Quote:
Originally Posted by CRussel
Oh, I'd agree Hersey's Hiroshima was superior in every way. And I almost nominated it again, but decided to go with something away from the main theatres of the war. And I'm glad I did, even though some of you really didn't like it. And I get that, but maybe we're looking for something a bit different in a history read.
I'll be brutally honest -- I'm never going to read or want to read a thoroughly scholorly tome on war or history. I'm past the age where I find that interesting, and I no longer have to read them for an assignment or school. I enjoy reading history when it makes the history personal and interesting. I find I learn and retain far more from that sort of treatment than I do from something I might have read for a college course. Does that make me shallow? Perhaps, but if so, I accept it and embrace it. At least I try to learn from the mistakes of history. (I'd point out some current examples, but that would take us into P&R territory!)
And OK, I agree completely about Barss. I never quite understood the focus on him, he was the least interesting of the characters chronicled in many ways. But this was not a story about Barss, nor was the book primarily about him no matter how often he intruded. To me, this was a book about how the people of Halifax died and survived the greatest non-nuclear human-caused disaster in history, and how they worked to recover from it. And it was also very much a book about the events that led to that disaster. And while I can certainly see the limitations of the book, ultimately I found it compelling and interesting.
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I didn't need a tome, really. I have read and enjoyed popular history before. The Ghost Map:
The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic - and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World by Steven Johnson was great. I am not sure how I would have felt about this topic in the hands of another historian or if it had not come on the heels of
The Radium Girls.
I think the subject matter was very interesting, and, again, it did make for a very interesting conversation with my Better Half about just what I did want to get out of reading history. I don't regret reading it for just that reason.
(I am also fully braced for people to not like my lucky winner for September)