Nonfiction Challenge - Chapter 2

Hello fellow Nonfiction readers!

Welcome to Chapter 2 of the 75 Books Nonfiction Challenge for 2024. As a reminder of what the focus for this group is, and to make it easy for all of to find the parameter information, I a reposting the guidelines for the group.

I am the moderator for this group. I have been a member of this group for many years ( I didn't want to go back to check exactly how many it was) and am happy to try my hand at taking over the moderation of this group. I have been moderating another group for several years and am a newly retired academic librarian and have taken on moderating this group.

Late last year the group from 2023 decided on a few changes for 2024. We are not going to have a separate thread for each month. We will run a continuous string until we reach the 250 posts line and then I will establish a new thread. This will enable us to have better linkage when we start new threads and it will take less time to administer the group.

This group was established to encourage reading and discussion of works of nonfiction using a guided topics format. That means that you get to read what you want, but the moderator sets the parameters for the topics. At the end of the year, the group decides what topics they will pursue for the coming year. The moderator then assigns months in which these topics will be read and discussed. The list for 2024 will be in the next post on this thread.

The 2023 group decided on the monthly topics and that list will be posted in the next post along with the explanations of what the boundaries are for the topic. Each person generally will post the title and other information about the book they have chosen for the month at the beginning (or whenever they make the decision about what to read) and when they have finished the book write about their opinions, recommendations, and other comments about the book. Thoughts of this nature generally elicit comments so sometimes there will be discussion about the book. In fact, that is what this thread is, a forum for discussing nonfiction titles. You can attack the title you have chosen to read for whatever reason you as a reader have, but do not attack the people in this discussion group. We want to be critical readers, not critical people.

There is no publication limit for the books chosen by readers. If you want to read a classic published in 1820, go ahead.

If you don't finish a book in the month that topic was to be read, don't feel bad, just let us know when you finished the book, and your thoughts about it, then move on to the next topic.

I will try to make a reminder announcement about the next topic on the last day of the month for the next month. Please don't jump the gun and announce what you are going to be reading for the month until the first day of the month. It will get confusing if you post your selection before the moderator has made the beginning post for the month.

Along with the posting of the topic for the month I will sketch out the parameters for that topic. If there are questions about those parameters bring them forward in the discussion posts so that I can clarify the parameters for you. If you can make a good case for choosing that title, even if it may not appear there is a connection between the book and the topic, bring your good reasons to the discussion screen and make your argument. We are a wide open group so generally most titles are acceptable. Just remember, this is a Nonfiction group, so keep the works read to nonfiction.

The nonfiction topics for 2024!

January - Prize Winners - prize winning books that won literary prizes that are off the beaten tracks. Not the National Book Award, Pulitzer, or other prizes of that ilk. There will be more details in subsequent posts. - DONE

February - Women's Work - what women do or did. This could be books about WWII pilots, civil war nurses, the women who sued Newsweek over pay and promotion issues, or the history of home economics. - DONE

March - Forensic Sciences - forensics is a wide open topic so read about criminal forensics, genetic forensics, even astronomical forensics. - DONE

April - Globalization - all things global, exports, international banking, terrorism, pandemics.

May - Wild Wild West - books about the western U.S. Historical or modern. Indian wars, water wars, conservation, settlement, etc.

June - Middle Europe - anything about Europe from the Elbe to the Ural's, from Finland to Turkey. History, language, travel, etc.

July - Insect World - insects are important. Butterflies, honey bees, mosquitoes, ants, roaches, etc.

August - Being Jewish - this topic is wide open as long as it is nonfiction. Zionism, modern Israel, history, religion, Kabbalah, Judaism.

September - Essays - any book of essays. Scientific, religious, political, racial, social commentary, etc.

October - Music, more music - lots of books being published now about composers, the music industry, history of music, and even memoirs and biography's from the Boss to Bach.

November - Too Small to See - books about Bacteria, Viruses, Atoms, Dust. maybe even microaggressions?

December - This is a dual topic month. As You Like It - whatever you want to catch up on that is nonfiction
OR
Political Biography - ancient or modern, any person who had a role in politics of their day. Even people who might not have had a job or title, like historian Theodore White, or women like Madam Chiang Kai-Shek or Nancy Regan. People who had influence in the politics of their day, but not a job title that would indicate the scope of their power.

