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I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the history of the settlement of the west or anyone who just wants to read a good old-fashioned adventure story based in historical fact.
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The novel is unusual in its construction. The storm called Maria (this book started the custom of giving storms feminine names) is the all imposing, domineering character in the story. There are 12 chapters, one for each day in the life of the storm. Each chapter has 6-12 subchapters that tell of the two or three dozen human characters who are in the plot. We know most of them by job title, not by name. Maria connects them all together in an ever rising crescendo that reminds me of Ravel's Bolero.
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Both books tell you not only the meaning and derivation of the name, but when it entered the English language, when it became popular, disappeared, and came back into fashion, which segments of the populace used the name most-- and the reasons behind it all. Next to these two, almost all other name books available in the U.S. today are junk.
Whereas Dunkling/Gosling has many more names (and is much, much cheaper!), Stewart sticks to fewer and goes into more depth on many. He also concentrates on American practice, rather than the entire English-speaking world. There are quite a few Puritan names here (ever heard of Preserved Fish?), making this especially useful for U.S. genealogists.
Finally, every literate person should have a name dictionary on his reference shelf next to the regular dictionary and the thesaurus. If you just want to name your next kid, Dunkling/Gosling is good enough, but if you're a student, writer, historian or genealogist, get Stewart's too. It's worth it.
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If you are not familiar with the story of the Donner Party, they were a group of 87 pioneers who set out for California from Illinois in the spring of 1846. They traveled via a passage (which was essentially untried at that time) that was being hawked by a man named Hastings. The trail led them through an ordeal that included near death from thirst, marauding Indians, at least one murder, and, finally, their entrapment in the Sierra Nevada through the worst-ever recorded winter in that region. Sadly, most of the party that survived did so by yielding to the necessity of cannibalism. About half of the original party got out alive.
If you are as fascinated by true tales of extreme survival as I am, then this book will certainly prove gripping. One is reminded of the story of Shackleton's Endurance, or of the Uruguayan rugby team which suffered a plane crash in the Andes of South America. I recommend it without reservation to anyone who can stand it - but it is a most depressing saga.
Although we know the outcome in advance, the narrative is still thrilling as we read about Confederate troops breaking through and penetrating the Union defenses. Through the author's masterful story telling, the outcome, for a while, almost seems to be in doubt. In addition to documenting, almost regiment by regiment, the action which occured, the author provides many interesting, and often amusing, annecdotal tales of individual experiences. The carnage was terrible and the Confederate army suffered a horrific loss of officers, including generals.
The author also gets us into the heads of the key players in this event. He gives a lot of coverage to Lee's steadfastness in ordering the charge and Longstreet's serious misgivings. Written in the elegant, highly readable style of other Civil War historians of that era (the late 1950s), such as Bruce Catton, this is historical writing which almost reads like a novel. I highly recommend this classic history of this key event in American history.
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But it's Stewart's refusal to tread the usual Golden Age sci-fi path and make Ish a superscience hero that makes the novel very special. Ish may be a scientist, he's academically bright, but like many people he's low in energy, street-smarts, and foresight. By and large his motley clan possesses even lower survival skills. They aren't much different from the Valley Girls in another good story in the end-of-the-world genre, the movie NIGHT OF THE COMET. Both are based on an understanding that if the human race's average IQ is 100, half the people who are likely to survive a major disaster aren't going to be awfully competent. Stewart certainly knew that, and it provided both the uncanny realism and the rather depressing pessimism of this story. It's fascinating to note that the other reviewers have noted both aspects of EARTH ABIDES.
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