One Summer

  The first book of 2015 has been read!  Bill Bryson's One Summer:  America, 1927 was the selection, and it was a strong start to the year.  I didn't have many doubts about this one, since I enjoy reading all of Bill Bryon's works, but it just seemed like such a random choice.  The only thing I previously knew about 1927 was that the Yankees were by far the best team in baseball, possibly the greatest team ever assembled.
  But the summer was just packed.  It started with Charles Lindbergh crossing the ocean on his own, then starting a tour around Europe and the United States that saw crowds pack his every destination, often mobbing his plane as soon as it landed, sometimes crowding the runway as he was trying to land.  (Note to self:  Do not stand on runway while plane is trying to land on it.)  Lindbergh didn't really seem to enjoy the publicity, but he was probably the most internationally famous person alive at that point.
  This was also the summer in which Sacco & Vanzetti, two Italian anarchists who may or may not have participated in a robbery, were executed.  The Jazz Singer was filmed, work started on Mt. Rushmore, and the Federal Reserve began to create policies that would lead to the Great Depression.
  There were many other things that went on over the summer, and it was all fascinating.  It must have been so interesting to read the newspapers day after day, with so much going on in the world (not all of it good, but most of it supremely interesting).  There was a recent interview with Laura Hillenbrand, the author of Unbroken and Seabiscuit, in which she discussed doing most of her research by buying old newspapers on eBay and looking through them.  (She suffers from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome as well as vertigo, so she can't look at microfiche.  She mentioned that the inspiration for many of her stories comes from newspapers articles she stumbles upon while reading something else.  She discovers forgotten gems, amazing stories that have been covered up by the dust that accumulates over the ages, and these old stories are often just as compelling today, drawing us in as we anxiously await the outcome.
  I'd highly recommend One Summer, just because each page seems to hold some remarkable truth that I had never learned or long since forgotten, and it's always fun to learn of another age.