A Year of Reading: Books Read 2025

Before I had started reading

A year ago this month, in January of 2025, I began writing a line or two or three of description for each book read, but that only lasted a month, and beginning in February I went back to the more bare-bones author, title (fiction/nonfiction, year) format. Some of these were re-readings, and you will see occasional binges. Many of the books in this list I discussed on blog posts in 2025, and you can use the search bar at the top of the blog to find those posts where they exist. Want to know more? A couple books on the list I might not remember at all, but you can ask! Here then are the books I read over the last twelve months.

View from bank to harbor on a December morning

1. Thomas, Kai. In the Upper Country (fiction, 2023). Brilliant novel of refugees from American slavery who joined forces over generations with indigenous peoples of the U.S. and Canada in a quest for freedom. Tales within tales. A tour de force. 

2. Reade, Charles. The Cloister and the Hearth: A Tale of the Middle Ages (fiction, 1861). Picaresque historical novel set in the late 1400s, with every element a reader could ever desire. Adventure, love, humor, philosophy, description, atmosphere, etc.

3. Estes, Eleanor. The Moffats (juvenile fiction, 1941). Every now and then I re-read the always charming books about the Moffat and Pye families, enjoying Louis Slobodkin’s simple illustrations as much as the stories I first discovered in grade school. For me, they never grow old 

4. Lane, Eric & Michael Oreskes. The Genius of America: How the Constitution Saved Our Country and Why It Can Again (nonfiction, 2007). The authors stress that many compromises were necessary for the Constitution to come into being in the first place and that its structure of checks and balances were designed to prevent despotism. Recent and current winner-take-all strategies from the White House, in Congress, and in a loaded Court system have all been partisan attempts in recent decades to short-circuit what the authors of this book call our Constitutional Conscience. Full text of the United States Constitution included as an appendix. 

5. Godden, Rumer. A Time to Dance, No Time to Weep (nonfiction, 1987). The second book of memoir from this prolific author (she wrote and had published over 60 books, both fiction and nonfiction) tells of her childhood and young womanhood, and motherhood, covering years in India, England, and Kashmir. 

6. Barr, Nevada. Firestorm (fiction, 1996). Although the firestorm in this novel was confined to wilderness and did not touch urban areas, descriptions of the blaze and its aftermath were difficult to read as fires raged in the L.A. area this January. 

7. Gilbert, Elizabeth. Committed: A Love Story (nonfiction, 2010). Memoir plus explorations of the history of marriage, along with customs in a couple of other countries the author and her then-future husband visited.

8. Wang, Qian Julie. Beautiful Country (nonfiction, 2021). Another memoir, this one from a young woman who came to the U.S. from China with her mother to join her father who had come before. 

9. Orcutt, William Dana. From My Library Walls: A Kaleidoscope of Memories (nonfiction, 1945). Where did he find room for bookshelves with all the portraits and framed letters he had hanging on his library walls?

10. Lenski, Lois. Houseboat Girl (fiction – juv., 1957). Simple story and simple illustrations tell of a vanished way of American life. (Now, if only I could find my copy of  Phyllis Crawford’s Hello, the Boat!)

11. Gilbert, Elizabeth. Signature of All Things (fiction, 2013). Enormous canvas brilliantly executed.

12. Smith, Alexander McCall. The Enigma of Garlic (fiction, 2022). Comforting, as his books generally are.

13. Hamilton, Mary Mann. Trials of the Earth (nonfiction, 1992/2017). One woman’s life, working and raising a family in Arkansas and the Mississippi Delta in the late 1800s.

