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Rating: 
Summary: A plesant book to read
Review: Bruce Catton was born in 1899 in Bezonia, Mich., a town of about 300 people then and now. Catton tells a lot about lumbering, tho he himself had little to do with lumbering. He graduated from Bezonia Academy in 1916, there being 11 in his class. The Academy closed in 1918. The book ends when Catton goes to college. It is a pleasant book to read, since Catton is a fine writer. But Jimmy Carter's book on his rural childhood I thought a more fetching read.
Rating:
Summary: A plesant book to read
Review: Bruce Catton was born in 1899 in Bezonia, Mich., a town of about 300 people then and now. Catton tells a lot about lumbering, tho he himself had little to do with lumbering. He graduated from Bezonia Academy in 1916, there being 11 in his class. The Academy closed in 1918. The book ends when Catton goes to college. It is a pleasant book to read, since Catton is a fine writer. But Jimmy Carter's book on his rural childhood I thought a more fetching read.
Rating: 
Summary: Civil War Historian grows up in Northwestern Michigan
Review: Bruce Catton, winner of the Pulitzer, National Book Award and Presidential Medal of Freedom writes a little know memoir of his childhood of listening to the Civil War veterans tell tales of their Battery from Michigan that fought in the most famous battles in the War Between the States. How he was able to develop an almost transendent ability the listen and record in the far reaches of his sub conciousness the words and deeds that were told to him is remarkable. He would use the stories when he finally decided to put them down in his famous books that he didn't start until he was nearly at the age of fifty. But the book is also a statement on how the world has become a bunch of "Babbits" who put the motorcar above everything else. The metaphor he uses is the Mackinaw Bridge which was built in the late 50s to connect the Upper Penninsula to the lower so people would not have to wait in line for the ferry. Kafka said, "Because of impatience we were tossed out of Eden and because of impatience we can never return." Ironically Mackinac Island allows no cars and gets half a million plus tourists in the summer, where Maui has the finest weather in the world but no public transportation because people can't deal with the inconvience. Catton was very presient on this. The world finds itself in a place where we can't roll back to a slower time and now people want to drive tanks in the form of off road Vans. This book is also very readable and fun and in the intro his brother calls it his best book.
Rating:
Summary: Boyhood Memoirs of a Literary Giant
Review: I never met Bruce Catton, but I corresponded briefly with him in the mid-1970's. The same qualities that marked him as a correspondent--courtesy, graciousness, and gentle humor--illuminate this lovely memoir of a great historian. Catton grew up in Benzonia, Michigan, "a city upon a hill," as he correctly notes, very close to Lake Michigan, where the old certitudes held seemingly invincible sway over virtually every aspect of one's daily life. Catton's father was the superintendent of Benzonia Academy, whose main building is now Benzonia's library. The memoir, which recalls the years between the author's birth and his graduation from high school, is a series of reflections on what it was like to be a boy just as Michigan's logging era was drawing to a close, when sleepy Benzonia, along with the rest of the nation, was about to drift into the maw of the violent twentieth century. Catton writes of boyhood ambitions and boyish pranks, of the rich history that made Michigan's Lower Peninsula what it was, and especially of the Civil War veterans whose stories would later prompt Catton to devote years of his life to recording the history of that great conflict in rich anecdotal detail. Though unabashedly nostalgic, "Waiting for the Morning Train" is neither saccharine nor bitter. Catton was far too experienced a writer and historian to let his emotions get the better of him. This is, nonetheless, a rich and moving memoir of a time which, though it may seem virtually within reach, we will never see again. I recommend this book highly as a gift for yourself and, perhaps, for that reflective friend who can appreciate personal history told with universal appeal. Bruce Catton was, quite simply, one of the greatest writers and historians this country has produced, and in many ways this deceptively modest little volume represents the zenith of his literary achievement.
Rating:
Summary: Boyhood Memoirs of a Literary Giant
Review: I never met Bruce Catton, but I corresponded briefly with him in the mid-1970's. The same qualities that marked him as a correspondent--courtesy, graciousness, and gentle humor--illuminate this lovely memoir of a great historian. Catton grew up in Benzonia, Michigan, "a city upon a hill," as he correctly notes, very close to Lake Michigan, where the old certitudes held seemingly invincible sway over virtually every aspect of one's daily life. Catton's father was the superintendent of Benzonia Academy, whose main building is now Benzonia's library. The memoir, which recalls the years between the author's birth and his graduation from high school, is a series of reflections on what it was like to be a boy just as Michigan's logging era was drawing to a close, when sleepy Benzonia, along with the rest of the nation, was about to drift into the maw of the violent twentieth century. Catton writes of boyhood ambitions and boyish pranks, of the rich history that made Michigan's Lower Peninsula what it was, and especially of the Civil War veterans whose stories would later prompt Catton to devote years of his life to recording the history of that great conflict in rich anecdotal detail. Though unabashedly nostalgic, "Waiting for the Morning Train" is neither saccharine nor bitter. Catton was far too experienced a writer and historian to let his emotions get the better of him. This is, nonetheless, a rich and moving memoir of a time which, though it may seem virtually within reach, we will never see again. I recommend this book highly as a gift for yourself and, perhaps, for that reflective friend who can appreciate personal history told with universal appeal. Bruce Catton was, quite simply, one of the greatest writers and historians this country has produced, and in many ways this deceptively modest little volume represents the zenith of his literary achievement.
Rating:
Summary: The boyhood of a giant
Review: My interest in Waiting for the Morning Train lay not so much with Bruce Catton's being a giant of Civil War literature, but rather with his subject: Benzonia, Michigan, the place at which my family has taken vacation for decades (and where several family members now permanently reside). I could see the waters of Crystal Lake, the snow-covered hills of Beulah and Benzonia, and the lush birch, maple and pine forests of Northern Michigan as Catton knew them in his youth. Readers of Waiting for the Morning train will not only catch a glimpse of the spark that ignited Catton's pasion for the Civil War, but more importantly the story of a land that, if one tries hard enough, one will still find. Catton's boyhood stomping grounds come alive with tales of logging, weary travel by train and the fits of small towns being brought into a more modern era. The subtitle is An American Boyhood, and in Catton's childhood memoirs the reader will not only witness Catton's growth to manhood, but also the nation's emergence from adolecence to adulthood.
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