Clair's bookshelf: all en-US Thu, 01 May 2025 14:52:18 -0700 60 Clair's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Playing for Keeps: Michael Jordan and the World That He Made]]> 1890302 ĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚý
From The Breaks of the Game to Summer of '49 , David Halberstam has brought the perspective of a great historian, the inside knowledge of a dogged sportswriter, and the love of a fan to bear on some of the most mythic players and teams in the annals of American sport. With Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls he has given himself his greatest challenge, and produced his greatest triumph. The book is rich with Halberstam's professional incisive, carefully woven human portraits of the major figures. We see the various players and teams the Bulls must overcome on their long, hard journey to six world championships, including Larry Bird and the Celtics, Isiah Thomas and the Pistons, and Magic Johnson and the Lakers. We get a rare insider's view of the dynamics between Jordan, the star, and the others who played critical roles in the championship seasons, including the shrewd, thoughtful Phil Jackson, the enigmatic Scottie Pippen, and the curiously shy Dennis Rodman. In addition, we see the bitter divisions between players and management on the Bulls, and the NBA's interior pressures and conflicts as basketball grows during Jordan's reign into a phenomenally successful big-time celebrity sport. This book is, as well, about fame in America, the forces that create it and its consequences. Among other things, we see how David Falk and Nike launched the campaign that sold Jordan to the world, abetted by a small Oregon ad agency, Wieden and Kennedy, and a struggling young Brooklyn filmmaker named Spike Lee.
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The product of tireless on-the-ground reporting suffused with the wisdom and imagination of one of our greatest writers, Playing for Keeps is a book that, in defining Michael Jordan, also helps to define America in the Jordan Era.]]> 426 David Halberstam 0679415629 Clair 5 4.22 1989 Playing for Keeps: Michael Jordan and the World That He Made
author: David Halberstam
name: Clair
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1989
rating: 5
read at: 2025/05/01
date added: 2025/05/01
shelves:
review:
Playing for Keeps is a remarkable story about a remarkable athlete by a remarkable author. David Halberstam has demonstrated time and again how fluidly he can move from the subject of politics to sports and back again. His undertaking to tell the Michael Jordan story is another example of that unique talent. Some may criticize Halberstam's writing as glorification of the Jordan era in the NBA. If this was indeed the case, it would be difficult to not understand why. Jordan was then and remains the greatest among NBA greats (no apologies to Lebron James fans). Halberstam casts extended and in-depth light on what Jordan meant to the Chicago Bulls and the NBA itself (and to a lesser degree to the University of North Carolina). But Halberstam does not shy away from the dark side of Michael Jordan. He was and is after all, human, and there is no effort made to hide the bully-side. nor the selfish side that are part of the complicated man. Playing for Keeps was released more than 25 years ago. Halberstam is no longer living and Jordan is no longer an every day subject in the news. The NBA specifically and professional sports in general, has evolved numerous times in those 25 years. But like any great story of history, Playing for Keeps is a book that lives on, and should be read as a reminder of how times have changed.
]]> The Kite Runner 17165596 The Kite Runner is a beautifully crafted novel set in a country that is in the process of being destroyed. It is about the power of reading, the price of betrayal, and the possibility of redemption; and an exploration of the power of fathers over sons—their love, their sacrifices, their lies.

A sweeping story of family, love, and friendship told against the devastating backdrop of the history of Afghanistan over the last thirty years, The Kite Runner is an unusual and powerful novel that has become a beloved, one-of-a-kind classic.

The 10th anniversary edition of the New York Times bestseller and international classic loved by millions of readers.

]]> 371 Khaled Hosseini Clair 5 4.47 2003 The Kite Runner
author: Khaled Hosseini
name: Clair
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2003
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/17
date added: 2025/04/17
shelves:
review:
A remarkable novel of hope told in the shadows of a country that for so many years held no suggestion of hope. Khaled Hosseini's story is as much about Afghanistan as it is of Amir, Hassan, Baba, Soraya and so many other remarkable characters that together make The Kite Runner a beautifully told story. Like the recent history of Afghanistan, The Kite Runner evolves from a dark, uncertain history, but hope for a better time is suggested in the end. So it seemed for Afghanistan as well, and as uncertain as life was for the Afghan people, there was a glimmer of hope, until recent years with the Taliban returning to power. Would The Kite Runner have a different ending, had it been written in 2023, rather than 2003?
]]> Patriot: A Memoir 210943348
Alexei Navalny began writing Patriot shortly after his near-fatal poisoning in 2020. It is the full story of his life: his youth, his call to activism, his marriage and family, his commitment to challenging a world super-power determined to silence him, and his total conviction that change cannot be resisted—and will come.

In vivid, page-turning detail, including never-before-seen correspondence from prison, Navalny recounts, among other things, his political career, the many attempts on his life, and the lives of the people closest to him, and the relentless campaign he and his team waged against an increasingly dictatorial regime.

Written with the passion, wit, candor, and bravery for which he was justly acclaimed, Patriot is Navalny’s final letter to the world: a moving account of his last years spent in the most brutal prison on earth; a reminder of why the principles of individual freedom matter so deeply; and a rousing call to continue the work for which he sacrificed his life.

“This book is a testament not only to Alexei’s life, but to his unwavering commitment to the fight against dictatorship—a fight he gave everything for, including his life. Through its pages, readers will come to know the man I loved deeply—a man of profound integrity and unyielding courage. Sharing his story will not only honor his memory but also inspire others to stand up for what is right and to never lose sight of the values that truly matter.� —Yulia Navalnaya]]> 496 Alexei Navalny 0593320964 Clair 0 to-read 4.54 2024 Patriot: A Memoir
author: Alexei Navalny
name: Clair
average rating: 4.54
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle]]> 60647674
A president who governed a divided country has much to teach us in a twenty-first-century moment of polarization and political crisis. Abraham Lincoln was president when implacable secessionists gave no quarter in a clash of visions inextricably bound up with money, power, race, identity, and faith. He was hated and hailed, excoriated and revered. In Lincoln we can see the possibilities of the presidency as well as its limitations.

At once familiar and elusive, Lincoln tends to be seen in popular minds as the greatest of American presidents—a remote icon—or as a politician driven more by calculation than by conviction. This illuminating new portrait gives us a very human Lincoln—an imperfect man whose moral antislavery commitment was essential to the story of justice in America. Here is the Lincoln who, as a boy, was steeped in the sermons of emancipation by Baptist preachers; who insisted that slavery was a moral evil; and who sought, as he put it, to do right as God gave him light to see the right.

This book tells the story of Lincoln from his birth on the Kentucky frontier in 1809 to his leadership during the Civil War to his tragic assassination at Ford’s Theater on Good Friday 1865: his rise, his self-education through reading, his loves, his bouts of depression, his political failures, his deepening faith, and his persistent conviction that slavery must end. In a nation shaped by the courage of the enslaved of the era and by the brave witness of Black Americans of the nineteenth century, Lincoln’s story illuminates the ways and means of politics, the marshaling of power in a belligerent democracy, the durability of white supremacy in America, and the capacity of conscience to shape the maelstrom of events.

Lincoln was not all he might have been—few human beings ever are—but he was more than many men have ever been. We could have done worse. And we have. And, as Lincoln himself would readily acknowledge, we can always do better. But we will do so only if we see Abraham Lincoln—and ourselves—whole.]]> 676 Jon Meacham 0553393960 Clair 5
Beautifully written and shedding great light on the moralist and spiritual Lincoln, Meacham parlays that but suggesting early on that Lincoln had his sights on a life as a politician. Others have suggested that Lincoln was not a religious man, perhaps even an agnostic, but Meacham offers that Lincoln while not evangelistic, realized his role was guided by the principles of a higher being. Time and again, the author references that Lincoln's purpose was Providential; namely in bringing an end to slavery. But the politician side of Lincoln was always in view, recognizing that the country, both sides of the civil war would never embrace emancipation as the reason for war; it was about saving the Union, first; an objective skeptical, if not outright racist Northerners would patriotically embrace.

Meacham's portrayal of Lincoln is like few, if any others. Lincoln's words are offered frequently and powerfully. It's remarkable and nothing short of a miracle that Lincoln was so fortunately in the right place in what otherwise was a horrible time in US history.]]> 4.44 2022 And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle
author: Jon Meacham
name: Clair
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/10
date added: 2025/04/10
shelves:
review:
There have been countless marvelous books written about the great 16th president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. And I have read many, but few, if any take on the perspective that Jon Meacham takes with And there was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle.

Beautifully written and shedding great light on the moralist and spiritual Lincoln, Meacham parlays that but suggesting early on that Lincoln had his sights on a life as a politician. Others have suggested that Lincoln was not a religious man, perhaps even an agnostic, but Meacham offers that Lincoln while not evangelistic, realized his role was guided by the principles of a higher being. Time and again, the author references that Lincoln's purpose was Providential; namely in bringing an end to slavery. But the politician side of Lincoln was always in view, recognizing that the country, both sides of the civil war would never embrace emancipation as the reason for war; it was about saving the Union, first; an objective skeptical, if not outright racist Northerners would patriotically embrace.

Meacham's portrayal of Lincoln is like few, if any others. Lincoln's words are offered frequently and powerfully. It's remarkable and nothing short of a miracle that Lincoln was so fortunately in the right place in what otherwise was a horrible time in US history.
]]> Crazy Horse and Custer 49253 560 Stephen E. Ambrose 0743468643 Clair 0 to-read 4.14 1975 Crazy Horse and Custer
author: Stephen E. Ambrose
name: Clair
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1975
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Red Dog Farm 215749176
Growing up on his family’s cattle farm in western Iceland, young Orri has gained an appreciation for the beauty found in everyday things: the cavorting of a newborn calf, the return of birdsong after a long winter, the steadfast love of a good (or tolerably good) farm dog. But the outer world still beckons, so Orri leaves his no-nonsense Lithuanian Jewish mother and his taciturn father, Pabbi, to attend university in Reykjavík.

Pabbi is no stranger to cycles of life and death, growth and destruction. He is pursued by the memory of a volcanic eruption and its aftermath, and so many years of hardscrabble farming have left their mark. Jaded, and no longer able to find joy in his way of life, Pabbi falls into a depression soon after Orri goes away to school. Orri, feeling adrift and aimless at the end of his first semester, comes home.

For the first time, Pabbi allows Orri to help him run the farm. Despite their conflicting attitudes, Orri and Pabbi must learn to work together. Meanwhile, Orri meets a kindred spirit on the internet: Mihan, a part-time student. Over time—and countless texts and phone calls—their connection deepens. By year’s end, Orri must decide whether he wants to—or should—return to university, and what a future with Mihan would hold, if she’ll have him.

With his signature blend of humor and tenderness, Nathaniel Ian Miller’s Red Dog Farm is about the bonds forged and tested between family, friends, and lovers—and the act of building a home, together.]]> 272 Nathaniel Ian Miller 0316575143 Clair 3
In Miller's second novel, Orri, is a young man at a crossroads. Continue with college or return to the farm. It seems every main actor in Red Dog Farm is faced with their own life's challenges: Orri's parents, his neighbor, Runa, Orri's girlfriend Mihan. Only Orri's grandmother and dog are grounded. And all taking place in Iceland, no less.

This should all make for a terrific novel, but after the incredible story in the Memoirs of Stockholm Sven, Red Dog Farm doesn't quite measure up. Miller's wonderful word flow and his delightful humor are still present. His ability to vividly capture the darker side of Iceland, that which we don't learn about in tourist guides, especially on a small struggling farm is colorful and intimidating. But beyond the midpoint of the book, the story bogs down, becomes staid and more than a little predictable. It's an unfortunate turn.

if for no other reason, read Red Dog Farm, because it's the work of a remarkable writer. While it may not be his best, this read will leave us looking forward to Miller's next outing.]]> 3.88 Red Dog Farm
author: Nathaniel Ian Miller
name: Clair
average rating: 3.88
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/01
date added: 2025/04/02
shelves:
review:
Orrie is not Sven. Not that author Nathaniel Ian Miller's intention was to write a sequel to his marvelous first outing, The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven, when writing Red Dog Farm.

In Miller's second novel, Orri, is a young man at a crossroads. Continue with college or return to the farm. It seems every main actor in Red Dog Farm is faced with their own life's challenges: Orri's parents, his neighbor, Runa, Orri's girlfriend Mihan. Only Orri's grandmother and dog are grounded. And all taking place in Iceland, no less.

This should all make for a terrific novel, but after the incredible story in the Memoirs of Stockholm Sven, Red Dog Farm doesn't quite measure up. Miller's wonderful word flow and his delightful humor are still present. His ability to vividly capture the darker side of Iceland, that which we don't learn about in tourist guides, especially on a small struggling farm is colorful and intimidating. But beyond the midpoint of the book, the story bogs down, becomes staid and more than a little predictable. It's an unfortunate turn.

if for no other reason, read Red Dog Farm, because it's the work of a remarkable writer. While it may not be his best, this read will leave us looking forward to Miller's next outing.
]]> <![CDATA[When the Mississippi Ran Backwards: Empire, Intrigue, Murder, and the New Madrid Earthquakes of 1811-12]]> 13546422
On December 15, 1811, two of Thomas Jefferson's nephews murdered a slave in cold blood and put his body parts into a roaring fire. The evidence would have been destroyed but for a rare act of God—or, as some believed, of the Indian chief Tecumseh.

That same day, the Mississippi River's first steamboat, piloted by Nicholas Roosevelt, powered itself toward New Orleans on its maiden voyage. The sky grew hazy and red, and jolts of electricity flashed in the air. A prophecy by Tecumseh was about to be fulfilled.

He had warned reluctant warrior-tribes that he would stamp his feet and bring down their houses. Sure enough, between December 16, 1811, and late April 1812, a catastrophic series of earthquakes shook the Mississippi River Valley. Of the more than 2,000 tremors that rumbled across the land during this time, three would have measured nearly or greater than 8.0 on the not-yet-devised Richter Scale. Centered in what is now the bootheel region of Missouri, the New Madrid earthquakes were felt as far away as Canada; New York; New Orleans; Washington, DC; and the western part of the Missouri River. A million and a half square miles were affected as the earth's surface remained in a state of constant motion for nearly four months. Towns were destroyed, an eighteen-mile-long by five-mile-wide lake was created, and even the Mississippi River temporarily ran backwards.

The quakes uncovered Jefferson's nephews' cruelty and changed the course of the War of 1812 as well as the future of the new republic. In When the Mississippi Ran Backwards, Jay Feldman expertly weaves together the story of the slave murder, the steamboat, Tecumseh, and the war, and brings a forgotten period back to vivid life. Tecumseh's widely believed prophecy, seemingly fulfilled, hastened an unprecedented alliance among southern and northern tribes, who joined the British in a disastrous fight against the U.S. government. By the end of the war, the continental United States was secure against Britain, France, and Spain; the Indians had lost many lives and much land; and Jefferson's nephews were exposed as murderers. The steamboat, which survived the earthquake, was sunk.

When the Mississippi Ran Backwards sheds light on this now-obscure yet pivotal period between the Revolutionary and Civil wars, uncovering the era's dramatic geophysical, political, and military upheavals. Feldman paints a vivid picture of how these powerful earthquakes made an impact on every aspect of frontier life—and why similar catastrophic quakes are guaranteed to recur. When the Mississippi Ran Backwards is popular history at its best.]]> 320 Jay Feldman 0743242793 Clair 4 4.29 2005 When the Mississippi Ran Backwards: Empire, Intrigue, Murder, and the New Madrid Earthquakes of 1811-12
author: Jay Feldman
name: Clair
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/29
date added: 2025/03/30
shelves:
review:
Jay Feldman expertly provides a view of the cataclysmic earthquake that shook the center of North America in 1811-12 in his work, When the Mississippi Ran Backwards: Empire, Intrigue, Murder and the New Madrid Earthquakes of 1811-1812. It's surprising that more hasn't been written about this event and its impact on the Westward Expansion of the US. Feldman provides fascinating detail of the event through the eyes of the few who bothered to document it. One senses the shock and overwhelming emotions they experienced, as if life along the Mississippi wasn't already challenging. But more than just a record of the earthquake, Feldman shares the impact of the growing cultural and land battles with the numerous Indigenous people of the region and the heroic efforts of Tecumseh to rally them to stand their ground. To a lesser extent, Feldman sheds light on slavery in the involved territories, particularly one grisly occasion that epitomizes the horror that slavery in the US was and continued to be. when the Mississippi Ran Backwards is not a long book, but Feldman does a remarkable job of capturing the young United States as it was at that time, temporarily halted by a yearlong earthquake and subsequent tremors that were it to occur today, would dramatically change our way of life in the center of the country.
]]> Conclave 211119902
Behind the locked doors of the Sistine Chapel, one hundred and eighteen cardinals from all over the globe will cast their votes in the world’s most secretive election.

They are holy men. But they have ambition. And they have rivals.

Over the next seventy-two hours one of them will become the most powerful spiritual figure on earth.]]> 286 Robert Harris 0593689585 Clair 4 4.12 2016 Conclave
author: Robert Harris
name: Clair
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/23
date added: 2025/03/24
shelves:
review:
Perhaps I should have read the book before seeing the movie. Both were very good, but it's hard to read the book and not see Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci and John Lithgow in their respective roles, and for whatever reason, it detracted from reading. But the book itself read like it was the screenplay, verbatim. Is that a good thing? With only a few exceptions, it was as if every scene, every conversation, every thought was captured in the film adaptation. Nevertheless, Conclaves is an enjoyable read. Harris is terrific in capturing the painful process, Ralph, sorry, Lomeli, experiences virtually every moment leading up to and during the Conclave: his interaction with other cardinals, his prayers, his angst on literally every page. Other characters too, but none more so than Lomeli as the Dean of the Conclave. Enjoy both the movie and the book, but read the book, first.
]]> A Gentleman in Moscow 29430012 He can't leave. You won't want to.

With his breakout novel Rules of Civility, Amor Towles established himself as a master of absorbing, sophisticated fiction, bringing late-1930s Manhattan to life with splendid atmosphere and a flawless command of style. A Gentleman in Moscow immerses us in another elegantly drawn era with the story of Count Alexander Rostov.

When, in 1922, the thirty-year-old Count is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, he is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. An indomitable man of erudition and wit, Rostov must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors.

Unexpectedly, the Count's reduced circumstances provide him entry to a much larger world of emotional discovery as he forges friendships with the hotel's other denizens, including a willful actress, a shrewd Kremlinite, a gregarious American, and a temperamental chef. But when fate suddenly puts the life of a young girl in his hands, he must draw on all his ingenuity to protect the future she so deserves.

Brimming with humor, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates the Count’s endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose.]]> 462 Amor Towles Clair 5 4.33 2016 A Gentleman in Moscow
author: Amor Towles
name: Clair
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/20
date added: 2025/03/21
shelves:
review:
How does one deal with the news that his life has been spared from the firing squad and instead will live the rest of his life in an attic space in a large hotel. So begin A Gentleman in Moscow. Considered a voice opposed to post revolutionary Russia, but recognizing the popularity of his poetry, Count Alexander Rostov is exiled to live in the Metropol Hotel in the heart of Moscow. Rostov demonstrates his masterful skills in re-setting his life and lifestyle to this exiled world inside the six story walls of the Russian landmark. Author Amor Towles demonstrates his masterful skills as a writer, involving his readers in the life of this gentleman of Moscow and of the world. Anticipation of this being a dark story of brooding and self pity, is turned on its ear immediately as we find ourselves in awe of the Count's adjustments to his new way of life, and exhibiting his embrace of those beautiful souls around him. a real factor of his survival with grace, yet never losing sight of being a Count. But this is not a Pollyannish tale in any way, shape or form. It is a story of aspiration and hope; tale of joy from first page to last.
]]> <![CDATA[Faster: How a Jewish Driver, an American Heiress, and a Legendary Car Beat Hitler’s Best]]> 51936887 For fans of The Boys in the BoatĚýandĚýIn the Garden of Beasts, a pulse-pounding tale of triumph by an improbable team of upstarts over Hitler’s fearsome Silver Arrows during the golden age of auto racing.

