Jess's bookshelf: all en-US Fri, 09 May 2025 05:55:04 -0700 60 Jess's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[A Brief History of Seven Killings]]> 20893314
Deftly spanning decades and continents and peopled with a wide range of characters¡ªassassins, journalists, drug dealers, and even ghosts¡ªA Brief History of Seven Killings is the fictional exploration of that dangerous and unstable time and its bloody aftermath, from the streets and slums of Kingston in the 70s, to the crack wars in 80s New York, to a radically altered Jamaica in the 90s. Brilliantly inventive and stunningly ambitious, this novel is a revealing modern epic that will secure Marlon James¡¯ place among the great literary talents of his generation.]]> 688 Marlon James 159448600X Jess 0 3.91 2014 A Brief History of Seven Killings
author: Marlon James
name: Jess
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at: 2025/05/09
date added: 2025/05/09
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz]]> 51187948
On Winston Churchill's first day as prime minister, Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next twelve months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons. It was up to Churchill to hold the country together and persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally-and willing to fight to the end.

In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson shows, in cinematic detail, how Churchill taught the British people "the art of being fearless." It is a story of political brinkmanship, but it's also an intimate domestic drama set against the backdrop of Churchill's prime-ministerial country home, Chequers; his wartime retreat, Ditchley, where he and his entourage go when the moon is brightest and the bombing threat is highest; and of course 10 Downing Street in London.

Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports-some released only recently-Larson provides a new lens on London's darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his wife, Clementine; their youngest daughter, Mary, who chafes against her parents' wartime protectiveness; their son, Randolph, and his beautiful, unhappy wife, Pamela; Pamela's illicit lover, a dashing American emissary; and the cadre of close advisers who comprised Churchill's "Secret Circle," including his lovestruck private secretary, John Colville; newspaper baron Lord Beaverbrook; and the Rasputin-like Frederick Lindemann.

The Splendid and the Vile takes readers out of today's political dysfunction and back to a time of true leadership, when-in the face of unrelenting horror-Churchill's eloquence, courage, and perseverance bound a country, and a family, together."--]]> 546 Erik Larson 038534872X Jess 0 currently-reading 4.30 2020 The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz
author: Erik Larson
name: Jess
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/06
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> Mansfield Park 45032 488 Jane Austen Jess 4 3.86 1814 Mansfield Park
author: Jane Austen
name: Jess
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1814
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/11/27
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]]> <![CDATA[A Promise Kept To Bear Witness]]> 1377360 Book by Wagner, Joyce 152 Joyce Wagner 1425995527 Jess 5 4.55 2007 A Promise Kept To Bear Witness
author: Joyce Wagner
name: Jess
average rating: 4.55
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/25
date added: 2024/11/25
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]]> Everything I Never Told You 18693763
Lydia is the favourite child of Marilyn and James Lee; a girl who inherited her mother's bright blue eyes and her father's jet-black hair. Her parents are determined that Lydia will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue - in Marilyn's case that her daughter become a doctor rather than a homemaker, in James's case that Lydia be popular at school, a girl with a busy social life and the centre of every party. But Lydia is under pressures that have nothing to do with growing up in 1970s small town Ohio. Her father is an American born of first-generation Chinese immigrants, and his ethnicity, and hers, make them conspicuous in any setting.

When Lydia's body is found in the local lake, James is consumed by guilt and sets out on a reckless path that may destroy his marriage. Marilyn, devastated and vengeful, is determined to make someone accountable, no matter what the cost. Lydia's older brother, Nathan, is convinced that local bad boy Jack is somehow involved. But it's the youngest in the family - Hannah - who observes far more than anyone realises and who may be the only one who knows what really happened.

Everything I Never Told You is a gripping page-turner, about secrets, love, longing, lies and race.

Librarian's note: There is an Alternate Cover Edition for this edition of this book here.]]> 297 Celeste Ng 159420571X Jess 0 currently-reading 3.81 2014 Everything I Never Told You
author: Celeste Ng
name: Jess
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/03
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> Outlawed 56601642 In the year of our Lord 1894, I became an outlaw.

The day of her wedding, 17 year old Ada's life looks good; she loves her husband, and she loves working as an apprentice to her mother, a respected midwife. But after a year of marriage and no pregnancy, in a town where barren women are routinely hanged as witches, her survival depends on leaving behind everything she knows.

She joins up with the notorious Hole in the Wall Gang, a band of outlaws led by a preacher-turned-robber known to all as the Kid. Charismatic, grandiose, and mercurial, the Kid is determined to create a safe haven for outcast women. But to make this dream a reality, the Gang hatches a treacherous plan that may get them all killed. And Ada must decide whether she's willing to risk her life for the possibility of a new kind of future for them all.

Featuring an irresistibly no-nonsense, courageous, and determined heroine, Outlawed dusts off the myth of the old West and reignites the glimmering promise of the frontier with an entirely new set of feminist stakes. Anna North has crafted a pulse-racing, page-turning saga about the search for hope in the wake of death, and for truth in a climate of small-mindedness and fear.]]> 264 Anna North 147461535X Jess 0 3.49 2021 Outlawed
author: Anna North
name: Jess
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at: 2024/11/03
date added: 2024/11/03
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]]> The Known World 67 The Known World is a daring and ambitious work by Pulitzer Prize winner Edward P. Jones.

The Known World tells the story of Henry Townsend, a black farmer and former slave who falls under the tutelage of William Robbins, the most powerful man in Manchester County, Virginia. Making certain he never circumvents the law, Townsend runs his affairs with unusual discipline. But when death takes him unexpectedly, his widow, Caldonia, can't uphold the estate's order, and chaos ensues. Jones has woven a footnote of history into an epic that takes an unflinching look at slavery in all its moral complexities.]]> 388 Edward P. Jones 0061159174 Jess 0 3.83 2003 The Known World
author: Edward P. Jones
name: Jess
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2003
rating: 0
read at: 2024/10/27
date added: 2024/10/27
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]]> All I Asking for Is My Body 159738
The most important feature of Milton Murayama's brilliant All I Asking for Is My Body is the quality of the storytelling. It deserves thorough discussion and criticism among literary professionals and students. The work has a further genius, however, in its evocation of several major topics in modern Hawaiian history, specifically during the 1930s, the decade before United States involvement in World War II. I suggest that Murayama¡¯s novel provides us with valuable insights into the worlds of language, sugar plantation history, and the second-generation Japanese Americans, the nisei. . . . Critic Rob Wilson noted: ¡°Part of the accomplishment of the novel is that the language ranges from the vernacular to the literate and standard, and so reflects the cultural and linguistic diversity of Hawaii.¡± In the novel, Murayama uses standard English and pidgin. In real life, the narrator Kiyo explains, ¡°we spoke four languages: good English in school, pidgin English among ourselves, good or pidgin Japanese to our parents and the other old folks.¡± The wonder is that Murayama emerged using any one of the languages well. For most, that experience proved to be an insuperable barrier to good creative writing. . . . All I Asking for Is My Body is the most compelling work done on the Hawaii nisei experience. Murayama understood his theme to be ¡°the Japanese family system vs. individualism, the plantation system vs. individualism. And so the environments of the family and the plantation are inseparable from the theme.¡± Fortunately for us as readers, however, he understood that the story was the key ingredient; that anything less would simply add to the sociological study of the plantation and the Japanese family in Hawaii.]]> 120 Milton Murayama 0824811720 Jess 0 3.84 1988 All I Asking for Is My Body
author: Milton Murayama
name: Jess
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1988
rating: 0
read at: 2024/10/01
date added: 2024/10/01
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]]> <![CDATA[P-47 Thunderbolt: Republic's Mighty "Jug" in World War II (Legends of Warfare: Aviation, 20)]]> 42181463 112 David Doyle 0764356739 Jess 0 4.00 P-47 Thunderbolt: Republic's Mighty "Jug" in World War II (Legends of Warfare: Aviation, 20)
author: David Doyle
name: Jess
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2024/09/22
date added: 2024/09/22
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]]> <![CDATA[Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH]]> 9822
Mrs. Frisby, a widowed mouse with four small children, is faced with a terrible problem. She must move her family to their summer quarters immediately, or face almost certain death. But her youngest son, Timothy, lies ill with pneumonia and must not be moved. Fortunately, she encounters the rats of NIMH, an extraordinary breed of highly intelligent creatures, who come up with a brilliant solution to her dilemma. And Mrs. Frisby in turn renders them a great service.]]> 240 Robert C. O'Brien 0689862202 Jess 0 4.16 1971 Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH
author: Robert C. O'Brien
name: Jess
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1971
rating: 0
read at: 2024/09/08
date added: 2024/09/08
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]]> Brick Lane 18723 As a good Muslim girl, Nazneen struggles to not question why things happen. She submits, as she must, to Fate and devotes herself to her husband and daughters. Yet to her amazement, she begins an affair with a handsome young radical, and her erotic awakening throws her old certainties into chaos.
Monica Ali's splendid novel is about journeys both external and internal, where the marvelous and the terrifying spiral together.]]> 432 Monica Ali 0743243315 Jess 0 3.45 2003 Brick Lane
author: Monica Ali
name: Jess
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2003
rating: 0
read at: 2024/08/20
date added: 2024/08/20
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]]> There There 43076988 292 Tommy Orange 0525436146 Jess 5 4.05 2018 There There
author: Tommy Orange
name: Jess
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2020/01/04
date added: 2024/08/16
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]]> Coming Home 206571264 From the nine-time women¡¯s basketball icon and two-time Olympic gold medalist¡ªa raw, revelatory account of her unfathomable detainment in Russia and her journey home.

On February 17, 2022, Brittney Griner arrived in Moscow ready to spend the WNBA offseason playing for the Russian women¡¯s basketball team where she had been the centerpiece of previous championship seasons. Instead, a security checkpoint became her gateway to hell when she was arrested for mistakenly carrying under one gram of medically prescribed hash oil. Brittney¡¯s world was violently upended in a crisis she has never spoken in detail about publicly¡ªuntil now.

In Coming Home, Brittney finally shares the harrowing details of her sudden arrest days before Russia invaded Ukraine; her bewilderment and isolation while navigating a foreign legal system amid her trial and sentencing; her emotional and physical anguish as the first American woman ever to endure a Russian penal colony while the #WeAreBG movement rallied for her release; the chilling prisoner swap with Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout; and her remarkable rise from hostage to global spokesperson on behalf of America¡¯s forgotten. In haunting and vivid detail, Brittney takes listeners inside the horrors of a geopolitical nightmare spanning ten months.

And yet Coming Home is more than Brittney¡¯s journey from captivity to freedom. In an account as gripping as it is poignant, she shares how her deep love for Cherelle, her college sweetheart and wife of six years, anchored her during their greatest storm; how her family¡¯s support pulled her back from the brink; and how hundreds of letters from friends and neighbors lent her resolve to keep fighting. Coming Home is both a story of survival and a testament to love¡ªthe bonds that brought Brittney home to her family, and at last, to herself.]]> 320 Brittney Griner 0593801342 Jess 5 4.36 2024 Coming Home
author: Brittney Griner
name: Jess
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/14
date added: 2024/08/14
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]]> Dangerous Games 38251871
Margaret MacMillan is concerned that the history profession appears to be turning inwards, retreating from the big issues at a time when it is urgently needed to increase our understanding of the past. The Uses and Abises of History is a powerful and vital argument for the importance of history and historians.]]> Margaret MacMillan 1456110438 Jess 0 to-read 3.44 2008 Dangerous Games
author: Margaret MacMillan
name: Jess
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Heart of Fire: An Immigrant Daughter's Story (Random House Large Print)]]> 55573807 From Mazie Hirono, the first Asian-American woman and the only immigrant serving in the U.S. Senate, the intimate and inspiring story of how a girl born in rural Japan went on to become a hero on the left ( The Washington Post ) - and of the mother whose courageous choices made her journey possible

Mazie Hirono is one of the most fiercely outspoken Democrats in Congress, but her journey to the U.S. Senate was far from likely. Raised poor on her family's rice farm in rural Japan, Hirono was seven years old when her mother left her abusive husband and sailed with her two elder children to the United States, crossing the Pacific in steerage in search of a better life. Though the girl then known as Keiko did not speak English when she entered school in Hawaii, she would go on to hold state and national office, winning election to the U.S. Senate in 2012.

This intimate and inspiring memoir traces her remarkable life from her upbringing in Hawaii, where the family first lived in a single room in a Honolulu boarding house while her mother worked two jobs to keep them afloat; to her emergence as a highly effective legislator whose determination to help the most vulnerable was grounded in her own experiences of economic insecurity, lack of healthcare access, and family separation. Finally, it chronicles her evolution from dogged yet soft-spoken public servant into the fiery critic and advocate we know her as today.

