Here was somewhere but not quite here

Here is Where
Discovering America's Great Forgotten History
by Andrew Carroll

I wonder sometimes if editors suffer fatigue when reviewing long books. Is 462 pages long? I think it is, although I've read longer ones. And I suspect it is difficult to sustain the sharp attention to detail needed for editing such a lot of pages.

if so, editor fatigue might explain why I started this book with such enthusiasm but had to force myself to finish it. The last few chapters seemed to cover interesting topics--Daniel Boone's grave, which might or might not be in Frankfort, Kentucky; the current whereabouts of the 200 official copies of the Declaration of Independence; the source of the 850,000 unidentified and unclaimed bodies on Hart Island;.... But I lost interest at some point and the book failed to draw me back in.

Or possibly as the book took shape the author took fewer notes on his journeys to the places, so he was left with just the research materials. I admit to being more interested in reading how a place was discovered, how it's significance was determined, and how it looks now--rather than just the historical facts of its existence.

Here's how one of the stories starts.

My elation is tempered by the fact that I don't exactly know where I'm going.... I have old photos of a relevant site in Springville, just south of Provo, but the area has changed drastically since the 1970s. When I called around before coming to Utah, no one I spoke with from this area--librarians, town officials, real estate agents--key the specifics. Granted, the crime took place about forty years ago, but it's not often that someone carrying half a million dollars jumps out of a plane over one's town.

He goes on to relate the facts of the skyjacking, then his attempts to find someone who can tell him where the man landed. He finds someone who remembers and they tell him where to go. He then finishes the history of the crime and the guy who did it. But when he gets to the site--now an empty field behind a construction zone--dusk has fallen and there's nothing to see. End of story.

See my disappointment?  They weren't all like that, but just enough to make me feel like he could have written them without ever walking out his doorway.