They were the unlikeliest of heroes. Rene Dreyfus, a former top driver on the international racecar circuit, had been banned from the best European teams—and fastest cars—by the mid-1930s because of his Jewish heritage. Charles Weiffenbach, head of the down-on-its-luck automaker Delahaye, was desperately trying to save his company as the world teetered toward the brink. And Lucy Schell, the adventurous daughter of an American multi-millionaire, yearned to reclaim the glory of her rally-driving days.
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As Nazi Germany launched its campaign of racial terror and pushed the world toward war, these three misfits banded together to challenge Hitler’s dominance at the apex of motorsport: the Grand Prix. Their quest for redemption culminated in a remarkable race that is still talked about in racing circles to this day—but which, soon after it ended, Hitler attempted to completely erase from history.
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Bringing to life this glamorous era and the sport that defined it, Faster chronicles one of the most inspiring, death-defying upsets of all time: a symbolic blow against the Nazis during history’s darkest hour.]]> 368 Neal Bascomb 1328489876 Clair 3 4.05 2020 Faster: How a Jewish Driver, an American Heiress, and a Legendary Car Beat Hitler’s Best
author: Neal Bascomb
name: Clair
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/14
date added: 2025/03/15
shelves:
review:
Oh, the joy of automotive racing in the 20s and 30s! Cars were beautiful, fast and dangerous. Neal Bascomb's Faster: How a Jewish Driver, an American Heiress and a Legendary Car Beat Hitler's Best, captures an overlooked moment of this era, with a retelling the run up to the 1938 French Grand Prix at Pau. Nazi Germany was throwing its immense shadow over Europe at the time and demonstrating Teutonic prowess everywhere, including on the racetrack. But for a brief, shining moment, Germany and its fleet of silver Mercedes and Auto Unions, was dealt a slap down by French driver Rene Dreyfus behind the wheel of a Delahaye, and a team of remarkable craftsmen and ingenuity. That Dreyfus was a Jew added greatly to the embarrassment of the Nazis on the eve of their overrunning of Czechoslovakia and eventual start of World War II. Perhaps it was a freak happenstance that Dreyfus won this race as his Delahaye was more adept to the Pau street course, but he won nonetheless. Author Neal Bascomb provides a riveting, if oftentimes melodramatic, telling of this terrific story. He leaves no detail regarding this era of the auto races and rallies, the people behind the wheel and people that made it possible. Faster is a fast read, shedding light on an improbable moment in history.
]]> PrairyErth (A Deep Map) 163868 Blue Highways "a masterpiece." Now Heat-Moon has pulled to the side of the road and set off on foot to take readers on an exploration of time and space, landscape and history in the Flint Hills of central Kansas.]]> 624 William Least Heat-Moon 039592569X Clair 4 4.04 1991 PrairyErth (A Deep Map)
author: William Least Heat-Moon
name: Clair
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1991
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/11
date added: 2025/03/12
shelves:
review:
A book that should have been read years ago, PrairyErth is yet another example of the unmatched curiosities and insight of William Least Heat-Moon. Few would undertake the project he does in studying, exploring and experiencing an outpost and gateway to the beautiful Flint Hills that Chase County, KS is. Originally published in 1991, PrairyErth is an in-depth study of a land that few people stop to think about, even when passing through on Interstate 35. Least-Moon demonstrates he has done more than giving this beautiful land a passing thought. He demonstrates that Chase County is a microcosm of the history of Kansas, going back to the days of the Nemaha Mountains that ran south central to northeast Kansas. Who knew? Least-Moon appropriately devotes a great deal of chapters and words to the Kaw Indians, a population originally in the Indiana territory, forced to emigrate to Kansas Territory and ultimately to Oklahoma. Chase County was dissected by the path these people had to take on their last forced exile. Least-Moon divides the county into quadrangles and devotes in-depth attention to each, exploring towns long abandoned, natural springs, creeks, flora and fauna. Why go to all this work, over the course of six-plus years? The author sheds in the last few pages of what he says was intended to be a 200 page book. Thank goodness he saw reason to not limit himself to such a paltry notion.
]]> <![CDATA[Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future]]> 207294076 From Yale professor and bestselling author of How Fascism Works, a searing confrontation with the authoritarian right’s efforts to annihilate public education, silence teachers, and use taxpayer money to undo a century of work to advance social justice action on race, gender, sexuality, and class.Combining historical research with an in-depth analysis of our modern political landscape, Erasing History issues a dire warning for America and the the worst fascist movements of humanity’s past began in schools; the same place so many of today’s right-wing political parties have trained their most vicious attacks. Donald Trump, Speaker Mike Johnson, Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, Vladimir Putin, Turkey’s Recip Erdogan, and Argentina’s Javier Milei have all reached the same if you want to roll back the clock on civil rights, equity, and inclusion, a great place to start is in our schools. Yale professor Jason Stanley exposes the true danger of the right’s tactics and traces their inspirations and funding back to some of the most dangerous ideas of human history. He shows that hearts and minds are won in our elementary schools, high schools, and universities—and that governments are currently ill-prepared to do the work of uprooting fascist policies being foisted upon our children through school boards, in courtrooms, and in the boardrooms of the companies trusted to train our teachers and create the materials they’ll share with their students. Deeply informed and urgently needed, this book is a vibrant call to action for lovers of democracy worldwide.]]> 256 Jason F. Stanley 1668056917 Clair 0 to-read 4.31 2024 Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future
author: Jason F. Stanley
name: Clair
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Fierce Ambition: The Life and Legend of War Correspondent Maggie Higgins]]> 77265001 Marguerite Higgins catapulted to journalistic fame with her dramatic account of the liberation of Dachau at the end of World War II. Brash, beautiful, ruthlessly competitive, and sexually adventurous, she forced her way to the front despite being told the combat zone was no place for a woman. Her headline-making exploits earned her a reputation for bravery bordering on recklessness and accusations of “advancing on her back,� trading sexual favors for scoops. Her notoriety soared during the Cold War, and her daring dispatches from Korea garnered a Pulitzer Prize. A star reporter, she became close to the Kennedy brothers, but provoked bitter rivalries with male correspondents who vilified her until her untimely death. In Fierce Ambition , journalist and historian Jennet Conant digs into Maggie’s turbulent life and shines a spotlight on her legacy—her trailblazing career, unwavering courage, and refusal to sacrifice success to fit gender expectations.]]> 416 Jennet Conant Clair 4 3.95 Fierce Ambition: The Life and Legend of War Correspondent Maggie Higgins
author: Jennet Conant
name: Clair
average rating: 3.95
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/22
date added: 2025/02/23
shelves:
review:
Marguerite Higgins was so many things in life and Jennet Conant does a remarkable capturing a complete picture of this trailblazing journalist. At times, content reads a little like a Joan Collins novel with Higgins, factually or rumor driven, sleeping with any number of partners at almost every point in her career to get the story. However much fantasy plays into those moments there is no denying that Higgins was a gifted, driven, aggressive story who rarely took no for an answer. As dramatic as her stories of the liberation of Dachau near the end of World War II, her presence presenting the news from Berlin and later in Korea are the pivotal moments in her career. There have been numerous greats, outstanding journalists in the history of the profession. Higgins will always be among the greats.
]]> <![CDATA[The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn]]> 272627 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the story of Huck and Jim - white orphan boy and black slave - who are fugitive partners down the Mississippi river. Twain speaks to schoolchild and scholar, and novelist and ordinary reader alike. For who cannot share in these great adventures, as the companions slip in and out of little towns - one step ahead of disaster - to ultimate freedom?]]> 404 Mark Twain 0965097145 Clair 4 3.98 1884 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
author: Mark Twain
name: Clair
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1884
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/16
date added: 2025/02/16
shelves:
review:
Having just read Percival Everett's James, it seemed appropriate to blow the dust off of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Without going down the path of re-reviewing James, let's just say it's an amazing feat that Everett created the phenomenal story he did in writing James. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a remarkable book. Twain is not shy expressing his thoughts of slavery, the plight of the Freed Men (and women) and his intolerance of the evils of uneducated white men. Twain's sardonic wit is reflected on every page, poking his finger in the eye of the dim southerner. One wonders if Twain's writing reflects an embarrassment of the day, or if he simply used it as fodder for the follies of Huck and the many characters he and Him encounter on their way up and down the Mississippi. Having heard that Twain stopped writing Huck Finn's adventures, only to pick it up years later is reflected in the re-introduction of Tom Sawyer, which is somewhat like introducing the Marx Brothers to the story. It's an odd, sometimes over-drawn out turn, but in the end it all works. And with that, there's nothing more to write.
]]> The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven 56620852 336 Nathaniel Ian Miller 0316592552 Clair 5 4.18 2021 The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven
author: Nathaniel Ian Miller
name: Clair
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/09
date added: 2025/02/15
shelves:
review:
How often are we blessed with a novel in which we are totally taken by each and every character? Such is the beauty of The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven by Nathaniel Ian Miller. It starts with the protagonist, Sven: moody, directionless, a loner; bringing nothing to himself nor those around him. Others see differently. His sister, Olga who does her best to keep him moving forward, and her children, particularly Helga, with whom Sven realizes he has a connection. The wonderful characters continue to come forth as Sven finds himself almost in isolation on the far north Spitsbergen archipelago, working in the mines. Charles, Lieutenant Hare, Tapio, so many more who demonstrate that life whether alone or in the company of others, is worth living. While not lacking for moments of physical or emotional pain, The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven is a book of joy and fulfillment, even in a world at once desolate and equally enriching. A masterful debut for author Miller.
]]> When the Cranes Fly South 221251872 BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD WINNER (Sweden) � A profoundly moving debut novel that follows an elderly man’s struggle to maintain autonomy over his own an emotional story of love, friendship, fatherhood, and atonement that is already an international sensation.

“A tender tale about aging, our own and others, and the quiet brutality of love. About what being a man is, and what being a human is, about fathers and sons and fathers and dogs. It’s a book for anyone who’s had to say goodbye.”—Fredrik Backman, #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Man Called Ove

“A powerful, sneakily emotional meditation on life and death, and the foundational relationships in our lives. This is a book that will echo in your soul.� —Garth Stein, New York Times bestselling author of The Art of Racing in the Rain


Bo is running out of time. Yet time is one of the few things he’s got left. These days, his quiet existence is broken up only by daily visits from his homeĚýcare team. Fortunately, he still has his beloved elkhound Sixten to keep him company â€� though now his son, with whom Bo has had a rocky relationship, insists upon taking theĚýdog away, claiming that Bo has grown too old to properly care for him. The threat of losing Sixten stirs up a whirlwind of emotion, leading Bo to take stock of his life, his relationships, and the imperfect way he’s expressed his love over the years.]]> 320 Lisa RidzĂ©n Clair 0 to-read 4.48 2024 When the Cranes Fly South
author: Lisa Ridzén
name: Clair
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> James 173754979 A brilliant reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—both harrowing and satirical—told from the enslaved Jim's point of view

When Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he runs away until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck has faked his own death to escape his violent father. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.

Brimming with nuanced humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a literary icon, this brilliant and tender novel radically illuminates Jim's agency, intelligence, and compassion as never before. James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first-century American literature.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780385550369.]]> 303 Percival Everett Clair 5 4.46 2024 James
author: Percival Everett
name: Clair
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/12
date added: 2025/02/12
shelves:
review:
James leaves the reader in awe. Percival Everett's excellent work, and there's no other way to describe it, reaches out to another genius of pre-civil war southern dramatic satire, Mark Twain, to create a genius novel in James. It's easy to imagine the inspiration of bringing forth the contemporary character Everett introduces in Twain's Jim. More than two centuries of slavery and abuse of the Black man makes this enlightened (to us) Jim, a hero of an otherwise terribly dark time in American history. Everett captures the acerbic humor that Twain penned in 1884, but because lessons learned are few in the years since, that humor carries more bite, and more guilt than when Jim and Huck first made their appearance. Sadly, as a society, we haven't learned much since those times, other than being able to spread our racism and hatred among even more people. Everyone must read James, gritting our teeth, expressing our mirth , acknowledging our embarrassment and waiting anxiously for the sequel.
]]> <![CDATA[President Garfield: From Radical to Unifier]]> 62919753
In “the most comprehensive Garfield biography in almost fifty years� ( The Wall Street Journal ), C.W. Goodyear charts the life and times of one of the most remarkable Americans ever to win the Presidency. Progressive firebrand and conservative compromiser; Union war hero and founder of the first Department of Education; Supreme Court attorney and abolitionist preacher; mathematician and canalman; crooked election-fixed and clean-government champion; Congressional chieftain and gentleman-farmer; the last president to be born in a log cabin; the second to be assassinated. James Abram Garfield was all these things and more.

Over nearly two decades in Congress during a polarized era—Reconstruction and the Gilded Age—Garfield served as a peacemaker in a Republican Party and America defined by divisions. He was elected to overcome them. He was killed while trying to do so.

President Garfield is American history at its finest. It is about an impoverished boy working his way from the frontier to the Presidency; a progressive statesman, trying to raise a more righteous, peaceful Republic out of the ashes of civil war; the tragically imperfect course of that reformation, and the man himself; a martyr-President, whose death succeeded in nudging the country back to cleaner, calmer politics.]]> 624 C.W. Goodyear 1982146915 Clair 4
Goodyear's first solo writing may be criticized by some of getting too deep in the weeds, but it's his attention to detail that paints a complete picture of Garfield. It's hard to overlook that as principled as Garfield was as a person, feeding into his political career, he was still very much a politician, bending the rules to achieve success in the House for several terms before becoming the dark horse presidential candidate of 1880. But numerous principles remained, none less so than his commitment to giving Black Americans all the freedoms and rights others vocally and strenuously resisted to support. Garfield's success in resisting the efforts of boss politics, especially New York's Conkling and Platt shed light on the positive direction his administration was heading, but that light, as his light as a change agent in culture and devoted husband and father darkened much too soon.]]> 4.25 2023 President Garfield: From Radical to Unifier
author: C.W. Goodyear
name: Clair
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/06
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves:
review:
Is President James Garfield one of the least known presidents in US history? If so, CW Goodyear's President Garfield: From Radical to Unifier, will take the reader lengths in better understanding the brief life of the 20th president. Well beyond the more readily documented facts dealing with his assassination and prolonged medical fiasco, contributing to his death weeks later.

Goodyear's first solo writing may be criticized by some of getting too deep in the weeds, but it's his attention to detail that paints a complete picture of Garfield. It's hard to overlook that as principled as Garfield was as a person, feeding into his political career, he was still very much a politician, bending the rules to achieve success in the House for several terms before becoming the dark horse presidential candidate of 1880. But numerous principles remained, none less so than his commitment to giving Black Americans all the freedoms and rights others vocally and strenuously resisted to support. Garfield's success in resisting the efforts of boss politics, especially New York's Conkling and Platt shed light on the positive direction his administration was heading, but that light, as his light as a change agent in culture and devoted husband and father darkened much too soon.
]]> <![CDATA[Death in the Baltic: The World War II Sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff]]> 15794247 256 Cathryn J. Prince 023034156X Clair 3 3.72 2013 Death in the Baltic: The World War II Sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff
author: Cathryn J. Prince
name: Clair
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/22
date added: 2025/01/22
shelves:
review:
Cathryn J. Prince does an admirable job recording the story of the worst maritime disaster in history: the torpedo sinking of the Wilhem Gustloff with more than 9000 lives lost. This is a little known story of the war waging on the Eastern Front in World War II and yet another example of the horrible loss of lives trapped between the evils or Nazi Germany and the supposed allied forces of the Soviet Union. So many civilian lives lost on a ship that each hoped was taking them away from the horrors of the final days of the War. Prince captures this disaster through the eyes of a handful of survivors, their experiences leading up to boarding the Wilhem Gustloff and their survival and rescue after the ship was struck by Soviet torpedoes. At times Prince seems to have difficulty keeping stories straight, especially in the chapters describing the see-saw presence of German and Soviet navies in the Baltic, but overall she must be commended for uncovering this otherwise lost story of the struggle to survive in the Eastern Prussian territories in the final months of World War II.
]]> <![CDATA[This Is Chance!: The Shaking of an All-American City, a Voice That Held It Together]]> 51231340
Slowly, people switched on their transistor radios and heard a familiar woman's voice explaining what had just happened and what to do next. Genie Chance was a part-time radio reporter and working mother who would play an unlikely role in the wake of the disaster, helping to put her fractured community back together. Her tireless broadcasts over the next three days would transform her into a legendary figure in Alaska and bring her fame worldwide--but only briefly. That Easter weekend in Anchorage, Genie and a cast of endearingly eccentric characters--from a mountaineering psychologist to the local community theater group staging Our Town--were thrown into a jumbled world they could not recognize. Together, they would make a home in it again.

Drawing on thousands of pages of unpublished documents, interviews with survivors, and original broadcast recordings, This Is Chance! is the hopeful, gorgeously told story of a single catastrophic weekend and proof of our collective strength in a turbulent world.

There are moments when reality instantly changes--when the life we assume is stable gets upended by pure chance. This Is Chance! is an electrifying and lavishly empathetic portrayal of one community rising above the randomness, a real-life fable of human connection withstanding chaos.]]> 336 Jon Mooallem 0525509917 Clair 4 3.75 2020 This Is Chance!: The Shaking of an All-American City, a Voice That Held It Together
author: Jon Mooallem
name: Clair
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/17
date added: 2025/01/18
shelves:
review:
This is Chance! is a fascinating read. Not only does Jon Mooallem shed light on a natural disaster that few may remember, and even fewer have knowledge of, but his approach to the telling of this story is unique, carefully crafting a parallel with Thornton Wilder's Our Town. Mooallem brings to light forgotten heroes of the Alaska earthquake, not that any of these people ever would have considered themselves heroes, but to suggest otherwise would be an oversight. Genie Chance leads the cast of memorable, previously overlooked people who saw the need to lend a hand and did so with courage and without hesitation. This is Chance! really is about a massive earthquake, that devastated Anchorage and the surrounding area, but it's more so about people and community. Thornton Wilder would nod in appreciation of this real life adaptation.
]]> The Order (Gabriel Allon #20) 52937065 From Daniel Silva, author of the #1 New York Times bestsellers The New Girl and The Other Woman, comes a stunning new action-packed thriller of high stakes international intrigue featuring the enigmatic art restorer and master spy Gabriel Allon.

Master of the spy thriller Silva has entertained readers with twenty-two thoughtful and gripping suspense novels featuring a diverse cast of compelling characters and ingenious plots that have taken them around the globe and back—from the United States to Europe, Russia to the Middle East.

He returns with another blockbuster—a powerhouse novel that showcases his outstanding skill and brilliant imagination, destined to be a must read for both his multitudes of fans and growing legions of converts.

]]> 444 Daniel Silva 0062834843 Clair 3
It's not that The Order isn't on some level, entertaining, but it's also painfully predictable. Mossad Super spy Gabriel Allon is called upon by a friend in the Vatican to solve the murder of the Pope, who also happens to be a friend of Allon and who Allon happened to have saved years before in a terrorist attack on the Vatican. Take it from there.

The best part of The Order is the Author's Note where Silva delves into the sub-plot of The Order: the existence of gospel writings not included in today's Bible and how, over the years the organized Christianity, (fingers pointed at the Roman Catholic church) did everything in its power to bury those other Christian writings and lay blame on the Jews of Roman Empire time for the death of Jesus.

Granted, The Order is based on a fictionalized gospel of Pontius Pilate, but there's more to Silva's contention than what we've been led to believe over the millennia. For that alone, it's worth taking a few hours to read The Order.]]> 4.03 2020 The Order (Gabriel Allon #20)
author: Daniel Silva
name: Clair
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/10
date added: 2025/01/12
shelves:
review:
I fear that Daniel Silva's works, including The Order falls into the category of formulaic, mass production, mass appeal action/adventure fiction.

It's not that The Order isn't on some level, entertaining, but it's also painfully predictable. Mossad Super spy Gabriel Allon is called upon by a friend in the Vatican to solve the murder of the Pope, who also happens to be a friend of Allon and who Allon happened to have saved years before in a terrorist attack on the Vatican. Take it from there.

The best part of The Order is the Author's Note where Silva delves into the sub-plot of The Order: the existence of gospel writings not included in today's Bible and how, over the years the organized Christianity, (fingers pointed at the Roman Catholic church) did everything in its power to bury those other Christian writings and lay blame on the Jews of Roman Empire time for the death of Jesus.

Granted, The Order is based on a fictionalized gospel of Pontius Pilate, but there's more to Silva's contention than what we've been led to believe over the millennia. For that alone, it's worth taking a few hours to read The Order.
]]> <![CDATA[Ghosts of Honolulu: A Japanese Spy, A Japanese American Spy Hunter, and the Untold Story of Pearl Harbor]]> 123266603 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

"A fast-paced debut...Espionage buffs will savor this vibrant account." � Publishers Weekly

A U.S. naval counterintelligence officer working to safeguard Pearl Harbor; a Japanese spy ordered to Hawaii to gather information on the American fleet. On December 7, 1941, their hidden stories are exposed by a morning of bloodshed that would change the world forever. Scrutinizing long-buried historical documents, NCIS star Mark Harmon and co-author Leon Carroll, a former NCIS Special Agent, have brought forth a true-life NCIS story of deception, discovery, and danger.

Hawaii, 1941. War clouds with Japan are gathering and the islands of Hawaii have become battlegrounds of spies, intelligence agents, and military officials - with the island's residents caught between them. Toiling in the shadows are Douglas Wada, the only Japanese American agent in naval intelligence, and Takeo Yoshikawa, a Japanese spy sent to Pearl Harbor to gather information on the U.S. fleet.

Douglas Wada's experiences in his native Honolulu include posing undercover as a newspaper reporter, translating wiretaps on the Japanese Consulate, and interrogating America's first captured POW of World War II, a submarine officer found on the beach. Takeo Yoshikawa is a Japanese spy operating as a junior diplomat with the consulate who is collecting vital information that goes straight to Admiral Yamamoto. Their dueling stories anchor Ghosts of Honolulu's gripping depiction of the world-changing cat and mouse games played between Japanese and US military intelligence agents (and a mercenary Nazi) in Hawaii before the outbreak of the second world war.

Also caught in the upheaval are Honolulu's innocent residents - including Douglas Wada's father - who endure the war's anti-Japanese fervor and a cadre of intelligence professionals who must prevent Hawaii from adopting the same destructive mass internments as California.

Ghosts of Honolulu depicts the incredible high stakes game of naval intelligence and the need to define what is real and what only appears to be real.]]> 272 Mark Harmon 1400337011 Clair 0 to-read 3.58 2023 Ghosts of Honolulu: A Japanese Spy, A Japanese American Spy Hunter, and the Untold Story of Pearl Harbor
author: Mark Harmon
name: Clair
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Burn 202102018 From the best-selling author of The Dog Stars, a novel about two men—friends since boyhood—who emerge from the woods of rural Maine to a dystopian country racked by bewildering violence

Every year, Jess and Storey have made an annual pilgrimage to the most remote corners of the country, where they camp, hunt, and hike, leaving much from their long friendship unspoken. Although the state of Maine has convulsed all summer with secession mania—a mania that has simultaneously spread across other states—Jess and Storey figure it’s a fight reserved for legislators or, worst-case scenario, folks in the capital.

But after weeks hunting off the grid, the men reach a small town and are shocked by what they find: a bridge blown apart, buildings burned to the ground, and bombed-out cars abandoned on the road. Trying to make sense of the sudden destruction all around them, they set their sights on finding their way home, dragging a wagon across bumpy dirt roads, scavenging from boats left in lakes, and dodging armed men—secessionists or U.S. military, they cannot tell—as they seek a path to safety. Then, a startling discovery drastically alters their path and the stakes of their escape.

Drenched in the beauty of the natural world and attuned to the specific cadences of male friendship, even here at the edge of doom, Burn is both a blistering warning about a divided country’s political strife and an ode to the salvation found in our chosen families.]]> 291 Peter Heller 0593801628 Clair 3
It's not that Burn isn't well written, but it's not in the same category as Heller's previous writing. Too many unanswered questions, protagonists that are hard to like, unfinished business; something that cannot be said of his earlier novels: Why was one village left standing when so many others are burned to the ground and what is the significance of it being a miniaturized lobstering village? What happened to all of those small town residents? Who was responsible for those unburied bodies in Grantham, and why didn't the townspeople seem to notice or care? Do Jess and Storey split up to find their way home on their own?

Perhaps it's the darkness of the underlying sub-topic. Insurrection. A state seceding from the Union. Maine of all states. Why not Texas? Or Florida? And worse, how violent and bloody the situation is, with no misgivings of killing a fellow American, or anyone else for that matter. It's isn’t that Heller hasn't presented dark scenarios in earlier writing, but with today's political tensions, maybe it's a little too close for comfort. But again, the unanswered questions are more concerning that secession, at least in Burn.