Details about these topics will come monthly.

It is now the end of the month of March and time for us to start reading in a new area. The topic for April is Globalization.

Wikipedia defines Globalization or Globalisation (Commonwealth spelling), as the process of interaction and integration among people, companies, and governments worldwide. The term came into popular use in the 1990's and has been part of the lexicon since then. Globalization is primarily an economic process of interaction and integration that is associated with social and cultural aspects. However, disputes and international diplomacy are also part of the globalization process. This increase in global interactions has caused a growth in international trade and the exchange of ideas, beliefs, and culture, as well as capital and people.

Economically, globalization involves goods, services, data, technology, and the economic resources of capital. Advances in transportation, like the steam locomotive, steamship, jet engine, and container ships, and developments in telecommunication infrastructure such as the telegraph, the Internet, mobile phones, and smartphones, have been major factors in globalization and have generated further interdependence of economic and cultural activities around the globe.

In 2000, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) identified four basic aspects of globalization: trade and transactions, capital and investment movements, migration and movement of people, and the dissemination of knowledge. Globalizing processes affect and are affected by business and work organization, economics, sociocultural resources, and the natural environment. Academic literature commonly divides globalization into three major areas: economic globalization, cultural globalization, and political globalization.

For the purposes of this reading group we are going to be very liberal in our interpretation of the term globalization. This will result in a wide range of topics. You could choose to read historically and read a book on the global spread of Communism in the 20th Century, or you might choose to read that new history of the East India Company. The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire by William Dalrymple, or Outside the Box: How Globalization Change From Moving Stuff to Spreading Ideas.

Supply chains are now world wide and so there is also this most timely book Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger by Marc Levinson. Pictures of a certain container ship are now plastered all over the news.

You could also choose to read something about world economics. Michael Lewis' book Boomerang, or the Big Short for example, or a book about the rise and fall of Lehman Brothers. Open: The Progressive Case, for Free Trade, Immigration, and Global Capital would be another book in this area. Or Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World

Global immigration might be another topic. A book like Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them would be an example. We're Here Because You Were There: Immigration and the End of Empire is an example of a book that crosses from global immigration to global governance.

Books on Climate Change will also work because that is a global problem that is creating global problems.

A book on pandemics is also part of the picture. Spillover would be a book that works in category as does Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond. Be careful with this one as a book about the Influenza pandemic in the U.S. is not global in scope.

Food consumption and production is another global topic that might be of interest. This is certainly a current topic because of the year long protests going on in the EU regarding food production and cheap imports. Guns, Germs, and Steel is a title that would work in this area. Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal is another.

Culture and cultural destruction is another area of globalization. How Soccer Explains the World works here as does Fugitive Denim: A Moving Story of People and Pants in the Borderless World of Global Trade or Red Carpet: Hollywood, China, and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy

Lastly, there is the globalization of terror and other military and political elements. World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability or Tenth Parallel. Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security and Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 would also be titles of interest in this subcategory.

As you can see there is a wide variety of books on this topic that are available for the nonfiction reader. Take a cruise through your TBR list and see what might be hidden in there on any part of the theme globalization. This might be the perfect opportunity to lighten the load on your book shelves. Don't forget to post what you will be reading for this month here on this thread.

I'm going to pull Vermeer's Hat from my TBR stash for the globalization theme.

>4 cbl_tn:
I thought about doing that book! But haven't decided yet which one I will pull from my TBR list. I think this one sounds very interesting. And what beautiful paintings to learn from. Lucky you to be reading about it.

Here is the blurb from Amazon about that book on the beginnings of world wide trade. Vermeer's Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World by Timothy Brook

A painting shows a military officer in a Dutch sitting room, talking to a laughing girl. I n another, a woman at a window weighs pieces of silver. Vermeer’s images captivate us with their beauty and mystery: What stories lie behind these stunningly rendered moments? As Timothy Brook shows us, these pictures, which seem so intimate, actually offer a remarkable view of a rapidly expanding world. Moving outward from Vermeer’s studio, Brook traces the web of trade that was spreading across the globe. Vermeer’s Hat shows how the urge to acquire foreign goods was refashioning the world more powerfully than we have yet understood.

