Another one for the “middle-aged suburban dads will love this!” bucket.

Nothing wrong with middle-aged, suburban dads, of course, but they don’t tend to have the same taste in nonfiction History as I do, and unfortunately this one is more their bag than mine.

Boessenecker writes well enough from a narrative standpoint so the book flows relatively well, and it’s certainly well researched. Alas, way too many detailed battle descriptions from the Civil War, specifics on weapons, and general military stuff for me. I was a little surprised to see such a heavy focus on that since this is purported to be about train robbery.

And indeed it is, but I still left this one feeling like I would have preferred more detailed discussion of train travel at the time and Old West atmosphere than what I actually got.

This is well crafted and there’s definitely an audience for it, but that audience is definitely not—no matter how much I love train-related nonfiction—me.