Summer Reading

During summers as a kid, I’d rummage around in the public library, come home with an armful of books, and return the next week to do it all over again. I grew up in a small town with a tiny public library; if I recall, there were shelves all around the inside of the building, 2 standing shelves near the front, and 6 or 7 standing shelves in the back. I probably read every book in the library before I went away to college! I remember reading Little Women and Little Men, The Boxcar Children series, Where the Red Fern Grows, Sounder, everything I could find by Beverly Clearly, Madeleine L’Engle, Judy Blume, E.B. White, and C.S. Lewis, and this wonderful series about kids who travel to “the mushroom plant.” I wish I could remember more about that last series, but all I can recall is the mushroom planet and that I really liked those books.

These days, I do most of my reading on flights and during summers. I devour mysteries like they were candy, but this summer my interests are leaning more toward history than mystery. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll be reading the latest by Kathy Reichs, John Sanford, Karin Slaughter, Jeffery Deaver, Beverly Connor, Tess Gerritsen (mostly on my iPad, I suppose) and all my other favs, but the following books, in no particular order, are also on my list:

1. Eric Foner’s The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery (about 1/2 way through this; it is fantastic!)
2. William Lee Miller’s Arguing about Slavery: John Quincy Adams and the Great Battle in the United States Congress (started reading this in Feb and now will be getting back to it)
3. Hampton Sides’ Hellhound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin (another one I started reading some time ago and will be getting back to it)
4. The Writings of Abraham Lincoln (his collected writings in 7 volumes; have this as an e-book. I’ll see how this goes)
5. Bernard Bailyn’s The Debate on the Constitution: Federalist and Antifederalist Speeches, Articles, and Letters During the Struggle over Ratification: Part One, September 1787-February 1788 (need to find used copies of the other one)
6. Martha S. Jones’ All Bound Up Together: The Woman Question in African American Public Culture, 1830-1900
7. Michael Stancliff’s Frances Ellen Watkins Harper: African American Reform Rhetoric and the Rise of a Modern Nation State
8. Stephen G. Hall’s A Faithful Account of the Race: African American Historical Writing in Nineteenth-Century America
9. Timothy Patrick McCarthy’s Prophets of Protest: Reconsidering the History of American Abolitionism
10. Laurie B. Green’s Battling the Plantation Mentality: Memphis and the Black Freedom Struggle
11. Matt Taibbi’s Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America
12. Blair Kelley’s Right to Ride: Streetcar Boycotts and African American Citizenship in the Era of Plessy v. Ferguson
13. Danielle S. Allen’s Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown v. Board of Education
14. David O. Stewart’s The Summer of 1787: The Men Who Invented the Constitution
15. Lawrence Goldstone’s Dark Bargain: Slavery, Profits and the Struggle for the Constitution
16. Charles Lemert’s The Voice of Anna Julia Cooper

Well, if I am going to get through this list, I best get to work (and stop playing Dragon Ages!

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