Castledan's book has short first-person accounts of significant historical events. They are never more than a few pages long and include two introductory quote/photo pages per event and occasional sidebars. That makes this a coffee table book to me, but it's an interesting one. The witnessed events include events such as the Battle of Hastings and the execution of Mary during Elizabeth I's reign. I had seen the latter depicted in a couple of movies, and the eyewitness account was both interesting and chilling. More modern events include the D-Day invasion and the fall of the Twin Towers. The most distinctive thing about the book is that there is only a short description of the event, an introduction of the eyewitness, and then their first-person account. The only commentary on the account relates to whether the eyewitness is actually reliable and what biases he might have.
I picked this up at a B&N closeout table for a few dollars, and I will probably hang into it for a while as some of the stories and language are quite quotable.
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