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In February of 1910, two trains set out to cross the Cascade Mountains of Washington state, steaming from Spokane to Seattle through the remote Stevens Pass. That the Great Northern Railway could build and maintain such a route was heralded as an example of man’s triumph over nature but nature had not yet begun to fight. Within hours, both trains would become trapped in the middle of the stark and desolate pass, caught by a snowstorm greater than any recorded to that day. By the time the ordeal was over, both trains lay crushed by a massive avalanche, and nearly 100 passengers, crew and railroad workers lay dead under the snow. The White Cascade: The Great Northern Railway Disaster and America’s Deadliest Avalanche tells their story and the story of those few who survived, as well as that of the railroad men who struggled to free the trains only to have their efforts thwarted and their wisest choice turned into the worst mistake of all.

The book surges along with the inexorable pull of a suspense novel. Gary Krist uses letters and journals of the victims as well as court documents and (often unreliable) newspaper accounts to great effect, reproducing both the conversations and thoughts of the victims and their would-be rescuers. The result produces a dramatic arc that builds in tension as the inevitable disaster approaches, allowing the reader to connect with the participants and become concerned about their fates. The characters themselves are fascinating, a mixture of the heroic and the callous, caught in a battle of man and his machines against the might of nature. The story of the disaster is also linked to the story of the American railroad system and the famous (and sometimes infamous) industry barons who built it, a connection Krist explores with an objective eye, never losing sight of the human drama of the event itself.

The White Cascade offers something for readers of many genres, from history and railroad buffs to fans of disaster stories and tales of human nature. The writing is fluid, skillful and taut, consistently compelling throughout. The trip through The White Cascade is a journey worth taking. Howard Shirley writes from Franklin, Tennessee.

The foreign aid provided by France during the American Revolution was crucial to the outcome of the uprising. French funds kept the Revolution alive. As Stacy Schiff points out in A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America, The majority of the guns fired on the British at Saratoga were French. Four years later, when the British set down their muskets at Yorktown, they surrendered to forces that were equal parts French and American, all of them fed and clothed and paid for by France, and protected by (a French) fleet. Critical to getting this aid from the French monarchy was Benjamin Franklin, revered throughout the world as a scientist and philosopher. But the aid did not come easily. The story of how it was obtained is fascinating and messy, as diplomacy often is. As part of his eight-year mission in France, Franklin also assisted in negotiating the 1783 peace settlement, the terms of which are arguably America’s greatest diplomatic triumph.

Schiff, who received the Pulitzer Prize for biography for Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov) in 2000, tells this story in engaging detail in the most insightful A Great Improvisation. As she writes, He was inventing foreign policy out of whole cloth, teaching himself diplomacy on the job, while serving as America’s unofficial banker. In addition, Franklin was in charge of his budding nation’s naval affairs and dealing in other areas that were not part of his official instructions. Such matters would have been difficult enough if those who shared his objectives were compatible personally and strategically, but this was not the case. One example was that John Adams, among others, understood that Franklin’s reputation was merited and benefited the American cause. What irked his American colleagues was the difference between the man and the myth. In their eyes, Schiff observes, He ruled by fiat; the Enlightenment-embodying democrat was a bully at home. . . . As his dissenting colleagues saw it, there were no checks on Franklin’s behavior. As (he) saw it, he was operating in a vacuum, forced to make sweeping decisions in areas far outside his expertise, with no hope of guidance in Europe and little in America. To further complicate matters, there were British and French spies everywhere Franklin turned.

The many-sided Franklin and his cause are always at the center of events in A Great Improvisation. But Schiff’s extraordinary scholarship and gift for vivid re-creation of the period also help us to better understand the other major personalities and complex issues involved. Roger Bishop is a Nashville bookseller and a frequent contributor to BookPage.

In America’s 20th-century historical myth, author Lance Morrow says, John F. Kennedy is the Light Prince, Richard Nixon is the Dark Prince and Lyndon Johnson is the False Claimant who came in-between the shapeshifter” who was part victim, part monster. This has its truth of course, as all myths do. But in ways we don’t often consider, these three memorable, if not great, presidents had their similarities. They were of the same generation, shaped by Depression and World War. And they each made key personal choices in the year 1948 that ultimately led to both their triumphs and downfalls. Morrow, a veteran Time magazine writer who now teaches at Boston University, zeroes in on that year and those choices in The Best Year of Their Lives: Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon in 1948, his perceptive, provocative rumination on how the United States started down the path to what it is today. All three men were relatively young congressmen in 1948. Nixon and Kennedy were at the start of their political careers, but Johnson was in the middle of his, and he was deeply frustrated. His primary campaign to move up to the Senate revealed him to be a man willing to do anything to gain power. Nixon in 1948 maneuvered to national prominence by inserting himself into the epic showdown between Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss over Chambers’ accusation that Hiss had been a Communist spy. At the expense of both men, Nixon emerged as the Young Crusader, headed for the stars. It was a deeply traumatic year for Kennedy, whose favorite sister, Kathleen, died in a plane crash. Family patriarch Joe Kennedy lied about the circumstances of her death. And Kennedy himself decided to lie about his near-fatal attack of Addison’s disease the start of years of deceit about his health. In writing that is always thoughtful and sometimes gorgeous, Morrow shows that his protagonists opted for amorality at a time when the nation itself was struggling with its post-war self-image. Anne Bartlett is a journalist Washington, D.C.