Bronwyn

I first saw this book about a decade ago. I was working at The Henry Ford, browsing the gift shop, and it sounded interesting. It also seemed to have no connection to THF, so I was confused why they had it. I didn't buy it then, but remembered it and finally bought it a few years later.

I didn't have to wait long to find out why THF carried it - the Benson Ford Research Center is mentioned in the acknowledgments. More of why THF is relevant is found out at the end of the last chapter - THF purchased a collection of Eva's things. Mystery solved. On to the book.

This was really interesting. Eva had a fascinating life and influenced so much. It's a pity she's not more well known, considering her popularity in the early decades of the twentieth century. However, she also seemed incredibly difficult. I can see why she couldn't cope with the changing world, and unfortunately that led to her being forgotten relatively quickly.

If you're interested in show biz, early twentieth century history, women, etc., you'll enjoy this book. Eva should be more well known and hopefully this book will help, even a little.

3.5/5

The first half was quicker going and more interesting than the second half, but just fascinating. What weird family dynamics...

Won through goodreads.

I knew very little about Herschel Grynszpan going into reading this book. I volunteered for a little while at the Holocaust Memorial Center here in Michigan and at the end of their hall leading up to the war and the Holocaust they have a display and video about Kristallnacht that briefly discusses Herschel as well. That's about all I knew about him, his motives, and what happened to him - that is, very little at all.

This book was really interesting. It gave background to why Herschel went to the German Embassy in Paris and shot a man. The family dynamics involved in his being in Paris and why he ultimately went to the Embassy are amazing. How this and his background were used by the Nazis to justify Kristallnacht and how his trial progressed are just fascinating to read about; some of it is so ridiculous it would be funny if it weren't so serious. No one really knows what happened to Herschel and so the book does stall a bit at the end when discussing all the theories about what happened to him. However, the last chapter dealing with why Herschel isn't remembered like other Jews who stood up to the Nazis is really interesting and has a lot of things to consider from his conflicting reports of why he did what he did, to his changing stories, to how various people view his act.

I wasn't blown away by this book, it didn't have me needing to know what happened next, or it could've been five stars. It tells a very interesting story about someone who people know very little about and who ought to be better known. I highly recommend it.

Won through Goodreads.

Well, my phone ate my review, so let's try again.

I didn't really care for this. I really enjoyed Abbott's first book, so I had high hopes. I didn't connect with the story or any of the people. Everyone was awful and I'm not really sure why I should care about any of them; sometimes those people can still be interesting, but I did not feel that was the case here. The jumping time periods and people just added to the confusion. I want to read a straightforward biography again; so many seem to be written disjointed lately. I didn't hate this book, I just didn't enjoy it. It's probably good I know next to nothing about Gypsy and have never seen the musical, judging from other people's reviews.

Minus the last chapter and all the personal anecdotes in it, I loved reading this. Now I need to reread Gatsby.

Ultimately I enjoyed this - it's such an interesting book. For some reason I just never wanted to read it, though when reading it I really enjoyed it.

You can read my review/synopsis at: http://www.suite101.com/content/parlor-politics-by-catherine-allgor-a-summary-a371940

I received this book free through Goodreads in exchange for a review.

50 Great American Places: Essential Historic Sites Across the U.S. is a quick interesting read about places of importance in the United States. There are 50 chapters in the book, all very short, one on each of the places.

The places in this book range from the well-known to the lesser known. There is something of interest for pretty much anyone: early-American history, western American history, industrial and/or technological history, etc.

Overall I really enjoyed this book. It's just the kind of thing I like: snippets about a number of different places; giving just enough information to keep you interested, but if you're not it's done pretty quick. I liked learning about different places I was not aware of at all or places where I only knew a little about. There were a few places in the book that I knew quite a bit about, but that was very welcome too.

I did have a few issues with this book. Firstly, while this is titled “50 Great American Places” I felt that some of the choices have been done to death over the years. As much as I love Monticello or Salem, these are things that are touched on in every book and it seems that other choices may have worked better here.

