9. Breakfast at the Hermitage

Title: Breakfast at the Hermitage
Author: Alfred Leland Crabb
Year Published: 1945
Year Printed: 1945

Date Acquired: December 20, 2014
Where Purchased: The Hermitage Gift Shop, Hermitage, TN
Price Paid: $105

Read Status: Read (July 16, 2015)

Notes/Thoughts

• Signed by author
• Has book jacket
• I had already got a book for this trip at a used bookstore in Nashville, but I had to look through the rare books they had in the gift shop when I saw them to see if there were any 1940s editions. I still wasn't going to get it when I found it because of the price, but Mom decided to still get it for me as a Christmas present. Probably was overpriced, but it is signed by author without being to someone specific and it has the book jacket. Plus, since I bought it at The Hermitage it definitely fits being about the local area even though it is an historical fiction novel.
• It took a little while to get into this book, but this turned out to be quite an interesting historical fiction novel about Nashville and architecture, preservation and continuing the tradition of beautiful homes.
• “Once I dreamed I was at the Capitol and a lot of men wanted me to be governor, but I outran them. Lucky I did, too.”
  “Lucky? How was that lucky?”
  “I’d be dead now. You ever read in a history book about a governor that’s still alive?” (p. 101)
• “So did I, but he does it almost too well. To keep alive the comradeship, that is well; but to make us wish we were back in the war, that is not well. We lost the war; we mustn’t lose anything else.” (p. 102)
• “Mrs. Jackson thinks the Hermitage can become the Mount Vernon of the South." (p. 175) - Um, isn't Mount Vernon in the South?

8. Rivers of America: The Tennessee, Volume I - The Old River: Frontier to Secession

Title: Rivers of America: The Tennessee, Volume I - The Old River: Frontier to Secession
Author: Donald Davidson
Year Published: 1946
Year Printed: 1946

Date Acquired: December 20, 2014
Where Purchased: BookManBookWoman Books, Nashville, TN
Price Paid: $28.95

Read Status: Read (May 5, 2015)

Notes/Thoughts

•  Has Book Jacket

7. Reveille in Washington

Title: Reveille in Washington
Author: Margaret Leech
Year Published: 1941
Year Printed: 1941

Date Acquired: December 11, 2014
Where Purchased: City Center Gallery & Books, Fayetteville, NC
Price Paid: $5

Read Status: Read (April 7, 2015)

Notes/Thoughts

• For months I've been meaning to get a D.C. book for my collection, but I meant to do that as a quick metro trip from home. So much for trying to diversify my collection from being so Virginia/D.C. area dominant by stopping in another state this road trip. However, somehow I have managed to have the first seven books printed in seven different years.
• I found the Ladies in Durance chapter particularly interesting as it tells about Mrs. Greenbow and other Confederate spies imprisoned in D.C. during the war.
• The description of Mary Todd Lincoln's half-sister's visit was also quite interesting as Emili Helm was a rebel. (p. 306-7).

6. F.D.R. My Boss

Title: F.D.R. My Boss
Author: Grace Tully
Year Published: 1949
Year Printed: 1949

Date Acquired: December 11, 2014
Where Purchased: City Center Galley & Books, Fayetteville, NC
Price Paid: $6

Read Status: Read (January 28, 2015)

Notes/Thoughts

• I did have to go beyond the local interest section to find a 1940s edition book this time and I was really trying to get beyond having so much related to where we live (D.C. area), but at the same time this and the other book (Reveille in Washington, 1860-65) I picked up seemed too interesting to not get.
• This book provides an interesting perspective from a secretary to F.D.R. from when he was a nominee for Governor of New York in 1928 through his death in 1945, especially since it focuses more on the day to day (daily routine, basic thoughts on cabinet members) than the big events.
• When talking about the Farley-Roosevelt falling out, which seems to have been mostly related to FDR running for a third term, Tully attributes it partially to Farley knowing he would be unable to become President, but had some triple play plan to become Vice President. (p. 182) She clearly says it's just her conjecture and I automatically considered it entirely improbable because she basically explains it being a complex plan because a Roosevelt-Farley ticket was impossible due the Constitution not allowing the President and Vice President to be from the same state. Well, considering how much I have been reading about Virginia and many early Presidents/Vice Presidents were both from Virginia, I figured that could not possibly be true. However, I thought maybe it was in the amendments and ended up coming across this Snopes article that explains the misconception that Tully had is actually quite common even among recent selection of running mates.