14. Hughes, Sian. Pearl (fiction, 2024). A small book but not slight, this novel gains substance as it goes along.

15. Harrison, Jim. Dalva (fiction, 1988)

16. Ahmed, Samira. This Book Won’t Burn (fiction, 2024)

17. Houston, James. Ghost Fox (fiction, 1977)

18. Eig, Jonathan. King: A Life (nonfiction, 2024)

19. Kaur, Valarie. See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love (nonfiction, 2020)

20. Stander, Aaron. Smoke and Mirrors (fiction, 2024)

21. Maxwell, William. The Chateau (fiction, 1961)

22. Carter, Jimmy. Keeping Faith (nonfiction, 1982)

23. Brooks, Geraldine. Memorial Days (nonfiction, 2024)

24. Braun, Lilian Jackson. The Cat Who Went Up the Creek (fiction, 2002)

25. Benedict, Marie & Victoria Christopher Murray. The Personal Librarian (historical fiction, 2021)

26. Wilkerson, Charmaine. Black Cake (fiction, 2022)

27. Christie, Agatha. The Clocks (fiction, 1964)

28. Egan, Timothy. Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis (nonfiction, 2012).

29. Stark-Nemon, Barbara. Hard Cider (fiction, 2018)

30. Anderson, Peter. Heading Home: Field Notes (nonfiction, 2017).

31. Hesse, Hermann. Steppenwolf (fiction, 1927)

32. Base, Ron. The Dame with the Sanibel Sunset Detective (fiction, 2017).

33. Base, Ron. The Two Sanibel Sunset Detectives (fiction, 2013)

34. Base, Ron. The Hound of the Sanibel Sunset Detective (fiction, 2014)

35. Base, Ron. The Four Wives of the Sanibel Sunset Detective (fiction, 2015).

36. Zimmerman, Marilyn. In Defense of Good Women (fiction, 2025, ARC)

37. Base, Ron. The Sanibel Sunset Detective Goes to London (fiction, 2016)

38. Ardizzone, Heidi. An Illuminated Life: Belle da Costa Greene’s Journey from Prejudice to Privilege (nonfiction, 2007)

