Mary F. Ehrlander's 3 favorite reads in 2024

I love a history book that takes me behind the scenes or headlines to learn about the actual human experience – a book that leaves me thinking, “I had no idea!” That’s how I felt as I read McCullough’s account of Wilbur and Orville Wright’s relentless efforts to build a “flying machine.” The keen observation skills, methodical approach, mechanical intelligence, and dogged determination that led to their success, coupled with their stoicism and lack of vanity, make them truly heroic and inspiring figures.

I was also drawn to McCullough’s touching depiction of the brothers’ uncommonly compatible working relationship and the support they drew from their close-knit family that contributed to their success. A loyal long-term housekeeper and an equally faithful and capable employee further illustrated the role that warm, trusting personal relationships played in the brothers’ success. The book is both enlightening and a feel-good story that I’ve been recommending to family members, friends, and current and former students who love history.

This tale of courage, determination, and teamwork leading to victory against all odds kept me spell-bound from its opening pages. Throughout the book I was pulling for the central character Joe Rantz to overcome his childhood dominated by poverty and neglect to win his seat on the Olympic team. Sure enough, he did! The lifelong friendships forged in the crucible of the quest for the Olympic Gold in rowing was equally heartwarming. Brown’s epilogue accounting for the latter decades of these terrific athletes’ lives and their enduring friendship provides a satisfying bonus to this epic story.

I’m awestruck by the research and writing skills that allowed Brown to so brilliantly interweave the historical context both in the U.S. and Germany with the rowers’ personal stories, the coaching methods, and the boat-building craftsmanship that led to the Olympic Gold in rowing in Berlin.

This well-researched account of this poorly understood era in U.S. history drew me in with the personal stories of the individuals within the great exodus of African-Americans from the Jim Crow South. Witnessing the daily threats, insults, and indignities the migrants experienced in their birth places opened my eyes as never before to the myriad ways that race based assumptions and rules structured life and stifled aspirations. Relying on thousands of interviews, and focusing on the experiences of three individuals, Wilkerson paints such a realistic picture of their journeys that I felt the nerve wracking secrecy in which they planned their exits and their deep relief when they crossed borders to safety. Yet the indignities and barriers to success didn’t vanish upon escape from officially Jim Crow country. And so, as the migrants confronted more subtle but nevertheless real obstacles in their destination communities, my relief, life theirs, gave way to weariness. Yet they persevered.

Ultimately, this powerful saga left me in awe of the courage and resilience of these individuals, and of migrants in general; and more deeply convinced of the need to study history to better understand our world today.