Read Burn, because it's authored by Peter Heller, but be prepared for an incomplete story.]]> 3.51 2024 Burn
author: Peter Heller
name: Clair
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/06
date added: 2025/01/07
shelves:
review:
I don't know. I have always enjoyed Peter Heller's works, everything previously read, fiction and non-fiction. His writing stands above virtually all other contemporary writers with his incredible ability to capture a scene, a landscape, a character's personality and presence.

It's not that Burn isn't well written, but it's not in the same category as Heller's previous writing. Too many unanswered questions, protagonists that are hard to like, unfinished business; something that cannot be said of his earlier novels: Why was one village left standing when so many others are burned to the ground and what is the significance of it being a miniaturized lobstering village? What happened to all of those small town residents? Who was responsible for those unburied bodies in Grantham, and why didn't the townspeople seem to notice or care? Do Jess and Storey split up to find their way home on their own?

Perhaps it's the darkness of the underlying sub-topic. Insurrection. A state seceding from the Union. Maine of all states. Why not Texas? Or Florida? And worse, how violent and bloody the situation is, with no misgivings of killing a fellow American, or anyone else for that matter. It's isn’t that Heller hasn't presented dark scenarios in earlier writing, but with today's political tensions, maybe it's a little too close for comfort. But again, the unanswered questions are more concerning that secession, at least in Burn.

Read Burn, because it's authored by Peter Heller, but be prepared for an incomplete story.
]]> Salt to the Sea 25614492
Sepetys (writer of 'Between Shades of Gray') crafts four fictionalized but historically accurate voices to convey the real-life tragedy. Joana, a Lithuanian with nursing experience; Florian, a Prussian soldier fleeing the Nazis with stolen treasure; and Emilia, a Polish girl close to the end of her pregnancy, converge on their escape journeys as Russian troops advance; each will eventually meet Albert, a Nazi peon with delusions of grandeur, assigned to the Gustloff decks.]]> 391 Ruta Sepetys Clair 5
As the author notes in her postscript, "What determines how we remember history and which elements are preserved and penetrate the collective consciousness? If historical novels stir your interest, pursue the facts, history, memoirs and personal testimonies available. These are the shoulders that historical fiction sits upon. When the survivors are gone, we must not let the truth disappear with them. Please, give them a voice."

Beautifully said. Beautifully written.]]> 4.35 2016 Salt to the Sea
author: Ruta Sepetys
name: Clair
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/04
date added: 2025/01/05
shelves:
review:
If there was a way to award a book more than five stars, Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys is one most deserving of that ranking. Positioned as a historical novel for teen readers, Salt to the Sea should not be categorized as such and limiting its reach. Is it because the four main characters are all young(ish)? It shouldn't matter as the author is masterful in developing her characters, cutting no corners in defining their individual backgrounds and stories. Sepetys blends their stories into the terrible last days of Nazi Germany and the punishing circumstances the civilians of the Balkans and Eastern Europe endured, trapped between the retreating German army and the Soviet Army in pursuit. Specifically, Salt to the Sea leads the reader to the little known, horrid event of the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff and the more than 9000 lives lost when torpedoed by a Soviet submarine, the great majority of them children. That horrible disaster is brought to life through the eyes and lives of these four young people. Whether or not Salt to the Sea is truly intended for just young adult readers, it is a powerful story for adults on the other end of the age curve as well.

As the author notes in her postscript, "What determines how we remember history and which elements are preserved and penetrate the collective consciousness? If historical novels stir your interest, pursue the facts, history, memoirs and personal testimonies available. These are the shoulders that historical fiction sits upon. When the survivors are gone, we must not let the truth disappear with them. Please, give them a voice."

Beautifully said. Beautifully written.
]]> <![CDATA[Once We Were Brothers (Liam Taggart & Catherine Lockhart, #1)]]> 17834834 The gripping tale about two boys, once as close as brothers, who find themselves on opposite sides of the Holocaust.

Elliot Rosenzweig, a respected civic leader and wealthy philanthropist, is attending a fundraiser when he is suddenly accosted and accused of being a former Nazi SS officer named Otto Piatek, the Butcher of Zamosc. Although the charges are denounced as preposterous, his accuser is convinced he is right and engages attorney Catherine Lockhart to bring Rosenzweig to justice. Solomon persuades attorney Catherine Lockhart to take his case, revealing that the true Piatek was abandoned as a child and raised by Solomon's own family only to betray them during the Nazi occupation. But has Solomon accused the right man?

Once We Were Brothers is Ronald H. Balson's compelling tale of two boys and a family who struggle to survive in war-torn Poland, and a young love that struggles to endure the unspeakable cruelty of the Holocaust. Two lives, two worlds, and sixty years converge in an explosive race to redemption that makes for a moving and powerful tale of love, survival, and ultimately the triumph of the human spirit.]]> 378 Ronald H. Balson 1250046394 Clair 3 4.33 2010 Once We Were Brothers (Liam Taggart & Catherine Lockhart, #1)
author: Ronald H. Balson
name: Clair
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/01
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves:
review:
Ronald H. Balson's Once We Were Brothers is a conundrum. Is it a deeply moving novel of a Holocaust survivors efforts to bring a Nazi officer to justice, 60 years after the end of World War II? Is it a love story involving a woman struggling with her past, personal and professional, resisting a relationship that would make her vulnerable? It is certainly a well told story based on the former that delivers an emotional, haunting story of two men and their lives before and during the war in Poland. And it's also a weaker side story of a lawyer struggling with her professional and personal demons who ultimately represents the accuser and finds love in the arms of a longtime friend. The two stories create a mudding bond, but fortunately the latter doesn't sink the former. The story of the two "brothers" makes this a worthwhile read, if one can get past the noise of the other.
]]> <![CDATA[The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet]]> 55145261 A deeply moving and mind-expanding collection of personal essays in the first ever work of non-fiction from #1 internationally bestselling author John Green

The Anthropocene is the current geological age, in which human activity has profoundly shaped the planet and its biodiversity. In this remarkable symphony of essays adapted and expanded from his ground-breaking, critically acclaimed podcast, John Green reviews different facets of the human-centered planet - from the QWERTY keyboard and Halley's Comet to Penguins of Madagascar - on a five-star scale.

Complex and rich with detail, the Anthropocene's reviews have been praised as 'observations that double as exercises in memoiristic empathy', with over 10 million lifetime downloads. John Green's gift for storytelling shines throughout this artfully curated collection about the shared human experience; it includes beloved essays along with six all-new pieces exclusive to the book.]]> 304 John Green 0525555218 Clair 4 4.37 2021 The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet
author: John Green
name: Clair
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/29
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves:
review:
John Green takes us on a unique overview of where we've been and where we're going in this Anthropocene window of time. He adds his personal touch as to his expectations and experiences of these occasions of time, creating the challenge: and what does this particular event or trend of the Anthropocene mean to me? What have I learned? Has this made me a better person? Green provides a variety of unique examples of occurrences within the Anthropocene, and then there are those that are taken for granted, but all within this epoch and all having there respective impact. Borrowing heavily from his podcast, the subjects are reflected in their own short essays. A few not to be missed: Harvey, Auld Lang Syne and the Farmers on the Way to a Dance. But every chapter is a worthy read and all share Green's personal insight.
]]> The Day of the Jackal 1793193 Librarian note: an alternate cover for this edition can be found here.

The Jackal. A tall, blond Englishman with opaque, gray eyes. A killer at the top of his profession. A man unknown to any secret service in theĚý world. An assassin with a contract to kill the world's most heavily guarded man.

OneĚý man with a rifle who can change the course of history. One man whose mission is so secretive notĚýeven his employers know his name. And as theĚýminutes count down to the final act of execution, itĚýseems that there is no power on earth that can stopĚýthe Jackal.]]> 380 Frederick Forsyth 0670259365 Clair 4
Written in 1971, reflecting an even earlier time of the early 1960s, I am pleased to say The Day of the Jackal remains an exciting thriller, holding its own in spite of the dramatic changes the world has experienced. Reading The Day of the Jackal the first time, turned me into a Forsyth fan and in the years following have read many of his other works as well as his memoir. It is perhaps because of his journalist background, covering so many international hot spots, that I have always found his work a little more believable than others.

There are some newly discovered holes that I don't recall the first time around, such as whatever happened to St. Clair and his spying mistress? It's unfortunate that such key characters simply disappeared.

The first time around, part of the mystique of The Day of the Jackal was Forsyth's attention to detail of the French countryside. Having now traveled a good portion of the country the Jackal traversed, maybe makes it a little more believable.

The sum of all this, is The Day of the Jackal has held up well after all the years, and remains one of Forsyth's best works.]]> 4.04 1971 The Day of the Jackal
author: Frederick Forsyth
name: Clair
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1971
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/25
date added: 2024/12/26
shelves:
review:
I read Frederick Forsyth's The Day of the Jackal the first time about 40 years ago. Reading it again, I wasn't sure what to expect, as to whether my reading tastes had changed enough for it to be a let down from positive memories.

Written in 1971, reflecting an even earlier time of the early 1960s, I am pleased to say The Day of the Jackal remains an exciting thriller, holding its own in spite of the dramatic changes the world has experienced. Reading The Day of the Jackal the first time, turned me into a Forsyth fan and in the years following have read many of his other works as well as his memoir. It is perhaps because of his journalist background, covering so many international hot spots, that I have always found his work a little more believable than others.

There are some newly discovered holes that I don't recall the first time around, such as whatever happened to St. Clair and his spying mistress? It's unfortunate that such key characters simply disappeared.

The first time around, part of the mystique of The Day of the Jackal was Forsyth's attention to detail of the French countryside. Having now traveled a good portion of the country the Jackal traversed, maybe makes it a little more believable.

The sum of all this, is The Day of the Jackal has held up well after all the years, and remains one of Forsyth's best works.
]]> <![CDATA[Of Kennedys and Kings: Making sense of the sixties]]> 3602132
Yet Wofford had been a special assistant to President John F. Kennedy and was one of the founders of the Peace Corps. During the decade of struggle from Montgomery to Memphis, he was and advisor to Martin Luther King, Jr. With independent views of his own, Harris Wofford was witness from within the White House to the bright and the dark side of the Kennedy administration. Focusing on how the politics and ideas came together to shape critical decisions, Wofford’s memoir captures the personal drama of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King as their characters were tested. Of Kennedys and Kings not only makes sense of the sixties, but gives us a glimpse into the issues closest to the heart of one of America’s most interesting senators.

Wofford’s vivid recollections and reflections shed light on the sixties and on the dramatic domestic and international politics of the era. Of Kennedys and Kings provides a timely reminder of what can be accomplished with leaders who are, with all their human feelings, committed to public service and responsible political action.]]> 512 Harris Wofford 0374224323 Clair 4 3.50 1981 Of Kennedys and Kings: Making sense of the sixties
author: Harris Wofford
name: Clair
average rating: 3.50
book published: 1981
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/19
date added: 2024/12/19
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There is a fascination with wondering "what if?" What if John F. Kennedy had lived and was re-elected to a second term? What it Robert F. Kennedy had lived and was elected president in 1968 and again in 1972? What if Martin Luther King had lived and was given the rightful respect and recognition to further the rights of African Americans as well as other people of color? Sadly, that's all we can do is wonder. And that is in essence what Harris Wofford does in his remarkable recollections of the '60s in his 1980 Of Kennedy and Kings: Making Sense of the Sixties. Wofford's place in that decade and in the late 50s, working along side both Kennedys and King make him an ideal, if not terribly biased historian of those years. Sharing insight into King's rise in the Civil Rights movement, the desire to bring real freedom to Blacks, is moving and inspiring. Shedding light on the birth of the Peace Corps and what an impact it had on America's young in the early 60s is like nothing else high school and college aged Americans had experienced before or since, with possible exception of World War II. Often, Of Kennedys & Kings gets a little muddled and slow with detail, even minutia, but not enough to detract from pressing on. In the end, Wofford too laments as well, "what if?" Few could rightfully imagine better than he, having been in the midst of it all and having lived what could have been, if only for a moment.
]]> Hamburgers and Fries 1068450 208 John T. Edge 0399152741 Clair 4 3.58 2005 Hamburgers and Fries
author: John T. Edge
name: Clair
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/30
date added: 2024/12/13
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Some may consider the venture a major undertaking; others a silly adventure in eating. Either way, in the early 2000s, John T. Edge took it upon himself to discover the many varieties of hamburgers (primarily) and fries and documents his findings in his book, appropriately, Hamburgers & Fries: and American Story. From the outset, Edge says he is not seeking the early efforts of gourmet burgers, but focuses instead on unique regional offerings. Although his book is small, his reporting is extensive. From the rural South, to the Iowa prairies and beyond, America offers a great many versions of America's favorite handheld. Self identified connoisseurs may not find much purpose in Edge's research, but those of us who find pleasure in small town and roadside diners (while they continue to exist) will be envious of this effort. Thanks John.
]]> <![CDATA[A Molecule Away from Madness: Tales of the Hijacked Brain]]> 58085250
A college student cannot remember if she has eaten breakfast. By dinner, she is strapped to a hospital bed, convinced she is battling zombies. A man planning to propose marriage instead becomes violently enraged, gripped by body spasms so severe that he nearly bites off his own tongue. One after another, poor farmers in South Carolina drop dead from a mysterious epidemic of dementia.

With an intoxicating blend of history and intrigue, Sara Manning Peskin invites readers to play medical detective, tracing each diagnosis from the patient to an ailing nervous system. Along the way, Peskin entertains with tales of the sometimes outlandish, often criticized, and forever devoted scientists who discovered it all.

Peskin never loses sight of the human impact of these conditions. Alzheimer’s Disease is more than the gradual loss of a loved one; it can be a family’s multigenerational curse. The proteins that abound in every cell of our bodies are not simply strings of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon; they are the building blocks of our personalities and relationships. A Molecule Away from Madness is an unputdownable journey into the deepest mysteries of our brains.]]> 214 Sara Manning Peskin 1324002379 Clair 5 4.17 2022 A Molecule Away from Madness: Tales of the Hijacked Brain
author: Sara Manning Peskin
name: Clair
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/27
date added: 2024/12/13
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A Molecule Away from Madness is a quick and relatively easy read that should have us all wondering if we may have some rabid molecule in our bodies. Sara Manning Peskin tells us that our we have weird things in our heads all the time that could flip the on switch of Alzheimer's, Huntington's or countless other frightening brain bombing diseases. In the same breath, Manning Peskin points out that if medical research is allowed to do what it does, find solutions, determine cures, then hope is around the next turn. A Molecule Away from Madness is a fascinating read, but just know you could be next.
]]> <![CDATA[Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy]]> 51243325
By the 1890s, Wilmington was North Carolina's largest city and a shining example of a mixed-race community. It was a bustling port city with a burgeoning African American middle class and a Fusionist government of Republicans and Populists that included black aldermen, police officers and magistrates. There were successful black-owned businesses and an African American newspaper, The Record. But across the state--and the South--white supremacist Democrats were working to reverse the advances made by former slaves and their progeny.

In 1898, in response to a speech calling for white men to rise to the defense of Southern womanhood against the supposed threat of black predators, Alexander Manly, the outspoken young Record editor, wrote that some relationships between black men and white women were consensual. His editorial ignited outrage across the South, with calls to lynch Manly.

But North Carolina's white supremacist Democrats had a different strategy. They were plotting to take back the state legislature in November "by the ballot or bullet or both," and then use the Manly editorial to trigger a "race riot" to overthrow Wilmington's multi-racial government. Led by prominent citizens including Josephus Daniels, publisher of the state's largest newspaper, and former Confederate Colonel Alfred Moore Waddell, white supremacists rolled out a carefully orchestrated campaign that included raucous rallies, race-baiting editorials and newspaper cartoons, and sensational, fabricated news stories.

With intimidation and violence, the Democrats suppressed the black vote and stuffed ballot boxes (or threw them out), to win control of the state legislature on November eighth. Two days later, more than 2,000 heavily armed Red Shirts swarmed through Wilmington, torching the Record office, terrorizing women and children, and shooting at least sixty black men dead in the streets. The rioters forced city officials to resign at gunpoint and replaced them with mob leaders. Prominent blacks--and sympathetic whites--were banished. Hundreds of terrified black families took refuge in surrounding swamps and forests.

This brutal insurrection is a rare instance of a violent overthrow of an elected government in the U.S. It halted gains made by blacks and restored racism as official government policy, cementing white rule for another half century. It was not a "race riot," as the events of November 1898 came to be known, but rather a racially motivated rebellion launched by white supremacists.

In Wilmington's Lie, Zucchino uses contemporary newspaper accounts, diaries, letters and official communications to create a gripping and compelling narrative that weaves together individual stories of hate and fear and brutality. This is a dramatic and definitive account of a remarkable but forgotten chapter of American history.]]> 426 David Zucchino 0802128386 Clair 0 to-read 4.41 2020 Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy
author: David Zucchino
name: Clair
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/30
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]]> <![CDATA[The Situation Room: The Inside Story of Presidents in Crisis]]> 198493808
No room better defines American power and its role in the world than the White House Situation Room. And yet, none is more shrouded in secrecy and mystery. Created under President Kennedy, the Sit Room has been the epicenter of crisis management for presidents for more than six decades. Time and again, the decisions made within the Sit Room complex affect the lives of every person on this planet. Detailing close calls made and disasters narrowly averted, THE SITUATION ROOM will take readers through dramatic turning points in a dozen presidential administrations, THE SITUATION ROOM is the definitive, past-the-security-clearance look at the room where it happened, and the people—the famous and those you've never heard of—who have made history within its walls.]]> 368 George Stephanopoulos 1538740761 Clair 0 to-read 4.30 2024 The Situation Room: The Inside Story of Presidents in Crisis
author: George Stephanopoulos
name: Clair
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/30
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]]> <![CDATA[The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues]]> 217387633 Bible scholar and popular TikToker Dan McClellan confronts misconceptions about the Bible.

The Bible is the world’s most influential book, but do we really know what it says? Every day across social media and in homes, businesses, and public spaces, people try to cut debate short by claiming that "the Bible says so!" However, they commonly disagree about what it actually does and doesn't say, particularly when it comes to socially significant issues. For instance, does the Bible say we should be on the lookout for an antichrist associated with the number 666? Does it say women shouldn’t wear revealing clothing? Does it say it’s okay to hit your kids?

In The Bible Say So, Dan McClellan leverages his popular "data over dogma" approach, and his years of experience in the academy and on social media, to lay out in clear and accessible ways what the data indicate the Bible does and doesn't say about issues ranging from homosexuality, abortion, and slavery to monotheism, inspiration, and even God's wife. Smart, accessible, and informative, The Bible Says So is an invaluable resource for our fractious times.]]> 320 Daniel McClellan 1250347467 Clair 0 to-read 4.36 The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues
author: Daniel McClellan
name: Clair
average rating: 4.36
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]]> <![CDATA[John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs]]> 211004838 John Lennon and Paul McCartney knew each other for twenty-three years, from 1957 to 1980. This book is the myth-shattering biography of a relationship that changed the cultural history of the world.

The Beatles shook the world to its core in the 1960’s and, to this day, remain an active ingredient in our cultural bloodstream, as new generations fall in love with their songs and their story. At the heart of this phenomenon lies the dynamic between John and Paul. Few other musical partnerships have been rooted in such a deep, intense and complicated personal relationship.

John and Paul’s relationship was defined by its complexity: compulsive, tender and tempestuous; full of longing, riven by jealousy. Like the band, their relationship was always in motion, never in equilibrium for long. John and Paul traces its twists and turns and reveals how these shifts manifested themselves in the music. Yoko Ono remarked on the resemblance of their friendship to a romantic relationship and suggested that at some point that’s what John wanted it to be. The two of them shared a private language, rooted in the stories, comedy and songs they both loved as teenagers, and later, in the lyrics of Beatles songs.

In John and Paul, acclaimed writer on human psychology and creativity Ian Leslie traces the shared journey of these men before, during and after The Beatles, offering us both a new look at two of the greatest icons in music history, and rich insights into the nature of creativity, collaboration, and human intimacy.]]> 424 Ian Leslie 1250869544 Clair 0 to-read 4.52 2025 John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs
author: Ian Leslie
name: Clair
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/30
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]]> <![CDATA[The 1619 Project: A Visual Experience]]> 203608467 AnĚýillustrated edition of The 1619 Project, with newly commissioned artwork and archival images, The New York Times Magazine's award-winning reframing of the American founding and its contemporary echoes, placing slavery and resistance at the center ofĚýthe American story.

Here, in these pages, Black art provides refuge. The marriage of beautiful, haunting and profound words and imagery creates an experience for the reader, a wanting to reflect, to sit in both the discomfort and the joy, to contemplate what a nation owes a people who have contributed so much and yet received so little, and maybe even, to act. --Nikole Hannah-Jones, from the Preface

Curated by the editors of The New York Times Magazine, led by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, this illustrated edition of The 1619 Project features seven chapters from the original book that lend themselves to beautiful, engaging visuals, deepening the experience of the content. The 1619 A Visual Experience offers the same revolutionary idea as the original book, an argument for a new national origin story that begins in late August of 1619, when a cargo ship of enslaved people from Africa arrived on the shores of Jamestown, Virginia. Only by reckoning with this difficult history and understanding its powerful influence on our present can we prepare ourselves for a more just future.Ěý

Filled with original art by thirteen Black artists like Carrie Mae Weems, Calida Rawles, Vitus Shell, Xaviera Simmons, on the themes of resistance and freedom, a brand-new photo essay about slave auction sites, vivid photos of Black Americans celebrating their own forms of patriotism, and a collection of archival images of Black families by Black photographers, this gorgeous volume offers readers a dynamic new way of experiencing the impact of The 1619 Project.

