Book cover of Reveille in Washington: 1860-1865

Book description

Overview
1860: The American capital is sprawling, fractured, squalid, colored by patriotism and treason, and deeply divided along the political lines that will soon embroil the nation in bloody conflict. Chaotic and corrupt, the young city is populated by bellicose congressmen, Confederate conspirators, and enterprising prostitutes. Soldiers of a volunteer…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Reveille in Washington as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

“A city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm” is how John F. Kennedy described Washington. Margaret Leech’s classic describes how the Civil War transformed a sleepy Southern town into the capital of a muscle-flexing nation-state, as well as a target for Confederate attacks. Along the way we meet characters as varied as spy Rose O’Neal Greenow, poet Walt Whitman, nurse Clara Barton, the egotistical General George McClellan, and an unstable actor named John Wilkes Booth. Lincoln is present, but one of Leech’s achievements is to treat Abe as a member of a larger human constellation, not as the automatic center…

From Steven's list on cities at war.

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Book cover of December on 5C4

December on 5C4 by Adam Strassberg,

Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!

On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…

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