (If you are looking for a new book it is much quicker to just buy it.)

Other than a brief mention of President Garfield in high school history and the book mentioned above, I knew little about this President. Millard’s book was wonderful way to fill in that gap. Millard tell the fascinating story of his rise from abject poverty to the presidency, his assassination by a mad man, and the medical care that killed him.

This is not a complete biography of James Garfield. His life before his brief presidency is well told. It is clear that he was an extraordinary man and his assassination only a few months after inauguration was a great loss to the country. The assassin Charles Guiteau is vividly portrayed as he gets closer to the President. As in River of Doubt , you know how this story is going to end but Millard adds considerable suspense while telling this story.

Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard is a fascinating account of that era and the sadly short presidency of James Garfield.

River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey by Candice Millard

River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey by Candice Millard

Posted on by Jack

I enjoyed The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey by Candice Millard. It thought it might be interesting as I enjoy reading about little known historical events but this book was much more.

The trip started out as a sort of photo-op adventure tour in the wilds of South America to occupy and satisfy former President Theodore Roosevelt after he lost his attempt as a third party candidate to oust President Taft in 1912. For those unfamiliar with the election: Wilson (the Democratic nominee) won; Roosevelt came in second; and Taft (the Republican nominee ) came in third.

Before starting this adventure tour, Roosevelt journeyed to South America and was convinced to make this a real journey of exploration. In partnership with a Brazilian officer, Roosevelt led a small group of men on this hazardous expedition. This small group included Theodore Roosevelt’s son Kermit. Both Theodore and Kermit Roosevelt were ill during the journey and risked their lives as they shared the hardships and work with the rest of the group. In fact, the former President came very close to death.

It amazed me that although I knew both Roosevelts would survive the trip, there was a very real sense of suspense during the river journey. I believe this is due to Candice Millard’s superb writing skills.

My backstory here is that I found this book accidentally. I had just finished a book about President Cleveland and in a discussion of medical care, the shoddy medical care of President Garfield which resulted in his death was mentioned. I saw an excellent review of a recent book by Candice Millard on James Garfield and while I was requesting that one from the library noticed she had published The River of Doubt a few years back. I requested both books but the older one came in first so I read it and was very pleased with it. So now I am looking forward to reading Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President when I get my copy from the library.

In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson

In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson

Posted on by Jack

I finished reading In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin by Erik Larson while on a trip last weekend.

A mild mannered history professor, a free spirited daughter, Nazis, Russian spys – what’s not to like. As I said before, it is a wonderful book and I’d highly recommend it.

Reading Now: In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson

Reading Now: In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson

Posted on by Jack

I am now reading In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin by Erik Larson. I heard an interview with the author on NPR and was intrigued by the subject.


FDR had trouble finding someone to be our ambassador to Nazi Germany. The American consul general describes the Nazi government as a “danger to world peace” and adds that some members of the government are psychopaths “who would ordinarily be receiving treatment somewhere.” A mild mannered professor becomes the US ambassador to Nazi Germany after several others turn down the job. This is further complicated by his free-spirited daughter who admires the “New Germany”, enjoys elite society, and has a series of affairs including one with the head of the Gestopo and another with a Soviet spy. I’m only about a third through the book but I am completely enjoying it and learning quite a bit of history never covered in school.

New York: The Novel by Edward Rutherfurd

New York: The Novel by Edward Rutherfurd

Posted on by Jack

New York: The Novel by Edward Rutherfurd.


I read this one awhile back and just noticed it while browsing in Borders. It is a wonderful historical fiction about New York City. Follows several families across multiple generations to tell the story of NY City from Dutch days to the present.

I’ve read several novels by Edward Rutherfurd and generally they are long but quite enjoyable and are well worth the time it takes to read a longer book.

You might want to have a look at Edward Rutherfurd’s page at Amazon

Tabloid City by Pete Hamill, a thriller of New York City

Tabloid City by Pete Hamill, a thriller of New York City

Posted on by Jack

Tabloid City has a double murder, a terrorist, a dying newspaper, financial fraud, New York, the Lipstick building, the Chelsea hotel, and more stuff. Well, it’s a thiller and it’s complicated and Pete Hamill tells the stories well and moves among them with apparent ease and ties them together into a bigger story about New York City. And nobody is better than Pete Hamill in writing about New York.


