Turn of the Century Books

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America

Erik Larson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 772 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A bit tedious at times, but worth a read - esp if you like architectural history 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

It took me 2 weeks to get through this book. Mainly because it's been crazy in my life lately, but also because this is, in some ways, a dry book. I was fascinated by the architecture and building practices of the time. The history of foundations in the Chicago area, the time/effort/labor it took, all that stuff interested me. BUT it did seem to drag on and on at times. The Holmes connection wasn't really connected, it happened at the same time and I think the fair only allowed him to get away with it because of the large number of people and craziness that went down around there. I wish we had heard more of the Holmes story and a little less of the fair. They were inter-woven, yes, but I think they deserved equal time.

Having said that, it is a good book, a bit tedious, definitely not a beach read. It did make me go look up more information and pictures about the fair. I always knew we had one there back then, but I didn't really know much about it. The whole project seems huge and frankly, amazing, for the time. Impressive.

Editorial Review:

Bringing Chicago circa 1893 to vivid life, Erik Larson's spellbinding bestseller intertwines the true tale of two men--the brilliant architect behind the legendary 1893 World's Fair, striving to secure America’s place in the world; and the cunning serial killer who used the fair to lure his victims to their death. Combining meticulous research with nail-biting storytelling, Erik Larson has crafted a narrative with all the wonder of newly discovered history and the thrills of the best fiction.

Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt

David McCullough

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 76 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Mornings on Horseback is the brilliant biography of the young Theodore Roosevelt. Hailed as "a masterpiece" (John A. Gable, Newsday), it is the winner of the Los Angeles Times 1981 Book Prize for Biography and the National Book Award for Biography. Written by David McCullough, the author of Truman, this is the story of a remarkable little boy, seriously handicapped by recurrent and almost fatal asthma attacks, and his struggle to manhood: an amazing metamorphosis seen in the context of the very uncommon household in which he was raised.

The father is the first Theodore Roosevelt, a figure of unbounded energy, enormously attractive and selfless, a god in the eyes of his small, frail namesake. The mother, Mittie Bulloch Roosevelt, is a Southerner and a celebrated beauty, but also considerably more, which the book makes clear as never before. There are sisters Anna and Corinne, brother Elliott (who becomes the father of Eleanor Roosevelt), and the lovely, tragic Alice Lee, TR's first love. All are brought to life to make "a beautifully told story, filled with fresh detail", wrote The New York Times Book Review.

A book to be read on many levels, it is at once an enthralling story, a brilliant social history and a work of important scholarship which does away with several old myths and breaks entirely new ground. It is a book about life intensely lived, about family love and loyalty, about grief and courage, about "blessed" mornings on horseback beneath the wide blue skies of the Badlands.

1897 Sears Roebuck Catalogue

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A portal to another time 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This book is utterly fascinating for those who hold any sort of interest in bygone times. While not a step-by-step guide, it inadvertantly thrusts the reader into the role of a home owner of limited means in the late 1800s. You find yourself shopping, suckered in by the richly worded item desciptions and enticed by the promises of "best on the market," "guaranteed for a lifetime," and "will cure all diseases of the nervous system."

Unconsciously, you create your own little shopping list and envision a home where the husband builds everything from the buggy to the bathrooms while the wife prepares all the meals and pretties herself with skin whiteners and hair lotions.

I am so glad to have bought this catalogue. I use it as a writing prompt for my high school students, to encourage creative and analytical thought, and they delight in it. I implore everyone to investigate this book.

Editorial Review:

This is a complete replica of the revolutionary consumer's guide. This facsimile of the 1897 "Sears Roebuck and Co. Catalogue" presents a unique glimpse of America at the end of the 19th century. Hundreds of illustrations and intriguing text bring this bygone era to life, describing more than 6,000 items, from abdominal corsets and zulu guns, to trout baskets and puff bangs, to bicycle suits and phaeton tops. A replica of the original catalog, this volume features products offered to consumers more than 100 years ago and makes this period come alive by illuminating people's consumer habits, as well as advertising methods during that time. Perfect for collectors of Americana, social historians, and general readers, this catalog is a browser's delight.

The Search for Order, 1877-1920

Robert H. Wiebe

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Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

A "Revolution in Values" Thoroughly Explained 3 out of 5 stars.
41 of 43 people found this review helpful.

