Here is Where: Discovering America’s Great Forgotten History

By Andrew Carroll

Long time readers (if that is you – thanks) know that each week I recommend a resource to help you improve, grow, or in some way move towards your potential. The most common resource (about 40/year) are books. And most of those books have a connection to leadership in the broadest context.

Not so much today.

Today’s book is a new one that I enjoyed reading, but you wouldn’t find it in the leadership, personal development, or business management section in a book shelf. This book is part history book and part travelogue.

Here is the premise: There are many places where important and interesting things happened in history, that aren’t marked in any way: people could walk or drive by and never know that something important happened at that spot. Carroll, a talented author, decided to find those places and tell those stories.

I read an excerpt – actually the first story told in the book (and the situation that started the whole project) – in an airplane magazine. I was immediately hooked and ordered the book on Amazon before it was released (the publication date was in May of 2013).

The initial story is about the spot where Abraham Lincoln’s son was saved by the brother of Lincoln’s assassin. While not all of the stories are quite that cool, the book is fascinating, funny and a must read for anyone who cares at all about history – and really even if you didn’t like history in school, you would have liked it much more if you had learned some of these stories.

Here are a few examples:

• Where America’s biggest maritime disaster took place (far worse than the Titanic) – and insights into why we don’t know much about it.
• The brainstorm that lead a 14 year old to invent the television.
• Where the first cremation took place.
• The invention of a revolutionary weapon that was invented – in prison.

In short, while you can find leadership lessons in this book (I did), that isn’t why I read it or recommend that you do. This blog is titled Leadership and Learning. Put this one in the Learning – the interesting and fun learning – category.