Guest of Honor by Deborah Davis

Friday I finished reading "Guest of Honor" by Deborah Davis. It's a non-fiction account of the 1901 White House dinner of Teddy Roosevelt and Booker T. Washington - the first time a black man was invited to break bread with the President, and an action that enflamed the South. I respect the dinner and the courage it took for all parties - but I think the book as a whole failed to live up to the importance of that moment. It was organized loosely, spending far too much time tracing the biographies of the two men and then relegating the dinner and its aftershocks to less than a third of the book. Also, while I know its a work of popular history and not a scholarly treatment, I could have done without some of the annoying hallmarks of that genre; such as endless times when successive, often irrelevant anecdotes and trivia were used to establish the feel for the time and place. One thing it did do well was re-establish the brilliance of Washington, a man long dismissed by historians weened on the jealousies of his rival W.E.B. DuBouis. Grade: C+/B- (book# 72 of the year)

You are so freaking smart. You need to become an editor for some these independents. They'd be in tears but smarter for it. Pays well too. - Violetta