Complete with many of the powerful essays and vignettes from the original edition, written by some of the most brilliant journalists, scholars, and thinkers of our time, The 1619 A Visual Experience brings to life a fuller, more comprehensive understanding of American history and culture.]]> 288 Nikole Hannah-Jones 0593232259 Clair 0 to-read 4.46 The 1619 Project: A Visual Experience
author: Nikole Hannah-Jones
name: Clair
average rating: 4.46
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]]> <![CDATA[On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century]]> 34083908
On TyrannyĚýis a call to arms and a guide to resistance, with invaluable ideas for how we can preserve our freedoms in the uncertain years to come.]]> 110 Timothy Snyder 0804190127 Clair 0 to-read 4.45 2017 On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
author: Timothy Snyder
name: Clair
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/30
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]]> <![CDATA[Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders & How They Changed America 1789-1989]]> 2891527
With surprising new sources and a dazzling command of history and human character, Beschloss brings to life those flawed, complex men -- and their wives, families, friends and foes. Never have we had a more intimate, behind-the-scenes view of Presidents coping with the supreme dilemmas of their lives. For Americans who must choose Presidents and assess them once they are elected, Presidential Courage sets a lasting standard by showing us the best in Presidential leadership.]]> 448 Michael R. Beschloss 0743257448 Clair 5 3.86 2007 Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders & How They Changed America 1789-1989
author: Michael R. Beschloss
name: Clair
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/14
date added: 2024/10/15
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Reading Presidential Courage by Michael Beschloss may restore one's hope that our Presidents can make heard decisions and do great things. On the flip side, if one plays the odds, it could be said that the number of Presidents who have risen to the occasion, based on Beschloss's work, reflecting presidents in office through Reagan is so small (barely one-in-four) makes for a sorry history. You choose. Presidential Courage is a thoroughly enjoyable read. Beschloss brings to light these difficult but important decisions made by the likes of Washington, Adams, Theodore Roosevelt among others, who cast popularity and personal success aside for what was best for the country. Beschloss does not sugarcoat these men. He makes great effort to show each man's warts, selfishness and even paranoia, but rose above their individual pettiness to do the right thing. In the end, these acts do offer hope for us as a country. If only the voters to their job and elect the right person for the office.
]]> <![CDATA[The One Week Writing Workshop: 7 Days to Spark, Boost or Revive Your Novel]]> 218115898 It's time to crush the blank page, shed your writer's angst and write the novel you were meant to write! All the magic and enthusiasm of acclaimed author Karin Adams� in-person writing workshops—now in book form!

You’ve always wanted to write a novel and have been nurturing a great idea. Maybe you’ve read books by writing experts, perhaps even taken a class or two. But as you sit down alone with the blank page, despite all the dreaming, planning and learning—nothing happens. Or if the writing does start to flow, it soon dries up.

Why is writing a novel so hard?

łŰ´ÇłÜ’r±đ not uncreative. And the learning and planning you’ve done isn’t suddenly useless!

Rather, you’re facing that overwhelming gap between the story you’re imagining and the book you want to write. It’s enough to stop most people from trying at all. But that doesn’t have to be you!

In The One Week Writing Workshop, author Karin Adams helps you to overcome the overwhelm. She breaks the writing process down into a series of bite-sized, actionable tasks within a proven seven-step method. It’s the method Karin herself uses, and the one she has taught to thousands of workshop participants since 2010. This is not another book to read before you start your draft—it’s the book you grab when you want to actually start writing your novel.

While The One Week Writing Workshop emphasizes taking action now, it also circles back to story essentials as you go. If you’ve read other writing books, it will complement, reinforce and add fresh perspectives to what you’ve learned. If you’ve never studied creative writing before, The One Week Writing Workshop is the perfect book for getting yourself grounded while you get busy writing!

Structured as a seven-day workshop, each chapter is a lively session guiding you through energizing tasks that get you working on and actively growing your story. Throughout the book, you have lots of choice so that you can further tailor the experience for you and your novel.

You’ll find:


- Real-world writing activities and strategies you’ll start using within minutes of opening the book

- A tried-and-tested 7-step method for starting your novel and seeing it through to the finish

- Hands-on strategies for every step of the writing process, from generating ideas to revision

- Helpful mini lessons to get (or keep) you grounded with story writing essentials
A blend of at-your-desk and out-of-the-box actions that help to inspire your entire creative self

- Activities you can come back to again and again to bust past blocks, develop new story concepts and reconnect with the joy that got you writing in the first place


The One Week Writing Workshop is the book you need when it’s time to take action, start writing your novel and finally see it through to completion. ]]> 212 Karin Adams 1896711235 Clair 0 to-read 4.78 The One Week Writing Workshop: 7 Days to Spark, Boost or Revive Your Novel
author: Karin Adams
name: Clair
average rating: 4.78
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date added: 2024/10/06
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]]> <![CDATA[American Reckoning: Inside Trump's Trial―and My Own]]> 216664255
As one of a handful of journalists allowed in the courtroom, for 23 days Jonathan Alter sat just feet away from the most dangerous threat to democracy in American history, watching the spectacle of the century: the felony trial of Donald Trump. Highly publicized but untelevised and thus largely hidden from public view, this landmark trial offered hope of real justice amid a grueling eight-year national ordeal and foreshadowed the drama of the 2024 presidential election.

Alter shares everything he witnessed—from eviscerating takes on the colorful characters to the chilling legal ups and downs—to offer a barbed account of the trial and its aftermath, including fresh reporting about the historic events of the summer of 2024. A Zelig of journalism experiencing a crisis of faith in the good sense of the American people, Alter chronicles the shaping of his political consciousness and his bracing, unpredictable relationships with Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John McCain, and Joe Biden, whose decision to stand down in favor of former prosecutor Kamala Harris put the criminal trial front and center as Americans render their own verdict at the polls.

Deeply personal and passionate, American Reckoning is an eye-opening book from a journalist with a front row seat on history, offering a troubled yet hopeful look at our national moment of truth.]]> 256 Jonathan Alter 1637746660 Clair 0 to-read 3.81 American Reckoning: Inside Trump's Trial―and My Own
author: Jonathan Alter
name: Clair
average rating: 3.81
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rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/06
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]]> Dorothy Parker in Hollywood 207294062 An expansive and illuminating study of legendary writer Dorothy Parker’s life and legacy in Hollywood from the author of the “fascinating� (Town & Country) Three Martini Afternoons at the Ritz. The glamorous extravagances and devasting lows of her time in Hollywood are revealed as never before in this fresh new biography of Dorothy Parker—from leaving New York City to work on numerous classic screenplays such as the 1937 A Star Is Born to the devastation of alcoholism, a miscarriage, and her husband’s suicide. Parker’s involvement with anti-fascist and anti-racist groups, which led to her ultimate blacklisting, and her early work in the civil rights movement that inspired her to leave her entire estate to the NAACP are also explored as never before. Just as she did with her “deliriously fast-paced and erudite� (Library Journal) dual biography of Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath, Gail Crowther brings Parker back to life on the page in all her wit, grit, and brilliance.]]> 304 Gail Crowther 1982185791 Clair 0 to-read 3.81 2024 Dorothy Parker in Hollywood
author: Gail Crowther
name: Clair
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/06
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Simon Wiesenthal: The Life and Legends]]> 8165375
Like most Jews in Eastern Europe on the eve of Hitler’s invasion of Poland, twenty-four-year-old Simon Wiesenthal did not grasp the nature of the Nazi threat. But six years later, when a skeletal Wiesenthal was liberated from the concentration camp at Mauthausen, he fully fathomed the crimes of the Nazis. Within days he had assembled a list of nearly 150 Nazi war criminals, the first of dozens of such lists he would make over a lifetime as a Nazi hunter. A hero in the eyes of many, Wiesenthal was also attacked for his unrelenting pursuit of the past, when others preferred to forget.

For this new biography, rich in newsworthy revelations, historian and journalist Tom Segev has obtained access to Wiesenthal’s private papers and to sixteen archives, including records of the U.S., Israeli, Polish, and East German secret services. Segev is able to reveal the intriguing secrets of Wiesenthal’s life, including his stunning role in the capture of Adolf Eichmann, his relationship with Israel’s Mossad, his controversial investigative techniques, his unlikely friendships with Kurt Waldheim and Albert Speer, and the nature of his rivalry with Elie Wiesel.

Segev’s challenge in writing this biography was Wiesenthal’s own complicated relationship to truth. Wiesenthal told many versions of his life, his suffering in the camps, and his involvement with the arrest of individual Nazis. Segev shows that in order to gain the information he sought and twist the arms of reluctant government figures, Wiesenthal needed to seem more influential than he really was.

For two generations of Americans, Simon Wiesenthal was a Jewish superhero—depicted on film by Ben Kingsley and Laurence Olivier—and the muse for a Frederick Forsyth thriller. Now Segev demonstrates that the truth of Wiesenthal’s existence is as compelling as the fiction. Simon Wiesenthal is an unforgettable life of one of the great men of the twentieth century.]]> 496 Tom Segev 038551946X Clair 3 3.51 2010 Simon Wiesenthal: The Life and Legends
author: Tom Segev
name: Clair
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/04
date added: 2024/10/06
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Many of us grew up with a larger than life perspective of Nazi hunter, Simon Wiesenthal. Tom Segev's biography of Wiesenthal does a great deal to lessen that perspective. Segev reinforces our understanding that Wiesenthal's mission to track down and imprison countless Nazis who escaped punishment after World War II was a noble cause. More so when we learn that Wiesenthal's efforts were conducted by a small network of volunteers in addition to himself. Few countries, even the newly recognized state of Israel did much to support Wiesenthal's work. What he accomplished, under those circumstances, is admirable. But Wiesenthal may have been his own greatest obstacle in accomplishing more than he did. Ego and vanity too often influenced his work and offended those who may have contributed more to Wiesenthal's efforts. Segev's writing adds to what was an already complicated story, bouncing us around as we try to keep track of who Wiesenthal was pursuing and who, on any given day, may have been helping or hindering his work. In the end, it's hard not to feel some sadness that Wiesenthal's life ended with many praising his efforts, but even more never taking him seriously enough to help him accomplish more.
]]> Once There Were Wolves 54860573 From the author of the beloved national bestseller Migrations, a pulse-pounding new novel set in the wild Scottish Highlands.

Inti Flynn arrives in Scotland with her twin sister, Aggie, to lead a team of biologists tasked with reintroducing fourteen gray wolves into the remote Highlands. She hopes to heal not only the dying landscape, but Aggie, too, unmade by the terrible secrets that drove the sisters out of Alaska.

Inti is not the woman she once was, either, changed by the harm she’s witnessed—inflicted by humans on both the wild and each other. Yet as the wolves surprise everyone by thriving, Inti begins to let her guard down, even opening herself up to the possibility of love. But when a farmer is found dead, Inti knows where the town will lay blame. Unable to accept her wolves could be responsible, Inti makes a reckless decision to protect them. But if the wolves didn’t make the kill, then who did? And what will Inti do when the man she is falling for seems to be the prime suspect?

Propulsive and spell-binding, Charlotte McConaghy's Once There Were Wolves is the unforgettable story of a woman desperate to save the creatures she loves—if she isn’t consumed by a wild that was once her refuge.]]> 258 Charlotte McConaghy 1250244145 Clair 3 4.07 2021 Once There Were Wolves
author: Charlotte McConaghy
name: Clair
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/06
date added: 2024/09/08
shelves:
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There is a lot going on in Charlotte McConaghy's Once There were Wolves. The fictional backstory of the attempt to return wolves to the wilds of the Scottish Highlands is lost as the multiple-threaded tales of Inti and identical twin Aggie's upbringing in Australia and Alaska, Inti's relationship with a local constable, Aggie's traumatic rape by her husband and his cousin, Inti's highly unusual sensory abilities to feel what other living organisms experience and that may only be scratching the surface, as murder and pregnancy also enter the picture. What about the wolves, you ask? Fortunately, their story isn't totally lost in this otherwise complicated tale. In the telling of the wolf story, McConaghy may offer a fair reflection of wolves being re-introduced elsewhere, i.e. Yellowstone, but it's too easy to lose track of that fascinating story thanks to frenetic tales with which it competes. Others liked Once There were Wolves better, but better to look elsewhere for more fulfilling wolf tales.
]]> Two Steps Forward 36204099 New York Times bestselling author of The Rosie Project comes a story of taking chances and learning to love again as two people, one mourning her husband and the other recovering from divorce, cross paths on the centuries-old Camino pilgrimage from France to Spain.

“The Chemin will change you. It changes everyone…�

The Chemin, also known as the Camino de Santiago, is a centuries-old pilgrim route that ends in Santiago de Compostela in northwest Spain. Every year, thousands of walkers—some devout, many not—follow the route that wends through quaint small villages and along busy highways alike, a journey unlike any other.

Zoe, an artist from California who’s still reeling from her husband’s sudden death, has impulsively decided to walk the Camino, hoping to find solace and direction. Martin, an engineer from England, is road-testing a cart of his own design…and recovering from a messy divorce. They begin in the same French town, each uncertain of what the future holds. Zoe has anticipated the physical difficulties of her trek, but she is less prepared for other challenges, as strangers and circumstances force her to confront not just recent loss, but long-held beliefs. For Martin, the pilgrimage is a test of his skills and endurance but also, as he and Zoe grow closer, of his willingness to trust others—and himself—again.

Smart and funny, insightful and romantic, Two Steps Forward reveals that the most important journeys we make aren’t measured in miles, but in the strength, wisdom, and love found along the way. Fans of The Rosie Project will recognize Graeme Simsion’s uniquely quirky and charming writing style.

Ěý]]> 384 Graeme Simsion 0062846159 Clair 3 3.59 2017 Two Steps Forward
author: Graeme Simsion
name: Clair
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/26
date added: 2024/09/08
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In fairness to authors Graeme Simison and Anne Buist, they do not hide the fact that their collaboration, Two Steps Forward, is a novel of healing, forgiveness and relationships. Their insight into exploring The Way, or the spiritual trek, the Camino de Santiago through France and Spain is unfortunately a backstory. Perhaps this is the appropriate backdrop for the main story involving Zoe who is mourning the death of her husband, and Martin, overcoming an ugly divorce and attempting to save his relationship with his daughter, brought together by their initially less than spiritual motivation for hiking the Camino. But their own soul searching and inspiration created by others changes that. Yet if one hopes to learn more of the French Le Chemin and the Camino, the lessons in Two Steps Forward are minimal. Embrace the novel for the acts of forgiveness and search elsewhere for greater knowledge of the path to St. James.
]]> The Fifties 1148307
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER


From the Trade Paperback edition.]]> 800 David Halberstam 0679415599 Clair 5 4.16 1991 The Fifties
author: David Halberstam
name: Clair
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1991
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/20
date added: 2024/08/21
shelves:
review:
Bookended by the forties and World War II and the sixties and Vietnam and the years of social upheaval, the fifties are thought of as the calm years with little more than Elvis and McCarthyism. David Halberstam in is wrist-bending volume, The Fifties makes it very clear, in each of 46 chapters, that this is not the case. Halberstam devotes great attention to virtually every year, including insight into the late forties and concluding with 1960. He makes it very clear that the decade that introduced rock and roll, the McDonald's hamburger and Marilyn Monroe also played significant entree to issues that we tend to associate with the 60s: the run-up to US involvement in Vietnam and the Civil Rights tidal wave. For those people who yearn for the good old days of the 50s, this great (big) book, The Fifties, should serve as a reminder that life wasn't exactly as rosy those folks may recall while watching Lucy and Desi.
]]> The Showman 63365317 384 Simon Shuster 0063307421 Clair 0 to-read 4.17 The Showman
author: Simon Shuster
name: Clair
average rating: 4.17
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/25
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Walking with Sam: A Father, a Son, and Five Hundred Miles Across Spain]]> 62587676 Ěý
When Andrew McCarthy's eldest son began to take his first steps into adulthood, McCarthy found himself wishing time would slow down. Looking to create a more meaningful connection with Sam before he fled the nest, as well as recreate his own life-altering journey decades before, McCarthy decided the two of them should set out on a trek like few 500 miles across Spain's Camino de Santiago.
Ěý
Over the course of the journey, the pair traversed an unforgiving landscape, having more honest conversations in five weeks than they'd had in the preceding two decades. ĚýDiscussions of divorce, the trauma of school, McCarthy's difficult relationship with his own father, fame, and Flaming Hot Cheetos threatened to either derail their relationship or cement it. Ěý Walking With Sam Ěýcaptures this intimate, candid and hopeful expedition as the father son duo travel across the country and towards one another.]]> 256 Andrew McCarthy 1538709201 Clair 5 3.97 2023 Walking with Sam: A Father, a Son, and Five Hundred Miles Across Spain
author: Andrew McCarthy
name: Clair
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/21
date added: 2024/07/22
shelves:
review:
Walking with Sam by Andrew McCarthy is a delightful read. At it's core, Walking with Sam is about father/son, parental relationships, especially as the child works his way toward adulthood. Taking this beyond a self-help parenting guide, Walking with Sam serves as a travelogue, taking the reader on a candid journey on the fabled Camino de Santiago through the middle of Spain and all that it offers in the way of splendor and of barrenness. Walking with Sam is also about introspection. McCarthy is not shy to share the internal challenges he juggles with regard to his struggles with his own father and his self doubt as a father. Walking with Sam is not a heavy read, although there may be heavy moments. It is instead an eye-opening, entertaining, often-times humorous, 'hey that's me, too,' sort of read. There is joy and poignance in this journey on the path of St. James, and in the renewed discovery and relationship of father and son.
]]> King: A Life 62039291
The first full biography in decades, Eig mixes revelatory and exhaustive new research with brisk and accessible storytelling to forge the definitive life for our times.

Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig’s A Life is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.―and the first to include recently declassified FBI files. In this revelatory new portrait of the preacher and activist who shook the world, the bestselling biographer gives us an intimate view of the courageous and often emotionally troubled human being who demanded peaceful protest for his movement but was rarely at peace with himself. He casts fresh light on the King family’s origins as well as MLK’s complex relationships with his wife, father, and fellow activists. King reveals a minister wrestling with his own human frailties and dark moods, a citizen hunted by his own government, and a man determined to fight for justice even if it proved to be a fight to the death. As he follows MLK from the classroom to the pulpit to the streets of Birmingham, Selma, and Memphis, Eig dramatically re-creates the journey of a man who recast American race relations and became our only modern-day founding father―as well as the nation’s most mourned martyr.

In this landmark biography, Eig gives us an MLK for our a deep thinker, a brilliant strategist, and a committed radical who led one of history’s greatest movements, and whose demands for racial and economic justice remain as urgent today as they were in his lifetime.

Includes 8 pages of black-and-white photographs]]> 688 Jonathan Eig 0374279292 Clair 0 to-read 4.65 2023 King: A Life
author: Jonathan Eig
name: Clair
average rating: 4.65
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[There Will Be Fire: Margaret Thatcher, the IRA, and Two Minutes That Changed History]]> 61420116 Killing Thatcher is the gripping account of how the IRA came astonishingly close to killing Margaret Thatcher and to wiping out the British Cabinet � an extraordinary assassination attempt linked to the Northern Ireland Troubles and the most daring conspiracy against the Crown since the Gunpowder Plot.

In this fascinating and compelling book, veteran journalist Rory Carroll retraces the road to the infamous Brighton bombing in 1984 â€� an incident that shaped the political landscape in the UK for decades to come. He begins with the infamous execution of Lord Mountbatten in 1979 â€� for which the IRA took full responsibility â€� before tracing the rise of Margaret Thatcher, her response to the â€Troublesâ€� in Ireland and the chain of events that culminated in the hunger strikes of 1981 and the death of 10 republican prisoners, including Bobby Sands. From that moment on Thatcher became an enemy of the IRA â€� and the organisation swore revenge.

Opening with a brilliantly-paced prologue that introduces bomber Patrick Magee in the build up to the incident, Carroll sets out to deftly explore the intrigue before and after the assassination attempt � with the story spanning three continents, from pubs and palaces, safe houses and interrogation rooms, hotels and barracks. On one side, an elite IRA team aided by a renegade priest, US-raised funds and Libya’s Qaddafi and on the other, intelligence officers, police detectives, informers and bomb disposal officers. An exciting narrative that blends true crime with political history, this is the first major book to investigate the Brighton attack.]]> 397 Rory Carroll 0593419499 Clair 0 to-read 4.24 2023 There Will Be Fire: Margaret Thatcher, the IRA, and Two Minutes That Changed History
author: Rory Carroll
name: Clair
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks]]> 6493208
Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave.

Now Rebecca Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the “colored� ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers full of HeLa cells; from Henrietta’s small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia � a land of wooden quarters for enslaved people, faith healings, and voodoo � to East Baltimore today, where her children and grandchildren live and struggle with the legacy of her cells.

Henrietta’s family did not learn of her “immortality� until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the story of the Lacks family � past and present � is inextricably connected to the history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of.

Over the decade it took to uncover this story, Rebecca became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family—especially Henrietta’s daughter Deborah, who was devastated to learn about her mother’s cells. She was consumed with questions: Had scientists cloned her mother? Did it hurt her when researchers infected her cells with viruses and shot them into space? What happened to her sister, Elsie, who died in a mental institution at the age of fifteen? And if her mother was so important to medicine, why couldn’t her children afford health insurance?

Intimate in feeling, astonishing in scope, and impossible to put down, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences.]]> 370 Rebecca Skloot 1400052173 Clair 0 to-read 4.12 2010 The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
author: Rebecca Skloot
name: Clair
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Three Ordinary Girls: The Remarkable Story of Three Dutch Teenagers Who Became Spies, Saboteurs, Nazi Assassins–and WWII Heroes]]> 53735021 The astonishing WWII true story of a trio of fearless female resisters whose youth and innocence belied their extraordinary daring in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands. It also made them the underground's most invaluable commodity. Now for the first time, the complete account of these inspiring teenagers, recruited during WWII as spies, saboteurs and Nazi assassins, who fulfilled their harrowing missions with remarkable courage.

May 10, 1940. The Netherlands was swarming with Third Reich troops. In seven days it's entirely occupied by Nazi Germany. Joining a small resistance cell in the Dutch city of Haarlem were three teenage girls: Hannie Schaft, and sisters Truus and Freddie Oversteegen who would soon band together to form a singular female underground squad.

Smart, fiercely political, devoted solely to the cause, and "with nothing to lose but their own lives", Hannie, Truus, and Freddie took terrifying direct action against Nazi targets. That included sheltering fleeing Jews, political dissidents, and Dutch resisters. They sabotaged bridges and railways and donned disguises to lead children from probable internment in concentration camps to safehouses. They covertly transported weapons and set military facilities ablaze. And they carried out the assassinations of German soldiers and traitors-on public streets and in private traps-with the courage of veteran guerilla fighters and the cunning of seasoned spies.

In telling this true story through the lens of a fearlessly unique trio of freedom fighters, Tim Brady offers a never-before-seen perspective of the Dutch resistance during the war. Of lives under threat; of how these courageous young women became involved in the underground; and how their dedication evolved into dangerous, life-threatening missions on behalf of Dutch patriots-regardless of the consequences.

