Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House or
How a Top CIA Agency Was Betrayed by Her Own Government
Valerie Plame Wilson, 2007
Simon & Schuster
412 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781451623871
Summary
On 14 July 2003 in his syndicated column in the Washington Post, Robert Novak identified "Wilson's wife" publicly as "an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction" named "Valerie Plame". The column was a response to another, published by former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson in the New York Timeson July 6, 2003, "What I Didn't Find in Africa," in which Ambassador Wilson stated that the George W. Bush administration exaggerated unreliable claims that Iraq intended to purchase uranium yellowcake to support the administration's arguments that Iraq was proliferating weapons of mass destruction so as to justify its preemptive war in Iraq.
Novak's public disclosure of Mrs. Wilson's classified covert CIA identity led to a CIA leak grand jury investigation, resulting in the indictment and successful prosecution of Lewis "Scooter" Libby—Assistant to the President of the United States, Chief of Staff to the Vice President of the United States, Dick Cheney, and Assistant to the Vice President for National Security Affairs from 2001 to 2005—for perjury, obstruction of justice, and making false statements to federal investigators.
Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White Houseis a memoir that covers Mrs. Wilson tenure in the CIA, the leak of her secret identity, and the subsequent scandal. The book provoked a lawsuit even before its launching. In May, the publisher and Valerie Wilson sued J. Michael McConnell, Director of National Intelligence, and Michael V. Hayden, Director of the CIA, arguing that the CIA was "unconstitutionally interfering with the publication of her memoir, Fair Game, which is set to be published in October, by not allowing Plame to mention the dates she served in the CIA, even though those dates are public information."
The agency insisted that her dates of service remained classified and were not mentioned in the book, in spite of a letter published in the Congressional Record and available on the Library of Congress website from the C.I.A. to Ms. Wilson about her retirement benefits saying that she had worked for the agency since November 1985. The judged decided in favor of the agency. The CIA publication review board explained that the manuscript was "replete with statements" that "become classified when they are linked with a specific time frame", but cleared the way for the memoir to be published. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—April 19, 1963
• Where—Anchorage, Alaska, USA
• Education—B.A., Pennsylvania State University; M.A.,
London School of Economics; M.A., College of Europe,
(Bruges Belgium)
• Currently—lives in New Mexico
Valerie Elise Plame Wilson is a former United States CIA Operations Officer and the author of a memoir detailing her career and the events leading up to her resignation from the CIA.
Valerie Elise Plame was born on April 19, 1963, on Elmendorf Air Force Base, in Anchorage, Alaska, to Diane and Samuel Plame. Plame's paternal great-grandfather was a rabbi who emigrated from Ukraine; the original family surname was Plamevotski.
Growing up in "a military family ... imbued her with a sense of public duty"; her father was a lieutenant colonel in the United States Air Force, who worked for the National Security Agency for three years, and, according to her "close friend Janet Angstadt," her parents "are the type who are still volunteering for the Red Cross and Meals on Wheels in the Philadelphia suburb where they live," having moved to that area while Plame was still in school
She graduated in 1981 from Lower Moreland High School, in Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania, and attended Pennsylvania State University, graduating with a B.A. in advertising in 1985. By 1991, Plame had earned two master's degrees, one from the London School of Economics and Political Science and one from the College of Europe (Collège d'Europe), in Bruges, Belgium.[1][4] In addition to English, she speaks French, German, and Greek.
After graduating from Penn State in 1985, Plame was briefly married to Todd Sesler, her college boyfriend. In 1997, while she was working for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Plame met former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, IV "at a reception in Washington ... at the residence of the Turkish Ambassador." According to Wilson, because Plame was unable to reveal her CIA role to him on their first date, she told him that she was an energy trader in Brussels, and he thought at that time that she was "an up-and-coming international executive." After they began dating and became "close," Plame revealed her employment with the CIA to Wilson. They were married on April 3, 1998, Plame's second marriage and Wilson's third.
Professionally and socially, she has used variants of her name. Professionally, while a covert CIA officer, she used her given first name and her maiden surname, "Valerie Plame." Since leaving the CIA, as a speaker, she has used the name "Valerie Plame Wilson," and she is referred to by that name in the civil suit that the Wilsons brought against former and current government officials, Plame v. Cheney. Socially, and in public records of her political contributions, since her marriage in 1998, she has used the name "Valerie E. Wilson."
Prior to the disclosure of her classified CIA identity, Valerie and Joe Wilson and their twins lived in the Palisades, an affluent neighborhood of Washington, D.C., on the fringe of Georgetown. After she resigned from the CIA following the disclosure of her covert status, in January 2006, they moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico. In a 2011 interview, Plame said she and Wilson had received threats while living in the D.C. metro area, and while she acknowledged an element of threat remains in their new home, the New Mexico location "tamps down the whole swirl."
After graduating from college, moving to Washington, D.C., and marrying Sesler, Plame worked at a clothing store while awaiting results of her application to the CIA. She was accepted into the 1985–86 CIA officer training class and began her training for what would become a twenty-year career with the Agency.[12] Although the CIA will not release publicly the specific dates from 1985 to 2002 when she worked for it, due to security concerns Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald affirmed that Plame "was a CIA officer from January 1, 2002, forward" and that "her association with the CIA was classified at that time through July 2003. Due to the nature of her clandestine work for the CIA, many details about Plame's professional career are still classified, but it is documented that she worked for the CIA in a clandestine capacity relating to counter-proliferation.
Plame served the CIA as a non-official cover (or NOC), operating undercover in (at least) two positions in Athens and Brussels. While using her own name, "Valerie Plame", her assignments required posing in various professional roles in order to gather intelligence more effectively. Two of her covers include serving as a junior consular officer in the early 1990s in Athens and then later an energy analyst for the private company (founded in 1994) "Brewster Jennings & Associates," which the CIA later acknowledged was a front company for certain investigations.
A former senior diplomat in Athens remembered Plame in her dual role and also recalled that she served as one of the 'control officers' coordinating the visit of President George H.W. Bush to Greece and Turkey in July 1991. After the Gulf War in 1991, the CIA sent her first to the London School of Economics and then the College of Europe, in Bruges, for Master's degrees. After earning the second one, she stayed on in Brussels, where she began her next assignment under cover as an "energy consultant" for Brewster-Jennings. Beginning in 1997, Plame's primary assignment was shifted to the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. The CIA’s Ishmael Jones confirmed her status as a NOC or “deep cover officer” and remarked that she was talented and highly intelligent, but decried the fact that her career largely featured US-based Headquarters service, typical of most CIA officers.
She married Wilson in 1998 and gave birth to their twins in 2000, and resumed travel overseas in 2001, 2002, and 2003 as part of her cover job. She met with workers in the nuclear industry, cultivated sources, and managed spies. She was involved in ensuring that Iran did not acquire nuclear weapons. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
[T]he story of how [Plame's] career was derailed and her C.I.A. cover blown also has its combative side. But the real proof of Ms. Wilson’s fighting spirit is the form in which her version of events has been brought into the light of day.... What emerges is a sense of Ms. Wilson as an ambitious, gung-ho professional, dedicated to her work yet colorful in ways no Hollywood storyteller would dare to make up.
Janet Maslin - New York Times
The government redacted much of the significant information in the first section of Wilson's memoir, which concerns her career in the CIA. In print, a black bar omitted the words and passages; on audio, a tone does the deleting. Once the novelty of the beeps wears off, the incompleteness of Wilson's narrative, at first tantalizing, becomes frustrating. The constant interruptions make it difficult for a listener to assemble a coherent story. Once Wilson's identity is leaked by White House insiders, the memoir's redactions cease for the most part. Unfortunately, her distress over the attempted destruction of her and her husband's professional reputations is considerably less riveting than her spy career. Whiles neither a prose stylist or an actress, Wilson reads clearly, with immediacy and sincerity and a note of barely suppressed anger. Laura Rozen's afterword (occupying the last two CDs) fills in the gaps removed by the CIA. It's intriguing and considerably more polished. The two narratives create an interesting, if not entirely satisfying, account of a disturbing contemporary scandal.
Publishers Weekly
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Fair Game:
1. What do you think of Valerie Plame Wilson? Did reading her memoir alter your view of her?
2. Why did Plame Wilson write this memoir? What was her purpose in doing so? Does the book accomplish her goals?
3. Why did Plame Wilson join the CIA? How does she describe the agency and the training the operatives through? Were you surprised by its rigor?
4. How does Plame describe the position of female officers vis-a-vis career advancement in the CIA?
5. How difficult, irritating, puzzling was it for you to read the memoir with all the redactions (blacked out text) by the CIA? Does it make sense that parts of Ms. Plame's career could not be published in her book...even though the information was already in the public domain and readily available for anyone to read?
6. What do you think of the book's Afterword by Laura Rozen? Is it helpful, illuminating, or dull and irritating? Is there anything in Rozen's revelations that might constitute a national security secret?
7. What was your understanding of the Plame Affair—in which members of the Bush administration revealed her identity as a CIA operative—before reading this book? Has your understanding changed as a result of reading the memoir?
8. Do you think it was wrong to have released—and published—Plame's name? Or do you agree with former White House officials that they did nothing wrong because Plame was no longer an undercover agent? Why was her cover blown in the first place?
9. Does this account by Plame of her activities convince you that she once worked under deep cover...which some in Washington had questioned?
10. What damage was been done by the publication of her identity?
11. Is Plame's use of "betrayal" in the subtitle the right word? In what way did the CIA betray her? What should they have done when her identity was revealed?
12. What were her friends' reactions when they found out Plame had been a spy? Were they justified in their feelings?
13. Talk about the impact her career derailment had on her marriage. Had you been a friend at the time, what advice might you have offered?
14. Plame writes "I would soon find out that in Washington, the truth is not always enough." What was she referring to...and why isn't truth enough?
15. Where does the book's title "fair game" come from?
16. How did Plame come to feel about the Bush administration? What does she mean when she says that the efforts to shut her and her husband up were "classic Karl Rove"? Do you agree, as Plame puts it that "their tactics would have made Joseph McCarthy proud"? In what way?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
top of page (summary)
The Faith Club: A Muslim, a Christian, a Jew—
Three Women Searching for Understanding
Ranya Idliby, Suzanne Oliver, Priscilla Warner, 2007
Simon & Schuster
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780743290487
Summary
The Faith Club was started when Ranya Idliby, an American Muslim of Palestinian descent, recruited Suzanne Oliver, a Christian, and Priscilla Warner, a Jew, to write a children's book about their three religions. As the women's meetings began, it became clear that they had their own adult struggles with faith and religion, and they needed a safe haven where they could air their concerns, admit their ignorance, and explore their own faiths.
Ranya, Suzanne, and Priscilla began to meet regularly to discuss their religious backgrounds and beliefs and to ask each other tough questions. As the three women met and talked, there were no awkward silences — no stretches of time with nothing for them to say to each other. Honesty was the first rule of the Faith Club, and with that tenet as a foundation, no topic was off limits.
With courage, pain, and sometimes tears, Ranya, Suzanne, and Priscilla found themselves completely transformed by their experience inside the safe cocoon of the Faith Club, and they realized that they had learned things so powerful they wanted to share them with the rest of the world. This is their story. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Ranya Idliby was raised in Dubai and McLean, Virginia. She holds a bachelor of science from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, and earned her MS in international relations from the London School of Economics. She lives in New York City with her husband and two children.
• Suzanne Oliver was raised in Kansas City, Missouri, and has worked as a writer and editor at Forbes and Financial World magazines. She graduated from Texas Christian University and lives in New York City and Jaffrey Center, New Hampshire, with her husband and three children.
• Priscilla Warner grew up in Providence, Rhode Island, where she began her interfaith education at a Hebrew day school and then a Quaker high school. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, she worked as an art director at various advertising agencies in Boston and New York. She lives with her family in a suburb of New York City. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
The dialogue among the three friends comes across as genuine and thoughtful. They try valiantly to be frank with one another, which becomes easier as they learn to trust one another's motives and to respect each other's integrity…The conversations recorded in this book engage our attention as the women search out spiritual values common to all the three faiths and learn more about their own in the process.
Naomi Harris Rosenblatt - Washington Post
In the wake of 9/11, Idliby, an American Muslim of Palestinian descent, sought out fellow mothers of the Jewish and Christian faiths to write a children's book on the commonalities among their respective traditions. In their first meeting, however, the women realized they would have to address their differences first. Oliver, an Episcopalian who was raised Catholic, irked Warner, a Jewish woman and children's author, with her description of the Crucifixion story, which sounded too much like "Jews killed Jesus" for Warner's taste. Idliby's efforts to join in on the usual "Judeo-Christian" debate tap into a sense of alienation she already feels in the larger Muslim community, where she is unable to find a progressive mosque that reflects her non-veil-wearing, spiritual Islam. The ladies come to call their group a "faith club" and, over time, midwife each other into stronger belief in their own respective religions. More Fight Club than book club, the coauthors pull no punches; their outstanding honesty makes for a page-turning read, rare for a religion nonfiction book. From Idliby's graphic defense of the Palestinian cause, Oliver's vacillations between faith and doubt, and Warner's struggles to acknowledge God's existence, almost every taboo topic is explored on this engaging spiritual ride.
Publishers Weekly
In writing a children's book highlighting the commonalities among the Abrahamic religions, Idliby, an American Muslim of Palestinian descent, sought Christian and Jewish collaborators. She was joined by Episcopalian-turned-Catholic Suzanne Oliver and Jewish children's book writer Warner, who both came to realize they needed to deal with their own questions, stereotypes, and concerns before starting the book. After several meetings, the trio's relationship and project seemed in jeopardy, but they painstakingly worked through their differences, accompanying one another at significant times to each of their places of worship, reading one another's Scripture, and supporting one another's doubts and fears. In the process, the women developed a strong bond that strengthened the way each practiced her own religion and moved them all toward deeper commitment to interfaith dialog, to justice, and to one another. This book, which concludes with suggestions to readers for forming their own Faith Club and includes sample questions for thought, is a documentation of Idliby, Oliver, and Warner's discussions, debates, and reflections. The world needs this book or others very similar! Highly recommended for all libraries. —Carolyn M. Craft, formerly of Longwood Univ., Farmville, VA
Library Journal
Three mothers' engaging account of their interfaith dialogue. At first glance, the authors don't seem to have much in common. Idliby is a Muslim of Palestinian descent; Warner is a Reform Jew; Oliver grew up Catholic but was drawn to the more liberal Episcopal Church as an adult. Beneath those differences lie some important similarities: All three are mothers who want to teach their children religious tolerance, and each places great stock in her religious identity. In order to learn about the religious traditions of their neighbors, the authors came together to form a "faith club," meeting regularly to discuss prayer and ritual, their beliefs about God and the relationship between spirituality and social justice. They never shy away from potentially explosive topics, such as the way that Christian descriptions of Jesus' crucifixion have been used to provoke anti-Jewish violence, or the question of whether people can criticize Israeli policy without being accused of anti-Semitism. Over time, the women's religious commitments evolved: Idliby, who had felt spiritually homeless, found a community of like-minded progressive American Muslims; Oliver began to question some of her commitments to classic Christian doctrine; and Warner became more comfortable praying to and talking about God. The three charming narrators transform potentially dry theological discourses into personal, intimate heart-to-hearts. For readers who wish they could pull up a chair and join Idliby, Oliver and Warner in their chats, the concluding chapter explains how to form your own faith club. The only weakness here is that all three authors represent decidedly liberal expressions of their religions. The conversations would have been even more interesting, albeit considerably more fraught, had they included an evangelical Christian or an Orthodox Jew or a Muslim woman who wears hijab. An invitation to discussion that's hard to turn down—and a natural for book groups.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. How did the book's format (a three-way memoir written in first person) contribute to the overall feel of the book? At what points did the women write different versions of the same event? (One specific example can be found when Ranya confronts Priscilla about the Israel/Palestinian conflict, pages 129-138.) How does each woman's individual prejudices and religion color her interpretations of the discussions?
2. How does each woman's role as amother influence the direction and tone of the Faith Club? Would the club have been different if it included both mothers and women with no children? How did the children play a role in the challenges to each woman's faith?
3. To which woman did you most relate, and why? Was it the one you expected to when you began the book? If you identified with one of the women because you share her religious beliefs, did you agree with her presentation of your faith? What did you disagree with, and why?
4. Much of the first half of the book deals with Suzanne's and Priscilla's struggles to define anti-Semitism and to confront their prejudices about the other's faith. Did you feel that Ranya was unfairly relegated to the role of "mediator" (p. 46), or did she welcome it? "For months, I had to bide my time patiently" (p. 126). Why do you think Ranya waited to bring up her own struggles with Suzanne's and Priscilla's faiths?
5. On page 106, Ranya says, "The more that science unravels about the wonders of life and the universe, the more I am in awe of it." Do you think this combination of science and faith is realistic, or must one ultimately take precedence over the other?
6. Suzanne's first sentence speaks of the "cozy, homogeneous community" at her Episcopal church. What is Priscilla's "comfort zone"? What is Ranya's? How does each woman step out of her individual cozy and homogeneous comfort zone, and in what ways does each of them remain there?
7. On page 147, Priscilla wonders if worrying is "a form of gratefulness." What do you think she means by this? Does Priscilla's worry ultimately strengthen her faith? How does each woman show gratitude in her life and in her faith?
8. On page 204, Craig Townsend tells Suzanne, "The opposite of faith is not doubt, it's certainty." What does he mean by this? Is doubt necessary for true faith?
9. In Chapter 12, "Intimations of Mortality," the women discuss their differing views about death and the afterlife. Which understanding of death was most comforting to you? Which image of the afterlife was most comforting? Are they from the same religion?
10. When Priscilla confronts Suzanne about her confession that she was uncomfortable being mistaken for a Jew, Ranya says, "She wouldn't want to be a Muslim either." Do you agree? Why or why not? Is Suzanne's discomfort an inevitable result of being a member of the majority, of "not [being] forced to accommodate [herself] to the culture, religion, or even friendship of minorities"?
11. Ranya provides a vivid description of her own method of prayer on page 175: "My prayer is essentially a form of meditation in which I singularly apply my limited human physical capacity to try to connect with that omnipresent universal unknown force: God." (Suzanne's description of her prayer is on page 162; Priscilla's is on page 175.) How is each woman's method of prayer different? How is it similar? How do Suzanne's, Ranya's, and Priscilla's prayer styles reflect the differences and similarities in their childhoods?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr
Nancy Isenberg, 2007
Penguin Group USA
560 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780143113713
Summary
With Fallen Founder, Nancy Isenberg plumbs rare and obscure sources to shed new light on everyone's favorite founding villain.
The Aaron Burr whom we meet through Isenberg's eye-opening biography is a feminist, an Enlightenment figure on par with Jefferson, a patriot, and—most importantly—a man with powerful enemies in an age of vitriolic political fighting.
Revealing the gritty reality of eighteenth-century America, Fallen Founder is the authoritative restoration of a figure who ran afoul of history and a much-needed antidote to the hagiography of the revolutionary era. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Nancy Isenberg is Professor of History at Louisiana State University and the author of books and articles on American politics and culture. Isenberg teaches courses on gender, film and legal history. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Nancy Isenberg...in her fascinating new biography, Fallen Founder, argues that Burr has been misunderstood, and underappreciated, for two centuries.... Isenberg's call for a better, less fetishistic history of the founding fathers is eloquent and inspiring. And her study of Burr is full of insight and new research. It is an important and engaging account.
Jill Lepore - New York Times Book Review
Isenberg's meticulous biography reveals a gifted lawyer, politician and orator who championed civility in government and even feminist ideals, in a political climate that bears a marked resemblance to our own.
Washington Post
Does Burr belong in the pantheon of founding fathers? Or is he, as historians have asserted ever since he fatally shot Alexander Hamilton in a duel, a faux founder who happened to be in the right place at the right time? Was he really the enigmatic villain, the political schemer who lacked any moral core, the sexual pervert, the cherubic-faced slanderer so beloved of popular imagination? This striking new biography by Isenberg (Sex and Citizenship in Antebellum America) argues that Burr was, indeed, the real thing, a founder "at the center of nation building" and a "capable leader in New York political circles." Interestingly, if controversially, Isenberg believes Burr was "the only founder to embrace feminism," the only one who "adhered to the ideal that reason should transcend party differences." Far from being an empty vessel, she says, Burr defended freedom of speech, wanted to expand suffrage and was a proponent of equal rights. Burr was not without his faults, she concludes, but then, none of the other founders was entirely angelic, either, and his actions must be viewed in the context of his political times. As this important book reminds us, America's founders behaved like ordinary human beings even when they were performing their extraordinary deeds. (Illustrations.)
Publishers Weekly
In this positive portrayal of the controversial Aaron Burr (1756-1836), Isenberg departs from all previous biographers, deploring their lack of basic research.... Making a strong case for revising received wisdom about Burr, Isenberg significantly contributes to the history of the early republic. —Gilbert Taylor
Booklist
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Fallen Founder:
1. How does Nancy Isenberg characterize Aaron Burr, his personality and character? How is her characterization different than what you previously believed about Burr?
2. What in this biography do you find to admire about Aaron Burr?
3. After reading Isenberg's account, was the aftermath of the 1800 election between Jefferson and Burr fair—particularly Jefferson's shutting Burr out of his cabinet and the subsequent choice of Madison as his future running mate?
4. What led up to the famous Hamilton-Burr duel? How much did you know previously about the episode? How does Isenberg challenge received wisdom regarding that fateful day in Weehawken, New Jersey? What still is left unknown?
5. "Everything we think we know about Aaron Burr is untrue," says Isenberg. What are some of those untruths? Why, according to the author, has Burr become one of history's favorite whipping boys? How culpable are historians in perpetrating Burr's scurrilous.
6. In what way does Isenberg see Aaron Burr as an early feminist? By the same token, in what way did Burr represent, through his actions and reputation, the era's masculine ideals?
7. What does Isenberg means when she insists that "the sexualized image of Burr was principally a function of political rivalry"?
8. In what way, according to Isenberg, was the nation "simply not as virtue-bound as we would like to imagine"?
9. Do you think Isenberg presents an accurate picture of Burr? Or does her desire to rehabilitate his reputation color her historical objectivity?
10. Have you read other accounts of Aaron Burr—books about him (Burr by Gore Vidal) or books in which he figures prominently? If so, how does Isenberg's depiction of Burr hold up? Is her account credible?
11. Has this book altered your view of Aaron Burr? What have you learned about the era's social and political culture? Have you come away supporting Nancy Isenberg's hypothesis—that Burr has been treated unfairly by historians and that his place in history deserves a rehabilitation?
12. Do you see any parallels between the political climate of Burr's era and our own?
(Questions issued by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Far From the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity
Andrew Solomon, 2012
Scribner
976 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780743236713
Summary
Winner, 2012 National Book Critic Circle Awards
From the National Book Award–winning author of The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression comes a monumental new work, a decade in the writing, about family. In Far from the Tree, Andrew Solomon tells the stories of parents who not only learn to deal with their exceptional children but also find profound meaning in doing so.
Solomon’s startling proposition is that diversity is what unites us all. He writes about families coping with deafness, dwarfism, Down syndrome, autism, schizophrenia, multiple severe disabilities, with children who are prodigies, who are conceived in rape, who become criminals, who are transgender. While each of these characteristics is potentially isolating, the experience of difference within families is universal, as are the triumphs of love Solomon documents in every chapter.
All parenting turns on a crucial question: to what extent parents should accept their children for who they are, and to what extent they should help them become their best selves. Drawing on forty thousand pages of interview transcripts with more than three hundred families, Solomon mines the eloquence of ordinary people facing extreme challenges. Whether considering prenatal screening for genetic disorders, cochlear implants for the deaf, or gender reassignment surgery for transgender people, Solomon narrates a universal struggle toward compassion.
Many families grow closer through caring for a challenging child; most discover supportive communities of others similarly affected; some are inspired to become advocates and activists, celebrating the very conditions they once feared. Woven into their courageous and affirming stories is Solomon’s journey to accepting his own identity, which culminated in his midlife decision, influenced by this research, to become a parent.
Elegantly reported by a spectacularly original thinker, Far from the Tree explores themes of generosity, acceptance, and tolerance—all rooted in the insight that love can transcend every prejudice. This crucial and revelatory book expands our definition of what it is to be human. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—October 30, 1963
• Where—New York City, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Yale University; M.A.,
Cambridge University
• Awards— National Book Award, National Book Critics
Circle Award
• Currently—lives in New York City and London, England
Andrew Solomon is a writer on politics, culture and psychology who lives in New York and London. He has written for the New York Times, New Yorker, Artforum, Travel and Leisure, and other publications on a range of subjects, including depression, Soviet artists, the cultural rebirth of Afghanistan, Libyan politics, and deaf politics. His book The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression won the 2001 National Book Award, was a finalist for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize, and was included in the London Times's list of one hundred best books of the decade.
Solomon attended the Horace Mann School, graduating cum laude in 1981. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Yale University in 1985, graduating magna cum laude, and later earned a Master's degree in English at Jesus College, Cambridge. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in psychology, at Jesus College, Cambridge, working on attachment theory under the supervision of Professor Juliet Mitchell.
Personal
Solomon is the oldest son of Howard Solomon, the chairman of pharmaceutical manufacturer Forest Laboratories, and Carolyn Bower Solomon. Solomon described the experience of being present at his mother's planned suicide at the end of a long battle with ovarian cancer in an article for The New Yorker; in a fictionalized account in his novel A Stone Boat, and again in The Noonday Demon. Solomon's subsequent depression, eventually managed with psychotherapy and antidepressant medications, inspired his father to secure FDA approval to market citalopram (Celexa) in the United States.
Born and raised in New York City, as an adult Solomon became a dual citizen of the United States and the United Kingdom. He and journalist John Habich had a civil partnership ceremony on June 30, 2007, at Althorp, the Spencer family estate and childhood home of Diana, Princess of Wales. The couple married again on July 19, 2009, the eighth anniversary of their meeting, in Connecticut, so that their marriage would be legally recognized in the state of New York.
In 2003, Solomon and longtime friend Blaine Smith decided to have a child together; their daughter, Carolyn Blaine Smith Solomon, was born in November 2007. Mother and child live in Texas. A son, George Charles Habich Solomon, was born in April 2009, and lives in New York with Solomon and Habich, his adoptive father. Habich is also the biological father of two children, Oliver and Lucy, born to lesbian friends who live in Minneapolis. The development of this composite family was the subject of a feature article by Solomon published in Newsweek in January 2011.
Publications and career
In 1988, Solomon began his study of Russian artists, which culminated with the publication of The Irony Tower: Soviet Artists in a Time of Glasnost (1991). His first novel was A Stone Boat (1994), the story of a man's shifting identity as he watches his mother battle cancer.
From 1993 to 2001, Solomon was a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine.
The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression was originally published in 2001, and has been translated into twenty-four languages. It was named a Notable Book of 2001 by the New York Times and included in the American Library Association's 2002 list of Notable Books. It won the National Book Award for Nonfiction.
In 2003, Solomon's article, "The Amazing Life of Laura," a profile of diarist Laura Rothenberg, received the Clarion Award for Health Care Journalism, and the Angel of Awareness Award from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. In April 2009, his article, "Cancer & Creativity: One Chef’s True Story,"[33] received the Bert Greene Award for Food Journalism by the International Association of Culinary Professionals;.the story was also a finalist for the 11th Annual Henry R. Luce Award..Solomon's reminiscence on a friend who committed suicide won the Folio Eddie Gold Award in 2011.
In addition to his magazine work, Solomon has written essays for many anthologies and books of criticism, and his work has been featured on National Public Radio's Moth Radio Hour.
Solomon's 2012 book, Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity, about how families accommodate children with physical, mental and social disabilities was named one of the 10 best books of 2012 by the New York Times. and won the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction.
Activism and philanthropy
Solomon is an activist and philanthropist in LGBT rights, mental health, education and the arts. He is founder of the Solomon Research Fellowships in LGBT Studies at Yale University and a member of the boards of directors of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and Trans Youth Family Allies. His articles on gay marriage have appeared in Newsweek, The Advocate, and on Anderson Cooper 360.
Solomon has lectured widely on depression. His work in the arts and education includes service on the boards of numerous arts organizations, including New York's Metropolitan Museum. He is also a fellow of Berkeley College at Yale University, a member of the New York Institute for the Humanities, and the Council on Foreign Relations. (Adapted from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
[Solomon's] winding volume sometimes tried my patience, but my respect for it rarely wavered…The bulk of Far From the Tree comprises profiles of families in extremis. Many of these will leave you weeping at the resilience so many display in the face of adversity. "I almost drowned him in the tears I shed over him," one mother says about a son with Down syndrome. That's a typical sentence here. This is a book that shoots arrow after arrow into your heart. Yet there's nothing maudlin. Mr. Solomon's prose is dry and epigrammatic.
Dwight Garner - New York Times
It’s a book everyone should read and there’s no one who wouldn’t be a more imaginative and understanding parent—or human being—for having done so.
Julie Myerson - New York Times Book Review
Solomon forcefully showcases parents who not only aren't horrified by the differences they encounter in their offspring, but who rise to the occasion by embracing them. In so doing, they reveal a "shimmering humanity" that speaks to our noblest impulses to nurture. Far From the Tree is massively ambitious and...often inspirational about the "infinitely deep" and mysterious love of parents for their children.
Lisa Zeidner - Washington Post
Solomon is a storyteller of great intimacy and ease…He approaches each family’s story thoughtfully, respectfully…Bringing together their voices, Solomon creates something of enduring warmth and beauty: a quilt, a choir.
Kate Tuttle - Boston Globe
[A] masterpiece of non-fiction, the culmination of a decade’s worth of research and writing, and it should be required reading for psychologists, teachers, and above all, parents.... A bold and unambiguous call to redefine how we view difference…A stunning work of scholarship and compassion.
Carmela Ciuraru - USA Today
A book of extraordinary ambition…Part journalist, part psychology researcher, part sympathetic listener, Solomon’s true talent is a geographic one: he maps the strange terrain of the human struggle that is parenting.
Brook Wilensky-Lanford - San Francisco Chronicle
Masterfully written and brilliantly researched…Far from the Tree stands apart from the countless memoirs and manuals about special needs parenting published in the last couple of decades.
Tina Calabro - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
A brave, beautiful book that will expand your humanity.
Anne Leslie - People
Monumental.... Solomon has an extraordinary gift for finding his way into the relatively hermetic communities that form around conditions...and gaining the confidence of the natives.
Lev Grossman - Time
A profoundly moving new work of research and narrative.... Solomon explores the ways that parents of marginalized children—being gay, dwarf, severely disabled, deaf, autistic, schizophrenic...—have been transformed and largely enriched by caring for their high-needs children.... Sifting through arguments about nature versus nurture, Solomon finds some startling moments of discovery.... Solomon’s own trials of feeling marginalized as gay, dyslexic, and depressive, while still yearning to be a father, frame these affectingly rendered real tales about bravely playing the cards one’s dealt.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Years of interviews with families and their unique children culminate in this compassionate compendium…The truth Solomon writes about here is as poignant as it is implacable, and he leaves us with a reinvented notion of identity and individual value.
Booklist
Solomon writes about the transformative, "terrifying joy of unbearable responsibility" faced by parents who cherish severely disabled children, and he takes an in-depth look at the struggles of parents of autistic children who behave destructively. He also explores the fascinating mental lives of independently functioning autistic individuals and speculates on the possibility that geniuses such as Mozart and Einstein were at the far end of the spectrum. Throughout, Solomon reflects on his own history as a gay man who has been bullied when he didn't conform to society's image of masculinity. An informative and moving book that raises profound issues regarding the nature of love, the value of human life and the future of humanity.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
(Below are both discussion questions for book clubs and ideas for the classroom.)
1. In Far from the Tree, Andrew Solomon tells the stories of dozens of parents raising children from across the spectrum of horizontal identities. Did any particular family remain etched in your memory?
2. Solomon describes how his reporting on deaf culture quickly challenged his assumption that deafness “was a deficit and nothing more” (P. 2). What did he discover? Were any of your own assumptions challenged by Far from the Tree?
3. On page 83 Solomon writes about visiting the village of Bengkala, Bali, where a congenital form of deafness has affected generations of residents. What struck Solomon about the way this community treated its deaf residents? Can we draw any lessons from Bengkala about the way we treat deaf people or those with other kinds of illnesses/identities?
4. One of the book’s recurring themes is the difficult decision parents face when a child could benefit from “corrective procedures” such as cochlear implants and limb-lengthening. At what stage in a person’s life do you think such interventions are appropriate? Should parents of young children be allowed to authorize such surgeries?
5. How has the Internet built community for people with horizontal identities?
6. Solomon notes that some dwarf couples use pre-natal testing to “screen out average size fetuses and ensure a dwarf child” (P. 156), and that some deaf people prefer to have deaf children. In contrast, Solomon describes “ever-increasing options to choose against having children with horizontal identities” for society at large (P. 6). He notes that most people who receive a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome choose to abort. What moral burdens come with the existence of these tests? What does it mean for any individual to seek out or to avoid prenatal testing?
7. Emily Perl Kingsley’s son Jason became a public face for Down syndrome but went on to struggle with depression. “I’ll admit that lower-functioning Down’s kids are happier, less obsessed with how unfair it is,” she tells Solomon. What do you think of Emily’s quest to make Jason “the highest-functioning DS kid in history?” (P. 178). How would you approach parenting a Down syndrome child?
8. From your reading of the book, how do you think socioeconomic status affects the way parents cope with children with horizontal identities?
9. Imagine that you are the parent of a severely autistic child or a child with multiple disabilities. What strategies would you adopt from the parents profiled here? Any you would avoid? Is there a formula for maintaining mental, emotional, and financial health when one must be a constant caregiver?