For the vast majority of Mazie Hirono's five decades in public service, even as she fought for the causes she believed in, she strove to remain polite and reserved. Steeped in the non-confrontational cultures of Japan and Hawaii, and aware of the expectation that women in politics should never show an excess of emotion, she had schooled herself to bite her tongue, even as her male colleagues continually underestimated her. After the 2016 election, however, it was clear that she could moderate herself no longer. In the face of an autocratic administration, Hirono was called to at last give voice to the fire that had always been inside her.

The moving and galvanizing account of a woman coming into her own power over the course of a lifetime in public service, and of the mother who encouraged her immigrant daughter's dreams, Heart of Fire is the story of a uniquely American journey, written by one of those fighting hardest to ensure that a story like hers is still possible.]]> 576 Mazie K. Hirono 0593396162 Jess 0 4.25 2021 Heart of Fire: An Immigrant Daughter's Story (Random House Large Print)
author: Mazie K. Hirono
name: Jess
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at: 2024/06/29
date added: 2024/06/29
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]]> <![CDATA[Dear Black Girls: How to Be True to You]]> 127306075
This is a book for all the girls with an apostrophe in their name.

This is for all the girls who are ¡°too loud" and ¡°too emotional.¡±

This is for all the girls who are constantly asked, ¡° Oh , what did you do with your hair? That¡¯s new .¡±

This is for my Black girls.

In this empowering and deeply personal collection¨Dadapted from and expanded upon the piece of the same name in The Players¡¯ Tribune ¨DWNBA star A¡¯ja Wilson shares stories from her life. Despite gold medals, championships, and a list of accolades, Wilson knows how it feels to be swept under the rug. To not be heard, to not feel seen, to not be taken seriously. As a fourth grader going to a primarily white school in South Carolina, she was told she¡¯d have to stay outside for a classmate¡¯s birthday party. ¡°Huh?¡± she asked. Because the birthday girl¡¯s father didn¡¯t like Black people.

Wilson tells stories like stories that held her down but didn¡¯t stop her. She shares her contribution to ¡°The Talk,¡± and how to keep fighting, all while igniting strength, resilience, and passion. Dear Black Girls is one remarkable author¡¯s necessary and meaningful exploration of what it means to be a Black woman in America today¨Dand an of-the-moment rally cry to lift up women and girls everywhere.]]> 192 A'ja Wilson 125029004X Jess 5 4.54 Dear Black Girls: How to Be True to You
author: A'ja Wilson
name: Jess
average rating: 4.54
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/30
date added: 2024/05/30
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]]> <![CDATA[Dinners with Ruth: A Memoir on the Power of Friendships]]> 60407689 Celebrated NPR correspondent Nina Totenberg delivers an extraordinary memoir of her personal successes, struggles, and life-affirming relationships, including her beautiful friendship of nearly fifty years with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.Four years before Nina Totenberg was hired at NPR, where she cemented her legacy as a prizewinning reporter, and nearly twenty-two years before Ruth Bader Ginsburg was appointed to the Supreme Court, Nina called Ruth. A reporter for The National Observer, Nina was curious about Ruth¡¯s legal brief, asking the Supreme Court to do something declare a law that discriminated ¡°on the basis of sex¡± to be unconstitutional. In a time when women were fired for becoming pregnant, often could not apply for credit cards or get a mortgage in their own names, Ruth patiently explained her argument. That call launched a remarkable, nearly fifty-year friendship. Dinners with Ruth is an extraordinary account of two women who paved the way for future generations by tearing down professional and legal barriers. It is also an intimate memoir of the power of friendships as women began to pry open career doors and transform the workplace. At the story¡¯s heart is one, special Ruth and Nina saw each other not only through personal joys, but also illness, loss, and widowhood. During the devastating illness and eventual death of Nina¡¯s first husband, Ruth drew her out of grief; twelve years later, Nina would reciprocate when Ruth¡¯s beloved husband died. They shared not only a love of opera, but also of shopping, as they instinctively understood that clothes were armor for women who wanted to be taken seriously in a workplace dominated by men. During Ruth¡¯s last year, they shared so many small dinners that Saturdays were ¡°reserved for Ruth¡± in Nina¡¯s house. Dinners with Ruth also weaves together compelling, personal portraits of other fascinating women and men from Nina¡¯s life, including her cherished NPR colleagues Cokie Roberts and Linda Wertheimer; her beloved husbands; her friendships with multiple Supreme Court Justices, including Lewis Powell, William Brennan, and Antonin Scalia, and Nina¡¯s own family¡ªher father, the legendary violinist Roman Totenberg, and her ¡°best friends,¡± her sisters. Inspiring and revelatory, Dinners with Ruth is a moving story of the joy and true meaning of friendship.]]> 320 Nina Totenberg 1982188081 Jess 0 4.03 2022 Dinners with Ruth: A Memoir on the Power of Friendships
author: Nina Totenberg
name: Jess
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2024/05/13
date added: 2024/05/13
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]]> The Fault in Our Stars 11870085
Insightful, bold, irreverent, and raw, The Fault in Our Stars is award-winning author John Green's most ambitious and heartbreaking work yet, brilliantly exploring the funny, thrilling, and tragic business of being alive and in love.]]> 313 John Green Jess 0 4.13 2012 The Fault in Our Stars
author: John Green
name: Jess
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at: 2024/04/21
date added: 2024/04/21
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]]> <![CDATA[Parable of the Sower (Earthseed, #1)]]> 52397
Lauren Olamina and her family live in one of the only safe neighborhoods remaining on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Behind the walls of their defended enclave, Lauren¡¯s father, a preacher, and a handful of other citizens try to salvage what remains of a culture that has been destroyed by drugs, disease, war, and chronic water shortages. While her father tries to lead people on the righteous path, Lauren struggles with hyperempathy, a condition that makes her extraordinarily sensitive to the pain of others.

When fire destroys their compound, Lauren¡¯s family is killed and she is forced out into a world that is fraught with danger. With a handful of other refugees, Lauren must make her way north to safety, along the way conceiving a revolutionary idea that may mean salvation for all mankind.]]> 345 Octavia E. Butler 0446675504 Jess 5 4.21 1993 Parable of the Sower (Earthseed, #1)
author: Octavia E. Butler
name: Jess
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1993
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/07
date added: 2024/04/07
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]]> <![CDATA[The Forgotten 500: The Untold Story of the Men Who Risked All For the Greatest Rescue Mission of World War II]]> 1707116 336 Gregory A. Freeman 0451222121 Jess 0 3.97 2007 The Forgotten 500: The Untold Story of the Men Who Risked All For the Greatest Rescue Mission of World War II
author: Gregory A. Freeman
name: Jess
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at: 2024/03/24
date added: 2024/03/24
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]]> The Sea Runners 223406
"Goes beyond being 'about' survival and becomes, mile by terrible mile, the experience itself."¡ª New York Times Book Review

In this timeless survival story, four indentured servants escape their Russian Alaska work camp in a stolen canoe, only to face a harrowing journey down the Pacific Northwest coast. Battling unrelenting high seas and fierce weather from New Archangel, Alaska, to Astoria, Oregon, the men struggle to avoid hostile Tlingit Indians, to fend off starvation and exhaustion, and to endure their own doubt and distrust.

"The sea, wind, space, are palpable in this exquisitely worked book. And not the least of its charms is the liveliness with which it explores a forgotten corner of North American history."¡ªThomas Keneally, Booker Prize¨Cwinning author of Schindler's List]]> 277 Ivan Doig 0156031027 Jess 0 currently-reading 3.82 1981 The Sea Runners
author: Ivan Doig
name: Jess
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1981
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/25
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> Daisy Miller 16204 164 Henry James 1592243002 Jess 0 3.38 1879 Daisy Miller
author: Henry James
name: Jess
average rating: 3.38
book published: 1879
rating: 0
read at: 2024/02/25
date added: 2024/02/25
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]]> <![CDATA[Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee]]> 41883932 To Kill a Mockingbird

Reverend Willie Maxwell was a rural preacher accused of murdering five of his family members for insurance money in the 1970s. With the help of a savvy lawyer, he escaped justice for years until a relative shot him dead at the funeral of his last victim. Despite hundreds of witnesses, Maxwell's murderer was acquitted - thanks to the same attorney who had previously defended the Reverend.

As Alabama is consumed by these gripping events, it's not long until news of the case reaches Alabama's - and America's - most famous writer. Intrigued by the story, Harper Lee makes a journey back to her home state to witness the Reverend's killer face trial. Lee had the idea of writing her own In Cold Blood, the true-crime classic she had helped her friend Truman Capote research. She spent a year in town reporting on the Maxwell case and many more years trying to finish the book she called The Reverend.

Now Casey Cep brings this story to life, from the shocking murders to the courtroom drama to the racial politics of the Deep South. At the same time, she offers a deeply moving portrait of one of America's most beloved writers and her struggle with fame, success and the mystery of artistic creativity.

This is the story Harper Lee wanted to write. This is the story of why she couldn't.]]> 314 Casey Cep 1101947861 Jess 0 3.74 2019 Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee
author: Casey Cep
name: Jess
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at: 2024/02/23
date added: 2024/02/23
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]]> Ball Four 762563
When first published in 1970, Ball Four stunned the sports world. The commissioner, executives, and players were shocked. Sportswriters called author Jim Bouton a traitor and "social leper." Baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn tried to force him to declare the book untrue. Fans, however, loved the book. And serious critics called it an important social document. Today, Jim Bouton is still not invited to Oldtimer's Days at Yankee Stadium. But his landmark book is still being read by people who don't ordinarily follow baseball.]]> 465 Jim Bouton 0020306652 Jess 0 4.04 1970 Ball Four
author: Jim Bouton
name: Jess
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1970
rating: 0
read at: 2024/02/15
date added: 2024/02/15
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]]> Night Fisher 145240 First-rate prep school, SUV, and a dream house in the heights - this was the island paradise handed to Loren Foster when he moved to Hawaii with his father six years ago. Now, with the end of high school just around the corner, his best friend, Shane, has grown distant. The rumors say its hard drugs, and Loren suspects that Shane has left him behind for a new group of friends. What sets Kikuo's drama apart is the naturalistic ease with which he explores the relationships of his characters. It is at once an unsentimental portrait of that most awkward period between adolescence and young adulthood and that rarest of things - a mature depiction of immature lives.]]> 144 R. Kikuo Johnson 1560977191 Jess 0 3.10 2005 Night Fisher
author: R. Kikuo Johnson
name: Jess
average rating: 3.10
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at: 2024/02/09
date added: 2024/02/09
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]]> No One Else 57322547
No One Else is a graphic novel of great tender truth, as Charlene, Brandon, and Robbie learn to navigate life day to day with their plans, fears, and desires. Gorgeously drawn and set in the author's hometown on the Hawaiian island of Maui, it is the long-awaited follow up to his acclaimed debut graphic novel, Night Fisher, and a mature work of literary fiction.]]> 99 R. Kikuo Johnson 1683964799 Jess 4 3.64 2021 No One Else
author: R. Kikuo Johnson
name: Jess
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/07
date added: 2024/02/07
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]]> <![CDATA[This Time Together: Laughter and Reflection]]> 7521400 Carrie and Me: A Mother Daughter Love Story , This Time Together is 100 percent Carol Burnett ¨C funny, irreverent, and irresistible.
?
Carol Burnett is one of the most beloved and revered actresses and performers in America. The Carol Burnett Show was seen each week by millions of adoring fans and won twenty-five Emmys in its remarkable eleven-year run. Now, in This Time Together, Carol really lets her hair down and tells one funny or touching or memorable story after another ¨C reading it feels like sitting down with an old friend who has wonderful tales to tell.
?
In engaging anecdotes, Carol discusses her remarkable friendships with stars such at Jimmy Stewart, Lucille Ball, Cary Grant, and Julie Andrews; the background behind famous scenes, like the moment she swept down the stairs in her curtain-rod dress in the legendary ¡°Went With the Wind¡± skit; and things that would happen only to Carol ¨C the prank with Julie Andrews that went wrong in front of the First Lady; the famous Tarzan Yell that saved her during a mugging; and the time she faked a wooden leg to get served in a famous ice cream emporium. This poignant look back allows us to cry with the actress during her sorrows, rejoice in her successes, and finally, always, to laugh.]]> 266 Carol Burnett 0307461181 Jess 0 4.02 2010 This Time Together: Laughter and Reflection
author: Carol Burnett
name: Jess
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at: 2024/02/05
date added: 2024/02/05
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]]> Sea Monsters 40626794 Sea Monsters offers an intoxicating portrait of Mexico in the late 1980s.

