The Great Bridge

By David McCullough,

Book cover of The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge

Book description

Forty years after its original publication, David McCullough's masterful history of the building of the Brooklyn Bridge has become a classic work and is now being reissued with a new preface from the author. The building of the Brooklyn Bridge was a time of optimism and corruption, a time when…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Great Bridge as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Yes, you want to read a history of the building of the Brooklyn Bridge. It’s not just fascinating, it is genuinely exciting. 

McCullough is best known for his presidential biographies, but I find this work much more interesting because the subject is so unpredictable, the protagonists (the Roeblings) are such tragic figures and the bridge itself is so unique. The Brooklyn Bridge is very close to where the Fulton Fish Market was so I got to write about the way that the bridge affected the flow of traffic through the city. 

This is a different story because it centers more…

From Jonathan's list on the history of New York City.

No Average Day: The 24 Hours of October 24, 1944

By Rona Simmons,

Book cover of No Average Day: The 24 Hours of October 24, 1944

Rona Simmons Author Of No Average Day: The 24 Hours of October 24, 1944

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

I come by my interest in history and the years before, during, and after the Second World War honestly. For one thing, both my father and my father-in-law served as pilots in the war, my father a P-38 pilot in North Africa and my father-in-law a B-17 bomber pilot in England. Their histories connect me with a period I think we can still almost reach with our fingertips and one that has had a momentous impact on our lives today. I have taken that interest and passion to discover and write true life stories of the war—focusing on the untold and unheard stories often of the “Average Joe.”

Rona's book list on World War II featuring the average Joe

What is my book about?

October 24, 1944, is not a day of national remembrance. Yet, more Americans serving in World War II perished on that day than on any other single day of the war.

The narrative of No Average Day proceeds hour by hour and incident by incident while focusing its attention on ordinary individuals—clerks, radio operators, cooks, sailors, machinist mates, riflemen, and pilots and their air crews. All were men who chose to serve their country and soon found themselves in a terrifying and otherworldly place.

No Average Day reveals the vastness of the war as it reaches past the beaches in…

No Average Day: The 24 Hours of October 24, 1944

By Rona Simmons,

What is this book about?

October 24, 1944, is not a day of national remembrance. Yet, more Americans serving in World War II perished on that day than on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, or on June 6, 1944, when the Allies stormed the beaches of Normandy, or on any other single day of the war. In its telling of the events of October 24, No Average Day proceeds hour by hour and incident by incident. The book begins with Army Private First-Class Paul Miller's pre-dawn demise in the Sendai #6B Japanese prisoner of war camp. It concludes with the death…


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