Love Elmira? Readers share 100 books like Elmira...

This intriguing collection of essays explores the dark reaches of Civil War prison scholarship from a variety of viewpoints and professions—including historians, anthropologists and public historians. The eclectic mix of topics includes environment, race, material culture, memory, and more. One of the more interesting aspects explored here is the phenomenon of prison camps which became tourist attractions—such as Johnson’s Island off Sandusky, Ohio—where steamboats would ply the waters around the island so guests might be able to spot an actual Rebel officer.

This authoritative book is the first comprehensive study of all major Civil War prisons—North and South. Speer traces the development of the POW facilities the various types used throughout the war from barren ground affairs to the infamous barren stockades—like Andersonville. We learn about the system of prisoner exchange created in the crisis and how it broke down, including how the taking of African-American prisoners ultimately spelled doom for the cartel. Speer traces the development of the POW facilities and the various types used throughout the war, from barren ground affairs to the infamous barren stockades—like Andersonville. This essential tool helps us categorize prisons by type, years they existed, capacity, escapes, and number of deaths.

One of the hottest fields of scholarship in the last generation is memory and how it shapes historiography. Cloyd’s contribution to the field is the first to focus exclusively on Civil War prisons. This thought-provoking book demonstrates how the passions of the post-war fight over treatment of prisoners have complicated the process of reconciliation. In the present, as the Lost Cause mythology has stubbornly held on, how we want to remember the war extends to the need for both side to cast blame on the other when it comes to prisoners of war.

The definitive work on the Elmira POW Camp, Michael Gray’s book is a captivating account of life inside the pen on the Chemung River. Especially valuable is Gray’s account of Elmira’s management by the post commanders, commandants, Commissary General of Prisoners and its supervision by the War Department. It is a web of intrigue and even conspiracy. Another important aspect of this path-breaking book is the micro-economy that was created by the prisoners, who kept themselves busy by catching and selling rats, making jewelry, and other ornaments, and fostering a marketplace where tobacco was the primary medium of exchange.

One of the best and most underappreciated works of contemporary speculative fiction by one of its finest living stylists, this book dares to riff on The Diary of Anne Frank and manages to pull it off with a first-person narration by a 12-year-old girl in New York City recounting her everyday life as the nation is coming apart in civil conflict and unrest.

The rapidly maturing innocence of the point of view dials up the intensity of the story—making it feel more real—while at the same time giving it a uniquely accessible charisma powered by emotional connection more than the cyberpunk eyeball kicks that charged Womack’s other amazing novels.

In urban warfare, boulevards, parks, palaces, and prisons take on crucial meanings. This is the launch point for Rapport’s narrative of how the spatial layout of three cities—colonial New York, revolutionary Paris, and imperial London—inspired and channeled violent uprisings and reprisals. Rapport ranges from New York’s Commons, a park contested by patriots and redcoats in 1770, to Paris’s Faubourg Saint-Antoine neighborhood, whose artisans stormed the Bastille in 1789, and on to the network of taverns created by London radicals as clandestine hubs of revolutionary activism during the 1790s. A treat for anyone interested in how eighteenth-century cities became battlegrounds for the era’s insurgent movements for freedom and equality.

Not usually considered a Hollywood novella per se, Bellow’s “small grey masterpiece” (V.S. Pritchett) tracks failed actor Tommy Wilhelm on a dark Manhattan day when his luck and his money run out.

This book is at once a tender portrait of failure and a searing indictment of the false promises America makes to the gullible. Along the way, Tommy recalls his one and only screen role—as a Hollywood extra, he briefly appeared barelegged in a kilt, pretending to blow bagpipes—just one more humiliation in a string of let-downs. By day’s end, Tommy goes face to face with humanity in a subway station and spirals toward “the heart’s ultimate need”—tears. 

There’s nothing scarier than answering personal ads to a complete stranger in my opinion. Women in Loves Music, Loves to Dance who answers a personal ad find themselves the next victim of a serial killer. What makes this particularly frightening is that the situation actually happens in real life. This book might make you rethink answering that personal ad in the newspaper or online. That’s what makes this book a nail-biter and keeps you up until all hours of the night. It is a fun read, and I highly recommend it. 

I liked this novel because it is rough, heartfelt, and engaging. This story is unusual in that the protagonist, Chulito, a 16-year-old Puerto Rican high school dropout, lives in the South Bronx and is in love with his childhood friend Carlos, but with the barrio’s rampant, ongoing homophobia, he attempts to play straight. Chulito is recruited by a local dealer to sell drugs, and though he acts the tough guy, his love for Carlos persists, even though he struggles to keep his true desire secret. Everything changes when Carlos comes home for the summer after his first year of college and Chulito’s life breaks free.

Their love for each other rises above the trove of hostile masculinity surrounding them, bringing vibrancy to their lives. Yet the struggles persist, as Chulito needs to negotiate the options available for a queer high school dropout caught between limited choices. I enjoyed Rice-Gonzalez’s vibrant… show more.

This book describes the rich multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, and multi-lingual communities that co-existed peacefully in Alexandria and Cairo in the 1940s and early 1950s. They forged close ties in such public domains as commerce and schooling, while keeping their family and religious lives mainly private and marrying within the community. By the mid-50s as Arab-Israeli problems spread to Egypt, the Nasser government stoked animosity against the Jews and other non-Muslim communities, forcing many to migrate. The book shows graphically how even during normal times cultural communities distinguish between areas where it is safe to mingle with outsiders and those where it is better to draw tight boundaries against penetration if they are to sustain their uniqueness. The latter are mostly areas that define them, including religion, values, and bloodlines.