Title: Major Harold Ferguson: Citizen-Soldier Meets Roaring 20s Los Angeles
Author: Edmond J. Clinton III
Publisher: Xlibris US
ISBN: 978-1984571380
Pages: 254
Genre: Non-Fiction
Reviewed by: Aaron Washington
Pacific Book Review
It is always a fascinating experience when one reads about world wars in history books. The feeling gets to be better when the events are written by a person who experienced the war first hand. This book documents the life of Major Harold Ferguson as a World War I soldier.
The Stanford graduate lawyer came back to his Los Angeles home to find it different from the city he left before the war. The war had transformed his life and exposed him to the world. The war veteran told his accounts of the war explicitly and I was able to learn many few facts from his story.
The book starts with a brief biography of Harold Ferguson. Born in British Columbia, Canada, on August 31, 1888, Harold Gale Ferguson together with his family immigrated to California when he was six months old. The author wrote about Harold’s career life in law, his marriage and how he signed up for World War I after America entered the war. I liked the fact that Harold expounded a little on the cause of the war, and the alliances in Europe. I got to refresh my memory about the war.
One thing that made this book exciting to read was the inclusion of pictures in between the chapters. Looking at the pictures made me think of how life was back then, and how the people in the pictures interacted with Harold. One particular picture that I loved was that of Harold’s parents; Lillian and Peter Ferguson. Their Hollywood home was beautiful too.
I was impressed by how the author arranged Harold’s arrival in France chronologically, and even appreciated him more when I saw that he did that throughout the chapters. Giving dates and explaining the activities Harold engaged in made me visualize how his days must have been. One admirable thing about Harold Ferguson’s family was their family collection which had all the documents and images that were shared in the book. I think it was a cool thing that the family archived these memoirs for future generations. One would have a hard time trying to imagine how some WWI weapons and other items looked like without the images.
This book makes one want to read more about history, especially about the war. Not only was I made aware of some historical occurrences but also got to see how some political events were affected by the war. Edmond J. Clinton III did a brilliant job by compiling the diaries and journals of Major Harold Ferguson to give us this amazing book. I would encourage any history lover to get hold of the book, because the stories given are touching and the writing style excellent. All avid readers would enjoy such a book. The text is simplified for an average reader resulting in having a large reading audience, and the arrangement of the chapters are well placed. This is a book which is a delight to read from the first page to the last. For a better understanding of the world today, one needs to read Major Harold Ferguson: CitizenSoldier Meets Roaring 20s Los Angeles so to know where and how the world got to be the way it is.