One autumn afternoon in Mexico City, seventeen-year-old Luisa does not return home from school. Instead, she boards a bus to the Pacific coast with Tom¨¢s, a boy she barely knows. He seems to represent everything her life is lacking¡ªrecklessness, impulse, independence.

Tom¨¢s may also help Luisa fulfill an unusual obsession: she wants to track down a traveling troupe of Ukrainian dwarfs. According to newspaper reports, the dwarfs recently escaped a Soviet circus touring Mexico. The imagined fates of these performers fill Luisa¡¯s surreal dreams as she settles in a beach community in Oaxaca. Surrounded by hippies, nudists, beachcombers, and eccentric storytellers, Luisa searches for someone, anyone, who will ¡°promise, no matter what, to remain a mystery.¡± It is a quest more easily envisioned than accomplished. As she wanders the shoreline and visits the local bar, Luisa begins to disappear dangerously into the lives of strangers on Zipolite, the ¡°Beach of the Dead.¡±

Meanwhile, her father has set out to find his missing daughter. A mesmeric portrait of transgression and disenchantment unfolds. Sea Monsters is a brilliantly playful and supple novel about the moments and mysteries that shape us.]]> 205 Chloe Aridjis 1936787865 Jess 0 3.37 2019 Sea Monsters
author: Chloe Aridjis
name: Jess
average rating: 3.37
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at: 2024/02/05
date added: 2024/02/05
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]]> One Writer's Beginnings 12590
Eudora Welty was born in 1909 in Jackson, Mississippi. In a "continuous thread of revelation" she sketches her autobiography and tells us how her family and her surroundings contributed to the shaping not only of her personality but of her writing. Homely and commonplace sights, sounds, and objects resonate with the emotions of recollection: the striking clocks, the Victrola, her orphaned father's coverless little book saved since boyhood, the tall mountains of the West Virginia back country that become a metaphor for her mother's sturdy independence, Eudora's earliest box camera that suspended a moment forever and taught her that every feeling awaits a gesture. She has recreated this vanished world with the same subtlety and insight that mark her fiction.

Even if Eudora Welty were not a major writer, her description of growing up in the South--of the interplay between black and white, between town and countryside, between dedicated schoolteachers and the public they taught--would he notable. That she is a splendid writer of fiction gives her own experience a family likeness to others in the generation of young Southerners that produced a literary renaissance. Until publication of this book, she had discouraged biographical investigations. It undoubtedly was not easy for this shy and reticent lady to undertake her own literary biography, to relive her own memories (painful as well as pleasant), to go through letters and photographs of her parents and grandparents. But we are in her debt, for the distillation of experience she offers us is a rare pleasure for her admirers, a treat to everyone who loves good writing and anyone who is interested in the seeds of creativity.]]> 128 Eudora Welty 0674639278 Jess 5 4.08 1983 One Writer's Beginnings
author: Eudora Welty
name: Jess
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1983
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/03
date added: 2024/02/03
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]]> Trust 58210933 An unparalleled novel about money, power, intimacy, and perception

Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly boundless wealth¡ªall as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit.

Hernan Diaz's TRUST elegantly puts these competing narratives into conversation with one another¡ªand in tension with the perspective of one woman bent on disentangling fact from fiction. The result is a novel that spans over a century and becomes more exhilarating with each new revelation.

At once an immersive story and a brilliant literary puzzle, TRUST engages the reader in a quest for the truth while confronting the deceptions that often live at the heart of personal relationships, the reality-warping force of capital, and the ease with which power can manipulate facts.]]> 402 Hernan Diaz 0593420314 Jess 5 3.77 2022 Trust
author: Hernan Diaz
name: Jess
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/02
date added: 2024/02/02
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]]> <![CDATA[We Were Soldiers Once... and Young: Ia Drang - The Battle that Changed the War in Vietnam]]> 42512 We Were Soldiers Once . . . and Young.

In November 1965, some 450 men of the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, under the command of Lt. Col. Hal Moore, were dropped by helicopter into a small clearing in the Ia Drang Valley. They were immediately surrounded by 2,000 North Vietnamese soldiers. Three days later, only two and a half miles away, a sister battalion was chopped to pieces. Together, these actions at the landing zones X-Ray and Albany constituted one of the most savage and significant battles of the Vietnam War.
How these men persevered--sacrificed themselves for their comrades and never gave up--makes a vivid portrait of war at its most inspiring and devastating. General Moore and Joseph Galloway, the only journalist on the ground throughout the fighting, have interviewed hundreds of men who fought there, including the North Vietnamese commanders. This devastating account rises above the specific ordeal it chronicles to present a picture of men facing the ultimate challenge, dealing with it in ways they would have found unimaginable only a few hours earlier. It reveals to us, as rarely before, man's most heroic and horrendous endeavor.]]> 480 Harold G. Moore 034547581X Jess 4 4.33 1991 We Were Soldiers Once... and Young: Ia Drang - The Battle that Changed the War in Vietnam
author: Harold G. Moore
name: Jess
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1991
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/21
date added: 2024/01/21
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]]> <![CDATA[Facing the Mountain: A True Story of Japanese American Heroes in World War II]]> 55920278 From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Boys in the Boat, a gripping World War II saga of patriotism and courage: the special Japanese-American Army unit that overcame brutal odds in Europe; their families, incarcerated back home; and a young man who refused to surrender his constitutional rights, even if it meant imprisonment.

They came from across the continent and Hawaii. Their parents taught them to embrace both their Japanese heritage and the ways of their American homeland. They faced bigotry, yet they believed in their bright futures as American citizens. But within days of Pearl Harbor, the FBI was ransacking their houses and locking up their fathers. And within months many would themselves be living behind barbed wire.

Facing the Mountain is an unforgettable chronicle of war-time America and the battlefields of Europe. Based on Daniel James Brown's extensive interviews with the families of the protagonists as well as deep archival research, it portrays the kaleidoscopic journey of four Japanese-American families and their sons, who volunteered for 442nd Regimental Combat Team and were deployed to France, Germany, and Italy, where they were asked to do the near impossible.

But this is more than a war story. Brown also tells the story of these soldiers' parents, immigrants who were forced to shutter the businesses, surrender their homes, and submit to life in concentration camps on U.S. soil. Woven throughout is the chronicle of a brave young man, one of a cadre of patriotic resisters who stood up against their government in defense of their own rights. Whether fighting on battlefields or in courtrooms, these were Americans under unprecedented strain, doing what Americans do best--striving, resisting, pushing back, rising up, standing on principle, laying down their lives, and enduring.]]> 560 Daniel James Brown 0525557407 Jess 5 4.45 2021 Facing the Mountain: A True Story of Japanese American Heroes in World War II
author: Daniel James Brown
name: Jess
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/19
date added: 2023/12/19
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]]> <![CDATA[The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colourblindness]]> 43566093 The New York Times bestseller and 'Bible of a social movement' (San Francisco Chronicle)

Once in a great while a book comes along that radically changes our understanding of a crucial political issue and helps to fuel a social movement. The New Jim Crow is such a book. Lawyer and activist Michelle Alexander offers a stunning account of the rebirth of a caste-like system in the United States, one that has resulted in millions of African Americans locked behind bars and then relegated to a permanent second-class status, denied the very rights supposedly won in the Civil Rights movement.

Challenging the notion that the election of Barack Obama signalled a new era of colourblindness in the United States, The New Jim Crow reveals how racial discrimination was not ended but merely redesigned. By targeting black men through the War on Drugs and decimating communities of colour, the American criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control, relegating millions to a permanent second-class status even as it formally adheres to the principle of colourblindness.

A searing call to action for everyone concerned with social justice, The New Jim Crow is one of the most important books about race in the 21st century.]]> 312 Michelle Alexander 0141990678 Jess 0 4.44 2010 The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colourblindness
author: Michelle Alexander
name: Jess
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at: 2023/10/20
date added: 2023/10/20
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]]> <![CDATA[When We Were Very Young (Winnie-the-Pooh, #3)]]> 821003 100 A.A. Milne 0525444459 Jess 0 4.25 1924 When We Were Very Young (Winnie-the-Pooh, #3)
author: A.A. Milne
name: Jess
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1924
rating: 0
read at: 2023/08/13
date added: 2023/08/13
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]]> <![CDATA[Undaunted Courage: The Pioneering First Mission to Explore America's Wild Frontier]]> 45546 592 Stephen E. Ambrose 074347788X Jess 0 4.21 1996 Undaunted Courage: The Pioneering First Mission to Explore America's Wild Frontier
author: Stephen E. Ambrose
name: Jess
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1996
rating: 0
read at: 2023/07/31
date added: 2023/07/31
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]]> <![CDATA[Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019]]> 54998251 An epoch-defining history of African America, the first to appear in a generation, Four Hundred Souls is a chronological account of four hundred years of Black America as told by ninety of America's leading Black writers.

Curated by Ibram X. Kendi, author of the number one bestseller How To Be an Antiracist, and fellow historian Keisha N. Blain, Four Hundred Souls begins with the arrival of twenty enslaved Ndongo people on the shores of the British colony in mainland America in 1619, the year before the arrival of the Mayflower.

In eighty chronological chapters, the book charts the tragic and triumphant four-hundred-year history of Black American experience in a choral work of exceptional power and beauty.

Contributors include some of the best-known scholars, writers, historians, journalists, lawyers, poets and activists of contemporary America who together bring to vivid life countless new facets to the drama of slavery and resistance, segregation and survival, migration and self-discovery, cultural oppression and world-changing artistic, literary and musical creativity. In these pages are dozens of extraordinary lives and personalities, rescued from the archives and restored to their rightful place in America's narrative, as well as the ghosts of millions more.

Four Hundred Souls is an essential work of story-telling and reclamation that redefines America and changes our notion of how history is written.]]> 504 Ibram X. Kendi 0593134044 Jess 0 currently-reading 4.56 2021 Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019
author: Ibram X. Kendi
name: Jess
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/07/27
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> <![CDATA[The Death and Life of the Great Lakes]]> 30231729 A master reporter¡¯s landmark work of contemporary ecology.

The Great Lakes hold 20 percent of the world¡¯s freshwater, and they provide food, work, and weekend fun for tens of millions of Americans. Yet they are under threat as never before.

In a work of narrative reporting in the vein of Rachel Carson and Elizabeth Kolbert, prize-winning reporter Dan Egan delivers an eye-opening portrait of our nation¡¯s greatest natural resource as it faces ecological calamity. He tells the story of the St. Lawrence Seaway and the Chicago ship canal¡ªgood ideas in their time that have had horrendous consequences. He explains how invasive species such as Asian carp, sea lamprey, and zebra mussels have decimated native species and endanger the entire United States. And he examines new risks, such as unsafe drinking water, the threat of water diversions, and ¡°dead zones¡± that cover hundreds of square miles of water¡ªwhile showing how the Great Lakes can be restored and preserved for generations to come.]]> 364 Dan Egan 0393246434 Jess 5 4.38 2017 The Death and Life of the Great Lakes
author: Dan Egan
name: Jess
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2017
rating: 5
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]]> Dark at the Crossing 29930315 From the author of the acclaimed Green on Blue, a timely new novel of stunning humanity and tension: a contemporary love story set on the Turkish border with Syria.

Haris Abadi is a man in search of a cause. An Arab American with a conflicted past, he is now in Turkey, attempting to cross into Syria and join the fight against Bashar al-Assad¡¯s regime. But he is robbed before he can make it, and is taken in by Amir, a charismatic Syrian refugee and former revolutionary, and Amir¡¯s wife, Daphne, a sophisticated beauty haunted by grief. As it becomes clear that Daphne is also desperate to return to Syria, Haris¡¯s choices become ever more wrenching: Whose side is he really on? Is he a true radical or simply an idealist? And will he be able to bring meaning to a life of increasing frustration and helplessness? Told with compassion and a deft hand, Dark at the Crossing is an exploration of loss, of second chances, and of why we choose to believe¡ªa trenchantly observed novel of raw urgency and power.]]> 237 Elliot Ackerman 1101947373 Jess 0 3.56 2017 Dark at the Crossing
author: Elliot Ackerman
name: Jess
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at: 2023/07/10
date added: 2023/07/10
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]]> <![CDATA[Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge]]> 30753748 Never Caught is the powerful narrative of Ona Judge, George and Martha Washington¡¯s runaway slave who risked it all to escape the nation¡¯s capital and reach freedom.