In "The Search for Order," Robert Wiebe provides perhaps the first unifying overview of the American Progressive period. Beginning with the Reconstruction era, Wiebe presents the United States as "a nation of loosely connected islands." The economic panic of 1873 began what Wiebe describes as as a "soul searching" period for these homogenous, stable, primarily Protestant "island communities." America was noticeably changing from simple, locally-oriented communities guided by small town ethics to complex, interdependent societies seemingly controlled by distant and impersonal forces. Wiebe explains the ways in which Americans sought to regain some sense of order as this rapidly changing nation rumbled through the first decades of the twentieth century.

A "revolution in values" took place during this "search for order." Wiebe traces a pattern of "bureaucratization" in such diverse areas as science, philosophy, business, education, journalism, law, medicine, and social work (although Wiebe neglects the influence of arts and technology). A new middle class emerged as certain occupations such as law, medicine, and teaching became professionalized. Journalism became more scientific. Social workers began to establish their distinct field. "Idealists" and "utopianists" advocated the idea of progress by stages. A "business unionism" developed establishing a set of values for organized labor and carrying "the obligation that union executives become experts in their particular industry" (125). Factories turned to scientific management. With the establishment of the American Farm Burea, even farmers allowed their former image as "the people" to fade in favor of an agricultural business image. Such bureaucratic solutions were also attempted on an international level with the League of Nations (curiously, foreign policy makers seemed quite confident of America's superior place in the world despite domestic confusion). In other words, when the new middle class joined the Progressive movement, reform had altered its meaning from results to procedures.

The success of this bureaucratic integration was made evident by the ability of the nation to mobilize for the First World War. However, as Wiebe maintains, the successes of the Progressive movement actually helped lead to its downfall. Achievements such as financial reform following the panic of 1907, workmen's compensation laws, and policies under Woodrow Wilson's New Freedom "dulled the reforming urge" (212). Former Progressives began to defend the status quo as the nation entered the 1920s. What is more, the Progressives had "constructed just an approach to reform, mistaking it for the finished product" (223). Although Wiebe does not fully explain the reasons Americans turned to bureaucratic trends in their "search for order" and is often guilty of over-generalizing, over-intellectualizing, and inundating his work with an excessive use of abstractions, he does make a strong case that there was a "revolution in values" during the Progressive era. These values of Progressivism are with us today, including an active executive begun during the administrations of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.

Editorial Review:

At the end of the Reconstruction, the spread of science and technology, industrialism, urbanization, immigration, and economic depressions eroded Americans' conventional beliefs in individualism and a divinely ordained social system. In The Search for Order, Robert Wiebe shows how, in subsequent years, during theProgressive Era of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, Americans sought the organizing principles around which a new viable social order could be constructed in the modern world. This subtle and sophisticated study combines the virtues of historical narrative, sociological analysis, and social criticism.

Murdering McKinley: The Making of Theodore Roosevelt's America

Eric Rauchway

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Very First Page Contains a Glaring Error. Rest isn't Much Better 1 out of 5 stars.
5 of 15 people found this review helpful.

I'm sure the statement, as fact, that Emma Goldman "dismissed [Czolgosz] as a police informant" would come as a great surprise to Miss Goldman. Anyone who read her autobiography, living my life, or looked into the subject at all would know that it was her friend, the Mennonite anarchist Abraham Isaak, who published a warning about Czolgosz being a spy in his newspaper "Free Society." Goldman didn't really know Czolgosz (or even his real name), but she demanded Isaak publish a retraction as he had no proof of his allegation. She later blamed this kind of hostile treatment from the very Chicago anarchists she'd introduced Czolgosz to for driving him to "prove himself" through his attentat.

If you want to know about Anarchism and the period, don't buy this book. Buy "Living My Life," or read it right here for free: [...]

Frankly, that's what the author would have done if he'd cared about getting even the most basic facts correct.

Editorial Review:

When President William McKinley was murdered at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, on September 6, 1901, Americans were bereaved and frightened. Rumor ran rampant: A wild-eyed foreign anarchist with an unpronounceable name had killed the commander-in-chief. Eric Rauchway's brilliant Murdering McKinley restages Leon Czolgosz's hastily conducted trial and then traverses America with Dr. Vernon Briggs, a Boston alienist who sets out to discover why Czolgosz rose up to kill his president.

Theodore Roosevelt: A Life

Nathan Miller

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Total reviews: 34 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Nathan Miller's critically acclaimed biography of Theodore Roosevelt is the first complete one-volume life of the Rough Rider to be published in more than thirty years. From his sickly childhood to charging up San Juan Hill to waving his fist under J.P. Morgan's rubicund nose, Theodore Roosevelt offers the intimate history of a man who continues to cast a magic spell over the American imagination.