I have started reading Lexus and the Olive Tree by Thomas L. Friedman. This is sort of the granddaddy of the books about the modern approach to globalization. I have had it on my shelves since it was new. I put it into my collection when I joined LT back in 2008 and it was published in 1999. It might seem dated by now, but I am 50 pages into it and so far it isn't too badly dated. I did have to laugh about the discussion about the invention of the mobile phone and its projected use. I can also say that this is a very dense book and I would like to read two books this month on this topic but given the length of this book that may not happen.

>3 benitastrnad: I wasn't sure that I would have anything on my shelves for the Globalization topic. But I do have Guns, Germs, and Steel. However, since this topic includes Climate Change, I think I'm going to read Forecast : the consequences of climate change, from the Amazon to the Arctic, from Darfur to Napa Valley which has been sitting in a stack unread for I don't know how long. That looks like a perfect fit for this topic.

>7 atozgrl:
That looks like a perfect fit for this topic, as the consequences of climate change have all sorts of economic impacts. It looks like you are picking up a book you have had around for some time as well. I am glad that I am not the only person with books on the shelf - unread - for more than ten years. That is exactly what this challenge is designed to do - motivate us as readers to look at our shelves and pull some things off that we haven't thought about for a long time.

I will be reading Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed for April's globalization topic. According to the cover blurb, "it was the decisions taken bu a small number of central bankers that were the primary cause of the economic meltdown (the Great Depression), the effects of which set the stage for World War II and reverbated for decades." Seems pretty global to me. . .

I'll start with my write up for the book I read for Forensics:

Forensic science was barely in its infancy in the early 1840s when the main case outlined in The Inheritor’s Powder: A Tale of Arsenic, Murder, and the New Forensic Science was brought to trial. The death of George Bodle appeared to have been as the result of poisoning but was it and, if so, who was the poisoner? It was a time when even the experts disagreed on how to test for arsenic. But, scientists were working to develop and perhaps even agree on definitive tests.

Now I need to scan my shelves for something to fit the globalization theme.

>10 Familyhistorian: That one sounds interesting, Meg. I will have to see if I can track down a copy.

>11 alcottacre: It's like a true crime book, with social history thrown in. Good luck on your book hunt, Stasia.

I think I found one for April - A Rabble of Dead Money: The Great Crash and the Global Depression 1929-1939.

So many good suggestions! I will be taking some BB's for sure. I will begin by reading Globalization: A Very Short Introduction by Manfred Steger. I see this covers loss of economics (job losses) , politics (loss of state sovereignty) , college, sociology, etc. This is only 184 pages. Either through this book or all of your posts, I will choose another book to read that is more in detail. I also have Wasted Lives: Modernity and Its Outcasts on my shelf and I will have to check and see if this would cover this topic appropriately. >4 cbl_tn: is calling my name!

>4 cbl_tn: I am going to try and get that one from the library, Carrie. If I can, I will join you in that read. The book has been in the BlackHole for far too long. The Lords of Finance may just have to wait, lol.

>15 alcottacre: Wonderful! I would enjoy the company!

>16 cbl_tn: Since I just put it on hold today, it will likely be next week before I have my hands on the book. I will keep you posted!

I’ll be reading the Dalrymple book: The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire. I’ve had it on my e-Shelbie’s for quite a while, and am glad of this push to get going on it. It’s a subject I’ve been interested in for years, and I’ve read lots of fiction and some nonfiction about it. I’m looking forward to it!

>18 Matke:
That will be an interesting read for this category. The East India Company was the one of the first global companies and, I think that it might have been the largest company ever in terms of employees. And maybe profits. Have fun with this one and let us know what you think.

I found A Rabble of Dead Money: The Great Crash and the Global Depression 1929-1939 among the stacks.

The closest book on my shelves which I think relates to this topic is Noam Chomsky's Who Rules the World?. This will be my first Chomsky, so we'll see how I go...