When George Washington was elected president, he reluctantly left behind his beloved Mount Vernon to serve in Philadelphia, the temporary seat of the nation¡¯s capital, after a brief stay in New York. In setting up his household he took Tobias Lear, his celebrated secretary, and nine slaves, including Ona Judge, about which little has been written. As he grew accustomed to Northern ways, there was one change he couldn¡¯t get his arms around: Pennsylvania law required enslaved people be set free after six months of residency in the state. Rather than comply, Washington decided to circumvent the law. Every six months he sent the slaves back down south just as the clock was about to expire.

Though Ona Judge lived a life of relative comfort, the few pleasantries she was afforded were nothing compared to freedom, a glimpse of which she encountered first-hand in Philadelphia. So, when the opportunity presented itself one clear and pleasant spring day in Philadelphia, Judge left everything she knew to escape to New England. Yet freedom would not come without its costs.

At just twenty-two-years-old, Ona became the subject of an intense manhunt led by George Washington, who used his political and personal contacts to recapture his property.

Impeccably researched, historian Erica Armstrong Dunbar weaves a powerful tale and offers fascinating new scholarship on how one young woman risked it all to gain freedom from the famous founding father.]]> 253 Erica Armstrong Dunbar 1501126393 Jess 2 3.80 2017 Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge
author: Erica Armstrong Dunbar
name: Jess
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2017
rating: 2
read at: 2023/06/27
date added: 2023/06/27
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]]> <![CDATA[Remember Us: My Journey from the Shtetl Through the Holocaust]]> 7356300 Remember Us is a look back at the lost world of the shtetl: a wise Zayde offering prophetic and profound words to his grandson, the rich experience of Shabbos, and the treasure of a loving family. All this is torn apart with the arrival of the Holocaust, beginning a crucible fraught with twists and turns so unpredictable and surprising that they defy any attempt to find reason within them.

From work camps to the partisans of the Nowogrudek forests, from the Mauthausen concentration camp to life as a displaced person in Italy, and from fighting the Egyptian army in a tiny Israeli kibbutz in 1948 to starting a new life in a new world in New York, this book encompasses the mythical ¡°hero¡¯s journey¡± in very real historical events. Through the eyes of 91-year-old Holocaust survivor Martin Small, we learn that these priceless memories that are too painful to remember are also too painful to forget.]]> 336 Vic Shayne 1602397236 Jess 0 4.42 2008 Remember Us: My Journey from the Shtetl Through the Holocaust
author: Vic Shayne
name: Jess
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2008
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/06/19
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]]> Wuthering Heights 6185 You can find the redesigned cover of this edition HERE.

At the centre of this novel is the passionate love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff - recounted with such emotional intensity that a plain tale of the Yorkshire moors acquires the depth and simplicity of ancient tragedy.

This best-selling Norton Critical Edition is based on the 1847 first edition of the novel. For the Fourth Edition, the editor has collated the 1847 text with several modern editions and has corrected a number of variants, including accidentals. The text is accompanied by entirely new explanatory annotations.

New to the fourth Edition are twelve of Emily Bronte's letters regarding the publication of the 1847 edition of Wuthering Heights as well as the evolution of the 1850 edition, prose and poetry selections by the author, four reviews of the novel, and poetry selections by the author, four reviews of the novel, and Edward Chitham's insightful and informative chronology of the creative process behind the beloved work.

Five major critical interpretations of Wuthering Heights are included, three of them new to the Fourth Edition. A Stuart Daley considers the importance of chronology in the novel. J. Hillis Miller examines Wuthering Heights's problems of genre and critical reputation. Sandra M. Gilbert assesses the role of Victorian Christianity plays in the novel, while Martha Nussbaum traces the novel's romanticism. Finally, Lin Haire-Sargeant scrutinizes the role of Heathcliff in film adaptations of Wuthering Heights.

A Chronology and updated Selected Bibliography are also included.]]> 464 Emily Bront? Jess 0 3.89 1847 Wuthering Heights
author: Emily Bront?
name: Jess
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1847
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Hunt for Red October (Jack Ryan, #3)]]> 19691 Somewhere under the Atlantic, a Soviet sub commander has just made a fateful decision. The Red October is heading west. The Americans want her. The Russians want her back. And the most incredible chase in history is on...

]]> 432 Tom Clancy 0425172902 Jess 0 4.11 1984 The Hunt for Red October (Jack Ryan, #3)
author: Tom Clancy
name: Jess
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1984
rating: 0
read at: 2023/06/04
date added: 2023/06/04
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]]> Slaughterhouse-Five 168646 ?
Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time
?
Slaughterhouse-Five , an American classic, is one of the world¡¯s great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous World War II firebombing of Dresden, the novel is the result of what Kurt Vonnegut described as a twenty-three-year struggle to write a book about what he had witnessed as an American prisoner of war. It combines historical fiction, science fiction, autobiography, and satire in an account of the life of Billy Pilgrim, a barber¡¯s son turned draftee turned optometrist turned alien abductee. As Vonnegut had, Billy experiences the destruction of Dresden as a POW. Unlike Vonnegut, he experiences time travel, or coming ¡°unstuck in time.¡±

An instant bestseller, Slaughterhouse-Five made Kurt Vonnegut a cult hero in American literature, a reputation that only strengthened over time, despite his being banned and censored by some libraries and schools for content and language. But it was precisely those elements of Vonnegut¡¯s writing¡ªthe political edginess, the genre-bending inventiveness, the frank violence, the transgressive wit¡ªthat have inspired generations of readers not just to look differently at the world around them but to find the confidence to say something about it. Authors as wide-ranging as Norman Mailer, John Irving, Michael Crichton, Tim O¡¯Brien, Margaret Atwood, Elizabeth Strout, David Sedaris, Jennifer Egan, and J. K. Rowling have all found inspiration in Vonnegut¡¯s words. Jonathan Safran Foer has described Vonnegut as ¡°the kind of writer who made people¡ªyoung people especially¡ªwant to write.¡± George Saunders has declared Vonnegut to be ¡°the great, urgent, passionate American writer of our century, who offers us . . . a model of the kind of compassionate thinking that might yet save us from ourselves.¡±

More than fifty years after its initial publication at the height of the Vietnam War, Vonnegut¡¯s portrayal of political disillusionment, PTSD, and postwar anxiety feels as relevant, darkly humorous, and profoundly affecting as ever, an enduring beacon through our own era¡¯s uncertainties.]]> 215 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 0440180295 Jess 0 4.08 1969 Slaughterhouse-Five
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Jess
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1969
rating: 0
read at: 2022/12/06
date added: 2023/06/04
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]]> <![CDATA[The Field of Life and Death & Tales of Hulan River]]> 366024 384 Ïôºì 0887273920 Jess 0 3.86 1979 The Field of Life and Death & Tales of Hulan River
author: Ïôºì
name: Jess
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1979
rating: 0
read at: 2023/05/19
date added: 2023/05/19
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]]> <![CDATA[The Leading Lady: Dinah's Story]]> 1845366 The Golden Girls; Tom Sullivan, bestselling author of If You Could See What I Hear may have made his mark as a multitalented performer, songwriter, and lecturer¡ªbut the real star of this heartwarming story is an extraordinary dog named Dinah.

For nine years this beautiful golden retriever was Tom's best friend, his right arm¡ªand his eyes. A world-class guide dog trained by the Leader Dog Foundation for the Blind, Dinah gave Tom, a man who has been blind since birth, his first real taste of independence. And she gave the entire Sullivan family¡ªwife Patty, daughter Blythe, and son Tom, Jr.¡ªunfaltering loyalty and love.

Together, Tom and Dinah traveled this entire country countless times, and she led him safely through crowded airport terminals, city traffic, strange hotels, and onstage performances.

But when Dinah reached the age of eleven, she began to lose her edge. Her eyes were no longer as sharp, her step not as sure. The once-assured guide dog became defensive and hesitant. Although Tom hated the idea of working with any dog but Dinah, it seemed to be his only choice, and Nelson, a black Labrador retriever, joined the family.

Dinah, however, was not ready to settle back into a life of leisure in the Sullivan household while an interloper took over her job and her master. She stopped eating, began hiding away, and simply gave up on life. Yet Dinah's story has a whole new beginning¡­and her name is Betty White.

In The Leading Lady, Tom and Betty, close friends for years who have become more like family thanks to their special golden girl, take turns talking about Dinah. Here is how the supercanine came into Tom's life; the hard work and frustration man and dog endured to become a team; and the adventures¡ªsome traumatic, some joyful¡ªthat cemented the bond between them. Here, too, is how Betty rescued this gallant lady in distress and how caring, courageous Dinah became a full-fledged member of Betty's family overnight, with a brand-new job to do. Most of all, here is the essence of Dinah, a dog who made a positive difference in every life she touched.]]> 235 Betty White 0553298704 Jess 0 4.16 1991 The Leading Lady: Dinah's Story
author: Betty White
name: Jess
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1991
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/05/03
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]]> <![CDATA[Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers Who Helped Win World War II]]> 34184307 In the tradition of Hidden Figures and The Girls of Atomic City, Code Girls is the astonishing, untold story of the young American women who cracked key Axis codes, helping to secure Allied victory and revolutionizing the field of cryptanalysis.

Recruited by the U.S. Army and Navy from small towns and elite colleges, more than ten thousand women served as codebreakers during World War II. While their brothers and boyfriends took up arms, these women moved to Washington and learned the meticulous work of code-breaking. Their efforts shortened the war, saved countless lives, and gave them access to careers previously denied to them. A strict vow of secrecy nearly erased their efforts from history; now, through dazzling research and interviews with surviving code girls, bestselling author Liza Mundy brings to life this riveting and vital story of American courage, service, and scientific accomplishment.]]> 640 Liza Mundy 0316439894 Jess 0 3.91 2017 Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers Who Helped Win World War II
author: Liza Mundy
name: Jess
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at: 2023/04/26
date added: 2023/04/26
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]]> I'm Glad My Mom Died 59364173
Jennette McCurdy was six years old when she had her first acting audition. Her mother¡¯s dream was for her only daughter to become a star, and Jennette would do anything to make her mother happy. So she went along with what Mom called ¡°calorie restriction,¡± eating little and weighing herself five times a day. She endured extensive at-home makeovers while Mom chided, ¡°Your eyelashes are invisible, okay? You think Dakota Fanning doesn¡¯t tint hers?¡± She was even showered by Mom until age sixteen while sharing her diaries, email, and all her income.

In I¡¯m Glad My Mom Died, Jennette recounts all this in unflinching detail¡ªjust as she chronicles what happens when the dream finally comes true. Cast in a new Nickelodeon series called iCarly , she is thrust into fame. Though Mom is ecstatic, emailing fan club moderators and getting on a first-name basis with the paparazzi (¡°Hi Gale!¡±), Jennette is riddled with anxiety, shame, and self-loathing, which manifest into eating disorders, addiction, and a series of unhealthy relationships. These issues only get worse when, soon after taking the lead in the iCarly spinoff Sam & Cat alongside Ariana Grande, her mother dies of cancer. Finally, after discovering therapy and quitting acting, Jennette embarks on recovery and decides for the first time in her life what she really wants.

Told with refreshing candor and dark humor, I¡¯m Glad My Mom Died is an inspiring story of resilience, independence, and the joy of shampooing your own hair.]]> 320 Jennette McCurdy Jess 0 4.45 2022 I'm Glad My Mom Died
author: Jennette McCurdy
name: Jess
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2023/04/22
date added: 2023/04/22
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]]> Every Day Is a Gift: A Memoir 55898097
In Every Day Is a Gift , Tammy Duckworth takes readers through the amazing¡ªand amazingly true¡ªstories from her incomparable life. In November of 2004, an Iraqi RPG blew through the cockpit of Tammy Duckworth's U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter. The explosion, which destroyed her legs and mangled her right arm, was a turning point in her life. But as Duckworth shows in Every Day Is a Gift , that moment was just one in a lifetime of extraordinary turns.

The biracial daughter of an American father and a Thai-Chinese mother, Duckworth faced discrimination, poverty, and the horrors of war¡ªall before the age of 16. As a child, she dodged bullets as her family fled war-torn Phnom Penh. As a teenager, she sold roses by the side of the road to save her family from hunger and homelessness in Hawaii. Through these experiences, she developed a fierce resilience that would prove invaluable in the years to come.

