I've just finished Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin and downloaded Last Train to Paradise.

One of Amazon's reviewers compared Les Standiford's writing with that of David McCullough. I thoroughly enjoyed his The Great Bridge, Johnstown Flood, and Truman, so I'm looking forward to Last Train.

I've had a little fun with an Amazon 99 cent special recently too. In Morgue Drawer Four, a punk car thief discovers a body in the trunk of a new Mercedes he has just stolen. A day or so later he is himself murdered and discovers that he can communicate with a nerdy medical examiner who is doing his autopsy. It's good bubblegum for the mind.

I'm still reading Moneyball. I'm surprised how much I'm enjoying it. And, yes, the book is better than the movie, but isn't that almost always the case.

I thoroughly enjoyed No Ordinary Time by Doris Kearns Goodwin.

Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How it Changed America by John M. Barry was a pretty fascinating read.

Sounds like I need to check out some of David McCullough books.

I have put those two books on my 'wish list'.

I have read The Great Bridge and Johnstown Flood twice. I first read Johnstown years ago in the paperback form. After reading the 1889 account by Fletcher Johnson, I bought McCullough's ebook.

I thought Johnson's book was available at Project Gutenberg but now I can't find it there so I'm wondering just where I got it. Amazon has it in paperback for the paltry sum of $36 but it's available free here in pdf form.

The book, that is. I haven't seen the movie yet.

I haven't read much non-fiction lately, but I did enjoy "The Religion", a novel set primarily on Malta during the Great Siege of Malta in 1565. It's pretty brutal, because war back them was uniquely up close and personal and involved a lot of hacking with sharp edges. Also, the Inquisition was still in full swing, and nobody was more creative in inflicting pain than the Inquisition.

Still, it prompted me to read up on the Great Siege of Malta, and I actually learned something. Plus, it's the first book in a trilogy, and I liked it well enough to want to read the next two books.

I was reading Team of Rivals in the waiting area of the therapy center last month when an old darling who is in the early stages of Alzheimer's asked me to con his wife into buying him a Kindle for Christmas. They both looked mine over and he asked me several times if I had read any books by some author who writes about the rapture and such nonsense. It wasn't the guy who wrote the Left Behind books. When I told him a little about Team of Rivals, his wife asked me if I had read the new book Bill O'Reilly had written about Lincoln and I told her about the controversy surrounding it and that Bill O'Reilly is a notorious liar. Suddenly I had the feeling I had farted in church. Discussion over!

Last week the old duck told me he had seen me on TV but he didn't remember where. I said it was at the Bistro at the Bijou and that I was trying to be good. He said, "Oh yeah . . I bet they serve beer there."

I told him I'm sure they do and he said, "Well, you won't catch me in a place like that."

Yeah, right, he's retired military and must be one of the three teetotalers who served in the Navy.

If you get a chance, check out those poured-concrete resort hotels in St. Augustine, built to accommodate the railroad traffic. One of them, now a museum, has Tiffany windows.

I'm reading a new-ish book called "Hemingway's Boat," which frames the loves and losses in the author's life from '34 until his 1961 suicide around his beloved boat The Pilar, which to this day is still in Cuba. Never thought I'd get giddy over a Hemingway biography again, but the author writes really, really well.

Am also reading the new (and, in general, critical) biography of Gen. William Westmoreland. Am enjoying both.

his beloved boat The Pilar, which to this day is still in Cuba

When we were down there last month we visited the "Worldwide Sportsman" store/marina/restaurant complex in Islamorada. It's a saltwater fishing/outdoors store run by Bass Pro Shops. (Worth a stop if you're down that way.)

Anyway, they have a full-size working (now retired) replica of the Pilar on display in the store. A handsome boat indeed. I believe the story was that a wealthy publisher and friend of Hemingway loved the boat and commissioned the boat company to build him one just like it.

I found this video that gives a little more insight into the building of the Key West Extension. Some of the text in The Last Train to Paradise indicated there were photos included but they obviously didn't make it to the ebook version. That seems to be a fairly common practice. It certainly makes for a bit faster download times.

Another little irritant, for me anyway, was the author's often repeated use of 'old' when referring to the locomotive coupled to the failed rescue train. So many authors and narrators refer to 'old number this' and 'old number that' when referring to steam. Number 447 was no more than 15 years old in 1935. It was not uncommon for railroads to keep steam locomotives in service for 50 years or more so old no. 447 was a spring chicken.

Internet Archive offers this book, available in mobi format, published by the Florida East Coast Railroad in 1912.

Florida Keys - Public Libraries has an excellent collection of photos documenting the Key West Extension. Makes a great slide show.

Mr. Westcott celebrated his 90th birthday the other day and the Oak Ridger ran this article.

And, speaking of the photos of the Key West Extension, it's easy to see why the popular attitude at the time was that humans were on the verge of conquering nature. The Key West Railway nurtured that feeling.

After all, when the first train arrived in Key West, we had a railroad going more than a hundred miles out into the ocean plus the largest moving object ever created by humans, RMS Olympic, was regularly crossing the Atlantic and her even larger, and equally unsinkable, sister would be making her maiden voyage in only two months.