The Age of Wonder: The Romantic Generation and the Discovery of the Beauty and Terror of Science   Richard Holmes
Beautifully written, fascinating intellectual history of the English “second scientific revolution” that occurred between the 1760s and 1831, when Darwin began his voyage on H.M.S. Beagle. Never heard of Joseph Banks before, but what a profound effect he had on the development of the sum of human knowledge. Really enjoyed the sections on Banks, on the Herschels, the science of Frankenstein. Informative and very enjoyable.

Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War   Fred Kaplan
Almost exclusively a tedious recounting of the political development of cyber security policy, players, and meetings. Covers the bureaucrats and organization charts of U.S. government cyber security and action, but there’s no theoretical or technical information. Very disappointing, waste of my time.

Trying Conclusions: New and Selected Poems, 1961-1991   Howard Nemerov
I first encountered Nemerov in the stacks of my high school library back in the 60s, and I have liked his poetry very much ever since. “To A Scholar in the Stacks” is a good example of what I love about his work, beautiful and intellectual. Some of the earliest poems in this collection seemed dated, and the newest poems reflect a world without depth. For national poetry month.

Midnight Sun   Jo Nesbø
Interesting novel about a man hiding from a drug dealer’s assassin in the remote arctic area of Norway. Pretty good, but the ending was kind of unbelievably positive and lovely. Whole thing was kind of a fantasy. What happened to the Joe of the Harry Hole novels. Not bad though, no regrets.

America, 1908: The Dawn of Flight, the Race to the Pole, the Invention of the Model T, and the Making of a Modern Nation   Jim Rasenberger
Well-written, engaging history of the year in United States history. Unfortunately, the subjects are more what would be considered for sensationalist journalism than social history, such as the sordid Shaw murder trial, the around-the-world auto race. But the other points of focus were highly relevant to where the U.S. was then and how it would develop throughout the 20^th Century. Pretty good.

Baseball Haiku: The Best Haiku Ever Written about the Game   Nanae Tamura, Cor van den Heuvel
A collection of 200 haiku about baseball, some average, some pretty good, all entertaining. The editors admit that the form doesn’t really work in English, so many of the English poems don’t have the structure, and the translations of the Japanese poems can’t retain the syllable structure, but, in my opinion, haiku does seem to go well with the subject of baseball. Glad I read it, especially in April.

The Wright Brothers   David McCullough
Well-written, fascinating, and detailed account of their aerial achievement. As usual, McCullough is not interested in tearing down the images, and in this case that seems appropriate. Gained a profound respect for the brothers’ thrilling and monumental achievement and the way they accomplished it. Very engaging and enjoyable history of something I have always loved. Really liked it.

Quarry’s Vote   Max Allan Collins
1987 addition to the Quarry series. This time he is happily married and living a retired and contented life until everything goes bad, big surprise. He proceeds to track down the people who did him wrong. While this book follows the formula of the other books, pretty much identically, I didn’t find it as interesting, got kind of slow. Same clear, effective prose.

The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War   James Bradley
An account of the cruise in 1904-1905 to cement U.S. colonies in Asia with in-depth background to it. Completely undermines Teddy Roosevelt’s manly image. Good description of the powerful racism everywhere in American culture, especially in Roosevelt’s policies toward Asia, the depth of Roosevelt’s personal racism is staggering. Astonishing how Roosevelt and Taft completely bungled policy toward Asia. Bradley does a pretty good job of showing how their policies led to our involvement in World War II in the Pacific. Found Alice to be kind of interesting. Informative and mostly convincing.

The War Lovers: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst, and the Rush to Empire, 1898   Evan Thomas
Informative, well-written, and useful history of the push to continue American expansion beyond our borders once the frontier was closed. Really enjoyed the focus on the people and not just what they did. William James turns out to be a hero, to me, by not being swept along. Teddy Roosevelt, notwithstanding his later reformist work, was an egotistical, malevolent jerk. Unsurprisingly, Hearst was an evil, unfeeling manipulator. Learned a lot. Good bridge into the twentieth, American, century.