I wonder if africa is not a country would fit here? the books talks about the colonization of the country and the effect it had on life, trade, identity. How the countries involved took a map of Africa and divided up the land any way they wanted.And while I knew a little bit about this, the amount of stolen treasures taken by all of the colonizers shocked me.I know some museums are returning some art, but all need to return it now. I very interesting book

I should probably read it; he wrote many of the texts we used in college about language development that were quite good. I havent read his other work tho

>22 cindydavid4:
This title would work because colonization was part of what drove globalization. As a reader you might have to make those connections clear to us when you report on what you thought of the book, but go ahead with it.

>16 cbl_tn: Carrie, I was able to pick Vermeer's Hat up at the library today, so I will be reading that one along with you.

>24 benitastrnad: actually ive already read it, just put it up for a suggestion, still might reread it .

>25 alcottacre: Yay!

I just finished A Life on Our Planet by Sir David Attenborough. It's not too long and it is easy to read in terms of the prose and how it is organized.
However, it was also a difficult read because the subject matter is dire and saddening.
I appreciated that he presented numerous ideas for things that people can do to mitigate the future doom that scientists currently foresee. It's hopeful for the future, but it really is his attempt to make a call to action before he dies.
More people should read this book.

I completed Globalization A Very Short Introduction by Manfred Steger. This was a short and unnecessarily belabored book about globalization. The author did provide many real time/life examples of globalization. It is the author’s thesis that globalization has three facets: form, quality, and dimension. I have found several author opinions (and they are opinions!) that I would argue: “Globalism consists of powerful narratives that sell an overarching neoliberal worldview.” Then the author goes on to argue that globalism is sparking a worldwide resurgence of national populism. Populism and neoliberalism are not compatible—it can’t be both—imho. I’m not even sure this was worth the read, but I have been “introduced!” I listened to this on audio. 4 hours 4 mins 3 stars 75's NF Read April-Globalization

I am a little over 100 pages into Lexus and the Olive Tree by Thomas Friedman and am finding it to be a dense read. This book was very popular when it was published in 1999 and sold millions of copies. It is now 25 years on and I am wondering why this book was so popular and if all those people really read it. Given my life's experience and the fact that I am a good reader I have significant doubts about this book and all those readers. Did they really read it? Or just say they did? I find I have to read this book with full concentration. It is not easy.

I finished reading Vermeer's Hat tonight and found it to be an interesting book. I am finally glad to have gotten around to it! Thanks for the suggestion of it, Carrie.

I seldom quit on books, especially nonfiction books, but I am about to give up on Lexus and the Olive Tree. I have read 140 pages and I know two things reading this book. Friedman is an unabashed cheerleader for globalization and that this book is sadly out-of-date. I should have known there was a reason why it was on my shelves for almost 25 years. It never appealed to me and it still doesn't. The book was written in 1998 and that age shows. The great disasters of 2007-08 haven't happened yet, and so all the evils of globalization as we know it today haven't happened. Therefore, it is easy to be positive about the idea and how it will lift all boats and bring millions out of poverty. Yada, yada, yada. I think I will quit on this book and start reading World on Fire instead. It was written in 2003 and appears to be a sort of answer to Lexus and the Olive Tree. It may also prove to be dated, but we'll see.

At any rate, I wouldn't recommend anybody waste their time reading Lexus and the Olive Tree unless they are undertaking a historical study on attitudes and ideas about globalization. That sounds like a job for an academic, not somebody who just wants to learn about globalization in 2024.

>31 alcottacre: I finished Vermeer's Hat this afternoon and it was enlightening. I was surprised that so much of it was about China, but it makes sense since China is the author's area of specialization. My favorite part of the book is actually the introduction where the author tells the story of his 20-year-old self's bike wreck in the Netherlands and the kindness of the woman who witnessed his accident and invited him into her home.

I finished Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World a few days ago. Enjoyed the book a lot. Liked the author's sense of humor and his ability to represent a lot of information that could be deemed as boring in an easy to follow and engaging format.

I've finished Noam Chomsky's Who Rules the World? for April's globalisation topic. It's about American dominance and hypocrisy in geopolitics around the world, and frankly is thoroughly depressing. I do have some faith in the credibility of his argument in that he was equally scathing of both major political parties and their policies, but also got really annoyed at his using Russia/USSR (and Russian/Soviet) interchangeably when someone of his stature really should know better.

