Tag Archives: America

Turbulent Skies

Posted on September 18, 2016 by smellincoffee

Turbulent Skies: The History of Commercial Aviation© 1995 T. H. Heppenheimer408 pages What a century was the 20th, which turned everyday life into the stuff of yesteryear’s science fiction. Who would believe at its dawning that one day people would … Continue reading →

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How the Scots Invented the Modern World

Posted on September 10, 2016 by smellincoffee

How the Scots Invented the Modern World:The True Story of How Western Europe’s Poorest Nation Created Our World and Everything in It © 2001  Arthur Herman400 pages An elderly patron at the library has adopted me as his go-to source for … Continue reading →

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Miracle at Midway

Posted on August 21, 2016 by smellincoffee

Miracle at Midway© 1983 Gordon Prange, Donald Goldstein and,Katherine Dillon,512 pages Miracle at Midway is a thorough history of the June 4-7 effort of the Japanese to simultaneously seize the most likely U.S. approaches to the Empire and lure the … Continue reading →

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Men from Earth

Posted on July 23, 2016 by smellincoffee

Men from Earth© 1989 Buzz Aldrin and Malcom McConnell314 pages Forty-seven years ago, men from Earth first stepped foot on the moon. There, they left medals commemorating the men of Apollo and Soyuz who perished in this quest for fire … Continue reading →

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A Country Called Amreeka

Posted on July 18, 2016 by smellincoffee

A Country Called Amreeka: U.S. History Retold through Arab-American LivesAlternate subtitle: Arab Roots, American Stories© 2009 Alia Malek320 pages I discovered  A Country Called Amreeka while looking for the film Amreeka, the story of a Palestinian woman who emigrates to … Continue reading →

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Our America

Posted on July 4, 2016 by smellincoffee

Our America: A Hispanic History of the United States© 2014  Felipe Fernández-Armesto416 pages Spain disappears from American history books following the Spanish-American war, in which the tired old empire was given a sound thrashing and retreated from the hemisphere, but Spanish … Continue reading →

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Harvest of Empire

Posted on June 27, 2016 by smellincoffee

Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America©  2000 Juan Gonzalez416 pages Harvest of Empire is a tale of two civilizations, Anglo and Spanish. In general terms, it recounts the history or rather the plight of Latin America, of people … Continue reading →

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Celebrating America: Independence Day Reading

Posted on June 14, 2016 by smellincoffee

Every year since this blog’s inception I have committed part of June and July to Independence-Day reading. The number and variety of the books has grown every year, and usually includes material on the colonial period, the revolution, and the … Continue reading →

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All the Shah’s Men

Posted on May 29, 2016 by smellincoffee

All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror© 2003 Stephen Kinzler272 pages On one  dismal  night in 1953,  a conspiracy destroyed both Iranian democracy and American honor.  At the dawn of the 1950s, Iran was … Continue reading →

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American History: the Index

Posted on May 13, 2016 by smellincoffee

Across the Bering:  Native America Twilight of the Mammoths,  Paul Martin The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America, James Wilson Kingdoms of Gold, Kingdoms of Jade: Peopling the Americas, Brian Fagan 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before … Continue reading →

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