10. What do you think of Andrew Solomon’s decision to include chapters on the families of children conceived in rape, prodigies, and criminals alongside those chronicling people with disabilities?
11. Solomon is puzzled to find that among the schizophrenic people he meets “there was surprisingly little railing at the disease itself” (P. 296). How do people with this horizontal identity differ from many others in the book? Why is it “in a class by itself for unrewarding trauma?” Could society do more to alleviate this burden?
12. What do you think is the proper role for government in the realm of research and treatment for people struggling with horizontal illnesses or identities? Are some identities more deserving of public funds than others? Why or why not?
13. One of the book’s most unforgettable stories involves the girl known as Ashley X, whose parents, controversially, asked doctors to perform procedures that would attenuate her growth, to preserve a childlike “body that more closely matched her state of mental development.” Review Ashley X’s story (pp. 385-393). Did her parents make the right decision?
14. In what context is the word “genocide” used in identity movements? Is it justified?
15. Solomon writes that, “more than any other parents coping with exceptional children, women with rape-conceived children are trying to quell the darkness within themselves in order to give their progeny light” (p. 536). Did you find it harder to read about the choices these parents make than about those made by other parents in this book?
16. In the “Crime” chapter, Solomon writes, “Love is not only an intuition but also a skill.” What do you think he means here? What do you ultimately make of the theme of love that permeates the book?
17. “Most adults horizontal with identities do not want to be pitied or admired; they simply want to get on with their lives without being stared at” (p. 31). How do you treat people with a noticeable horizontal identity, such as Down syndrome. Do you shy away from contact? Do you find yourself curious? Give an honest assessment of yourself. Will you alter your behavior after reading Far from the Tree?
18. In his conclusion, Solomon writes that he used to see himself “as a historian of sadness,” but he ends Far from the Tree on a decidedly hopeful note, writing about his newfound joy in parenthood. What was your state of mind as you finished the book? How do you ultimately view the parents in these pages, as “heroic” or “fools?” (P. 702).
Ideas for Teachers
1. Solomon spent over a decade researching and writing Far from the Tree. He drew on “forty thousand pages of interview transcripts with more than three hundred families.” Have your students find someone who belongs to one of the horizontal identities in the book (or another identity not in the book) and interview that person or his or her parent or caregiver. Ask your students to write a reflection paper. What were the challenges mentioned by the subject of the interview? What was surprising? Did their findings correspond with what Andrew Solomon describes in Far from the Tree, or did the student discover unique information?
2. Solomon describes numerous difficult and controversial issues affecting groups in the book. Assign your students a paper in which they must research an issue, explore moral and ethical considerations, and take a position on it. Topics may include the following:
• cochlear implants for deaf people
• limb-lengthening for dwarfs
• insurance coverage for gender-reassignment surgery
• genetic screening during pregnancy
• institutionalization of the disabled
3. Social attitudes and government policy toward the disabled, the mentally ill, transgender people, rape survivors, and criminals have evolved throughout modern history. Assign students to small groups and direct them to research how people in a horizontal identity category have been treated throughout history. Ask the students to assess whether attitudes today have improved over past conditions. Students can create a timeline of important events and people connected to their issue and present it to the class.
(Questions and teacher ideas issued by publisher.)
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Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal
Eric Schlosser, 2001
HarperCollins
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780060838584
Summary
Fast Food Nation—the groundbreaking work of investigation and cultural history that has changed the way America thinks about the way it eats—and spent nearly four months on the New York Times bestseller list.
Are we what we eat? To a degree both engrossing and alarming, the story of fast food is the story of postwar America. Though created by a handful of mavericks, the fast food industry has triggered the homogenization of our society. Fast food has hastened the malling of our landscape, widened the chasm between rich and poor, fueled an epidemic of obesity, and propelling the juggernaut of American cultural imperialism abroad. That's a lengthy list of charges, but Eric Schlosser makes them stick with an artful mix of first-rate reportage, wry wit, and careful reasoning.
Schlosser's myth-shattering survey stretches from the California subdivisions where the business was born to the industrial corridor along the New Jersey Turnpike where many of fast food's flavors are concocted. Along the way, he unearths a trove of fascinating, unsettling truths—from the unholy alliance between fast food and Hollywood to the seismic changes the industry has wrought in food production, popular culture, even real estate.
He also uncovers the fast food chains' efforts to reel in the youngest, most susceptible consumers even while they hone their institutionalized exploitation of teenagers and minorities. Schlosser then turns a critical eye toward the hot topic of globalization—a phenomenon launched by fast food. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—August 17, 1959
• Where—New York City, New York, USA
• Raised—Los Angeles, California
• Education—B.A., Princeton University; M.A., Oxford
University
• Awards—National Magazine Award; Sidney Hillman
Foundation Award for Reporting
• Currently—lives in California
Eric Schlosser has been investigating the fast food industry for years. In 1998, his two-part article on the subject in Rolling Stone generated more mail than any other item the magazine had run in years. In addition to writing for Rolling Stone, Schlosser has contributed to The New Yorker and has been a correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly since 1996. He won a National Magazine Award for "Reefer Madness" and "Marijuana and the Law" and has received a Sidney Hillman Foundation Award for Reporting. His work has been nominated for several other National Magazine Awards and for the Loeb Award for business journalism. (From the publisher.)
More
Schlosser was born in New York, New York; he spent his childhood there and in Los Angeles, California. His father, Herbert Schlosser, a former Wall Street lawyer who turned to broadcasting later in his career, eventually became the President of NBC in 1974.
Schlosser studied American History at Princeton University and earned a graduate degree in British Imperial History from Oxford.
Schlosser lives in California and is married to Shauna Redford, daughter of Robert Redford. They have two children. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Eric Schlosser's compelling new book, Fast Food Nation, will not only make you think twice before eating your next hamburger, but it will also make you think about the fallout that the fast food industry has had on America's social and cultural landscape: how it has affected everything from ranching and farming to diets and health, from marketing and labor practices to larger economic trends... Fast Food Nation provides the reader with a vivid sense of how fast food has permeated contemporary life and a fascinating (and sometimes grisly) account of the process whereby cattle and potatoes are transformed into the burgers and fries served up by local fast food franchises.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times
Schlosser is a serious and diligent reporter.... An avalanche of facts and observations.... Pretty compelling.... A fine piece of muckraking, alarming without being alarmist. At the very least, Schlosser makes it hard to go on eating fast food in blissful ignorance.
Rob Walker - New York Times Book Review
Fast Food Nation should be another wake-up call, a super-size serving of common sense.
Atlanta Journal Constitution
Fast Food Nation presents these sometimes startling discoveries in a manner that manages to be both careful and fast-paced. Schlosser is a talented storyteller, and his reportorial skills are considerable.
Hartford Courant
Schlosser's incisive history of the development of American fast food indicts the industry for some shocking crimes against humanity, including systematically destroying the American diet and landscape, and undermining our values and our economy. The first part of the book details the postwar ascendance of fast food from Southern California, assessing the impact on people in the West in general. The second half looks at the product itself: where it is manufactured (in a handful of enormous factories), what goes into it (chemicals, feces) and who is responsible (monopolistic corporate executives). In harrowing detail, the book explains the process of beef slaughter and confirms almost every urban myth about what in fact "lurks between those sesame seed buns." Given the estimate that the typical American eats three hamburgers and four orders of french fries each week, and one in eight will work for McDonald's in the course of their lives, few are exempt from the insidious impact of fast food. Throughout, Schlosser fires these and a dozen other hair-raising statistical bullets into the heart of the matter. While cataloguing assorted evils with the tenacity and sharp eye of the best investigative journalist, he uncovers a cynical, dismissive attitude to food safety in the fast food industry and widespread circumvention of the government's efforts at regulation enacted after Upton Sinclair's similarly scathing novel exposed the meat-packing industry 100 years ago. By systematically dismantling the industry's various aspects, Schlosser establishes a seminal argument for true wrongs at the core of modern America.
Publishers Weekly
It is not unusual, from time to time, to read expos s about the unhealthy quality of mass-produced American food. What makes this book special is its indictment of the enormous U.S. fast-food industry. The author, an award-winning contributor to Atlantic Monthly, contends that chains like McDonald's are significant contributors to global ill-health; ugly, homogeneous landscapes; an undertrained and unpromotable work force; and a widespread corporate conformity that discourages the very individualism that propelled these companies to their initial success. While excellently researched, Fast Food Nation is not at all dull but is peppered with acerbic commentary and telling interviews. Of critical importance is the end: just as the reader despairs of a solution, Schlosser outlines a set of remedies, along with steps to get them accomplished. Highly recommended. —Wendy Miller, Lexington P.L., KY
Library Journal
National Magazine Award-winning journalist Schlosser spent three years studying the history of fast food, the business practices of its major chains and the nexus of agribusiness and chemical concerns behind it. Schlosser makes a powerful argument against an industry that exploits its workers, destroys the environment and creates an obese society in the relentless pursuit of profit. We learn about the chemical factories in New Jersey that manufacture fast foods' realistic and delicious flavors, and tour the filthy, Dickensian hell-hole of a modern meatpacking plant, where each year one in every three of its migrant workers can expect to suffer a serious injury. Most troubling, Schlosser argues that the influence of the meatpacking lobby on Congress largely prevents federal agencies from regulating the industry that Upton Sinclair first exposed nearly a century ago in The Jungle. This is in many ways a disturbing book, about much more than the already well-known public health implications of addictive, fattening and potentially disease-carrying foods. Beyond revealing what is actually in those burgers and fries, it shows why their cheap prices do not reflect their true human costs. —Eric Wargo
Book Magazine
Discussion Questions
1. Schlosser discusses the eagerness of fast food companies to avoid hiring skilled workers and to rely instead upon highly unskilled workers. In fact, some chains openly embrace "zero training" as their ultimate goal. Since these companies are providing a steady paycheck, is it really the obligation of fast food chains to take an interest in their workers and to teach them job skills? Also, since many of the workers are recently arrived immigrants, doesn't employment at fast food restaurants offer them a toehold in the American economy and an opportunity to move onto a better job?
2. Over the last several decades, fast food companies have aggressively targeted children in their marketing efforts. Should advertisers be permitted to target children who lack the sophistication to make informed decisions and are essentially being lured into eating high fat, high calorie food through toys and cute corporate mascots? Is it possible that fast food companies—like tobacco companies—are recruiting increasingly younger consumers in order to insure a steady customer base as their older constituents die from heart disease, diabetes, and other obesity-related disorders?
3. Upton Sinclair's The Jungle was the first book to sound the clarion call about the appalling abuses inherent in mass-produced beef. In the decades since its publication, the state of meatpacking has received scant attention. Were you shocked that Fast Food Nation documents some of the same unsafe conditions and practices that Sinclair revealed nearly 100 years ago? Were you under the impression that the unsafe conditions in meatpacking had largely been eliminated and that the United States' beef and poultry industry set the standard for other countries? Does the author's contention that not enough has changed in the meat industry challenge the progressive belief in American capitalism—that it will lift all boats and make constant improvements in working and living conditions?
4. Fast food chains, despite the myriad problems documented by the author, have an undeniable appeal-they are convenient and offer inexpensive and tasty food. Even if you are disturbed by the practices of these corporations, could you realistically swear off your food, given its ubiquity and mainstream appeal? If you are driving home from work, tired and hungry, and your two choices are a familiar fast food restaurant or an unknown Mom-and-pop, which would you choose? What kinds of implications does this choice have?
5. If one accepts the author's assertions that the beef processors and fast food corporations are engaging in patterns of unethical conduct, what can the consumer do to modify their behavior? Can the conduct of an individual have an impact on a company's practices? Why is a company most likely to change its conduct? To generate public goodwill? To respond to its employees' concerns? To address diminishing profits?
6. Since few people would confuse fast food with health food, who bears the greater responsibility for the alarming rate of obesity in children in the United States: the fast food chains that market "supersize" meals to children, or parents who are not educating their children about the benefits of a balanced diet? Can well-intentioned parents maintain control over the eating habits of their children in an era when school districts are contracting to bring fast food into the school cafeteria?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century
Kirk Wallace Johnson, 2018
Penguin Publishing
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781101981610
Summary
A rollicking true-crime adventure and a captivating journey into an underground world of fanatical fly-tiers and plume peddlers, for readers of The Stranger in the Woods, The Lost City of Z, and The Orchid Thief.
On a cool June evening in 2009, after performing a concert at London's Royal Academy of Music, twenty-year-old American flautist Edwin Rist boarded a train for a suburban outpost of the British Museum of Natural History.
Home to one of the largest ornithological collections in the world, the Tring museum was full of rare bird specimens whose gorgeous feathers were worth staggering amounts of money to the men who shared Edwin's obsession: the Victorian art of salmon fly-tying.
Once inside the museum, the champion fly-tier grabbed hundreds of bird skins—some collected 150 years earlier by a contemporary of Darwin's, Alfred Russel Wallace, who'd risked everything to gather them—and escaped into the darkness.
Two years later, Kirk Wallace Johnson was waist high in a river in northern New Mexico when his fly-fishing guide told him about the heist. He was soon consumed by the strange case of the feather thief …
What would possess a person to steal dead birds? Had Edwin paid the price for his crime? What became of the missing skins?
In his search for answers, Johnson was catapulted into a years-long, worldwide investigation. The gripping story of a bizarre and shocking crime, and one man's relentless pursuit of justice, The Feather Thief is also a fascinating exploration of obsession, and man's destructive instinct to harvest the beauty of nature. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1980?
• Where—West Chicago, Illinois, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Chicago
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California
Kirk W. Johnson is the author of To Be a Friend Is Fatal and the founder of the List Project to Resettle Iraqi Allies. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, among others. He is the recipient of fellowships from Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, the American Academy in Berlin, and the USC Annenberg Center. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
A fascinating book …the kind of intelligent reported account that alerts us to a threat and that, one hopes, will never itself be endangered.
Wall Street Journal
Vivid and arresting.… Johnson [is] a wonderfully assured writer.
Times (UK)
Within pages I was hooked. This is a weird and wonderful book.… Johnson is a master of pacing and suspense.… It’s a tribute to [his] storytelling gifts that when I turned the last page I felt bereft.
Maggie Fergusson - Spectator (UK)
One of the most peculiar and memorable true-crime books ever.… Johnson is an intrepid journalist … [with] a fine knack for uncovering details that reveal, captivate, and disturb.
Christian Science Monitor
An uncommon book… [that] informs and enlightens.… A heist story that manages to underline the enduring and continuing importance of natural history collections and their incredible value to science. We need more books like this one.
Science
Johnson succeeds in conveying the gravity of this natural-history "heist of the century," and one of The Feather Thief’s greatest strengths is the excitement, horror, and amazement it evokes. It’s nonfiction that reads like fiction, with plenty of surprising moments.
Outside
A riveting story about mankind’s undeniable desire to own nature’s beauty and a spellbinding examination of obsession, greed, and justice …[told] in engrossing detail.… A gripping page-turner.
Bustle
(Starred review) [An] enthralling account of a truly bizarre crime.… Johnson goes deep into the exotic bird and feather trade and concludes that though obsession and greed know no bounds, they certainly make for a fascinating tale. The result is a page-turner.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) [M]ind-blowing…a riveting historical tour of the feather trade from the 1800s to the present. The resolution, however, is frustrating and demonstrates both the importance and difficulty of preserving our natural history. —Deirdre Bray Root, formerly with MidPointe Lib. Syst., OH
Library Journal
(Starred review) A remarkably compelling story of obsession and history.
Booklist
(Starred review) [C]aptivating.… Throughout, Johnson's flair for telling an engrossing story is, like the beautiful birds he describes, exquisite.… A superb tale about obsession, nature, and man's "unrelenting desire to lay claim to its beauty, whatever the cost."
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for THE FEATHER THIEF … then take off on your own:
m. Johnson reports that a fly-tier expert warned Johnson away from pursuing the story of the Tring theft. "I don’t think you want to write that story.… We’re a tight-knit community, fly-tiers, and you do not want to piss us off.” Johnson becomes frustrated by those who don't seem to grasp the seriousness of Rist's crime. Why is it such a serious crime?
m. What was Edwin Rist's motivation for his theft? Actually, is obsession a motivation?
m. What are your thoughts regarding Edwin Rist's legal penalty? Fair? Too light?
m. When the author interviews Rist, he shows little remorse for his theft. What do you think of Rist and his self-exoneration? He says at one point:
[A]ll of the scientific data that can be extracted from them has been extracted from them. You can no longer use DNA, because what you would want to do it for is to prolong and help living birds, which hasn’t really worked anyway, because they’re still going extinct, or will go extinct depending on what happens with the rainforests.
Is Rist correct? Or is that beside the point?
m. Follow-up to Question XXX: Juxtaposed to Rist's lack of remorse is the museum's science director who calls the theft a "catastrophic event," of "stealing knowledge from humanity." Is it catastrophic? What do the losses mean to science?
m. Talk about why the loss of the birds' identity tags is so devastating to the scientists.
m. In what way does the basic conflict at the heart of this book continue today? That conflict is the belief that nature is worth preserving for posterity vs. the belief that nature is put here for the use and betterment of humankind. In what other areas do we see this debate playing out, and where do you stand in regards to it?
m. Is The Feather Thief an important book or merely an entertaining book about an absurd obsession? Do we need care about what happened to the birds of Tring? What is their value to science? Johnson says that the curators had protected the specimens for years, because they "understood that the birds held answers to questions that hadn't yet even been asked." If the questions haven't been formulated by this juncture in history, are they really that important?
m. Of the three sections of the book—the story of the theft, the history of Alfred Russell Wallace and the Victorian era's "feather fever," the author's experiences researching this book—which do you find most interesting?
m. Alfred Russell Wallace once expounded on the importance of cataloguing the natural world:
[T]he individual letters which go to make up one of the volumes of our earth’s history; and, as a few lost letters make a sentence unintelligible, so the extinction of numerous forms of life which the progress of cultivation invariably entails will necessarily render obscure this valuable record of the past.
Do you think he is right?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence
Karen Armstrong, 2014
Knopf Doubleday
528 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307957047
Summary
From the renowned and best-selling author of A History of God, a sweeping exploration of religion and the history of human violence.
For the first time, religious self-identification is on the decline in American. Some analysts have cited as cause a post-9/11perception: that faith in general is a source of aggression, intolerance, and divisiveness—something bad for society. But how accurate is that view?
With deep learning and sympathetic understanding, Karen Armstrong sets out to discover the truth about religion and violence in each of the world’s great traditions, taking us on an astonishing journey from prehistoric times to the present.
While many historians have looked at violence in connection with particular religious manifestations (jihad in Islam or Christianity’s Crusades), Armstrong looks at each faith—not only Christianity and Islam, but also Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Daoism, and Judaism—in its totality over time.
As she describes, each arose in an agrarian society with powerful landowners brutalizing peasants while also warring among themselves over land, then the only real source of wealth. In this world, religion was not the discrete and personal matter it would become for us but rather something that permeated all aspects of society. And so it was that agrarian aggression, and the warrior ethos it begot, became bound up with observances of the sacred.
In each tradition, however, a counterbalance to the warrior code also developed. Around sages, prophets, and mystics there grew up communities protesting the injustice and bloodshed endemic to agrarian society, the violence to which religion had become heir. And so by the time the great confessional faiths came of age, all understood themselves as ultimately devoted to peace, equality, and reconciliation, whatever the acts of violence perpetrated in their name.
Industrialization and modernity have ushered in an epoch of spectacular and unexampled violence, although, as Armstrong explains, relatively little of it can be ascribed directly to religion. Nevertheless, she shows us how and in what measure religions, in their relative maturity, came to absorb modern belligerence—and what hope there might be for peace among believers of different creeds in our time.
At a moment of rising geopolitical chaos, the imperative of mutual understanding between nations and faith communities has never been more urgent, the dangers of action based on misunderstanding never greater. Informed by Armstrong’s sweeping erudition and personal commitment to the promotion of compassion, Fields of Blood makes vividly clear that religion is not the problem. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—November 14,1944
• Where—Wildmoor, Worcestershire, England, UK
• Education—Oxford University
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in London, England
Karen Armstrong is a British author and commentator known for her books on comparative religion. A former Roman Catholic religious sister, she went from a conservative to a more liberal and mystical Christian faith. She would become disillusioned and leave the convent in 1969.
Armstrong first rose to prominence in 1993 with her book A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Her work focuses on commonalities of the major religions, such as the importance of compassion and the Golden Rule.
In February, 2008, she received a $100,000 TED Prize. She used that occasion to call for the creation of a Charter for Compassion, which was unveiled the following year.
Early life
Armstrong was born into a family of Irish ancestry who, after her birth, moved to Bromsgrove and later to Birmingham. In 1962, at the age of 18, she became a member of the Sisters of the Holy Child Jesus, a teaching congregation, in which she remained for seven years. Armstrong claims she suffered physical and psychological abuse in the convent, according to The Guardian newspaper:
But the sisters ran a cruel regime. Armstrong was required to mortify her flesh with whips and wear a spiked chain around her arm. When she spoke out of turn, she claims she was forced to sew at a treadle machine with no needle for a fortnight.
Once she had advanced from postulant and novice to professed nun, she enrolled in St Anne's College, Oxford, to study English. Armstrong left her order in 1969 while still a student at Oxford. After graduating with a Congratulatory First, she embarked on a DPhil on the poet Tennyson. According to Armstrong, she wrote her dissertation on a topic that had been approved by the university committee.
Nevertheless it was failed by her external examiner on the grounds that the topic had been unsuitable. Armstrong did not formally protest this verdict, nor did she embark upon a new topic but instead abandoned hope of an academic career. She reports that this period in her life was marked by ill-health stemming from her lifelong but, at that time, still undiagnosed temporal lobe epilepsy.
Career
In 1976, Armstrong took a job as teaching English at James Allen's Girls' School in Dulwich while working on a memoir of her convent experiences. This was published in 1982 to excellent reviews as Through the Narrow Gate. That same year she embarked on a new career as an independent writer and broadcasting presenter.
In 1984, the British Channel Four commissioned her to write and present a TV documentary on the life of St. Paul, The First Christian, a project that involved traveling to the Holy Land to retrace the steps of the saint. Armstrong described this visit as a "breakthrough experience" that defied her prior assumptions and was the inspiration for virtually all her subsequent work.
In A History of God (1993), she traces the evolution of the three major monotheistic traditions from their beginnings in the Middle East up to the present day and also discusses Hinduism and Buddhism. As guiding "luminaries" in her approach, Armstrong acknowledges the late Canadian theologian Wilfred Cantwell Smith, a Protestant minister, and the Jesuit father Bernard Lonergan. In 1996, she published Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths.
Armstrong's The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions (2006) continues the themes covered in A History of God and examines the emergence and codification of the world's great religions during the so-called Axial age, identified by Karl Jaspers. As a result of her body of work, she has made considerable appearances on television, including appearances on Rageh Omaar's program, The Life of Muhammad. She was also an advisor for the award-winning, PBS-broadcast documentary Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet (2002), produced by Unity Productions Foundation.
In 2007, Armstrong was invited by the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore to deliver the MUIS Lecture.
Armstrong is a fellow of the Jesus Seminar, a group of scholars and laypeople that attempts to investigate the historical foundations of Christianity. She has written numerous articles for The Guardian and other publications. She was a key advisor on Bill Moyers' popular PBS series on religion, has addressed members of the United States Congress, and was one of three scholars to speak at the UN's first ever session on religion. She is a vice-president of the British Epilepsy Association, otherwise known as Epilepsy Action.
Armstrong, who has taught courses at Leo Baeck College, a rabbinical college and center for Jewish education located in north London, says she has been particularly inspired by the Jewish tradition's emphasis on practice as well as faith:
I say that religion isn't about believing things. It's about what you do. It's ethical alchemy. It's about behaving in a way that changes you, that gives you intimations of holiness and sacredness.
She maintains that religious fundamentalism is not just a response to, but is a product of contemporary culture and for this reason concludes that,
We urgently need to make compassion a clear, luminous and dynamic force in our polarized world. Rooted in a principled determination to transcend selfishness, compassion can break down political, dogmatic, ideological and religious boundaries. Born of our deep interdependence, compassion is essential to human relationships and to a fulfilled humanity. It is the path to enlightenment, and indispensable to the creation of a just economy and a peaceful global community.
Awarded the $100,000 TED Prize in February 2008, Armstrong called for drawing up a Charter for Compassion, in the spirit of the Golden Rule, to identify shared moral priorities across religious traditions, in order to foster global understanding and a peaceful world. It was presented in Washington, D.C. in November 2009. Signatories include Queen Noor of Jordan, the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Paul Simon.
Armstrong has been called "a prominent and prolific religious historian" and described as "arguably the most lucid, wide-ranging and consistently interesting religion writer today." She is a regular speaker on the Abrahamic tradition, and after the September 11 attacks she was in great demand as a lecturer, pleading for inter-faith dialogue.
Criticism
Atheist activist Sam Harris criticizes Armstrong's "benign" view of Islam, contending that "Islam, as it is currently understood and practiced by vast numbers of the world's Muslims, is antithetical to civil society." Harris is also strongly critical of Armstrong's "religious apology" of Islamic fundamentalism, accusing her and like-minded scholars of "political correctness."
Armstrong has also attracted the criticism of Christian philosopher and theologian William Lane Craig. Craig has criticized Armstrong's "anti-realist" views about statements concerning God, particularly her assertion that "'God' is merely a symbol that points beyond itself to an indescribable transcendence." Craig argues that Armstrong's view of God as ineffable is "self-refuting" and "logically incoherent.
Honors
1999 - Media Award, Muslin Public Affairs Council
2000 - Dr. Leopold Lucas Prize, University of Tübingen
2006 - Doctor of Letters, Aston University
2008 - TED Prize
2008 - Freedom of Worship Award, Roosevelt Institute
2011 - Nationalencyklopedin's International Knowledge Award
2011 - Honorary Doctor of Letters, University of St. Andrews
2014 - Honorary Doctor of Divinity, McGill University
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 11/5/2014.)
Book Reviews
Elegant and powerful.... Both erudite and accurate, dazzling in its breadth of knowledge and historical detail.... [Armstrong] seeks to demonstrate that, rather than putting the blame on the bloody images and legends in sacred texts and holy history, we should focus on the political contexts that frame religion.
Mark Juergensmeyer - Washington Post
[A] bold new book.... Armstrong makes a powerful case that critics like Dawkins ignore the lessons of the past and present in favor of a "dangerous oversimplification."... [Her argument] is strong enough to change minds.
Randy Dotinga - Christian Science Monitor
A timely work....This passionately argued book is certain to provoke heated debate against the background of the Isis atrocities and many other acts of violence perpetrated around the world today in the name of religion.
John Cornwell - Financial Times
With exquisite timing, religious historian Karen Armstrong steps forth with Fields of Blood . . . Laden with example.... [Armstrong’s] overall objective is to call a time-out. Think before you leap to prejudice, she says.... Among the most interesting stuff in [her] book is her deconstruction of the modern Islamic stereotype.... In the end, the point Armstrong feels most adamant about is that by blaming religion for violence, we are deliberately and disastrously blinding ourselves to the real, animating issues in the Middle East and Africa.
Patricia Pearson - Daily Beast
Detailed and often riveting...a mighty offering.... Armstrong can be relied on to have done her homework and she has the anthropologist’s respect for the ‘otherness’ of other cultures . . . [Her] oeuvre is extensive, bringing a rare mix of cool-headed scholarship and impassioned concern for humanity to bear on the vexed topic of religion.... [And she] is nothing if not democratic in her exposition.
Salley Vickers - Guardian (UK)
Eloquent and empathetic, which is rare, and impartial, which is rarer.... [Armstrong] ranges across the great empires and leading faiths of the world. Fields of Blood is never less than absorbing and most of the time as convincing as it is lucid and robust.... [This] wonderful book certainly cleanses the mind. It may even do a little repair work on the heart.
Ferdinand Mount - Spectator (UK)
From Gilgamesh to bin Laden, [Armstrong covers] almost five millennia of human experience.... Supplying the context of what may look like religiously motivated episodes of violence, in order to show that religion as such was not the prime cause.... She is no doubt right to say that the aggression of a modern jihadist does not represent some timeless essence of religion, and that other political, economic and cultural factors loom large in the stories of how and why individuals become radicalized.
Noel Malcolm - Telegraph (UK)
Fluent and elegant, never quite long enough...as much about the nature of warfare as it is about faith.... [Armstrong] is taking issue with a cliché, the routine claim that religion, advertising itself as humanity’s finest expression, has been responsible for most of the woes of the species.... The Crusades, the Inquisition, the Wars of Religion, even modern "jihadi" terrorism: each is investigated.... The picture is bleak, but certainly accurate.... Exploitation and oppression continue...but these provide a challenge for the godly and the godless alike. The proposition, like the book, is noble.
Ian Bel - Sunday Herald (Scotland)
(Starred review.) Provocative and supremely readable...the comparative nature of [Armstrong’s] inquiry is refreshing.... Bracing as ever, [she] sweeps through religious history around the globe and over 4,000 years to explain the yoking of religion and violence and to elucidate the ways in which religion has also been used to counter violence.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) A well-written historical summary of what have traditionally been viewed as "religious" wars, showing convincingly that in pretty much all cases it was not so much religion as it was political issues that fueled the conflict. —Augustine J. Curley, Newark Abbey, NJ
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Armstrong again impresses with the breadth of her knowledge and the skill with which she conveys it to us.
Booklist
(Starred review.) Epic in scale...a comprehensive and erudite study of the history of violence in relation to religion.... Armstrong leads readers patiently through history...her writing is clear and descriptive, her approach balanced and scholarly.... An intriguing read, useful resource and definitive voice in defense of the divine in human culture.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for Fields of Blood:
1. Talk about Karen Armstrong's central theory that economics and politics have been the underlying causes of religious violence throughout history. Is her argument persuasive? Does her premise hold true today?
2. What have you learned about the various faiths that Armstrong covers—the three Abrahamic religions, as well as the Eastern religions? What surprised you or struck you as particularly noteworthy?
3. Discuss Armstrong's concept of the three different evolutionary stages of the human brain: "limbic," emotional, and reasoning. How does each of those stages play out in responses to violence and/or religion.
4. Is the Western world's belief in the separation of church and state a viable model for other cultures around the globe?
5. Does Fields of Blood give you cause for hope of peace?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, on and off line, with attribution. And if you have developed questions for your book club and would like to share them, we'd love to include them here—and give you credit. Thanks.)
Fifty Acres and a Poodle: A Story of Love, Livestock
and Finding Myself on a Farm
Jeanne Marie Laskas, 2000
Random House
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780553380156
Summary
Jeanne Marie Laskas had a dream of fleeing her otherwise happy urban life for fresh air and open space — a dream she would discover was about something more than that. But she never expected her fantasy to come true — until a summer afternoon’s drive in the country.
That’s when she and her boyfriend, Alex — owner of Marley the poodle — stumble upon the place she thought existed only in her dreams. This pretty-as-a-picture-postcard farm with an Amish barn, a chestnut grove, and breathtaking vistas is real ... and for sale. And it’s where she knows her future begins.
But buying a postcard — fifty acres of scenery — and living on it are two entirely different matters. With wit and wisdom, Laskas chronicles the heartwarming and heartbreaking stories of the colorful two- and four-legged creatures she encounters on Sweetwater Farm.
Against a backdrop of brambles, a satellite dish, and sheep, she tells a tender, touching, and hilarious tale about life, love, and the unexpected complications of having your dream come true. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1958
• Where—Western Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—M.F.A., University of Pittsburgh
• Currently—lives in Scenery Hill, Pennsylvania
Jeannne Marie Laskas is a columnist for the Washington Post Magazine, a GQ correspondent, and the author of Fifty Acres and a Poodle and the award-winning The Exact Same Moon.
A professor in the creative writing program at the University of Pittsburgh, she also writes the "My Life as a Mom" column for Ladies Home Journal. She lives with her husband and two children at Sweetwater Farm in Scenery Hill, Pennsylvania (From the publishers.)
Book Reviews
A delightful memoir about love and relocation... [by] an accomplished journalist and also a deft storyteller.... Hilarious....a pleasurable read indeed.
Newsday
Humorous...this true-life tale charts a big-city girl’s transformation to farm gal.
People
Jeanne Marie Laskas is the thinking woman’s Erma Bombeck ... [with] a talent for finding wisdom in daily life.... Even the most entrenched urbanite will be charmed by this book.
Time
One damn fine writer...a charming memoir about buying a farm in the country.
Esquire
In this spunky memoir of a dream come true, Laskas (columnist for the Washington Post Magazine, author of The Balloon Lady and Other People I Know, etc.) recounts her first year of living the country life after buying a farm. Before the move, Laskas lived comfortably with her beloved cat, Bob, and her mutt, Betty, in a small house set on a quarter-acre plot only 15 minutes by bike from downtown Pittsburgh. Her boyfriend, Alex, a devoted urban dweller, was a shrink and owner of a pet poodle who lived separately from her in the city. Her childhood dream of living on a farm unexpectedly became a reality after she found the embodiment of her dream—complete with a barn, a chestnut grove and breathtaking vistas—while looking at farms for sale as an excuse for a Sunday outing with Alex. Their first year together on the farm makes for an amusing and emotional tale, told in loving detail as Laskas recalls her own and Alex's adjustment from single, urban life to a committed relationship in wide-open spaces. She describes clearing the farm, meeting the neighbors, Alex's illness and the death of one of their animals with heartfelt honesty, offering many fresh pleasures for any city dweller who has ever dreamed of buying a farm.