Duckworth joined the Army, becoming one of a handful of female helicopter pilots at the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom. She served eight months in Iraq before an insurgent's RPG shot down her helicopter, an attack that took her legs¡ªand nearly took her life. She then spent thirteen months recovering at Walter Reed, learning to walk again on prosthetic legs and planning her return to the cockpit. But Duckworth found a new mission after meeting her state's senators, Barack Obama and Dick Durbin. After winning two terms as a U.S. Representative, she won election to the U.S. Senate in 2016. And she and her husband Bryan fulfilled another dream when she gave birth to two daughters, becoming the first sitting senator to give birth.

From childhood to motherhood and beyond, Every Day Is a Gift is the remarkable story of one of America's most dedicated public servants.]]> 288 Tammy Duckworth 1538718502 Jess 0 4.53 2021 Every Day Is a Gift: A Memoir
author: Tammy Duckworth
name: Jess
average rating: 4.53
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at: 2023/04/16
date added: 2023/04/16
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]]> West with the Night 1624 Markham was the first woman in East Africa to be granted a commercial pilot's license, piloting passengers and supplies to remote corners of Africa. She became the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west.
Considered a classic of outdoor literature and ranked #8 by National Geographic Adventure in 2008 on its list of the 100 best adventure books.]]> 294 Beryl Markham 0865471185 Jess 0 4.13 1942 West with the Night
author: Beryl Markham
name: Jess
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1942
rating: 0
read at: 2023/04/11
date added: 2023/04/11
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]]> The Somme 5734125 589 Peter Hart 1605980161 Jess 0 4.02 2005 The Somme
author: Peter Hart
name: Jess
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at: 2023/02/21
date added: 2023/02/21
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]]> <![CDATA[Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed]]> 6592993 Environmental damage, climate change, globalization, rapid population growth, and unwise political choices were all factors in the demise of societies around the world, but some found solutions and persisted. As in Guns, Germs, and Steel , Diamond traces the fundamental pattern of catastrophe, and weaves an all-encompassing global thesis through a series of fascinating historical-cultural narratives. Collapse moves from the Polynesian cultures on Easter Island to the flourishing American civilizations of the Anasazi and the Maya and finally to the doomed Viking colony on Greenland. Similar problems face us today and have already brought disaster to Rwanda and Haiti, even as China and Australia are trying to cope in innovative ways. Despite our own society¡¯s apparently inexhaustible wealth and unrivaled political power, ominous warning signs have begun to emerge even in ecologically robust areas like Montana.

Brilliant, illuminating, and immensely absorbing, Collapse is destined to take its place as one of the essential books of our time, raising the urgent How can our world best avoid committing ecological suicide?]]> 608 Jared Diamond 0143117009 Jess 0 3.97 2004 Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
author: Jared Diamond
name: Jess
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at: 2023/02/15
date added: 2023/02/15
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]]> <![CDATA[15 Years of War: How the Longest War in U.S. History Affected a Military Family in Love, Loss, and the Cost Of Service]]> 29562524
He answers the call of duty in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Pacific; she keeps the home fires burning. Worlds apart, and in the face of indescribable grief, their relationship is pushed to the limits.

15 Years of War: How the Longest War in U.S. History Affected a Military Family in Love, Loss, and the Cost Of Service provides a unique he said/she said perspective on coping with war in modern-day America. It reveals a true account of how a dedicated Marine and his equally committed spouse faced unfathomable challenges and achieved triumph, from the days just before 9/11 through 15 years of training workups, deployments, and other separations.

This story of faith, love, and resilience offers insight into how a decade and a half of war has redefined what it means to be a military family.]]> 386 Kristine Schellhaas Jess 0 4.59 2016 15 Years of War: How the Longest War in U.S. History Affected a Military Family in Love, Loss, and the Cost Of Service
author: Kristine Schellhaas
name: Jess
average rating: 4.59
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at: 2023/01/23
date added: 2023/01/23
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]]> Under Fire 48176 Based on his own experience of the Great War, Henri Barbusse's novel is a powerful account of one of the greatest horrors mankind has ever inflicted on itself.

For the group of ordinary men in the French Sixth Battalion, thrown together from all over France and longing for home, war is simply a matter of survival, lightened only by the arrival of their rations or a glimpse of a pretty girl or a brief reprieve in the hospital. Reminiscent of classics like Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms and Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, Under Fire (originally published in French as La Feu) vividly evokes life in the trenches: the mud, stench, and monotony of waiting while constantly fearing for one's life in an infernal and seemingly eternal battlefield.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.]]> 318 Henri Barbusse 0143039040 Jess 0 3.84 1916 Under Fire
author: Henri Barbusse
name: Jess
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1916
rating: 0
read at: 2023/01/12
date added: 2023/01/12
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]]> <![CDATA[Reveille in Washington, 1860-65]]> 736091 conspirators, and enterprising prostitutes. Soldiers of a volunteer army swing from the dome of the Capitol, assassins stalk the avenues, and Abraham Lincoln struggles to justify his presidency as the Union heads to war.?
? Reveille in Washington focuses on the everyday politics and preoccupations of Washington during the Civil War. From the stench of corpse-littered streets to the plunging lace on Mary Lincoln¡¯s evening gowns, Margaret Leech illuminates the city and its familiar figures¡ªamong them Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, William Seward, and Mary Surratt¡ªin intimate and fascinating detail.?
?? Leech¡¯s book remains widely recognized as both an impressive feat of scholarship and an uncommonly engrossing work of history.]]> 524 Margaret Leech 1931313237 Jess 0 4.14 1941 Reveille in Washington, 1860-65
author: Margaret Leech
name: Jess
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1941
rating: 0
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]]> The Complete Maus 15195
The Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus tells the story of Vladek Spiegelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler¡¯s Europe, and his son, a cartoonist coming to terms with his father¡¯s story. Maus approaches the unspeakable through the diminutive. Its form, the cartoon (the Nazis are cats, the Jews mice), shocks us out of any lingering sense of familiarity and succeeds in ¡°drawing us closer to the bleak heart of the Holocaust¡± (The New York Times).

Maus is a haunting tale within a tale. Vladek¡¯s harrowing story of survival is woven into the author¡¯s account of his tortured relationship with his aging father. Against the backdrop of guilt brought by survival, they stage a normal life of small arguments and unhappy visits. This astonishing retelling of our century¡¯s grisliest news is a story of survival, not only of Vladek but of the children who survive even the survivors. Maus studies the bloody pawprints of history and tracks its meaning for all of us.]]> 296 Art Spiegelman 0141014083 Jess 5 4.57 1980 The Complete Maus
author: Art Spiegelman
name: Jess
average rating: 4.57
book published: 1980
rating: 5
read at: 2022/12/04
date added: 2022/12/04
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]]> Americanah 40510801 Ifemelu--beautiful, self-assured--left Nigeria 15 years ago, and now studies in Princeton as a Graduate Fellow. Obinze--handsome and kind-hearted--was Ifemelu's teenage love; he'd hoped to join her in America, but post 9/11 America wouldn't let him in.
Years later, when they reunite in Nigeria, neither is the same person who left home. Obinze is the kind of successful "Big Man" he'd scorned in his youth, and Ifemelu has become an "Americanah"--a different version of her former self, one with a new accent and attitude. As they revisit their shared passion--for their homeland and for each other--they must face the largest challenges of their lives.
Source: penguinrandomhouse.ca]]> 608 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 0307397920 Jess 5 4.19 2013 Americanah
author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
name: Jess
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2022/11/27
date added: 2022/11/27
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]]> Unprotected: A Memoir 56969425
¡°Bold, hilarious, honest, and singular. . . . Unprotected is a record of survival, commitment to authenticity, and healing; a road map out of hell.¡± ¡ªLeslie Odom Jr.

It¡¯s easy to be yourself when who and what you are is in vogue. But growing up Black and gay in America has never been easy. Before Billy Porter was slaying red carpets and giving an iconic Emmy-winning performance in the celebrated TV show Pose ; before he was the groundbreaking Tony and Grammy award-winning star of Broadway¡¯s Kinky Boots ; and before he was an acclaimed recording artist, actor, playwright, director, and all-around legend, Porter was a young boy in Pittsburgh who was seen as different, who didn¡¯t fit in. At five years old, Porter was sent to therapy to ¡°fix¡± his effeminacy. He was endlessly bullied at school, sexually abused by his stepfather, and criticized at his church. Porter came of age in a world where simply being himself was a constant struggle.

Billy Porter¡¯s Unprotected is the life story of a singular artist and survivor in his own words. It is the story of a boy whose talent and courage opened doors for him, but only a crack. It is the story of a teenager discovering himself, learning his voice and his craft amid deep trauma. And it is the story of a young man whose unbreakable determination led him through countless hard times to where he is now; a proud icon who refuses to back down or hide. Porter is a multitalented, multifaceted treasure at the top of his game, and Unprotected is a resonant, inspirational story of trauma and healing, shot through with his singular voice.]]> 288 Billy Porter 1419746197 Jess 4 4.45 2021 Unprotected: A Memoir
author: Billy Porter
name: Jess
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2022/11/16
date added: 2022/11/16
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]]> <![CDATA[In Praise of Difficult Women: Life Lessons From 29 Heroines Who Dared to Break the Rules]]> 35754802 From Frida Kahlo and Elizabeth Taylor to Nora Ephron, Carrie Fisher, and Lena Dunham, this witty narrative explores what we can learn from the imperfect and extraordinary legacies of 29 iconic women who forged their own unique paths in the world.

Smart, sassy, and unapologetically feminine, this elegantly illustrated book is an ode to the bold and charismatic women of modern history. Best-selling author Karen Karbo (The Gospel According to Coco Chanel) spotlights the spirited rule breakers who charted their way with little regard for expectations: Amelia Earhart, Helen Gurley Brown, Edie Sedgwick, Hillary Clinton, Amy Poehler, and Shonda Rhimes, among others. Their lives--imperfect, elegant, messy, glorious--provide inspiration and instruction for the new age of feminism we have entered. Karbo distills these lessons with wit and humor, examining the universal themes that connect us to each of these mesmerizing personalities today: success and style, love and authenticity, daring and courage. Being "difficult," Karbo reveals, might not make life easier. But it can make it more fulfilling--whatever that means for you.

In the Reader's Guide included in the back of the book, Karbo asks thought-provoking questions about how we relate to each woman that will make for fascinating book club conversation.]]> 352 Karen Karbo 1426217749 Jess 0 3.54 2018 In Praise of Difficult Women: Life Lessons From 29 Heroines Who Dared to Break the Rules
author: Karen Karbo
name: Jess
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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]]> The Joy Luck Club 7763 Alternate cover editions of ISBN 9780143038092 can be found here.

Four mothers, four daughters, four families, whose histories shift with the four winds depending on who's telling the stories. In 1949, four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, meet weekly to play mahjong and tell stories of what they left behind in China. United in loss and new hope for their daughters' futures, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Their daughters, who have never heard these stories, think their mothers' advice is irrelevant to their modern American lives ¨C until their own inner crises reveal how much they've unknowingly inherited of their mothers' pasts.

With wit and sensitivity, Amy Tan examines the sometimes painful, often tender, and always deep connection between mothers and daughters. As each woman reveals her secrets, trying to unravel the truth about her life, the strings become more tangled, more entwined. Mothers boast or despair over daughters, and daughters roll their eyes even as they feel the inextricable tightening of their matriarchal ties. Tan is an astute storyteller, enticing readers to immerse themselves into these lives of complexity and mystery.]]> 288 Amy Tan Jess 0 3.96 1989 The Joy Luck Club
author: Amy Tan
name: Jess
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1989
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Autobiography of Malcolm X]]> 92057
Through a life of passion and struggle, Malcolm X became one of the most influential figures of the 20th Century. In this riveting account, he tells of his journey from a prison cell to Mecca, describing his transition from hoodlum to Muslim minister. Here, the man who called himself "the angriest Black man in America" relates how his conversion to true Islam helped him confront his rage and recognize the brotherhood of all mankind.

An established classic of modern America, "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" was hailed by the New York Times as "Extraordinary. A brilliant, painful, important book." Still extraordinary, still important, this electrifying story has transformed Malcolm X's life into his legacy. The strength of his words, and the power of his ideas continue to resonate more than a generation after they first appeared.]]> 466 Malcolm X Jess 0 4.35 1965 The Autobiography of Malcolm X
author: Malcolm X
name: Jess
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1965
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[J.R.R. Tolkien 4-Book Boxed Set: The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings]]> 30
19 CDs. 17 hrs 30 mins.]]> 1728 J.R.R. Tolkien 0345538374 Jess 0 4.61 1954 J.R.R. Tolkien 4-Book Boxed Set: The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings
author: J.R.R. Tolkien
name: Jess
average rating: 4.61
book published: 1954
rating: 0
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]]> Green on Blue 22609593
Aziz and his older brother Ali are coming of age in a village amid the pine forests and endless mountains of eastern Afghanistan. There is no school, but their mother teaches them to read and write, and once a month sends the boys on a two-day journey to the bazaar. They are poor, but inside their mud-walled home, the family has stability, love, and routine.

