While 50 Great American Places: Essential Historic Sites Across the U.S., by Brent D. Glass could be used to decide where to go on your next vacation, it was also a wonderful book for this armchair traveler. I loved that the selections were not necessarily the most well known, and that a bit of history was included with each.

This is more a journey across time rather than a tour you can actually take: We Interrupt This Broadcast: the Events That Stopped Our Lives ... from the Hindenburg Explosion to the Attacks of September 11 (updated third edition), by Joe Garner. There are CDs included here, so you can hear the actual broadcast, but the text and pictures were enough for me. Emotional!

If you collect stamps then you'll get more out of Put a Stamp On It!: Seventy-Seven Sparkling Stories Showcasing How Stamps Have Intercepted Historical Events, by Herman Herst, Jr., than I did, I think ... some of the names, etc. were a puzzlement, but otherwise it was an enjoyable read. There was a time, when the 'bad guy' was making a getaway (usually on foot and under the cover of darkness) when a warning sent out to neighboring towns with a penny postcard got there first! And in WWII a clever forgery of a stamp let spies know if the message they were reading were real orders or not.

It's been bad, really bad for us ... it could lead to the use of alcohol. It's been good, really good for us ... it could be used as a meal, (A quarter pound Baby Ruth bar with milk was considered a balanced meal). Then it was bad again, it could make us all fat. (For a time, smoking was offered as a safe, non-fattening, alternative). Candy: a Century of Panic and Pleasure, by Samira Kawash, is a ... um ... yo-yo of journey through the history of (obviously) candy. And it all started with a comment made when someone saw the author giving her child jelly beans!

Reading Hermit With Dog