Publishers Weekly
The back-to-the-land movement, as exemplified by the account in Helen Nearing's Living the Good Life, has often appealed to urbanites longing for a simpler, sustainable lifestyle. Magazine writer Laskas, too, had a farm dream, but hers had its roots in a desire to emulate the cuteness of the TV comedy Green Acres. So, at age 37, she purchased a farmhouse on 50 acres located an hour's drive from Pittsburgh and moved in with her commuting boyfriend. Her subtitle "Farm Lessons" is misleading; in reality, she merely moved her office to a rural area. There, she connected a plethora of telecommunications devices, added a few more pets to her household, and hired local handymen to do work around her property. Laskas's attempts at injecting humor into her narrative consistently fall flat. Her slang, repetition, and staccato sentences are as corny as her descriptions of her dogs' antics. She enjoys comparing herself and her boyfriend to various sitcom characters ("We've been behaving like Samantha and Darren") and, in boring detail, rehashes their dull conversations. City dwellers looking for farm lessons would get more inspiration from such memoirs as Frank Levering and Wanda Urbanska's Simple Living, about the couple's move to a Virginia farm, and Eugene Logsdon's You Can Go Home Again, about starting a homestead in Ohio. Not recommended. —Ilse Heidmann, San Marcos, TX
Library Journal
A professional, city-living woman up and moves herself and boyfriend to a farm, where everything is way different from what she's used to. Eventually, she and boyfriend find true happiness. It really happened, she says. The End.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Fifty Acres and a Poodle:
1. Is this a cautionary tale of "be careful what you wish for"? Or is it a "follow-your-bliss" tale?
2. Does Laskas really retreat to the country, given all her modern communications hook-ups?
3. What insights does Laskas gain from her experiences in the country?
4. Reviews of this book are mixed—some love it, find it funny, while others find it hackneyed and its humor clunky. Which side do you fall on?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
top of page (summary)
A Fighting Chance
Elizabeth Warren, 2014
Henry Holt & Co.
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781627790529
Summary
An unlikely political star tells the inspiring story of the two-decade journey that taught her how Washington really works—and really doesn’t
As a child in small-town Oklahoma, Elizabeth Warren yearned to go to college and then become an elementary school teacher—an ambitious goal, given her family’s modest means. Early marriage and motherhood seemed to put even that dream out of reach, but fifteen years later she was a distinguished law professor with a deep understanding of why people go bankrupt. Then came the phone call that changed her life: could she come to Washington DC to help advise Congress on rewriting the bankruptcy laws?
Thus began an impolite education into the bare-knuckled, often dysfunctional ways of Washington. She fought for better bankruptcy laws for ten years and lost. She tried to hold the federal government accountable during the financial crisis but became a target of the big banks. She came up with the idea for a new agency designed to protect consumers from predatory bankers and was denied the opportunity to run it. Finally, at age 62, she decided to run for elective office and won the most competitive—and watched—Senate race in the country.
In this passionate, funny, rabble-rousing book, Warren shows why she has chosen to fight tooth and nail for the middle class—and why she has become a hero to all those who believe that America’s government can and must do better for working families. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 22, 1949
• Where—Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA
• Education—B.S., University of Houston; J.D., Rutgers University
• Currently—lives in Washington, DC and Massachusetts
Elizabeth Ann Warren (nee Herring) is an American academic and politician, who is the senior United States Senator from Massachusetts and a member of the Democratic Party. She was previously a Harvard Law School professor specializing in bankruptcy law. Warren is an active consumer protection advocate whose work led to the conception and establishment of the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She has written a number of academic and popular works, and is a frequent subject of media interviews regarding the American economy and personal finance.
In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, Warren served as chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel created to oversee the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). She later served as Assistant to the President and Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under President Barack Obama. In the late 2000s, she was recognized by publications such as the National Law Journal and the Time 100 as an increasingly influential public policy figure.
In September 2011, Warren announced her candidacy for the U.S. Senate, challenging Republican incumbent Scott Brown. She won the general election on November 6, 2012, to become the first female Senator from Massachusetts. She was assigned to the Senate Special Committee on Aging; the Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee; and the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee.
Warren is in favor of increasing the minimum wage and has argued that if the minimum wage had followed increases in worker productivity in the United States, it would now be at least $22 an hour.
Early life, education, and family
Warren was born on June 22, 1949, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, to working class parents Pauline (née Reed) and Donald Jones Herring. She was their fourth child, with three older brothers. When she was twelve, her father, a janitor, had a heart attack—which led to many medical bills, as well as a pay cut because he could not do his previous work. Eventually, this led to the loss of their car from failure to make loan payments. To help the family finances, her mother found work in the catalog-order department at Sears and Elizabeth began working as a waitress at her aunt's restaurant.
She became a star member of the debate team at Northwest Classen High School and won the title of "Oklahoma's top high-school debater" while competing with debate teams from high schools throughout the state. She also won a debate scholarship to George Washington University at the age of 16. Initially aspiring to be a teacher, she left GWU after two years to marry her high-school boyfriend, Jim Warren.
She moved to Houston with her husband, who was a NASA engineer. There she enrolled in the University of Houston and was graduated in 1970 with a degree in speech pathology and audiology. For a year, she taught children with disabilities in a public school, based on an "emergency certificate," as she had not taken the education courses required for a regular teaching certificate.
Warren and her husband moved to New Jersey for his work where, after becoming pregnant with their first child, she decided to become a stay-at-home mom. After her daughter turned two, Warren enrolled at the Rutgers School of Law–Newark. She worked as a summer associate at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft. Shortly before her graduation in 1976, Warren became pregnant with her second child, and began to work as a lawyer from home, writing wills and doing real estate closings.
After having two children, Amelia and Alexander, she and Jim Warren divorced in 1978. In 1980, Warren married Bruce Mann, a Harvard law professor, but retained the surname, Warren.
Political affiliation
Warren voted as a Republican for many years saying, "I was a Republican because I thought that those were the people who best supported markets." She states that in 1995 she began to vote Democratic because she no longer believed that to be true, but she says that she has voted for both parties because she believed that neither party should dominate.
Career
During the late-1970s, the 1980s, and the 1990s, Warren taught law at several universities throughout the country, while researching issues related to bankruptcy and middle-class personal finance. Warren taught at the Rutgers School of Law–Newark during 1977–1978, the University of Houston Law Center from 1978 to 1983, and the University of Texas School of Law from 1981 to 1987, in addition to teaching at the University of Michigan as a visiting professor in 1985 and as a research associate at the University of Texas at Austin from 1983 to 1987.
She joined the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1987 and became a tenured professor. She began teaching at Harvard Law School in 1992, as a visiting professor, and began a permanent position as Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law in 1995.
In 1995 Warren was asked to advise the National Bankruptcy Review Commission. She helped to draft the commission's report and worked for several years to oppose legislation intended to severely restrict the right of consumers to file for bankruptcy. Warren and others opposing the legislation were not successful; in 2005 Congress passed the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005.
From November 2006 to November 2010, Warren was a member of the FDIC Advisory Committee on Economic Inclusion. She is a member of the National Bankruptcy Conference, an independent organization that advises the U.S. Congress on bankruptcy law. She is a former Vice-President of the American Law Institute and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Public life
Warren has had a high public profile; she has appeared in the documentary films, Maxed Out and Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story. She has appeared numerous times on television programs including Dr. Phil and The Daily Show, and has been interviewed frequently on cable news networks and radio programs.
TARP oversight
On November 14, 2008, Warren was appointed by United States Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to chair the five-member Congressional Oversight Panel created to oversee the implementation of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act. The Panel released monthly oversight reports that evaluate the government bailout and related programs. During Warren's tenure, these reports covered foreclosure mitigation, consumer and small business lending, commercial real estate, AIG, bank stress tests, the impact of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) on the financial markets, government guarantees, the automotive industry, and other topics.
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
Warren was an early advocate for the creation of a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The bureau was established by the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act signed into law by President Obama in July 2010. In anticipation of the agency's formal opening, for the first year after the bill's signing, Warren worked on implementation of the bureau as a special assistant to the president. While liberal groups and consumer advocacy groups pushed for Obama to nominate Warren as the agency's permanent director, Warren was strongly opposed by financial institutions and by Republican members of Congress who believed Warren would be an overly zealous regulator.
Reportedly convinced that Warren could not win Senate confirmation as the bureau's first director, Obama turned to former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray and in January 2012, over the objections of Republican Senators, appointed Cordray to the post in a recess appointment.
2012 election - U.S. Senate
On September 14, 2011, Warren declared her intention to run for the Democratic nomination for the 2012 election in Massachusetts for the United States Senate. The seat had been won by Republican Scott Brown in a 2010 special election after the death of Ted Kennedy. A week later, a video of Warren speaking in Andover became popular on the internet. In it, Warren replies to the charge that asking the rich to pay more taxes is "class warfare," pointing out that no one grew rich in America without depending on infrastructure paid for by the rest of society, stating:
There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody.... You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.
President Barack Obama later echoed her sentiments in a 2012 election campaign speech.
Warren ran unopposed for the Democratic nomination, and won it on June 2, 2012, at the state Democratic convention with a record 95.77% of the votes of delegates. She was endorsed by the Governor of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick. Warren and her opponent Scott Brown agreed to engage in four televised debates, including one with a consortium of media outlets in Springfield and one on WBZ-TV in Boston.
Results by Municipality
Warren encountered significant opposition from business interests. In August 2012, Rob Engstrom, political director for the United States Chamber of Commerce, claimed that "no other candidate in 2012 represents a greater threat to free enterprise than Professor Warren." She nonetheless raised $39 million for her campaign, the most of any Senate candidate in 2012.
Warren received a primetime speaking slot at the 2012 Democratic National Convention, immediately before Bill Clinton, on the evening of September 5, 2012. Warren positioned herself as a champion of a beleaguered middle class that "has been chipped, squeezed, and hammered." According to Warren, "People feel like the system is rigged against them. And here's the painful part: They're right. The system is rigged." Warren said that Wall Street CEOs "wrecked our economy and destroyed millions of jobs" and that they "still strut around congress, no shame, demanding favors, and acting like we should thank them."
Native American controversy
In April 2012, the Boston Herald drew attention to Warren's law directory entries from 1986 to 1995, in which she had self-identified as having Native American ancestry. Because of these entries, Harvard Law School had added her to a list of minority professors in response to criticisms about a lack of faculty diversity. Warren said that she was unaware that Harvard had done so until she read about it in a newspaper. She said that Native American ancestry was a part of her family folklore.
The New England Historical Genealogical Society found no documentary proof of Warren having Native American lineage, but a spokesperson from the Oklahoma Historical Society said "finding a definitive answer about Native American heritage can be difficult, not only because of intermarriage, but also because some Native Americans opted not to be put on federal rolls, while others who were not Native American did put their names on rolls to get access to land."
Her ethnicity claims became the focus of the media's election coverage for a certain time, during which her opponents bought ads asking her for explanations and to "come clean about her motivations" and some members of the Cherokee Nation asked how her claim influenced universities interested in hiring her. Colleagues and supervisors at the schools where she had worked publicly supported her statement that she did not receive preferential treatment. In polls, 72% of voters said the issue would not impact their vote in the election.
Tenure
On November 6, 2012, Warren defeated incumbent Scott Brown with a total of 53.7% of the votes. She is the first woman ever elected to the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts, as part of a sitting U.S. Senate that has 20 female senators currently in office, the largest female U.S. Senate delegation in history, following the November 2012 elections. In December 2012, Warren was assigned a seat on the Senate Banking Committee, the committee that oversees the implementation of Dodd-Frank and other regulation of the banking industry. Warren was sworn in by Vice President Joe Biden on January 3, 2013. Upon John Kerry's resignation to become United States Secretary of State, Warren became the state's senior senator after having served for less than a month, making her the most junior senior senator.
At Warren's first Banking Committee hearing on February 14, 2013, she pressed several banking regulators to answer when they had last taken a Wall Street bank to trial and stated, "I'm really concerned that 'too big to fail' has become 'too big for trial.'" Videos of Warren's questioning became popular on the internet, amassing more than 1 million views in a matter of days. At a Banking Committee hearing in March, Warren questioned Treasury Department officials why criminal charges were not brought against HSBC for its money laundering practices. With her questions being continually dodged and her visibly upset, Warren then compared money laundering to drug possession, saying "if you’re caught with an ounce of cocaine, the chances are good you’re going to go to jail... But evidently, if you launder nearly a billion dollars for drug cartels and violate our international sanctions, your company pays a fine and you go home and sleep in your own bed at night."
In May, Warren sent letters to Justice Department, Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Federal Reserve, questioning their decisions that settling rather than going to court would be more fruitful.
In May 2013, Warren introduced her first bill, the Bank on Student Loans Fairness Act, which would allow students to take out government education loans at the same rate that banks such as Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan Chase pay to borrow from the federal government. Suggesting that students should get "the same great deal that banks get," Warren proposed that new student borrowers be able to take out a federally subsidized loan at 0.75%, the rate paid by banks, compared with the current 3.4% student loan rate. Endorsing her bill days after its introduction, Independent Senator from Vermont Bernie Sanders stated: "the only thing wrong with this bill is that [she] thought of it and I didn't" on The Thom Hartmann Program. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 5/12/2014.)
Book Reviews
Warren, the freshman senator from Massachusetts turned Democratic rock star, serves up a frank and lively account of how she became the banking and finance industry's fiercest nemesis.... The book is more memoir than manifesto; Warren emerges as a committed advocate with real world sensibility, who tasted tough economic times at an early age and did not forget its bitterness.
Publishers Weekly
In the world of ordinary citizens vs. big banks, U.S. senator Warren sees the match as the battle between David and Goliath. She warns readers that often the story doesn't have a happy ending and that sometimes it ends with David getting the slingshot shoved down his throat—sideways. —Jill Ortner, SUNY Buffalo Libs.
Library Journal
A passionate memoir of one woman’s personal story and the larger story of corruption in financial circles and the need for reform that balances the interests of the American middle class against those of the corporate sector…. [Warren] offers a behind-the-scenes look at the political dealmaking and head-butting machinations in efforts to restore the nation’s financial system.
Booklist
In this engaging memoir, Massachusetts Sen. Warren introduces her family and recounts the battles that shaped her career as a teacher and politician.... A frankly partisan memoir that provides shrewd insights into both national politics and the state of the middle class.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)
Finding Tipperary Mary
Phyllis Whitsell, 2015
Mirror Books
244 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781910335338
Summary
Finding Tipperary Mary, is the astonishing first person account of Phyllis Whitsell’s search for the mother who left her in a Catholic orphanage in Birmingham.
While struggling to fit in with her adoptive family, growing up, becoming a nurse and starting a family of her own, Phyllis longed to discover the missing pieces of her early life.
Her search to learn more about her mother—and the reasons for abandoning her, led to a remarkable journey where the two women’s lives crossed each other unknowingly. When they both eventually sat down in the same room together, the circumstances were extraordinary, moving and ultimately life-changing.
The book touches on topical issues such as adoption, alcoholism, abuse, dementia and forgiveness. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—May, 18 1956
• Where—Coventry, England, UK
• Education—R.N., City Hospital, Birmingham
• Currently—lives in Birmingham, England
Phyllis Whitsell British author. She is also a registered nurse who has worked in most hospital departments from A&E to midwifery as well as community nursing. Phyllis now cares for dementia patients in her home town of Birmingham.
She has three grown up children and enjoys travelling, particularly to Greece where she does most of her writing. Finding Tipperary Mary is her first book, painting a personal view of growing up in an orphanage in the 1950s, then as an adopted child and student nurse in Birmingham in the '60s and '70s. (From the author.)
Book Reviews
What an extraordinary story....very moving indeed!
Vanessa Feltz - BBC Radio 2, Jeremy Vine Show
Discussion Questions
1. Did the challenges Phyllis and / or Bridget faced strike a chord with your own childhood?
2. How did the actions of Bridget make you feel?
3. What observations about English society are made in the book?
4. What is different from your own culture? What do you find most surprising, intriguing or difficult to understand?
5. What is the central idea discussed in the book? What issues or ideas does the author explore? Are they personal, sociological, global, political, economic, spiritual, medical, or scientific
6. Talk about specific memorable passages that struck you as significant—or interesting, profound, amusing, illuminating, disturbing, sad...?
7. What have you learned after reading this book? Has it broadened your perspective about a difficult issue—personal or societal? Has it introduced you to a culture in another country?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Fire in Paradise: An American Tragedy
Alistair Gee, Dani Anguiano, 2020
W.W. Norton
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781324005148
Summary
The harrowing story of the most destructive American wildfire in a century.
There is no precedent in postwar American history for the destruction of the town of Paradise, California. On November 8, 2018, the community of 27,000 people was swallowed by the ferocious Camp Fire, which razed virtually every home and killed at least 85 people.
The catastrophe seared the American imagination, taking the front page of every major national newspaper and top billing on the news networks. It displaced tens of thousands of people, yielding a refugee crisis that continues to unfold.
Fire in Paradise is a dramatic and moving narrative of the disaster based on hundreds of in-depth interviews with residents, firefighters and police, and scientific experts.
Alastair Gee and Dani Anguiano are California-based journalists who have reported on Paradise since the day the fire began. Together they reveal the heroics of the first responders, the miraculous escapes of those who got out of Paradise, and the horrors experienced by those who were trapped.
Their accounts are intimate and unforgettable, including…
• the local who left her home on foot as fire approached while her 82-year-old father stayed to battle it;
• the firefighter who drove into the heart of the inferno in his bulldozer;
• the police officer who switched on his body camera to record what he thought would be his final moments as the flames closed in;
• the mother who, less than 12 hours after giving birth in the local hospital, thought she would die in the chaotic evacuation with her baby in her lap.
Gee and Anguiano also explain the science of wildfires, write powerfully about the role of the power company PG&E in the blaze, and describe the poignant efforts to raise Paradise from the ruins.
This is the story of a town at the forefront of a devastating global shift—of a remarkable landscape sucked ever drier of moisture and becoming inhospitable even to trees, now dying in their tens of millions and turning to kindling.
It is also the story of a lost community, one that epitomized a provincial, affordable kind of Californian existence that is increasingly unattainable.
It is, finally, a story of a new kind of fire behavior that firefighters have never witnessed before and barely know how to handle. What happened in Paradise was unprecedented in America. Yet according to climate scientists and fire experts, it will surely happen again. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Alastair Gee is an award-winning editor and reporter at the Guardian who has also written for the New Yorker online, the New York Times, and the Economist. Gee lives in New York City.
Dani Anguiano writes for the Guardian and was formerly a reporter for the Chico Enterprise-Record, where she covered Butte County, including Chico and Paradise. Having lived in Butte County for a decade, Anguiano now resides in the San Francisco Bay area.
(Bios from the publisher.)
Book Reviews
The heart of the book… is the individual stories of bravery and tragedy that played out in Paradise…. The horror of the fire’s relentless advance is viscerally evoked, although the details sometimes verge on unbearable…. The authors temper the horror with stories of heroism and rescue…. [Fire in Paradise] has the narrative propulsion and granular detail of the best breaking-news disaster journalism…. The main takeaway from their book is sobering:… we will likely see more fires as destructive as the one in Paradise.
Rachel Monroe - New York Times Book Book Review
[T]ense and detailed…. Gee and Anguiano vividly describe the conflagration without sensationalizing it…. This impressive report makes a convincing case that such tragedies as the Camp Fire are not a freak occurrence, but a glimpse of the future.
Publishers Weekly
[A] gripping, in-depth account of the Camp Fire that devastated Paradise, CA…. A vividly descriptive, compelling, well-researched, page-turning work of narrative nonfiction, both heartbreaking and uplifting. —Sue O'Brien, Downers Grove, IL
Library Journal
Drawing heavily on the powerful interviews they conducted at the time and in the stunned aftermath, [Gee and Anguiano] have created a gripping account of the fire and how it affected the community.
Booklist
[A] powerful book debut… [drawing on] extensive reporting to produce a tense, often moving narrative about the fire that destroyed the northern California town of Paradise.… A riveting narrative that provides further compelling evidence for the urgency of environmental stewardship.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for FIRE IN PARADISE … then take off on your own:
1. Talk about the causes of the wild fire, both the immediate and underlying causes.
2. (Follow-up to Question 1) What role did Pacific Gas and Electric play? Is the near-villainy that the authors tend to ascribe to the utility deserved or unfairly placed?
3. Discuss the many individual accounts included in Gee and Anguiano's account. Which stories do you find most horrific or most tragic—and which of them illustrate great courage, even heroism. Consider not only residents, old and young, but first responders, doctors, and nurses, and even the drivers stuck in traffic.
4. Talk about the town's preparedness to avert such a disaster, its evacuation plan and emergency alert system. What happened to a town that seemed to be so well prepared?
5. What do the authors suggest will be the long-term future for northern California and towns like Paradise?
6. Should Paradise be rebuilt?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
First Family: Abigail and John Adams
Joseph J. Ellis, 2010
Knopf Doubleday
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307269621
Summary
The Pulitzer Prize–winning, best-selling author of Founding Brothers and His Excellency brings America’s preeminent first couple to life in a moving and illuminating narrative that sweeps through the American Revolution and the republic’s tenuous early years.
John and Abigail Adams left an indelible and remarkably preserved portrait of their lives together in their personal correspondence: both Adamses were prolific letter writers (although John conceded that Abigail was clearly the more gifted of the two), and over the years they exchanged more than twelve hundred letters. Joseph J. Ellis distills this unprecedented and unsurpassed record to give us an account both intimate and panoramic; part biography, part political history, and part love story.
Ellis describes the first meeting between the two as inauspicious—John was twenty-four, Abigail just fifteen, and each was entirely unimpressed with the other. But they soon began a passionate correspondence that resulted in their marriage five years later.
Over the next decades, the couple were separated nearly as much as they were together. John’s political career took him first to Philadelphia, where he became the boldest advocate for the measures that would lead to the Declaration of Independence. Yet in order to attend the Second Continental Congress, he left his wife and children in the middle of the war zone that had by then engulfed Massachusetts. Later he was sent to Paris, where he served as a minister to the court of France alongside Benjamin Franklin. These years apart stressed the Adamses’ union almost beyond what it could bear: Abigail grew lonely, while the Adams children suffered from their father’s absence.
John was elected the nation’s first vice president, but by the time of his reelection, Abigail’s health prevented her from joining him in Philadelphia, the interim capital. She no doubt had further reservations about moving to the swamp on the Potomac when John became president, although this time he persuaded her. President Adams inherited a weak and bitterly divided country from George Washington. The political situation was perilous at best, and he needed his closest advisor by his side: “I can do nothing,” John told Abigail after his election, “without you.”
In Ellis’s rich and striking new history, John and Abigail’s relationship unfolds in the context of America’s birth as a nation. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1943
• Where—USA
• Education—B.A. College of William and Mary; M.A., Ph.D.,
Yale University
• Awards—Pulitzer Prize, 2001; National Book Award, 1997
• Currently—Amherst Massachusetts, USA
Joseph J. Ellis is the Ford Foundation Professor of History at Mount Holyoke College. Educated at the College of William and Mary and Yale University, he served as a captain in the army and taught at West Point before coming to Mount Holyoke in 1972. He was dean of the faculty there for ten years.
Among his previous books are Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams, Founding Brothers, and American Sphinx, which won the 1997 National Book Award. He lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, with his wife, Ellen, and their three sons. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
We may not learn anything appreciably new about the Adams family, per se, but in First Family Mr. Ellis employs his narrative gifts to draw a remarkably intimate portrait of John and Abigail s marriage as it played out against the momentous events that marked the birth of a nation.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times
Written with the grace and style one expects from the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Founding Brothers...John Adams could not have a better biographer.
Los Angeles Times
Ellis’s strength is his ability to portray historical icons as real human beings, and his talent remains sharp.... Ellis has made himself into a sort of bard of our early Republic, and [First Family] is a fitting addition to his repertoire.
Anne Bartlett - Miami Herald
The author’s fluid style penetrates a correspondence studded with classical references, political dish, felicitous turns of phrases and unvarnished pleadings of affection and anxiety. America’s first power couple enjoyed, teased and rescued each other during 54 years of marriage.
John E. Lazarus - Newark Star-Ledger
Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Ellis (Founding Brothers) gives "the premier husband-wife team in all American history" starring roles in an engrossing romance. His Abigail has an acute intellect, but is not quite a protofeminist heroine: her ambitions are limited to being a mother and helpmeet, and in the iconic correspondence she often strikes the traditional pose of a neglected wife who sacrifices her happiness by giving up her husband to the call of duty. The author's more piquant portrait of John depicts an insecure, mercurial, neurotic man stabilized by Abigail's love and advice. Ellis's implicit argument—that the John/Abigail partnership lies at the foundation of the Adams family's public achievements--is a bit over-played, and not always to the advantage of the partnership: "Her judgment was a victim of her love for John…," Ellis writes of Abigail's support for the Alien and Sedition Acts, the ugliest blot on John's presidency, all of which explains little and excuses less. Still, Ellis's supple prose and keen psychological insight give a vivid sense of the human drama behind history's upheavals.
Publishers Weekly
On the heels of Woody Holton's prize-winning Abigail Adams, renowned historian Ellis (history, Mount Holyoke Coll.) returns to the well-trod ground of the founding era, this time shifting his focus to America's "first family" and political dynasty, the Adamses. Bringing his talents for narrative writing to the task, Ellis recounts the compelling relationship that included an awkward courtship and a life of sacrifice along with raising a family and constructing a legacy. However, here—unlike in Edith B. Gelles's Abigail & John: Portrait of a Marriage and G.J. Barker-Benfield's forthcoming Abigail & John Adams: The Americanization of Sensibility—Abigail is frequently relegated to the sidelines as the narrative becomes yet another biography of John. And there is nothing new here. Verdict: Lacking the intellectual depth of Ellis's previous American Sphinx and the originality of his Founding Brothers, his new book nevertheless imparts a poignant tale. Biography buffs who haven't yet read about John and Abigail may well enjoy this; those familiar with the subject have no need for it. —Brian Odom, Pelham P.L., AL
Library Journal
Ellis is that rare professional historian who can eloquently convey both information and insight with remarkable clarity... he has once again given us a consistently engaging dual biography and love story as well as an insightful exploration of early American history. —Roger Bishop
Bookpage
In addition to looking at the strengths of the Adams’ marriage, the book examines the toll taken by their years apart and the misfortunes in the lives of all their children except John Quincy. Ellis has produced a very readable history of the nation’s founding as lived by these two. —Mary Ellen Quinn
Booklist
(Starred review) The author’s beautiful writing draws the reader wholly into this relationship, bringing new perspective to the historical importance of this enduring love story. An impeccable account of the politics, civics and devotion behind the Adams marriage.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The First Family:
1. Some reviewers say Ellis's book offers little new about Abigail and John Adams. Was it new to you? Have you learned something you didn't know before? Or is it rehashing old ground...things you've already read about the couple and their role in history? If you've read other works on the Adamses, how does this book compare?
2. The marriage of John and Abigail Adams is one of the most famous in U.S. history. What is it that draws the two to one another? Talk about their relationship as Ellis portrays it. What makes it work? What are its weak points ... and its strengths? Who was the more independent ... and who the more dependent—either...or neither?
3. Does the Adams marriage offer any lessons to those of us in the 21st century? Can we learn from a marriage that occurred over 200 years ago when cultural expectations were very different? How would you compare their relationship to one another with your own relationship(s)?
4. What does Ellis mean by "the paradox of proximity"?
5. How supportive is Abigail of John's growing political involvement and ambitions? What does she reveal in letters to friends and relatives? What affect does John's choice of career have on her and on their marriage? Male or female, how would your partner's absences and political involvements affect you?
6. Talk about how Ellis presents John's famous temper and the possible reasons for it. How would you describe John Adams? Was he justified in his mistrust of his colleagues...or are his constant suspicions a sign of a deeper paranoia?
7. Describe Abigail Adams. Was she a feminist...or a forerunner of feminists? If so, why so...if not, why not?
8. What kind of parents are John and Abigail Adams? What about their clear favoritism of John Quincy?
9. The Jefferson-Adams friendship and enmity is long famous. Talk about that relationship, it's dissolution and the later reconciliation? What prompted the friendship...what dissolved it? How does this book affect your attitude toward Jefferson, a famously enigmatic figure?
10. Talk about the press in the early days of the nation—its reflection, even fueling, of a deep political divisiveness. Are there similarities to today's media coverage of politics? Or not.
11. In what way does Ellis take sides in the Adams-Hamilton debate. How does Hamilton come across in Ellis's portrayal of him?
12. Consider watching clips from the 2008 PBS John Adams mini-series, based on David McCullough's 2001 book, John Adams. The series stars Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney. It's excellent! Make comparisons to Ellis's book.
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers
Loung Ung, 2000
HarperCollins
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780060856267
Summary
From a childhood survivor of Cambodia's brutal Pol Pot regime comes an unforgettable narrative of war crimes and desperate actions, the unnerving strength of a small girl and her family, and their triumph of spirit.
Until the age of five, Lounge Ung lived in Phnom Penh, one of seven children of a high-ranking government official. She was a precocious child who loved the open city markets, fried crickets, chicken fights, and sassing her parents. While her beautiful mother worried that Loung was a troublemaker—that she stomped around like a thirsty cow—her beloved father knew Lounge was a clever girl.
When Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge army stormed into Phnom Penh in April 1975, Ung's family fled their home and moved from village to village to hide their identity, their education, their former life of privilege. Eventually, the family dispersed in order to survive.
Because Lounge was resilient and determined, she was trained as a child soldier in a work camp for orphans, while other siblings were sent to labor camps. As the Vietnamese penetrated Cambodia, destroying the Khmer Rouge, Loung and her surviving siblings were slowly reunited.
Bolstered by the shocking bravery of one brother, the vision of the others—and sustained be her sister's gentle kindness amid brutality—Loung forged on to create for herself a courageous new life. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1970
• Where—Phnom Penh, Cambodia
• Awards—Excellence in Non-Fiction Award,
Pacific/Asian American Libraries Assn.
• Currently—lives near Cleveland, Ohio USA
Loung Ung is a national spokesperson for the Campaign for a Landmine Free World, a program of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation. She is the author of Lucky Child: A Daughter of Cambodia Reunites with the Sister She Left Behind, and she lives with her husband in Ohio. (From the publisher.)
More
Loung Ung is a Cambodian American human-rights activist, an internationally-recognized lecturer, and the national spokesperson for the Campaign for a Landmine-Free World. Between 1997 and 2003 she served in the same capacity for the "International Campaign to Ban Landmines", which is affiliated with the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation.
Ung was born in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, the sixth of seven children and the third of four girls, to Sem Im Ung and Ay Chourng Ung. Her actual birthdate is unknown; the Khmer Rouge destroyed many of the birth records of the inhabitants of cities in Cambodia. At ten years of age, she escaped from Cambodia as a survivor of what became known as "the Killing Fields" during the reign of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime. After emigrating to the United States and adjusting to her new country, she wrote two books which related her life experiences from 1975 through 2003.
Ung's first memoir, First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers, details her experiences in Cambodia from 1975 until 1980:
"From 1975 to 1979—through execution, starvation, disease, and forced labor—the Khmer Rouge systematically killed an estimated two million Cambodians, almost a fourth of the country's population. This is a story of survival: my own and my family's. Though these events constitute my own experience, my story mirrors that of millions of Cambodians. If you had been living in Cambodia during this period, this would be your story too."
Published in the United States in 2000, it became a national bestseller, and in 2001 it won the award for "Excellence in Adult Non-fiction Literature" from the Asian/Pacific American Librarians' Association. First They Killed My Father has subsequently been published in twelve countries in nine languages.
Her second memoir, Lucky Child: A Daughter of Cambodia Reunites with the Sister She Left Behind, chronicles her adjustment to life in the U.S. with and without her family, and the experiences of her surviving family members in Cambodia during the ensuing warfare between Vietnamese troops and the Khmer Rouge. It covers the period of 1980 until 2003, and HarperCollins published it in 2005.
In both of her memoirs, Ung wrote in the first person and, for the most part, in the present tense, describing the events and circumstances as if they were unfolding before the reader's eyes: "I wanted [the readers] to be there." (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
During the three years that the Khmer Rouge tried to create an agrarian utopia in Cambodia, two million people are believed to have died from execution, starvation and disease. Two million—a horrifying number, but so large as to seem almost an abstraction, like the distance to the nearest star. The number gains far greater psychological force with [this] new memoirs, whose author, a young girl in the Cambodia of the time, describes the terror and losses she suffered during the Khmer Rouge revolution in wrenchingly particular terms... [Ung] tells her stories straightforwardly, vividly, and without any strenuous effort to explicate their importance, allowing the stories themselves to create their own impact.
New York Times
A riveting memoir...an important, moving work that those who have suffered cannot afford to forget and those who have been spared cannot afford to ignore.
San Francisco Chronicle
In 1975, Ung, now the national spokesperson for the Campaign for a Landmine-Free World, was the five-year-old child of a large, affluent family living in Phnom Penh, the cosmopolitan Cambodian capital. As extraordinarily well-educated Chinese-Cambodians, with the father a government agent, her family was in great danger when the Khmer Rouge took over the country and throughout Pol Pot's barbaric regime. Her parents' strength and her father's knowledge of Khmer Rouge ideology enabled the family to survive together for a while, posing as illiterate peasants, moving first between villages, and then from one work camp to another. The father was honest with the children, explaining dangers and how to avoid them, and this, along with clear sight, intelligence and the pragmatism of a young child, helped Ung to survive the war. Her restrained, unsentimental account of the four years she spent surviving the regime before escaping with a brother to Thailand and eventually the United States is astonishing—not just because of the tragedies, but also because of the immense love for her family that Ung holds onto, no matter how she is brutalized. She describes the physical devastation she is surrounded by but always returns to her memories and hopes for those she loves. Her joyful memories of life in Phnom Penh are close even as she is being trained as a child soldier, and as, one after another, both parents and two of her six siblings are murdered in the camps. Skillfully constructed, this account also stands as an eyewitness history of the period, because as a child Ung was so aware of her surroundings, and because as an adult writer she adds details to clarify the family's moves and separations. Twenty-five years after the rise of the Khmer Rouge, this powerful account is a triumph.