When a convoy of armed men arrives in their village one day, their world crumbles. The boys survive and make their way to a small city, where they sleep among other orphans. They learn to beg, and, eventually, they earn work and trust from the local shopkeepers. Ali saves their money and sends Aziz to school at the madrassa, but when US forces invade the country, militants strike back. A bomb explodes in the market, and Ali is brutally injured.

In the hospital, Aziz meets an Afghan wearing an American uniform. To save his brother, Aziz must join the Special Lashkar, a US-funded militia. No longer a boy, but not yet a man, he departs for the untamed border. Trapped in a conflict both savage and entirely contrived, Aziz struggles to understand his place. Will he embrace the brutality of war or leave it behind, and risk placing his brother and a young woman he comes to love in jeopardy?

Having served five tours of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq, Elliot Ackerman has written a gripping, morally complex debut novel, an astonishing feat of empathy and imagination about boys caught in a deadly conflict.]]> 243 Elliot Ackerman 1476778558 Jess 0 3.73 2015 Green on Blue
author: Elliot Ackerman
name: Jess
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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]]> A Moveable Feast 4631 192 Ernest Hemingway Jess 4 4.04 1964 A Moveable Feast
author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Jess
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1964
rating: 4
read at: 2022/08/01
date added: 2022/08/01
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]]> The Personal Librarian 55333938 This is a previously-published edition of ISBN 9780593101537.

The remarkable, little-known story of Belle da Costa Greene, J. P. Morgan's personal librarian¡ªwho became one of the most powerful women in New York despite the dangerous secret she kept in order to make her dreams come true, from New York Times bestselling author Marie Benedict and acclaimed author Victoria Christopher Murray.

In her twenties, Belle da Costa Greene is hired by J. P. Morgan to curate a collection of rare manuscripts, books, and artwork for his newly built Pierpont Morgan Library. Belle becomes a fixture on the New York society scene and one of the most powerful people in the art and book world, known for her impeccable taste and shrewd negotiating for critical works as she helps build a world-class collection.

But Belle has a secret, one she must protect at all costs. She was born not Belle da Costa Greene but Belle Marion Greener. She is the daughter of Richard Greener, the first Black graduate of Harvard and a well-known advocate for equality. Belle's complexion isn't dark because of her alleged Portuguese heritage that lets her pass as white¡ªher complexion is dark because she is African American.

The Personal Librarian tells the story of an extraordinary woman, famous for her intellect, style, and wit, and shares the lengths to which she must go¡ªfor the protection of her family and her legacy¡ªto preserve her carefully crafted white identity in the racist world in which she lives.]]> 341 Marie Benedict Jess 0 3.98 2021 The Personal Librarian
author: Marie Benedict
name: Jess
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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]]> The Book Thief 19063 Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will be busier still.

By her brother's graveside, Liesel's life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger's Handbook, left behind there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery. So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, with the help of her accordian-playing foster father, learns to read. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor's wife's library, wherever there are books to be found.

But these are dangerous times. When Liesel's foster family hides a Jew in their basement, Liesel's world is both opened up, and closed down.

In superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markus Zusak has given us one of the most enduring stories of our time.

(Note: this title was not published as YA fiction)]]> 592 Markus Zusak Jess 4 4.38 2005 The Book Thief
author: Markus Zusak
name: Jess
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2005
rating: 4
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]]> Ulysses 338798
According to Declan Kiberd, "Before Joyce, no writer of fiction had so foregrounded the process of thinking". Ulysses chronicles the peripatetic appointments and encounters of Leopold Bloom in Dublin in the course of an ordinary day, 16 June 1904. Ulysses is the Latinised name of Odysseus, the hero of Homer's epic poem the Odyssey, and the novel establishes a series of parallels between the poem and the novel, with structural correspondences between the characters and experiences of Bloom and Odysseus, Molly Bloom and Penelope, and Stephen Dedalus and Telemachus, in addition to events and themes of the early 20th-century context of modernism, Dublin, and Ireland's relationship to Britain.

The novel is highly allusive and also imitates the styles of different periods of English literature. Since its publication, the book has attracted controversy and scrutiny, ranging from an obscenity trial in the United States in 1921 to protracted textual "Joyce Wars." The novel's stream-of-consciousness technique, careful structuring, and experimental prose¡ªreplete with puns, parodies, and allusions¡ªas well as its rich characterisation and broad humour have led it to be regarded as one of the greatest literary works in history; Joyce fans worldwide now celebrate 16 June as Bloomsday.']]> 783 James Joyce Jess 0 3.72 1922 Ulysses
author: James Joyce
name: Jess
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1922
rating: 0
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]]> Middlemarch 19089 "People are almost always better than their neighbours think they are"

George Eliot¡¯s most ambitious novel is a masterly evocation of diverse lives and changing fortunes in a provincial community. Peopling its landscape are Dorothea Brooke, a young idealist whose search for intellectual fulfillment leads her into a disastrous marriage to the pedantic scholar Casaubon; the charming but tactless Dr Lydgate, whose pioneering medical methods, combined with an imprudent marriage to the spendthrift beauty Rosamond, threaten to undermine his career; and the religious hypocrite Bulstrode, hiding scandalous crimes from his past. As their stories interweave, George Eliot creates a richly nuanced and moving drama, hailed by Virginia Woolf as "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people".]]> 912 George Eliot 0451529170 Jess 0 4.00 1872 Middlemarch
author: George Eliot
name: Jess
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1872
rating: 0
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]]> Homeland Elegies 50358133 Homeland Elegies blends fact and fiction to tell an epic story of belonging and dispossession in the world that 9/11 made. Part family drama, part social essay, part picaresque adventure -- at its heart, it is the story of a father, a son, and the country they both call home.

Akhtar forges a new narrative voice to capture a country in which debt has ruined countless lives and our ideals have been sacrificed to the gods of finance, where a TV personality is president and immigrants live in fear, and where the nation's unhealed wounds of 9/11 wreak havoc around the world. Akhtar attempts to make sense of it all through the lens of a story about one family, from a heartland town in America to palatial suites in Central Europe to guerilla lookouts in the mountains of Afghanistan, and spares no one -- least of all himself -- in the process.]]> 368 Ayad Akhtar 0316496421 Jess 0 4.11 2020 Homeland Elegies
author: Ayad Akhtar
name: Jess
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at: 2022/05/26
date added: 2022/05/26
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]]> <![CDATA[The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms]]> 18859350 The century since the end of the Napoleonic wars had been the most peaceful era Europe had known since the fall of the Roman Empire. In the first years of the twentieth century, Europe believed it was marching to a golden, happy, and prosperous future. But instead, complex personalities and rivalries, colonialism and ethnic nationalisms, and shifting alliances helped to bring about the failure of the long peace and the outbreak of a war that transformed Europe and the world.
" "
"The War That Ended Peace "brings vividly to life the military leaders, politicians, diplomats, bankers, and the extended, interrelated family of crowned headsacross Europe who failed to stop the descent into war: in Germany, the mercurial Kaiser Wilhelm II and the chief of the German general staff, Von Moltke the Younger; in Austria-Hungary, Emperor Franz Joseph, a man who tried, through sheer hard work, to stave off the coming chaos in his empire; in Russia, Tsar Nicholas II and his wife; in Britain, King Edward VII, Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, and British admiral Jacky Fisher, the fierce advocate of naval reform who entered into the arms race with Germany that pushed the continent toward confrontation on land and sea.
There are the would-be peacemakers as well, among them prophets of the horrors of future wars whose warnings went unheeded: Alfred Nobel, who donated his fortune to the cause of international understanding, and Bertha von Suttner, a writer and activist who was the first woman awarded Nobel's new Peace Prize. Here too we meet the urbane and cosmopolitan Count Harry Kessler, who noticed many of the early signs that something was stirring in Europe; the young Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty and a rising figure in British politics; Madame Caillaux, who shot a man who might have been a force for peace; and more. With indelible portraits, MacMillan shows how the fateful decisions of a few powerful people changed the course of history.
Taut, suspenseful, and impossible to put down, "The War That Ended Peace" is also a wise cautionary reminder of how wars happen in spite of the near-universal desire to keep the peace. Destined to become a classic in the tradition of Barbara Tuchman's "The Guns of August," "The War That Ended Peace" enriches our understanding of one of the defining periods and events of the twentieth century.
Advance praise for "The War That Ended Peace"
"[A] richly textured narrative about World War I . . . addressing the war's build-up . . . MacMillan tells this familiar story with panache. A major contribution, however, is her presentation of its subtext, as Europe's claims to be the world's most advanced civilization 'were being challenged from without and undermined from within.' . . . MacMillan eloquently shows that 'turning out the lights' was not inevitable, but a consequence of years of decisions and reactions: a slow-motion train wreck few wanted but none could avoid."--"Publishers Weekly "(starred review)
""The War That Ended Peace" tells the story of how intelligent, well-meaning leaders guided their nations into catastrophe. These epic events, brilliantly described by one of our era's most talented historians, warn of the dangers that arise when we fail to anticipate the consequences of our actions. This is one of the finest books I have ever read on the causes of World War I."--Madeleine Albright, former secretary of state]]> Christine Ammer 1299981437 Jess 0 to-read 4.00 1997 The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms
author: Christine Ammer
name: Jess
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1997
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Guns of August / The Proud Tower]]> 11837308
Nowhere are her talents more brilliantly on display than in her Pulitzer Prize¨Cwinning bestseller The Guns of August (1962), a riveting account of the outbreak of World War I and the weeks of fighting leading up to the First Battle of the Marne in September 1914. Tuchman dramatizes the diplomatic debacles that precipitated the war and the intransigence of the German and French armies as they dogmatically adhered to their battle plans, with disastrous consequences. Interwoven with her vivid re-creation of the German march through Belgium into France and the fierce fighting on the Eastern Front are astute characterizations of the conflict¡¯s key military and political leaders, among them French General Joseph Joffre, German Kaiser Wilhelm II, and British First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill. The Guns of August can also be read as a cautionary study in the perils of brinksmanship, and Tuchman¡¯s searching observations about the irrational escalation of conflict among states made a deep impression on President John F. Kennedy, who famously drew on the book for insight during the Cuban Missile Crisis. In a deluxe reader¡¯s edition for the first time in more than a generation, The Guns of August is presented here with ten fully restored color maps and sixteen pages of photographs.

Some of Tuchman¡¯s finest writing graces her next book, The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890¨C1914 (1966). She brings to life the disparate worlds of the self-satisfied English aristocracy and the miserable poor whose conditions gave rise to international anarchism; revisits the national madness of the Dreyfus Affair in France; considers the naivet¨¦ and cynicism of the varied participants in the international peace conferences at The Hague; mounts a dazzling foray into cultural criticism with a meditation on the operas of Richard Strauss; and creates unforgettable portraits of such political titans as Thomas B. Reed, longtime Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, and French Socialist leader Jean Jaur¨¨s. Honoring the historian¡¯s ideal to envision life ¡°as it really was,¡± Tuchman paints a fin-de-si¨¨cle world ¡°bursting with new tensions and accumulated energies.¡± The present volume reproduces the original endpaper illustrations from the first edition of The Proud Tower, plus a thirty-two page insert of illustrations. And as a special coda, it presents ¡°How We Entered World War I,¡± a 1967 essay that appeared in The New York Times Magazine in which Tuchman explores the genesis of U.S. involvement in the Great War.]]> 1264 Barbara W. Tuchman 159853145X Jess 0 to-read 4.40 1962 The Guns of August / The Proud Tower
author: Barbara W. Tuchman
name: Jess
average rating: 4.40
book published: 1962
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]]> <![CDATA[Parties Long Estranged: Canada and Australia in the Twentieth Century]]> 2572860 320 Margaret MacMillan 0774809752 Jess 0 to-read 0.0 2002 Parties Long Estranged: Canada and Australia in the Twentieth Century
author: Margaret MacMillan
name: Jess
average rating: 0.0
book published: 2002
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]]> <![CDATA[Canada's House: Rideau Hall and the Invention of a Canadian Home]]> 879271
Opening wide the doors, Canada¡¯s House reveals how Rideau Hall has reinvented itself into a place that mirrors the varied identity, gardens and foods of the country ¡ª immensely inspiring, alive with a vitality and distinctiveness that is Canada today. Over the last five years, Rideau Hall has been transformed into a place that vitally reflects Canada¡¯s unique contemporary identity: its kitchens are now a hive of activity using indigenous foods and wine from across the country; and its garden has been redesigned into a true Northern Garden ¡ª a showcase for Canadian flowers, plants and trees, and organic vegetables. It has become a unique home that represents Canada and Canadians from coast-to-coast.