39. Farjeon, J. Jefferson. Mystery in White: A Christmas Crime Story (fiction, 1937)

40. Reich, Robert B. Aftershock (nonfiction, 2010).

41. Cook, Olive. Breckland (nonfiction, 1956)

42. Williams, Niall. This Is Happiness (fiction, 2019)

43. Smith, Ali. There but for the (fiction, 2011)

44. Perkins, Lynne Rae. At Home in a Faraway Place (fiction, juv., 2025)

45. Hudson, Marjorie. Indigo Field (fiction, 2023)

46. Dobyns, Jay. No Angel: My Harrowing Undercover Journey to the Inner Circle of the Hells Angels (nonfiction, 2009)

47. Brooks, Robert R. R. A Tumult of Years (nonfiction, 1980)

48. Dutourd, Jean. Pluche, or the Love of Art (fiction, 1970)

49. Sweet, Melissa. Some Writer! The Story of E.B. White (nonfiction, 2016)

50. Sherratt, Yvonne. Hitler’s Philosophers (nonfiction, 2013)

51. Bennett, Arnold. Riceyman Steps (fiction, 1923)

52. Bennett, Arnold. The Card (fiction, 1911)

53. Bennett, Arnold. Imperial Palace (fiction, 1930)

54. Davies, Robertson. What’s Bred in the Bone (fiction, 1985) 

55. Parini, Jay. Benjamin’s Crossing (fiction, 1997)

56. Benjamin, Walter. Berlin Childhood around 1900 (nonfiction, 2006 Am. ed.)

57. Behrman, S.N. Duveen (nonfiction, 1952)

58. Levi, Lia; trans. Antony Shugaar. The Jewish Husband (fiction, 2009)

59. Milne, Christopher. The Path Through the Trees (nonfiction, 1979)

60. Base, Ron. The Sanibel Sunset Detective Returns (fiction, 2011)

61. Tomkins, Calvin. Living Well is the Best Revenge (nonfiction, 1971)

62. Cambridge, Colleen. Mastering the Art of French Murder (fiction, 2023)

63. Atkinson, Kate. Behind the Scenes at the Museum (fiction, 2020)

64. Cambridge, Colleen. A Murder Most French (fiction, 2024)

65. Trollope, Fanny. Domestic Manners of the Americans (1832)

66. McMurtry, Larry. The Last Kind Words Saloon (fiction, 2014)

67. Ofaire, Cilette, trans. Beren Van Slyke. The San Luca (nonfiction, 1935)

68. Gerber, Dan. A Voice from the River (fiction, 2005)

69. Clarke, Stephen. A Year in the Merde (fiction, 2004)

70. Stimson, James A. King Noanett: A Story of Old Virginia and the Massachusetts Bay (fiction, 1896)

71. Mulvahill, Karen. The Lost Woman (fiction, 2025).

72. Trueblood, Valerie. Criminals: Love Stories (fiction, 2016)

73. Daudet, Alphonse. Lettres de mon moulin (nonfiction, 1869)

74. Seth, Vikram. The Golden Gate (fiction/sonnets, 1986)

75. Bennett, Leslie K. Peaks & Valleys (fiction, 2024).

76. McMurtry, Larry. Lonesome Dove (fiction, 1985)

77. Everett, Percival. James (fiction, 2024)

78. Buck, Pearl S. My Several Worlds: A Personal Record (nonfiction, 1954)

79. Mason, Miriam E. Caroline and Her Kettle Named Maud (fiction, juv, 1965)

80. Bayles, David & Ted Orland. Art and Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking (nonfiction, 2001)

81. Swanson, Julie A. North of Tomboy (fiction, 2025)

82. Bell, J.H. The Dish Boat (fiction, 1943)

83. Butterworth, Oliver. The Enormous Egg (fiction – juv., 1956)

84. Kipling, Rudyard. The Second Jungle Book (fiction, 1895)

85. Zuravleff, Mary Kay. American Ending (fiction, 2023)

86. Walker, Martin. The Templars’ Last Secret (fiction, 2017)

87. McNeer, May. Give Me Freedom (nonfiction – juv., 1964)

88. Oakley, Mary Ann B. Elizabeth Cady Stanton (nonfiction, 1972)

89. Clark, Jennifer. Kissing the World Goodbye (nonfiction, 2022)

90. Eggers, Dave. Zeitoun (nonfiction, 2009)

91. Lerner, Betsy. The Forest for the Trees: An Editor’s Advice to Writers (nonfiction, 2000)

92. Lopez, Barry. About This Life: Journeys on the Threshold of Memory (nonfiction, 1998)

93. Garner, Bryan A. & David Foster Wallace. Quack This Way (nonfiction, 2013)

94. Brooks, David. The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life (nonfiction, 2019)

95. Lawrence, D.H. Etruscan Places (nonfiction, 1932)

96. Anderson, Joan. A Year by the Sea (nonfiction, 1999)

97. Fuentes, Robert “Carlos.” The Vacation: A Teenage Migrant Farmworker’s Experience Picking Cherries in Michigan (nonfiction, 2025)

98. Mulherin, Timothy. This Magnetic North: Candid Conversations on a Changing Northern Michigan (nonfiction, 2025)

99. Dykeman, Wilma. The French Broad (nonfiction, from “Rivers of America” series, (1955)

100. Erdrich, Louise. The Bingo Palace (fiction, 1993)

101. Shingarev, A.I. The Shingarev Diary (nonfiction, 1978)

102. Youngquist, Mark D. My Joy Journey with Amy (nonfiction, 2025)

103. Terkel, Studs. Hope Dies Last (nonfiction, 2003)

104. Mosley, Walter. Farewell, Amethystine (fiction, 2024)

105. Myette, Jack. Prison: The Inside Story—Transforming Lives as an Officer and Educator (nonfiction, 2025)

106. Kemelman, Harry. Tuesday the Rabbi Saw Red (fiction, 1973)

107. Ibid. Wednesday the Rabbi Got Wet (fiction, 1976)

108. Ibid. Thursday the Rabbi Walked Out (fiction, 1978)

109. Ibid. Someday the Rabbi Will Leave (fiction, 1985)

110. Wilkerson, Charmaine. Good Dirt (fiction, 2025)

111. Jacobs, A.J. Drop Dead Healthy: One Man’s Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection (nonfiction, 2012)