Publishers Weekly
In this "Age of Holocaust," Ung's memoir of her childhood in Pol Pot's Cambodia offers a haunting parallel to the writings of Anne Frank in the Europe of Adolf Hitler. A precocious, sparkling youngster, Ung was driven from Phnom Penh in April 1975 to relatives in the countryside, then to Khmer Rouge work camps. Here she recalls her fear, hunger, emotional pain, and loneliness as her parents and a sister were murdered and another sister died from disease. By the 1979 freeing of Cambodia by Vietnamese troops, she was a hardened, vengeful nine year old. Although written nearly 20 years later, this painful narrative retains an undeniable sense of immediacy. The childlike memories are adroitly placed in a greater context through older family members' descriptions of the political and social milieu. Recommended for public and academic libraries. —John F. Riddick, Central Michigan Univ. Lib., Mt. Pleasant.
Library Journal
Ung was a headstrong, clever child who was a delight to her father, a high-ranking government official in Phnom Penh. She was only five when the Khmer Rouge stormed the city and her family was forced to flee. They sought refuge in various camps, hiding their wealth and education, always on the move and ever fearful of being betrayed. After 20 months, Ung's father was taken away, never to be seen again. Her story of starvation, forced labor, beatings, attempted rape, separations, and the deaths of her family members is one of horror and brutality. The first-person account of Cambodia under the reign of Pol Pot will be read not only for research papers but also as a tribute to a human spirit that never gave up. YAs will applaud Ung's courage and strength. —Katherine Fitch, Rachel Carson Middle School, Fairfax, VA
School Library Journal
A rare, chilling eyewitness account of the bloody aftermath of the Khmer Rouge's merciless victory over the Cambodian government in April 1975, as seen through the eyes of a precocious child. The authornational spokesperson for the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation's``Campaign for a Landmine Free World program, whose activities won her the 1997 Nobel Peace Prizewas, in 1970, the five-year-old daughter of a Cambodian government official when her loving, close-knit, middle-class family of seven children first learned of the Khmer Rouges approach to their hometown of Phnom Penh. The family fled, constantly moving, trying to hide their identity as educated urban people who would be regarded by their agrarian enemies as exploiters. Eventually they were captured, robbed, beaten, half-starved, and sent to forced-labor camps. In time, Loung's father and mother were killed, her older sister and baby sister died of malnutrition and disease, and her older brothers and she were recruited to serve the Khmer Rouge. The genocidal fury endured by Loungs family and other families caused a widespread and lasting hatred of the Khmer Rouge. Her surviving relatives split up to avoid being executed together, and through their courage and resourcefulness managed to stay alive despite the bloodbath. In time, Vietnamese forces invaded Cambodia and Pol Pot's forces were destroyed, but not before millions of Cambodians perished. Ung, her older brother, and his family were rescued by a humanitarian group and came to the US to build a new life; ultimately, the surviving family members would meet again. A harrowing true story of the nightmare world that was Cambodia in those terrible times of mass murder and slow death through overwork, starvation, and disease. Will affect even readers who cannot find Ungs homeland on a map.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What fundamental problems existed in the Khmer Rouge's plan that caused the destruction of so many lives? Were there any values that the Khmer Rouge claimed to hold that you share?
2. What impact did the narrator's child's voice have on your experience as a reader? How would you characterize the transformation that takes place in her narrative voice throughout the story?
3. How did it affect your reading of the book that you were aware of Loung's father's impending death long before her?
4. Would you describe Loung as a feminist? How did the experiences of the Ung family differ during the war because of gender?
5. What was your impression of the final separation, both geographic and cultural, that Loung had with her surviving family? Did you sympathize with her eventual desire to assimilate into American culture, or had you expected her to be more aggressive about pursuing her family relationships earlier on?
6. Loung saw herself as a "strong" person, as did many other people in the book, and was eventually drafted into a soldier training camp as a result. What are the qualities of a survivor? How does one reconcile compassion with a will to survive? What qualities enabled her gentle sister Chou to survive as well?
7. With armed struggle a reality of life for people all over the world both past and present, how does one draw the line as to which means are ethical and unethical for coping with it, such as the author's current campaign against the use of landmines? Are there other tools of war that you believe should be broadly banned?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital
Sheri Fink, 2013
Crown Publishing
576 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307718969
Summary
Pulitzer Prize winner Sheri Fink’s landmark investigation of patient deaths at a New Orleans hospital ravaged by Hurricane Katrina—and her suspenseful portrayal of the quest for truth and justice
In the tradition of the best investigative journalism, physician and reporter Sheri Fink reconstructs 5 days at Memorial Medical Center and draws the reader into the lives of those who struggled mightily to survive and to maintain life amid chaos.
After Katrina struck and the floodwaters rose, the power failed, and the heat climbed, exhausted caregivers chose to designate certain patients last for rescue. Months later, several health professionals faced criminal allegations that they deliberately injected numerous patients with drugs to hasten their deaths.
Five Days at Memorial, the culmination of six years of reporting, unspools the mystery of what happened in those days, bringing the reader into a hospital fighting for its life and into a conversation about the most terrifying form of health care rationing.
In a voice at once involving and fair, masterful and intimate, Fink exposes the hidden dilemmas of end-of-life care and reveals just how ill-prepared we are in America for the impact of large-scale disasters—and how we can do better. A remarkable book, engrossing from start to finish, Five Days at Memorial radically transforms your understanding of human nature in crisis. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1968-69 (?)
• Where—N/A
• Education—B.A., University of Michigan; Ph.D, M.D., Stanford University
• Awards—Pulitzer Prize-Journalism; National Magazine Award
• Currently— a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center,
Washington, D.C.
Sheri Fink is an American physician, journalist, and a reporter on subjects covering health, medicine and science. A 1990 graduate of the University of Michigan, she received Ph.D. and M.D. from Stanford University in 1998 and 1999.
Career
Dr Fink is a a senior fellow with Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and a staff reporter at ProPublica in New York. Her articles have appeared in a number of high profiled publications such as the New York Times, Discover and Scientific American.
She has contributed to the public radio news magazine Public Radio International (PRI)’s The World covering a number of topics including the global HIV/AIDS pandemic and international aid in development, conflict and disaster settings.
Her first book, War Hospital: A True Story of Surgery and Survival (2003), is about medical professionals under siege during the genocide in Srebrenica, Bosnia-Herzegovina. Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital, published in 2013, is an account of patient deaths at a New Orleans hospital ravaged by Hurricane Katrina. The book is based on her Pulitizer Prize winning 2009 article published at ProPublica.org and in the New York Times Magazine.
Awards
In 2010, she was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting for her article about the deadly choices faced at New Orleans' Memorial Hospital during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. She also won a 2010 National Magazine Award for Reporting for the article and was a finalist for the 2010 Michael Kelly Award. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/19/2013 .)
Book Reviews
Although she had the material for a gripping disaster story, Dr. Fink has slowed the narrative pulse to investigate situational ethics: what happens when caregivers steeped in medicine's supreme value, preserving life, face traumatic choices as the standards of civilization collapse. This approach is a literary gamble, demanding more of readers than a standard-issue medical thriller would. But Dr. Fink...more than delivers. She writes with a seasoned sense of how doctors and nurses improvise in emergencies, and about the ethical realms in which they work.... Sheri Fink has written an unforgettable story. Five Days at Memorial is social reporting of the first rank.
Jason Barry - New York Times
Though not present during the disastrous days, [Fink] interviewed more than 500 participants, from hospital executives to family members, prosecutors and ethicists, recording their comments and descriptions so meticulously that her gripping narrative captures not only the facts of the situation, but the thoughts of her witnesses and the feverishly unfolding disorder, confusion and tragedy. Her choice of sentence structure, the almost staccato voice, and the starkness of style and language reflect the circumstances so well that the reader cannot help being pulled into the discordant rhythms of those chaotic hours…The tone is...visceral and very appropriate to the atmosphere created by the storm and its consequences. What we have here is masterly reporting and the glow of fine writing.
Sherwin B. Nuland - New York Times Book Review
Fink has done a masterful reporting job, and Five Days at Memorial is often engrossing, particularly those pages that take readers inside the hospital...Fink’s book is essential reading for anyone who cares about New Orleans, the breakdown of order in disaster zones, and medical dilemmas under crisis circumstances.
Boston Globe
A triumph of journalism...Fink re-creates this world with mastery and sensitivity, revealing the full humanity of each character. Unlike post-storm commentary that jumped to black and white conclusions, painting the doctors as heroes or villains, Fink’s narrative wades through the muck and finds only real people making tough choices under circumstances the rest of us, if we’re lucky, will never experience
Houston Chronicle
Every page gives evidence of meticulous research, thousands of hours spent interviewing, prowling the halls at Memorial, reviewing legal documents and transcripts...[Fink] offers no easy answers, no rush to judgment. But she does deliver an amazing tale, as inexorable as a Greek tragedy and as gripping as a whodunit.
Dallas Morning News
Fink’s descriptions of the flooded hospital, her extensive interviews with those who were there, profiles of investigators and study of the history and ethics of triage and euthanasia come very close to a full airing of how a disaster can upset society’s usual ethical codes, and how that played out at New Orleans’ Memorial Medical Center....Fink has written a compelling and revealing account.
Seattle Times
In this astonishing blend of Pulitzer Prize–winning journalism (Fink, who also has an M.D. and Ph.D., won the award for the investigative reporting on which this book is based) and breathtaking narration, she chronicles the chaotic evacuation of the hospital and the agonizing ethical, physical, and emotional quandaries facing Memorial nurses and doctors, including a nightmarish triage process that led to the controversial decision to inject critically ill patients with fatal doses of morphine..
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Fink’s six years of research and more than 500 interviews yield a rich narrative full of complex characters, wrenching ethical dilemmas, and mounting suspense. General readers and medical professionals alike will finish the book haunted by the question, "What would I have done?"
Library Journal
(Starred review.) [Fink] offers a stunning re-creation of the storm, its aftermath, and the investigation that followed.... She evenhandedly compels readers to consider larger questions, not just of ethics but race, resources, history, and what constitutes the greater good.... And, crucially, she provides context, relating how other hospitals fared in similar situations. Both a breathtaking read and an essential book for understanding how people behave in times of crisis.z
Booklist
Pulitzer Prize–winning medical journalist/investigator Fink War Hospital, 2003 submits a sophisticated, detailed recounting of what happened at Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina. Fink draws those few days in the hospital’s life with a fine, lively pen, providing stunningly framed vignettes of activities in the hospital and sharp pocket profiles of many of the characters.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to get a discussion started for Five Days at Memorial:
1. To understand the pressures doctors and nurses faced, readers needed to know exactly what it felt like to be trapped in a sweltering hospital in a city that had descended into chaos. Do you think Sheri Fink does a good job of recreating those conditions?
2. What do you think of the behavior and decisions made by the medical staff at Memorial? Where you shocked by the lethal injections of morphine? According to Dr. Ewing Cook, "It was actually to the point where you were considering that you couldn’t just leave them; the humane thing would be to put ’em out.’’ What do you think?
3. What shocked, or disturbed, you the most? The actions of the staff? The unpreparedness (short-sightedness?) of the hospital? The horrific conditions everyone operated under?
4. How would you have fared under the conditions at New Orleans' Memorial?
5. What legal and ethical standards must doctors be expected to uphold in a disaster? Should they—or any professional—be held to the same standards that operate during normal conditions? In other words, is there a gray area in ethics when things go disastrously wrong?
6. In such situations as occured at Memorial, who should be saved first? Who should make those decisions?
7. Why did the local grand jury decline to bring charges against Anna Pou? Do you agree with its decision? To what degree should Pou be held accountable for her actions?
8. Ultimately, who is most responsible for the tragedy at Memorial Hospital? The hospital owners? The staff? The local, state, or federal government?
9. What lessons were learned from the hospital disaster at Memorial?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt
Michael Lewis, 2014
W.W. Norton & Co.
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780393244663
Summary
Michael Lewis returns to Wall Street to report on a high-tech predator stalking the equity markets.
Flash Boys is about a small group of Wall Street guys who figure out that the U.S. stock market has been rigged for the benefit of insiders and that, post–financial crisis, the markets have become not more free but less, and more controlled by the big Wall Street banks. Working at different firms, they come to this realization separately; but after they discover one another, the flash boys band together and set out to reform the financial markets. This they do by creating an exchange in which high-frequency trading—source of the most intractable problems—will have no advantage whatsoever.
The characters in Flash Boys are fabulous, each completely different from what you think of when you think “Wall Street guy.” Several have walked away from jobs in the financial sector that paid them millions of dollars a year. From their new vantage point they investigate the big banks, the world’s stock exchanges, and high-frequency trading firms as they have never been investigated, and expose the many strange new ways that Wall Street generates profits.
The light that Lewis shines into the darkest corners of the financial world may not be good for your blood pressure, because if you have any contact with the market, even a retirement account, this story is happening to you. But in the end, Flash Boys is an uplifting read. Here are people who have somehow preserved a moral sense in an environment where you don’t get paid for that; they have perceived an institutionalized injustice and are willing to go to war to fix it. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—October 15, 1960
• Where—New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
• Education—B.A., Princeton; M.B.A., London School of Economics
• Currently—Currently—lives in Berkeley, California
Michael Lewis is an American contemporary non-fiction author and financial journalist. His bestselling books include Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt (2014); The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine (2010); The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game (2006); Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (2003); and Liar's Poker (1989).
Background
Lewis was born in New Orleans to corporate lawyer J. Thomas Lewis and community activist Diana Monroe Lewis. He attended the private, nondenominational, co-educational college preparatory Isidore Newman School in New Orleans. Later, he attended Princeton University where he received a BA in art history in 1982 and was a member of the Ivy Club.
After graduating from Princeton, he went on to work with New York art dealer Daniel Wildenstein. Despite his degree in art history, he nonetheless wanted to break into Wall Street to make money. After leaving Princeton, he tried to find a finance job, only to be roundly rejected by every firm to which he applied. He then enrolled in the London School of Economics to pursue a Master's degree in economics.
While still in England, Lewis was invited to a banquet hosted by the Queen Mother at St. James's Palace. His cousin, Baroness Linda Monroe von Stauffenberg, one of the organizers of the banquet, purposely seated him next to the wife of the London Managing Partner of Salomon Brothers. The hope was that Lewis, just having obtained his master's degree, might impress her enough for her to suggest to her husband that Lewis be given a job with Salomon Bros.—which had previously turned him down. The strategy worked: Lewis was granted an interview and landed a job.
As a result of the job offer, Lewis moved to New York City for Salomon's training program. There, he was appalled at the sheer bravado of most of his fellow trainees and indoctrinated into the money culture of Salomon and Wall Street in general.
After New York, Lewis was shipped to the London office of Salomon Brothers as a bond salesman. Despite his lack of knowledge, he was soon handling millions of dollars in investment accounts. In 1987, he witnessed a near-hostile takeover of Salomon Brothers but survived with his job. However, growing disillusioned with his work, he eventually quit to write Liar's Poker and become a financial journalist.
Writing
Lewis described his experiences at Salomon and the evolution of the mortgage-backed bond in Liar's Poker (1989). In The New New Thing (1999), he investigated the then-booming Silicon Valley and discussed obsession with innovation.
Four years later, Lewis wrote Moneyball (2003), in which he investigated the success of Billy Beane and the Oakland A's. In August 2007, he wrote an article about catastrophe bonds entitled "In Nature's Casino" that appeared in the New York Times Magazine.
The Big Short, about a handful of scrappy investors who foresaw the 2007-08 subprime mortgage debacle, came out in 2010. Flash Boys, detailing high-speed trading in stock and other markets, was published in 2014. Like both The Big Short and Moneyball, the book features an underdog type who is ahead of the pack in understanding his industry.
Lewis has worked for The Spectator, New York Times Magazine, as a columnist for Bloomberg, as a senior editor and campaign correspondent to The New Republic, and a visiting fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. He wrote the "Dad Again" column for Slate. Lewis worked for Conde Nast Portfolio but in February 2009 left to join Vanity Fair, where he became a contributing editor.
Film
The film version of Moneyball, starring Brad Pitt, was successfully released in 2011. The Big Short, with its all-star cast—Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gossling, and Brad Pitt—came out in 2015 to top reviews.
Personal life
Lewis married Diane de Cordova Lewis, his girlfriend prior to his Salomon days. After several years, he was briefly married to former CNBC correspondent Kate Bohner, before marrying the former MTV reporter Tabitha Soren in 1997. Lewis lives with Tabitha, two daughters, and one son (Quinn, Dixie, and Walker) in Berkeley, California. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 1/11/2016.)
Book Reviews
[D]azzling… Because Mr. Lewis is at the helm finding clear, simple metaphors for even the most impenetrable financial minutiae, this tawdry tale should make sense to anyone. And so should its shock value. Flash Boys is guaranteed to make blood boil.
Janet Maslin - New York Times
When it comes to narrative skill, a reporter’s curiosity, and an uncanny instinct for the pulse of the zeitgeist, Lewis is a triple threat as he’s demonstrated in best-selling books like The Big Short and Moneyball. But those formidable talents are only intermittently on display in this ultimately unsatisfying probe of high-frequency traders, who may (or may not) be ripping off investors and destabilizing the global financial system.... Lewis might have pondered how frustrating it is for readers...to be told a story in which the villains aren’t named.
James B. Stewart - New York Times Book Review
Important to public debate about Wall Street… in exposing what one of his central characters calls the "Pandora's box of ridiculousness" that financial exchanges have become.
Philip Delves Broughton - Wall Street Journal
Michael Lewis is a genius, and his book will give high-frequency trading a much-needed turn under the microscope.
Kevin Roose - New York Magazine
A beautiful narrative, so well-written. You’ve got to get this.
Jon Stewart - Daily Show
Remarkable… Michael Lewis has a spellbinding talent for finding emotional dramas in complex, highly technical subjects.
Financial Times
Who knew high-frequency trading was such a sexy subject?
Bloomberg Business Week
Michael Lewis is one of the premier chroniclers of our age.
Huffington Post
Score one for the humans! Critics of high speed, computer-driven trading have a new champion.
CNN Money
If you own stock, you need to read Flash Boys… and then call your broker.
Entertainment Weekly
In 24 hours, I plowed through Michael Lewis' new blockbuster Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt, a book about the huge changes that have occurred in financial markets in the last three decades. It's compelling reading.
John Aziz - The Week
Flash Boys richly deserves to be the first chapter in a new discussion of market rules and abuses… Lewis raises troubling and necessary questions.
American Conservative
In his latest captivating expedition into the marketplace jungle, Lewis (Moneyball) explores how the rise of computerized stock exchanges and their attendant scams started a battle for the soul of Wall Street.... The result is an engrossing true-life morality play that unmasks the devil in the details of high finance.
Publishers Weekly
Kirkus Reviews
In trademark Lewis fashion, a data-rich but all-too-human tale of “heuristic data bullshit and other mumbo jumbo” in the service of gaming the financial system, courtesy of—yes, Goldman Sachs and company.... A riveting, maddening yarn that is causing quite a stir already, including calls for regulatory reform.
Discussion Questions
1. Does Michael Lewis do a good job of explaining the arcane practices of Wall Street high frequency trading? If you are not involved in the financial industry, do his explanations make sense to you.
2. Follow-up to Question 1: What are dark pools? Can you explain their role in this high stakes game?
3. Talk about the Wall Street personality "type" as experienced by Brad katsuyama, a Canadian. Do you believe it's a fair assessment...or an overly generalized one?
4. Talk about the skill set of the team that Katsuyama put together. Brad himself admits he was no computer wizard, and Ronan Ryan at one point had no idea what a millisecond was...and, when hired by Katsuyama, had no idea what he was to do. How was Katsuyama's group able to accomplish all they did?
5. What damage is caused by high-frequency trading? Or is it, perhaps, not as damaging as Lewis indicates? Defenders of the practice say it provides market liquidity and efficiency. And, mostly likely, the average investor hardly notices a few pennies here and there. What do you think? How does Lewis respond to defenders of the high-frequency trading?
6. Are there villains in this story? If so, who are they? Katsuyama doesn't want to name names. Why not? What about Goldman Sachs—what is its role?
7. What, if anything, should be done to halt the practice of high-frequency trades? Do you think anything will be done?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Fly Girls: How Five Daring Women Defied All Odds and Made Aviation History
Chuck O'Brien, 2018
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781328876645
Summary
The untold story of five women who fought to compete against men in the high-stakes national air races of the 1920s and 1930s — and won
Between the world wars, no sport was more popular, or more dangerous, than airplane racing. Thousands of fans flocked to multi‑day events, and cities vied with one another to host them.
The pilots themselves were hailed as dashing heroes who cheerfully stared death in the face.
Well, the men were hailed. Female pilots were more often ridiculed than praised for what the press portrayed as silly efforts to horn in on a manly, and deadly, pursuit.
Fly Girls recounts how a cadre of women banded together to break the original glass ceiling: the entrenched prejudice that conspired to keep them out of the sky.
O’Brien weaves together the stories of five remarkable women: Florence Klingensmith, a high‑school dropout who worked for a dry cleaner in Fargo, North Dakota; Ruth Elder, an Alabama divorcee; Amelia Earhart, the most famous, but not necessarily the most skilled; Ruth Nichols, who chafed at the constraints of her blue‑blood family’s expectations; and Louise Thaden, the mother of two young kids who got her start selling coal in Wichita.
Together, they fought for the chance to race against the men—and in 1936 one of them would triumph in the toughest race of all.
Like Hidden Figures and Girls of Atomic City, Fly Girls celebrates a little-known slice of history in which tenacious, trail-blazing women braved all obstacles to achieve greatness. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
• Education—Northwestern Unniversity
• Awards—Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism
• Currently—lives in New Hampshie
The New York Times Book Review has hailed Keith O'Brien for his "keen reportorial eye" and "lyrical" writing style. He has written two books: Outside Shot: Big Dreams, Hard Times, and One County's Quest for Basketball Greatness (2013) and Fly Girls: How Five Daring Women Defied All Odds and Made Aviation History (2018).
O'Brien has been a finalist for the PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sportswriting, and contributed to National Public Radio for more than a decade. His radio stories have appeared on NPR's All Things Considered, Morning Edition, and Weekend Edition, as well as Marketplace, Here & Now, Only a Game, and This American Life.
O'Brien has written for the New York Times, New York Times Magazine, Washington Post, Politico, Slate, Esquire.com, and the Oxford American, among others.
He is a former staff writer for both the Boston Globe and the New Orleans Times-Picayune. As a newspaper reporter, he won multiple awards, including the Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism.
O'Brien lives in New Hampshire with his wife and two children. (From Amazon. Retrieved 8/25/2018.)
Book Reviews
Exhilarating…vibrant.… O’Brien’s prose reverberates with fiery crashes, then stings with the tragedy of lives lost in the cockpit and sometimes, equally heartbreaking, on the ground.
Nathalia Holt - New York Times Book Review
Mr. O’Brien, a former reporter for the Boston Globe working in the tradition of Hidden Figures and The Girls of Atomic City, has recovered a fascinating chapter not just in feminism and aviation but in 20th-century American history.
Wall Street Journal
Keith O’Brien has brought these women—mostly long-hidden and forgotten—back into the light where they belong. And he’s done it with grace, sensitivity and a cinematic eye for detail that makes Fly Girls both exhilarating and heartbreaking.
USA Today
Let’s call it the Hidden Figures rule: If there’s a part of the past you thought was exclusively male, you’re probably wrong. Case in point are these stories of Amelia Earhart and other female pilots who fought to fly.
Time
A riveting account that puts us in the cockpit with Amelia Earhart and other brave women who took to the skies in the unreliable flying machines of the ’20s and ’30s.
People
[E]xciting…. This fast-paced, meticulously researched history will appeal to a wide audience both as an entertaining tale of bravery and as an insightful look at early aviation.
Publishers Weekly
O'Brien details in crisp and engaging writing how his subjects came to love aviation, along with their struggles and victories with flying, the rampant sexism they experienced, and the hard choices they faced regarding work and family.
Library Journal
In the decades between the world wars, women took to the skies as daring, record-breaking fliers.… O'Brien vividly recounts the dangers of early flight…. A vivid, suspenseful story of women determined to… fulfill their lofty dreams.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers Talking Points to help start a discussion for FLY GIRLS … then take off on your own:
1. Overall, how were female aviators treated in the 1920s and '30s? How were all women defined during that era; what were society's expectations for them?
2. Follow-up to Question 1: Did you find yourself becoming angry as you read of the fly girls' treatment at the hand of males? Consider the explanation about women crashing their planes (as did men): "Women are lacking in certain qualities that men possess." Or consider the debate about allowing women to fly while menstruating. What else did you find demeaning? If you came of age before the woman's movement took hold in the late 1960s and '70s, do any of those arguments sound familiar to you?
3. Spend time talking about the women aviators. Of the five—Ruth Nichols, Louise Thaden, Ruth Elder, Florence Klingensmith, and Amelia Earhart—whose story most engaged you? Are some struggles more impressive than others? Discuss the women's different backgrounds. Despite those differences, however, what did they share in common?
4. The women were all connected in one way or another. Talk about their relationships and the formation of the Ninety-Nines.
5. What was the state of aviation in the era between the two wars? Talk about flight technology and the dangers all fliers faced.
6. When Louise Thaden became the first woman to win "The Powder Puff Derby" (nice, huh?), Charles Lindbergh had little to say other than, well... "I haven't anything to say about that." What is your reaction to Lindbergh's response?
7. Author Keith O'Brien says of the fliers: "each of the women went missing in her own way." Why does he make that observation, and what does he mean by the word "missing" other than, like Amelia Earhart, missing literally over the ocean? In what ways did the other fliers go "missing."
8. In the New York Times Book Review, Nathalia Holt makes note of the book's title, Fly Girls, pointing out that "girls" is an often derogatory term used to equate serious, mature women with children. Do you think O'Brien used the term "girls" without thinking (as well as the fact that "girl" titles are a major publishing trend—see our LibBlog on the 200+ girl titles)? Or maybe he meant the title ironically?
9. Holt also notices the way O'Brien describes the women's physical attributes and the way their clothes drape their bodies or fit snugly. She posits that the focus on women's appearances goes against the very grain of the book. Is Holt overly sensitive …or has O'Brien fallen back on a standard sexist trope? On the other hand, perhaps O'Brien is providing the grainy details of good journalism—writing the same of these women as he does of his male subjects (you know, how a man's suit jacket drapes his torso).
10. How much has changed today for women? Clearly, females have been accepted into jobs previously restricted to males. But what about the choices women continue to struggle with regarding work and family? Has that changed?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
The Folded Clock: A Diary
Heidi Julavits, 2015
Knopf Doubleday
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385538985
Summary
A raucous, stunningly candid, deliriously smart diary of two years in the life of the incomparable Heidi Julavits
Like many young people, Heidi Julavits kept a diary. Decades later she found her old diaries in a storage bin, and hoped to discover the early evidence of the person (and writer) she’d since become. Instead, "The actual diaries revealed me to possess the mind of a paranoid tax auditor."
The entries are daily chronicles of anxieties about grades, looks, boys, and popularity. After reading the confessions of her past self, writes Julavits, "I want to good-naturedly laugh at this person. I want to but I can't. What she wanted then is scarcely different from what I want today."
Thus was born a desire to try again, to chronicle her daily life as a forty-something woman, wife, mother, and writer. The dazzling result is The Folded Clock, in which the diary form becomes a meditation on time and self, youth and aging, betrayal and loyalty, friendship and romance, faith and fate, marriage and family, desire and death, gossip and secrets, art and ambition.
Concealed beneath the minute obsession with "dailiness" are sharply observed moments of cultural criticism and emotionally driven philosophical queries. In keeping with the spirit of a diary, the tone is confessional, sometimes shockingly so, as the focus shifts from the woman she wants to be to the woman she may have become.
Julavits's spirited sense of humor about her foibles and misadventures, combined with her ceaseless intelligence and curiosity, explode the typically confessional diary form. The Folded Clock is as playful as it is brilliant, a tour de force by one of the most gifted prose stylists in American letters. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1968
• Where—Portland, Maine, USA
• Education—B.A., Dartmouth College; M.F.A., Columbia University
• Currently—lives in New York City and Camden, Maine
Heidi Suzanne Julavits is an American author and co-editor of The Believer magazine. She has been published in The Best Creative Nonfiction Vol. 2, Esquire, Story, Zoetrope All-Story, and McSweeney’s Quarterly. Her novels include The Mineral Palace (2000), The Effect of Living Backwards (2003), The Uses of Enchantment (2006), and The Vanishers (2012).
Background and education
Julavits was born and grew up in Portland, Maine, before attending Dartmouth College. She later went on to earn an MFA from Columbia University.
The Believer
For the debut issue of The Believer, she wrote one of the lead articles, titling it "Rejoice! Believe! Be Strong and Read Hard!: A Call For A New Era of Experimentation and a Book Culture That Will Support It." The Believer, is a literary magazine founded by Dave Eggers in 2003 and publised nine times a year from San Franciso. It urges its readers and writers to "reach beyond their usual notions of what is accessible or possible."
New York Times cultural critic A.O. Scott described the magazine as part of "a generational struggle against laziness and cynicism, to raise once again the banners of creative enthusiasm and intellectual engagement." It has a "cosmopolitan frame of reference and an eclectic internationalism," mixing pop genres with literary theory.
In 2005, Julavits told Scott how she decided on The Believer's tone:
I really saw 'the end of the book' as originating in the way books are talked about now in our culture and especially in the most esteemed venues for book criticism. It seemed as though their irrelevance was a foregone conclusion, and we were just practicing this quaint exercise of pretending something mattered when of course everyone knew it didn't.
She added that her own aim as book critic would be "to endow something with importance, by treating it as an emotional experience."
Personal
Julavits currently lives in Maine and Manhattan with her husband, the writer Ben Marcus, and their children. (Adapted from Wikipedia articles. Retrieved 10/12/2014.)
Book Reviews
[Julavits] tells of returning to her childhood diaries…looking for evidence of the writer she would become. "The actual diaries, however, fail to corroborate the myth I'd concocted for myself," she admits…With The Folded Clock, she corrects the record. Keeping a diary may not have made her a writer, but becoming a writer has made it possible for her to produce, now, an exquisite diary…[Julavits's] prose…is especially liquid, and her sentences are unimpeachable…The opportunity to inhabit another self, to experience another consciousness, is perhaps the most profound trespass a work of literature can allow. The Folded Clock offers all the thrill of that trespass, in a work so artful that it appears to be without artifice. This diary is a record of the interior weather of an adept thinker. In it, the mundane is rendered extraordinary through the alchemy of effortless prose. It is a work in which a self is both lost and found, but above all made.
Eula Bliss - New York Times Book Review
[A] well-written, sometimes entertaining, occasionally irritating portrait of an intelligent and accomplished woman struggling with identity and aging.... Each day describes an event...which over time reveal Julavits’s life: childhood in Maine, desperate to escape; infatuation with the lives of wealthy college peers; entering the New York literary scene; an erroneous first and successful second marriage; and professional success, which leaves her raggedly busy, missing her children, and yearning for her summers back in Maine.... [H]er search for identity, fear of time passing, and sense of her own aging can be poignant.
Rebecca Steinitz - Boston Globe
The Folded Clock replaces slavish chronological record-keeping with a playfulness that allows Julavits to thumb her nose at time. For starters, she scrambles the sequence of dates...with no identifying years attached. The lovely title...suggests a Dali-esque image of hours and days folding in on themselves to disappear altogether.... Julavits, as we know from her inventive novels...is a pro at spinning stories.... The Folded Clock is an engaging portrait of a woman's sense of identity, which continually shape-shifts with time. In her mid-40s, Julavits says she is "looking for the next age I will be."
Heller McAlpin - Los Angeles Times
[A] cleverly crafted, thoughtfully entertaining series of meditations on personhood and culture.... complex and captivating.... [Julavits] raises the questions, How do we curate our own lives when everything about them may wind up in print? Can we ever expect naked truth from a diary, or do we invariably receive a sanitized version? Maybe, Julavits's work suggests, the best we can hope for is a deeply mediated honesty—for words are always equal parts mask and revelation
Lydia Millet, O Magazine
[B]lur[s] the lines between contemplation and revelation, fact and fiction.... Julavits takes the novel approach of reinventing the form of the diary.... Julavits reveals a whole lot, in often-flawless prose, about motherhood, time, petty jealousies, grand debates, and the irresistible attractions of The Bachelorette (“8 Books You Need to Read This April”).
New York Magazine
Display[s] both charm and stark honesty... The diary angle makes for a clever hook, but masks what this really is—a compelling collection of intimate, untitled personal essays that reveal one woman's ever-evolving soul
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) [A] seamless narrative describing [Julavits's] life as a woman, wife, mother, and writer. Lyrically written, each entry is a brief but boundless meditation on time, identity, and constructions of selfhood. Julavits is a natural and gifted essayist. —Meagan Lacy, Guttman Community Coll., CUNY
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Reflections on being and becoming… Some entries are slyly funny, gossipy and irreverent; others, quietly intimate… An inventive, beautifully crafted memoir, wise and insightful.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)
Following Ezra: What One Father Learned About Gumby, Otters, Autism, and Love From His Extraordinary Son
Tom Fields-Meyer
Penguin Group USA
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780451234636
Summary
When Tom Fields-Meyer's son Ezra was three and showing early signs of autism, a therapist suggested that the father needed to grieve.
