John U. Bacon

First sentence: On Thursday, December 1, 2016, the people of Boston slogged through a drizzly day with temperatures in the 40s--neither fall nor winter, the kind of cold that gets deep in your bones and stays there.

Premise/plot: Narrative nonfiction covering the Halifax Disaster of December 1917. The book provides context, context, more context. But there does seem to be a point--not details for the sake of details. For example, it provides several chapters on the history of Halifax--including Halifax's complex relationship with the United States. There's also context about the First World War (aka the War to End all Wars or The Great War). The book chronicles the disaster through the eyes of a dozen or so people.

My thoughts: I definitely appreciated this one more than the first book I read on this topic. The first book I read, Shattered City, was a bit dry at times and the book wasn't always great at connecting the dots and showing the relevance or significance of the facts it was sharing.

I don't know exactly why this topic/subject has become of interest to me. It was in a fiction book--Christian fiction--book I read earlier this year. I then came across a movie on Tubi. I'll probably read more on the subject--fiction or nonfiction.… (altro)

This filled in a lot of the gaps in my Michigan football knowledge, particularly of the specific criticisms of the Dave Brandon era that I knew mostly from allusions and blog posts from friends who follow the Wolverines as their team. One could probably extract a business case study out of the Michigan Athletic Department from this book, but I would recommend this for the football fan more than the business student just for the scope of the work, although Bacon does break the book up into short segments that make the story flow quickly.… (altro)