Three of our leading writers have come together to tell the story of how Rideau Hall has come to reflect so much that is both distinctive and excellent from across Canada:

Margaret MacMillan, Governor-General¡¯s Literary Award winner, contemplates the history of ¡°home¡± in Canada, and the story of the great house ¡ª the hub of the country¡¯s public life since before Confederation ¡ª through the people who have given it life.

Marjorie Harris, award-winning garden writer, writes vividly on the Canadian woodland garden, the flowers and plants, as well as the organic vegetable garden that provides the fresh herbs and an impressive proportion of the fruits and vegetables for both daily life and state dinners ¡ª essential reading for all who love gardens, as well as those who aspire to creating a Canadian garden.

Anne Desjardins, award-winning Quebec food writer, shows how Rideau Hall has become synonymous with contemporary Canadian cuisine, its cross-country diversity and its riches ¡ª from the shellfish and cloudberries of the Maritimes to the cheeses of Quebec; from the oolichan of the West coast to the teas and caribou of the Far North; from the wines of the Okanagan to Niagara, recognized world-wide for their excellence. With an introduction to the country¡¯s leading food and wine producers, as well as thirty original recipes tested for home cooks by Rideau Hall¡¯s famous Chef Oliver Bartsch.

Throughout the book, Adrienne Clarkson and John Ralston Saul share their experiences in helping to bring our national house ¡ª a place that reflects Canada as diverse, bountiful, self-confident and rich in achievement ¡ª into the 21st century.]]> 272 Margaret MacMillan 0676976751 Jess 0 to-read 2.71 2004 Canada's House: Rideau Hall and the Invention of a Canadian Home
author: Margaret MacMillan
name: Jess
average rating: 2.71
book published: 2004
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]]> Tempest-Tost 30813028 The debut novel that launched Robertson Davies¡¯ literary career, Tempest-Tost is a magnificent display of his legendary wit. The first novel in The Salterton Trilogy is now available as an eBook for the first time.

An amateur production of The Tempest provides a colourful backdrop for a hilarious look at unrequited love. Mathematics teacher Hector Mackilwraith, stirred and troubled by Shakespeare¡¯s plays, falls in love with the beautiful Griselda Webster. When Griselda shows she has plans of her own, Hector despairs and tries to commit suicide on the play¡¯s opening night.]]> 784 Robertson Davies 0771027893 Jess 0 to-read 4.00 1951 Tempest-Tost
author: Robertson Davies
name: Jess
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1951
rating: 0
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]]> Stephen Leacock 6468996 MacMillan, Margaret 192 Margaret MacMillan 0670066818 Jess 0 to-read 3.52 2009 Stephen Leacock
author: Margaret MacMillan
name: Jess
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Rhyme of History: Lessons of the Great War]]> 20486313 28 Margaret MacMillan Jess 0 to-read 3.86 2013 The Rhyme of History: Lessons of the Great War
author: Margaret MacMillan
name: Jess
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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]]> Women of the Raj 416987 256 Margaret MacMillan 0500278989 Jess 0 to-read 3.76 1988 Women of the Raj
author: Margaret MacMillan
name: Jess
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1988
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[History's People: Personalities and the Past (CBC Massey Lectures)]]> 25089756 304 Margaret MacMillan 1487000057 Jess 0 to-read 3.66 2015 History's People: Personalities and the Past (CBC Massey Lectures)
author: Margaret MacMillan
name: Jess
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/05/23
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]]> <![CDATA[Nixon and Mao: The Week That Changed the World]]> 9753
That monumental meeting in 1972¨Cduring what Nixon called ¡°the week that changed the world¡±¨Ccould have been brought about only by powerful Nixon himself, a great strategist and a flawed human being, and Mao, willful and ruthless. They were assisted by two brilliant and complex statesmen, Henry Kissinger and Chou En-lai. Surrounding them were fascinating people with unusual roles to play, including the enormously disciplined and unhappy Pat Nixon and a small-time Shanghai actress turned monstrous empress, Jiang Qing. And behind all of them lay the complex history of two countries, two great and equally confident China, ancient and contemptuous yet fearful of barbarians beyond the Middle Kingdom, and the United States, forward-looking and confident, seeing itself as the beacon for the world.

Nixon thought China could help him get out of Vietnam. Mao needed American technology and expertise to repair the damage of the Cultural Revolution. Both men wanted an ally against an aggressive Soviet Union. Did they get what they wanted? Did Mao betray his own revolutionary ideals? How did the people of China react to this apparent change in attitude toward the imperialist Americans? Did Nixon make a mistake in coming to China as a supplicant? And what has been the impact of the visit on the United States ever since?

Weaving together fascinating anecdotes and insights, an understanding of Chinese and American history, and the momentous events of an extraordinary time, this brilliantly written book looks at one of the transformative moments of the twentieth century and casts new light on a key relationship for the world of the twenty-first century.


Margaret MacMillan is the author of Women of the Raj and Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World , which won the Duff Cooper Prize, the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction, the Hessell-Tiltman Prize for History, a Silver Medal for the Arthur Ross Book Award of the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Governor General¡¯s Literary Award for nonfiction. It was selected by the editors of The New York Times as one of the best books of 2002. Currently the provost of Trinity College and a professor of history at the University of Toronto, MacMillan takes up the position of warden of St. Antony¡¯s College, Oxford, in July 2007. She is an officer of the Order of Canada, a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and a senior fellow of Massey College at the University of Toronto.]]> 432 Margaret MacMillan 140006127X Jess 0 to-read 3.88 2005 Nixon and Mao: The Week That Changed the World
author: Margaret MacMillan
name: Jess
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Uses and Abuses of History]]> 3272163 ?]]> 208 Margaret MacMillan 067006680X Jess 0 to-read 3.62 2008 The Uses and Abuses of History
author: Margaret MacMillan
name: Jess
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2008
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]]> War: How Conflict Shaped Us 54111936 Is peace an aberration? The bestselling author of Paris 1919 offers a provocative view of war as an essential component of humanity.

The instinct to fight may be innate in human nature, but war¡ªorganized violence¡ªcomes with organized society. War has shaped humanity¡¯s history, its social and political institutions, its values and ideas. Our very language, our public spaces, our private memories, and some of our greatest cultural treasures reflect the glory and the misery of war. War is an uncomfortable and challenging subject not least because it brings out both the vilest and the noblest aspects of humanity.

Margaret MacMillan looks at the ways in which war has influenced human society and how, in turn, changes in political organization, technology, or ideologies have affected how and why we fight. War: How Conflict Shaped Us explores such much-debated and controversial questions as: When did war first start? Does human nature doom us to fight one another? Why has war been described as the most organized of all human activities? Why are warriors almost always men? Is war ever within our control?

Drawing on lessons from wars throughout the past, from classical history to the present day, MacMillan reveals the many faces of war¡ªthe way it has determined our past, our future, our views of the world, and our very conception of ourselves.]]> 304 Margaret MacMillan 1984856146 Jess 0 to-read 3.53 2020 War: How Conflict Shaped Us
author: Margaret MacMillan
name: Jess
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2020
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]]> <![CDATA[The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914]]> 17345257
Beginning in the early nineteenth century and ending with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, award-winning historian Margaret Macmillan uncovers the huge political and technological changes, national decisions, and just as important, the small moments of human muddle and weakness that led Europe from peace to disaster. This masterful exploration of how Europe chose its path towards war will change and enrich how we see this defining moment in history.]]> 739 Margaret MacMillan 140006855X Jess 0 to-read 4.21 2013 The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914
author: Margaret MacMillan
name: Jess
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Paris, 1919: Six Months that Changed the World]]> 26348
Between January and July 1919, after "the war to end all wars," men and women from around the world converged on Paris to shape the peace. Center stage, for the first time in history, was an American president, Woodrow Wilson, who with his Fourteen Points seemed to promise to so many people the fulfillment of their dreams. Stern, intransigent, impatient when it came to security concerns and wildly idealistic in his dream of a League of Nations that would resolve all future conflict peacefully, Wilson is only one of the larger-than-life characters who fill the pages of this extraordinary book. David Lloyd George, the gregarious and wily British prime minister, brought Winston Churchill and John Maynard Keynes. Lawrence of Arabia joined the Arab delegation. Ho Chi Minh, a kitchen assistant at the Ritz, submitted a petition for an independent Vietnam.

For six months, Paris was effectively the center of the world as the peacemakers carved up bankrupt empires and created new countries. This book brings to life the personalities, ideals, and prejudices of the men who shaped the settlement. They pushed Russia to the sidelines, alienated China, and dismissed the Arabs. They struggled with the problems of Kosovo, of the Kurds, and of a homeland for the Jews.

The peacemakers, so it has been said, failed dismally; above all they failed to prevent another war. Margaret MacMillan argues that they have unfairly been made the scapegoats for the mistakes of those who came later. She refutes received ideas about the path from Versailles to World War II and debunks the widely accepted notion that reparations imposed on the Germans were in large part responsible for the Second World War.

A landmark work of narrative history, Paris 1919 is the first full-scale treatment of the Peace Conference in more than twenty-five years. It offers a scintillating view of those dramatic and fateful days when much of the modern world was sketched out, when countries were created--Iraq, Yugoslavia, Israel--whose troubles haunt us still.

Winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize, the PEN Hessell Tiltman Prize and the Duff Cooper Prize]]> 624 Margaret MacMillan 0375760520 Jess 0 to-read 4.11 2001 Paris, 1919: Six Months that Changed the World
author: Margaret MacMillan
name: Jess
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2001
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Behind Japanese Lines: With the OSS in Burma]]> 22017224 450 Richard Dunlop Jess 0 4.20 1980 Behind Japanese Lines: With the OSS in Burma
author: Richard Dunlop
name: Jess
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1980
rating: 0
read at: 2022/05/21
date added: 2022/05/21
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]]> <![CDATA[Strange But True Football Stories (The Punt Pass and Kick Library, 8)]]> 2543452 0 Unknown 0394801989 Jess 0 3.67 1971 Strange But True Football Stories (The Punt Pass and Kick Library, 8)
author: Unknown
name: Jess
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1971
rating: 0
read at: 2022/05/13
date added: 2022/05/13
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]]> All In: An Autobiography 43584584 An inspiring and intimate self-portrait of a champion of equality that encompasses her brilliant tennis career, unwavering activism, and an ongoing commitment to fairness and social justice.

Billie Jean King was only seven years old when she told her mother, I'm going to do something great with my life someday. But the world she wanted did not exist yet, so she set out to create it. In this spirited account, King details her life's journey to find her true self. She recounts her groundbreaking tennis successes that came at a breathtaking pace--six years as the top-ranked woman in the world, twenty Wimbledon championships, thirty-nine grand-slam titles, and her watershed defeat of Bobby Riggs in the famous Battle of the Sexes. King poignantly recalls the cultural backdrop of her career and the profound impact on her worldview from the women's movement, the assassinations and anti-war protests of the 1960s, the civil rights movement, and, eventually, the LGBTQ+ rights movement.

King describes the myriad challenges she hurdled, including entrenched sexism, an eating disorder, near financial ruin after being outed, and accepting her sexual identity. It was not until the age of 51 that she began to publicly and unequivocally acknowledge, I am gay. Today, King's life remains one of indefatigable service. She offers insights and advice on leadership, business, activism, sports, politics, marriage equality, parenting, sexuality and love. She shows how living honestly and openly has had a transformative effect on her relationships and happiness. Hers is the story of a pathbreaking feminist, world-class athlete, and an indomitable spirit whose impact has transcended her achievements in sports.]]> 487 Billie Jean King 1101947330 Jess 4 4.31 2021 All In: An Autobiography
author: Billie Jean King
name: Jess
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2022/05/01
date added: 2022/05/01
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]]> Beneath a Scarlet Sky 32487617 Based on the true story of a forgotten hero, Beneath a Scarlet Sky is the triumphant, epic tale of one young man¡¯s incredible courage and resilience during one of history¡¯s darkest hours.

Pino Lella wants nothing to do with the war or the Nazis. He¡¯s a normal Italian teenager¡ªobsessed with music, food, and girls¡ªbut his days of innocence are numbered. When his family home in Milan is destroyed by Allied bombs, Pino joins an underground railroad helping Jews escape over the Alps, and falls for Anna, a beautiful widow six years his senior.