5. Ridin' the Rainbow

Title: Ridin' the Rainbow: Father's Life in Tucson
Author: Rosemary Taylor
Year Published:1944
Year Printed: 1944

Date Acquired: October 8, 2014
Where Purchased: The Book Stop, Tucson, AZ
Price Paid: $15

Read Status: Read (February 11, 2015)

Notes/Thoughts

• Signed by Author
• It was more difficult than I expected to find a 1940s book to buy here. They definitely have old stuff, as I randomly picked up at least 3 1927 books and some 1900s books. I got excited when I saw the Utah book from the American Guide Series. While it was broadening out of the local section to the regional section, I would have bought it if it had not turned out to be a 1970s reprint. Almost ended up with a California book, but glad I found this one.
• Of course, as much as I tried to expand my collection beyond Virginia, this book in fact features a Virginia connection with the author's mother being from Virginia. I particularly found it interesting when she explains how her father and mother often debated "whether kids had more fun in Arizona or in Virginia" (p. 20) with one of the examples being between seeing the first dogwood in spring versus the first night-blooming cereus in summer. Well, I'll have to wait for spring to find a dogwood to see in person, but I'm going to have to go with the night-blooming cereus definitely winning on this one. Then, again, I guess I'm biased having grown up in Arizona.
• Having grown up almost a century later in the same University neighborhood as the author it was interesting to read it referred to as "right out in the country." (p. 101)
• Throughout reading this it seemed the author's father had a lot to do with everything that went on in the early development of Tucson and finally it made sense when I did some research online and finally figured that Rosemary Taylor was a Drachman. Now if I could just find a 1940s edition of what appears to be her more well-known novel, Chicken Every Sunday.

4. Roanoke: Story of County and City

Title: Roanoke: Story of County and City
Author: Virginia Writers' Project
Year Published: 1942
Year Printed:1942

Date Acquired: September 11, 2014
Where Purchased: Too Many Books, Roanoke, VA
Price Paid: $40

Read Status: Read (December 22, 2014)

Notes/Thoughts

• I almost didn't get this book because of the price. I had found another American Guide series book in South Carolina earlier in the week that was way overpriced ($100 vs. $10 on Amazon) that I didn't get. After finding that this was priced comparable if not cheaper than Amazon I decided it was worth it, especially since I actually found it in Roanoke and I'm not planning to start buying books for my 1940s collection online anytime soon.
• Interesting localized history, although there is a lot of just listing of names within the narrative as well as the extensive appendixes on Officers of Roanoke County and City and Veterans from the county.

3. Southern Horizons

Title: Southern Horizons
Author: William Haynes
Year Published: 1946
Year Printed: 1946

Date Acquired: September 9, 2014
Where Purchased: Bound to Be Read, Atlanta, GA
Price Paid: $10

Read Status: Read (September 28, 2014)

Notes/Thoughts

• This book provides an interesting historical look at the South's resources and how they were being utilized in the 1940s including recent discoveries at the time and what was currently being researched.
• One of the main focuses is on cotton including mentioning how crimped cotton bandages were a new development that came out of the secret research for the military. The discussion on cotton's future even included a quote that sound very much like today's The Fabric of Our Lives ads.
• "I can conceive that a few years hence woman may be boastful that they are wearing sheer cotton undies, luxury fabrics made out of cotton" (p. 51)
• One of the other parts that I found most interesting was the discussion on ramie, which sounded promising at the time Southern Horizons was written. In doing a little further research online, it seems that it still has not gained wide use despite it's superior strength because the processing is still complex and thus expensive. However, it was one of the main crops used in plant-derived plastics for Toyota Prius vehicles.

2. Tidewater Virginia

Title: Tidewater Virginia
Author: Paul Wilstach
Year Published: 1929
Year Printed: 1945

Date Acquired: August 28, 2014
Where Purchased: Book Bank, Alexandria, VA
Price Paid: $4 (Marked as $8, but they were having a 50% off sale at the time)

Read Status: Read (November 28, 2014)

Notes/Thoughts

• On my second visit to the local used bookstore, I found this book and decided to start collecting books printed in the 1940s.
• I found a lot of this repetitive having just finished Virginia: A Guide to the Old Dominion prior to reading this, which isn't surprising as this book (and several more by Paul Wilstach) is listed in that book's bibliography. However, this was still very enjoyable as the writing style is more engaging and conversational compared to the other being closer to stereotypical boring textbook style.
• Learned that the part of the Potomac River below Great Falls (which we happened to have just visited before I began reading this book) is actually an estuary hence this area being part of the Tidewater.
• Contains an interesting discussion on the meaning of Chesapeake as “country on a great river” supposedly dispelling a myth; but then I found a very similar 2005 Washington Post article coming to about the same conclusion as if it was a new discovery. Well, sort of maybe still was in the understanding of the Native American language; but not exactly a newly discovered potential meaning, although it does seem to mean that the myth was not really effectively dispelled in the 1920s. (p. 51)

1. Virginia: A Guide to the Old Dominion

Title: Virginia: A Guide to the Old Dominion
Author: Virginia Writers' Project
Year Published: 1940 (1946 printing included corrections)
Year Printed: 1947 (4th printing)

Date Acquired: June 1, 2014
Where Purchased: Book Bank, Alexandria, VA
Price Paid: $15

Read Status: Read (November 13, 2014)

Notes/Thoughts

• I picked this book out when checking out the local used bookstore the first weekend after we bought our condo in Alexandria. My mom ended up buying it for me as a housewarming gift.
• I never considered that turnpikes/toll roads existed before automobiles until reading about the first turnpikes in Virginia being chartered in the early 1800s; because dirt roads became impassable with heavy traffic. (p. 92)
• Lots on Thomas Jefferson's influence on architecture
• In the 1890s, there was a plan to develop twin cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis in Virginia; but only Minneapolis never came to exist. (p. 537)