Harrowing, emotional, and unforgettable, Three Ordinary Girls finally moves these three icons of resistance into the deserved forefront of world history.]]> 298 Tim Brady 0806540389 Clair 0 to-read 3.69 2021 Three Ordinary Girls: The Remarkable Story of Three Dutch Teenagers Who Became Spies, Saboteurs, Nazi Assassins–and WWII Heroes
author: Tim Brady
name: Clair
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920's]]> 197169 New York Times

“A perfectly grand piece of historical record and synthetic journalism.�
� Chicago Daily Tribune

From Frederick Lewis Allen, former editor-in-chief of ±á˛ą°ů±č±đ°ů’s magazine, comes a classic history of 1920s America, from the end of World War I to the stock market crash and the beginning of The Great Depression. Originally published in 1931, Only Yesterday has an exuberance and proximity to its subject—the Roaring Twenties in all its scandal and glory—that uniquely captures the feel of the era.]]> 352 Frederick Lewis Allen 0060956658 Clair 3 3.92 1931 Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920's
author: Frederick Lewis Allen
name: Clair
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1931
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/01
date added: 2024/07/02
shelves:
review:
Having high hopes for an insightful look at the run-up to the great depression, Only Yesterday by Frederick Lewis Allen was a disappointment. Only Yesterday was really more of an essay built on snarky (even for the time) cynicism and finger pointing. But if one is to take anything away from Lewis's work it is that 1) big business was greedy and evil; 2) Politicians, especially in the White House were uncaring and evil; 3) Wall Street was greedy and evil; and 4) the American people were gullible, stupid or both. Allen does devote more than a chapter or two to the changing American culture impacted (or not) by prohibition, shorter hair and skirts and relaxed morals. Yet, one comes away from Lewis's writing and wondering, did I really learn anything new? A disappointment for a book written in the moment.
]]> Last Words: A Memoir 7134019
One of the undisputed heavyweight champions of American comedy, with nineteen appearances on the Johnny Carson show, thirteen HBO specials, five Grammys, and a critical Supreme Court battle over censorship under his belt, George Carlin saw it all throughout his extraordinary fifty-year career, and made fun of most of it. Last Words is the story of the man behind some of the most seminal comedy of the last half century, blending his signature acerbic humor with never-before-told stories from his own life, including encounters with a Who’s Who of 1970s celebrity—from Lenny Bruce to Hugh Hefner—and the origins of some of his most famous standup routines. Carlin’s early conflicts, his long struggle with substance abuse, his turbulent relationships with his family, and his triumphs over catastrophic setbacks all fueled the unique comedic worldview he brought to the stage. From the heights of stardom to the low points few knew about, Last Words is told with the same razor-sharp wit and unblinking honesty that made Carlin one of the best-loved comedians in American history.]]> 5 George Carlin 1442303182 Clair 4 3.92 2009 Last Words: A Memoir
author: George Carlin
name: Clair
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/28
date added: 2024/07/01
shelves:
review:
George Carlin will always be a hero. With his rowdy junior high inspired humor of Class Clown, Carlin demonstrated to us junior high kids at the time that being silly and in somewhat poor taste was okay. Some of the time. Carlin's performance demeanor, imagination, long list of voices and bottom line liberal mindedness helped him stand out as someone with whom we could identify. Years and many re-inventings of oneself later, Carlin remains a comedic and cultural hero. His memoir, Last Words doesn't change anything, other than like everyone else in the room, he was all too human. Drugs, booze, success all challenged Carlin time and again. But unlike many, he bounced back, perhaps a little more worn for the wear, but he bounced back. Last Words is a remarkable history of the George Carlin roller-coaster ride. Sadly, in audiobook format, it loses a little something . Its reader, Patrick Carlin, George's elder brother gives it his best. But its not quite the same as imagining George belt out the lines. But credit where credit is deserved. Last Words is a delightful memoir or confession, if you will. Love the effort the reader makes and the words he shares.
]]> Celine 30687236 The Dog Stars and The Painter, a luminous, masterful novel of suspense--the story of Celine, an elegant, aristocratic private eye who specializes in reuniting families, trying to make amends for a loss in her own past.

Working out of her jewel box of an apartment at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge, Celine has made a career of tracking down missing persons, and she has a better record at it than the FBI. But when a young woman, Gabriela, asks for her help, a world of mystery and sorrow opens up. Gabriela's father was a photographer who went missing on the border of Montana and Wyoming. He was assumed to have died from a grizzly mauling, but his body was never found. Now, as Celine and her partner head to Yellowstone National Park, investigating a trail gone cold, it becomes clear that they are being followed--that this is a case someone desperately wants to keep closed.

Combining the exquisite plotting and gorgeous evocation of nature that have become his hallmark, with a wildly engrossing story of family, privilege, and childhood loss, Peter Heller gives us his finest work to date.]]> 12 Peter Heller 1524751065 Clair 4 3.70 2017 Celine
author: Peter Heller
name: Clair
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/20
date added: 2024/07/01
shelves:
review:
This is a challenging review, as it is difficult to avoid criticizing Peter Heller's work because of a bad reader. Having read Celine previously, it is fair to suggest that while not his best work, Celine in printed format is head and shoulders above the oral efforts by Kimberly Farr. Celine is a wonderful heroine, a character as complicated and fascinating as his many others, if at times a little to super-human. This takes nothing away from her professional mission to reunite families, a longstanding to right what in her mind was a terrible wrong in her colorful past. She is surrounded by a cast that keeps her real, particularly her spouse, Pete and son, Hank. To read Heller's words in describing thoughts and place can be mesmerizing. And Heller does this beautifully as he takes us on Celine's fall journey through Yellowstone and the Rockies as she tracks down the father of her orphaned client. But Farr's oration dilutes the strength of this story with her feeble attempts to create the numerous other characters. She is terribly unjust to Pete and to Hank specifically, but others suffer as well. All said, this does not dampen my enthusiasm for Peter Heller's work, but a lesson learned here to rely on his printed word and not the interpretation of an audiobook reader.
]]> Custer 70336963 In this lavishly illustrated volume, Larry McMurtry, the greatest chronicler of the American West, tackles for the first time one of the paramount figures of Western and American history.

ĚýOn June 25, 1876, General George Armstrong Custer and his 7th Cavalry attacked a large Lakota Cheyenne village on the Little Bighorn River in Montana Territory. He lost not only the battle but his life—and the lives of his entire cavalry. “Custer’s Last Standâ€� was a spectacular defeat that shocked the country and grew quickly into a legend that has reverberated in our national consciousness to this day.

Pulitzer Prize winner Larry McMurtry has long been fascinated by the “Boy General� and his rightful place in history. In Custer, he delivers an expansive, agile, and clear-eyed reassessment of the iconic general’s life and legacy—how the legend was born, the ways in which it evolved, what it has meant—told against the broad sweep of the American narrative. We see Custer in all his contradictions and complexity as the perpetually restless man with a difficult marriage, a hunger for glory, and an unwavering confidence in his abilities.

McMurtry explores how the numerous controversies that grew out of the Little Bighorn combined with a perfect storm of technological developments—the railroad, the camera, and the telegraph—to fan the flames of his legend. He shows how Custer’s wife, Libbie, worked for decades after his death to portray Major Marcus Reno as the cause of the disaster of the Little Bighorn, and how Buffalo Bill Cody, who ended his Wild West Show with a valiant reenactment of Custer’s Last Stand, played a pivotal role in spreading Custer’s notoriety.

While Custer is first and foremost an enthralling story filled with larger-than-life characters—Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, William J. Fetterman, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Red Cloud—McMurtry also argues that Little Bighorn should be seen as a monumental event in our nation’s history. Like all great battles, its true meaning can be found in its impact on our politics and policy, and the epic defeat clearly signaled the end of the Indian Wars—and brought to a close the great narrative of western expansion. In Custer, Larry McMurtry delivers a magisterial portrait of a complicated, misunderstood man that not only irrevocably changes our long-standing conversation about Custer, but once again redefines our understanding of the American West.]]> 1 Larry McMurtry 1664672400 Clair 4 3.33 2012 Custer
author: Larry McMurtry
name: Clair
average rating: 3.33
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/15
date added: 2024/07/01
shelves:
review:
Larry McMurtry's Custer was a fascinating follow-up to reading Nathanial Philbrick's The Last Stand. As an audiobook, McMurtry's work, read by an enthusiastic Henry Strozier, didn't lose any of McMurtry's wit, nor the degree of the circumstances that led up to the massacre at Little Big Horn. McMurtry knows a little about the run-up to and the events that took place on June 25, 1876. As an audiobook, one loses the visual impact that McMurtry's book with photographs and illustrations would otherwise provide. But his words remain impactful. And as an historian and story-teller supreme, McMurtry's work is impactful. He defers to others, like Philbrick, for a wealth of facts and figures, but McMurtry's writing stands with them. Brief and powerful, McMurtry's Custer is a volume worth reading.
]]> <![CDATA[The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn]]> 7311907
The bestselling author of "Mayflower" sheds new light on one of the iconic stories of the American West

Little Bighorn and Custer are names synonymous in the American imagination with unmatched bravery and spectacular defeat. Mythologized as Custer's Last Stand, the June 1876 battle has been equated with other famous last stands, from the Spartans' defeat at Thermopylae to Davy Crockett at the Alamo.

In his tightly structured narrative, Nathaniel Philbrick brilliantly sketches the two larger-than-life antagonists: Sitting Bull, whose charisma and political savvy earned him the position of leader of the Plains Indians, and George Armstrong Custer, one of the Union's greatest cavalry officers and a man with a reputation for fearless and often reckless courage. Philbrick reminds readers that the Battle of the Little Bighorn was also, even in victory, the last stand for the Sioux and Cheyenne Indian nations. Increasingly outraged by the government's Indian policies, the Plains tribes allied themselves and held their ground in southern Montana. Within a few years of Little Bighorn, however, all the major tribal leaders would be confined to Indian reservations.

Throughout, Philbrick beautifully evokes the history and geography of the Great Plains with his characteristic grace and sense of drama. "The Last Stand" is a mesmerizing account of the archetypal story of the American West, one that continues to haunt our collective imagination.]]> 466 Nathaniel Philbrick 0670021725 Clair 4 4.02 2010 The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn
author: Nathaniel Philbrick
name: Clair
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/10
date added: 2024/06/11
shelves:
review:
In the Last Stand, Nathaniel Philbrick presents and incredible retelling of the events that led up to the end of George Armstrong Custer and his men at Little Big Horn on 1876, serving as a shocking prelude to the celebration of the 100th anniversary of independence. Philbrick's writing offers up an inside perspective of Custer, the men under his command and his leaders. Perhaps more significantly. Philbrick provides a rare perspective of the Native American people who precipitated the demise of Custer and his men. Sitting Bull, leading his Sioux people, knowing they were facing men of war, wanted to find a path to peace. His hand was forced to act otherwise. The Last Stand is an excellent read, shedding new light on the numerous legends that arose from the Battle of Little Bighorn, and brings the unfortunate event down to human scale.
]]> <![CDATA[The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt and the Golden Age of Journalism]]> 21412350 The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Economist, Time, USA TODAY, Christian Science Monitor, and more. &#8220;A tale so gripping that one questions the need for fiction when real life is so plump with drama and intrigue; (Associated Press).

Doris Kearns Goodwin’s The Bully Pulpit is a dynamic history of the first decade of the Progressive era, that tumultuous time when the nation was coming unseamed and reform was in the air.

The story is told through the intense friendship of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft; a close relationship that strengthens both men before it ruptures in 1912, when they engage in a brutal fight for the presidential nomination that divides their wives, their children, and their closest friends, while crippling the progressive wing of the Republican Party, causing Democrat Woodrow Wilson to be elected, and changing the country’s history.

The Bully Pulpit is also the story of the muckraking press, which arouses the spirit of reform that helps Roosevelt push the government to shed its laissez-faire attitude toward robber barons, corrupt politicians, and corporate exploiters of our natural resources. The muckrakers are portrayed through the greatest group of journalists ever assembled at one magazine; Ida Tarbell, Ray Stannard Baker, Lincoln Steffens, and William Allen White; teamed under the mercurial genius of publisher S.S. McClure.

Goodwin’s narrative is founded upon a wealth of primary materials. The correspondence of more than four hundred letters between Roosevelt and Taft begins in their early thirties and ends only months before Roosevelt’s death. Edith Roosevelt and Nellie Taft kept diaries. The muckrakers wrote hundreds of letters to one another, kept journals, and wrote their memoirs. The letters of Captain Archie Butt, who served as a personal aide to both Roosevelt and Taft, provide an intimate view of both men.

The Bully Pulpit, like Goodwin’s brilliant chronicles of the Civil War and World War II, exquisitely demonstrates her distinctive ability to combine scholarly rigor with accessibility. It is a major work of history; an examination of leadership in a rare moment of activism and reform that brought the country closer to its founding ideals. One of the Best Books of the Year as chosen by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Economist, Time, USA TODAY, Christian Science Monitor, and more. &#8220;A tale so gripping that one questions the need for fiction when real life is so plump with drama and intrigue1; (Associated Press).

Doris Kearns Goodwin’s The Bully Pulpit is a dynamic history of the first decade of the Progressive era, that tumultuous time when the nation was coming unseamed and reform was in the air.

The story is told through the intense friendship of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft; a close relationship that strengthens both men before it ruptures in 1912, when they engage in a brutal fight for the presidential nomination that divides their wives, their children, and their closest friends, while crippling the progressive wing of the Republican Party, causing Democrat Woodrow Wilson to be elected, and changing the country’s history.

The Bully Pulpit is also the story of the muckraking press, which arouses the spirit of reform that helps Roosevelt push the government to shed its laissez-faire attitude toward robber barons, corrupt politicians, and corporate exploiters of our natural resources. The muckrakers are portrayed through the greatest group of journalists ever assembled at one magazine; Ida Tarbell, Ray Stannard Baker, Lincoln Steffens, and William Allen White; teamed under the mercurial genius of publisher S.S. McClure.

Goodwin’s narrative is founded upon a wealth of primary materials. The correspondence of more than four hundred letters between Roosevelt and Taft begins in their early thirties and ends only months before Roosevelt’s death. Edith Roosevelt and Nellie Taft kept diaries. The muckrakers wrote hundreds of letters to one another, kept journals, and wrote their memoirs. The letters of Captain Archie Butt, who served as a personal aide to both Roosevelt and Taft, provide an intimate view of both men.

The Bully Pulpit, like Goodwin’s brilliant chronicles of the Civil War and World War II, exquisitely demonstrates her distinctive ability to combine scholarly rigor with accessibility. It is a major work of history; an examination of leadership in a rare moment of activism and reform that brought the country closer to its founding ideals.]]> 912 Doris Kearns Goodwin 1416547878 Clair 5 4.33 2013 The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt and the Golden Age of Journalism
author: Doris Kearns Goodwin
name: Clair
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/05
date added: 2024/06/06
shelves:
review:
My reviews may read like a broken record sounds as I have repeated my belief that history is cyclical. And so it is again called out as a result of reading Doris Kearns Goodwin's The Bully Pulpit. Reflecting much of what we are experiencing in today's contemporary politics, business and society, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, progressive Republicans(!) and an investigative lot of journalists encountered in the early 20th century, encompassing Roosevelt's and Taft's unique relationship and Roosevelt's even more unique relationship with the leading names in investigative journalism, William Allen White, Ida Tarbell, Ray Stannard Baker and Lincoln Steffens. The challenges these individuals faced in their attempts to improve the lives of everyday Americans was an uphill battle, overcoming the tyrants of the oil, rail and meat processing industries, among many others. And just as we witness today, the spoiler of the efforts of the great people was politics. The desire for power and authority, the desire of fame, infected and thwarted those efforts. Doris Kearns Goodwin is a remarkable historian and author. The wonders of her work are demonstrated page after page in The Bully Pulpit just as she has shown in her other works. The Bully Pulpit is a great re-capturing of history of a time unknown to most and reflecting yet again, the hamster wheel of history.
]]> <![CDATA[Lonely Vigil: Coastwatchers of the Solomons]]> 1335920
To piece their story together, Lord traveled 40,000 miles to interview participants, check archives, and examine private letters and diaries. He even made a three-day hike through the Guadalcanal jungle to inspect the coastwatcher hideout on Gold Ridge so he could successfully put readers in their shoes. The book's varied cast of intriguing characters has attracted readers ever since.]]> 322 Walter Lord 0670437654 Clair 3 4.03 1977 Lonely Vigil: Coastwatchers of the Solomons
author: Walter Lord
name: Clair
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1977
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/01
date added: 2024/05/13
shelves:
review:
Lonely Vigil: Coastwatchers of the Solomons by Walter Lord is a fascinating, colorful subject of Second World War's Pacific theater. Sadly, Lord's attempt to capture their story doesn't live up to the coastwatchers' role and service to the Allied cause. Lord's story is ahard to follow, scattered collection of the Solomon coastwatchers' history. He references subjects that he assumes the reader has knowledge of, with no attempt to fill in the gap. For example, out of the blue in a later chapter he references the location of the Solomons chain in proximity to the Russell Islands: so what? Lonely Vigil is worth reading for the myriad stories of the many selfless individuals who contributed to the important role of tracking Japanese activity to take Guadalcanal. It's hard to believe such a small chain of islands was so important to the course of the Pacific war, but it was, because of proximity to Australia and reach of the central Pacific. Look past to mediocre authorship for the story
]]> The Farm 17557913
But with that phone call, everything changes. Your mother's not well, his father tells him. She's been imagining things--terrible, terrible things. She's had a psychotic breakdown, and has been committed to a mental hospital.

Daniel prepares to rush to Sweden, on the first available flight the next day. Before he can board the plane, his father contacts him again with even more frightening news: his mother has been released from the hospital, and he doesn't know where she is.

Then, he hears from his mother:

I'm sure your father has spoken to you. Everything that man has told you is a lie. I'm not mad. I don't need a doctor. I need the police. I'm about to board a flight to London. Meet me at Heathrow.

Caught between his parents, and unsure of who to believe or trust, Daniel becomes his mother's unwilling judge and jury as she tells him an urgent tale of secrets, of lies, of a horrible crime and a conspiracy that implicates his own father.]]> 400 Tom Rob Smith 1471110672 Clair 4 3.55 2014 The Farm
author: Tom Rob Smith
name: Clair
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2017/03/23
date added: 2024/05/11
shelves:
review:
The Farm is another example of why we should always finish what we start reading. For the first 200 pages, it was hard to like the characters; hard to appreciate the direction the book appeared to be taking. What a surprise in the last 75 pages. Read the whole book.
]]> <![CDATA[Once In A Great City: A Detroit Story]]> 23492705
It’s 1963 and Detroit is on top of the world. The city’s leaders are among the most visionary in America: Grandson of the first Ford; Henry Ford II; influential labor leader Walter Reuther; Motown’s founder Berry Gordy; the Reverend C.L. Franklin and his daughter, the amazing Aretha; Governor George Romney, Mormon and Civil Rights advocate; super car salesman Lee Iacocca; Mayor Jerome Cavanagh, a Kennedy acolyte; Police Commissioner George Edwards; Martin Luther King. It was the American auto makers� best year; the revolution in music and politics was underway. Reuther’s UAW had helped lift the middle class.

The time was full of promise. The auto industry was selling more cars than ever before and inventing the Mustang. Motown was capturing the world with its amazing artists. The progressive labor movement was rooted in Detroit with the UAW. Martin Luther King delivered his “I Have a Dream� speech there two months before he made it famous in the Washington march.

Once in a Great City shows that the shadows of collapse were evident even then. Before the devastating riot. Before the decades of civic corruption and neglect, and white flight. Before people trotted out the grab bag of rust belt infirmities—from harsh weather to high labor costs—and competition from abroad to explain Detroit’s collapse.]]> 464 David Maraniss 1476748381 Clair 5 3.77 2015 Once In A Great City: A Detroit Story
author: David Maraniss
name: Clair
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2017/01/30
date added: 2024/05/11
shelves:
review:
Excellent read. Those who challenge the premise that our chosen course, our actions of 20, 40 50 years ago influence our current state of affairs should read this brief, but fascinating, detailed snapshot of American history.
]]> <![CDATA[Gifts of the Crow: How Perception, Emotion, and Thought Allow Smart Birds to Behave Like Humans]]> 13259775 Stan Coren’s groundbreaking The Intelligence of Dogs meets Bernd Heinrich’s classic Mind of the Raven in this astonishing, beautifully illustrated look at the uncanny intelligence and emotions of crows.

CROWS ARE MISCHIEVOUS, playful, social, and passionate. They have brains that are huge for their body size and exhibit an avian kind of eloquence. They mate for life and associate with relatives and neighbors for years. And because they often live near people—in our gardens, parks, and cities—they are also keenly aware of our peculiarities, staying away from and even scolding anyone who threatens or harms them and quickly learning to recognize and approach those who care for and feed them, even giving them numerous, oddly touching gifts in return.

With his extraordinary research on the intelligence and startling abilities of corvids—crows, ravens, and jays—scientist John Marzluff teams up with artist-naturalist Tony Angell to tell amazing stories of these brilliant birds in Gifts of the Crow. With narrative, diagrams, and gorgeous line drawings, they offer an in-depth look at these complex creatures and our shared behaviors. The ongoing connection between humans and crows—a cultural coevolution—has shaped both species for millions of years. And the characteristics of crows that allow this symbiotic relationship are language, delinquency, frolic, passion, wrath, risk-taking, and awareness—seven traits that humans find strangely familiar. Crows gather around their dead, warn of impending doom, recognize people, commit murder of other crows, lure fish and birds to their death, swill coffee, drink beer, turn on lights to stay warm, design and use tools, use cars as nutcrackers, windsurf and sled to play, and work in tandem to spray soft cheese out of a can. Their marvelous brains allow them to think, plan, and reconsider their actions.

