Waiting for the Morning Train: An American Boyhood

by Bruce Catton

Book Overview

In this memoir, Catton remembers his youth, his family, his home town, and his coming of age. Bruce Catton, whose name is identified with Civil War history, grew up in Benzonia, Michigan, probably the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385074603
• ISBN13: 9780385074605
• Release Date: January 1972
• Publisher: Doubleday Books
• Length: 260 Pages
• Weight: 1.06 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A lament fior the 20th century

This book is generally considered a memoir of growing up in rural northern Michigan in the early 1900's, and it is; but it is also a lament for the 20th century. Catton contrasts the optimism of the America of his youth--it's faith in progress and in the future, it's belief that Americans could solve any problem with hard work, right thinking, and the guidance of Divine Providence--with the reality of national and world events that transpired from World War I through the Viet Nam era. The mood of the book is reflective and even melancholy at times. I felt Catton was a concerned and discouraged man as he wrote this. He saw unlimited technological power as a frightening development and he had little faith in the ability of America or humankind in general to exhibit self-discipline in the use of such power. It's a very thought-provoking book, and extremely relevant to today's world even 35 years after publication.

Boyhood Memoirs of a Literary Giant

I never met Bruce Catton, but I corresponded briefly with him in the mid-1970's. The same qualities that marked him as a correspondent--courtesy, graciousness, and gentle humor--illuminate this lovely memoir of a great historian. Catton grew up in Benzonia, Michigan, "a city upon a hill," as he correctly notes, very close to Lake Michigan, where the old certitudes held seemingly invincible sway over virtually every aspect of one's daily life. Catton's father was the superintendent of Benzonia Academy, whose main building is now Benzonia's library. The memoir, which recalls the years between the author's birth and his graduation from high school, is a series of reflections on what it was like to be a boy just as Michigan's logging era was drawing to a close, when sleepy Benzonia, along with the rest of the nation, was about to drift into the maw of the violent twentieth century. Catton writes of boyhood ambitions and boyish pranks, of the rich history that made Michigan's Lower Peninsula what it was, and especially of the Civil War veterans whose stories would later prompt Catton to devote years of his life to recording the history of that great conflict in rich anecdotal detail.Though unabashedly nostalgic, "Waiting for the Morning Train" is neither saccharine nor bitter. Catton was far too experienced a writer and historian to let his emotions get the better of him. This is, nonetheless, a rich and moving memoir of a time which, though it may seem virtually within reach, we will never see again.I recommend this book highly as a gift for yourself and, perhaps, for that reflective friend who can appreciate personal history told with universal appeal. Bruce Catton was, quite simply, one of the greatest writers and historians this country has produced, and in many ways this deceptively modest little volume represents the zenith of his literary achievement.

The boyhood of a giant

My interest in Waiting for the Morning Train lay not so much with Bruce Catton's being a giant of Civil War literature, but rather with his subject: Benzonia, Michigan, the place at which my family has taken vacation for decades (and where several family members now permanently reside). I could see the waters of Crystal Lake, the snow-covered hills of Beulah and Benzonia, and the lush birch, maple and pine forests of Northern Michigan as Catton knew them in his youth. Readers of Waiting for the Morning train will not only catch a glimpse of the spark that ignited Catton's pasion for the Civil War, but more importantly the story of a land that, if one tries hard enough, one will still find. Catton's boyhood stomping grounds come alive with tales of logging, weary travel by train and the fits of small towns being brought into a more modern era. The subtitle is An American Boyhood, and in Catton's childhood memoirs the reader will not only witness Catton's growth to manhood, but also the nation's emergence from adolecence to adulthood.

Civil War Historian grows up in Northwestern Michigan

Bruce Catton, winner of the Pulitzer, National Book Award and Presidential Medal of Freedom writes a little know memoir of his childhood of listening to the Civil War veterans tell tales of their Battery from Michigan that fought in the most famous battles in the War Between the States. How he was able to develop an almost transendent ability the listen and record in the far reaches of his sub conciousness the words and deeds that were told to him is remarkable. He would use the stories when he finally decided to put them down in his famous books that he didn't start until he was nearly at the age of fifty. But the book is also a statement on how the world has become a bunch of "Babbits" who put the motorcar above everything else. The metaphor he uses is the Mackinaw Bridge which was built in the late 50s to connect the Upper Penninsula to the lower so people would not have to wait in line for the ferry. Kafka said, "Because of impatience we were tossed out of Eden and because of impatience we can never return." Ironically Mackinac Island allows no cars and gets half a million plus tourists in the summer, where Maui has the finest weather in the world but no public transportation because people can't deal with the inconvience. Catton was very presient on this. The world finds itself in a place where we can't roll back to a slower time and now people want to drive tanks in the form of off road Vans. This book is also very readable and fun and in the intro his brother calls it his best book.