112. Byfield, Barbara Ninde. A Parcel of Their Fortunes (fiction, 1979).

113. Tyler, Anne. Clock Dance (fiction, 2018)

114. Williams, Niall. The Year of the Child (fiction, 2024)

115. Forbes, Kathryn. Mama’s Bank Account (1943)

116. Mosley, Walter. Little Green (fiction, 2013)

117. Camus, Albert, trans. Matthew Ward. The Stranger (fiction, this edition 1993)

118. McHugh, Ernestine. Love and Honor in the Himalayas: Coming to Know Another Culture (nonfiction, 2001)

119. Dahl, Roald. Boy (nonfiction, 1984)

120. Williams, Niall. History of the Rain (fiction, 

121. Whybrow, Helen. The Salt Stones: Seasons of a Shepherd’s Life (nonfiction, 2025)

122. Backman, Fredrick. Britt-Marie Was Here (fiction, 2016)

123. Harris, Kai. What the Fireflies Knew (fiction, 2022)

124. White, E.B., ed. Martha White. E.B. White on Dogs (nonfiction, 2013)

125. Styron, William. Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness (nonfiction, 1990)

126. Camus, Henri. Le premier homme (fiction, 1994)

127. Waganese, Richard. Medicine Walk (fiction, (fiction, 2016)

128. Paul, Elliot. The Last Time I Saw Paris (nonfiction, 1942)

129. Lanham, J. Drew. The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature (nonfiction, 2016)

130. Quinn, Spencer. Dog On It (fiction, 2009)

131. Quinn, Spencer. Thereby Hangs a Tail (fiction, 2010

132. Quinn, Spencer. To Fetch a Thief (fiction, 2010)

133. Goddard, Todd. Devouring Time: Jim Harrison, a Writer’s Life (nonfiction, 2025)

134. Walsh, Jenni L. Sonora (fiction, 2025)

135. Goldstein, Rebecca. Incompleteness : The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel (nonfiction, 2005)

136. Collins, Chuck & Mary Wright. The Moral Measure of the Economy (nonfiction, 2007).

137. Steves, Rick. On the Hippie Trail: Instanbul to Kathmandu and the Making of a Travel Writer (nonfiction, 2025) Note: He and his travel pal did not hitchhike at all and did not stay in youth hostels, so they might have been on the “hippie trail,” but they did not travel as “hippies.”

138. Grant, Stephen Starring. Mailman: My Wild Ride Delivering the Mail in Appalachia and Finally Finding Home (nonfiction, 2025).

139. Harrison, Robert Pogue. The Dominion of the Dead (nonfiction, 2003). 

140. Hudson, W.H., ed. & intro by Edward Garnett. Letters from W. H. Hudson, 1901-1922 (nonfiction, 1923)

141. Paul, Elliot. The Life and Death of a Spanish Town (nonfiction, 1937)

142. Wieseltier, Leon. Kaddish (nonfiction, 1998)

143. Stratton-Porter, Gene. At the Foot of the Rainbow (fiction, 1916)

144. Quinn, Spencer. The Dog Who Knew Too Much (fiction, 2011)

145. Karinthy, Frigyes. A Journey Round My Skull (nonfiction, 1939)

146. Cousineau, Phil. The Book of Roads (nonfiction, 2015)

147. Kehlmann, Daniel; trans. Ross Benjamin. The Director (fiction, 2023)

148. Joyce, James; ed. w/ notes by Seamus Deane. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (© 1964)

149. Casebeer, Karen. The Lure (fiction, 2025)

150. The Epic of Gilgamesh

151. Whyman, Paula. Bad Naturalist: One Woman’s Ecological Education on a Wild Virginia Mountaintop (nonfiction, 2025)

152. Burke, James Lee. Another Kind of Eden (fiction, 2021)

153. Goldstein, Rebecca Newberger. 36 Arguments for the Existence of God (fiction, 2010)

154. Frank, Anne. Diary of a Young Girl (nonfiction; definitive edition)

155. Riordan, John J. The Dark Peninsula (nonfiction, 1976)

***

Wind makes wave lines in drifted snow.

"There's just books in there."

 

Catalpa in full bloom

Thirty-one years ago a couple of summer visitors walked by the original Dog Ears on Waukazoo Street (in that long-gone little shed next to long-gone Woody's Settling Inn down the street from our present location), and one of them stuck her head in the door briefly, then reported to her companion before they continued down the sidewalk, "It's just books in there." She might have said, "It's nothing but old books in there," because Dog Ears started with exclusively used volumes. It was at least six years later before I added a few new titles. 

But the warning is apt for today's blog post, as it is an annotated list of books I read in the month of June. To refer to dates for the LTFOL Summer Author Series, see my previous post. I've kept my political opinions on an entirely different blog. This is "just books." #1 here on the June list is #97 in my year-long list (which ended June at #109), but with other things keeping me busy, my reading has slowed down considerably since the beginning of the year, and the next couple of months' lists will no doubt be shorter.

Books Read June 2024

1. Mulloy, Pamela. Off the Tracks: A Meditation on Train Journeys in a Time of No Travel (nonfiction). Having been raised in a railroad family – father a civil engineer for a railroad, grandfather a train-driving engineer, great-uncles who were train conductors – I had a most fortunate childhood, with many memorable train journeys. Those not so fortunate, however, may want to experience armchair train travel, which is what the author did during COVID, remembering and recounting her time on trains.