With its abundance of funny, awe-inspiring, and poignant stories, Gifts of the Crow portrays creatures who are nothing short of amazing. A testament to years of painstaking research and careful observation, this fully illustrated, riveting work is a thrilling look at one of nature’s most wondrous creatures.]]> 304 John M. Marzluff 143919873X Clair 4 3.92 2012 Gifts of the Crow: How Perception, Emotion, and Thought Allow Smart Birds to Behave Like Humans
author: John M. Marzluff
name: Clair
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/09
date added: 2024/05/11
shelves:
review:
Gifts of the Crow is a must read for bird lovers, wherever the crow, raven and related members of the Corvid family may appear on your favorites list. John Marzluff, Tony Angell and the scores of contributors whose stories Marzluff shares sheds incredible light on these otherwise maligned birds. Examples of community, humor, care and even love run rampant throughout this amazing book. Marzluff includes more than enough science, explaining how these remarkable birds do what what they do, with complex brains that challenge our own, but it's all part of the greater story. Upon reading Gifts of the Crow, one is immediately inspired to go out and spend a day observing these fascinating bird.
]]> Eleanor: The Years Alone 1087291 Joseph P. Lash 0393073610 Clair 5
That aside, The Years Alone is a remarkable story of a most remarkable woman. Every page of every chapter sheds light on her incredible drive and vision for a better world. Few others, woman or man, can compare their influence on issues, domestic and internationally, as Eleanor Roosevelt. One has to wonder if were it not for her work if the United Nations would have survived through the Fifties; she was so committed to it's existence. Would Truman have been as committed to the creation of the nation of Israel, were it not for her gentle, but persistent influence.

While Eleanor Roosevelt claimed time and again she was no politician, there is no question she learned from the best how to deal with the political minds to accomplish her myriad missions. If only today, we had more non-politicians doing the great work that Eleanor Roosevelt succeeded in doing throughout her life.]]> 4.04 1972 Eleanor: The Years Alone
author: Joseph P. Lash
name: Clair
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1972
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/08
date added: 2024/05/08
shelves:
review:
Let's note up-front that Joseph P. Lash, author of Eleanor: The Years Alone, and his wife Trude, were very close friends and confidants of both Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt, so there is no doubt his writing reflects a devotion and bias that a reader may not find in Doris Kearns Goodwin's more recent book, No Ordinary Time.

That aside, The Years Alone is a remarkable story of a most remarkable woman. Every page of every chapter sheds light on her incredible drive and vision for a better world. Few others, woman or man, can compare their influence on issues, domestic and internationally, as Eleanor Roosevelt. One has to wonder if were it not for her work if the United Nations would have survived through the Fifties; she was so committed to it's existence. Would Truman have been as committed to the creation of the nation of Israel, were it not for her gentle, but persistent influence.

While Eleanor Roosevelt claimed time and again she was no politician, there is no question she learned from the best how to deal with the political minds to accomplish her myriad missions. If only today, we had more non-politicians doing the great work that Eleanor Roosevelt succeeded in doing throughout her life.
]]> <![CDATA[Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI]]> 204927599 From the author of Sapiens comes the groundbreaking story of how information networks have made, and unmade, our world.

For the last 100,000 years, we Sapiens have accumulated enormous power. But despite all our discoveries, inventions, and conquests, we now find ourselves in an existential crisis. The world is on the verge of ecological collapse. Misinformation abounds. And we are rushing headlong into the age of AI—a new information network that threatens to annihilate us. For all that we have accomplished, why are we so self-destructive?

Nexus looks through the long lens of human history to consider how the flow of information has shaped us, and our world. Taking us from the Stone Age, through the canonization of the Bible, early modern witch-hunts, Stalinism, Nazism, and the resurgence of populism today, Yuval Noah Harari asks us to consider the complex relationship between information and truth, bureaucracy and mythology, wisdom and power. He explores how different societies and political systems throughout history have wielded information to achieve their goals, for good and ill. And he addresses the urgent choices we face as non-human intelligence threatens our very existence.

Information is not the raw material of truth; neither is it a mere weapon. Nexus explores the hopeful middle ground between these extremes, and in doing so, rediscovers our shared humanity.]]> 528 Yuval Noah Harari 059373422X Clair 0 to-read 4.14 2024 Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI
author: Yuval Noah Harari
name: Clair
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Going to Meet the Man 38469 This is an older edition of ISBN 9780679761792.

"There's no way not to suffer. But you try all kinds of ways to keep from drowning in it." The men and women in these eight short fictions grasp this truth on an elemental level, and their stories, as told by James Baldwin, detail the ingenious and often desperate ways in which they try to keep their head above water. It may be the heroin that a down-and-out jazz pianist uses to face the terror of pouring his life into an inanimate instrument. It may be the brittle piety of a father who can never forgive his son for his illegitimacy. Or it may be the screen of bigotry that a redneck deputy has raised to blunt the awful childhood memory of the day his parents took him to watch a black man being murdered by a gleeful mob.

By turns haunting, heartbreaking, and horrifying--and informed throughout by Baldwin's uncanny knowledge of the wounds racism has left in both its victims and its perpetrators--Going to Meet the Man is a major work by one of our most important writers.]]> 249 James Baldwin Clair 0 to-read 4.38 1965 Going to Meet the Man
author: James Baldwin
name: Clair
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1965
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> In Patagonia 79909 199 Bruce Chatwin 0142437190 Clair 3 3.69 1977 In Patagonia
author: Bruce Chatwin
name: Clair
average rating: 3.69
book published: 1977
rating: 3
read at: 2024/05/01
date added: 2024/05/05
shelves:
review:
Part personal journey, part history lesson, part travelogue. So it seems with Bruce Chatwin's in Patagonia. Personal journey in that Chatwin travels throughout the Patagonian region following in his great-grandfather's own travel and discovery; part history lesson as Chatwin wonderfully provides the reader with in-depth backstory of Patagonia with emphasis on the many indigenous people of the region, their demise, a result of invasion of European explorers and settler and the many diseases they brought with as well as perhaps way too much time devoted to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid; and Chatwin offers up a wonderful overview of the region, exploring the land and shoreline, much of it on-foot, meeting locals along the way. It's easy to get lost as Chatwin bounces from family history to geography to cultural history and back again. But it's worth the effort, especially if one has even passing knowledge and appreciation for the region.
]]> <![CDATA[Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship]]> 147537
Born in the nineteenth century and molders of the twentieth and twenty-first, Roosevelt and Churchill had much in common. Sons of the elite, students of history, politicians of the first rank, they savored power. In their own time both men were underestimated, dismissed as arrogant, and faced skeptics and haters in their own nations--yet both magnificently rose to the central challenges of the twentieth century. Theirs was a kind of love story, with an emotional Churchill courting an elusive Roosevelt. The British prime minister, who rallied his nation in its darkest hour, standing alone against Adolf Hitler, was always somewhat insecure about his place in FDR's affections--which was the way Roosevelt wanted it. A man of secrets, FDR liked to keep people off balance, including his wife, Eleanor, his White House aides--and Winston Churchill.

Confronting tyranny and terror, Roosevelt and Churchill built a victorious alliance amid cataclysmic events and occasionally conflicting interests. Franklin and Winston is also the story of their marriages and their families, two clans caught up in the most sweeping global conflict in history.

Meacham's new sources--including unpublished letters of FDR's great secret love, Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd, the papers of Pamela Churchill Harriman, and interviews with the few surviving people who were in FDR and Churchill's joint company--shed fresh light on the characters of both men as he engagingly chronicles the hours in which they decided the course of the struggle.

Hitler brought them together; later in the war, they drifted apart, but even in the autumn of their alliance, the pull of affection was always there. Charting the personal drama behind the discussions of strategy and statecraft, Meacham has written the definitive account of the most remarkable friendship of the modern age.]]> 490 Jon Meacham 0812972821 Clair 5 4.12 2003 Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship
author: Jon Meacham
name: Clair
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2003
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/21
date added: 2024/04/22
shelves:
review:
Jon Meacham's work Franklin and Winston is a great study of Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt, two of the most profound, impactful world leaders of the 20th Century, if not all time. We know from school history books that these two men bonded resulting from England's need for a military arms resource in the early years of World War II, but few have written of the remarkable relationship that came about from that need for aid. Two powerful personalities, for better or worse, became not just friends in need, but friends in life. Meacham proposes the friendship may have been more one sided, with Churchill often being the suitor of a oftentimes fickle, winsome and distant FDR. but Meacham points out this was simply how FDR treated everyone, warm and approachable when he needed something, distant and cold when Churchill was the needy one. This was especially apparent when Stalin came into the picture in the Big Three meetings in Tehran. Childish to a point, but ultimately a political ploy. In spite of the writing capturing so much of the sometimes questionable behavior of men with over the top egos, Franklin and Winston is an excellent behind the scenes perspective of the most important relationship of World War II.
]]> <![CDATA[The Whale Warriors: The Battle at the Bottom of the World to Save the Planet's Largest Mammals]]> 1062597 304 Peter Heller 1416532463 Clair 5
The Whale Warriors: The Battle at the Bottom of the World to Save the Planet's Largest Mammals, chronicles the efforts of Watson, a modern day anti-Ahab, and his international band of mostly younger people to interrupt the murderous rampage of Japanese whalers in late 2005/early 2006. Published in 2007, Heller's coverage initially suggests skepticism of Watson's mission. After all, they are going to battle on a tired rusty trawler with crew made up of committed vegans, many of whom had never been on the ocean before. But witnessing the slaughter inflicted by the whalers and the bold, heroic, even suicidal efforts of Watson's crew, Heller becomes a believer.

What man has done to the whale over the millennia is beyond comprehension. Maybe we can give ourselves an out for the days of Moby Dick, not knowing any better, but today, what is our shameful excuse? How can we allow ourselves to continue with this senseless killing of whales led by some of the more progressive countries in the world? We should all be required to read Whale Warriors and be moved to action to end this senseless murder by Japan, Norway and Iceland.

Will we ever learn?]]> 3.96 2007 The Whale Warriors: The Battle at the Bottom of the World to Save the Planet's Largest Mammals
author: Peter Heller
name: Clair
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/03
date added: 2024/04/05
shelves:
review:
It's ironic that mankind, which has spent it's entire time on earth doing everything we can to eradicate ourselves, would stop for a moment to try to save another species. As a whole, we don't. But Peter Heller's marvelous journal of his time with Paul Watson, the Sea Shepherd and his crew, records how a small team of committed, courageous people are ready to sacrifice their own lives to save whales in the frigid waters of Antarctica.

The Whale Warriors: The Battle at the Bottom of the World to Save the Planet's Largest Mammals, chronicles the efforts of Watson, a modern day anti-Ahab, and his international band of mostly younger people to interrupt the murderous rampage of Japanese whalers in late 2005/early 2006. Published in 2007, Heller's coverage initially suggests skepticism of Watson's mission. After all, they are going to battle on a tired rusty trawler with crew made up of committed vegans, many of whom had never been on the ocean before. But witnessing the slaughter inflicted by the whalers and the bold, heroic, even suicidal efforts of Watson's crew, Heller becomes a believer.

What man has done to the whale over the millennia is beyond comprehension. Maybe we can give ourselves an out for the days of Moby Dick, not knowing any better, but today, what is our shameful excuse? How can we allow ourselves to continue with this senseless killing of whales led by some of the more progressive countries in the world? We should all be required to read Whale Warriors and be moved to action to end this senseless murder by Japan, Norway and Iceland.

Will we ever learn?
]]> <![CDATA[Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime]]> 6694937 Catch 22.� �The Financial Times

Ěý

“It transports you to a parallel universe in which everything in the National Enquirer is true�.More interesting is what we learn about the candidates themselves: their frailties, egos and almost super-human stamina.� �The Financial Times

Ěý

“I can’t put down this book!� —Stephen Colbert

Ěý

Game Change is the New York Times bestselling story of the 2008 presidential election, by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, two of the best political reporters in the country. In the spirit of Richard Ben Cramer’s What It Takes and Theodore H. White’s The Making of the President 1960, this classic campaign trail book tells the defining story of a new era in American politics, going deeper behind the scenes of the Obama/Biden and McCain/Palin campaigns than any other account of the historic 2008 election.]]> 448 John Heilemann 0061733636 Clair 0 to-read 4.12 2010 Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime
author: John Heilemann
name: Clair
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Truth Worth Telling: A Reporter's Search for Meaning in the Stories of Our Times]]> 42350000 An inspiring memoir from the front lines of history by award-winning 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley.

Don’t ask the meaning of life. Life is asking, what’s the meaning of you?

With this provocative question, Truth Worth Telling introduces us to unforgettable people who discovered the meaning of their lives in the historic events of our times. A 60 Minutes correspondent and former anchor of the CBS Evening News, Scott Pelley writes as a witness to events that changed our world. In moving, detailed prose, he stands with firefighters at the collapsing World Trade Center on 9/11, advances with American troops in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq, and reveals private moments with presidents (and would-be presidents) he’s known for decades. Truth Worth Telling offers a resounding defense of free speech and a free press as the rights that guarantee all others. For readers who believe values matter and truth is worth telling, Pelley writes, “I have written this book for you.”]]> 464 Scott Pelley 1335999140 Clair 4 4.42 2019 Truth Worth Telling: A Reporter's Search for Meaning in the Stories of Our Times
author: Scott Pelley
name: Clair
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/28
date added: 2024/03/28
shelves:
review:
Scott Pelley preaches. Throughout his writings of Truth Worth Telling: A Reporter's Search for Meaning in the Stories of our Times, Pelley is delivering a sermon. And like any good sermon, there is a meaningful, worthwhile message in his preachings. Pelley's strength as a journalist is in his on-camera presence, currently on CBS's 60 Minutes, but previously as the face of the Evening News and very much in his earliest reporting. But the stories he shares in Truth Worth Telling are powerful, even if at times diluted by preaching. Be it the firefighters of FDNY on 9/11, the parents of murdered children of Sandy Hook Elementary or shedding light on the horrors of torture inflicted by the military and CIA in Afghanistan, these are incredibly powerful stories. Pelley's reporting does not preach the right and wrong of each story; he allows his reader to make those judgments. But Pelley does preach to us the power of unbiased fact driven journalism. And for this, we should all be grateful, that while threatened time and again, fact based journalism remains as the base of our democracy, our freedoms. Pelley preaches, but it's a message that we need to all be reminded is time well spent in the pew.
]]> The Mysterious Island 33975472 Jules Verne 1620122197 Clair 4 4.50 1874 The Mysterious Island
author: Jules Verne
name: Clair
average rating: 4.50
book published: 1874
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/22
date added: 2024/03/23
shelves:
review:
Every once in awhile, it's good to reach back in time to read about what once was. So it was with reading Jules Verne's The Mysterious Island. What a thrilling adventure it is to read today, imagining what readers must have experienced from their reading more than 150 years ago. It is difficult to avoid taking a 21st century snobbish attitude toward much of what Verne invented in his writing, but if the reader allows their tech-savvy minds to step back to that time, acknowledging that steam power, electricity, biology and geological sciences were on the cusp of real every day use, then the story is even more fascinating. Beyond technology and the sciences, The Mysterious Island is also a study of people and relationships. Again, let's set aside our jaded perspective of today's interpersonal relationships and relish in that yes, even in the immediate post-Civil War period, complete strangers could get along and prosper from those relationships. If there is an oversight within the perspective of relationships, the death of Jup is treated as an unfortunate throwaway moment. But overall, The Mysterious Island is a pleasurable trip to take if for no other reason than to escape our all to tech driven lives today.
]]> <![CDATA[Rising Tide: the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How it Changed America]]> 49376 Rising Tide is the story of this forgotten event, the greatest natural disaster this country has ever known. But it is not simply a tale of disaster. The flood transformed part of the nation and had a major cultural and political impact on the rest.

Rising Tide is an American epic about science, race, honor, politics, and society. Rising Tide begins in the nineteenth century, when the first serious attempts to control the river began. The story focuses on engineers James Eads and Andrew Humphreys, who hated each other. Out of the collision of their personalities and their theories came a compromise river policy that would lead to the disaster of the 1927 flood yet would also allow the cultivation of the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta and create wealth and aristocracy, as well as a whole culture. In the end, the flood had indeed changed the face of America, leading to the most comprehensive legislation the government had ever enacted, touching the entire Mississippi valley from Pennsylvania to Montana. In its aftermath was laid the foundation for the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt.]]> 524 John M. Barry 0684840022 Clair 5 4.21 1997 Rising Tide: the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How it Changed America
author: John M. Barry
name: Clair
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1997
rating: 5
read at: 2023/03/19
date added: 2024/03/09
shelves:
review:
The horror of Hurricane Katrina and her impact on New Orleans and the lower Mississippi River delta remains a clear memory for many of us. Rising Tide is a fascinating book that tells of another dark time in our nation's history affecting the Louisiana basin and so much more. Who today is really aware of the horrific natural disaster that struck the US in 1927? John M Barry captures the event vividly and with painful honesty that most likely had never been exposed in such detail before this telling. A massive natural disaster is made worse by engineering egotism and conceit, overwhelming post civil war/reconstruction racism, political gain and selfish greed. While the event is largely an example of natural horror made worse by man, there are moments of men attempting to do good, but quickly lost in the otherwise terrible moment. The cast of characters is long, and very few can be considered heroes of this widespread geographic disaster that flooded a greater area of the central part of the country in water. Whether Hurricane Katrina or climate change, when we look at the Mississippi River and its many tributaries, what have we learned from 1927?
]]> The Trial of the Century 62919910
A gripping and comprehensive history of the iconic attorney Clarence Darrow and the famous Scopes Monkey Trial, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Russia Hoax and the “superb� (Sean Hannity) Witch Hunt .

Nearly a century ago, famed liberal attorney Clarence Darrow defended schoolteacher John Scopes in a blockbuster legal proceeding that brought the attention of the entire country to the small town of Dayton, Tennessee. Darrow’s seminal defense of freedom of speech helped form the legal bedrock on which our civil liberties depend today. Expertly researched, eye-opening, and stirring, The Trial of the Century calls upon our past to unite Americans in the defense of the free exchange of ideas, especially in this divided time.]]> 304 Gregg Jarrett 1982198575 Clair 4
I do share his opinion of the state of education as documented in the Epilogue of The Trial of the Century, his book documenting the run-up to and outcomes of the 1925 Scopes Trial on Evolution. Jarrett, in able partnership with Don Yaeger, spell out the details of the court trial featuring William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow as the featured attorneys going nose-to-nose on the subject of Evolution in general and whether Tennessee law allowed the subject to be discussed in the classroom. The surprises are numerous in the re-telling of this monumental court trial, but none more than to learn how much Jarrett praises the outspoken, liberal leaning, agnostic Darrow.

The court trial and the key players including Scopes, the defendant and Raulston, the presiding judge is fascinating, but the less than subtle praise and uplifting of Darrow as the protagonist of open and fair representation and discussion of science in the classroom only adds to this otherwise mostly forgotten moment in time.

As Jarrett is keen to point out in his epilogue, the reality of evolution is all but accepted as fact today in education and among most church religious faiths. However, Jarrett isn't shy to raise the ugly treatment of American history and race and the backlash against it being taught in schools today, referring to the limits placed as "educational gag orders."

Sadly, the world is yet to see another Clarence Darrow and his principled pursuit of a just society for all. But so long as there are writers like Jarrett, who remind us of moments such as the Scopes Monkey Trial of July 1925, our hope and faith should remain strong.]]> 3.60 The Trial of the Century
author: Gregg Jarrett
name: Clair
average rating: 3.60
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/02
date added: 2024/03/09
shelves:
review:
Disclaimer: I am not a fan of Gregg Jarrett the FOX commentator. While I often find his opinions on-air to be thoughtful and fact based, we don't see eye-to-eye on most political and social issues of the day.

I do share his opinion of the state of education as documented in the Epilogue of The Trial of the Century, his book documenting the run-up to and outcomes of the 1925 Scopes Trial on Evolution. Jarrett, in able partnership with Don Yaeger, spell out the details of the court trial featuring William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow as the featured attorneys going nose-to-nose on the subject of Evolution in general and whether Tennessee law allowed the subject to be discussed in the classroom. The surprises are numerous in the re-telling of this monumental court trial, but none more than to learn how much Jarrett praises the outspoken, liberal leaning, agnostic Darrow.

The court trial and the key players including Scopes, the defendant and Raulston, the presiding judge is fascinating, but the less than subtle praise and uplifting of Darrow as the protagonist of open and fair representation and discussion of science in the classroom only adds to this otherwise mostly forgotten moment in time.

As Jarrett is keen to point out in his epilogue, the reality of evolution is all but accepted as fact today in education and among most church religious faiths. However, Jarrett isn't shy to raise the ugly treatment of American history and race and the backlash against it being taught in schools today, referring to the limits placed as "educational gag orders."

Sadly, the world is yet to see another Clarence Darrow and his principled pursuit of a just society for all. But so long as there are writers like Jarrett, who remind us of moments such as the Scopes Monkey Trial of July 1925, our hope and faith should remain strong.
]]> <![CDATA[Travels with Charley: In Search of America]]> 35901791
Travels with Charley originally published in 1922, provides an intimate and personal look at one of America's most beloved writers in the later years of his life, and is a stunning evocation of a country on the eve of a tumultuous decade.]]> 246 John Steinbeck Clair 4 4.22 1961 Travels with Charley: In Search of America
author: John Steinbeck
name: Clair
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1961
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/08
date added: 2024/03/09
shelves:
review:
Because it's a book by Steinbeck, it gets a higher rating, but Travels with Charley is not among the better writings by the great author. It's a wonderful premise: getting reacquainted with the America that he has written so much about, but Steinbeck doesn't share as much of his new found acquaintances as one would imagine would be made on the perimeter circuit he makes around the US. And that's unfortunate, for the ones he does meet and offers in text are fascinating connections, especially in the deep south. Travels with Charley is time well spent, but just not as enlightening as one would anticipate, or more likely, hope to discover through the eyes of the icon of classic American literature.
]]> <![CDATA[The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation]]> 52580809
“This absorbing and important book recounts the titanic struggle over the implications of the Civil War amid the impeachment of a defiant and temperamentally erratic American president.”—Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Soul of America

When Abraham Lincoln was assassinated and Vice-President Andrew Johnson became “the Accidental President,� it was a dangerous time in America. Congress was divided over how the Union should be when and how the secessionist South should regain full status, whether former Confederates should be punished, and when and whether black men should be given the vote. Devastated by war and resorting to violence, many white Southerners hoped to restore a pre–Civil War society, if without slavery, and the pugnacious Andrew Johnson seemed to share their goals. With the unchecked power of executive orders, Johnson ignored Congress, pardoned rebel leaders, promoted white supremacy, opposed civil rights, and called Reconstruction unnecessary. It fell to Congress to stop the American president who acted like a king.

With profound insights and making use of extensive research, Brenda Wineapple dramatically evokes this pivotal period in American history, when the country was rocked by the first-ever impeachment of a sitting American president. And she brings to vivid life the extraordinary characters who brought that impeachment the willful Johnson and his retinue of advocates—including complicated men like Secretary of State William Seward—as well as the equally complicated visionaries committed to justice and equality for all, like Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner, Frederick Douglass, and Ulysses S. Grant. Theirs was a last-ditch, patriotic, and Constitutional effort to render the goals of the Civil War into reality and to make the Union free, fair, and whole.