>33 cbl_tn: I found the part about China interesting too, Carrie, especially of how Silver impacted so much of its economy. It was very interesting reading this book in conjunction with The Thirty Years War: Europe's Tragedy since they are essentially covering the same time frames.

I liked the introduction as well. Thank you again for mentioning this one so that I would finally get it read!

>36 alcottacre:
Silver also caused a problem in China. Too much coming in to China and a whole lot of trade goods going out to Britain. The Chinese weren't buying from the British because the British didn't have much that they wanted. So Britain started shipping them opium. It made the British East India Company angry that China wouldn't buy from them and wasn't a big purchaser of British goods. It eventually led to war in the 1850's.

>37 benitastrnad: Yes, this is something that Timothy Brook discusses in Vermeer's Hat.

>35 Jackie_K: That usage ("Russia" for "USSR") was pretty much ubiquitous in my corner of the English-speaking world until the end of the Cold War. When I was of an age to learn basic world geography, I pretty much learned them a two names for the same place, kind of like "Great Britain" and "the United Kingdom". (I'm sure someone will pop up now with a correction to my understanding of British geography - in my defence, at least I know that England is not another synonymn for the first two ;-()

>39 ArlieS: Yes, it was here too, but for a book published nearly 30 years after the end of the Cold War, by someone proclaimed (by a review on the front cover of the book!) as "the world's greatest public intellectual", it made me cross! (in my defence, I used to teach Central/East European studies, including their history up to 1990, and I don't feel I should be making the same complaint about Noam Chomsky as I did about 1st year undergrads!)

I am still reading on my selection for this month. I settled on World On Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability by Amy Chua. I am 120 pages into this book and finding it much more relevant than my first selection. I clearly spent too much time on Freidman's book when I should have been reading this one. I will let you know my final verdict on this book when I finish it, but for now, this is a book that is still setting up its main thesis.

The author says in the Introduction that "This book is about a phenomenon - pervasive outside the West yet rarely acknowledged, indeed often viewed as taboo - that turns free market democracy into an engine of ethnic conflagration. The phenomenon ... is that of Market-dominant minorities: ethnic minorities wo, for widely varying reasons, tend under market conditions to dominate economically, often to a startling extent, the indigenous majorities around them.

So far it has held my attention and this is a book I will finish. Probably not tomorrow, but I will finish this one.

Yesterday I finished reading Forecast : the consequences of climate change, from the Amazon to the Arctic, from Darfur to Napa Valley by Stephan Faris. The book was published in 2009, but even though it's 15 years old now, the information it contains is still pertinent. Although Faris, a journalist, says

In a sense, this book is an exercise in optimism. Just what global warming will mean for the world will depend on just how serious we become in fighting it.

it was still hard to read. The world hasn't gotten serious enough in the past 15 years to make a big enough dent in the problem. Faris was trying to wake people up to all the ways that climate change was already impacting the world. He started with the horrific war in Darfur, which had its roots in a drought all the way back in 1985. He said that war was usually portrayed as a racial one; I saw reports that focused on religion. However, he says there was not much physical difference, and both groups were predominantly Muslim. The main difference was in the lifestyle, with the Arabs being primarily nomadic herders and the black Africans being predominantly farmers. They had lived in peaceful coexistence for a very long time, but drought caused the Sahara to spread south. The farmers started to fence off their land, leading to conflict with the herders, and eventually a terrible war. Analysts initially blamed the farmers for the environmental degradation, but climatologists later showed that rising temperatures caused warming in the tropical and southern oceans, disrupting the African monsoons and leading to the drought back in the '80's. Faris uses this to show how climate change can lead to political chaos.

