Saturday, April 17, 2010

Books of the Year?

The book 1920: the Year of the Six Presidents by David Pietrusza has been bothering me ever since I saw its cover, but I finally looked at it today. The crux of the book is that 4 eventual presidents ran in the 1920 election to replace Woodrow Wilson. "Six" is stretching the truth, since Teddy Roosevelt died in 1919, but he had been the Republican frontrunner till then.

Here's a timeline of a few similar books (thankfully I am not going to list all 32). See how much you can learn just from subtitles!

1421: The Year China Discovered America by Gavin Menzies

1603: the Death of Queen Elizabeth I, the Return of the Black Plague, the Rise of Shakespeare, Piracy, Witchcraft and the Birth of the Stuart Era by Christopher Lee (Whew! Did anything else happen that we could stick in there?)

1676: The End of American Independence by Stephen Webb

1759: The Year Britain Became Master of the World by Frank McLynn, at least until. . .

1776 by David McCullough

1941: The Greatest Year in Sports : Two Baseball Legends, Two Boxing Champs, and the Unstoppable Thoroughbred Who Made History in the Shadow of War by Mike Vaccaro. This strikes me as a great conversation starter: what was the greatest year in sports? Now bookworms like me have an answer.

1959: The Year Everything Changed by Fred Kaplan, who must have a dispute with the author of the following book (no typos here):

1969: The Year Everything Changed by Rob Kirkpatrick. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

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