The stories are told in brief, sometimes very brief, snippets. When he moves on to the next story, I often missed the story he just left as I wanted to know more, but usually that feeling didn’t last more than a few sentences as you were pulled into the next story. I highly recommend this book to the Pete Hamill fan. If you are not a fan but think you might be interested in his writing, this is a great way to start. The book is only 280 pages and it moves quickly so it really doesn’t seem that long. As you move about with several characters you get a lot about the city as it is now but also a flavor of the New York City of a generation or two back. So all you have to lose is spending several hours with a good book. And if you like the New York City history aspect of Hamill’s writing I suggest Forever as your next Pete Hamill book.

I like Pete Hamill’s writing. I usually don’t finish books I don’t like and so I don’t review them. And if you’ve browsed through this blog, you may have noticed several reviews of Pete Hamill’s work. I also like New York and I think the 2 things are related.

In my review I don’t like to tell too much of the story because I think it may diminish the pleasure or reading the book. On the other hand if the reviewer doesn’t say enough you may not be interested and will definitely miss the pleasures of the book. So if you like a longer review, here is a good one by the Women of Mystery. I completely agreed with the review and since they are mystery writers from the New York City area, their opinions about this New York City thriller are well worth reading.

Forever by Pete Hamill a novel New York City history

Forever by Pete Hamill a novel New York City history

Posted on by Jack

Forever by Pete Hamill is one of my favorite books. I read it several years back and re-read it recently. I’d highly recommend it. It is a novel dealing with the old Celtic religion, 18th century Ireland, the history of New York City (colonial times to the tragedy of September 2001), and love in an unusual way. I enjoyed it when I first read it several years ago and enjoyed it again recently.

The book is a bit over 600 pages; so be aware reading this is large time commitment for all but the fastest readers. And a fair bit of magic is involved. So unless you are willing to accept that for purposes of the story, the story will seem stupid. But if you do accept the magic for the story (or at least suspend your disbelief), you will be amply rewarded with a great story.

Pete Hamill is a great writer with a long history as a New York City newspaperman and author. It is hard to imagine someone better to tell the story of The City.

Andrew Johnson by Annette Gordon-Reed

Andrew Johnson by Annette Gordon-Reed

Posted on by Jack

I read the new book on President Andrew Johnson by Annette Gordon-Reed. The author is best known for her books on Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson and has won a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award for her work. She is also a MacArthur Fellow and recipient of the National Humanities Medal and holds 3 appointments at Harvard.

Here is a partial quote from near the beginning of the book

… an assassin’s bullet would place the political fate of African Americans into the hands of a man who despised them.

Were it not so thoroughly steeped in mindless tragedy the first assassination of an American president, the destruction of the hopes of a people long treated as property who thought they were finally going to be able to live in dignity and peace, the lost chance to make the promise of America real to all who lived here one might be content to cast Andrew Johnson’s time in the White House as a form of cosmic joke. The gods were playing tricks on us, giving us Abraham Lincoln exactly when we needed him, having him cut down by an inconsequential person, and then giving us Andrew Johnson to teach us the folly of even imagining that we controlled our own destinies. But the effects of Johnson’s presidency were too profound, too far ranging — reaching into twenty-first-century America to be considered anything approaching a joke or trick, even one to teach an important lesson.

To be fair to Johnson, any man would have had a tough time following Abraham Lincoln, particularly under the circumstances that ended his presidency. …

Seems a very tragic thing that we went from Lincoln who is considered one of the best presidents to Andrew Johnson who is considered one of the worst presidents at a time of great national need. Like Lincoln, Johnson rose from very humble beginnings to the highest office in the land. Unfortunately, Johnson learned a very different lesson from the journey. The book documents his career which includes white supremacist beliefs and battles with Congress over Reconstruction of the defeated South.

My take on this is that the author has very strong feelings about the failures of Johnson as a President and events resulting from those failures. At a time the nation need unity and healing, a white supremacist became President and his failures have “haunted the nation ever since.” It seems to me that the author is very fair in her evaluation of events and documents those failures well. The book was extremely interesting and gave me insight into the first president to be impeached (and the only one before Bill Clinton). The Constitution provides for impeachment for “… high Crimes and Misdemeanors” but those offenses are not defined. There is an interesting discussion about various interpretations of that provision of the Constitution. The book has also made me want to learn more about the period after the Civil War and its implications for modern society.

