A restless reader in New York

Since coming to New York City earlier this year, I’ve kept a bunch of New York books on my nightstand. Among them are the journals of Alfred Kazin, which I recently finished, and the diary of George Templeton Strong. Kazin was one of the premier literary critics in the country during the 20th century, Strong a lawyer who began keeping his diary in his youth

Detail of the Louisiana monument at Gettysburg, which is discussed in "What
the rebels won at Gettysburg" from top-25 list. (David Sullivan photo). 

In Strong’s case, I’m hoping his almost legendary account of the Civil War years will provide fodder for this blog, but mainly I’m trying to steep myself in New York history.

I am a restless reader. I read Thomas Berger’s obituary in the New York Times earlier this year and picked up his best known book, Little Big Man. What a treat! Maybe not Mark Twain but in the same neighborhood.

Most years I buy the Booker Prize winner. I read this year’s, Richard Flanagan’s harrowing The Narrow Road to the Deep North, with deep interest. Years ago, I helped Steve Raymond, a Bataan Death March survivor, get his memoir into print. Though a novel, Flanagan’s book tells a similar story; because a novel, its author imagines the inner lives of the Japanese captors as well as the ordeal of their Australian prisoners.

Vera Brittain’s memoir and journal are among my favorite books about World War I. Now, to fulfill a desire to read at least one more book about this war during the centennial year of its beginning, I’ve started Poilu. This is the marvelous diary-cum-memoir of a French barrel-maker who survived four years in the trenches.

*

Even though I have added few posts to the Our War blog during the last month, readership remains strong, for which I thank you. Page-views have now reached more than 54,000.  Even the haikus I’ve been writing about my wife Monique’s and my early days in New York have attracted eaders.

Here are the top 25 blog posts all-time on the basis of page-view count. Their numbers range from 1,123 to 266. The numbers in parenthesis are last month’s rankings.

1. Killing the Southerners with kindness (1)

2. The long American tradition of racist speech (5)

3. Why couldn’t Franklin Pierce just keep his mouth shut? (3)

4. Urgent! Telegram from Gettysburg (2)

5. A Gettysburg veteran who knew the battlefield by heart (4)

6. Did Abraham Lincoln really free the slaves? (7)

7. Farewell, my teacher (6)

8. Exeter’s Civil War general (8)

9. A Gettysburg journal (part 3) (9)

10. Unpacking the new ‘Gettysburg’ (10)

11. The rise and fall of James Willis Patterson (15)

12. One school’s proud Civil War heritage (12)

13. The soldier’s story behind the love story, Part I (11)

14. Faces of Fort Wagner, Olustee and Andersonville (14)

15. The Civil War: ‘It was not my fault,’ Buchanan insisted (12)

16. A Gettysburg photo album (18)

17. A Gettysburg Journal, part 4 (17)

18. Gallery: Old soldiers(2), a New England brigade (16)

19. The soldier’s story behind the love story, Part II  (20) 

20 (t). ‘The reputation of a regiment if always made by the worst men in it’ (22)

           A gift from the heart (19)

22. The Civil War created a boom for Yankee’s circus (23)

23. Gallery: Faces of the Fighting Fifth (part one) (21) 

24 (t). Gallery: What the rebels won at Gettysburg (new to list)

         

           Together again: They rode with Cross at Gettysburg (24)