Notorious hotels

Old books, a coffee addiction, and the Civil War. Also, 7 other things worth your time.

In 1901, a man named William Crossley, who was then in his early 60s and who had a dry wit and a way with words, addressed the Rhode Island Soldiers and Sailors Historical Society.

The topic: his experience as a Union soldier during the Civil War who had served only 46 days before being wounded and captured by the Confederate army.

Crossley spent 300 days, as he put euphemistically put it, “boarding with Jefferson Davis, in three of his notorious hotels,” before he was exchanged. (Then, he went back into combat, fighting at seven other battles between 1862 and 1864.)

Still later, Crossley turned his talk — which was based on his war diary — into a short book. Google helpfully scanned it more than 100 years later, and I wound up sprinting through it on my back deck yesterday, laughing out loud at parts.

Here’s how that all came to pass:

1. I took last week off. (I’m hoping you noticed!) I was on vacation on Cape Cod with my wife, daughter, and quite a bit of my extended family. It was so gr…