2. Klein, Naomi. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (nonfiction). How to present this book briefly? That is the challenge! In the United States, our national tendency is to conflate democracy and capitalism under one heading, labeled “freedom,” but Klein demonstrates (in one case after another around the world, as well as in our own country, i.e., in New Orleans), that capitalism and democracy are easily uncoupled, given sufficient force, and that “freedom” for unregulated capitalism generally erodes democratic “freedom,” since what people want (good job, decent housing and health care, etc.) is often at odds with what predatory capitalism wants (smallest costs and highest profits). Big business plays the game all too well. They put the fear of Communism into the population while taking advantage themselves of public funds. In one country aftere another corporations (mostly American) have  dismantled public institutions and safety nets in the name of “freedom.” Think NAFTA. If globalization had really been “inevitable,” why did we have to speed up and rush into it? Death is inevitable, but that’s no reason to commit suicide today.

3. Keen, Andrew. The Internet Is Not the Answer (nonfiction). Rather than “democratizing” the world, the Internet in its privatized and heavily commercialized incarnation has increased and compounded inequality, creating a two-tier world. The worst of it is that, unlike shock-and-awe troops that did so in the wake of disasters and wars (see Klein’s The Shock Doctrine above), Internet inequality is something we have done (and continue to do) to ourselves, albeit without that intention. Falling for the hype, however, we have produced a handful of billionaires and a few bestselling authors and artists, with everyone else working without pay in the trenches, “creating content” (like this blog). I admit I skimmed this book pretty quickly, having just finished Klein’s after two of three weeks of intense concentration. Keen thinks he has the answer and quotes Canadian political theorist Michael Ignatieff: “A question haunting democratic politics everywhere is whether elected governments can control the cyclone of technological change sweeping through their societies.” Keen believes that governments, along with “voluntary, market-led solutions” can control the sweeping changes. I have my doubts, especially when we see that so many members of the United States Congress and the majority of the U.S. Supreme Court are in bed with the corporate billionaires. And how much of government has already been outsourced to corporations? (See again Klein, above.) P.S. This book would be better with an index.

4. Laing, Olivia. The Trip to Echo Spring: On Writers and Drinking (nonfiction). I would not say the author explores “the link” between creativity and alcohol (not all creative people are alcoholics) as much as she explores the role of alcohol in the lives of half a dozen well-known American writers also known well for their alcoholism: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Berryman, John Cheever, and Raymond Carver. Laing says she will never abandon ‘hybrid’ writing for strict genre work, and The Trip to Echo Spring typifies her preference as it combines travel and personal memoir with biography and investigation of a social and medical problem. That worked for me. I might not have wanted to read book-length biographies of all the writers she includes or a memoir of her alcoholic family, and I was amused to read (after finishing the book myself) some reader responses from people who didn’t like one or another aspect and wish she told a narrower story. No, I liked the way she did it. I loved the train travel and the places she visited, found the writers’ lives and relationships fascinating (if often horribly depressing), and I was grateful for notes on recent social research and physiological findings about how people become addicted to alcohol and why the addiction is so hard to escape, with clues here and there that explained what had been mystifying behavior of alcohol-dependent people in my own life.

5. Dennis, Jerry. A Place on the Water: An Angler’s Reflections on Home (nonfiction). I did not put this book aside to read Pamela Mulloy’s and Olivia Laing’s books because Jerry Dennis failed to enchant me but because I was so thoroughly enchanted that I was in no hurry to reach the end of the book. When Hemingway couldn’t sleep, he reviewed actual fishing experiences and imagined others. When I wake in the middle of the night, I reach for a book. A Place on the Water is a book that puts me right there, midstream. Very comforting.

6. Buck, Pearl. All Under Heaven (fiction). In the author’s epilogue, she writes that this novel was put away unfinished for a long time, until she felt ready to complete and publish it. To me, it still feels unfinished -- undoubtedly because events were still in process, but between the Chinese revolution and the novel’s publication in the 1970s came the McCarthy era in the U.S., and while the story of former diplomat Malcolm MacNeil and his Russian-born wife and their family establishing themselves in the eastern United States following Malcolm’s return from 20 years in China (America a first-time experience for his wife and children), what seems like foreshadowing in the story is never developed, and Malcolm seems not to have come to any conclusions by the last page of the book. The backgrounds of the family members and their responses to their new home are interesting, but when the novel comes to an end it feels as if we have left the characters at the story’s midpoint.