"For what?" he asked.
The answer: "For the child he didn't turn out to be."
That moment helped strengthen the author's resolve to do just the opposite: to love the child Ezra was, a quirky boy with a fascinating and complex mind.
Full of tender moments and unexpected humor, Following Ezra is the story of a father and son on a ten-year journey from Ezra's diagnosis to the dawn of his adolescence. It celebrates his growth from a remote toddler to an extraordinary young man, connected in his own remarkable ways to the world around him. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Portland, Oregon, USA
• Education—B.A., Harvard University
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California
Tom Fields-Meyer has been writing stories for popular audiences for nearly three decades, specializing in telling meaningful and worthwhile narratives with humanity, humor and grace.
In twelve years as senior writer at People, he produced scores human-interest pieces and profiles of newsmakers. He penned articles on some of the biggest crime stories of the day (from the O.J. Simpson trial to the murder of Matthew Shepherd), profiled prominent politicians and world leaders (Nancy Pelosi, Pope John Paul II, Sen. Ted Kennedy), and demonstrated a pitch-perfect touch writing tales of ordinary people overcoming life’s challenges in inspiring and compelling ways.
Tom also lends his skills to help others to put their compelling personal narratives into words. He teamed up with the late Eva Brown, a popular speaker at The Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Museum of Tolerance, to write Brown’s memoir, If You Save One Life: A Survivor’s Memoir (2007). Wiesenthal executive director Rabbi Marvin Hier called the book “very significant and meaningful…an everlasting and important legacy…and a reminder to future generations that championing tolerance, justice and social change are everyone’s obligation.”
Tom collaborated with Noah Alper, founder Noah’s Bagels, the successful West Coast chain, on Alper’s memoir: Business Mensch: Timeless Wisdom for Today’s Entrepreneur (2009). Publisher’s Weekly said: “This earnest book shines with Alper’s conviction, business savvy and decency.”
Tom’s own memoir, Following Ezra: What One Father Learned About Gumby, Otters, Autism, and Love from His Extraordinary Son, was published in 2011. Full of tender moments and unexpected humor, the book tells the story of a father and son on a ten-year journey from Ezra’s diagnosis to the dawn of his adolescence. It celebrates Ezra’s evolution from a remote toddler to an extraordinary young man, connected in his own remarkable ways to the world around him.
Tom previously worked as a news reporter and feature writer for the Dallas Morning News, where he covered the kinds of stories that happen only in Texas (shootouts in Country-Western dance halls, culture pieces on the State Fair) and once was dispatched to Nevada to investigate a road designated by AAA as “America’s loneliest highway.” As a senior editor at the Chronicle of Higher Education, he traveled the nation’s campuses and once convinced his editor to send him on a 10-day junket aboard a schooner in the Bahamas (an assignment he came to regret, not just because of seasickness). Tom’s writing has appeared in dozens of publications, including the New York Times Magazine, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times and Washington Post.
A graduate of Harvard University, Tom lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Rabbi Shawn Fields-Meyer, and their three sons. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Following Ezra is a revelation. I could not put it down. This inspiring memoir of a father raising (and being raised by) his autistic son is a great lesson about patience and the blessings that can come when we let our unique children lead us.
Rabbi Naomi Levy - Author (To Begin Again and Hope Will Find You)
A riveting account of raising one special boy, Following Ezra is a powerful story for parents of any child. This inspiring book shows us that seeing meaning and depth in our children's idiosyncrasies is crucial to raising strong, secure and resilient kids. Tom Fields-Meyer has written a beautiful, funny, tender book."
Michael Gurian - Author (The Wonder of Boys)
Anyone who is raising a child with special needs should read Following Ezra. It shows how warmth and humor—yes, humor—can help not just the child, but the family, more than most of us could ever imagine.
James Patterson - Author
When Tom Fields-Meyer's son Ezra was diagnosed with autism, the author decided to forego mourning for the child who might have been, and concentrate instead on the delightful kid he had. Following Ezra is at once a meticulous description of what it is to parent a child who has autism, and a salute to the kid whose mind takes both of"
Carolyn See - Author and Book Critic
Discussion Questions
1. A therapist tells Tom Fields-Meyer and his wife Shawn that they should grieve “for the child he didn’t turn out to be.” How do you respond to her advice, and to the author’s own reaction to it?
2. In the Prologue, the author introduces the book’s central metaphor: Rather than leading his son or walking by his side, the father opts to “follow” Ezra. What is your reaction to Tom Fields-Meyer’s choice, and how does it compare to your own parenting style—or to the way your parents raised you? How do you think you would react to having a child like Ezra?
3. Chapter One opens with a pivotal moment, the conference at which it becomes clear to the author that Ezra faces serious challenges. When in your life did you receive information that changed everything? How did you react?
4. “It wasn’t about finding the right expert, it was about learning to be the right parent.” What does the author mean by this statement (in the Prologue), and how does it play itself out in Following Ezra?
5. Chapter Ten opens with the author excitedly watching his son chase a boy at the park, only to learn that Ezra isn’t focused on the child, but the picture on his hat. What’s your emotional reaction to this scene, and how does it illustrate some of the book’s central themes?
6. Following Ezra paints a portrait of a highly unusual individual. Describe a person you have encountered who’s different in some extreme way. How have you reacted? How did the person make you feel? And how has reading this book made you think differently about encountering such people?
7. On one visit to the zoo, Ezra races through without stopping to look at a single animal. At first. the author finds this frustrating and confusing, but ultimately how does the incident help the father’s understanding of his son?
8. While Following Ezra is about one particular father and son, it’s full of valuable lessons for all kinds of parents. What parenting advice did you find most valuable?
9. After the author observes his son’s remarkable feats of memory (at the end of Chapter Nine), he contemplates “the impossibly thin line between ability and disability.” What does he mean by that? How does that theme emerge in Following Ezra, and how have you seen that line in your own experience?
10. When Ezra’s mother explains to him that he has autism (Chapter Thirteen), Ezra asks whether that’s “good” “bad.” What do you think of her answer? And what would yours be, and why?
11. How does the author both follow and lead his son? What are some benefits and challenges of following and leading for their relationship—and for parents in general.
12. Throughout the book, Ezra develops fixations—with animated characters, particular animals, toys. How does his unusual ability to focus on such things pose challenges for Ezra? How does it serve him?
13. Based on your reading of Following Ezra, what is your understanding of what autism is? How is it different from your impression before your read the book?
14. Several people help the author to understand and connect with his son: Debbie, the preschool teacher; Miriam, the therapist; Hugh, the barber; Dr. Miller, psychologist; Dawn, the preschool aide; Tito, the boy who can’t speak. Whose advice or example do you find most and least helpful, and why?
(Questions kindly provided by the author.)
For the Love: Fighting for Grace in a World of Impossible Standards
Jen Hatmaker, 2015
Thomas Nelson Press
224 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780718031824
Summary
Best-selling author Jen Hatmaker is convinced life can be lovely and fun and courageous and kind.
She reveals with humor and style how Jesus’ embarrassing grace is the key to dealing with life's biggest challenge: people. The majority of our joys, struggles, thrills, and heartbreaks relate to people, beginning with ourselves and then the people we came from, married, birthed, live by, go to church with, don’t like, don’t understand, fear, compare ourselves to, and judge.
Jen knows how the squeeze of this life can make us competitive and judgmental, how we can lose love for others and then for ourselves. She reveals how to...
- Break free of guilt and shame by dismantling the unattainable Pinterest life.
- Learn to engage our culture’s controversial issues with a grace-first approach.
- Be liberated to love and release the burden of always being right.
- Identify the tools you already have to develop real-life, all-in, know-my-junk-but-love-me-anyway friendships.
- Escape our impossible standards for parenting and marriage by accepting the standard of “mostly good.”
- Laugh your butt off.
In this raucous ride to freedom for modern women, Jen Hatmaker bares the refreshing wisdom, wry humor, no-nonsense faith, liberating insight, and fearless honesty that have made her beloved by women worldwidea (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1973-74
• Where—state of Kansas, USA
• Education—Oklahoma Baptist University
• Currently—lives in Austin, Texas
Jen Hatmaker is a mom to five children, a pastor’s wife, sought-after speaker, best-selling author and star of the popular series My Big Family Renovation on HGTV.
She is best known for her books 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess (2012), Interrupted: When Jesus Wrecks Your Comfortable Christianity (2014), and For the Love: Fighting for Grace in a World of Impossible Standards (2015). (From the publisher.)
Visit the author's website.
Book Reviews
There is humor out there in the real world we live in, and Jen points it out. She doesn't sugar coat things, so don't dig into this book expecting it to be all hilarious. There are some jagged points in there too. Maybe it is different for everyone. It will all depend on you, and what you need to get out of her writing.
AnotherChanceRanch.net
There’s wisdom doled out in Jen’s humorous style and I think all women should read this. From beautiful thoughts for her kids, to the chapter on marriage, to encouraging women, friendship, social justice, the church and our calling as believers, this book will not only make you smile (and laugh out loud), but encourage you in so many ways.
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also, conisder using these LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for For the Love:
1. Discuss one of the central quotations from Hatmaker's book: "Live long enough and it becomes clear that stuff is not the stuff of life. People are." What does she mean? How do you relate this statement to your own life?
2. What about the Thank You Notes? Whom would you write thank-you notes to...and why? Why are they important?
3. Another quote: "Anytime the rich and poor combine, we should listen to whoever has the least power." Talk about what that means. Do you agree...or disagree?
4. Many reviewers use the word "hilarioius" when talking about this book. Do you feel Hatmaker's humor enhances or detracts from her message?
5. Talk about the reasons Hatmaker gives for young people leaving the church. Do you agree with her assessment?
6. Read what Hatmaker says below about raising children. Do you agree?
The best we can do is give them Jesus. Not rules, not behaviors, not entertainment, not shame. I have no confidence in myself but every confidence in Jesus….Jesus is the only thing that will endure. He trumps parenting techniques, church culture, tight boundaries, and best-laid plans. Jesus can lead our children long after they’ve left our homes.
7. What other sections—or passages—in the book strike you as particularly powerful, insightful, or perhaps even controversial...and why?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten City
Greg Grandin, 2009
Henry Holt
432 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780312429621
Summary
The stunning, never before told story of the quixotic attempt to recreate small-town America in the heart of the Amazon
In 1927, Henry Ford, the richest man in the world, bought a tract of land twice the size of Delaware in the Brazilian Amazon. His intention was to grow rubber, but the project rapidly evolved into a more ambitious bid to export America itself, along with its golf courses, ice-cream shops, bandstands, indoor plumbing, and Model Ts rolling down broad streets.
Fordlandia, as the settlement was called, quickly became the site of an epic clash. On one side was the car magnate, lean, austere, the man who reduced industrial production to its simplest motions; on the other, the Amazon, lush, extravagant, the most complex ecological system on the planet. Ford’s early success in imposing time clocks and square dances on the jungle soon collapsed, as indigenous workers, rejecting his midwestern Puritanism, turned the place into a ribald tropical boomtown. Fordlandia’s eventual demise as a rubber plantation foreshadowed the practices that today are laying waste to the rain forest.
More than a parable of one man’s arrogant attempt to force his will on the natural world, Fordlandia depicts a desperate quest to salvage the bygone America that the Ford factory system did much to dispatch. As Greg Grandin shows in this gripping and mordantly observed history, Ford’s great delusion was not that the Amazon could be tamed but that the forces of capitalism, once released, might yet be contained. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1970-71
• Where—N/A
• Education—Brooklyn College, CUNY; Ph.D., Yale University
• Awards—Bryce Wood Award, Latin American Studies
Association
• Currently—teaches at New York University (New York City)
Greg Grandin is the author of Empire’s Workshop, The Last Colonial Massacre, and the award-winning The Blood of Guatemala. A professor of history at New York University, and a Guggenheim fellow, Grandin has served on the United Nations Truth Commission investigating the Guatemalan Civil War and has written for the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, The New Statesman, and the New York Times.
Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism (Metropolitan Books), published to critical acclaim and commercial success, was the first book to draw parallels between the U.S. government’s actions in the "War on Terror" and its long-obscured and dubious history of intervention in our own backyard—Latin America. Grandin reminded us that before Iraq and Afghanistan, a political philosophy that embraced the deployment of military power to advance free-market economics was unleashed much closer to home. In the words of Naomi Klein: "Grandin has always been a brilliant historian; now he uses his detective skills in a book that is absolutely crucial to understanding our present."
The Last Colonial Massacre: The Latin American Cold War and its Consequence (University of Chicago Press), argues that the Cold War in Latin America was a struggle between two visions of democracy. Using Guatemala as a case study, Grandin demonstrates that the main effect of U.S. intervention in Latin America was not the containment of Communism, but the elimination of home-grown concepts of social democracy. Eric Hobsbawm described it as a "remarkable and extremely well-written work… about how common people discover politics, the roots of democracy and those of genocide, and the hopes and defeats of the twentieth-century left."
Grandin’s first book, The Blood of Guatemala: A History of Race and Nation (Duke University Press, 2000), a two-century history of the development of Mayan nationalism, was awarded the Latin American Studies Association’s Bryce Wood Award for most outstanding book published in English in the humanities and social sciences on Latin America. In the London Review of Books, Corey Robin proclaimed it "remarkable… Grandin’s book performs a modest act of restorative justice: it allows Guatemalans to tell their own stories in their own words."
Grandin received his BA from Brooklyn College, CUNY in 1992 and his Ph.D. from Yale in 1999. His many books and articles explore the connection between the diverse manifestations of everyday life and large-scale societal transformations that took place in Central America related to agricultural commodity production and state formation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Grandin has published extensively on issues of revolution, popular memory, US-Latin American relations, photography, genocide, truth commissions, human rights, disease, and the tensions that exist between legal and historical inquiries into political violence. In 1997-1998 Grandin worked with the Guatemalan Comisión para el Esclarecimiento Histórico—the UN-administered truth commission set up to investigate political violence committed during Guatemala’s 36-year civil war (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Haunting.... Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness resonates through every page of this book.
New York Times
Historian Greg Grandin has taken what heretofore seemed just such a marginal event...and turned it into a fascinating historical narrative that illuminates the auto industry’s contemporary crisis, the problems of globalization and the contradictions of contemporary consumerism. For all of that, this is not, however, history freighted with political pedantry. Grandin is one of blessedly expanding group of gifted American historians who assume that whatever moral the story of the past may yield, it must be a story well told.... Fordlandia is precisely that—a genuinely readable history recounted with a novelist’s sense of pace and an eye for character. It’s a significant contribution to our understanding of ourselves and engrossingly enjoyable.
Timothy Rutten - Los Angeles Times
Excellent history.... Fordlandia is keenly and emotionally observed and a potent record of the last hundred years of economic thinking and U.S./South American relations in the form of a blunt blow to the head.
Chicago Sun Times
Fordlandia was, ultimately, the classic American parable of a failed Utopia, of soft dreams running aground on a hard world—which tends to make the most compelling tale of all. It’s such an engrossing story that one wonders why it has never been told before in book-length form. Grandin takes full command of a complicated narrative with numerous threads, and the story spills out in precisely the right tone—about midway between Joseph Conrad and Evelyn Waugh.
American Scholar
Gandin, an NYU professor of Latin American history, offers the thoroughly remarkable story of Henry Ford's attempt, from the 1920s through 1945, to transform part of Brazil's Amazon River basin into a rubber plantation and eponymous American-style company town: Fordlandia. Gandin has found a fascinating vehicle to illuminate the many contradictory parts of Henry Ford: the pacifist, the internationalist, the virulent anti-Semite, the $5-a-day friend of the workingman, the anti-union crusader, the man who ushered America into the industrial age yet rejected the social changes that followed urbanization. Both infuriating and fascinating, Ford is only a piece of the Fordlandia story. The follies of colonialism and the testing of the belief that the Amazon-where "7,882 organisms could be found on any given five square miles"-could be made to produce rubber with the reliability of an auto assembly line makes a surprisingly dramatic tale. Although readers know that Fordlandia will return to the jungle, the unfolding of this unprecedented experiment is compelling. Grandin concludes that "Fordlandia represents in crystalline form the utopianism that powered Fordism—and by extension Americanism." Readers may find it a cautionary tale for the 21st century.
Publishers Weekly
Henry Ford's doomed attempt to establish a rubber industry and an attendant "work of civilization" in the rain forests of Brazil. The rising price of rubber and a threatened British-led cartel inspired the famously independent Henry Ford in 1927 to purchase a Connecticut-sized plot of land for the purpose of growing his own. The South American leaf blight and the advent of synthetic rubbers forced the company to abandon Fordlandia in 1945, long after Ford had poured millions of dollars and years of strenuous effort into the project. So why did he persist? Grandin convincingly argues that, for Ford, the enterprise was more than a purely economic venture. It was a missionary application of Ford-style capitalism—high wages, humane benefits, moral improvement—to a backward land. Ford's belief that he could harmonize industry and agriculture was always at war with the forces he had unleashed in the United States—mass-produced, affordable cars that encouraged mobility, and fear induced in workers by hired thugs like Harry Bennett, who assured that the company would remain nonunion. With his vision of an industrial arcadia slipping away at home—due to what Grandin acutely terms "a blithe indifference to difference"—Ford attempted to construct in the Amazon a world he had helped obliterate in America. The author follows a succession of Ford representatives and managers overwhelmed by the challenges of doing business where the implacable terrain, jungle diseases, mounting costs, floundering construction, government bumbling and worker resistance all conspired to sink the project. The plantation's original motive, to grow rubber, gave way to an unsustainable sociological experiment, which despite its amenities—weekly dances, movies, tennis courts, garden clubs, schools and hospitals—made no economic sense and became a mockery of the Ford Motor Company's reputation for orderliness, efficiency and synchronization. Works both as a nice bit of recovered history and a parable.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Fordlandia:
1. What first prompted Henry Ford in 1927 to buy the plot of land in Brazil? Did his motives change over the years? If so...into what?
2. Describe Ford's capitalistic ideal. What did he envision for Brazil, and how did he attempt to impose it on the Amazonian jungle?
3. How was that capitalistic ideal slipping away from him at home in the US? What forces had Ford unleashed in this country that undermined his core beliefs in a humane, moral order?
4. Talk about the many forces at work against Ford's vision in Brazil? What happened? Who—or what—was at fault in the project's many failures? Was failure inevitable?
5. Describe Henry Ford. Was he an idealist, an autocrat, an elitist or friend of the working man?
6. How did Ford's attempt 80 years ago, to convert the lush, naturally abundant Brazilian landscape into industrial agriculture, foreshadow today's destruction of the rainforest?
7. In what way might this account be seen as a parable for 21st-century attempts at globalization? Are there lessons to be learned? Or would that be reading too much into what is a single moment in history?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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The Forger's Spell: A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis, and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century
Edward Dolnick, 2008
HarperCollins
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780060825423
Summary
As riveting as a World War II thriller, The Forger's Spell is the true story of Johannes Vermeer and the small-time Dutch painter who dared to impersonate him centuries later. The con man's mark was Hermann Goering, one of the most reviled leaders of Nazi Germany and a fanatic collector of art.
It was an almost perfect crime. For seven years a no-account painter named Han van Meegeren managed to pass off his paintings as those of one of the most beloved and admired artists who ever lived. But, as Edward Dolnick reveals, the reason for the forger's success was not his artistic skill. Van Meegeren was a mediocre artist. His true genius lay in psychological manipulation, and he came within inches of fooling both the Nazis and the world. Instead, he landed in an Amsterdam court on trial for his life.
ARTnews called Dolnick's previous book, the Edgar Award-winning The Rescue Artist, "the best book ever written on art crime." In The Forger's Spell, the stage is bigger, the stakes are higher, and the villains are blacker. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Raised—Marblehead, Massachusetts, USA
• Awards—Edgar Award
• Currently—lives in the Washington, DC area
Edward Dolnick is an American writer, formerly a science writer at the Boston Globe. He has been published in the Atlantic Monthly, New York Times Magazine, and Washington Post, among other publications.
His books include Madness on the Couch: Blaming the Victim in the Heyday of Psychoanalysis (1998) and Down the Great Unknown: John Wesley Powell's 1869 Journey of Discovery and Tragedy Through the Grand Canyon (2001).
Dolnick's book The Rescue Artist: A True Story of Art, Thieves, and the Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece (2005)—an account of the 1994 theft, and eventual recovery, of Edvard Munch's "The Scream" from Norway's National Gallery in Oslo—won the 2006 Edgar Award in the Best Crime Fact category.
The Forger's Spell (2008), describes the 1930-40s forging of Johannes Vermeer paintings by a critic-detesting Dutch artist, accepted as "masterpieces" by art experts until the artist's confession and trial in 1945.
Dolnick lives in the Washington, D.C. area, is married, and has two children. His wife, Lynn Iphigene Golden, is a member of the Ochs-Sulzberger family, publishers of the New York Times, and is on the board of The New York Times Company. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Dolnick...tells his story engagingly and with a light touch. He has a novelist's talent for characterization, and he raises fascinating questions. How, for instance, could the forgeries have fooled anyone? (Dolnick says that van Meegeren was "perhaps the only forger whose most famous works a layman would immediately identify as fake.") How do forgers set about doing their work? One chapter is titled "Forgery 101"; it contains instructions from which any prospective forger would benefit. And why does our estimation of a work of art change when we discover it is a fake? Forgery is interesting in part because it demands great, if imitative, skill, and in part because copying itself has become a significant aspect of contemporary art-making. It is an art-crime that encourages reflections on the nature of art itself. This book is an aid to such reflections.
Anthony Julius - New York Times
Gripping historical narrative.... Dolnick, a veteran science writer, knows his way around a canvas.... The Forger's Spell has raised provocative questions about the nature of art and the psychology of deception.
Washington Post Book World
Edgar-winner Dolnick (The Rescue Artist) delves into the extraordinary story of Han van Meegeren (1889—1947), who made a fortune in German-occupied Holland by forging paintings of the 17th-century Dutch painter Vermeer. The discovery of a "new" Vermeer was just what the beleaguered Dutch needed to lift their spirits, and van Meegeren's Christ at Emmaus had already been bought by the Boymans Museum in Rotterdam in 1937 for $2.6 million. Collectors, critics and the public were blind to the clumsiness of this work and five other "Vermeers" done by van Meegeren. Dolnick asks how everyone could have been fooled, and he answers with a fascinating analysis of the forger's technique and a perceptive discussion of van Meegeren's genius at manipulating people. Van Meegeren was unmasked in 1945 by one of his clients, Hermann Goering. Later accused of treason for collaboration, he saved himself from execution and even became a hero for having swindled Goering. Dolnick's compelling look at how a forger worked his magic leads to one sad conclusion: there will always be eager victims waiting to be duped. (Illustrated.)
Publishers Weekly
In 1945, just after the end of World War II in Europe, a Dutch detective looking for artwork looted by the Nazis and for Nazi collaborators questioned a high-living Dutch artist named Han van Meegeren. Had van Meegeren, the detective inquired, been involved in the sale to Hermann Goring of a priceless Vermeer painting? Upon further questioning, van Meegeren confessed that he had painted this Vermeer himself, along with other Vermeers then in the collections of several major Dutch art museums, and so began the unraveling of "the greatest art hoax of the twentieth century." While other books—including Frank Wynne's I Was Vermeer and Lord Kilbracken's Van Meegeren: Master Forger—have covered this intriguing case of forgery, greed, and detection, this account by Dolnick, author of the Edgar Award-winning The Rescue Artist, is especially strong in plot development and characterization. It also has a unique point of view: that van Meegeren was not a genius and master forger but rather his "true distinction was [that] he is perhaps the only forger whose most famous works a layman would immediately identify as fake." Recommended for public and academic library art and true-crime collections.
Marcia Welsch - Library Journal
Dolnick covers it all, from Van Meegeren’s technical brilliance to his shrewd choice of subject matter to his extraordinary manipulation of egos and perceptions. [His] zesty, incisive, and entertaining inquiry illuminates the hidden dimensions...of art and ambition, deception and war. —Donna Seaman
Booklist
Mesmerizing account of an amateur artist who made millions selling forged paintings to art-obsessed Nazis and business tycoons. Veteran science journalist Dolnick (The Rescue Artist: The True Story of Art, Thieves, and the Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece, 2005, etc.) brings his expertise in art theft, criminal psychology and military history to a scintillating portrait of Dutch painter Han van Meegeren (1889-1947). Humiliated by critics who dismissed his work as lackluster, Van Meegeren turned to cunningly crafting paintings that he peddled during the 1930s and '40s as the work of revered 17th-century master Johannes Vermeer. The polished, fast-paced narrative captures the surreal mood in Nazi-occupied Holland. As German forces killed more than 70 percent of the Jewish population, the highest toll in Europe, Hitler and his leading aide, Hermann Goering, pillaged museums and private homes for paintings, sculpture and jewelry. In a rivalry Dolnick likens to a perverse schoolyard competition, the men also vied for treasures from art dealers enticed by the Nazis' looted cash. Enter Van Meegeren, a disaffected artist who watched with glee as the same critics who had ridiculed his original work swooned over the technically competent but off-kilter compositions he sold for princely sums as "lost Vermeers." In compelling prose, Dolnick details the doctored canvases, phony paint and fake bills of sale Van Meegeren painstakingly created to achieve his grand deceit. In addition to Nazis and wealthy Europeans, the author notes, he also duped affluent Americans such as Andrew Mellon. After a high-profile 1947 trial during which the con artist demonstrated his techniques, the Dutch government found van Meegeren guilty of forgery and fraud. He died less than two months later, before serving his one-year prison sentence. Energetic and authoritative.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Forger's Spell:
1. What motivated Han van Meegeren to become a forger?
2. Van Meergeren mastered the scientific side of forgery through by using plastics in his paints. Would you consider him a genius?
3. Talk about the Nazis' passion for art, especially in light of the fact that the crates of confiscated masterpieces often lay unopened.
4. Why has Vermeer been so prized as an artist? What is it about his paintings, beyond their limited number, that is so alluring?
5. Dolnick says that laymen would not have been fooled by van Meergeren's fakes. How, then, was he able to fool scholars and curators, starting with Abraham Bredius? What is the psychology behind conning art dealers and collectors into accepting forgeries as genuine? What makes those who should know fall for fakery? Is "connossieurship" a hollow pretense...or does it have merit?
6. Van Meergeren became a sort of folk hero after the war when his deception was uncovered. Did he deserve that status? Does the fact that van Meergeren was able to swindle Goering, Hitler's second in command, increase your estimation of him?
7. Dolnick's book calls into question the nature of art itself, especially "great" art. If a painting is skillfuly imitative of a great artist, isn't the imitation something to be admired and valued in and of itself? If a work is good enough to fool the experts, isn't it good enough to be considered on its own merits as "art"?
8. What is the "Uncanny Valley"? How does it play out in van Meegeren's forgeries? Can you think of other instances in life where the Uncanny Valley theory applies?
9. Did you learn something new about the world of art—and the practice of forgery—by reading this book? What surprised, or intrigued, you most?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation
Joseph J. Ellis
Knopf Doubleday
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780375705243
Summary
Winner, Pulitizer Prize for History, 2001
An illuminating study of the intertwined lives of the founders of the American republic—John Adams, Aaron Burr, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington.
During the 1790s, which Ellis calls the most decisive decade in our nation's history, the greatest statesmen of their generation—and perhaps any—came together to define the new republic and direct its course for the coming centuries. Ellis focuses on six discrete moments that exemplify the most crucial issues facing the fragile new nation: Burr and Hamilton's deadly duel, and what may have really happened; Hamilton, Jefferson, and Madison's secret dinner, during which the seat of the permanent capital was determined in exchange for passage of Hamilton's financial plan; Franklin's petition to end the "peculiar institution" of slavery—his last public act—and Madison's efforts to quash it; Washington's precedent-setting Farewell Address, announcing his retirement from public office and offering his country some final advice; Adams's difficult term as Washington's successor and his alleged scheme to pass the presidency on to his son; and finally, Adams and Jefferson's renewed correspondence at the end of their lives, in which they compared their different views of the Revolution and its legacy.
In a lively and engaging narrative, Ellis recounts the sometimes collaborative, sometimes archly antagonistic interactions between these men, and shows us the private characters behind the public personas: Adams, the ever-combative iconoclast, whose closest political collaborator was his wife, Abigail; Burr, crafty, smooth, and one of the most despised publicfigures of his time; Hamilton, whose audacious manner and deep economic savvy masked his humble origins; Jefferson, renowned for his eloquence, but so reclusive and taciturn that he rarely spoke more than a few sentences in public; Madison, small, sickly, and paralyzingly shy, yet one of the most effective debaters of his generation; and the stiffly formal Washington, the ultimate realist, larger-than-life, and America's only truly indispensable figure.
Ellis argues that the checks and balances that permitted the infant American republic to endure were not primarily legal, constitutional, or institutional, but intensely personal, rooted in the dynamic interaction of leaders with quite different visions and values. Revisiting the old-fashioned idea that character matters, Founding Brothers informs our understanding of American politics—then and now—and gives us a new perspective on the unpredictable forces that shape history. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1943
• Where—USA
• Education—B.A. College of William and Mary; M.A., Ph.D.,
Yale University
• Awards—Pulitzer Prize, 2001; National Book Award, 1997
• Currently—Amherst Massachusetts, USA
Joseph J. Ellis is the Ford Foundation Professor of History at Mount Holyoke College. Educated at the College of William and Mary and Yale University, he served as a captain in the army and taught at West Point before coming to Mount Holyoke in 1972. He was dean of the faculty there for ten years.
Among his previous books are Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams and American Sphinx, which won the 1997 National Book Award. He lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, with his wife, Ellen, and their three sons. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
As historian Joseph J. Ellis points out in his compelling new book, the achievement of the American Revolution was considerably more improbable at the time.... [A] lively and illuminating, if somewhat arbitrary book that leaves the reader with a visceral sense of a formative era in American life.
Michiko Kakutan - New York Times
A splendid book—humane, learned, written with flair and radiant with a calm intelligence and wit. Even those familiar with 'the Revolutionary generation' will [find much] to captivate and enlarge their understanding of our nation's fledgling years.
Beson Bobrick - New York Times Book Review
(Starred review.) This subtle, brilliant examination of the period between the War of Independence and the Louisiana Purchase puts Pulitzer-winner Ellis among the finest of America's narrative historians. Six stories, each centering on a significant creative achievement or failure, combine to portray often flawed men and their efforts to lay the republic's foundation. Set against the extraordinary establishment of the most liberal nation-state in the history of Western Civilization... in the most extensive and richly endowed plot of ground on the planet are the terrible costs of victory, including the perpetuation of slavery and the cruel oppression of Native Americans. Ellis blames the founders' failures on their decision to opt for an evolutionary revolution, not a risky severance with tradition (as would happen, murderously, in France, which necessitated compromises, like retaining slavery). Despite the injustices and brutalities that resulted, Ellis argues, this deferral strategy was a profound insight rooted in a realistic appraisal of how enduring social change best happens. Ellis's lucid, illuminating and ironic prose will make a ... hit.
Publishers Weekly
Ellis holds the Ford Foundation Chair in American History at Mount Holyoke College and is the author of American Sphinx, a National Book Award-winning study of Thomas Jefferson. His new book contains six chapters on unconnected events in the formation of the American republic, featuring Aaron Burr, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, and George Washington as principal characters. Ellis is deeply steeped in the literature, and his style is crisp and full of subtle ironies. He brings fresh insights into such well-worn topics as the Hamilton-Burr duel and Jefferson's feelings about slavery. If there is a central theme that runs through the chapters, it concerns the fragility of the early years of the republic. Ellis calls the 1790s one long shouting match between those, like Hamilton, who championed the power of the central government and those, like Jefferson, who defended the rights of states and individuals. The question of slavery was so explosive that most Founding Fathers avoided discussing it at all. Ellis clearly admires the irascible John Adams. Perhaps surprisingly from the author of American Sphinx, however, the Founding Father who comes off least well here is Jefferson himself. Highly recommended for all academic and large public libraries. —T.J. Schaeper, St. Bonaventure Univ.
Library Journal
An outstanding biographer of Jefferson (American Sphinx, 1997), Ellis takes up new lines in this exploration of the "gestative" 1790s.... Palpably steeped in a career's worth of immersion in the early republic, Ellis' essays are angled, fascinating, and perfect for general-interest readers. —Gilbert Taylor
Booklist
Discussion Questions
1. The anecdote that Benjamin Rush liked to repeat about an overheard conversation between Benjamin Harrison and Elbridge Gerry on July 4, 1776, makes clear that the signers of the Declaration of Independence felt some doubt about their chances of surviving their revolutionary act. As Ellis points out, if the British commanders had been more aggressive, "The signers of the Declaration would . . . have been hunted down, tried, and executed for treason, and American history would have flowed forward in a wholly different direction" [p. 5]. Why is it so difficult to grasp this notion of the new nation's utter fragility? How successful is Founding Brothers in taking the reader back in time, in order to witness the contingencies of a historical gamble in which "sheer chance, pure luck" [p. 5] were instrumental in determining the outcome?
2. Ellis has said, "We have no mental pictures that make the revolutionary generation fully human in ways that link up with our own time.... These great patriarchs have become Founding Fathers, and it is psychologically quite difficult for children to reach a realistic understanding of their parents, who always loom larger-than-life as icons we either love or hate." How does Founding Brothers address this problem, and how does it manage to humanize our image of the founders? How does the book's title relate to this issue?
3. What was really at stake in the disagreement and duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton? If Hamilton felt that the disparaging statements he had made about Burr were true, should he have lied in order to save his life? Was this merely a war over words? Did words havemore significance then than they do now? What role did newspapers play in the drama, and how is the media's role different or similar today?
