Author Archives: smellincoffee

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About smellincoffee

Citizen, librarian, reader with a boundless wonder for the world and a curiosity about all the beings inside it.

Martin Van Buren

Posted on December 12, 2025 by smellincoffee

Who is Martin Van Buren? When I cast the name into the pool of my imagination, I can see his face reflected there, framed by wild sideburns and seeded by a guide to the US Presidents I read cover to … Continue reading →

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Confederate Women

Posted on December 11, 2025 by smellincoffee

Continuing in my march through Bell Irwin Wiley’s social histories of the Civil War,   I bought Confederate Women immediately after reading Billy Yank.    Confederate Women looks at the diaries and letters of three socially prominent southern belles and … Continue reading →

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WWW Wednesday

Posted on December 10, 2025 by smellincoffee

WHAT have you finished reading recently? The Battle Cry of Freedom, James McPherson. Review in progress. I have three more ACW books stacking up: Confederate Women, by Bell Irwin Wiley; 1858, by Bruce Chadwick; and The Civil War: An Aerial … Continue reading →

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Selections from the Battle Cry of Freedom

Posted on December 9, 2025 by smellincoffee

Quotes Austere and humorless, Davis did not suffer fools gladly. He lacked Lincoln’s ability to work with partisans of a different persuasion for the common cause. Lincoln would rather win the war than an argument; Davis seemed to prefer winning … Continue reading →

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The Battle Cry of Freedom

Posted on December 9, 2025 by smellincoffee

Battle Cry of Freedom is widely regarded as the finest single-volume history of the Civil War — and after finally reading it, I understand why. McPherson compresses an era of extraordinary complexity into a narrative that feels both sweeping and … Continue reading →

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Top Ten Books Set in the Snow

Posted on December 9, 2025 by smellincoffee

Today’s TTT is “books set in snowy places”. Well, that rules out anything in Alabama! But first, a couple of Tuesday Teases from The Battle Cry of Freedom, by James McPherson. “Soon after dawn on February 16, Buckner sent a … Continue reading →

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The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Posted on December 8, 2025 by smellincoffee

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader opens with one of my favorite lines from Lewis’s fiction, and repeats that achievement toward its close. “There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.” Said lad is the … Continue reading →

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A Fine, Quiet Sunday Morning in December….

Posted on December 7, 2025 by smellincoffee

Today’s annual remembrance of the sneak attack at Pearl Harbor has an especially salient echo given that it’s a Sunday. I am reminded of Captain Billy Mitchell’s interwar warning, quoted in The Airman’s War by Albert Marrin. By chance, I … Continue reading →

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Man of Iron

Posted on December 4, 2025 by smellincoffee

Grover Cleveland may have lost his claim to fame in being the only president to be elected to two nonconsecutive terms, but he is nevertheless a striking and memorable figure. Hailed as ‘the last Jeffersonian’  by another biography,  his two … Continue reading →

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The Book of Common Prayer

Posted on December 3, 2025 by smellincoffee

The Book of Common Prayer is the heart of the Anglican communion, and for my money contains some of English’s best phrasing outside Shakespeare and the Bible. Since 2011, its liturgy has been part of my life, its phrases embedded … Continue reading →

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