Praise for The Impeachers

“In this superbly lyrical work, Brenda Wineapple has plugged a glaring hole in our historical memory through her vivid and sweeping portrayal of President Andrew Johnson’s 1868 impeachment. She serves up not simply food for thought but a veritable feast of observations on that most trying decision for a whether to oust a sitting president. Teeming with fiery passions and unforgettable characters, The Impeachers will be devoured by contemporary readers seeking enlightenment on this issue. . . . A landmark study.â€� —Ron Chernow, Pulitzer Prize–winningĚýauthor ofĚý Grant]]> 592 Brenda Wineapple 0812987918 Clair 4 4.00 2019 The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation
author: Brenda Wineapple
name: Clair
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/03
date added: 2024/03/04
shelves:
review:
The Impeachers by Brenda Wineapple is a book everyone tuned in to the recent and likely continued events in Washington should read. Wineapple's captivating retelling of the events leading up to the first impeachment trial of a sitting US president is remarkable in that it reflects so much of what occurred during the Trump presidency, but her work sheds light on post Civil War America that is terribly glossed over in US history in general, but especially in public education. Who knew what a despicable despot Andrew Johnson was? Did Lincoln have a clue as to who who running mate and vice-president really was? And if the powers that be of Washington today are really paying any attention to our history, how could we have ever allowed the events in the Trump White House to have taken place and not allow punishment? In a telling similar to David McCullough's works, Wineapple has taken a moment of our past and brought it to life. Let's hope we don't continue to ignore its importance to our future.
]]> <![CDATA[Amelia Earhart's Daughters: The Wild And Glorious Story Of American Women Aviators From World War II To The Dawn Of The Space Age]]> 346467 322 Leslie Haynsworth 0380729849 Clair 3 4.07 1998 Amelia Earhart's Daughters: The Wild And Glorious Story Of American Women Aviators From World War II To The Dawn Of The Space Age
author: Leslie Haynsworth
name: Clair
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1998
rating: 3
read at: 2024/02/26
date added: 2024/02/26
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review:
A very good story, just not very well told. Too often reading as if from the pages of People magazine, Amelia Earhart's Daughters too often presents the heroes of this story as if prom queen candidates, giving us much attention to make-up as to flying experience. So concentrate on the remarkable story of these remarkable women who made their mark in World War II as pilots and after in pursuit of their continued dream of flight. It's their story that makes the grind of the writing tolerable.
]]> <![CDATA[A Mystery of Mysteries: The Death and Life of Edgar Allan Poe]]> 127280424
It is a moment shrouded in horror and mystery. Edgar Allan Poe died on October 7, 1849, at just forty, in a painful, utterly bizarre manner that would not have been out of place in one of his own tales of terror. What was the cause of his untimely death, and what happened to him during the three missing days before he was found, delirious and “in great distress� on the streets of Baltimore, wearing ill-fitting clothes that were not his own?

Mystery and horror. Poe, who remains one of the most iconic of American writers, died under haunting circumstances that reflect the two literary genres he took to new heights. Over the years, there has been a staggering amount of speculation about the cause of death, from rabies and syphilis to suicide, alcoholism, and even murder. But many of these theories are formed on the basis of the caricature we have come to associate with the gloomy-eyed grandfather of Goth, hunched over a writing desk with a raven perched on one shoulder, drunkenly scribbling his chilling masterpieces. By debunking the myths of how he lived, we come closer to understanding the real Poe―and uncovering the truth behind his mysterious death, as a new theory emerges that could prove the cause of Poe’s death was haunting him all his life.

In a compelling dual-timeline narrative alternating between Poe’s increasingly desperate last months and his brief but impactful life, Mark Dawidziak sheds new light on the enigmatic master of macabre.]]> 304 Mark Dawidziak 1250792517 Clair 0 to-read 3.74 2023 A Mystery of Mysteries: The Death and Life of Edgar Allan Poe
author: Mark Dawidziak
name: Clair
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/24
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]]> <![CDATA[Lula Dean's Little Library of Banned Books]]> 200987258
Beverly Underwood and her arch enemy, Lula Dean, live in the tiny town of Troy, Georgia, where they were born and raised. Now Beverly is on the school board, and Lula has become a local celebrity by embarking on mission to rid the public libraries of all inappropriate books—none of which she’s actually read. To replace the “pornographic� books she’s challenged at the local public library, Lula starts her own lending library in front of her home: a cute wooden hutch with glass doors and neat rows of the worthy literature that she’s sure the town’s readers need.

But Beverly’s daughter Lindsay sneaks in by night and secretly fills Lula Dean’s little free library with banned books wrapped in “wholesome� dust jackets. The Girl’s Guide to the Revolution is wrapped in the cover of The Southern Belle’s Guide to Etiquette. A jacket that belongs to Our Confederate Heroes ends up on Beloved. One by one, neighbors who borrow books from Lula Dean’s library find their lives changed in unexpected ways. Finally, one of Lula Dean’s enemies discovers the library and decides to turn the tables on her, just as Lula and Beverly are running against each other to replace the town’s disgraced mayor.

That’s when all the townspeople who’ve been borrowing from Lula’s library begin to reveal themselves. It’s a diverse and surprising bunch—including the local postman, the prom queen, housewives, a farmer, and the former DA—all of whom have been changed by what they’ve read. When Lindsay is forced to own up to what she’s done, the showdown that’s been brewing between Beverly and Lula will roil the whole town...and change it forever.]]> 298 Kirsten Miller 0063348691 Clair 0 to-read 4.06 2024 Lula Dean's Little Library of Banned Books
author: Kirsten Miller
name: Clair
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/24
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]]> <![CDATA[Sharing Too Much: Musings from an Unlikely Life]]> 58438609
Before he was the #1 New York Times bestselling author of holiday classics such as The Christmas Box , Richard Paul Evans was a young boy being raised by a suicidal mother and dealing with relentless bullying. He could not fathom what the future held for him.

Now, in this intimate and heartfelt collection of personal essays, Evans shares his moving journey from childhood to beloved author. With his signature “seasoned finesse� ( Booklist ), he offers the insightful lessons he’s learned and engaging advice about everything from marriage to parenthood and even facing near-death experiences. This is a charming essay collection that is the perfect gift all year round.]]> 272 Richard Paul Evans 1982177462 Clair 0 to-read 4.21 2024 Sharing Too Much: Musings from an Unlikely Life
author: Richard Paul Evans
name: Clair
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/24
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]]> <![CDATA[The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within]]> 199373502 A renowned climber and National Geographic photographer shares his incredible adventures—and the early trauma that drove him to seek such heights.

“In order to escape madness, I will live madly. I will risk my life in order to save it.�

Growing up in the mountains of Utah, Cory Richards was constantly surrounded by the outdoors. His father, a high school teacher and a ski patroller, spent years teaching Richards and his brother how to ski, climb, mountaineer, and survive in the wild. Despite a seemingly idyllic childhood, the Richards home was fraught with violence, grief, and mental illness. After being diagnosed with bipolar disorder and dropping out of high school, Richards subsumed himself in the worlds of photography and climbing, seeking out the farthest reaches of the world to escape the darkness. Then, in the midst of a wildly successful career in adventure photography, a catastrophic avalanche changed everything, forcing Richards to confront the trauma of his past, evaluate his own mental health, and learn to rewrite his story.

The Color of Everything is a thrilling tale of risk and adventure, written by a man who has done it all: He’s stood at the top of the world, climbed imposing mountain faces alone in the dark, and become the only American to summit an 8,000-meter peak in winter. But it is also the story of a tumultuous life—a stirring, lyrical memoir that captures the profound musings of an unquiet mind grappling with the meaning of success, the cost of fame and addiction, and whether it is possible to outrun your demons. With exquisite prose and disarming candor, accompanied by stunning photos from his career, Richards excavates the roots of his trauma and shares what it took for him to climb out of it.]]> 368 Cory Richards 059359679X Clair 0 to-read 4.23 2024 The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within
author: Cory Richards
name: Clair
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/24
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Disproven: My Unbiased Search for Voter Fraud for the Trump Campaign, the Data that Shows Why He Lost, and How We Can Improve Our Elections]]> 201600347 Former US Attorney General Bill Barr says this about Disproven: "I did not know it at the time, but the day after the 2020 election, the Trump campaign hired a serious expert, Ken Block, to assess whether the outcome was the result of voter fraud. DISPROVEN � Block’s thorough, fact-based account of his work and conclusions � is a must-read and a great service to the country."

Many searched for evidence of voter fraud in 2020, only a few were unbiased professionals . . . and only one has written a book about his experience.

If you value the integrity of our elections—or want a behind-the-scenes look at an attempt at overturning one—Disproven by Ken Block takes you out of the voting booth and into the chaos that was the attempt to challenge the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

In November 2020, data specialist Ken Block received a phone call from the Trump Campaign. They wanted to hire him to find evidence of election fraud. What followed were late-night and early-morning requests to assess fraud claims at a blistering pace and ultimately find definitive evidence about the role voter fraud played in the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

Multiple subpoenas later, Block reveals the truth about being one of the few professionals hired to prove the Trump Campaign’s allegation that voter fraud cost Donald Trump the 2020 presidential election. He explains what the voter data tells us and he exposes the sobering truth that our federal elections are operating on hundreds, if not thousands, of disparate voting systems prone to error—a threat to national election integrity.

Disproven is an insider’s look at the results of an inflammatory claim, a flawed system, and the changes drastically needed before the results of another election are threatened or contested.]]> 320 Ken Block 1637632851 Clair 0 to-read 4.12 Disproven: My Unbiased Search for Voter Fraud for the Trump Campaign, the Data that Shows Why He Lost, and How We Can Improve Our Elections
author: Ken Block
name: Clair
average rating: 4.12
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/24
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]]> Rules of Civility 13339004 Rules of Civility won the hearts of readers and critics alike.]]> 335 Amor Towles 0143121162 Clair 0 to-read 4.10 2011 Rules of Civility
author: Amor Towles
name: Clair
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/24
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]]> <![CDATA[2032: The Year A.I. Runs for President]]> 61931647 279 Keir Newton Clair 0 to-read 3.92 2032: The Year A.I. Runs for President
author: Keir Newton
name: Clair
average rating: 3.92
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/24
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]]> <![CDATA[When Women Ran Fifth Avenue: Glamour and Power at the Dawn of American Fashion]]> 198563695
The American department a palace of consumption that epitomized modern consumerism. Every wish could be met under one roof � afternoon tea, a stroll through the latest fashions, a wedding (or funeral) planned. It was a place where women, shopper and shopgirl alike, could stake out a newfound independence. Whether in New York or Chicago or on Main Street, USA, men owned the buildings, but inside, women ruled.

In this hothouse atmosphere, three women rose to the top. Hortense Odlum of Bonwit Teller, Dorothy Shaver of Lord & Taylor, and Geraldine Stutz of Henri Bendel's took risks, innovated and competed as very different kinds of career women, forging new paths for the women who followed in their footsteps. In the 1930s, Hortense came to her husband's department store as a housewife tasked with attracting more shoppers like herself, and wound up running the company. Dorothy championed American designers during World War II--before which US fashions were almost exclusively Parisian copies--and beyond, becoming the first businesswoman to earn a salary of more than $1.5 million. And Geraldine re-invented the look of the modern department store in the 1960s, and had a preternatural sense for trends, inspiring a devoted following of ultra-chic shoppers as well as decades of copycats.

In When Women Ran Fifth Avenue, journalist Julie Satow draws back the curtain on three American women who made twentieth-century department stores a mecca for women of every age, social class, and ambition. This stylish account, rich with personal drama and trade secrets, captures the department store in all its glitz, decadence, and fun, and showcases the women who made that beautifully curated world go round.]]> 295 Julie Satow 0385548753 Clair 0 to-read 3.88 2024 When Women Ran Fifth Avenue: Glamour and Power at the Dawn of American Fashion
author: Julie Satow
name: Clair
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/24
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]]> Zodiac: A Graphic Memoir 139400708
As a child living in exile during the Cultural Revolution, Ai Weiwei often found himself with nothing to read but government-approved comic books. Although they were restricted by the confines of political propaganda, Ai Weiwei was struck by the artists' ability to express their thoughts on art and humanity through graphic storytelling. Now, decades later, Ai Weiwei and Italian comic artist Gianluca Costantini present Zodiac, Ai Weiwei's first graphic memoir.

Inspired by the twelve signs of the Chinese zodiac and their associated human characteristics, Ai Weiwei masterfully interweaves ancient Chinese folklore with stories of his life, family, and career. The narrative shifts back and forth through the years—at once in the past, present, and future—mirroring memory and our relationship to time. As readers delve deeper into the beautifully illustrated pages of Zodiac, they will find not only a personal history of Ai Weiwei and an examination of the sociopolitical climate in which he makes his art, but a philosophical exploration of what it means to find oneself through art and freedom of expression.

Contemplative and political, Zodiac will inspire readers to return again and again to Ai Weiwei's musings on the relationship between art, time, and our shared humanity.]]> 176 Ai Weiwei 1984863002 Clair 0 to-read 3.69 2024 Zodiac: A Graphic Memoir
author: Ai Weiwei
name: Clair
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/24
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]]> <![CDATA[In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife]]> 199798896 A near-fatal health emergency leads to this powerful reflection on death—and what might follow—by the bestselling author of Tribe and The Perfect Storm.

For years as an award-winning war reporter, Sebastian Junger traveled to many front lines and frequently put his life at risk. And yet, the closest he ever came to death was the summer of 2020 while spending a quiet afternoon at the New England home he shared with his wife and two young children. Crippled by abdominal pain, Junger was rushed to the hospital by ambulance. Once there, he began slipping away. As blackness encroached, he was visited by his dead father, inviting Junger to join him. “It’s okay,� his father said. “There’s nothing to be scared of. I’ll take care of you.� That was the last thing Junger remembered until he came to the next day when he was told he had suffered a ruptured aneurysm that he should not have survived.

This experience spurred Junger—a confirmed atheist raised by his physicist father to respect the empirical—to undertake a scientific, philosophical, and deeply personal examination of mortality and what happens after we die. How do we begin to process the brutal fact that any of us might perish unexpectedly on what begins as an ordinary day? How do we grapple with phenomena that science may be unable to explain? And what happens to a person, emotionally and spiritually, when forced to reckon with such existential questions?

In My Time of Dying is part medical drama, part searing autobiography, and part rational inquiry into the ultimate unknowable mystery.]]> 176 Sebastian Junger 1668050838 Clair 0 to-read 3.76 2024 In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife
author: Sebastian Junger
name: Clair
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/24
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]]> <![CDATA[An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s]]> 196585876 An Unfinished Love A Personal History of the 1960s by Doris Kearns Goodwin, one of America’s most beloved historians, artfully weaves together biography, memoir, and history. She takes you along on the emotional journey she and her husband, Richard (Dick) Goodwin embarked upon in the last years of his life.

Dick and Doris Goodwin were married for forty-two years and married to American history even longer. In his twenties, Dick was one of the brilliant young men of John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier. In his thirties he both named and helped design Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and was a speechwriter and close advisor to Robert Kennedy. Doris Kearns was a twenty-four-year-old graduate student when selected as a White House Fellow. She worked directly for Lyndon Johnson and later assisted on his memoir.

Over the years, with humor, anger, frustration, and in the end, a growing understanding, Dick and Doris had argued over the achievements and failings of the leaders they served and observed, debating the progress and unfinished promises of the country they both loved.

The Goodwins� last great adventure involved finally opening the more than three hundred boxes of letters, diaries, documents, and memorabilia that Dick had saved for more than fifty years. They soon realized they had before them an unparalleled personal time capsule of the 1960s, illuminating public and private moments of a decade when individuals were powered by the conviction they could make a difference; a time, like today, marked by struggles for racial and economic justice, a time when lines were drawn and loyalties tested.

Their expedition gave Dick’s last years renewed purpose and determination. It gave Doris the opportunity to connect and reconnect with participants and witnesses of pivotal moments of the 1960s. And it gave them both an opportunity to make fresh assessments of the central figures of the time—John F. Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Robert Kennedy, Eugene McCarthy, and especially Lyndon Johnson, who greatly impacted both their lives. The voyage of remembrance brought unexpected discoveries, forgiveness, and the renewal of old dreams, reviving the hope that the youth of today will carry forward this unfinished love story with America.]]> 480 Doris Kearns Goodwin 1982108665 Clair 0 to-read 4.53 2024 An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s
author: Doris Kearns Goodwin
name: Clair
average rating: 4.53
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/24
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]]> <![CDATA[Taboo: Topics Christians Should Be Talking About But Don't]]> 200737180 Hot-button issues dominating our culture can make speaking out feel taboo. Hiding from hard conversations won’t work. We need to know what God actually says about these issues, and by looking to Scripture, we can find the answers.

In Taboo, author Mike Novotny covers deeply personal, vulnerable, and emotional topics, handling them with grace and respect. It’s the ultimate resource for Christians looking to create change and deal with struggles in their own lives.

God’s Word gives us clarity, healing, and hope. Taboo is a must-read for Christians looking for a biblically based resource to modern questions.

Not talking is not helping! It’s time for believers to step gracefully into the Taboo and share God’s truth with a world in need.]]> 364 Mike Novotny 1957616555 Clair 0 to-read 4.47 Taboo: Topics Christians Should Be Talking About But Don't
author: Mike Novotny
name: Clair
average rating: 4.47
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/24
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]]> Let Me Tell You a Story 1175894
As a living legend among sports fans, Red Auerbach -- the fiery coach who led the Boston Celtics to nine NBA championships, eight of them consecutive -- has long been renowned for his formidable brash, opinionated, and unfailingly accurate. As a coach, he had a great eye for talent, drafting such Hall of Famers as Bill Russell and Larry Bird, and managed to build a powerful franchise with an abiding legacy. Red never stood still along the sidelines and was never seen without his trademark cigar.

Now in retirement, at age eighty-seven, he remains a lively part of the game, still consulted by coaches, players, and general managers. And his admirers continue to be legion. Not long ago a former president postponed a meeting with Bill Gates so as not to pass up the chance to talk with Red. For the past several years, John Feinstein has met regularly with Red Auerbach and his friends in a series of raucous, unforgettable sessions.

Out of those smoke-and-laughter-filled rooms have emerged the stories of Red's life, from his childhood on the playgrounds of Brooklyn to his triumphs at the famed Boston Garden, where he coached for sixteen years. Just listen as Red colorfully recalls all the players and coaches he has worked with and played Bill Russell, Larry Bird, Bob Cousy, Wilt Chamberlain, Sam Jones, and Michael Jordan -- you name them, the basketball greats are all here. Red holds nothing back.

In Let Me Tell You a Story , Red Auerbach's unique experiences in sports and John Feinstein's unparalleled skills as a storyteller combine to produce one of the most richly entertaining books ever written about the game of basketball.]]> 369 John Feinstein 0316010723 Clair 4 4.02 2004 Let Me Tell You a Story
author: John Feinstein
name: Clair
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2004
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/18
date added: 2024/02/24
shelves:
review:
Has John Feinstein ever written a dog? Not to my knowledge. Has he ever had such an incredibly entertaining and wonderful character to base his writings on as he does with Red Auerbach? Debatable, but in my mind, not likely. Let Me Tell You a Story captures the beautiful, colorful life of the great pioneering basketball icon who led the Boston Celtics in their glory years. Auerbach is one of those incredible personalities that I would have loved to have spent 10 minutes with. Feinstein, one of the great sports writers lucked into doing that and a great deal more in the later years of Auerbach's life and collaborated in sharing the experiences and tales that were Auerbach's life. Let Me Tell You a Story is a fascinating book about one of the most fascinating characters in sports. There will never be another quite like Red Auerbach.
]]> <![CDATA[A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II]]> 51153322
The target in their sights was Virginia Hall, a Baltimore socialite who talked her way into Special Operations Executive, the spy organization dubbed Winston Churchill's "Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare." She became the first Allied woman deployed behind enemy lines and--despite her prosthetic leg--helped to light the flame of the French Resistance, revolutionizing secret warfare as we know it.

Virginia established vast spy networks throughout France, called weapons and explosives down from the skies, and became a linchpin for the Resistance. Even as her face covered wanted posters and a bounty was placed on her head, Virginia refused order after order to evacuate. She finally escaped through a death-defying hike over the Pyrenees into Spain, her cover blown. But she plunged back in, adamant that she had more lives to save, and led a victorious guerilla campaign, liberating swathes of France from the Nazis after D-Day.

Based on new and extensive research, Sonia Purnell has for the first time uncovered the full secret life of Virginia Hall--an astounding and inspiring story of heroism, spycraft, resistance, and personal triumph over shocking adversity.]]> 368 Sonia Purnell 0735225311 Clair 5 4.19 2019 A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II
author: Sonia Purnell
name: Clair
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/13
date added: 2024/02/24
shelves:
review:
It seems every year there are new, previously lost or little known accountings of courageous efforts in defeating Nazi Germany in World War II. Sonia Purnell's telling of the significant contributions of Virginia Hall, an American woman leading resistance in Vichy France is one of those stories brought to light. Hall, who viewed herself in the eyes of others, as having no importance in life, chose to prove otherwise. Her intense hatred for the Nazi machine wrecking Europe and particularly, her beloved France led her to take on an incredible role establishing the Resistance forces in southern France. That her story of courage and contribution were little known before Purnell's wonderful detailed book is unfortunate as Hall, during her life, never received the recognition she so rightly deserved.
]]> <![CDATA[The Passenger (The Passenger #1)]]> 60581087
Traversing the American South, from the garrulous barrooms of New Orleans to an abandoned oil rig off the Florida coast, The Passenger is a breathtaking novel of morality and science, the legacy of sin, and the madness that is human consciousness.]]> 385 Cormac McCarthy 0593535227 Clair 0 to-read 3.58 2022 The Passenger (The Passenger #1)
author: Cormac McCarthy
name: Clair
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/09
shelves: to-read
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]]> Blue Highways 43961911 Hailed as a masterpiece of American travel writing, Blue Highways is an unforgettable journey along our nation's backroads.
William Least Heat-Moon set out with little more than the need to put home behind him and a sense of curiosity about "those little towns that get on the map-if they get on at all-only because some cartographer has a blank space to fill: Remote, Oregon; Simplicity, Virginia; New Freedom, Pennsylvania; New Hope, Tennessee; Why, Arizona; Whynot, Mississippi."
His adventures, his discoveries, and his recollections of the extraordinary people he encountered along the way amount to a revelation of the true American experience.]]> 448 William Least Heat-Moon 0316353299 Clair 5
Heat-Moon takes to the back roads, highlighted as blue highways in his Rand-McNally atlas, avoiding the interstates and super-highways of America, and instead visiting small towns and the people who keep those towns alive. Heat-Moon references these folks as "the best professors" he ever knew, opening his eyes, mind and soul to life as he had never willingly, much less, per chance, encountered.

