"A Place in History"

A Place in History: Albany in the Age of Revolution, 1775-1825 (Warren Roberts)

I wanted to like this book; I thought you could read Bloody Mohawk and then this for a nice overview of the capital region's history. Unfortunately, Roberts wanders around far too much. Half the book is about the French revolution, which is interesting, but isn't really about Albany, and the lack of focus really hurts the book. The very beginning, about the battle of Saratoga, and the very end about the Erie Canal manage to stay on topic, but the bulk of the book - a framing device examining the lives of six people who visited Philip Schuyler, and then a long biography of a French noblewoman who spent a whole two years in New York - meanders unpardonably. Most of the characters we get substantive biographies of end up going to France, or fleeing from France, or are French noblewomen, and ten pages into a biography of Gouvernor Morris where he's been getting laid in Paris for pages, I find myself flipping back to the cover and making sure I'm still reading a book that's about Albany in the revolutionary period. I'm sure there's a good book in here somewhere, but I have to regretfully attach the "badly needs an editor" tag and assign the dreaded

Grade: D