7. Hamilton, Steve. The Lock Artist (fiction). I wasn’t sure how I felt about this for the first few pages but kept going and became engrossed. Very likable young protagonist gets himself into a helluva mess! Not set in the U.P. (as are his Woods Cop novels) but definitely an attention-grabber.

8. Samuels, Robert and Toluse Olorunnipa. His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice (nonfiction). You’ve heard his name. You know how he died. This book tells you how he lived. It’s one thing to read statistics about rates of arrests and incarceration for Black men and/or about how many Black families live in poverty, even to read a history of slavery and subsequent Jim Crow laws in the South. It’s quite another thing to follow generations of a family from slavery to the present and then to follow one individual from birth to death – and then to follow his family’s experiences after he died. He didn’t want to be another picture of a dead Black man on a t-shirt. He had dreams and struggles and family and friends he loved. A reader feels his presence on the page and wishes to have known him in person. His name: George Floyd. Read this book.

9. Portis, Charles. True Grit (fiction). I read this novel because Bonnie Jo Campbell said it had been one of her inspirations for The Waters. It seems many people who have discovered it take it to heart and read it over and over, but I probably won’t re-read it myself, though it was interesting. Part of the interest was in the fact that it was written and published in the middle of the 20^th century but feels like something much earlier, around the time of the novel’s setting.

10.             Franqui, Leah. Mother Land (fiction). Jake at the library in Leland got this one for me through interlibrary loan. I’d read America for Beginners and wanted to try something else by the same author. In Mother Land, an American woman who has moved to Mumbai with her Indian husband is surprised by a “visit” from her new mother-in-law, who announces that she has left her husband and is moving in with son and wife. Wife is dismayed. Mother-in-law begins to take over running of household. Son departs on a month-long business trip that stretches out beyond the month. The novel goes back and forth between the two main women characters (both in third person), which was interesting to me, but very little actually happens until, near the end, things seem to happen in a big rush. I know friends who would not persevere to that end, bored by earlier lack of action. I probably won’t re-read this book, either, but the inner lives of the two women and their struggles to find themselves kept me reading.

11.             Bythell, Shaun. Confessions of a Bookseller (nonfiction). I had a busy week. On Monday I made a deal to buy 7,000 used and rare books, the entire contents of another bookseller’s shop, inventory his widow needed to liquidate. She made me a good price. But moving 7,000 books is no picnic, and I told her I had too much going on in June and July to clear everything out until the beginning of August. She was very understanding. Still, with the help of her daughter and son-in-law we managed to pack up and transfer three carloads of books from Leland to Northport, leaving me depleted end of day and with no energy to dive into the challenge of a new book. Instead, rereading Shaun’s diary of a year in his bookstore in Scotland – stretching his year out over a full week of my bedtimes – was the perfect solution. 

12.             Kellogg, Richard. Wall of Silver: A Treasure Hunter’s Dream (fiction? nonfiction?). My neighbor (who printed this book for the author) loaned me Wall of Silver. The author swore it was a true story. Who knows? It reads like an exciting and suspenseful adventure tale, though the author is never able to return to the mine to claim the treasured silver he says was there.

13.             Caldwell, Erskine. Some American People (nonfiction). Known for his fiction, Caldwell undertook cross-country travel during the Depression to talk to Americans in all walks of life but particularly the poor, unemployed, and marginally and vulnerably employed. This picture of the Depression is as grim as any you’ll read and certainly bleaker than what we read in school history books. Back before there were strong unions and would-be workers were desperate, Detroit’s auto industry comes off as a nightmare, but there are also migrants from all over the Great Plains (not only Oklahoma), moving west in hopes of finding fertile soil to farm and rain to water it. Starving, malnourished babies; men “riding the rails”; girls and women turning to prostitution; and countless families broken by a broken economy. And yet—I doubted the first quotation so checked that Henry really said it and found the citation—Ford claimed in 1934 that "The Depression was just a state of mind. It is over for everyone who has changed his state of mind" (Ford News, back cover, April 1934). He also opined that "Man minus the Machine is a slave; Man plus the Machine is a freeman" (Ford News, p. 2, 8/1/1925). Workers who spoke to Caldwell had a different view of machines, particularly when “the line” was speeded up, workforce simultaneously reduced, and safety devices removed to avoid slowing production. It was labor unions that made auto factory work the bedrock of Detroit’s mid-20^th century new middle class. In the 1930s, fulltime work was hard to come by and easy to lose. And then the poor sharecroppers in Georgia! Be glad you are living now, friends!