Secondly, I had an issue with a word choice of Glass's that popped up a few times. In the chapters about Edison (NJ) and Ford Rouge (MI), Glass states that Henry Ford recreated Edison's Menlo Park lab in Greenfield Village. While I can see this word being appropriate, I feel it gives the wrong impression of what Ford did. As someone who worked at Greenfield Village for two years and lived in the area nearly my entire life, I would characterize what Ford did differently than “recreate”. Ford moved entire buildings to Greenfield Village, marking the boards so they were put back together in the exact same position. With Menlo Park (the building mentioned in the book a few times), Henry Ford even brought in boxcar loads of New Jersey soil to put the building on because Edison said Menlo Park would never leave New Jersey soil. So while recreate may be a decent choice of word, I feel like there are better words Glass could have used. Because of this, it does make me wonder what other things in the book could be misunderstood because of iffy word choices.

Despite those two issues, I did enjoy the book and would recommend it for anyone looking for a book of places in the U.S. to visit as long as they don't have other guide books. I think it would be a good first book, but with so much overlap, if you have other similar books or know a lot about American history, this book may not be for you.

Cute tie-in book for Brave with some decent rhymes. The glowing parts are fun.

I didn't like this but didn't dislike it. What a weird book.

What a charming book. I'll have to read the others that go before this (but weren't really necessary to this one).

Really interesting book about early Hollywood, scandals, and a murder. I didn't really care for the author supposing who and how the murder was committed, but other than that it was really interesting and well-done.

Really interesting story of a sort of bored Victorian housewife. Summerscale writes this like a novel, and makes even the long court case/s interesting.

First read October 2011.
Second read February 2014.

More like 3 1/2 stars... This book isn't as much about the brothers as I would have liked, but I did enjoy the circus stuff (ties in well with my recent read, Queen of the Air, about Lillian Lietzel, who is mentioned here on a few occasions). Some of the race stuff was interesting as well, but there too it felt just touched upon. There are a lot of interesting ideas in this, but there are too many in the end so it suffers a bit.

I didn't dislike this, but didn't really like it either, so 3 stars it is. The Ada parts were a bit too much like Alice in Wonderland and the Lydia parts seemed forced much of the time. Not a bad book, but not what I was expecting.

3.5/5

I wish this was better. There were parts I really enjoyed and other parts that weren't well explained. I agree with another reviewer that I never really felt like I knew who Audrey was. Still an interesting book, it just had a lot of potential that didn't pan out.

Really interesting book about the beginnings of capturing movement on film. The set up of the book, though, was distracting, jumping from person to person and back and forth in time.

I wish this was better. I understand that this is for little kids, but I think that then it's even more important that the information is accurate. Just because you've simplified something doesn't mean you can't be truthful.

This was really interesting. While it's supposedly about Tolkien, Lewis, Barfield, and Williams, the vast majority is about Tolkien and Lewis - this is fine as they were the two I was most interested in. There's a lot of information and detail in this. I got a little annoyed with how precious Tolkien (Lewis to a lesser degree) was with his writing, but it's to be expected when you know how much work was put into all the LotR and related books. I learned so much in this and probably would have gotten a bit more out of it if I was more familiar with all the writings discussed. Really excellent.

(Read this previously but didn't add it. Read it again today.) Cute enough. Of course it can't touch on all the presidents but I do wish it had.

I've enjoyed some of Juliet Nicolson's non-fiction, so thought I'd try her fiction. This wasn't bad. It felt like she'd been researching 1936 and didn't have enough for a non-fiction book, so turned it into a novel - every now and then there'd be info dumps about the Queen Mary or one of Mosley's rallies or such. The story itself was fine enough, but I didn't feel terribly connected to any of the characters. And the characterization of Evangeline... Ugh.

This is a good one. It was one of my first Christies I don't remember when and got me into Poirot. I really like the set up and reveal. Really well done.

Honestly, I just finished this because I wanted to know the answer to if there was a child. I feel like there's a kernel of an interesting story here, but this isn't it. All the people are pretty insufferable too...