As the twenty-sixth president of the United States, from 1901 to 1909, Roosevelt embodied the overwheliming confidence of the nation as it entered the American Century. With fierce joy, he brandished a "Big Stick" abroad and promised a "Square Deal" at home. He was the nation's first environmental president, challenged the trusts, and, as the first American leader to play an important role in world affairs, began construction of a long-dreamed canal across Panama and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for almost singlehandedly bringing about a peaceful end to the Russo-Japanese War.

In addition to following Roosevelt's political career, Theodore Roosevelt looks deeply into his personal relations to draw a three-dimensional portrait of a man who confronted life-wrenching tragedies as well as triumphs. It is biography at its most compelling.

Carry a Big Stick: The Uncommon Heroism of Theodore Roosevelt (Leaders in Action Series)

George Grant

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Errors galore in this Conservative Christian propaganda! 1 out of 5 stars.
12 of 30 people found this review helpful.

I've read 40+ plus books by or about TR and this is the worst, one-sided view of this complex, multi-facted man. This is as bad as the radical-left "Howard Zinn-ism" revisionist history of TR's foreign policies.

There are too many "blatant" errors to list in this mini-review, but just for starters:

1). TR did not, as the author claims, visit his mother's Georgia plantation "10 or more times". It is well documented that TR only visited Bulloch Hall twice -once as president and once post-White House. He did not have a very high opinion of most Southerners, despite the author's claims to the contrary. His wife abhorred most Southerners.

2). TR did not force his children, particulary Alice, to attend church every Sunday. Edith was the religious task master of the family and in her quiet manner usually rounded up all kids, except for Alice. Alice was a well-known, open atheist from her teen years until she died. TR and Edith had accepted the teenager's refusal to be confirmed in the Episcopal church or any other church. Their son Archie also grew up to be an agnostic.

3). TR most certainly did NOT shower Edith with flowers and jewels. He never even remembered her birthday (though he never forgot the date of their engagement and wedding anniversay). Edith hated receiving extravagent gifts from anyone, especially her husband. They did have a very happy marriage and home life but he also known for taking off on 3-month hunting trips soon after Edith would deliver another baby.

4). TR most certainly did like to attend parties and was a professional social butterfly because he knew he would probably end up as the main attraction - just what his ego needed. The author paints TR as a man who shunned social gatherings to be with his family 24/7. Definitely not true. He LOVED being around people of all and any type, though his wife certainly like to stoke the home fires more than making the social rounds.

5). TR never made any speeches about abortion. Abortion was not on the radar screen in his time. The author uses quotes that TR said about women not wanting to get married and raise families to make it seem as though TR were speaking direcly on the subject of abortion.

6). TR believed in and preached on the separation of Church and State. He wanted to remove "In God We Trust" from the US coinnage and even pushed one of the leading artists of that time, Grant LaFarge, to create a new design. The "religious right" of his time went ballistic over this decision and he later backed down. He made many speeches proclaiming that the Church stay out of the affairs of the State. Indeed, he was a strong, "old school" Christian who did preach to the citizens the value of religion, a happy home life, and following the morals one teaches to his/her children. However, he also thought a country would head down the dangerous path if a certain religion or belief were forced upon its citizens.

I would not recommend this book on TR to ANYONE.

Editorial Review:

This volume in the Leaders in Action series presents the life of Teddy Roosevelt: adventurer, journalist, rancher, legislator, governor, vice president and president of the United States, and an inspiration to people of his own time and of ours.

The Imperial Tense: Prospects and Problems of American Empire

Andrew J. Bacevich

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Invites debates and consideration of all sides 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 6 people found this review helpful.

This collection of arguments on compelling problems of America provides a range of viewpoints, invites debates and consideration of all sides, and surveys issues important to humanitarian causes. From assessments of American global domination and imperialist purposes in the world to its quest for security and expanded world influence, this provides an essential source of particular recommendation to high school and college-level courses on social issues.

Debating the American Empire 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

The debate on the American Empire takes place on several levels simultaneously: on one axis is the question of whether America is an empire, and if so, what kind of empire is it? It is obviously different from past empires because it is hardly territorial; but it still exerts its influence in ways that Rome or Britain would have found unimaginable. On another other axis rests the issue of the impact of the American imperium: is it a force for peace and stability or upheaval and destruction? Then, there is an issue of strategy: how should American policymakers conduct their affairs? What should citizens do?

These are some of the questions addressed in "The Imperial Tense," a book edited by Andrew Bacevich, a professor of International Relations at Boston University. Mr. Bacevich is no stranger to empire. His book, American Empire, was widely acclaimed; its central argument was that, however in denial, America's commitment to empire is not only real but also a central component of its foreign policy. He now brings that expertise in collecting some of the finest perspectives on the problems and prospects of the American Empire.

