Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard. One of my children used to be particularly interested in naming and researching the four U.S. presidents who were assassinated: Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and Kennedy. This book about the life, presidency, and assassination of President James Garfield …
Category Archive: US History Project
Apr 18
Poem #53: The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1861
“To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry. “~Gaston Bachelard I love Longfellow! Accessible, rhythmic, and pure fun! Listen my children and you shall hear Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, On the eighteenth of April, in …
Feb 08
Love Twelve Miles Long by Glenda Armand
How long is a mother’s love for her son? Twelve miles long. Frederick’s mama must walk twelve long miles to visit her son who lives in slavery in the master’s Big House while his mother toils far way in the fields. Mama measures her journey in twelve miles of forgetting, remembering, listening, looking up, praying, …
Jan 05
12 World War I Novels and Nonfiction Books I’d Like to Read in 2012
War Through the Generations is focusing on World War I this year. Here a few of the books I’d like to read for that project. Children’s and YA Fiction: War Horse by Michael Morpurgo. “Joey, the farm horse, is sold to the army and sent to the Western front.” I’d like to read the book, …
Sep 12
Reading About the Titanic
On April 15, 1912 the luxury liner Titanic hit an iceberg and sank. 1595 passengers and crew died. Only 745 people were saved. For some reason, more than almost any other tragedy or shipwreck, the sinking of the Titanic has inspired dozens, maybe even hundreds, of books, movies, poems, and other media. Here’s a list …
Aug 09
1905: Events and Inventions
January 22, 1905. Bloody Sunday. In St. Petersburg, 10,000 workers and their families march to the Winter Palace to petition Czar Nicholas II for better working conditions. Cossack troops fire on the unarmed crowd, killing over 100 of the demonstrators and injuring many hundreds more. January 25, 190. Frederick Wells, a mine supervisor in Transvaal, …
Aug 05
What did Teddy Read?
“And it’s likely that no president will ever match the Rough Rider himself, who charged through multiple books in a single day and wrote more than a dozen well-regarded works, on topics ranging from the War of 1812 to the American West.” ~For Obama and past presidents, the books they read shape policies and perceptions …
Dec 05
On the Seventh Day of Christmas, Nashville, TN, 1828
From the biography, American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham: Shortly after nine on the evening of Monday, December 22, three days before Christmas, Rachel [Jackson] suffered an apparent heart attack. It was over. Still, Jackson kept vigil, her flesh turning cold to his touch as he stroked her forehead. With …
Oct 26
This Means War! by Ellen Wittlinger
It’s 1962 again, just as in Deborah Wiles’ Countdown (Semicolon review here), and while JFK and Khrushchev play chicken in the Cuban Missle Crisis, Juliet Klostermeyer and her friends are competing with the boys in a series of “challenges” to see who’s best, the boys or the girls. Starting with a simple foot race, the …
Jul 24
Books About Teddy
Mornings on Horseback by David McCullough. River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey by Candice Millard. Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris. Theodore Roosevelt is one of my fascinations. I read McCullough’s Mornings on Horseback back in March, but I never got around to reviewing it. It was a lovely narrative biography of the young Teddy …



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