While Blue Highways was originally published in 1982, of a journey that took place to many places, in 1978, the language and the commentary is as fresh today as when Heat-Moon's notes were first jotted down. The passages share Heat-Moon's experiences on numerous levels: culturally, intellectually, emotionally. As he noted in the Afterword of May 1999, "Blue Highways -- roads and book -- remade my life, perhaps even keeping me from appearing in the obituary column too early."

I suspect deep down, we have all desired to take to the perceived lost roads and highways of America to see new faces and lives uniquely different from our own. Yet few of us take that leap of faith and wanderlust. For those yet to embark, live vicariously through the eyes and mind of William Least Heat-Moon. For those of us who think we have ventured forth, read Blue Highways anyway, and realize just how much we have missed.]]> 4.18 1982 Blue Highways
author: William Least Heat-Moon
name: Clair
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1982
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/25
date added: 2024/01/25
shelves:
review:
Let's be very clear: Blue Highways by the William Least Heat-Moon, is not a memoir. Call it a travelogue; call it a survey of American culture; call it what you will, but only after you've read this masterpiece of embracing observation and reflection.

Heat-Moon takes to the back roads, highlighted as blue highways in his Rand-McNally atlas, avoiding the interstates and super-highways of America, and instead visiting small towns and the people who keep those towns alive. Heat-Moon references these folks as "the best professors" he ever knew, opening his eyes, mind and soul to life as he had never willingly, much less, per chance, encountered.

While Blue Highways was originally published in 1982, of a journey that took place to many places, in 1978, the language and the commentary is as fresh today as when Heat-Moon's notes were first jotted down. The passages share Heat-Moon's experiences on numerous levels: culturally, intellectually, emotionally. As he noted in the Afterword of May 1999, "Blue Highways -- roads and book -- remade my life, perhaps even keeping me from appearing in the obituary column too early."

I suspect deep down, we have all desired to take to the perceived lost roads and highways of America to see new faces and lives uniquely different from our own. Yet few of us take that leap of faith and wanderlust. For those yet to embark, live vicariously through the eyes and mind of William Least Heat-Moon. For those of us who think we have ventured forth, read Blue Highways anyway, and realize just how much we have missed.
]]> <![CDATA[The Upstairs Delicatessen: On Eating, Reading, Reading About Eating, and Eating While Reading]]> 65215109
Reading and eating, like Krazy and Ignatz, Sturm und Drang, prosciutto and melon, Simon and Schuster, and radishes and butter, have always, for me, simply gone together. The book you’re holding is a product of these combined gluttonies.

Dwight Garner, the beloved New York Times critic and the author of Garner’s Quotations , serves up the intertwined pleasures of books and food. The product of a lifetime of obsessively reading, eating, and every combination therein, The Upstairs On Eating, Reading, Reading About Eating, and Eating While Reading is a charming, emotional memoir, one that only Garner could write. In it, he records the voices of great writers and the stories from his life that fill his mind as he moves through the sections of the day and of this breakfast, lunch, shopping, the occasional nap, drinking, and dinner.

Through his lifelong infatuation with these twin joys, we meet the man behind the pages and the plates, and a portrait of Garner, eager and insatiable, emerges. He writes with tenderness and humor about his mayonnaise-laden childhood in West Virginia and Naples, Florida (and about his father’s famous peanut butter and pickle sandwich), his mind-opening marriage to a chef from a foodie family (“Cree grew up taking leftover frog legs to school in her lunch box�), and the words and dishes closest to his heart. This is a book to be savored, though it may just whet your appetite for more.]]> 256 Dwight Garner 0374603421 Clair 0 to-read 3.82 2023 The Upstairs Delicatessen: On Eating, Reading, Reading About Eating, and Eating While Reading
author: Dwight Garner
name: Clair
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2023
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]]> <![CDATA[Our Hidden Conversations: What Americans Really Think About Race and Identity]]> 191004852
The prompt seemed simple: Race. Your Story. Six Words. Please Send.

The answers, though, have been challenging and complicated. In the twelve years since award-winning journalist Michele Norris first posed that question, over half a million people have submitted their stories to The Race Card Project inbox. The stories are shocking in their depth and candor, spanning the full spectrum of race, ethnicity, identity, and class. Even at just six words, the micro-essays can pack quite a punch, revealing, fear, pain, triumph, and sometimes humor. Responses such łŰ´ÇłÜ’r±đ Pretty for a Black girl. White privilege, enjoy it, earned it. Lady, I don’t want your purse. My ancestors massacred Indians near here. Urban living has made me racist. I’m only Asian when it’s convenient.

Many go even further than just six words, submitting backstories, photos, and a collection much like a scrapbook of American candor you rarely get to see. Our Hidden Conversations is a unique compilation of stories, richly reported essays, and photographs providing a window into America during a tumultuous era. This powerful book offers an honest, if sometimes uncomfortable, conversation about race and identity, permitting us to eavesdrop on deep-seated thoughts, private discussions, and long submerged memories.

The breadth of this work came as a surprise to Norris. For most of the twelve years she has collected these stories, many were submitted by white respondents. This unexpected panorama provides a rare 360-degree view of how Americans see themselves and one another.

Our Hidden Conversations reminds us that even during times of great division, honesty, grace, and a willing ear can provide a bridge toward empathy and maybe even understanding.]]> 528 Michele Norris 198215439X Clair 0 to-read 4.62 2024 Our Hidden Conversations: What Americans Really Think About Race and Identity
author: Michele Norris
name: Clair
average rating: 4.62
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]]> Alexander Hamilton 395848 The inspiration for the hit Broadway musical Hamilton!Ěý

In the first full-length biography of Alexander Hamilton in decades, National Book Award winner Ron Chernow tells the riveting story of a man who overcame all odds to shape, inspire, and scandalize the newborn America. According to historian Joseph Ellis, Alexander Hamilton is “a robust full-length portrait, in my view the best ever written, of the most brilliant, charismatic and dangerous founder of them all.”Few figures in American history have been more hotly debated or more grossly misunderstood than Alexander Hamilton. Chernow’s biography gives Hamilton his due and sets the record straight, deftly illustrating that the political and economic greatness of today’s America is the result of Hamilton’s countless sacrifices to champion ideas that were often wildly disputed during his time. “To repudiate his legacy,� Chernow writes, “is, in many ways, to repudiate the modern world.� Chernow here recounts Hamilton’s turbulent life: an illegitimate, largely self-taught orphan from the Caribbean, he came out of nowhere to take America by storm, rising to become George Washington’s aide-de-camp in the Continental Army, coauthoring The Federalist Papers, founding the Bank of New York, leading the Federalist Party, and becoming the first Treasury Secretary of the United States.

Historians have long told the story of America’s birth as the triumph of Jefferson’s democratic ideals over the aristocratic intentions of Hamilton. Chernow presents an entirely different man, whose legendary ambitions were motivated not merely by self-interest but by passionate patriotism and a stubborn will to build the foundations of American prosperity and power. His is a Hamilton far more human than we’ve encountered before—from his shame about his birth to his fiery aspirations, from his intimate relationships with childhood friends to his titanic feuds with Jefferson, Madison, Adams, Monroe, and Burr, and from his highly public affair with Maria Reynolds to his loving marriage to his loyal wife Eliza. And never before has there been a more vivid account of Hamilton’s famous and mysterious death in a duel with Aaron Burr in July of 1804.

Chernow’s biography is not just a portrait of Hamilton, but the story of America’s birth seen through its most central figure. At a critical time to look back to our roots, Alexander Hamilton will remind readers of the purpose of our institutions and our heritage as Americans.]]> 818 Ron Chernow 1594200092 Clair 5 4.42 2004 Alexander Hamilton
author: Ron Chernow
name: Clair
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2004
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/15
date added: 2024/01/16
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]]> <![CDATA[Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied the South]]> 101024157 Finalist, Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography
American Battlefield Trust Prize for History Finalist

A “compelling portrait� (Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize­–winning author) of the controversial Confederate general who later embraced Reconstruction and became an outcast in the South.

It was the most remarkable political about-face in American history. During the Civil War, General James Longstreet fought tenaciously for the Confederacy. He was alongside Lee at Gettysburg (and counseled him not to order the ill-fated attacks on entrenched Union forces there). He won a major Confederate victory at Chickamauga and was seriously wounded during a later battle.

After the war, Longstreet moved to New Orleans, where he dramatically changed course. He supported Black voting and joined the newly elected, integrated postwar government in Louisiana. When white supremacists took up arms to oust that government, Longstreet, leading the interracial state militia, did battle against former Confederates. His defiance ignited a firestorm of controversy, as white Southerners branded him a race traitor and blamed him retroactively for the South’s defeat in the Civil War.

Although he was one of the highest-ranking Confederate generals, Longstreet has never been commemorated with statues or other memorials in the South because of his postwar actions in rejecting the Lost Cause mythology and urging racial reconciliation. He is being discovered in the new age of racial reckoning as “one of the most enduringly relevant voices in American history� (The Wall Street Journal). This is the first authoritative biography in decades and the first that “brilliantly creates the wider context for Longstreet’s career� (The New York Times).]]> 476 Elizabeth Varon 1982148292 Clair 0 to-read 4.08 Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied the South
author: Elizabeth Varon
name: Clair
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]]> Rough Sleepers 62328661 In Rough Sleepers, Tracy Kidder shows how one person can make a difference, as he tells the story of Dr. Jim O’Connell, a man who invented ways to create a community of care for a city’s unhoused population, including those who sleep on the streets—the “rough sleepers.�

When Jim O’Connell graduated from Harvard Medical School and was nearing the end of his residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, the chief of medicine made a proposal: Would he defer a prestigious fellowship and spend a year helping to create an organization to bring health care to homeless citizens? Jim took the job because he felt he couldn’t refuse. But that year turned into his life’s calling. Tracy Kidder spent five years following Dr. O’Connell and his colleagues as they served their thousands of homeless patients. In this book, we travel with O’Connell as he navigates the city, offering medical care, socks, soup, empathy, humor, and friendship to some of the city’s most vulnerable citizens. He emphasizes a style of medicine in which patients come first, joined with their providers in what he calls “a system of friends.”]]> 320 Tracy Kidder 1984801430 Clair 0 to-read 4.34 2023 Rough Sleepers
author: Tracy Kidder
name: Clair
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism]]> 168677579 Ěý
Inspired by her research for the hit podcast Ultra, Rachel Maddow charts the rise of a wild American strain of authoritarianism that has been alive on the far-right edge of our politics for the better part of a century. Before and even after our troops had begun fighting abroad in World War II, a clandestine network flooded the country with disinformation aimed at sapping the strength of the U.S. war effort and persuading Americans that our natural alliance was with the Axis, not against it. It was a sophisticated and shockingly well-funded campaign to undermine democratic institutions, promote antisemitism, and destroy citizens� confidence in their elected leaders, with the ultimate goal of overthrowing the U.S. government and installing authoritarian rule.
Ěý
That effort worked—tongue and groove—alongside an ultra-right paramilitary movement that stockpiled bombs and weapons and trained for mass murder and violent insurrection.
Ěý
At the same time, a handful of extraordinary activists and journalists were tracking the scheme, exposing it even as it was unfolding. In 1941 the U.S. Department of Justice finally made a frontal attack, identifying the key plotters, finding their backers, and prosecuting dozens in federal court.
Ěý
None of it went as planned.
Ěý
While the scheme has been remembered in history—if at all—as the work of fringe players, in reality, it involved aĚýlarge number of some of the country’s most influential elected officials. Their interference in law enforcement efforts against the plot is a dark story of the rule of law bending and then breaking under the weight of political intimidation.
Ěý
That failure of the legal system had consequences. The tentacles of that unslain beast have reached forward into our history for decades. But the heroic efforts of the activists, journalists, prosecutors, and regular citizens who sought to expose the insurrectionists also make for a deeply resonant, deeply relevant tale in our own disquieting times.]]> 416 Rachel Maddow 0593444515 Clair 0 to-read 4.35 2023 Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism
author: Rachel Maddow
name: Clair
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2023
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]]> <![CDATA[American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump]]> 44148905 Politico Magazine’s chief political correspondent provides a rollicking insider’s look at the making of the modern Republican Party—how a decade of cultural upheaval, populist outrage, and ideological warfare made the GOP vulnerable to a hostile takeover from the unlikeliest of insurgents: Donald J. Trump.

The 2016 election was a watershed for the United States. But, as Tim Alberta explains inĚýAmerican Carnage, to understand Trump’s victory is to view himĚýnot as the creator of this era of polarization and bruising partisanship, but rather as its most manifest consequence.

American CarnageĚýis the story of a president’s rise based on a country’s evolution and a party’s collapse. As George W. Bush left office with record-low approval ratings and Barack Obama led a Democratic takeover of Washington, Republicans faced a moment of reckoning: They had no vision, no generation of new leaders, and no energy in the party’s base. Yet Obama’s forceful pursuit of his progressive agenda, coupled with the nation’s rapidly changing societal and demographic identity, lit a fire under the right, returning Republicans to power and inviting a bloody struggle for the party’s identity in the post-Bush era. The factions that emerged—one led by absolutists like Jim Jordan and Ted Cruz, the other led by pragmatists like John Boehner and Mitch McConnell—engaged in a series of devastating internecine clashes and attempted coups for control. With the GOP’s internal fissures rendering it legislatively impotent, and that impotence fueling a growing resentment toward the political class and its institutions, the stage was set for an outsider to crash the party. When Trump descended a gilded escalator to announce his run in the summer of 2015, the candidate had met the moment.

Only by viewing Trump as the culmination of a decade-long civil war inside the GOP—and of the parallel sense of cultural, socioeconomic, andĚýtechnologicalĚýdisruptionĚýduring that period—can we appreciate how he won the White House and consider the fundamental questions at the center of America’s current turmoil. How did a party once obsessed with national insolvency come to champion trillion-dollar deficits? How did the party of compassionate conservatism become the party of Muslim bans and family separation? How did the party of family values elect a thrice-married philanderer? And, most important, how long can such a party survive?

Loaded with explosiveĚýoriginal reporting and based off hundreds of exclusive interviews—including with key players such as President Trump, Paul Ryan, Ted Cruz, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Jim DeMint, and Reince Priebus, among many othersâ€�American CarnageĚýtakes us behind the scenes of this tumultuous period as we’ve never seen it before and establishes Tim Alberta as the premier chronicler of this political era.]]> 688 Tim Alberta 006289644X Clair 0 to-read 4.15 2019 American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump
author: Tim Alberta
name: Clair
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2019
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]]> <![CDATA[The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism]]> 112975131
For millions of conservative Christians, America is their kingdom—a land set apart, a nation uniquely blessed, a people in special covenant with God. This love of country, however, has given way to right-wing nationalist fervor, a reckless blood-and-soil idolatry thatĚýtrivializes the kingdom of Jesus Christ. Alberta retraces the arc of the modern evangelical movement, placing political and cultural inflection points in the context of church teachings and traditions, explaining how Donald Trump's presidency and the COVID-19 pandemic only accelerated historical trends that long pointed toward disaster. Reporting from half-empty sanctuaries and standing-room-only convention halls across the country, the author documents a growing fracture inside American Christianity and journeys with readers through this strange new environment in which loving your enemies is "woke" and owning the libs is the answer to WWJD.

Accessing the highest echelons of the American evangelical movement, Alberta investigates the ways in which conservative Christians have pursued, exercised, and often abused power in the name of securing this earthly kingdom. He highlights the battles evangelicals are fighting—and the weapons of their warfare—to demonstrate the disconnect from Contra the dictates of the New Testament, today's believers are struggling mightily against flesh and blood, eyes fixed on the here and now, desperate for a power that is frivolous and fleeting. Lingering at the intersection of real cultural displacement and perceived religious persecution, Alberta portrays a rapidly secularizing America that has come to distrust the evangelical church, and weaves together present-day narratives of individual pastors and their churches as they confront the twin challenges of lost status and diminished standing.

Sifting through the wreckage—pastors broken, congregations battered, believers losing their religion because of sex scandals and political schemes—Alberta If the American evangelical movement has ceased to glorify God, what is its purpose?]]> 506 Tim Alberta 006322688X Clair 0 to-read 4.42 2023 The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism
author: Tim Alberta
name: Clair
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2023
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]]> <![CDATA[Skies of Thunder: The Deadly World War II Mission Over the Roof of the World]]> 196848579
In April 1942, the Imperial Japanese Army steamrolled through Burma, capturing the only ground route from India to China. Supplies to this critical zone would now have to come from India by air—meaning across the Himalayas, on the most hazardous air route in the world. SKIES OF THUNDER is a story of an epic human endeavor, in which Allied troops faced the monumental challenge of operating from airfields hacked from the jungle, and took on “the Hump,� the fearsome mountain barrier that defined the air route. They flew fickle, untested aircraft through monsoons and enemy fire, with inaccurate maps and only primitive navigation technology. The result was a litany of both deadly crashes and astonishing feats of survival. The most chaotic of all the war’s arenas, the China-Burma-India theater was further confused by the conflicting political interests of Roosevelt, Churchill and their demanding, nominal ally, Chiang Kai-shek.

Caroline Alexander, who wrote the defining books on Shackleton’s Endurance and Bligh's Bounty, is brilliant at probing what it takes to survive extreme circumstances. She has unearthed obscure memoirs and long-ignored records to give us the pilots� and soldiers� eye views of flying and combat, as well as honest portraits of commanders like the celebrated “Vinegar Joe� Stillwell and Claire Lee Chennault. She assesses the real contributions of units like the Flying Tigers, Merrill’s Marauders, and the British Chindits, who pioneered new and unconventional forms of warfare. Decisions in this theater exposed the fault-lines between the Allies—America and Britain, Britain and India, and ultimately and most fatefully between America and China, as FDR pressed to help the Chinese nationalists in order to forge a bond with China after the war.
A masterpiece of modern war history.]]> 496 Caroline Alexander 1984879235 Clair 0 to-read 3.77 Skies of Thunder: The Deadly World War II Mission Over the Roof of the World
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name: Clair
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]]> <![CDATA[Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted]]> 50743767
In the summer after graduating from college, Suleika Jaouad was preparing, as they say in commencement speeches, to enter "the real world". She had fallen in love and moved to Paris to pursue her dream of becoming a war correspondent. The real world she found, however, would take her into a very different kind of conflict zone.

It started with an itch - first on her feet, then up her legs, like 1,000 invisible mosquito bites. Next came the exhaustion, and the six-hour naps that only deepened her fatigue. Then a trip to the doctor and, a few weeks shy of her 23rd birthday, a diagnosis: leukemia, with a 35 percent chance of survival. Just like that, the life she had imagined for herself had gone up in flames. By the time Jaouad flew home to New York, she had lost her job, her apartment, and her independence. She would spend much of the next four years in a hospital bed, fighting for her life and chronicling the saga in a column for The New York Times.

When Jaouad finally walked out of the cancer ward - after three and a half years of chemo, a clinical trial, and a bone marrow transplant - she was, according to the doctors, cured. But as she would soon learn, a cure is not where the work of healing ends; it’s where it begins. She had spent the past 1,500 days in desperate pursuit of one goal - to survive. And now that she’d done so, she realized that she had no idea how to live.

How would she reenter the world and live again? How could she reclaim what had been lost? Jaouad embarked - with her new best friend, Oscar, a scruffy terrier mutt - on a 100-day, 15,000-mile road trip across the country. She set out to meet some of the strangers who had written to her during her years in the hospital: a teenage girl in Florida also recovering from cancer; a teacher in California grieving the death of her son; a death-row inmate in Texas who’d spent his own years confined to a room. What she learned on this trip is that the divide between sick and well is porous, that the vast majority of us will travel back and forth between these realms throughout our lives. Between Two Kingdoms is a profound chronicle of survivorship and a fierce, tender, and inspiring exploration of what it means to begin again.]]> 352 Suleika Jaouad 0399588582 Clair 4
Author Suleika Jaouad provides a candid, honest telling of her experience in surviving a rare form of leukemia. She shares her fears, her pain, her struggles and her recovery. Her story however is not just of self, but of family and of community. I believe she would without hesitation tell us, it's not just her story.

Nor is it fair to suggest recovery for Jaouad or any cancer survivor can be so succinctly defined. Perhaps it sounds trite, but for her and every cancer fighter, this is a journey, and Jaouad, in her forthright manner, shares her emotional, physical and spiritual journey with us. We experience her every moment of uncertainty, and in the end, we also absorb her discovery, not necessarily her recovery, but her renewal.

Thanks to the eloquence and honesty of Between Two Kingdoms, we become jubilant fans and supporters of Suleika Jaouad. But deep down, we are fans of everyone who lives with cancer and their journey for renewal.]]> 4.40 2021 Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted
author: Suleika Jaouad
name: Clair
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/07
date added: 2024/01/08
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For anyone who has been afflicted by cancer, whether the person who has physically suffered from the illness or in the support and caring role of a person with cancer, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted, is a message that we can identify with and embrace. If you are blessed and have not been distressed by a cancer experience, there is perhaps even more reason to absorb this book.

Author Suleika Jaouad provides a candid, honest telling of her experience in surviving a rare form of leukemia. She shares her fears, her pain, her struggles and her recovery. Her story however is not just of self, but of family and of community. I believe she would without hesitation tell us, it's not just her story.

Nor is it fair to suggest recovery for Jaouad or any cancer survivor can be so succinctly defined. Perhaps it sounds trite, but for her and every cancer fighter, this is a journey, and Jaouad, in her forthright manner, shares her emotional, physical and spiritual journey with us. We experience her every moment of uncertainty, and in the end, we also absorb her discovery, not necessarily her recovery, but her renewal.

Thanks to the eloquence and honesty of Between Two Kingdoms, we become jubilant fans and supporters of Suleika Jaouad. But deep down, we are fans of everyone who lives with cancer and their journey for renewal.
]]>