50 Great American Places

I received this book free through Goodreads in exchange for a review.

50 Great American Places: Essential Historic Sites Across the U.S. is a quick interesting read about places of importance in the United States. There are 50 chapters in the book, all very short, one on each of the places.

The places in this book range from the well-known to the lesser known. There is something of interest for pretty much anyone: early-American history, western American history, industrial and/or technological history, etc.

Overall I really enjoyed this book. It's just the kind of thing I like: snippets about a number of different places; giving just enough information to keep you interested, but if you're not it's done pretty quick. I liked learning about different places I was not aware of at all or places where I only knew a little about. There were a few places in the book that I knew quite a bit about, but that was very welcome too.

I did have a few issues with this book. Firstly, while this is titled “50 Great American Places” I felt that some of the choices have been done to death over the years. As much as I love Monticello or Salem, these are things that are touched on in every book and it seems that other choices may have worked better here.

Secondly, I had an issue with a word choice of Glass's that popped up a few times. In the chapters about Edison (NJ) and Ford Rouge (MI), Glass states that Henry Ford recreated Edison's Menlo Park lab in Greenfield Village. While I can see this word being appropriate, I feel it gives the wrong impression of what Ford did. As someone who worked at Greenfield Village for two years and lived in the area nearly my entire life, I would characterize what Ford did differently than “recreate”. Ford moved entire buildings to Greenfield Village, marking the boards so they were put back together in the exact same position. With Menlo Park (the building mentioned in the book a few times), Henry Ford even brought in boxcar loads of New Jersey soil to put the building on because Edison said Menlo Park would never leave New Jersey soil. So while recreate may be a decent choice of word, I feel like there are better words Glass could have used. Because of this, it does make me wonder what other things in the book could be misunderstood because of iffy word choices.

Despite those two issues, I did enjoy the book and would recommend it for anyone looking for a book of places in the U.S. to visit as long as they don't have other guide books. I think it would be a good first book, but with so much overlap, if you have other similar books or know a lot about American history, this book may not be for you.