• Title: America 1908
• Author: Jim Rasenberger
• Genre/Subject: American History
• Publisher: Scribner
• Publication Date: 2008
• Start date: 5/1/24
• Finish date: 5/7/24

Review:

Grabbed this off the shelf at random and what a winner it was. The author, Jim Rasenberger is someone I was not familiar with but I am for sure going to check out his other books. If they are anything like this I want to read them.

Okay, so this book was published in 2008 looking back exactly 100 years to what was going on, what was making news, what was causing panics, what the latest thing was, in 1908. And wow, was there a lot going on not just in America where the main focus is but all over the world. The author by his own admission selected 1908 for no particular reason over say 1909 or 1904, but the choice turned out to be a very good one. There was a lot going on in 1908 and with the extensive research that the author did it is all laid out before us, 100 years later or more in my case reading it in 2024.

Some of the good things going on in 1908 were: the dawn of aviation, the race to the north pole, the invention and production of the Ford Model T, the voyage of the great white fleet around the globe. And of course there were bad things, the 1908 Springfield race riots, crooked politicians, Jim Crow laws, lynchings, and terrorist bombings.

The research was exoensive and yet this was a page turner that I could not put down. The author is a masterful storyteller that doesn’t pull punches or gloss over the unpleasant parts of this history. He rarely drew parellels between then and now, but I sure as hell did. The more things change the more they stay the same right?

This was excellent and I highly recommend it.