"Here Is Where: Discovering America's Great Forgotten History"
On this edition of ST, an interesting chat with Andrew Carroll, a writer and historian best known for the Legacy Project, which he created, and which tirelessly archives wartime correspondence as culled from across the nation; Carroll is also known for "War Letters," a bestselling book which he edited, and which inspired an acclaimed PBS documentary. While also discussing his ongoing war-letters endeavors, Carroll mainly tells us about his newest book, "Here Is Where: Discovering America's Great Forgotten History." As was noted of this vast and vastly entertaining volume in Booklist: "During the Civil War, at a railroad stop in New Jersey, Abraham Lincoln’s son was saved from a near-accident by John Wilkes Booth’s brother. Historian Carroll had traveled through that spot many times, unaware of its significance; once he learned of it, he wondered how many more such places there were across the US. He set out on a journey via car, train, plane, helicopter, boat, and bike to find historically significant places that have long been forgotten. Among his discoveries were a Civil War-era maritime disaster on the Mississippi River that was worse than the sinking of the Titanic but was overshadowed by the assassination of Lincoln two weeks earlier, and the crash-landing of a Japanese plane on the private island of Niihau in December 1941 that led to divided loyalties as Japanese-born residents protected the pilot from Hawaiian natives, even as they learned of the attack on Pearl Harbor. From coast to coast, Carroll presents completely fascinating and rambling history lessons, as well as the quirks that account for what goes into the history books and what is left out and later forgotten."