4. In congressional debates in 1790 about the possible abolition of slavery, Georgia representative James Jackson attacked the abolitionist Quakers as "outright lunatics" [p. 97] and went on to say, "If it were a crime, as some assert but which I deny, the British nation is answerable for it, and not the present inhabitants, who now hold that species of property in question" [p. 98]. Does Jackson's refusal to name "that species of property" point to his own moral discomfort with owning enslaved human beings? To what degree were the founders complicit in this deliberate refusal to name and acknowledge the moral problem of slavery?
5. Because of the founders' refusal to press for abolition, the slavery question was bequeathed to Abraham Lincoln to solve—and the Civil War illustrated just how divisive the issue was. How accurate was George Washington's belief that "slavery was a cancer on the body politic of America that could not at present be removed without killing the patient" [p. 158]? Should the nation's leaders have pressed harder, given that "the further one got from 1776, the lower the revolutionary fires burned and the less imperative the logic of the revolutionary ideology seemed" [p. 104]? What difference might it have made in the racial currents of contemporary American life if slavery had been abolished in the early days of the nation?
6. What does Ellis mean when he says that the public figures on which he focuses in this book were "America's first and, in many respects, its only natural aristocracy" [p. 13]? In what sense is this true?
7. How does the character of George Washington come across, as Ellis presents him and in the quoted extracts of the farewell address? How does Washington measure up to the mythology that surrounded him even in his own time? What qualities made Washington so indispensable to the new nation?
8. Ellis focuses more intensively on the plight of the slaves than that of the Indians, but he does point out that Washington addressed their situation with the suggestion that they abandon their hunter-gatherer way of life and assimilate themselves into the general population as farmers [p. 159]. Was this a viable solution, or merely a pragmatic one? What other solutions might have been offered at the time?
9. What is most surprising about Thomas Jefferson's character, as presented by Ellis? Which aspects of his personality, or which particular actions or decisions, seem incongruous in the man who wrote the idealistic words of the Declaration of Independence?
10. What is most impressive about Abigail Adams's intervention on her husband's behalf in his quarrel with Thomas Jefferson? Is it possible to compare the political partnership of John and Abigail Adams with, for example, that of Hillary and Bill Clinton?
11. Ellis has said of Founding Brothers, "If there is a method to my madness in the book, it is rooted in the belief that readers prefer to get their history through stories. Each chapter is a self-contained story about a propitious moment when big things got decided. . . . In a sense, I have formed this founding generation into a kind of repertory company, then put them into dramatic scenes which, taken together, allow us to witness that historic production called the founding of the United States." Does his focus on creating separate narrative units succeed in making the complex history of the founders simpler to penetrate and understand? Are there any drawbacks to presenting history this way?
12. Ellis says that the founders were always self-conscious about how posterity would view their decisions and their behavior. For instance, Adams's efforts on behalf of a "more realistic, nonmythologized version of the American Revolution" were partly motivated by his wounded vanity, his effort to get rid of versions of the story that "failed to provide him with a starring role in the drama" [p. 217]. How similar or different are more recent presidents' efforts to shape the historical portrayal of their own terms in office, as with presidential libraries and such?
13. Ellis notes that his ambition with Founding Brothers was "to write a modest-sized account of a massive historical subject . . . without tripping over the dead bodies of my many scholarly predecessors." In search of a structure in which "less could be more" Ellis takes as a model Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians (1918). Strachey wrote that the historian "will row out over the great ocean of material, and lower down into it, here and there, a little bucket, which will bring up to the light of day some characteristic specimen, from those far depths, to be examined with a careful curiosity" [p. ix]. How does this approach differ from other historical narratives or biographies of historical figures that you have read, and how does it affect your reading experience?
14. In the conflict between Republicans and Federalists described by Ellis throughout the book, readers can understand the origins of party factionalism that is a strong factor in American politics to this day. If, as Ellis writes, "The dominant intellectual legacy of the Revolution, enshrined in the Declaration of Indepen-dence, stigmatized all concentrated political power and even . . . depicted any energetic expression of governmental authority as an alien force that all responsible citizens ought to repudiate and, if possible, overthrow" [p. 11], what compromises were made in order to bring a stable national government to fruition? Does the apparent contradiction between Republican and Federalist principles still create instability in the American system?
15. In recent years historians have tended to avoid focusing on such issues as leadership and character, and more is being written about popular movements and working people whose lives exemplify a sort of democratic norm. Ellis clearly goes against this trend in offering Founding Brothers as "a polite argument against the scholarly grain" [p. 12]. Does he effectively convince his readers that the founding of the American nation was, in fact, largely accomplished by a handful of extraordinary individuals?
(Questions from the publishers.)
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Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation
Cokie Roberts, 2004
HarperCollins
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780060090265
Summary
While the "fathers" were off founding the country, what were the women doing? Running their husband’s businesses, raising their children plus providing political information and advice. At least that’s what Abigail Adams did for John, starting when he went off to the Continental Congress, which eventually declared the independence of the American colonies from the British. While the men were writing the rebellious words, the women were living the revolution, with the Redcoats on their doorsteps. John’s advice to Abigail as the soldiers approached Braintree: if necessary "fly to the woods with our children." That was it, she was on her own, as she was for most of the next ten years while Adams represented the newly independent nation abroad.
Abigail Adams is the best known of the women who influenced the founders, but there are many more, starting with Martha Washington, who once referred to herself as a “prisoner of state” for the constraints placed on her as the first First Lady. She was the one charged with balancing the demands of a Republic of the "common man" on the one hand, while insisting on some modicum of courtliness and protocol so that the former colonies would be taken seriously by Europe. She also took political heat in the press from the president’s political opponents when he was too popular to criticize.
And there are women like Esther Reed, married to the president of Pennsylvania, who, with Benjamin Franklin’s daughter Sarah Bache, organized a drive to raise money for Washington’s troops at Valley Forge. In 1780 the women raised more than three hundred thousand dollars. Reed wrote a famous patriotic broadside titled The Sentiments of an American Woman, calling on women to wear simpler clothing and hairstyles in order to save money to contribute to the cause. It worked! The women who ran the boarding houses of Philadelphia where the men stayed while writing the now sacred documents of America had their quite considerable say about the affairs of state as well.
This will be the story of some of those women, as learned through their seldom seen letters and diaries, and the letters from the men to them. It will be a story of the beginnings of the nation as viewed from the distaff side. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—December 27, 1943
• Where—New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
• Education—Wellesley College
• Awards—Emmy Award, Edward R. Murrow Award, Everett
McKinley Dirksen (all for journalism)
• Currently—outside Washington, D.C.
Cokie Roberts, author of We Are Our Mothers' Daughters, is the political commentator for ABC News and serves as Senior News Analyst for National Public Radio. From 1996-2002 she and Sam Donaldson co-anchored the weekly ABC interview program This Week. Roberts co-authored From This Day Forward with her husband Steven V. Roberts, and together they write a weekly column syndicated in newspapers around the country by United Media and serve as contributing editors to USA Weekend. (From Barnes & Noble.)
More
Cokie Roberts, née Mary Martha Corinne Morrison Claiborne Boggs received the sobriquet "Cokie" from her brother Tommy, who could not pronounce "Corinne". Cokie Roberts is the third child of former ambassador and long-time Democratic Congresswoman from Louisiana Lindy Boggs and of the late Hale Boggs, also a Democratic Congressman from Louisiana who was Majority Leader of the House of Representatives.
Roberts graduated from the Stone Ridge School outside Washington, D.C. in 1960 and then Wellesley College in 1964 where she received a BA in Political Science. She has been married to Steven V. Roberts, a professor and fellow journalist, since 1966. They currently reside in Bethesda, Maryland. She and her husband have two children, and six grandchildren. Her daughter, Rebecca Roberts, is also a journalist and was one of the hosts of POTUS '08 on XM Radio, which offered live daily coverage of the 2008 presidential election.
Cokie Roberts serves as a senior news analyst for NPR, where she was the congressional correspondent for more than 10 years. In addition to her work for NPR, Roberts is a political commentator for ABC News, serving as an on-air analyst for the network.
Roberts was the co-anchor of the ABC News' Sunday morning broadcast, This Week with Sam Donaldson & Cokie Roberts from 1996 to 2002, while also serving as the chief congressional analyst for ABC News. She covered politics, Congress and public policy, reporting for World News Tonight and other ABC News broadcasts.
Before joining ABC News in 1988, Roberts was a contributor to PBS in the evening television news program The MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour. Her coverage of the Iran-Contra Affair for that program won her the Edward Weintal Prize for Diplomatic Reporting in 1988. Prior to joining NPR, Roberts was a reporter for CBS News in Athens, Greece. Roberts is also a former president of the Radio and Television Correspondent's Association.
Roberts has won numerous awards, such as the Edward R. Murrow Award, the Everett McKinley Dirksen Award for coverage of Congress and a 1991 Emmy Award for her contribution to "Who is Ross Perot.
She is the author of the national bestseller We Are Our Mother's Daughters as well as Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Founding Mothers is essentially a series of entertaining mini-biographies and engaging vignettes. Roberts fleshes out familiar textbook figures like Abigail Adams or Dolley Madison, and rescues more obscure women from the footnotes of academic dissertations.
Amanda Fortini - New York Times
With Founding Mothers, Roberts fills a gap in our coverage of the era without straying far from the familiar story of colonial resistance, the struggle for independence and the climactic writing of the U.S. Constitution. We don't lose sight of the white male titans who built the nation; we just see them from the vantage point of the women they wooed and the families they worried about—usually at a distance—during America's longest war.
Joyce Appleby - Washington Post
Exploiting a wide range of historical evidence from military records to recipes, private correspondence, pamphlets and songs, Roberts succeeds in presenting something entirely new on a topic seemingly otherwise exhausted … Founding Mothers is a welcome addition to American Revolution biography, which is saturated by the lives of the Founding Fathers. It fills in blanks and adds substance, detail and dimension to what until now has seemed a strangely distant and utterly masculine mythology.
Maria Fish - USA Today
ABC News political commentator and NPR news analyst Roberts didn't intend this as a general history of women's lives in early America-she just wanted to collect some great "stories of the women who influenced the Founding Fathers." For while we know the names of at least some of these women (Martha Washington, Abigail Adams, Eliza Pinckney), we know little about their roles in the Revolutionary War, the writing of the Constitution, or the politics of our early republic. In rough chronological order, Roberts introduces a variety of women, mostly wives, sisters or mothers of key men, exploring how they used their wit, wealth or connections to influence the men who made policy. As high-profile players married into each other's families, as wives died in childbirth and husbands remarried, it seems as if early America-or at least its upper crust-was indeed a very small world. Roberts's style is delightfully intimate and confiding: on the debate over Mrs. Benedict Arnold's infamy, she proclaims, "Peggy was in it from the beginning." Roberts also has an ear for juicy quotes; she recounts Aaron Burr's mother, Esther, bemoaning that when talking to a man with "mean thoughts of women," her tongue "hangs pretty loose," so she "talked him quite silent." In addition to telling wonderful stories, Roberts also presents a very readable, serviceable account of politics-male and female-in early America. If only our standard history textbooks were written with such flair!
Publishers Weekly
When most people think about those who helped fight for the independence of and create the government of the United States, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin come to mind. They rarely mention Martha Washington, Abigail Adams, or Eliza Pinckney. However, these and many other women played a significant role, including raising money for the troops, lobbying their spouses to fight for liberty and independence, and eventually hosting events where members of government could meet and discuss issues in a civilized manner. Roberts provides details on the lives and activities of these women and how they helped the country to survive. Though the book is fascinating, the author detracts from the work with her reading; she makes asides that do not appear to fit within the story and is overly strident as if she demands that we listen to her and believe what she is telling us or else. Another narrator might have been more effective. However, Founding Mothers will find a home in most public and academic libraries, especially those with strong women's studies and early American history collections. —Danna Bell-Russel, Library of Congress
Library Journal
Political correspondent Roberts...offers a look at the women—mostly wives and mothers—who supported the men credited with creating the U.S.... [She] offers a much-needed look at the unheralded sacrifices and heroism of colonial women. —Vanessa Bush
Booklist
Discussion Questions
1. What inspired you to read Founding Mothers? Why do you suppose the contributions of women in the Revolutionary era have been largely overlooked by historians? Would the founding of the nation have occurred without these women?
2. Which woman would you say had the single greatest impact during the Revolution? How about during the first years of the new government?
3. Despite a lack of legal and social rights, including the right to own property and receive a formal education, how did the women presented in Founding Mothers assert their authority and exercise their intelligence?
4. How did life differ for women depending on where they lived—the North versus the South, the city versus rural areas? How else did geographical circumstances impact their lives?
5. Women often accompanied their husbands to army camps during the war, including Martha Washington, Kitty Greene, and Lucy Knox. Were you surprised they chose to do this? How did these three women in particular contribute to the often harsh life of a military camp and foster the war efforts?
6. By telling the stories of our Founding Mothers, this book also sheds light on the men of the time. Did you learn anything new about these men, including Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, and Alexander Hamilton, seeing them from the perspective of their female contemporaries?
7. How important was the "civilizing" role that women played in the years leading up to, during, and after the Revolution? Can you reference examples from the book that show how integral it was for the women to be able to step in and "calm down the men," or even to act as intermediaries, as Abigail Adams did in the dispute between her husband and James Madison?
8. Catharine Macaulay supported the American Revolution and was a vocal proponent of democratic governments in general. Why did Macaulay, an Englishwoman, take such an interest in the American cause? How did she contribute to it?
9. How did Martha Washington define the role of First Lady? Are her influences still evident today? Her political savvy was remarkable, but is there anything that can be learned from Martha Washington on a personal level?
10. Only a limited number of women could have accomplished what Abigail Adams and Mercy Otis Warren did — those who had access to the men shaping the future of the nation. What about the women who didn't have the advantage of providing direct counsel or publishing their discourses? How did they contribute to the Revolutionary War and the founding of the nation?
11. Cokie Roberts intersperses her thoughts and commentary throughout the book. Does this enhance the narrative? In what ways?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Four in the Garden
Rick Hocker, 2014
Hocker Press
342 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780991557707
Summary
An unusual retelling of the Garden of Eden story, Four in the Garden is a thought-provoking allegory of one's relationship with God. In this spiritual fantasy, Creator makes only one human, named Cherished. Instead of creating a second human to be a companion to Cherished, Creator desires to fill that role. Can this relationship work?
This inspirational book challenges the reader to trust in God because trust is the means by which we are transformed. To aid contemplation and spiritual growth, Four in the Garden is divided into short thematic chapters.
Author Bio
• Birth—December 2, 1960
• Where—Oakland, California, USA
• Education—B.S., California Polytechnic State University
• Currently—lives in Martinez, California
Rick Hocker is a game programmer and artist. In 2004, he sustained a back injury that left him bed-ridden in excruciating pain for six months, followed by a long recovery. He faced the challenges of disability, loss of income and mounting debt. After emerging from this dark time, he discovered that profound growth had occurred. Three years later, he had a dream that inspired him to write his book, Four in the Garden. His intent was to illustrate one's growth toward deep communion with God and to share the insights he gained from the personal transformation that resulted from his back injury. (From the author.)
Visit the author's website.
Follow Rick on Facebook.
Book Reviews
"Four in the Garden is a well-told and inspired tale about learning to trust in God. A spiritual message - complete with action, suspense, mystery, and some unforgettable characters and spectacular imagery. I believe that it may be destined to be a modern-day classic, alongside the works of C.S. Lewis, Hannah Hurnard, and other great authors.”
—Shauna McFadden, Long Beach, CA
“Not often does a writer appear on the literary scene with such an unforgettable story as Four in the Garden. A beautifully written, emotionally fulfilling read.”
—Sue Clark
Award winning writer of Is Anybody Listening
“Awesome Book! Well written and thought provoking! CS Lewis meets Eckart Tolle meets George Lucas.”
—Anthony L. Sawyer, Eugene, OR
“How fortunate I feel to have stumbled onto this remarkable, beautifully written and immensely thought provoking book. I found myself highlighting sections and quotes, often rereading them because they were so articulately written and deeply meaningful. I was impressed by the author’s ability to take aspects of spirituality and create a work that is altogether new, fresh, and completely inspired.”
—Keli Martinez, Pleasanton, CA
“Four in the Garden is a symbolic narrative bathed in spiritual meaning. It is a treasure chest overflowing with nuggets of truth. It challenges the reader to search out their own soul. Four in the Garden is one book I will read again and again.”
—Cheryl E. Rodriguez for Readers' Favorite
“Four in the Garden is simply one of those books you just hate to put down. I was drawn into the story line immediately, and thought it was a great way to demonstrate "Creator" and all that a spiritual life entails.”
—Amy Vey, Friendship, WI
“Rick Hocker has written a unique spiritual fantasy of a transcendental ordeal. His description of the ecstatic mystical experience is unparalleled.”
—David Brin
Author of An American Musician Visits Cremona
“Your book really helped me. I am now extremely happy in life. I was struggling for years. Art that inspires one to seek within and find truth through the painful act of living is truly priceless. Keep it up!”
—Tony S., Oregon
“Four in the Garden brought a time of spiritual renewal for me. The author brought to light in a creative, refreshing way the potential we have for experiencing intimacy with God.”
—Jim Strouse, Vancouver, WA
“How often have we heard someone say that if there was just one person in existence God would have gone through the whole process for that one. Hocker's book develops that idea. I liked how Cherished, the lead character, didn't have any shortcuts to the conclusion. I recommend it highly. I know I'll be rereading it over and again!”
—Bill Caldwell, Joplin, MO
“I found the spiritual nature of the book genuine, wise and thoughtful. I underlined something, I cried at the end and I'll probably read it again.”
—Barbara Cole Brooks, Martinez, CA
“This is a great book that tells a story that somehow everyone has gone through. I just loved it.”
—Jorge Moreno, Mexico
“Four in the Garden is a delightful and multifaceted read. This is a perfect BOOK CLUB read to bring forth a great discussion. I plan to read it again, with highlighter in hand, to mark and remember the wisdom, beautifully stated on each page.”
—Janet Piper, San Leandro, CA
“This is probably the best description of a personal relationship with a higher power that exists anywhere!”
—Melinda Hills for Readers' Favorite
“The journey for Cherished was truly about learning to trust, and it made me look at myself in that aspect - I learned a lot from that reflection. The story was thought-provoking, emotional, and transforming.”
—Michael Darling, Palm Springs, CA
“Rick Hocker's Four in the Garden challenges the reader and offers guidance even when all seems lost. I enjoyed the fact that the book had a message of where true hope and direction comes from.”
—Cyrus Webb
media personality, literary advocate and award-winning author
http://www.cyruswebbpresents.com <http://www.cyruswebbpresents.com/>
“Four in the Garden is an allegorical story similar to the writings of C.S. Lewis. This book definitely inspired me to trust more fully in God. I highly recommend it!”
—Doug McCoy, Pleasant Hill, CA
“This is an interesting book from beginning to end, and it truly makes you think about a lot of different things. This book is an inspiration in many ways as well as being a solid, entertaining read.”
—Kathryn Bennett for Readers' Favorite
“I flew through the first hundred pages, devouring the richness of the imagery and the comfort of the author's writing style. With each chapter I find insights, gentle ways to view life very differently, without any attempt to drag me into a belief.”
—Glenn Gebhardt, Ripon, CA
“Four In The Garden is an amazing fantasy-allegory; a story about the creation of one human by God. Told with clarity, pathos, and vivid detail, Four In the Garden is a refreshing read about hope and human triumph.”
—Alex Davis, San Francisco, CA
“The spiritual journey is very rewarding and helps readers delve into their inner selves. A very original story that is inspirational and uplifting with its unique plot.”
—Mamta Madhavan for Readers' Favorite
“Creative, ingenious, enlightening! Each time I picked up the book I immediately was re-engaged and challenged to consider the nuggets of wisdom found in that chapter! If you were enamored with the colorful, creative Harry Potter series then you already know how fun reading this book will be.”
—Sandra Wing, Pleasanton, CA
“A beautiful story of man's relationship with God, through fantasy, that leads the reader step-by-step to discovery of life's greatest truths of love, trust and redemption.”
—Lucy Hart, Concord, CA
“It caused me to think about the deeper meaning of life. I highly recommend it.”
—Karen Lee, Orinda, CA
“A brilliant, thought provoking piece of work. The imagery, the fantastic descriptions, made me feel as if I was walking along in the Garden. A great read.”
—Dennis Carreiro, Orlando, Florida
Discussion Questions
1. The theme of the book is that life can transform us if we trust. How did the book illustrate that theme? What is your understanding of transformation and its importance?
2. The story is told in first person so that the reader would feel as though they were experiencing the story firsthand. In what situations did you relate to Cherished?
3. What section or scene was the most meaningful to you and why?
4. What situations surprised you? Looking back, can you see the clues and foreshadowing that led up to those surprises?
5. What elements of the Garden of Eden story did you see in the book? In what ways did the book differ?
6. Although the book is classified as fantasy, the author wrote about spiritual realities he believed to be true. What elements in the story do you believe are true?
7. How did Cherished grow in his understanding of Creator? How did his relationship with Creator change over time?
8. In what ways did Radiance change? How did Blaze change? In what ways was Blaze stuck?
9. Did you find it easy or difficult to sympathize with Blaze? Could you identify with him in any way?
10. The book covered a number of difficult topics, such as suffering, free will and forgiveness. Which of the author’s explorations of a topic impacted you the most and why?
11. The story explored the tension between dependence and independence. What conclusions did the story make regarding free will and independence?
12. Creator’s love was a constant in Cherished’s life, but that love sometimes expressed itself in discipline or withdrawal. Identify the various facets of love presented in the story. How might you define love in such a way as to include these facets?
13. Cherished often made mistakes and sabotaged his relationship with Creator. How did Creator respond to Cherished in these situations? What was Creator’s highest priority for Cherished?
14. How did the story affect your understanding of God and/or your relationship to God?
(Questions courtesy of the author.)
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner, 2005
Harper Collins
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780060731335
Summary
Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? Why do drug dealers still live with their moms? How much do parents really matter? What kind of impact did Roe v. Wade have on violent crime?
These may not sound like typical questions for an economist to ask. But Steven D. Levitt is not a typical economist. He is a much heralded scholar who studies the stuff and riddles of everyday life — from cheating and crime to sports and child rearing — and whose conclusions regularly turn the conventional wisdom on its head. He usually begins with a mountain of data and a simple, unasked question. Some of these questions concern life-and-death issues; others have an admittedly freakish quality. Thus the new field of study contained in this book: freakonomics.
Through forceful storytelling and wry insight, Levitt and co-author Stephen J. Dubner show that economics is, at root, the study of incentives — how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing. In Freakonomics, they set out to explore the hidden side of ... well, everything. The inner workings of a crack gang. The truth about real-estate agents. The myths of campaign finance. The telltale marks of a cheating schoolteacher. The secrets of the Ku Klux Klan.
What unites all these stories is a belief that the modern world, despite a surfeit of obfuscation, complication, and downright deceit, is not impenetrable, is not unknowable, and — if the right questions are asked — is even more intriguing than we think. All it takes is a new way of looking. Steven Levitt, through devilishly clever and clear-eyed thinking, shows how to see through all the clutter.
Freakonomics establishes this unconventional premise: If morality represents how we would like the world to work, then economics represents how it actually does work. It is true that readers of this book will be armed with enough riddles and stories to last a thousand cocktail parties. But Freakonomics can provide more than that. It will literally redefine the way we view the modern world. (From the publisher.)
Author Bios
• Steven Levitt is a Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago and an editor of the Journal of Political Economy. In January 2004 he was awarded the John Bates Clark medal—for the economist under 40 who has made the greatest contribution to the discipline—by the American Economic Association.
• Stephen J. Dubner is the author of Confessions of a Hero Worshiper and Turbulent Souls and is a former writer and editor at the New York Times Magazine. He lives in New York City with his family. (Author bios from the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Economists can seem a little arrogant at times. They have a set of techniques and habits of thought that they regard as more ''rigorous'' than those of other social scientists. When they are successful — one thinks of Amartya Sen's important work on the causes of famines, or Gary Becker's theory of marriage and rational behavior — the result gets called economics. It might appear presumptuous of Steven Levitt to see himself as an all-purpose intellectual detective, fit to take on whatever puzzle of human behavior grabs his fancy. But on the evidence of Freakonomics, the presumption is earned.
Jim Holt - New York Times
Levitt (economics, U. of Chicago) and writing collaborator Dubner (a writer for the New York Times and The New Yorker) dub the material in this work "freakonomics" because Levitt uses analytical tools from economics to address a range of questions that, at first glance, might seem to be far removed from the discipline of the "dismal science." They consider questions such as how to determine if teachers are aiding in students' cheating on standardized tests, the impact of information asymmetry on the operation of the Ku Klux Klan, how the organizational structure of crack gangs resemble other businesses, and the influence of parents on child development.
Book News
(Starred review.) Forget your image of an economist as a crusty professor worried about fluctuating interest rates: Levitt focuses his attention on more intimate real-world issues, like whether reading to your baby will make her a better student. Recognition by fellow economists as one of the best young minds in his field led to a profile in the New York Times, written by Dubner, and that original article serves as a broad outline for an expanded look at Levitt's search for the hidden incentives behind all sorts of behavior. There isn't really a grand theory of everything here, except perhaps the suggestion that self-styled experts have a vested interest in promoting conventional wisdom even when it's wrong. Instead, Dubner and Levitt deconstruct everything from the organizational structure of drug-dealing gangs to baby-naming patterns. While some chapters might seem frivolous, others touch on more serious issues, including a detailed look at Levitt's controversial linkage between the legalization of abortion and a reduced crime rate two decades later. Underlying all these research subjects is a belief that complex phenomena can be understood if we find the right perspective. Levitt has a knack for making that principle relevant to our daily lives, which could make this book a hit. Malcolm Gladwell blurbs that Levitt "has the most interesting mind in America," an invitation Gladwell's own substantial fan base will find hard to resist.
Publishers Weekly
Economist Levitt and Dubner (Turbulent Souls) team up in this intriguing, quirky look at life and how to understand better the world in a new way. In 2003, the New York Times Magazine sent Dubner to do a profile of Levitt, and the idea for this book was born. Levitt looks at a variety of data, including KKK membership rolls, online dating services, and names for children, and finds in the math underlying answers to difficult questions that have a freakish quality. The quirky chapters include the commonality between schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers, why drug dealers still live with their mothers, and what makes a perfect parent. The crisp, bright narration by Dubner enlivens this title, which will appeal to fans of Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point as well as to economists. Recommended for university libraries supporting a business and economics curriculum and larger public libraries. —Dale Farris, Groves, TX.
Library Journal
Why do drug dealers live at home? Levitt (Economics/Univ. of Chicago) and Dubner (Confessions of a Hero Worshiper, 2003, etc.), who profiled Levitt for the New York Times, team up to demolish conventional wisdom. To call Levitt a "rogue economist" may be a tad hyperbolic. Certainly this epitome of antistyle ("his appearance is High Nerd: a plaid button-down shirt, nondescript khakis and a braided belt, brown sensible shoes") views the workaday world with different eyes; the young economist teases out meaning from juxtapositions that simply would not occur to other researchers. Consider this, for instance: in the mid-1990s, just when the Clinton administration projected it was about to skyrocket, crime in the U.S. fell markedly. And why? Because, Levitt hazarded a few years ago, of the emergent effects of the Roe v. Wade decision: legalized abortion prevented the births of millions of poor people who, beset by social adversity, were "much more likely than average to become criminals." The suggestion, Dubner writes, "managed to offend just about everyone," conservative and liberal alike, but it had high explanatory value. Levitt hasn't shied away from controversy in other realms, either, preferring to let the numbers speak for themselves: a young man named Jake will earn more job interviews than one with the same credentials named DeShawn; the TV game show The Weakest Link, like society as a whole, discriminates against the elderly and Hispanics; it is human nature to cheat, and the higher up in the organization a person rises, the more likely it is that he or she will cheat. Oh, yes, and street-level drug dealers live at home with their moms because they have to; most earn well belowminimum wage but accept the bad pay and dangerous conditions to get a shot at the big time, playing in what in effect is a tournament. "A crack gang works pretty much like the standard capitalist enterprise," Levitt and Dubner write, "you have to be near the top of the pyramid to make a big wage." An eye-opening, and most interesting, approach to the world.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Most people think of economics as a dry subject matter concerning monetary and fiscal matters. How does Freakonomics change this definition?
2. Freakonomics argues that morality represent the way we'd like the world to work, whereas economics can show how the world really does work. Do you agree?
3. Freakonomics lists three varieties of incentives: social, moral, and financial. Can you think of others?
4. Freakonomics shows how the conventional wisdom is often shoddily formed. What are some instances of conventional wisdom that you've always doubted?
5. Does it seem as though "experts" truly hold too much power in the modern world, or are we lucky to have them?
6 .What are some issues in your daily life toward which you can apply some Freakonomics-style thinking?
7. What were some of the most convincing arguments put forth in Freakonomics? What were some of the least convincing?
8. How does the argument linking Roe v. Wade to a drop in crime change your thinking about abortion?
9. How does the view of parenting in Freakonomics jibe with your own view?
10. After reading Freakonomics, do you think that cheating is more prevalent or less prevalent than you thought it was before you read the book?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
top of page (summary)
The Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee
Casey Cep, 2019
Knopf Doubleday
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781101947869
Summary
The stunning story of an Alabama serial killer and the true-crime book that Harper Lee worked on obsessively in the years after 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.
Sitting in the audience during the vigilante's trial was Harper Lee, who had traveled from New York City to her native Alabama with the idea of writing her own In Cold Blood, the true-crime classic she had helped her friend Truman Capote research seventeen years earlier. Lee spent a year in town reporting, and many more years working on her own version of the case.
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 the country's most beloved writers and her struggle with fame, success, and the mystery of artistic creativity. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1985
• Where—Cordova, Maryland, USA
• Education—B.A., Harvard University; M.Phil, Oxford University; Yale University Divinity School
• Currently—lives in Chesapeake Bay Area, Maryland
Casey Cep grew up in Maryland's Chesapeake Bay area, where she still lives and writes. She graduated from Harvard with a degree in English and earned an M.Phil in theology at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. She is presently studying at Yale Divinity School in order to be ordained in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
Cep's work has appeared in The New Yorker, New York Times, and New Republic, among other publications. The Furious Hours (2019) is her first book. (Adapted from the publisher.)
Book Reviews
There are two intertwined mysteries at the heart of Furious Hours, Casey Cep’s meticulously researched narrative about an Alabama preacher accused of multiple murders, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist who tried and failed to tell his story. The first section of the book, a spellbinding [is] true crime story.… [T]he other mystery proved even knottier. It involved reconstructing years of investigative work done by Harper Lee, who was fascinated by the Maxwell murders and worked on a true crime book about the case that she titled “The Reverend.” To this day, it remains unclear how much she wrote, why she stopped writing or whether she finished the book.
Alexander Alter - New York Times
It’s one measure of just how rich Casey Cep’s material is, and how artfully she handles it, that I have given away only about a tenth of the interest and delight contained within just the first third or so of her book. She reminded me all over again how much of good storytelling is leading the reader to want to know the things you are about to tell him, while still leaving him to feel that his interest was all his idea.
Michael Lewis - New York Time Book Review
If you’re a Harper Lee fan, come for the juicy tale of the true-crime story she wanted to write but never did.… If you’re not, come for Cep’s writing, which is so good that you won’t mind a side trip into the history of life insurance. Basically, if you love superb nonfiction, pick up a copy of Furious Hours; you may not put it down again for several of your own.
Bethanne Patrick - Washington Post
E]ssentially two books—a thriller and a biography—that Ms. Cep stitches into an intriguing and occasionally gripping whole. The only problem is that the enigma of Harper Lee is far more fascinating than the criminal trial she ultimately abandoned.… [F]or a true-crime tale, it is awkwardly devoid of suspense.… Ms. Cep pads this story with thoughtful digressions on Alabama’s politics and full profiles of Maxwell and Radney, but she strangely makes no mention of Lee until halfway through the book. When Harper Lee finally does arrive, it is a relief. Ms. Cep’s brisk and lively account of the woman’s life offers few surprises, but it is engrossing all the same.
Emily Brobrow - Wall Street Journal
(Starred review) [A] brilliant account of Harper Lee’s failed attempt to write a true crime book.… Meticulously researched, this is essential reading for anyone interested in Lee and American literary history.
Publishers Weekly
By fully detailing the crimes before Lee even appears, Cep allows readers to see the case through Lee's eyes…. Above all, this is a book about inspiration and how a passion for the mysteries of humanity can cause an undeniable creative spark. A well-tempered blend of true crime and literary lore.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers Book Club Resources. They can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(Resources by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things
Jenny Lawson, 2015
Flatiron Books
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250077004
Summary
Jenny Lawson explores her lifelong battle with mental illness. A hysterical, ridiculous book about crippling depression and anxiety? That sounds like a terrible idea.
But terrible ideas are what Jenny does best.
As Jenny says
Some people might think that being "furiously happy" is just an excuse to be stupid and irresponsible and invite a herd of kangaroos over to your house without telling your husband first because you suspect he would say no since he's never particularly liked kangaroos.
And that would be ridiculous because no one would invite a herd of kangaroos into their house. Two is the limit. I speak from personal experience. My husband says that none is the new limit. I say he should have been clearer about that before I rented all those kangaroos.
Most of my favorite people are dangerously fucked-up but you'd never guess because we've learned to bare it so honestly that it becomes the new normal. Like John Hughes wrote in The Breakfast Club, "We're all pretty bizarre. Some of us are just better at hiding it." Except go back and cross out the word "hiding."
