Money: A Story of Humanity (David McWilliams)

Money is the tie that binds societies together. The means of exchanging something of value for goods or services, money has been around since its initial introduction in Mesopotamia some 5,000 years ago. Even earlier, the first means of indicating owed debts goes back almost 20,000 years to the Congo. Since these rudimentary beginnings on clay tablets and notches into bones, money has evolved dramatically to the form that we see today with coins, bitcoins, paper currency, and more. 

Money: A Story of Humanity is as much a history of currency and economics as it is humanity.  Author David McWilliams chronicles the rise of financial systems, the items that backed finance, and the evolution of how humans use money to buy and sell items, as well as to hold onto assets. The reader learns how money fueled not just economic growth and advancement but also warfare. McWilliams also includes humorous stories of how money has been expressed in architecture and art, along with how greed fueled speculative practices and economic calamity. 

In essence, Money is a journey of us over the past centuries and how cash, or currency, or cryptocurrency rules everything around us whether we like it or not. McWilliams’s book is informative, entertaining, and fast-paced. 

MY RATING: 4.5

A Hell of a Storm: The Battle for Kansas, the End of Compromise, and the Coming of the Civil War (David S. Brown)

1854 was a momentous year in America, marked notoriously by the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The legislation declared that territories west of the Mississippi River could allow slavery if their residents and respective territorial legislatures voted for it. This bill wiped clear a generations-old truce of sectional compromise within the American government that first started with the Constitutional Convention in 1787. The bill’s author, Stephen Douglas, remarked at the time of drafting the legislation that the bill’s opposition, primarily from Yankee abolitionists, “will raise a hell of a storm.” David S. Brown, author of A Hell of a Storm:The Battle for Kansas, the End of Compromise, and the Coming of the Civil War, wryly noted in reply to Douglas’s quote “and so it did.”

This book is a walk through a stormy year in American life. The Kansas-Nebraska Act effectively killed one political party, birthed its replacement, and drove the longstanding dominant party in American politics into a minority status that took generations for it to exit fully from. The Underground Railroad was in full transit, helping Blacks escape slavery through the work of Harriet Tubman and others. 1854 also was marked by the conclusion of the Exhibition of Industry of All Nations, a World’s Fair held in Manhattan, as well as the opening of Japan to American trade. The year also included the death of the last of the founding mothers (a spouse of one of the Founding Fathers) of the United States. Abraham Lincoln found his political voice and an aspirant to the White House, Stephen Douglas, effectively lost his over the course of this important year.

A Hell of a Storm is a fast-paced trip through a year that changed much of America’s trajectory, sending it quickly towards a Civil War that would soon kill hundreds of thousands of American men in a few years’ time. 

MY RATING: 4.5

The Horse: A Galloping History of Humanity (Timothy C. Winegard)

Horses have powered, sustained, and helped human civilization for millenia. From the first domestication over 5,000 years ago, horses have been steadfast travel companions and driven economic growth. However, the horse’s journey through our civilization is equally a trip through our technological and even entertainment development.

Timothy C. Winegard’s The Horse: A Galloping History of Humanity describes the horse’s past from wild, untamed beast that roamed grasslands around the world to a means of transportation, growth and expansion to a tool for fighting battles against enemies. Nations desired horses to help them develop. Societies relied on them to help till the soil, ship goods, and so much more. Winegard does a masterful job tethering the growth of humanity to the horse, showing how the world became more interconnected and economically empowered thanks to the horse’s reliability. The author also discusses wild and feral horses and how they impacted (or sustained) ecosystems in various parts of the world.

The Horse is as much a gallop through human history as it is a story of horse evolution over the past 5,000 years. Winegard’s storytelling of our interaction with these horses through good times and bad is well-researched and very effective.

MY RATING: 5

The Newsmongers: A History of Tabloid Journalism (Terry Kirby)

The British press has quite the history for breaking scandals and significant stories, pushing boundaries and finding itself often in the crosshairs of the public and British government for how it pursues a lead. Terry Kirby accounts the history of the (mostly British) tabloid press in Newsmongers: A History of Tabloid Journalism.

Kirby’s account is roughly 90% the history of British journalism, with the remaining 10% devoted to the American press. Within that 90%, much covers the rise of newspapers and eventually tabloid news as a main source of information for Brits. Rupert Murdoch gets plenty of coverage , along with the various scandals his newspapers produced over his years of owning media outlets in the UK.

The Newsmongers is a fast-paced account of British press, at times a dizzying account of figuring out news and their associations to various outlets. As an American, I was at times trying to make heads of which scandal was tied to which publisher or which paper since I only had some basic background on how British tabloid journalism operated. However, the book’s frenetic pace is somewhat symbolic in some quarters of journalism: fast-paced and frenetic. 

