McIlhenny's Gold: How a Louisiana Family Built the Tabasco Empire

Jeffery Rothfeder's book McIlhenny's Gold: How a Louisiana Family Built the Tabasco Empire is not just a book about a business. It is a book about a family - the McIlhenny's, a place - Avery Island, Louisiana, and a time - the Civil War reconstruction era. Rothfeder does an excellent job of explaining how the product Tabasco - has been intertwined since the beginning with these three.

The business was begun as a post war enterprise. It grew to engulf the island - which is also home to salt mines. It helped create one of the first "company" towns. And it helped change the culinary culture as the appreciation for hot foods has grown. Tabasco has become an icon.

The McIlhenny family is full of bankers, naturalists, and soldiers and their family-run company has, in some ways, become an extension of themselves. Rothfeder does a nice job keeping the story going through the decades. An interesting story of history, food and a family run business. Don't blame me if you run out and get some hot sauce. A very good read.

Assassination Vacation

I got the chance to see Sarah Vowell give a lecture of her work. Meeting a favorite author in person usually makes one feel like a bit of a geek. Standing in a autographing line makes one race, to think up something pithy and witty to say to the author in the 2 minutes you may get, to converse with her. Then nerves take over - you give her your name and you say something about how you love her work and you just went to the Lincoln Museum in Springfield, yadda, yadda, yadda... And when the moment is over and you move on- you realize you really can't remember if you came off like a knowledgable citizen of the world or as a provincial rube. Sigh. But you percieve that this author is a bit of a geek herself in some ways - at least that is how you feel from reading her work - so in the end, you feel she may understand. We, history geeks have to stick together.

Have you been always wanting to take a relaxing tour of presidential assassination sites? Sure ya do. Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation does just that. And while entertaining us with her travels via the Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley assassination sites, she makes pithy statements and parallels about the modern presidency.

The book focuses mostly on the Lincoln assassination - but the others were all interconnected. Vowell points out that Robert Todd Lincoln was there for all of them. She refers to him as Jinxy McDeath. Always popping up near the appointed assignation time. Talk about being cursed. She also goes into great detail about the lives of those involved, so this book is definitely not just history lite.

With humor and irony, Vowell leads us on the path of discovery. We see how these men's lives affected their times and the policies that the United States still has today. And how the dedication of local historians and small museums keeps this history alive and that the truth truly can be weirder than fiction. And she makes the history geeks want to hitchhike along for the ride. An excellent read.

If you get a chance - try and listen to a bit of the book on audio. Vowell is a commentator on NPR's This American Life, and this shows in the audio book version. Can't wait until her next book - it is supposed to be on the Pilgrims.

Revisiting Little Women

Have you ever read a book and wanted to know about a character that the author did not give a great detail about? Geraldine Brooks' Pulitzer prize winning book March takes the story of the father from Louisa May Alcott's Little Women and brings his background and his Civil War experiences to light.

I think it helps if you have read the earlier book, because Brooks manages to match her book with Alcott's time lines. We find out about Mr. March's battles, his placement at a plantation where there are freed slaves working for their wages, and his job of teaching them to read. We also find out in flashback how he first traveled in the south and how he made his early money before he moved to Concord and met and married Marmee. We find out the reason why the family finances have gone down hill and the girls are sent out to work.

But we also see his lack of prejudice and conviction of principles, in a time and place when that was very rare. He struggles with these demons and struggles to make a difference to his students.

The second half of the book is told from Marmee's perspective, when March is injured and in a hospital in Washington D.C. Who is this man she has been married to? Why hasn't he mentioned the real conditions in his letters? And what surprises are in his past? Will they survive this latest crisis of faith and love?

Alcott based her characters on her own family and Brooks uses Bronson Alcott as her basis for March. She manages to make her characters come alive, and her prose is sparse but engaging. I think you can enjoy this book with out having read the original, but she has done such a great job of melding the stories you might want to try reading Alcott's original.

A very good read.