TransAtlantic

This is a wonderful book. It's not the masterpiece that McCann's last book (Let the Great World Spin) is, but still it is impressive. At first glance it appears to be disparate threads: Alcock & Brown make history with a transatlantic flight in 1919; Frederick Douglass also makes history when he visits Ireland in 1845; and George Mitchell negotiates a peace settlement in 1998. It's only toward the end of the third section that we get a glimpse of how the pieces fit together, and that's about a third of the way into the book.

Highly recommended.