Biographies are good fat-summer-reads. They last several afternoons under the umbrella or inside someplace, out of the fog. My late next-door neighbor Harry preferred biographies, one per summer, preferably about Jacqueline Onassis or Katherine Hepburn. Another customer said she chose a fat biography to read while nursing each of her babies, most recently David McCullough’s John Adams. But, however sexist it sounds, most of Roseledge Books bio readers are men. (Memoirs and journals are another story.) I currently have medium to fat biographies of Einstein, Sir Francis Drake, Benjamin Franklin, and Theodore Roosevelt, the latter because my late neighbor Harry claimed a connection to TR and because TR understood the beauty of North Dakota. But mostly I have it because of Harry.
Fig. #33. My neighbor Harry’s house, an “after” view, without the shiny globe or the faux gladiolas atop the stump of the fallen maple tree. Roseledge Books is to the right.
Harry, whom I miss a lot, told me that Teddy Roosevelt was a nice man who lived next to his aunt and that he (Harry) would talk with him in his aunt’s back yard when Harry and his parents would visit. This is the same aunt, his mother’s sister, who bought the TH house in the 1930’s after returning from a family trip in the Laurentians to cool off from the summer heat of wherever in NY or CT they lived. (Apparently even then TH was the coolest place to be.) About the backyard encounters, however, Harry’s story gets a little iffy because I think Harry said that his aunt lived in Greenwich, CT in a large house left to her by her much older, very wealthy husband and former boss, and I don’t think TR ever lived in, or on the border of, Greenwich. But the story is all Harry and makes too good a tie to TH to let an iffy fact or two get in its way.
Edmund Morris’ The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (Modern Library Paperbacks)
Edmund Morris’ Theodore Rex (Modern Library Paperbacks)
David McCullough’s Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt
David McCullough’s John Adams
Walter Isaacson’s Einstein: His Life and Universe
Walter Isaacson’s Benjamin Franklin: An American Life
Edmund Morgan’s Benjamin Franklin (Yale Nota Bene)
John Sugden’s Sir Francis Drake
It’s always better to read two bios about the same person at or near the same time, because the juiciest, iffiest stuff is in the differences.
The webcam is on, and the harbor is sparkling in the sun.
writes of people who not only choose to read that which agrees with their existing positions, but they read into situations, e.g. referee calls or debates, support for their preconceptions. This seeing or choosing whatever you are already looking for may be the biggest reason to oppose the FBI having access to the titles of your book purchases, library choices, or Google searches, because whatever your reasons for so choosing or searching, the fibbies are looking for evildoing and will assign their evildoer reasons to your choices.
(Wyoming environment) or (Senator) James Webb‘s 
(Vietnam).
because, through main character Henry Knox, the book has big ties to Thomaston which is practically next door– or next town — to Tenants Harbor. He liked it better than others who have commented, but maybe that’s because he and his family summer here. Good grief! At this very minute, David McCullough is on public radio talking about 1776! I’ll listen for talk of Henry Knox, a Boston bookseller who married Lucy Flucker (pronounced Flooker, insists Scott, but I‘m not so sure), only child of Mr. and Mrs. Flucker, granddaughter (I think) of Mr. Waldo who, through the Waldo Patent, was granted, from the King of England, most of the land on the St. George River side of the peninsula, including Thomaston and beyond. But I digress.
; and Julia Spencer-Fleming’s 
)
to continue learning about finance through fiction, but the author wrote more about the greed and egos of the investment bankers involved. This I can get from the NYTimes business section, but I’ll bet anyone who works on Wall Street or in the investment banking industry can put a name to every character in the book. I continue to miss Paul Erdman. Time to return to the Middle East with David Ignatius’ 
.
, Rory Stewart’s 
, or Carl Raswan’s 
because each walked the terrain, albeit at different times, in different areas, and for different reasons, but I knew everything each author noted was verifiable. Given their specificity, maybe these works are journals rather than memoirs, and probably I like journals more; but books of this kind are hard to find. All of these examples were shelved under Travel at the bookstore when first I checked.
(actually Dorothea Moulton Balano’s “log” of her time sailing with Captain Fred Balano in the early 1900’s; the Balanos lived in Port Clyde)
(with wonderful paintings by Maurice Pendergast; garden is currently being recreated)
(her first journal after moving to Maine)
. She visited Tenants Harbor and rented a room and a schoolhouse in Martinsville. She knew the area, so how much of the work is her experience or local lore?
, a book I liked a lot. (See CATCHING UP #2.) I loved knowing a little, then a little more, of how the world works. It’s a life goal.