Furiously Happy is about "taking those moments when things are fine and making them amazing, because those moments are what make us who we are, and they're the same moments we take into battle with us when our brains declare war on our very existence. It's the difference between "surviving life" and "living life."
It's the difference between "taking a shower" and "teaching your monkey butler how to shampoo your hair." It's the difference between being "sane" and being "furiously happy."
Lawson is beloved around the world for her inimitable humor and honesty, and in Furiously Happy, she is at her snort-inducing funniest. This is a book about embracing everything that makes us who we are - the beautiful and the flawed—and then using it to find joy in fantastic and outrageous ways.
Because as Jenny's mom says, "Maybe 'crazy' isn't so bad after all." Sometimes crazy is just right. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1973
• Where—Wall, Texas, USA
• Education—B.A., Angelo State University
• Currently—lives in Texas Hill Country
Jennifer Lawson is an American journalist and blogger from Wall, Texas. She is a graduate of Angelo State University. She is the author of The Bloggess and Ill Advised blogs, co-author of Good Mom/Bad Mom on the Houston Chronicle and a columnist for SexIs magazine.
Lawson is best known for her irreverent writing style. She also used to write an advice column named "Ask The Bloggess" for The Personal News Network (PNN.com) until she quit because they stopped paying her. She suffers from rheumatoid arthritis, OCD, depression and an anxiety disorder.
She was recognized by the Nielsen ratings as one of the Top 50 Most Powerful Mom Bloggers and Forbes listed thebloggess.com as one of their Top 100 Websites for Women. She was a finalist in the 2010 Weblog awards for Best Writing and Most Humorous Writer, and a finalist in the 2011 Weblog awards for Best Writing, Most Humorous Writer and Weblog of the Year.
In 2011 The Huffington Post named Lawson the "Greatest Person of the Day" for her work in raising money for struggling families in December 2010. She was also interviewed on CBC News Network's Connect with Mark Kelley during the fundraising campaign.
Lawson's autobiography, Let's Pretend This Never Happened, was released on April 17, 2012, and by May 6th, reached #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. She published her second book, Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things, in 2015. (Adapted from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Lawson's self-deprecating humor is not only gaspingly funny and wonderfully inappropriate; it allows her to speak...in a real and raw way.
Oprah Magazine
[Lawson] writes with a rambling irreverence that makes you wish she were your best friend.
Entertainment Weekly
Take one part David Sedaris and two parts Chelsea Handler and you'll have some inkling of the cockeyed humor of Jenny Lawson...[She] flaunts the sort of fearless comedic chops that will make you spurt Diet Coke through your nose.
Parade
Though mostly comedic, the text also addresses such serious issues as self-injury and why mental illness is misunderstood. Lawson insightfully explores the ways in which dark moments serve to make the lighter times all the brighter.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Lawson returns with another autobiographical work, this one focused on her experiences living with mental illness.... Vedict: The stigma surrounding mental illness can only be lifted if people affected are willing to talk about their experiences and everyone else is willing to listen. This book is a profane, hilarious, touching, and essential part of that conversation. —Stephanie Klose
Library Journal
Rather than hiding the facts, [Lawson] openly divulges, in a darkly humorous way, how she copes with rheumatoid arthritis, depression, panic attacks, anxiety.... She does a solid job exposing the hidden nature of mental illness.... Her amusing essays open up a not-so-funny topic: mental illness in its many guises.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for Furiously Happy:
1. Jenny Lawson is open about her struggle with mental illness. Has this book altered your view of those who face mental issues or given you greater insight of their plight?
2. Cancer patients, Lawson tells us, are not blamed for their failure to respond to treatment, but the same cannot always be said for those who suffer from mental illness. Why is that?
3. Do you personally know people—friends or family members—who suffer from any of the illnesses that Jenny Lawson discusses? If so, how do they cope, and how do the people close to them, perhaps yourself included, deal with their illnesses?
4. Talk about the use of humor in Furiously Happy. How does it affect your reading of this book? Why might Lawson treat such a serious, often tragic, subject with laughter?
5. What is the significance of the title, "Furiously Happy"?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It
Marc Goodman, 2015
Knopf Doubleday
464 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385539005
Summary
One of the world’s leading authorities on global security, Marc Goodman takes readers deep into the digital underground to expose the alarming ways criminals, corporations, and even countries are using new and emerging technologies against you—and how this makes everyone more vulnerable than ever imagined.
Technological advances have benefited our world in immeasurable ways, but there is an ominous flip side: our technology can be turned against us. Hackers can activate baby monitors to spy on families, thieves are analyzing social media posts to plot home invasions, and stalkers are exploiting the GPS on smart phones to track their victims’ every move.
We all know today’s criminals can steal identities, drain online bank accounts, and wipe out computer servers, but that’s just the beginning. To date, no computer has been created that could not be hacked—a sobering fact given our radical dependence on these machines for everything from our nation’s power grid to air traffic control to financial services.
Yet, as ubiquitous as technology seems today, just over the horizon is a tidal wave of scientific progress that will leave our heads spinning. If today’s Internet is the size of a golf ball, tomorrow’s will be the size of the sun. Welcome to the Internet of Things, a living, breathing, global information grid where every physical object will be online.
But with greater connections come greater risks. Implantable medical devices such as pacemakers can be hacked to deliver a lethal jolt of electricity and a car’s brakes can be disabled at high speed from miles away. Meanwhile, 3-D printers can produce AK-47s, bioterrorists can download the recipe for Spanish flu, and cartels are using fleets of drones to ferry drugs across borders.
With explosive insights based upon a career in law enforcement and counterterrorism, Marc Goodman takes readers on a vivid journey through the darkest recesses of the Internet. Reading like science fiction, but based in science fact, Future Crimes explores how bad actors are primed to hijack the technologies of tomorrow, including robotics, synthetic biology, nanotechnology, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence.
These fields hold the power to create a world of unprecedented abundance and prosperity. But the technological bedrock upon which we are building our common future is deeply unstable and, like a house of cards, can come crashing down at any moment.
Future Crimes provides a mind-blowing glimpse into the dark side of technological innovation and the unintended consequences of our connected world. Goodman offers a way out with clear steps we must take to survive the progress unfolding before us.
Provocative, thrilling, and ultimately empowering, Future Crimes will serve as an urgent call to action that shows how we can take back control over our own devices and harness technology’s tremendous power for the betterment of humanity—before it’s too late. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Marc Goodman has spent a career in law enforcement, including work as Futurist with the FBI, Senior Advisor to Interpol and street police officer. As the founder of the Future Crimes Institute and chair for Policy, Law & Ethics at Singularity University, he has continued to investigate the intriguing, often terrifying intersection of science and crime, uncovering nascent threats and combating the darker side of technology. (From the publisher.)
Marc holds a Master of Public Administration from Harvard University and a Master of Science in the Management of Information Systems from the London School of Economics. In addition, he has serves as a Fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation and is a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Stanford’s MediaX Laboratory. Marc is frequently covered in the press, having been featured by CNN, ABC, NBC, BBC, Fox News, The Guardian, Le Monde and PBS, among others. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Rather than challenge us to reconsider our habits, [some technology books] are more likely to inspire a defeatist "everything is terrible, nothing matters" attitude. Future Crimes,” a new book from Marc Goodman, inadvertently falls into this...category, which is unfortunate, because its arrival couldn’t have come at a better time.... While Goodman intends to deliver a warning about the dangers and vulnerabilities of our techno-laden world, Future Crimes often sounds less like a manifesto and more like a Wikipedia entry about the recent history of cybercrimes, some real, many hypothetical.
Jenna Wortham - New York Times Book Review
Addictive….[I]ntroduces readers to this brave new world of technology, where robbers have been replaced by hackers, and victims include nearly anyone on the Web… He presents his myriad hard-to-imagine cybercrime examples in the kind of matter-of-fact voice he probably perfected as an investigator. He clearly wants us never to look at our cellphones or Facebook pages in the same way again — and in this, Future Crimes succeeds marvelously.
Washington Post
Excellent and timely…Mr. Goodman is no neo-Luddite. He thinks innovations could ultimately lead to self-healing computer networks that detect hackers and automatically make repairs to shut them out. He rightly urges the private and public sectors to work more closely together, "crowdsourcing" ideas and know-how…The best time to start tackling future crimes is now.
Economist
This is a must-read!
Larry King
Future Crimes is a risk compendium for the Information Age…. Exhaustively researched…. Fascinating…. Thrilling to read.
San Francisco Chronicle
In Future Crimes, Goodman spills out story after story about how technology has been used for illegal ends...The author ends with a series of recommendations that, while ambitious, appear sensible and constructive...Goodman’s most promising idea is the creation of a “Manhattan Project” for cyber security...[Future Crimes is] a ride well worth taking if we are to prevent the worst of his predictions from taking shape.
Financial Times
Marc Goodman is a go-to guide for all who want a good scaring about the dark side of technology.
New Scientist
Utterly fascinating stuff... Goodman weds the joy of geeky technology with the tension of true crime. The future of crime prevention starts here.
NPR, San Francisco
A well-researched whirlwind tour of internet-based crime.
Science Magazine
By the middle of the first chapter you’ll be afraid to turn on your e-reader or laptop, and you’ll be looking with deep suspicion at your smartphone... [Goodman's] style is breezy but his approach is relentless, as he leads you from the guts of the Target data breach to the security vulnerabilities in social media...Mr. Goodman argues convincingly that we are addressing exponential growth in risky technologies with thinking that is, at best, incremental.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
[A] hair-raising exposé of cybercrime...Goodman’s breathless but lucid account is good at conveying the potential perils of emerging technologies in layman’s terms, and he sprinkles in deft narratives of the heists already enabled by them...A timely wake-up call.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) An alarming view of the burgeoning dark side of the Internet.... In this highly readable and exhaustive debut, [Goodman] details the many ways in which hackers, organized criminals, terrorists and rogue governments are exploiting the vulnerability of our increasingly connected society.... A powerful wake-up call.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)
Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love
Dava Soba, 1999
Viking Press
432 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780140280555
Summary
The son of a musician, Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) tried at first to enter a monastery before engaging the skills that made him the foremost scientist of his day. Though he never left Italy, his inventions and discoveries were heralded around the world. Most sensationally, his telescopes allowed him to reveal a new reality in the heavens and to reinforce the astounding argument that the Earth moves around the Sun.
For this belief, he was brought before the Holy Office of the Inquisition, accused of heresy, and forced to spend his last years under house arrest. Of Galileo's three illegitimate children, the eldest best mirrored his own brilliance, industry, and sensibility, and by virtue of these qualities became his confidante.
Born as Virginia in 1600, she was thirteen when Galileo placed her in a convent near him in Florence, where she took the most appropriate name of Suor Maria Celeste. Her loving support, which Galileo repaid in kind, proved to be her father's greatest source of strength throughout his most productive and tumultuous years.
Her presence, through letters which Sobel has translated from their original Italian and woven into the narrative, graces her father's life now as it did then. Galileo's Daughter dramatically recolors the personality and accomplishment of a mythic figure whose seventeenth-century clash with Catholic doctrine continues to define the schism between science and religion.
Moving between Galileo's grand public life and Maria Celeste's sequestered world, Sobel illuminates the Florence of the Medicis and the papal court in Rome during the pivotal era when humanity's perception of its place in the cosmos was being overturned. (From the publisher.)
(Be sure to read the Historical Background on Galileo provided by Dava Soba and Penguin Group publishers.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1947
• Where—Bronx, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., State University of New York, Binghamton
• Awards—American Academy of Arts and letters; Book of the
Year (UK); Le Prix Faubert du Coton (France); Il Premio del
Mare Circeo (Italy)
• Currently—lives in East Hampton, New York
Dava Sobel is an award-winning writer and former New York Times science reporter who has contributed articles to Audobon, Discover, Life, and The New Yorker. She has also been a contributing editor to Harvard magazine, writing about scientific research and the history of science.
Ms. Sobel has maintained an interest in Galileo since childhood and, with Galileo's Daughter, fulfills her ambition to plumb the renaissance scientist's life and times, and to reveal his little-explored relationship with his daughter, Suor Maria Celeste. In researching this book, she traveled to Italy four times and translated original documents, including more than 120 letters from Suor Maria Celeste to her famed father.
Ms. Sobel's previous book, Longitude, became an international bestseller and has been translated into more than twenty foreign languages. It has won several awards, including the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award, Book of the Year in England, Le Prix Faubert du Coton in France, and Il Premio del Mare Circeo in Italy. Also, in recognition of Longitude, Ms. Sobel was made a fellow of the American Geographical Society.
In summer 2000, the A&E Network broadcast a four-hour miniseries dramatization of Longitude produced as a joint production of Granada Films and A&E. In 2002 NOVA produced a television documentary, Galileo's Battle for the Heavens, based Soba's Galileo's Daughter.
Ms. Sobel lives in East Hampton, New York. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Retelling the story of Galileo's famous battle with the Inquisition over geocentricism, she brings it to life by concentrating on the everyday- his professional feuds, his own sincere religious beliefs and- most important- his intense relationship with his eldest daughter, a cloistered nun. The result is no textbook-sterile debate between science and religion over whether the sun revolved around a fixed Earth but an epic battle over our place in the cosmos... Galileo's Daughter is innovative history and a wonderfully told tale.
Malcom Jones - Newsweek
The book is most remarkable for its graceful combination of scholarly integrity and rhapsodic tone. Sobel imbues this potentially dry, academic story with the language and cadence of oral storytelling, and she gives it all the dramatic suspense that narrative demands.... As she tells a story about how difficult it was for many people to accept the Earth's place in the solar system, she suggests a simple explanation for why people so often fail to understand their own place in the world: "As participants in the Earth's activity, people cannot observe their own rotation, which is so deeply embedded in terrestrial existence as to have become insensible." Galileo's Daughter makes us pause and consider other aspects of our existence of which we may be insensible, and that we should perhaps regard with slightly less certainty.
Casey Greenfield - Salon
Despite its title, this impressive book proves to be less the story of Galileo's elder daughter, the oldest of his three illegitimate children, and more the story of Galileo himself and his trial before the Inquisition for arguing that Earth moves around the Sun. That familiar tale is given a new slant by Sobel's translation--for the first time into English--of the 124 surviving letters to Galileo by his daughter, Suor Maria Celeste, a Clarisse nun who died at age 33; his letters to her are lost, presumably destroyed by Maria Celeste's convent after her death. Her letters may not in themselves justify a book; they are devout, full of pious love for the father she addresses as "Sire," only rarely offering information or insight. But Sobel uses them as the accompaniment to, rather than the core of, her story, sounding the element of faith and piety so often missing in other retellings of Galileo's story. For Sobel shows that, in renouncing his discoveries, Galileo acted not just to save his skin but also out of a genuine need to align himself with his church. With impressive skill and economy, she portrays the social and psychological forces at work in Galileo's trial, particularly the political pressures of the Thirty Years' War, and the passage of the plague through Italy, which cut off travel between Florence, where Galileo lived, and Rome, the seat of the Pope and the Inquisition, delaying Galileo's appearance there and giving his enemies time to conspire. In a particularly memorable way, Sobel vivifies the hard life of the "Poor Clares," who lived in such abject poverty and seclusion that many were driven mad by their confinement. It's a wholly involving tale, a worthy follow-up (after four years) to Sobel's surprise bestseller, Longitude.
Publishers Weekly
Sobel, author of the bestselling Longitude (1995), has elegantly translated the letters Galileo's eldest child, Virginia, wrote to him and uses them as a leitmotif to illuminate their deep mutual love, religious faith, and dedication to science. Yes, Galileo had a daughter, in fact two daughters and a son, the illegitimate offspring of a liaison with a Venetian beauty. Both daughters, considered unmarriageable because of their illegitimacy, became nuns in a convent south of Florence, not far from where Galileo had homes. But Virginia, as Suor Maria Celeste, was deeply involved in her father's life work, even transcribing his writings, while managing convent affairs and serving as baker, nurse, seamstress, and apothecary. Thus, we learn that Galileo was often confined to bed with incapacitating illnesses and that he treasured the medicines as well as the sweets and cakes his daughter provided. He was also something of a bon vivant, enjoying the wines produced by his vineyards, writing ribald and humorous verse as well as literary criticism. Indeed, his celebrated Dialogues were conceived as dramas involving three persons, with one playing the role of simpleton as foil for the two. In the end, it was the Dialogues that argued for the Copernican view that the Earth moved around the Sun, which invoked the wrath of Pope Urban VIII, who had earlier been a loyal friend and supporter of Galileo. The subsequent trial in Rome ended with Galileo's recantation and his banishment first to Siena, and then to house arrest in Florence. Sobel provides a few correctives to tradition and fills out the cast of personae who were Galileo's chief defenders and enemies. But it's the deft apposition ofthe devoted and pious letters of Suor Maria Celeste that add not only verisimilitude, but depth to the character of the writer and her father—revealed as a man of great intellect as well as religious faith and loving kindness. Alas, his letters to her are lost.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
(Don't neglect the Historical Background on Galileo provided by Dava Soba and Penguin Group publishers.)
1. Suor Maria Celeste repeatedly asks Galileo for money in her letters, often apologetically. How does the tone and assuredness of these requests change over the course of the correspondence? Do you think Galileo was generous with his daughter? Is there any evidence that he refused any of her requests? How well did she manage his affairs when he was in Rome answering to the Holy Office of the Inquisition?
2. How do you envision the day-to-day routine in San Matteo in the years that Galileo's daughters lived there (see especially chapter 11)? Which of its deprivations were most trying for Suor Maria Celeste and her sisters in faith? How did a woman who never left the convent become so well-versed in the affairs of the world?
3. Under pressure from religious groups, the Kansas State Board of Education decided in 1999 to remove evolution and the big bang theory from the state-mandated curriculum. The move was opposed by a group named FLAT (Families for Learning Accurate Theories), a reference to the idea that the earth must be flat. Discuss the conflict between science and religion in Galileo's lifetime and ours. How have religious beliefs affected public policy concerning genetic engineering, cloning, and education?
4. Galileo's correspondence with his daughter reveals the value of many items in Renaissance Florence, from wheat and wine to thread and wedding dresses to Vincenzio's monthly allowance. Which were relatively costly, which inexpensive? How did their price compare to the value of a good farm, Galileo's first salary as a math professor, his rent in Bellosguardo and Arcetri, and the cost of a private room in the convent?
5. Why did Pope Urban VIII, once Galileo's ally, ultimately turn against him? How did external factors (the Thirty Years' War, alliances with France and Spain) affect his relationship with the scientist?
6. Galileo seems to have suffered from hernias, gout, and glaucoma. His elder daughter was plagued by headaches and tooth decay, and the younger may well have experienced major depression. How were these medical illnesses regarded during their lifetimes? What kind of home remedies did they use? How were doctors and surgeons regarded by the public at large and by Galileo?
7. The bubonic plague has been known for at least 3,000 years, and in the Middle Ages it depopulated entire cities. How did it touch the lives of Galileo and his family? Today plague still occurs in remote parts of Asia, Africa, South America, and even parts of the United States, but most cases can be treated with timely doses of antibiotics. What sorts of remedies—chemical, herbal, and religious—did Galileo and his daughters use to ward it off?
8. Galileo was famously wrong in his explanation of what causes tides. He thought, in essence, that the spinning of the earth caused the waters to slosh about their basins. Why did he dismiss the observation of his contemporary Johannes Kepler that the tides were related to the movements of the moon?
9. How do you think Galileo would react to the news that Pope John Paul II had called for a reexamination of his affair?
10. Given the suggestion in one of Suor Maria Celeste's letters that she wrote out the final manuscript for Galileo's Dialogue, how do you imagine the two of them might have worked together? How do you think each of them expected the final product to be received?
11. Viewed in this age of televised court cases, what did you think of the legal process of Galileo's trial?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Galileo's Daughter — Background
By Dava Soba . . .
The seventeenth century draws me and holds me because it embraces the most stunning reversal in perception ever to have jarred intelligent thought: We are not the center of the universe. The immobility of our world is an illusion. We spin. We speed through space, circling the Sun on our own wandering star.
Although the Polish cleric Nicolaus Copernicus had suggested this notion in 1543, it remained the quiet conjecture of scholars for more than sixty years before Galileo brought the Sun-centered universe to the attention of the general public. Beginning in 1609, his telescopic discoveries afforded the first tentative evidence in support of overturning the world order. In no time, Galileo the man became identified with the unpopular new paradigm, so that he attracted not only followers who lauded his insights, but also jealous competitors who vied with him for fame, outraged philosophers who questioned his veracity, and angry churchmen who accused him of heresy. Because, in the seventeenth century, Galileo's new cosmos was not simply a matter of astronomy, but appeared to violate an article of faith.
The Bible spoke specifically to this issue. The Psalms, for example, noted how God had "fixed the Earth upon its foundation, not to be moved forever." And surely the Sun must have been moving through space when Joshua entreated it to stand still.
A devout Catholic all his life, Galileo entertained these objections seriously. He believed in the absolute truth of the Bible, but he also believed in the fallacy of human interpretation of Holy Writ. Even the simplest sounding passages might hold the most hidden meanings. Thus, wherever the findings of astronomy appeared to contradict the teachings of Scripture, Galileo maintained, someone must have misconstrued the Biblical text.
The Bible was a book about how to go to Heaven, Galileo believed, not how the heavens go. Why would anyone turn to the Word of God to study astronomy when the Works of God stood open to scrutiny for that very purpose?
As enlightened as his viewpoint was -- indeed it became the official position of the Catholic Church in 1893 -- Galileo argued as a layman in an era of religious upheaval. The Council of Trent, after deliberating for two decades in response to the Protestant Reformation, in 1546 had issued a formal profession of faith that ceded Biblical interpretation to the Holy Fathers of the Church.
Galileo's championing of the Copernican system backfired miserably. In 1616, a formal Edict issued by the Holy Congregation of the Index declared the Sun-centered universe "false and contrary to Holy Scripture." And in 1633, Galileo stood trial before the Roman Inquisition for his persistent defense of the banned ideas, earning his enduring reputation as an enemy of church.
The rift between science and religion that we trace to the seventeenth century -- and specifically to the figure of Galileo -- opened in spite of him, not at any urging of his own. As the long-neglected letters of his daughter, a cloistered nun, have enabled me to show in my new book, Galileo's Daughter, Galileo endeavored always to conform his duty as a scientist with the destiny of his soul. The shift in perception that eventually rocked the world from complacency was for him the natural consequence of God's true omnipotence.
"It seems to me that we take too much upon ourselves," Galileo wrote, "when we will have it that merely taking care of us is the adequate work of Divine wisdom and power, and the limit beyond which it creates and disposes of nothing. I should not like to have us tie its hand so."
—Dava Sobel
________________________
Historial Background on Galileo
Introduction to the Penguin Group Reading Guide
The world into which Galileo Galilei was born was remarkably different from our own. Music was taught as a branch of mathematics. Medical students learned astrology as an aid to diagnosis and prognosis. Ice was believed to be heavier than water. A ten-pound stone was thought to fall ten times as fast as a one-pound stone. The world was the center of the universe, and the Vatican was the center of the world.
Into this cosmos stepped a revolutionary polymath-mathematician, physicist, astronomer, inventor, philosopher, and poet—who forever transformed the way we see our universe and ourselves. Galileo clashed famously with the Catholic Church, which held that his sun-centered universe was contrary to scripture. The Holy Office of the Inquisition ultimately ordered that he be placed under perpetual house arrest and banned his book, Dialogue on the Two Chief Systems of the World, which stayed listed on the Index of Prohibited Books for two hundred years. Yet Galileo remained faithful to the Church throughout his life, entrusting his two daughters to the convent of San Matteo near Florence.
Of Galileo's three children, only his daughter Virginia mirrored his own brilliance, industry, and sensibility. Her letters to her father, lovingly preserved by him, the margins sometimes marked with Galileo's notes, calculations, and diagrams, bear witness to the powerful emotional and intellectual bond between father and daughter. Virginia, Galileo wrote, was "a woman of exquisite mind, singular goodness, and most tenderly attached to me." Her letters, many of which are published here for the first time, not only illuminate the human side of this scientific genius but also convey the texture of Renaissance Italy with remarkable immediacy.
Galileo was born in 1564 near Pisa, a city within the grand duchy of Tuscany ruled by the powerful House of Medici. His father, Vincenzio, was a poor but gifted musician whose experiments with the harmonics of pipes and strings first introduced Galileo to the experimental method. Galileo, sent to the University of Pisa to study medicine in 1581, disappointed his father by turning his attention instead to mathematics, which he saw as the key to the physical world. At Pisa, he conducted famous studies of motion, such as dropping cannonballs of different weights from the Leaning Tower to demonstrate that the heavier ball did not fall significantly faster, contrary to what Aristotelian physical theory predicted.
After making academic enemies at Pisa, Galileo left in 1592 to take a better-paying position at the more prestigious University of Padua, where his fortunes flourished. He invented a "geometric and military compass," which was quickly adopted by kings and generals across Europe as an invaluable tool for calculating the arrangement of armies on the battlefield. He also ingratiated himself with the powerful Medici family. When Galileo's telescope revealed the four moons of Jupiter in 1610, he named them after the Medici heir apparent and his three younger brothers, and dedicated his book describing these marvelous discoveries, The Starry Messenger, to the young prince.
It was also during his sojourn in Padua that Galileo met Marina Gamba, who bore him three children without ever becoming his wife. Galileo eventually legitimized their son, Vincenzio, paving the way for him to enter Galileo's own social class and become his legal heir. But, Galileo viewed his two daughters, Virginia and Livia, as unmarriageable. After Galileo gained his long-sought position as "philosopher and mathematician to the Grand Duke," Cosimo de' Medici, he began to search for a place for his daughters among the fifty-three convents of Florence.
As many as one-half of the daughters of Florence's patrician families spent some portion of their lives cloistered, although many of them eventually left the convent to marry. Galileo insisted that the two sisters stay together despite laws prohibiting the placement of natural sisters in the same convent. Perhaps he already saw in Livia the signs of melancholy that would incapacitate her intermittently throughout her life and hoped that her older sister would care for her. Eventually he did secure a space for both in the convent of San Matteo in Arcetri, about a mile south of Florence. Virginia was thirteen and Livia twelve when they first passed through the convent's gates. When she reached the age of sixteen, Virginia took her vows and the name Suor (Sister) Maria Celeste, reflecting her father's interest in the celestial spheres. A year later, Livia became Suor Arcangela.
It was about this time, in 1616, that Galileo faced his first major conflict with the Church. Just as his father had struggled against the limits of medieval polyphony and helped to pave the way for new forms in music, Galileo rebelled against the prevailing Aristotelian physics and metaphysics, arguing instead for science based on observations of the world around him. His own observations of the planets and stars led him to support the theories of Nicolaus Copernicus, who had proposed some seventy years earlier that day and night were caused by the earth's rotation, not the sun's revolution around the earth. The publication of Galileo's famous Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems in 1632 led to his trial for heresy by the Holy Office of the Inquisition.
In 1633, the aged and infirm Galileo was summoned to Rome and chastened by the Church. Throughout this ordeal, Galileo found solace in correspondence with his elder daughter. She wrote him of the convent's most pressing needs, managed the affairs of his household when he was in Rome, and even assisted friends of his who sought to remove potentially incriminating evidence from his home. She alone among the sisters was called upon by the mother abbess to conduct the convent's correspondence, just as she was called to direct its choir and tend to its sick. Yet she found time to pray for her father and send him detailed news of home, while he grew increasingly dependent upon her for his emotional support.
Throughout Galileo's Daughter, Dava Sobel draws on a collection of 124 letters written by Suor Maria Celeste to her father. These letters, now preserved in the National Central Library of Florence, narrate an enduring story of faith and love. Sobel uses them to reanimate a forgotten woman. By Galileo's own estimation, as well as in the opinion of his friends, she was the most important person in his life. When, at the age of thirty-three, Maria Celeste met her untimely death from dysentery, Galileo wrote to a friend, "I feel immense sadness and melancholy...and continually hear my beloved daughter calling to me." (Introduction to the Reading Guide by the publisher.)
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The Game of Queens: The Women Who Made Sixteenth-Century Europe
Sarah Gristwood, 2016
Basic Books
392 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780465096787
Summary
Sixteenth-century Europe saw an explosion of female rule.
From Isabella of Castile and her granddaughter Mary Tudor, to Catherine de Medici, Anne Boleyn, and Elizabeth Tudor, women wielded enormous power over their territories for more than a hundred years.
In the sixteenth century, as in our own, the phenomenon of the powerful woman offered challenges and opportunities. Opportunities, as when in 1529 Margaret of Austria and Louise of Savoy negotiated the "Ladies’ peace" of Cambrai.
Challenges, as when both Mary Queen of Scots and her kinswoman Elizabeth I came close to being destroyed by sexual scandal.
A fascinating group biography of some of the most beloved (and reviled) queens in history, Game of Queens tells the story of the powerful women who drove European history. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1956 (?)
• Where—Kent, England, UK
• Education—B.A., Oxford University
• Currently—lives in London and Kent (in England)
Sarah Gristwood is a British author and journalist. She is the author of several historical biographies, most recently The Game of Queens about the 16th century's rule by a number of powerful women.
Gristwood was born in Kent, England, and read English literature at Oxford University, graduating in 1978. After leaving Oxford, she began a career as a journalist, eventually finding her niche in film journalism. She interviewed celebrities ranging from Johnny Depp and Robert DeNiro to Paul McCartney. Her stories have appeared in the UK's leading newspapers: The Times, Guardian, Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph, as well as in magazines like Cosmopolitan and Country Living.
Books
Turning to historical biographies, Gristwood published her first book, Arbella: England's Lost Queen, in 2005. Next, in 2007, came Bird of Paradise: The Colourful Career of the First Mrs Robinson, followed that same year by Elizabeth and Leicester: Power Passion and Politics.
Then came The Ring and the Crown: A History of Royal Weddings 1066–2011, co-authored with Allison Weir in 2011. The same year, Gristwood also published her first historical novel, The Girl in the Mirror. Blood Sisters: The Women Behind the Wars of the Roses came out in 2014, followed two years later by The Game of Queens: The Women Who Made Sixteenth-Century Europe in 2016.
Miscellany
n 2011, Gristwood published the 50th anniversary edition of The Breakfast at Tiffany's Companion. In 2013 she co-wrote Fabulous Frocks with Jane Eastoe, and in 2016 she released The Story of Beatrix Potter under the UK's National Trust imprint.
In addition to her writing, Gristwood has become a regular commentator on royal affairs, working with the team that provided live coverage on Radio for the royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. She has since spoken on the Queen’s Jubilee, the royal baby, and other royal stories for Sky News, Woman’s Hour, Radio 5 Live, and CBC.
Personal
Gristwood is married to film critic Derek Malcolm, and the two split their time between London and Kent. (Adapted from the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Gristwood successfully demonstrates how mentors...and power wielders...helped influence generations of ambitious, high-ranking women through networking and clever manipulation…. [A] fresh take on...some of Europe’s most powerful players.... [I]ntriguing, cohesive, and accessible.
Publishers Weekly
Gristwood chronicles the unusual happenstance of the 16th century whereby most of Europe was under a female ruler's control.... While the analysis isn't groundbreaking, it casts a well-researched time period in an intriguing light. —Laura Hiatt, Fort Collins, CO
Library Journal
[I]ntriguing collective biography about overlooked women of historical significance.... Gristwood interweaves their respective accomplishments and failures, placing the group dynamic firmly into historical and social context.... A fascinating work of world and women's history.
Booklist
Sarah Gristwood’s sweeping survey of the careers of numerous royal women in 16th-century Europe amply justifies the nod to Game of Thrones in the title: it features enough dynastic conflict, violence and sexual intrigue to satisfy the most hardened addicts of the series…. Gristwood handles multiple narrative strands with tremendous finesse, dexterously synthesising the stories of women who, in many cases, never met but whose lives intertwined in manifold ways…. Densely packed with fascinating material, this immensely ambitious undertaking succeeds triumphantly.
Literary Review (UK)
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)
Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets
Sudhir Venkatesh, 2008
Penguin Group USA
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780143114932
Summary
The story of the young sociologist who studied a Chicago crack-dealing gang from the inside captured the world's attention when it was first described in Freakonomics. Gang Leader for a Day is the fascinating full story of how Sudhir Venkatesh managed to gain entree into the gang, what he learned, and how his method revolutionized the academic establishment.
When Venkatesh walked into an abandoned building in one of Chicago's most notorious housing projects, he was looking for people to take a multiple-choice survey on urban poverty. A first-year grad student, he would befriend a gang leader named JT and spend the better part of the next decade inside the projects under JT's protection, documenting what he saw there.
Over the next seven years, Venkatesh observed JT and the rest of the gang as they operated their crack selling business, conducted PR within their community, and rose up or fell within the ranks of the gang's complex organizational structure.
Gang Leader for a Day is an inside view into the morally ambiguous, highly intricate, often corrupt struggle to survive in an urban war zone. It is also the story of a complicated friendship between two young and ambitious men, a universe apart. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—India
• Education—B.A., University of California, San Diego; Ph.D.,
University of Chicago
• Currently—treaches at Columbia University, New York, New
York, USA
Sudhir Venkatesh is professor of sociology at Columbia University. He has written extensively about American poverty. He is currently working on a project comparing the urban poor in France and the United states. His writings, stories, and documentaries have appeared in The American Prospect, This American Life, the Source, and on PBS and national Public Radio. (From the publisher.)
More
Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh is an Indian American sociologist and urban ethnographer. Born in India, he is a professor of sociology and African-American studies at Columbia University. He is also the director of the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy, the Charles H. Revson Fellowship, and a board member at Philadelphia-based nonprofit Public/Private Ventures.
In his work, Venkatesh has documented criminal gangs and the drug trade, and has written about the dynamics of the underground economy including street prostitution, contributing his findings to the research of economics professor Steven Levitt.