Faris goes on to provide examples of how climate change is affecting the world. This includes the impact of rising seas and hurricanes on the Florida Keys, leading to enormous losses for insurance companies and resulting drastic increases in the cost of insurance and some insurance companies pulling out of certain areas. Environmental change and disasters is also causing people in poor areas to flee to other countries, and he talks about how people fleeing Africa for Europe is impacting politics in Europe, with a focus on Italy and the UK. He also talks about the Amazon and how deforestation there had led to an increase in malaria (because one of the varieties of mosquito that spreads malaria best breeds much better in deforested areas). Because wine grapes are so sensitive to climate, where these can be grown is changing. We have all seen reports about Churchill in Canada, where the polar bears are struggling to find enough food to survive, due to the drastic decrease in polar ice. However, Faris also points out that it could be beneficial to the port at Churchill, because it is a deep water port. If the reduction in ice makes it possible for large ships to come into the port during more months of the year, they would not have to take the long route through locks to the ports on the Great Lakes. And it's also a shorter trip to ship to Europe from Churchill. But the reduction in polar ice is also leading to territorial disputes between Canada and Denmark and the US and Russia. Faris ends up discussing a potential flashpoint between India and Pakistan, due to disappearing glaciers in the Himalayas, the source of water for much of the area, but especially Pakistan. And on the other side, Bangladesh will be heavily impacted by rising seas, pushing refugees into eastern India.

Overall, the scenarios being presented were rather overwhelming. I know the intent of the book was to push people and governments into doing more, but at this point in time it does not seem like enough has been done to prevent a lot of the problems he pointed out from becoming worse and leading to major crises. The major impacts will happen in the parts of the world that are already the warmest, and also the poorest, with the least ability to adapt. So pressures of climate refugees is only going to get worse, and we already see how the refugee problem is impacting our politics. This did not help me to feel more positive about the future.

It is May Day and for most of the world this is International Workers' Day. For most of us here in the US it is a day that children take baskets of spring flowers to friends and neighbors. At least they did when I was a kid. For us, the nonfiction readers, it is time to change topics.

The Wild, Wild West is the topic for May. The Wild Wild West is anything about the American West, modern or not. You can read anything about the Indigenous people of the American West, histories of the settlement of the West, essays about the modern West. Books about the land, climate, and natural world of the West are all acceptable. You can read biographies about important people of the American West from either the indigenous or classic scholarly point-of-view. There is a recent biography of Wild Bill Hickock by Tom Clavin, who is a well known biographer of western heroes. Now is the time to pull of those books about the Indian Wars, the Land Wars, or the Water Wars past, present or future. You can read classic works such as Great Plains by Ian Frazier, or Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner. Timothy Egan has two books about the American West as well as Worst Hard Time that make for good reading about the American West. Books about the land such as those written by John McPhee would be a good choice for those interested in the Natural World. Down From the Mountain by Bryce Andrews would be a good book about the natural world in the American West that also illustrates how the borders between the natural world and the suburban modern world are getting fuzzy and causing lots of misunderstandings with wildlife often taking the brunt of that clash. Books on climate change such as the resent books on the major fires in the American West would also work.

There is lots to choose from so happy reading.

I have selected Blood and Thunder: The Epic Story of Kit Carson and the Conquest of the American West by Hampton Sides for my May book. I have had this book on my TBR shelf in the bedroom for years, so it is time to get it off and get it read. I hope to start it this weekend.

I had a hard time deciding on a book for this topic because I have so many books on my shelves that would work for this topic. Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher was another title in contention due to the amount of time it has been on my shelves. However, Blood and Thunder won out.

>44 benitastrnad: I will also be reading Blood and Thunder this month, Benita. I bought it last year after a trip to the Bosque Redondo in New Mexico. It was one of the books that the museum recommended.

I enjoyed Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher, so I hope you do as well if and when you get to it.

I don't have any unread books that fit these categories, and as usual I'm overcommitted to various challenges, so am going to sit this month out. I did though want to recommend an academic book that I read last year, courtesy of LT Early Reviewers, if anyone's looking for a suggestion: Bears Ears: Landscape of Refuge and Resistance by Andrew Gulliford, about the contested history and culture of the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah. It was very interesting.

Ah, John McPhee. I have quite a few books of his on the shelf that cry out to be read, so I'll take a look at the titles and see if one fits.

I'll be reading Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey. This one has been on my shelves for a long time, and I'm glad for this nudge to finally get it read!

>48 cbl_tn: That one sounds really good! I will be curious to see what you think of it when you are done.

