Eyewitness to America: 500 Years of American History in the Words of Those Who Saw It Happen by David ColbertMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
This was really a remarkable read: collecting first-person accounts from pre-colonial times to the 1990 in America. This compiles journalism, correspondence, treatises, memoirs, and other primary sources. Some things that stood out for me were the disappointing first suffragette congress (they decided to have a panel of men run it) to Sojourner Truth's fiery speech to the same body a decade later, The rise of Texas and its loss by Mexico, the predatory hell of Andersonville prison, the methodical invention of basketball for non-athletes, Gutzon Borglum's desire to see a carved Indian head gazing at the (not yet) completed Mt. Rushmore figures, the 442nd Regimental Combat Team composed almost entirely of American soldiers of Japanese ancestry out of the internment camps and the most decorated unit for its size and length of service in the history of American warfare, locked in with barricaded cops at Stonewall where a lot of specie was thrown (in mockery of the notorious system of payoffs – earlier dubbed “gayola” – in which police chiefs leeched huge sums from establishments used by gay people), and the final 1994 entry about email exchanges with Bill Gates - a medium that already seems quaint.
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