Customer Reviews

The Good Years

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Walter Lord takes the most significant historical events of the years 1900-1914, and gives it a human touch that makes you feel that you are there. He reveals volumes in sentences, and never disappoints. From the Boxer Rebellion to eve of World War I, The unique american perspective is well represented.

For people interested in American history, this book is just what the doctor ordered to round out one's knowledge of the first fifteen years of the 20th Century. Walter Lord has a wonderful, ironic style that pulls the reader in, and makes him feel as if he is witnessing first-hand the historical events described in the book.

These events range from the assassination of William McKinley, Jr., and the Wright brothers' pioneering flights at Kitty Hawk, both familiar to the layman, to the lesser-known Panic of 1907, where one man, J. P. Morgan, almost single-handedly saved the American economy, and the downright obscure convention that nominated Woodrow Wilson for the Presidency in 1912.

Great stuff, and highly worthwhile.

In this book, Walter Lord, a popular historian, chooses to focus on the years 1900-1914 and gives us accounts of the most famous events of that time period: the Wright Brothers' flight, the San Francisco earthquake, union troubles, Peary and the North Pole, etc. Lord is mostly interested in the drama of historical events, and though he's a good writer, his work is more journalistic than deeply historical. But what he does, he does well.

I somewhat reluctantly added The Good Years to a list of books I'm reading about the World War I era. I found it on my bookshelf, the pages yellowed and the introduction (harkening back to a golden age) sounding hokey to a jaded modern audience. But it turned out to be a pleasant surprise. Lord, best known for the Titanic narrative A Night to Remember, chose to chronicle the years 1900 to 1914 by focusing each chapter on a specific event - the Wright Brothers' first flight, the financial panic of 1907, the voyage of the Great White Fleet. Lord is a good storyteller, and his narratives are often vivid. His accounts of the siege of Peking during the Boxer Rebellion and the assassination of President McKinley are especially detailed and compelling. Sometimes he ill-advisedly cuts short the story he's telling - the Wright Brothers got short shrift in my view - to run down a laundry list of the latest social, scientific, political and economic trends. And his premise - that the early 1900s was a period of unusual optimism and energy - seemed a bit loosey-goosey to this reader. But overall this is a very nice read, and Lord maintains just the right attitude: amused at human foibles, affectionate toward the people he writes about, angry at the injustices of the time he otherwise celebrates.

I loved Lord's other books (A Night to Remember, Incredible Victory, Day of Infamy) and I bought this out of curiosity. Could he write about a period of history in which nothing seemed to happen (given the blanks I was drawing in my memory from high school history)? The answer is: absolutely!

Actually, you get 15 good short books which should replace any US history textbook on the era. Lord is a fantastic writer of history just because he finds so many witnesses and ties their accounts together in a narrative that puts you in the midst of the action. Presidential assassinations, brushfire wars, real expeditions to unvisited parts of the planet, financial crises, the lifestyles of the rich and famous, the inventors -- the good old days weren't as simple as we think they were!

Written reletively soon after the period of focus. His views are somewhat myopic, yet his narrative style makes reading easy and fun. Good if you want the facts in story form. A classic.