Title: Overblown and underdone
Review: This book, "When the Mississippi Ran Backwards: Empire, Intrigue, Murder, and the New Madrid Earthquakes" by Jay Feldman strikes this reader as having almost enough for a couple of short magazine articles. Instead, it has been padded out to book length with a series of at most tenuously connected elements that the author attempts, unavailingly, to weave into coherence. In this padding, Mr. Feldman manages to have "..veterans of the Napoleonic wars- many had fought with Wellington at Waterloo-.." engaged at New Orleans nearly six months before the decisive European battle (Jan 8, 1815 vs. June 18, 1815.) Most military historians attribute the "..whites of their eyes.." order to one of the colonial commanders at Bunker Hill, often to Israel Putnam - Feldman gives it to Jackson. The continual jumping from place to place and back again; topic to topic and back again; and time to time and back again left this reader dazed but not dazzled.
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