Now that we are at the end of 2024, I have decided to do a year-in-review of the different books and articles that I have read this year. More information about all of the books I have read this year (and previous years) can be found in a list on this page on my website. The bulk of this year’s reading has been non-fiction.
Non-Fiction Books
Instead of covering every book in detail, I would like to share ten highlights. I found each book below to be particularly engaging and interesting to read.
To begin, thanks to its subject Alberto Manguel’s A History of Reading makes a logical starting point. The book does not follow chronological order, instead moving from topic to topic on reading.[1] The title is a bit deceiving, as it is less a traditional history of reading and more of an ode to its practice, filled with references from across literature. Manuel seems to draw much inspiration from Jorge Luis Borges, who he knew as a teenager.
On the subject of books, Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts: Twelve Journeys into the Medieval World by Christopher de Hamel was a wonderful read. De Hamel looks at medieval manuscripts through the lens of twelve notable examples, ranging from the sixth to sixteenth centuries. Part of what makes the book so interesting is the focus, not just on the manuscripts themselves, but on the libraries where they reside today. The incorporation of these travelogue elements makes it a very engaging read.
A co-recipient of this year’s Pulitzer Prize for biography, Ilyon Woo’s Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom is the best book on Georgia history I read this year. It is the story of Ellen and William Craft, an enslaved couple living in Macon in the 1840s. The Crafts were able to arrange their escape to freedom though disguise: Ellen dressed as a young white planter, while William pretended to be “his” enslaved servant. On reaching freedom, the Crafts became major speakers on the topic of abolition. Through this incredible story, Woo reflects on race, gender, and class in the Antebellum South.[2]
The post-Reconstruction South saw a region struggle to find its identity, and sometimes its lofty conception of itself clashed with reality. Of the books I read this year that stand out, two cover this era. The first is The Problem South: Region, Empire, and the New Liberal State, 1880-1930 by Natalie J. King.[3] In the book, King shows how after Reconstruction the South was seen as the nation’s “problem,” a backwater that could only be fixed with outside help. King examines why this reputation developed and why it has persisted, even to today. Most importantly, The Problem South connects the Gilded Age discussions on the South to those about empire across the globe.
The second book covering the Gilded Age and Progressive Era South is Highbrows, Hillbillies & Hellfire: Public Entertainment in Atlanta, 1880-1930 by Steve Goodson. It looks at how, through opera and theatre, prominent Atlantans worked to craft a dignified, cultured reputation for the city. At the same time, country music and jazz began to spread among the less well-to-do, which ended up becoming the city’s larger musical legacy. The story Goodson shares highlights well the clash between the South’s image of itself during that time and reality.
History and modern adventure come together in Mensun Bound’s The Ship Beneath the Ice: The Discovery of Shackleton’s Endurance. In 2022, the legendary Endurance was located by an international team, over a century after it was lost in the ice of Antarctica’s Weddell Sea.[4] This book by the expedition’s leader records the ups and downs of the hunt for the ship’s wreck, ending in success. Along the way, the history of Ernest Shackleton’s historic Antarctic journey is shared.
For the past few semesters, I have matched my reading to my history class. During the Fall semester this year, I took a course covering American history from 1876 to the present. There are five books from this area, mostly covering the 1890s to 1950s, that I would like to focus on.
The first two belong together, as one is very much a spiritual sequel to the other. They are The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America and Rightful Heritage: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Land of America, both by Douglas Brinkley. These books look at the conservation beliefs of the Roosevelt’s in rich detail. During their presidencies, both men made nature a key part of their polices. Theodore worked to create the Antiquities Act, protect wildlife, and the national parks, while Franklin was able to incorporate the great outdoors into his New Deal.[5] While each of these books is quite hefty, I highly recommend them for their insights into the Roosevelts.
Those of you who know me well are aware of my affinity for Theodore Roosevelt. It is also possible you know that I strongly dislike Woodrow Wilson. American Midnight: The Great War, A Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis by Adam Hochschild has reinforced that opinion. Hochschild believes that World War I until 1921 was the darkest moment for American democracy, and he has the receipts to prove it. Civil liberties were squashed, lynchings and riots became widespread, and through it all Wilson proved an ineffectual domestic leader. While biographies I have read of Wilson have covered some of this chaos, or at least alluded to it, I have not read a book before with such eye-opening detail on Wilson’s second term.
Concurrent with World War I, Albert Lasker was working to change the advertising industry. A native of Texas, Lasker worked in Chicago to bring the principles of psychology to his profession. The story of this forgotten figure is shared in The Man Who Sold America: The Amazing (but True!) Story of Albert D. Lasker and the Creation of the Advertising Century by Jeffrey L. Cruikshank and Arthur W. Schultz. Lasker helped to revolutionize how everything was presented to the public, from household commodities to foods to politicians. It was fascinating to see just how much of modern advertising dates back to Lasker. For anyone interested in media history, I strongly recommend this book.
