Still reading books on Travel?

Well not exactly but these novels do take you to sites of the USA you have never visited before. Or I haven't visited before. But I have to be honest I am also a lover of history. And E.L.Doctorow knows a lot of history...his research must take months. It makes me wonder just how many people helped him to write about America delving into so much social history beginning in late 1885?
I recall how one late Australian author, Bryce Courtney, was rumoured to have over 100 researchers to help him write his many books. Both writers have death in common now yet I can't imagine E.L.Doctorow being driven to his final hours in a rush to finish one of his books.

If you click onto the photographs the writing will enlarge.

Never have I had so many surprises or should I say questions answered simply by reading a novel.

"The success of the Manhatten subway had created a demand for a line to Brooklyn....the construction of tunnel under the EAST river from Brooklyn to the Battery...the digging chamber filled with compressed air pumped in from the surface....the work was dangerous...the 'Sandhogs' were considered heroes...subject to horrible destinies during blowouts...."

Or on the political side, "The news of Teddy Roosevelt, the great conservationist, who on his African Safari...had bagged 17 lions,11 elephants, 21 rhinos, 8 hippos, 9 giraffes, 47 gazelles, 29 zebras and kudu, wildebeest, impala, eland, waterbuck, wart hog and bushbuck beyond number." Useful information one could easily throw into a conversation at any dinner party. Agreed?

Many other characters of the time were introduced to the reader also including Houdini, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Emma Goldman, the anarchist revolutionary and many others. Not to mention the reader's opportunity to discover detailed American landscapes, tourist get-aways and bus and transport routes as well as histories of members of the film world of California. Well worth reading seeing Qantas is advertising double frequent flyer points for any bookings to America. But not for us...we are off to Europe!