I'm going to be reading The Children's Blizzard by David Laskin.

I can recommend:
Down the Santa Fe Trail and into Mexico: The Diary of Susan Shelby Magoffin, 1846-1847 (Yale Western Americana Paperbound) by Susan Shelby Mcgoffin

Narrative of the Texan Santa Fé Expedition: Comprising a Tour Through Texas, and Capture of the Texans by George Wilkins Kendall

West from Home: Letters of Laura Ingalls Wilder, San Francisco, 1915 by Laura Ingalls Wilder

The Frontier in American History by Frederick Jackson Turner To me, not really a history, but more a historiography. A series of 12 essays

Gila: The Life and Death of an American River by Gregory McNamee

The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West by David McCullough This is about the Northwest Territory--if that is enough west for you!

Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynne Definitely a 5-star read! I have yet to see the movie--not sure it's even out yet.

Blue Jacket: War Chief of the Shawnees by Alan Eckert Again, most of the action takes place in the Northwest Territory.

There are some good selections mentioned here. Just remember - this is the Nonfiction Challenge. Nonfiction is generally easy to distinguish from Fiction using the following methods.

If you are accustomed to using the Dewey Decimal System, which is most common in public libraries, check the call number to find out if it is fiction or nonfiction. Nonfiction books have a call number that starts with a number. (The call number is also the spine label on the book.) If the call number on the spine starts with a letter such as F it is a work of fiction and therefore not part of this challenge. Spine labels that start with the letter B are biographies and are part of this challenge.

Larger public libraries and academic libraries tend to use the Library of Congress Classification System. (AKA LC) In this system the call number/spine label will begin with a letter or a series of letters. When I taught undergraduates how to use the library I gave them this simple rule to follow. If the call number/spine label begins with P it is fiction. All other letter combinations are nonfiction. (This is not always a hard and fast rule as biographies about authors and works of criticism about authors will often be found in the P's.) If the call number on a book starts with the letter combinations of PS through PZ they are fiction. Books of poetry or short stories have a call number that can be anywhere between PN - PZ. Poetry and short stories are works of fiction.

Now that many people are reading books digitally, looking at the spine label is oftentimes not available because digital books don't need to be assigned to a specific place on a shelf. Even so, library cataloging rules provide some easy ways to distinguish fiction and nonfiction. To find the call number in a digital book look on the reverse side of the title page. (the page right after the title page) For books published between 2005 and 2020 the LC Classification number and the Dewey number will be printed on that page. Books published before that date might not have this information. Books published after 2020 might or might not have the call number printed there. Check the call number/spine label information printed there. If it starts with the letter P it is probably fiction - unless you are reading a biography of Zane Grey such as Zane Grey: His Life, His Adventures, His Women by Thomas H. Pauly published in 2010 or Zane Grey's Riders of the Purple Sage: The Real Story Behind the Wild West's Greatest Tale by Stephen J. May published in 2021. Both of those books would have a P call number/spine label and yet would qualify for this challenge.

If you have access to WorldCat you can find both the LC Classification and the Dewey numbers in the entry for that title. WorldCat may be hard to find because it is a digital database but it can be very useful if your library has access to it.

not a big fan of this topic, since I live in a state associated with the wild west in upteem movies tvs and cigarette ads, so Ive really not read much about it. However, if you can find it, consider death by cactus when nature struck back about a couple of guys with shot guns using the protected by law catci as target practice. the book is funny and enlightning. Unfortunatley I can no longer find it. but it really happened

I've pulled out the only nonfiction writing I have about the West: The Silverado Squatters by Robert Louis Stevenson (1883). In 1880 Stevenson married American Fanny Vandegrift in California and for their honeymoon they traveled throughout the Napa Valley, eventually living as "squatters" for several months in an old mining camp. This is a short memoir (about 115 pages) of their travels. The area they stayed in is now called The Robert Louis Stevenson State Park. I enjoy Stevenson's writing style, so it should be interesting reading.

>45 alcottacre: oh I loved shadow catcher! was hooked by this man following a goal like this, preserving cultures that at the time was fast disappearing. I know he is criticized for staged photos, but I find them facsinating look at the Native American culture then