Pretty much what the title says. I’m taking a history of Maryland course and I’m required to write a book review on any book that pertains to Maryland or its people, and I figured the well-read denizens of the Straight Dope could point out some good ones. I’d prefer to shy away from general histories of the state because that’s what the class is covering. I’m more looking for books that cover the history of specific part of Maryland (e.g. Baltimore), perhaps a biography of a prominent Marylander, or a book that details Maryland’s role in something larger (U.S. history, WWII, etc.), or anything else you might recommend.
Basically as long as the book centers on Maryland or its people in some way it’s fair game.
• Making Steel: Sparrows Point and the Rise and Ruin of American Industrial Might, by Mark Reutter. About the world’s largest steel mill, at Sparrows Point, Maryland.
• Hanging Henry Gambrill: The Violent Career of Baltimore’s Plug Uglies, 1854-1860, by Tracy Matthew Melton. Pre-Civil War nativists.
• Group Harmony: The Black Urban Roots of Rhythm & Blues, by Stuart L. Goosman. Focuses on D.C. and Maryland.
Actually, given the current ethics problems with the Vice-President, how about Spiro Agnew for a report. Agnew was governor of Maryland and Vice President.
Very narrow scope, but the excellent Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets is the chronicle of a year author David Simon spent following Baltimore’s homicide squad in the late '80’s. It served as the basis for the NBC TV series Homicide: Life on the Streets, and many of the situations are echoed in the current HBO show The Wire, on which Simon is head writer.
Incidentally, The Wire is the best show on television.
There are lots of books written about its role as a border state and even a couple about the POW camps there if you’re interested, though you may want to stay out of the Civil War altogether.
IMO the Bloodiest Day in American History does not get nearly the level of attention it deserves – even in discussions of the Civil War. Therefore, I offer the best book that I know of that day in Maryland that still effects each of our lives still today:
I haven’t read them, but I know there are new-ish biographies out of H.L. Mencken and Mary Surratt out. (Surratt was hanged because of her D.C. boarding house, but she was from and primarily associated with Maryland- for that matter there are several bios of members of the Booth family, Dr. Mudd (who is now considered not quite as innocent as previously suspected by many historians) and Kate Sprague.
{Sprague was an intriguing woman who figures largely as a character in several Gore Vidal novels; she was the daughter of Salmon Chase [who though from Ohio owned a farm, Edgewood, in Maryland) and she was the Belle of D.C. during the Lincoln Administration and a political powerhouse. She married one of the richest men in the nation, a nutcase millionaire from Rhode Island, and the marriage dissolved due to chronic infidelities and other oddities on both sides and she retreated to her Maryland farm. People who stopped by in the 1890s could buy eggs and jelly from a frumpy old woman at a roadside stand and never know that she had once danced with crowned heads and worn $50,000 tiaras.
If you want a novel, there’s John Barth’s The Sot-Weed Factor, which is astonishingly accurate about colonial Maryland (I kept discovering that some of the more bizarre elements were actually true). You should read it just on general principles: it’s one of the greatest American Novels of the 20th Century – and both funny and bawdy.
Great book. Although a warning to the OP is probably in order: it’s verrrry long.
Another very important American book that takes place within the state of Maryland is Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, written by himself.
Wow! Thanks for the recommendations everybody. I thought I’d only get a response or two, but you guys have given me a bunch of suggestions. Another reason I love this place.
A year ago or so, I saw an HBO original film called Something the Lord Made, based on the amazing story of Vivien Thomas, who did pioneering research in heart surgery with Alfred Blalock even though Thomas had at most a high school education (while Blalock was a famous surgeon). Eventually Thomas was named to the faculty of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Thomas wrote a book on his experiences called Partners of the Heart: Vivien Thomas and His Work With Alfred Blalock.