MY RATING: 4

Why War? (Richard Overy)

Conflict between humans has been a natural part of history for millenia, going back to our Neanderthal cousins in Ice Age times. Why humans would fight each other, whether it be with rocks and sharp tools or missiles and mustard gas, is a question that has stumped sociologists and historians. It seems that war and conflict will be a part of future stories of humankind as long as we exist.

Richard Overy, a historian known for World War II research, tackles the central question of the aptly titled book Why War?. Overy answers the question through eight different topics - a range of physiological, environmental, and sociological categories that show why people fought people, tribes fought tribes, and states fought states throughout recorded history. While the book is not a comprehensive account of warfare in the classic sense, it does discuss different examples to showcase each of the eight topic areas, including examples from Asia, Africa, and the Americas before European settlement.

Why War? is a book that will not provide answers to how to prevent future war from occurring. However, it does provide a smart, thoughtful analysis of the elements of human nature that drive some of us, as well as those who lead us to violence as a means of survival.

MY RATING: 5

Martin Van Buren: America's First Politician (James M. Bradley)

Among 19th Century Presidents, Martin Van Buren’s name is not often cited among the most noteworthy for what he accomplished while in office or during his career. We know about Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and U.S. Grant, but Van Buren’s role in American political history is pretty significant. James M. Bradley’s Martin Van Buren: America’s First Politician highlights a man who helped in the rise of the Democratic Party and the formations of America’s two-party system that still hold today.

Van Buren was elected President in 1836 after serving as Andrew Jackson’s Vice President for a term and prior roles in Congress and New York’s state government. The son of a tavern owner, Van Buren worked his way up into being a leader of the so-called “Albany Regency,” a collection of New York state- elected and appointed officials who are often cited by historians as one of the first political machines in state politics. Many of these members moved into Van Buren’s administration. 

Bradley’s book chronicles a man who helped Andrew Jackson establish the Democratic party and followed many of Jackson’s policies while in office, including the removal of Native Americans from the Eastern US and the gradual demise of the 2nd National Bank of the United States. Van Buren lost in 1840 to William Henry Harrison, a retired hero from the War of 1812, and “retired” to his manor in New York State, only to try to run again for the White House in 1844 and 1848. 

Bradley details many parallels from the 1830’s and 1840’s to the present, such as allegations of voter fraud and a  toxic political environment. Van Buren in some respects helped contribute to those issues through his belief in partisanship. However, his views on various political issues of the day could evolve. His 1848 run was as part of the “Free Soil” party, a collection of abolitionists from the Democrats, Whigs, and other minor parties opposed to the expansion of slavery into newly acquired western and southern territories. In some respects, Van Buren epitomized many politicians of our nation’s history - imperfect but influential. Van Buren’s legacy is as one of the forces to help codify a two-party system in the United States and as one of the first to organize and steer state political machines through his leadership in the Albany Regency.

MY RATING: 4.5

Cities in the Sky: The Quest to Build the World's Tallest Skyscrapers (Jason M. Barr)

Skyscrapers serve multiple purposes, with space for offices, retail, and living often rolled into the same tall building. In Cities in the Sky: The Quest to Build the World’s Tallest Skyscrapers, author Jason M. Barr explains the usefulness of skyscrapers in our modern history and advocates for their continued evolution as human progress marches on.

The skyscraper is in its second century of existence, from its humble beginnings in Chicago in the 1880s. As technology and construction design improved, taller and taller buildings gradually took over the skylines of major cities. While there have been pushes against tall building construction over the years, whether by city legislation or gentlemen's agreements, the skyscraper gradually won out in many urban areas. For example, Philadelphia had a gentleman’s agreement that no building could be taller than the top of William Penn’s hat at the top of its City Hall. Since that agreement was broken in the 1980s, 12 buildings have since exceeded the 548 foot height of Penn’s hat. Some of the tallest buildings on Earth now exceed 2,000 feet, and Barr even predicts that the first kilometer tall (over 3,100 feet) building will grace our presence at some point soon.

Some cities have pushed back against tall and supertall building construction, which Barr delves into with a discussion about the “Not In My Backyard” (NIMBY) and “Yes In My Backyard” (YIMBY) movements, property prices, and housing affordability. While some of this discussion is helpful in painting the picture of property prices, Barr drifts a bit too far into income inequality issues and away from the core issues of office and housing supply vs. demand that typically drives property values in many major cities. 

While the economic validity of skyscrapers is certainly a worthy topic of discussion, it felt like those issues needed more depth if they were going to get proper consideration. The story of the skyscraper, on its own, is certainly a very worthy topic without trying to weave in additional socioeconomic discourse.

MY RATING: 4