Where a holiday actually came from is a question most people never ask, and Edward and JoAnn Walter answer it one holiday at a time. Memorial Day before it was called that. How Irish history and folklore turned into an American tradition. Why a day set aside for fathers exists at all. What the commercial side of Easter has grown into.
The travel writing is European and specific. A video tour of a castle with its architecture explained. A walled Bavarian town. A cathedral in Strasbourg filmed rather than described.
There is a substantial piece on the Hanoverian sport horse, on where the breed came from and how somebody actually finds one for dressage, written for people who already ride.
They also collect the coincidences linking two assassinated presidents, presented as a curiosity rather than as a theory.
Read whichever holiday is coming next. The history is properly researched and it will change how you sit at the table.