The last book covered here is about a surprising figure. On starting to read Neal Gabler’s Winchell: Gossip, Power and the Culture of Celebrity, I knew only barebones facts about the gossip columnist. My, frankly, ignorance helped to make this an interesting read. Walter Winchell worked in vaudeville, radio, television, movies, and even politics. His life offers a small window into the changes in America from the end of vaudeville to the dawn of television. What makes Gabler’s book stand out is how real Winchell seems to become. Winchell comes across as a deeply flawed but ultimately sad, sympathetic character. It is biographies like this, where the subject seems to leap off the page, that I find the best.
Journal Articles
I have read far fewer journal articles this year than books, so I decided to select five. Most of my reading of articles has been focused on Southern history, and you will see that reflected very clearly below.
Emily McClatchey’s article in Georgia Historical Quarterly (Vol. CVIII, No. 1) “The House That Harry Stephens Built: How an Emancipated Family’s Home Was Hijacked for the Lost Cause” was, for me, the best article in that journal published this year. It tells the story of Harry Stephens, the enslaved servant of Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens, and how his memory was erased in the 1920s by the United Daughters of the Confederacy. His house next to Alexander Stephens’ Liberty Hall was practically stolen by the UDC and demolished, so that a shrine to the Confederacy could be erected. Stories like this show how history can be used and abused as a tool for politics and creating hagiographic narratives. It is a wonder more has research has not been done into Harry Stephens and his family before.
Two articles from The Journal of Southern History I have chosen highlight infrastructure in the South: One is “Good Roads and Chain Gangs in the Progressive South: ‘The Negro Convict Is a Slave’” by Alex Lichtenstein (Vol. 59, No. 1), while the other is “Hitching the New South to ‘White Coal’: Water and Power, 1890-1930” by Christopher J. Manganiello (Vol. LXXVIII, No. 2). The former shows how the end of convict leasing, while theoretically a positive change, led to chain gangs, essentially slavery by another name. The article highlights how Progressive reformers thought they were improving the system but were just creating a new name for the existing order. The later article focuses on water in the New South, and how the region’s abundant rivers and streams were seen as a major resource. This article connects the waterways of the South to the cotton mills and early hydroelectric facilities which predated the New Deal’s TVA.
In preparation for my trip to the University of Virginia for Rare Book School, I read the article “Historical Shelf Marks as Sources for Institutional Provenance Research: Reconstructing the University of Virginia’s First Library” by Samuel V. Lemley, Neal D. Curtis, and Madeline Zehnder (Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, Vol, 118, No. 1). After the Rotunda library was destroyed in an 1890s fire, the interior was not rebuilt the way Jefferson designed it. To this day, some details remain a mystery, like how big Jefferson’s bookshelves were. By examining the way books were originally catalogued, three researchers were able to roughly determine the layout of the shelves and identify how many volumes survived the fire. This is a fantastic piece of historic detective work.
The final article connects well with my own collecting interests. I have about fifteen sample canvassing books used by traveling salesman from the 1880s to 1930s. These door-to-door canvassers were known as nuisances, leading Mark Twain to start work on a Hamlet satire with the addition of a book salesman, Basil Stockmar. “Book Canvassers, Mark Twain, and Hamlet’s Ghost” by Keith Arbour (The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, Vol. 93, No. 1) examines Twain’s surviving notes and shows how the jokes written for Stockmar connect to real traveling salesmen.
Other Writing
My reading has been heavily non-fiction history this year, with a few notable exceptions. Most prominent is Jorge Luis Borges. This fall, I found on clearance a $5 compilation of several of his collections. I knew a bit about Borges thanks to Albert Manguel’s A History of Reading, and finding this collection so cheap felt like a sign. They are all fantastic, with many of his best stories dealing with how we understand books. Two stories in particular, “The Library of Babel” and “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote,” are great examples. Additionally, “Ragnarok” and “On Exactitude in Science” are wonderful examinations of dreams and the quest of knowledge, respectively. What makes Borges special is how his work feels like it deserves reading and rereading to fully appreciate. His short stories are truly worthy of deep study.
[1] For a more strictly chronological look, see A History of Reading in the West edited by Guglielmo Cavallo and Robert Chartier.
[2] The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family by Annette Gordon-Reed covers similar themes, though its focus is slavery in the era of Thomas Jefferson.
[3] Thank you to Dr. David Bennett for recommending this book.
[4] The standard account of Ernest Shackleton’s expedition is Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing.
[5] For more information on books on Theodore Roosevelt and conservation, see https://ajbramlett.com/2024/06/13/theodore-roosevelt-and-nature/
Interested in subscribing to my blog? Type your email below to be notified about new posts.
Andrew J. Bramlett 
One thought on “Reading in 2024”
Comments are closed.