I normally won’t be using this blog for link suggestions but one of my favorite sites needs to be mentioned. I live in the Seattle area and HistoryLink.org is probably the best site for Seattle and Washington State History. It claims to be a free encyclopedia of Local History. With its huge collections of personal contributions and archival material along with their own research, it more than lives up to that claim.
HistoryLink.org – Seattle History
Sarah Vowell’s The Wordy Shipmates is a look at the Puritan settler’s creation of the City Upon the Hill. She makes a distinction between the Pilgrims of Plymouth, who were technically “separatists,” and the Puritans that later settled Boston who are the subjects of the book. Her writing style is humorous but still informative and I am looking forward to digging into this book. Look for a final review when I am finished.
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| Dirt is an interesting book. Most of us are aware of the importance of soil as a medium for growing our food sources. Many of us have probably even thought about the consequences of abusing the soil. In this book, however, Mr. Montgomery carefully lays out the countless instances where societies have not only mistreated their soil, they have done it to such an extent that their society has failed as a result. Not often emphasized in history texts, civilization has apparently been an ongoing quest to find new soil as existing sources are piddled away. I haven’t finished the book yet so I don’t know if he manages to extend his observations into our own times. I will fill that in later, when I have finished the book. |
| The Far Traveler is a little bit archeology, a little bit mythology and a little bit history. It is the story of Gudrid, a female Viking resident of ancient Greenland (1000 AD) who, according to Icelandic Sagas spent a few years living in “Vinland,” which was a Viking term for North America. I am only about half way through the book and the author is just now getting to the actual adventure, so it has been a little slow so far, but the history is fascinating and I feel like it is going to get interesting from now on. I will update this post when I have finished reading it.
Completion Update: In the end this book was worth reading. The history and archeology was detailed enough to be informative, without being too dry, and the mythology brought in another element that made the study much more personal than most stories that are as distant in time as the Icelandic tales. I was ultimately left wishing for a little more depth regarding the travels to “Vinland” while at the same time being confident that the author shared everything available. With this book, an incredibly remote and fascinating time and place became a little more real. Editor’s note: You may have noticed that I am not running ads on this blog. Aside from the fact that I probably won’t get enough traffic on this site for it to matter anyway, this site is basically for me and I don’t like to look at the ads. I do have an Amazon and a google account, however, and once in a while you might see evidence of that. The box on the right is one example. It is easier for me to grab a ready made display panel than build one myself so I will use them to accompany my book comments. |
