Four Hundred Souls

I'm not sure what the aim of this book is. It is made up of 400 years of history, divided into 5-year chunks, giving us 80 short essays and other pieces, interspersed by poems.

I definitely learned things. I heard from authors with perspectives and backgrounds different from mine, which was incredibly valuable. I learned about events in our history I never would learn in school. There were cultural references I did not understand, but that spurred me to do additional research.

The quality and interest of the pieces varied, as you'd expect with 80 different authors. It isn't a book you'll read from cover to cover, but was good for digesting in chunks here and there.