This book is part of The American Presidents Series and if this is a typical example, I assume it must be a series of fairly short and excellent biographies.

First Family: Abigail and John Adams by Joseph Ellis

First Family: Abigail and John Adams by Joseph Ellis

Posted on by Jack

Joseph Ellis has done it again. This combined biography of the most important husband/wife team of the era is a wonderful extension of his writing on early US history. I enjoyed 2 of his previous books on the American Revolutionary era. In my previous review of Founding Brothers and American Creation I thought that he covered that era well and in a totally enjoyable way.

His new book First Family: Abigail and John Adams covers the same time period but from a different perspective (and of course with much more detail on the Adams family). The book is based on the letters between Abigail and John which spanned the years leading up to the Revolution and the early republic. The gaps are filled in with Ellis’ knowledge of the era and some informed speculation to fill in missing details.

I read this on my Kindle and that has both advantages and disadvantages over reading a physical book. I’ll write a more detailed post on that later.

If you think you might be interested in this book, I would encourage you to visit the Amazon site (link below). You can read more reviews on Amazon or read samples of the book (see link below).

The revolutionaries: Founding Brothers & American Creation

The revolutionaries: Founding Brothers & American Creation

Posted on by Jack

I recently re-read Founding Brothers by Joseph Ellis. It is not a large book but (about 248 pages in the paperback excluding notes) but, I am reading on the train so I read in short intervals and quite often there are distractions.

Ellis tells several stories about the founders of the United States. Despite his modesty in the Preface, he does quite a remarkable job of making these Revolutionaries come alive in the stories. He starts with the well known story of the Hamilton-Burr duel which sets the stage for the rest and gets the unpleasantness out of the way. And he concludes with the reconciliation of two old friends who became bitter enemies in the rough and tumble politics of the early years of the republic (John Adams and Thomas Jefferson). In between are a few more stories about the Revolutionary Generation.

All the stories contribute to understanding of the dynamics among these revolutionaries. All eventually agreed that we needed to separate from England but they disagreed about how to proceed in founding a new country after we won our freedom. The Constitution did not settle the argument but just provides an orderly framework to allow the argument to continue. The document was a series of compromises and a bit of ambiguity in many cases.And it has continued for over 200 years.

The biggest of the compromises was about the clear inconsistency of allowing slavery in a nation whose founding is based on human rights. A good number of the founders saw the inconsistency and the wrong of it but it was probably impossible to get others who were both culturally and economically dependent on slavery to agree. The reached a compromise which only delayed the day of reckoning and results in civil war. During the intervening years the institution of slavery only increased but our country also became stronger. Ellis does a very good job in getting the reader to understand how we can see the inevitable in hindsight but that what we see as inevitable was not at all obvious to the revolutionaries and that there course may well have been the best that could be done given the fragile nature of our union in their time.

After I finished reading Founding Brothers, I thought it a good idea to read Ellis’s next book, American Creation. In many ways it was a continuation of his earlier work. Founding Brothers told the story of the Revolutionary era via stories about several of the founders; and American Creation is more chronological in approach and focuses largely on the 20 years after these revolutionaries have won freedom from Great Britain. That said, the 2 books do overlap in many ways (both characters and time and especially in some overarching themes) but the emphasis is a bit different.

Ellis neither puts the founders on pedestals nor treats them as unsympathetic dead white men as some works or views of history tend to do. He does not gloss over that facts that they were white and the men in that time had the power so all the main actors were men. (And of course they are dead now.) But importantly they were men of their time and while they were exceptional they were also human, complicated, and shared a certain lack of perfection with all of us.

All of the founders saw the need to set up our own government but they disagreed on what a federal government should look like and how it would related to the states. The first attempt (The Articles of Confederation) failed to give enough power to the federal government for the national government to remain viable. A second attempt resulted in the Constitution. There were failures, ambiguities, and many compromises but Ellis tells this story much better that I could.

Neither of these books is very large (less than 300 pages in each paperback) and I think most Americans would profit by reading both. Although I do not remember the books addressing this point, they put today’s political unpleasantness in perspective. But if I had to pick one, I would suggest the second. It is especially important because we constantly hear various pundits and politicians passing judgment on whether or not specific actions by the federal government are Constitutional. So if you are the type who likes to have an informed opinion on these matters, read one or both of these books.