So, March wasn't a great reading month. I got a little busy and fell behind the pace I need to maintain to get 48 books read. This book should have been finished a week ago, but what are you going to do. Things tend to slow down work wise during the summer, so hopefully I can make up some time in the middle months. Until then, here's book #11.
Brave Companions is a collection of essays written by David McCullough made up mostly of short character studies of little known yet important historical figures. McCullough is easily the most famous chronicler of American history and he didn't come by that reputation on accident. His work has that rare ability to be both informative and entertaining. McCullough has a way of not just reciting facts but bring the periods he writes about to life. Unfortunately, this collection doesn't really live up to the standard McCullough has set in his longer pieces. I'm not sure if it's just the limited space he had to write about his subjects, but most of these pieces weren't as interesting as McCullough's other stories. I was never really pulled into the worlds the subjects inhabited.
The best essays came in the last section of the book titled "On We Go." "Washington on the Potomac" is a wonderful ode to our nation's capital and all the many wonders within that any American should read. "Extraordinary Times" is a great essay on how much history has advanced since 1936. The crazy thing is it was written in 1986 and the theme is how fast things have started to happen, a theme that is almost out of date because of things accelerating even more since then. I would love to see him write a sequel essay on everything that has happened since 1986. "Recommended Itinerary" is an address to a college graduating class imploring them to travel abroad to get a better appreciation and understanding of American and its history. "Simon Willard's Clock" is about Congress and how neglected it is in many of our history books.
The one essay not in that final section that I enjoyed was "Steam Road to El Dorado." It talks about the building of the first transcontinental railroad in the Americas, the Panama Railway, and the role it played in the eventual Panama Canal. The completion of the railroad, when taken in context of the era it was built, is easily on of the greatest industrial accomplishments ever and is an incredibly fascinating story.
It's not the greatest collection of historical essays, but it's still McCullough and thus still informative. I may not have been pulled into every story, but there are enough gems here to make the book worth reading.
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