The selections are diverse just as they insightful; David Rieff carves out the problems of humanitarian intervention; Deepek Lal writes to defend Empires; Charles Krauthammer praises America's unipolar era; David North admonishes America's drive for world domination; Peter Bender, Andrew Bacevich, Jedediah Purdy, David Marquand, James Chance, Martin Walker, Victor Davis Hanson all explore America's position as a unique empire; Josh Milblank, Stanley Hoffman, G. John Ikenberry, Charles Maier, Stephen Peter Rosen debate America's imperial strategies; and Wendell Berry, Gabriel Ash and James Kurth speculate on America's future.

Not all the pieces are great; but they are widely representative of the breadth and depth of the debate taking place about America's role as a global empire. Although the authors are mostly American, this hardly diminishes those parts of the book which cast a skeptical eye on the imperial enterprise. In the end, "The Imperial Tense" is one of the best books to bring together some of the most thoughtful articles on the American imperium. For that, and for its reference value, it is sure to be widely read and used.

Editorial Review:

What is the nature and scope of the American empire, and what are its prospects and challenges? In this timely and thought-provoking collection, leading scholars and observers consider the new reality of American power in the world and what consequences it may bring at home and abroad. First-rate...a most valuable collection. --Walter LaFeber

Molly Brown: Unraveling the Myth

Kristen Iversen

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 17 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Iverson brings to life the woman and explains the myth 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I bought this book at the Molly Brown House and Museum in Denver, a few weeks ago. I like biographies, autobiographies, and well-written historical fiction about the lives of women, so this one caught my eye. I was not disappointed.

Dr. Iverson brought Margaret (Molly) Brown to life in context with the Victorian Age she part of. I delighted in all the little details of family and friends, fashions, travel, politics, and society that enriched this biography, for none of us exist in a vaccum.

Margaret Tobin Brown, an interesting philanthropist and activist who was way ahead of her time, has at last been given the respect she deserves, rather than trivializing her as merely Molly Brown, the crude, opportunistic, unsinkable wife of Mr. Brown.

Editorial Review:

When Margaret Tobin Brown arrived in New York City shortly after her perilous night in Titanic’s Lifeboat Six, a legend was born. Through magazines, books, a Broadway musical, and a Hollywood movie, she became "The Unsinkable Molly Brown," but in the process her life story was distorted beyond recognition. Even her name was changed—she was never known as Molly during her lifetime. Kristen Iversen’s "Molly Brown: Unraveling the Myth" is the first full-length biography of this American icon, and the story it tells is of a passionate and outspoken crusader for the rights of women, children, mine workers, and others struggling for their voice in the early twentieth century. In the end, the real "Molly" Brown was far more fascinating than her myth, and Kristen Iversen has captured her in all her brilliance.

Contempt of Court: The Turn-of-the-Century Lynching That Launched a Hundred Years of Federalism

Mark Curriden, Leroy Phillips

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Total reviews: 22 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Scary moments of our past 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

When Leroy Phillips, Jr. came to visit my school in Chattanooga, I was overwhelmed by the knowledge that something like this could have happened in my city. After his talk, I decided to read the book for myself. At first, I noticed that the authors took a lot of time to research the subject thoroughly, so much so that I think they know more about Chattanooga than I do, keeping in mind Leroy Phillips does live here. What also impressed me the most was the nonfiction story itself. The story is about a black man named Ed Johnson who was put on trial at first as a scapegoat. However, he eventually was a target for all anti-black aggressions. I mean, for me the 60's were scary, but the brutality and violence of the early 1900's, especially these incidents, are just terrifying. This book will show a detailed look at Chattanooga's past; it will show some historically fascinating law and court decisions, and it will just be an amazing read.

Editorial Review:

In this profound and fascinating book, the authors revisit an overlooked Supreme Court decision that changed forever how justice is carried out in the United States.
In 1906, Ed Johnson was the innocnet black man found guilty of the brutal rape of Nevada Taylor, a white woman, and sentenced to die in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Two black lawyers, not even part of the original defense, appealed to the Supreme Court for a stay of execution, and the stay, incredibly, was granted. Frenzied with rage at the deision, locals responded by lynching Johnson, and what ensued was a breathtaking whirlwind of groundbreaking legal action whose import, Thurgood Marshall would claim, "has never been fully explained." Provocative, thorough, and gripping, Contempt of Court is a long-overdue look at events that clearly depict the peculiar and tenuous relationship between justice and the law.