Richard F. Snow

Sailing the Graveyard Sea details an interesting chapter in U.S. naval history. Was there really a mutiny aboard the USS Somers, or did Commander Alexander Mackenzie overreact? Acting Midshipman Philip Spencer, son of the Secretary of War, was spoiled and self-indulgent and much too in love with a book detailing the history of pirates... but was he really the ringleader of a mutiny? Fortunately, some good did come from this entire mess: the public was so disgusted with Mackenzie's training cruise that the U.S. Naval Academy was founded in Annapolis.

Author Richard Snow's research is exhaustive, and I did learn a great deal; however, his writing style-- cut-and-dried, and stuffed to the gills with dusty facts-- was a chore to read and I often found my attention wandering. All in all, lots of excellent information on this chapter of U.S. naval history, but if you like your historians to craft a book that reads like the best fiction, you'd be better off going elsewhere.

(Review copy courtesy of the publisher and Net Galley)… (meer)

I've read a lot about Disney, and was worried this book might not contain anything new or different. I have to say, it is definitely the most exhaustive history of Disneyland that I've read. I found it to be very interesting, and a must-read for anybody else whose interested in all things Disney.

The one thing I could have lived without was the overly flowery language used especially in the first half of the book. Why use words that people can understand if the author can use words they can't? I was glad I read the book on my iPad so I could use the "look up" feature, but that got tiring after a while.… (meer)