In an attempt to protect him, Pino¡¯s parents force him to enlist as a German soldier¡ªa move they think will keep him out of combat. But after Pino is injured, he is recruited at the tender age of eighteen to become the personal driver for Adolf Hitler¡¯s left hand in Italy, General Hans Leyers, one of the Third Reich¡¯s most mysterious and powerful commanders.

Now, with the opportunity to spy for the Allies inside the German High Command, Pino endures the horrors of the war and the Nazi occupation by fighting in secret, his courage bolstered by his love for Anna and for the life he dreams they will one day share.

Fans of All the Light We Cannot See, The Nightingale, and Unbroken will enjoy this riveting saga of history, suspense, and love.

]]> 509 Mark T. Sullivan 1503943372 Jess 0 to-read 4.33 2017 Beneath a Scarlet Sky
author: Mark T. Sullivan
name: Jess
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/04/16
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]]> Mother Russia 8123429 352 Maurice Hindus 140670900X Jess 0 currently-reading 4.20 1943 Mother Russia
author: Maurice Hindus
name: Jess
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1943
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/04/08
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]]> The Education of Henry Adams 82896 320 Henry Adams 1406802786 Jess 0 currently-reading 3.64 1918 The Education of Henry Adams
author: Henry Adams
name: Jess
average rating: 3.64
book published: 1918
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/03/31
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]]> <![CDATA[Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood]]> 29780253
Trevor Noah¡¯s unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Living proof of his parents¡¯ indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life, bound by the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to hide him from a government that could, at any moment, steal him away. Finally liberated by the end of South Africa¡¯s tyrannical white rule, Trevor and his mother set forth on a grand adventure, living openly and freely and embracing the opportunities won by a centuries-long struggle.

Born a Crime is the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. It is also the story of that young man¡¯s relationship with his fearless, rebellious, and fervently religious mother¡ªhis teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life.]]> 289 Trevor Noah 0385689225 Jess 5 4.48 2016 Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood
author: Trevor Noah
name: Jess
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2022/03/10
date added: 2022/03/10
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]]> The Breaks of the Game 4018129


More than six years after his death David Halberstam remains one of this country's most respected journalists and revered authorities on American life and history in the years since WWII. A Pulitzer Prize-winner for his groundbreaking reporting on the Vietnam War, Halberstam wrote more than 20 books, almost all of them bestsellers. His work has stood the test of time and has become the standard by which all journalists measure themselves.




The tactile authenticity of Halberstam's knowledge of the basketball world is unrivaled. Yet he is writing here about far more than just basketball. This is a story about a place in our society where power, money, and talent collide and sometimes corrupt, a place where both national obsessions and naked greed are exposed. It's about the influence of big media, the fans and the hype they subsist on, the clash of ethics, the terrible physical demands of modern sports (from drugs to body size), the unreal salaries, the conflicts of race and class, and the consequences of sport converted into mass entertainment and athletes transformed into superstars -- all presented in a way that puts the reader in the room and on the court, and The Breaks of the Game in a league of its own.]]> 400 David Halberstam 1401309720 Jess 1 4.29 1981 The Breaks of the Game
author: David Halberstam
name: Jess
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1981
rating: 1
read at: 2022/03/09
date added: 2022/03/09
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]]> <![CDATA[Big Hair and Plastic Grass: A Funky Ride Through Baseball and America in the Swinging '70s]]> 7534508
The Major Leagues witnessed more dramatic stories and changes in the '70s than in any other era. The American popular culture and counterculture collided head-on with the national pastime, rocking the once-conservative sport to its very foundations. Outspoken players embraced free agency, openly advocated drug use, and even swapped wives. Controversial owners such as Charlie Finley, Bill Veeck, and Ted Turner introduced Astroturf, prime-time World Series, garish polyester uniforms, and outlandish promotions such as Disco Demolition Night. Hank Aaron and Lou Brock set new heights in power and speed while Reggie Jackson and Carlton Fisk emerged as October heroes and All-Star characters like Mark "The Bird" Fidrych became pop icons. For the millions of fans who grew up during this time, and especially those who cared just as much about Oscar Gamble's afro as they did about his average, this book serves up a delicious, Technicolor trip down memory lane.]]> 352 Dan Epstein 0312607547 Jess 0 3.88 2010 Big Hair and Plastic Grass: A Funky Ride Through Baseball and America in the Swinging '70s
author: Dan Epstein
name: Jess
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at: 2022/02/24
date added: 2022/02/24
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]]> Angle of Repose 3359 Stegner¡¯s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of personal, historical, and geographic discovery
?
Confined to a wheelchair, retired historian Lyman Ward sets out to write his grandparents' remarkable story, chronicling their days spent carving civilization into the surface of America's western frontier. But his research reveals even more about his own life than he's willing to admit. What emerges is an enthralling portrait of four generations in the life of an all American family.
?
"Cause for celebration . . . A superb novel with an amplitude of scale and richness of detail altogether uncommon in contemporary fiction." ¡ªThe Atlantic Monthly

"Brilliant . . . Two stories, past and present, merge to produce what important fiction must: a sense of the enchantment of life." ¡ªLos Angeles Times
?
This Penguin Classics edition features an introduction by Jackson J. Benson.

For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500?titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the?series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date?translations by award-winning translators.]]> 557 Wallace Stegner 0141185473 Jess 0 4.19 1971 Angle of Repose
author: Wallace Stegner
name: Jess
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1971
rating: 0
read at: 2022/02/17
date added: 2022/02/17
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]]> The Last Black Unicorn 34974310 288 Tiffany Haddish 1501181823 Jess 0 3.81 2017 The Last Black Unicorn
author: Tiffany Haddish
name: Jess
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at: 2022/01/28
date added: 2022/01/28
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]]> <![CDATA[The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914]]> 2372
All that changed, writes David McCullough in his magisterial history of the Canal, in 1848, when prospectors struck gold in California. A wave of fortune seekers descended on Panama from Europe and the eastern United States, seeking quick passage on California-bound ships in the Pacific, and the Panama Railroad, built to serve that traffic, was soon the highest-priced stock listed on the New York Exchange.

To build a 51-mile-long ship canal to replace that railroad seemed an easy matter to some investors. But, as McCullough notes, the construction project came to involve the efforts of thousands of workers from many nations over four decades; eventually those workers, laboring in oppressive heat in a vast malarial swamp, removed enough soil and rock to build a pyramid a mile high. In the early years, they toiled under the direction of French entrepreneur Ferdinand de Lesseps, who went bankrupt while pursuing his dream of extending France's empire in the Americas.

The United States then entered the picture, with President Theodore Roosevelt orchestrating the purchase of the canal¡ªbut not before helping foment a revolution that removed Panama from Colombian rule and placed it squarely in the American camp.]]> 698 David McCullough 0743262131 Jess 0 4.21 1977 The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914
author: David McCullough
name: Jess
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1977
rating: 0
read at: 2022/01/10
date added: 2022/01/10
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]]> <![CDATA[Everything's Trash, But It's Okay]]> 38649805 336 Phoebe Robinson 0525534148 Jess 5 3.91 2018 Everything's Trash, But It's Okay
author: Phoebe Robinson
name: Jess
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2021/12/30
date added: 2021/12/30
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]]> <![CDATA[Lightning Down: A World War II Story of Survival]]> 56268802 An American fighter pilot doomed to die in Buchenwald but determined to survive.

On August 13, 1944, Joe Moser set off on his forty-fourth combat mission over occupied France. Soon, he would join almost 170 other Allied airmen as prisoners in Buchenwald, one of the most notorious and deadly of Nazi concentration camps. Tom Clavin's Lightning Down tells this largely untold and riveting true story.

Moser was just twenty-two years old, a farm boy from Washington State who fell in love with flying. During the War he realized his dream of piloting a P-38 Lightning, one of the most effective weapons the Army Air Corps had against the powerful German Luftwaffe. But on that hot August morning he had to bail out of his damaged, burning plane. Captured immediately, Moser¡¯s journey into hell began.

Moser and his courageous comrades from England, Canada, New Zealand, and elsewhere endured the most horrific conditions during their imprisonment... until the day the orders were issued by Hitler himself to execute them. Only a most desperate plan would save them.

The page-turning momentum of Lightning Down is like that of a thriller, but the stories of imprisoned and brutalized airmen are true and told in unforgettable detail, led by the distinctly American voice of Joe Moser, who prays every day to be reunited with his family.

Lightning Down is a can¡¯t-put-it-down inspiring saga of brave men confronting great evil and great odds against survival.]]> 320 Tom Clavin 1250151260 Jess 0 4.23 2021 Lightning Down: A World War II Story of Survival
author: Tom Clavin
name: Jess
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at: 2021/12/19
date added: 2021/12/19
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]]> Brighton Rock 48862 ISBN 9780099478478 moved to this edition.
A gang war is raging through the dark underworld of Brighton. Seventeen-year-old Pinkie, malign and ruthless, has killed a man. Believing he can escape retribution, he is unprepared for the courageous, life-embracing Ida Arnold. Greene's gripping thriller, exposes a world of loneliness and fear, of life lived on the 'dangerous edge of things'.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY J.M. COETZEE]]> 269 Graham Greene Jess 0 3.69 1938 Brighton Rock
author: Graham Greene
name: Jess
average rating: 3.69
book published: 1938
rating: 0
read at: 2021/10/31
date added: 2021/10/31
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]]> <![CDATA[What S A Woman Doing Here A Reporter S Report On Herself]]> 26675478 This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.

This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.

As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

]]> 316 Dickey Chapelle 1298504422 Jess 5 4.33 1961 What S A Woman Doing Here A Reporter S Report On Herself
author: Dickey Chapelle
name: Jess
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1961
rating: 5
read at: 2018/11/23
date added: 2021/09/24
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]]> <![CDATA[Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman: Portrait of an American Hero]]> 916637 ?
Harriet Tubman is one of the giants of American history¡ªa fearless visionary who led scores of her fellow slaves to freedom and battled courageously behind enemy lines during the Civil War. Now, in this magnificent biography, historian Kate Clifford Larson gives us a powerful, intimate, meticulously detailed portrait of Tubman and her times. Drawing from a trove of new documents and sources as well as extensive genealogical data, Larson presents Harriet Tubman as a complete human being¡ªbrilliant, shrewd, deeply religious, and passionate in her pursuit of freedom. A true American hero, Tubman was also a woman who loved, suffered, and sacrificed.
?
Praise for Bound for the Promised Land
?
¡°[ Bound for the Promised Land ] appropriately reads like fiction, for Tubman¡¯s exploits required such intelligence, physical stamina and pure fearlessness that only a very few would have even contemplated the feats that she actually undertook. . . . Larson captures Tubman¡¯s determination and seeming imperviousness to pain and suffering, coupled with an extraordinary selflessness and caring for others.¡± ¡ª The Seattle Times
?
¡°Essential for those interested in Tubman and her causes . . . Larson does an especially thorough job of . . . uncovering relevant documents, some of them long hidden by history and neglect.¡± ¡ª The Plain Dealer
?
¡°Larson has captured Harriet Tubman¡¯s clandestine nature . . . reading Ms. Larson made me wonder if Tubman is not, in fact, the greatest spy this country has ever produced.¡± ¡ª The New York Sun]]> 440 Kate Clifford Larson 0345456289 Jess 0 4.08 2003 Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman: Portrait of an American Hero
author: Kate Clifford Larson
name: Jess
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2003
rating: 0
read at: 2021/08/31
date added: 2021/08/31
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]]> <![CDATA[The National Team: The Inside Story of the Women who Changed Soccer]]> 41104136
The National Team, from leading soccer journalist Caitlin Murray, tells the history of the USWNT in full, from their formation in the 1980s to the run-up to the 2019 World Cup, chronicling both their athletic triumphs and less visible challenges off the pitch. Murray also recounts the rise and fall of U.S. professional leagues, including the burgeoning National Women¡¯s Soccer League, an essential part of the women¡¯s game.

Through nearly 100 exclusive interviews with players, coaches, and team officials, including Alex Morgan, Carli Lloyd, Hope Solo, Heather O¡¯Reilly, Julie Foudy, Brandi Chastain, Pia Sundhage, Tom Sermanni, and Sunil Gulati, Murray takes readers inside the locker rooms and board rooms in engrossing detail. A story of endurance and determination, The National Team is a complete portrait of this beloved and important team.]]> 334 Caitlin Murray 1419734490 Jess 4 4.44 2019 The National Team: The Inside Story of the Women who Changed Soccer
author: Caitlin Murray
name: Jess
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2021/08/16
date added: 2021/08/16
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]]>