Venkatesh moved with his family to Southern California suburb of Irvine. There he was active in sports and excelled in his academic studies while attending University High School.
Venkatesh received a B.A. in mathematics from UCSD in 1988. He attended graduate school at the University of Chicago where he studied under Professor William Julius Wilson, focusing on Robert Taylor Homes, a housing project in Chicago about which he wrote a book, American Project.
In 2008, he published Gang Leader For A Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes To The Streets. The book chronicles the life of urban poor in Chicago, particularly the Robert Taylor Homes and the gang, Black Kings, whose leader J.T. he befriended. He found that most foot soldiers in drug gangs make only $3.30 an hour.
In a separate research project with Steven Levitt, he hired former sex workers to track working street prostitutes in Chicago, finding that they make about $30–$35 an hour, with those working with pimps making more and suffering fewer arrests. A street prostitute was arrested about once per 450 tricks, while 3% of the tricks were given for free to police officers to avoid arrest. Condoms were used in only 20% of the contacts. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Without question, Mr. Venkatesh is dazzled by J. T. and seduced by the gang life. He maintains enough distance, however, to appraise the information he is given and to build up, through careful observation, a detailed picture of life at the project. He writes what might be called tabloid sociology, but it rests on a solid foundation of data.
William Grimes - New York Times
The achievement of Gang Leader for a Day is to give the dry statistics a raw, beating heart.
Boston Globe
Compelling.... Venkatesh gives readers a window into a way of life that few Americans understand.
Newsweek
In the late 1980s and 1990s, rogue sociologist Venkatesh infiltrated the world of tenant and gang life in Chicago's Robert Taylor Home projects. He found a complex system of compromises and subsistence that makes life (barely) manageable. Venkatesh excellently illustrates the resourcefulness of impoverished communities in contrast to a society that has virtually abandoned them. He also reveals the symbiotic relationship between the community and the gangs that helps sustain each.
Publishers Weekly
(Adult/High School) As a young graduate student fresh off an extended stint following the Grateful Dead, Venkatesh began studying urban poverty. With a combination of an ethnographer's curiosity about another culture and some massive naïveté, he gathered firsthand knowledge of the intricacies of Chicago's Robert Taylor projects. Early on, he met a megalomaniac gang leader known here as J.T., who became his mentor. Venkatesh observed and learned how the crack game works, and how many have their fingers in the pie and need life to remain the way it is. He observed violence, corruption, near homelessness, good cops, bad cops, and a lot of neglect and politics-as-usual. He made errors in judgment-it took a long time for his street smarts to catch up to his book smarts-but he tells the story in such a way as to allow readers to figure out his missteps as he did. Finally, as the projects began to come down, Venkatesh was able to demonstrate how something that seems positive is not actually good for everyone. The first line in his preface, "I woke up at about 7:30 a.m. in a crack den," reflects the prurient side of his studies, the first chapter title, "How does it feel to be black and poor?" reflects the theoretical side, and both work together in this well-rounded portrayal. —Jamie Watson, Harford County Public Library, MD
School Library Journal
An insider's view of gang culture and warfare. First described in Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner's "rogue" guide, Freakonomics (2005), Venkatesh's brazen foray into Chicago's organized street life is chronicled here in its entirety. It began during his first year of graduate sociology work at the University of Chicago and took seven years to complete. The author's colleagues asserted that quantitative and statistical data would suffice to completely deconstruct the behavioral patterns of those living in the poor, black neighborhoods surrounding the university. Instead, he chose an ethnographic approach, personally immersing himself in his vigorous research. In Washington Park, a beautiful (by day) area that the university consistently discouraged its students from frequenting, Venkatesh spoke with two sage black seniors who dispensed fatalistic views on race relations. The ballsy investigator wandered through the Lake Park high-rise housing project located just a few miles from campus, hoping to interview families about being "black and poor." He was briskly escorted from an "abandoned" building; knives and guns were quickly drawn. With J.T., a gold-toothed, tough-talking former college student and current gang member, the author developed "a strange kind of intimacy." Venkatesh's guts and persistence elicited J.T.'s substantial history lesson on black Chicago, its underground economy, the crack cocaine trade and the intricate echelons of gang hierarchy. J.T. soon moved in with his proud, outspoken mother at the crack-infested Robert Taylor Homes housing project, hoping to increase his drug-selling revenue. Venkatesh dutifully followed and scrutinized prostitutes, hustlers and gang violence. Still striving to learn how gang activity and allegiances dictate behavior, he infiltrated the Black Kings crack gang. That was dangerous, complicated and legally risky; he could have been jailed for contempt for failing to share his notes with the police. Venkatesh writes of his harrowing, exhilarating fieldwork with the great pride and insatiable curiosity of a seasoned news reporter. A dark, revealing expose.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. How would you respond if a graduate student from an elite university turned up at your door and announced his intention to study you? How would your reaction differ from what Sudhir Venkatesh encountered in Gang Leader for a Day?
2. Give a character sketch of J.T. What are his particular strengths and weaknesses as a leader?
3. In Gang Leader for a Day, Venkatesh continually compares the Black Kings’ drug trafficking with more conventional forms of American business. To what extent are you persuaded by these comparisons?
4. What strategies does Venkatesh use to gain the confidence of J.T. and the other people he meets at Robert Taylor? Does he ever completely gain their trust? Why are issues of trust so difficult in this book?
5. In chapter two, Venkatesh and J.T. argue about whether a “culture of poverty” exists among poor blacks in America. In your opinion, does Gang Leader for a Day do more to confirm or to dispute that there is such a culture?
6. Why is J.T. so anxious and controlling with regard to where Venkatesh goes and whom he talks with at Robert Taylor? Whom or what is he really protecting?
7. On pages 146 through 149, Ms. Bailey blames the conditions at Robert Taylor on a larger society that has denied opportunities to the poor. To what extent do you consider her arguments persuasive?
8. Venkatesh’s regard for Autry Harrison is so great that he dedicates Gang Leader for a Day to him. Why does he respect Autry highly?
9. J.T. constantly rationalizes the activities of the Black Kings and maintains that the gang confers more benefits than detriments on the community. Is there any truth to his self-justifications? Are there ways in which the community would be worse off if the BKs were suddenly to disappear?
10. Venkatesh’s portrayal of the Chicago police and other “legitimate” institutions of power is less than wholly complimentary. To what extent do you think the city’s institutions helped to create and maintain the conditions that allow gangs to flourish?
11. Why do Venkatesh’s efforts to educate the young women and children of the project fail so miserably? Why does he find it so difficult in general to help the people he encounters?
12. How does a powerful woman like Ms. Bailey exert influence over the housing project? How does the exercise of female power in this book differ from the wielding of male power?
13. As you read Gang Leader for a Day, were you troubled by the ethics of Venkatesh’s research? Was he, as he himself sometimes worried, as exploitative and manipulative in his own way as J.T. was in his?
14. Did reading Gang Leader for a Day make you more or less sympathetic to the problems of America’s urban poor? Why
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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The Gardens that Mended a Marriage
Karen Moloney, 2014
Muswell Press
223 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780957556836
Summary
The Gardens that Mended a Marriage tells the story of how the author and her husband, an eminent architect, built a contemporary Moorish house on the top of a mountain and created a Persian garden, following the recipe laid down in the Quran for a paradise on earth.
Except it wasn’t as easy as that. The land slipped down the mountain, the neighbours sued, the town hall went into paralysis and wouldn’t allow them to finish the house. The Spanish builder turned out to be incompetent, the lawyer disinterested and the project manager seriously ill. In between times, she visited gardens all over the world for ideas and tended her precious vegetable patch in north London and waited.
Through all this, they argued, made up, disagreed about the garden, argued again, invested a lot of money and almost gave up. But over the years they came to understand that a significant shift happens in a relationship when you let go.
It was the creation of the garden that taught them. Nature will allow you to sculpt her land, nurture her plants and take control only if you agree to her conditions. So it is with a marriage. You can fight human nature only to a certain extent. It’s a trade-off. Accepting that fact is the real recipe for a paradise on earth.
Author Bio
• Birth—August 26, 1955
• Where—Gibraltar, Overseas Territory, UK
• Education—B.A., Trinity College, Dublin
• Currently—lives in London, England
Dr Karen Moloney is a business psychologist, Director of Moloney Minds, leadership coach and a futurist. She travels the world meeting remarkable business people and helping them become even more remarkable. At least, that’s her day job. But by night, she’s a writer. In the in-between times, she’s an enthusiastic but inept amateur gardener. (From the author.)
Visit the author's book website.
Book Reviews
Utterly enchanting.
Daily Mail
Like many empty-nest couples, Karen Moloney and her husband had drifted so far apart they were virtual strangers. Could they create a new dream together than would rekindle their passion?
Good Housekeeping
An amazing story of dogged determination to realise a Spanish garden vision. Frustrating obstacles are ultimately overcome in this serious but humorous book. A lesson in horticultural perseverance becomes an emotional experience for both author and reader.
Penelope Hobhouse
Moving mountains? Creating a dream garden to save your marriage? Karen Moloney recounts how she and her husband did just that. A horticultural tour de force.
Charlie Hopkinson
A beautifully written tale of courage, calamity and persistence. Great on plants too.
Ken Livingstone
Discussion Questions
1. The book narrates a six year period in the lives of a couple struggling with a new building and garden. What did you find inspiring? What did you find disappointing?
2. Was there a specific passage that had left an impression, good or bad? Share the passage and its effect.
3. Was there a lesson that you personally have taken away from this story, either about relationships, building projects or gardening? What was it and why is it important for you?
4. This book tells the story of an ambitious project. Do you have any secret ambitions and is there a chance they could ever be fulfilled?
5. If you are an empty-nester, how have you coped with the void of your children leaving home?
6. Thinking about the author’s marriage, how typical are the ups and downs she shared? What did you think of her way of coping with them? How do you cope with them?
7. Non-fiction books can sometimes be technical. Was this book written in a way that was easily accessible? Were horticultural terms and concepts explained? Did the photos help to reinforce the subject matter and were they helpful?
8. Sometimes it is hard to categorize a book, as the author wrote in the Foreword and Afterword. Where do you think this book belongs? Gardening, travel, relationships? Or does it cross over several categories?
9. How well written was this book?
10. The author recounts her differences between herself and her husband in their approach to designing a garden. Have you experienced a tension between high-control and laisse-faire styles? Maybe between you and those you live or work with? How did you resolve it?
11. Was there something especially surprising about this story? What was it and why?
12. Does this book mainly appeal to men or women and why?
13. Memoirs trace a personal story. Did you have any preconceived opinions of the author when you first began reading and did they change in the course of her story? If so, did it change for the better or the worse?
14. Memoirs are only one side of the story, of course. What kind of book do you think Stanley would have written?
15. What do you think the next ten years will bring for the author and her family?
(Questions courtesy of the author.)
The Gardner Heist: The True Story of the World's Largest Unsolved Art Theft
Ulrich Boser, 2009
HarperCollins
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061451843
Summary
One museum, two thieves, and the Boston underworld—the story behind the lost Gardner masterpieces and the art detective who swore to get them back.
Shortly after midnight on March 18, 1990, two men broke into the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston and committed the largest art heist in history. They stole a dozen masterpieces, including one Vermeer, three Rembrandts, and five Degas.
But after thousands of leads, hundreds of interviews, and a $5-million reward, not a single painting has been recovered. Worth a total of $500 million, the missing masterpieces have become the Holy Grail of the art world and one of the nation's most extraordinary unsolved mysteries.
Art detective Harold Smith worked on the theft for years, and after his death, reporter Ulrich Boser inherited his case files. Traveling deep into the art underworld, Boser explores Smith's unfinished leads and comes across a remarkable cast of characters, including the brilliant rock 'n' roll art thief; the golden-boy gangster who professes his innocence in rhyming verse; the deadly mobster James "Whitey" Bulger; and the Boston heiress Isabella Stewart Gardner, who stipulated in her will that nothing should ever be changed in her museum, a provision followed so closely that the empty frames of the stolen works still hang on the walls.
Boser eventually cracks one of the biggest mysteries of the case and uncovers the identities of the men who robbed the museum nearly two decades ago. A tale of art and greed, of obsession and loss, The Gardner Heist is as compelling as the stolen masterpieces themselves. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Ulrich Boser has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, Smithsonian magazine, Slate, and many other publications. He has served as a contributing editor at U.S. News and World Report and is the founding editor of The Open Case, a crime magazine and web community. He lives in Washington, D.C. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
The Gardner Museum in Boston is a monument to the idiosyncrasies of the rich. A replica of a Venetian palazzo, it embodies the vision of Isabella Stewart Gardner, who built a world-class art collection and displayed it her way....[In 1990] thieves dressed as cops faked their way inside and made off with a Rembrandt, a Vermeer and other paintings valued at over $500 million. Ulrich Boser presents his solution to the mystery: The culprits were the minions of Boston-area gangsters. But loose ends remain, notably the whereabouts of the paintings. It can't be easy to dispose of such well-known art works, and a recent federal law has added to the complexity. As a lawyer explained to Boser, "If someone buys the Gardner Rembrandt fifty years down the road, they can still be prosecuted."
Washington Post
By Boser's accounting, every cat burglar between Boston and Dublin has a bead on the missing masterpieces. To his credit, the book is a thrill despite the frustrating nature of the investigation, in which he painstakingly tracks audacious leads from mendacious thugs only to arrive at dead ends. And a few dead suspects. And to be sure, no art. Still, Boser does turn up some new evidence and makes a conclusive case for the identity of the thieves who did the job. The mystery remains unsolved, but the case is reinvigorated in its retelling by a man who fully appreciates the value of the masterpieces and the magnitude of the criminal conspiracy that carried them away in the night.
Kriston Capps - Guardian (UK)
Boser has done a public service in exposing the real world of art theft: It isn't about glamour and culture — it's about greed, violence and irreparable, maddening loss.
USA Today
Boser has produced a captivating portrait of the world's biggest unsolved art theft.
Wall Street Journal
In the early morning hours of March 18, 1990, thieves posing as cops entered Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and left with a haul unrivaled in the art world, including three Rembrandts and a Vermeer, valued today at $600 million. Boser, a contributing editor at U.S. News and World Report, turned amateur sleuth after the death of a legendary independent fine arts claims adjuster, Harold Smith, who was haunted by the Gardner robbery. Boser carried on Smith's work, pursuing leads as varied as James "Whitey" Bulger's Boston mob and the IRA. Along the way, he visited felons-including the notorious art thief Myles Connor-and Bob Wittman, the FBI's only art theft undercover agent. Boser's rousing account of his years spent collecting clues large and small is entertaining enough to make readers almost forget that, after 18 years, the paintings have still not been found: the museum is offering a $5 million reward for information leading to their return.
Publishers Weekly
An enjoyable true-crime tale accessible to lovers of art and whodunits alike.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Gardner Heist:
1. What possessed Boser to take up where Harold Smith left off?
2. Boser has said that art theft is more mundane, far less glamorous, than Hollywood portrayals. What does he mean? What is he referring to?
3. Talk about Isabella Stewart Gardner. What kind of person is she? How did she go about collecting her masterworks? What motivates someone like Gardner to spend such an immense fortune on original art?
4. Describe the underworld that Boser penetrates in his search for clues. Talk about those who inhabit that murky world— Whitey Bluger, Slab Murphy, and Myles Connor. Who are more distrubing—the criminals or the hardnosed, often corrupt, law enforcers who prusue them?
5. Dectectives sometimes turn to psychics and paranormals to help with a case, especially when they've hit wall. Can those individuals offer genuine help in solving crimes?
6. What new evidence does Boser bring to light? And what are his ultimate conclusions about who perpetrated the robbery? Does he build a convincing case?
7. Were you frustrated by the dead ends...and ultimately by Boser's inability to crack the case and recover the paintings? Or do you find invigorating the fact that the theft remains unsolved—one of those intriguing mysteries of life?
8. Talk about what the loss of some of the world's artistic masterpieces means. Do you find a $500 million theft of valuable art a despicable crime...or an intriguing mystery? How do you value that loss in the overall scheme of the world around you? (Cool question.)
9. Nearly 20 years have passed since the art heist at the Gardner museum. Do you think the case will ever be solved? Will the paintings ever be found?
10. If the paintings cannot be shown in public, even 50 years after the heist, for what purpose would someone buy them?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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A Gentleman in Moscow
Amor Towles, 2016
Penguin Publishing
480 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780670026197
Summary
With his breakout debut novel, Rules of Civility, Amor Towles established himself as a master of absorbing, sophisticated fiction, bringing late 1930s Manhattan to life with splendid atmosphere and a flawless command of style. Readers and critics were enchanted.
A Gentleman in Moscow immerses us in another elegantly drawn era with the story of Count Alexander Rostov.
When, in 1922, he is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, the count is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin.
Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him a doorway into a much larger world of emotional discovery.
Brimming with humor, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates the count’s endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose.(From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1964
• Where—near Boston, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—B.A., Yale University; M.A., Stanford University
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York
Amor Towles was born and raised just outside Boston, Massachusetts. He graduated from Yale University and received an MA in English from Stanford University, where he was a Scowcroft Fellow. For his M.A. thesis, he wrote a series of five related stories that was published in the Paris Review in 1989.
Towles spent the next 20 years in the financial industry as director of research for Select Equity Group, an $18 billion hedge fund. During that time, he never gave up the dream of becoming an author. A decade into his financial career, he began work on a novel set in the Russian countryside, only to toss the manuscript after seven years. Finally, in 2006, he made another effort, this time succeeding with what would become his 2011 debut novel, Rules of Civility.
In 2013, Towles retired so he devote himself to full-time writing. His second book, A Gentleman in Moscow came out in 2016. According to Towles, the book was inspired by a business trip two years earlier as he mused about guests at Le Richemond hotel in Geneva, Switzerland. He had noticed the same people on a previous trip, and he began to wonder what it would be like to be trapped, for decades, inside a hotel. Towles wrote his thoughts down on Le Richemond hotel stationery, notes which he has kept to this day. (Adapted from the publisher and Wall Street Journal.)
Book Reviews
In Amor Towles’ sparkling new novel, the dreary landscape of the former Soviet Union is transformed into a fairy tale land of candlelit dinners, hidden treasures, love struck movie stars, and precocious little girls. It all takes place within the walls of Moscow’s famed Metropol, one of the world’s grand luxury hotels. There, in 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is placed under house arrest for the remainder of his life. And what a life it turns out to be! READ MORE.
Molly Lundquist - LitLovers
The novel buzzes with the energy of numerous adventures, love affairs, twists of fate and silly antics.... And there is some beautiful writing.... [But while] the author’s light, waggish style suited the cafe society of Rules of Civility,... Stalin’s Soviet Union is another matter, and this is where his novel fails. "Let us concede," he remarks, "that the early thirties in Russia were unkind." Over four million people perished from famine in the U.S.S.R. in the early 1930s.... To flippantly refer to this moment as "unkind"...speaks to a disturbing lack of empathy and even moral imagination.
Douglas Smith - Wall Street Journal
Count Rostov is a memorable character you come to care about and root for.... Towles introduces his character slowly, offering glimpses of the man and his past as the story proceeds. But from the start, Rostov is quite the Renaissance man. He can taste the nettles tucked under the Ukrainian ham of a saltimbocca "fashioned from necessity"; seat a banquet's worth of Soviet bigwigs with a diplomat's dexterity; memorably bed an actress; befriend practically everyone; and quietly outwit dogmatic apparatchiks.... "Marvelous" is a word I'd use for this book..., [which] left me with conflicting emotions. I was happy for a good, engaging read. And I was sad that it was over and I had to bid Count Rostov adieu.
Bill Daley - Chicago Tribune
Rostov passes the decades making a whole world out of a hotel and the people in it....[living] a full and rich life according to the principle that, "If one did not master one's circumstances, one was bound to be mastered by them." A Gentleman in Moscow is a novel that aims to charm, not be the axe for the frozen sea within us. And the result is a winning, stylish novel that keeps things easy. Flair is always the goal Towles never lets anyone merely say goodbye when they could bid adieu, never puts a period where an exclamation point or dramatic ellipsis could stand. winning, stylish novel.
NPR.org
Enjoyable, elegant.... As years pass, Rostov finds that his confinement has conversely broadened his personal horizons.... There are two surprises at the end of the novel; you’ll nod at one, and raise your eyebrows at the other. Even greater delights, though, are found in Towles’ glorious turns of phrase.
Melissa Davis - Seattle Times
Irresistible.... In his second elegant period piece investment banker turned novelist Amor Towles continues to explore the question of how a person can lead an authentic life in a time when mere survival is a feat in itself.... Towles’s tale, as lavishly filigreed as a Faberge egg, gleams with nostalgia for the golden age of Tolstoy and Turgenev...reminding the reader that though Putin may be having a moment, it’s Pushkin who’s eternal.
Oprah Magazine
The book moves briskly from one crisp scene to the next, and ultimately casts a spell as encompassing as Rules of Civility, a book that inhales you into its seductively Gatsby-esque universe.
Town & Country
[A]n engaging 30-year saga set almost entirely inside the Metropol, Moscow’s most luxurious hotel.... Episodic, empathetic, and entertaining, Count Rostov’s long transformation occurs against a lightly sketched background of upheaval, repression, and war. Gently but dauntlessly, like his protagonist, Towles is determined to chart the course of the individual.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Towles grandly unfolds the life of Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov in Soviet-era Moscow.... As urbane, cultured, and honey-smooth as the count himself, even as his situation inevitably creates suspense, this enthralling work is highly recommended. —Barbara Hoffert
Library Journal
In his remarkable first novel, the bestselling Rules of Civility, Towles etched 1930s New York in crystalline relief.... His latest polished literary foray into a bygone era is just as impressive...an imaginative and unforgettable historical portrait.
Booklist
(Starred review.) Count Alexander Rostov...lives the fullest of lives, discovering the depths of his humanity..... A masterly encapsulation of modern Russian history, this book more than fulfills the promise of Towles' stylish debut, Rules of Civility (2011).
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use these LitLovers talking points to start a discussion for The Gentleman in Moscow...then take off on your own:
1. Start with the Count. How would you describe him? Do you find him an appealing, even memorable character?
2. In what way does his gilded cage, his "prison" for decades, transform Count Rostov? How do you see him changing during the course of the novel? What incidents have the most profound effect on him? Consider the incident with the beehive and the honey.
3. The Metropol serves literally and symbolically as a window on the world. What picture does Amor Towles paint of the Soviet Union—the brutality, its Kafka-esque bureaucracy, and the fear it inspires among its citizens? What are the pressures, for instance, faced by those who both live in and visit the Metropol? Does Towles's dark portrait overwhelm the story's narrative?
4. Talk about Nina, who even Towles considers the Eloise of the Metropol. Nina helps the Count unlock the hotel (again, literally and symbolically), revealing a much richer place than the it first seemed. What do we, along with the Count, discover?
5. What might Casablanca be the Count's favorite film? What does it suggest about his situation?
6. Talk about the other characters, aside from Nina, who play an important part in this novel the handyman, the actress, his friend Mishka, and even Osip Glebnikov. Consider the incident with the honey.
7. The Count was imprisoned for writing the poem, "where is it now?", which questioned the purpose of the new Soviet Union. Care to make any comparisons now with Russia under Putin, 70-some years later?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America
Jill Leovy, 2015
Random House
384pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385529983
Summary
A masterly work of literary journalism about a senseless murder, a relentless detective, and the great plague of homicide in America
On a warm spring evening in South Los Angeles, a young man is shot and killed on a sidewalk minutes away from his home, one of the thousands of black Americans murdered that year. His assailant runs down the street, jumps into an SUV, and vanishes, hoping to join the scores of killers in American cities who are never arrested for their crimes.
But as soon as the case is assigned to Detective John Skaggs, the odds shift.
Here is the kaleidoscopic story of the quintessential, but mostly ignored, American murder—a “ghettoside” killing, one young black man slaying another—and a brilliant and driven cadre of detectives whose creed is to pursue justice for forgotten victims at all costs.
Ghettoside is a fast-paced narrative of a devastating crime, an intimate portrait of detectives and a community bonded in tragedy, and a surprising new lens into the great subject of why murder happens in our cities—and how the epidemic of killings might yet be stopped. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Jill Leovy, an award-winning crime reporter for the Los Angeles Times, lives in Los Angeles with her family. In 2007 Leovy started the Homicide Report, a blog that records every homicide in Los Angeles County. She found that three people a day, on average, are killed in LA, most dying anonymously. These deaths are not headline grabbing drive-by shootings, school shootings, or other "notable" killings; rather they're homicides deemed unnewsworthy by police and media. (Adapted from the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Jill Leovy's powerful new book…is old-school narrative journalism…a serious and kaleidoscopic achievement…Nestled inside the story of one gang-related killing is a well-made and timely argument…that transcends a single death. Ms. Leovy suggests, six decades after the start of the civil rights movement, that the "impunity for the murder of black men" remains America's great and largely ignored race problem…Like an orchestra, Ghettoside needs time to warm up…Yet once it gets rolling, it is tidal in its force…Ms. Leovy's greatest gift as a journalist [is] her ability to remain hard-headed while displaying an almost Tolstoyan level of human sympathy. Nearly every person in her story—killers and victims, hookers and soccer moms, good cops and bad—exists within a rich social context…[Leovy's] a crisp writer with a crisp mind and the ability to boil entire skies of information into hard journalistic rain.
Dwight Garner - New York Times
This is a world that most journalists never cover, and most of America never sees…. In Ghettoside, [Leovy] tackles this "plague of murders," as she calls it, with a book-length narrative that enables her to write about it with all the context and complexity it deserves…. Leovy's relentless reporting has produced a book packed with valuable, hard-won insights—and it serves as a crucial, 366-page reminder that "black lives matter," showing how the "system's failure to catch killers effectively made black lives cheap.
Jennifer Gonnerman - New York Times Book Review
Masterful....gritty reporting that matches the police work behind it.
Los Angeles Times
Moving and engrossing.
San Francisco Chronicle
(Starred review.) [A]bsorbing....a powerful argument about race and our criminal justice system.... Leovy spins a good yarn.... Readers may come for Leovy’s detective story; they will stay for her lucid social critique.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) The author digs deeply into the story of one particular murder, exploring the long history of racism, discrimination, and poverty.... Like the best narrative nonfiction, the book burrows into both heart and brain.... [A] worthwhile read. —Kate Sheehan, C.H. Booth Lib., Newtown, CT
Library Journal
[T]he author journeys where most fear to tread: ...a vacuum left by a legal system that fails to serve everyone equally. Leovy posits that the gang violence in LA is the result of the local police simply not doing their jobs.... [S]obering and informative.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)
Gift from the Sea
Anne Morrow Lindberg, 1955
Knopf Doubleday
144 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780679732419
Summary
In this inimitable, beloved classic—graceful, lucid and lyrical—Anne Morrow Lindbergh shares her meditations on youth and age; love and marriage; peace, solitude and contentment as she set them down during a brief vacation by the sea.
Drawing inspiration from the shells on the shore, Lindbergh’s musings on the shape of a woman’s life bring new understanding to both men and women at any stage of life. A mother of five, an acclaimed writer and a pioneering aviator, Lindbergh casts an unsentimental eye on the trappings of modernity that threaten to overwhelm us: the time-saving gadgets that complicate rather than simplify, the multiple commitments that take us from our families. And by recording her thoughts during a brief escape from everyday demands, she helps readers find a space for contemplation and creativity within their own lives.
With great wisdom and insight Lindbergh describes the shifting shapes of relationships and marriage, presenting a vision of life as it is lived in an enduring and evolving partnership. A groundbreaking, best-selling work when it was originally published in 1955, Gift from the Sea continues to be discovered by new generations of readers. With a new introduction by Lindbergh’s daughter Reeve, this fiftieth-anniversary edition will give those who are revisiting the book and those who are coming upon it for the first time fresh insight into the life of this remarkable woman. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 22, 1906
• Where—Englewood, New Jersey, USA
• Death—February 7, 2001
• Where—Vermont
• Education—B.A., Smith College
• Awards—Elizabeth Montagu Prize and Mary Augusta Jordan
Literary Prize (both during college); Christoper Award for
War Within and Without
Anne Morrow Lindbergh, born Anne Spencer Morrow was a pioneering American aviator, author, and the spouse of fellow aviator Charles Lindbergh.
She was the second of four children born to Dwight Whitney Morrow and Elizabeth Cutter Morrow. Her siblings were Elisabeth Reeve (born 1904), Dwight, Jr. (1908), and Constance (1913).
Her father was consecutively a lawyer, a partner at J. P. Morgan & Co., United States Ambassador to Mexico, and Senator from New Jersey. Her mother was active in women's education, serving on the board of trustees and briefly as acting president of her alma mater Smith College.
Early Years
Morrow was raised in a household that fostered achievement. Every day at 5 PM, her mother would drop everything and read to her children. After the young Morrows outgrew this practice, they would employ that hour to read by themselves, or to write poetry and diaries. Anne in particular later capitalized on this routine learned in her youth to write her diaries, eventually published to critical acclaim.
After graduating from The Chapin School in New York City in 1924, Anne attended Smith College, from which she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1928. She received the Elizabeth Montagu Prize for her essay on women of the eighteenth century and Madame d'Houdetot, and the Mary Augusta Jordan Literary Prize for her fictional piece entitled "Lida Was Beautiful".
Anne and Charles Lindbergh met in Mexico, when Dwight Morrow, Lindbergh's financial adviser at J.P. Morgan and Co., invited Lindbergh to Mexico, shortly before Morrow resigned to become the American ambassador, in order to advance good relations between that country and the United States.
Life with Lindberg
Anne Morrow and Charles Lindbergh were married at the home of her parents in Englewood on May 27, 1929. That year, she flew solo for the first time, and in 1930 became the first American woman to earn a first class glider pilot's license. In the 1930s, Anne and Charles together explored and charted air routes between continents. Thus the Lindberghs were the first to fly from Africa to South America, and explored polar air routes from North America to Asia and Europe.
In an incident widely known as the "Lindbergh kidnapping", the Lindberghs' first child, Charles Augustus Lindbergh III, was kidnapped at 20 months of age from their home in East Amwell, New Jersey outside Hopewell on March 1, 1932. After a massive investigation, a baby's body, presumed to be that of Charles Lindbergh III, was discovered the following May 12, some four miles (6 km) from the Lindberghs' home, at the summit of a hill on the Hopewell-Mt. Rose Highway.
(Anne was the basis for Sonia Armstrong in the novel Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie.)
The frenzied press attention paid to the Lindberghs, particularly after the kidnapping of their son and later the trial, conviction and execution of Bruno Richard Hauptmann, prompted Charles and Anne to move first to England, to a house called Long Barn owned by Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West, and later to the small island of Illiec, off the coast of Brittany in France. Charles and Anne Lindbergh had five more children: sons Jon, Land and Scott, and daughters Anne and Reeve.
While in Europe, the Lindberghs came to advocate isolationist views that led to their fall from grace in the eyes of many. In the late 1930s, the U.S. Air Attaché in Berlin invited Charles Lindbergh to inspect the rising power of Nazi Germany's Air Force. Impressed by German technology and their apparent number of planes, as well as influenced by the staggering number of deaths from World War I, Lindbergh opposed U.S. entry into the impending European conflict. Anne wrote a book titled The Wave of the Future, arguing that something resembling fascism was the unfortunate "wave of the future", echoing authors such as Lawrence Dennis and later James Burnham.
The antiwar America First Committee quickly adopted Charles Lindbergh as their leader, but after Pearl Harbor and Germany's declaration of war, the committee disbanded.
After the war, Anne and Charles wrote books that rebuilt the reputations they had gained and lost before WWII. The publication of Gift from the Sea in 1955 earned her place as "one of the leading advocates of the nascent environmental movement" and became a national best seller.
Over the course of their 45-year marriage, Charles and Anne lived in New Jersey, New York, England, France, Maine, Michigan, Connecticut, Switzerland, and Hawaii. Charles died on Maui in 1974.
After suffering a series of strokes in the early 1990s, which left her confused and disabled, Anne continued to live in her home in Connecticut with the assistance of round-the-clock caregivers. During a visit to her daughter Reeve's family in 1999, she came down with pneumonia, after which she went to live near Reeve in a small home built on Reeve's Vermont farm, where Anne died in 2001 at the age of 94. Reeve Lindbergh's book "No More Words" tells the story of her mother's last years.
More
Anne received numerous awards and honors, in recognition of her contributions to both literature and aviation. The U.S. Flag Association honored her with its Cross of Honor in 1933 for having taken part in surveying transatlantic air routes. The following year, she was awarded the Hubbard Medal by the National Geographic Society for having completed 40,000 miles (64,000 km) of exploratory flying with Charles, a feat that took them to five continents. Later, in 1993, Women in Aerospace presented her with an Aerospace Explorer Award in recognition of her achievements in, and contributions to, the aerospace field.
In addition to being the recipient of honorary Masters and Doctor of Letters degrees from her alma mater Smith College (1935; 1970), Anne also received honorary degrees from Amherst College (1939), the University of Rochester (1939), Middlebury College (1976), and Gustavus Adolphus College (1985). She was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame, the National Women's Hall of Fame, and the Aviation Hall of Fame of New Jersey. War Within and Without, the last installment of her published diaries, received the Christopher Award.
Though (typically) he never showed it, Charles was hurt by Anne's 3-year affair in the early 50's with her personal doctor. This may have led to the fact that from 1957 until his death in 1974, Charles had an affair with a Bavarian woman 24 years his junior, whom he supported financially. The affair was kept secret, and only in 2003, after Anne and the mistress were both dead, did DNA testing prove that Charles had fathered the mistress's three children.
One child came to suspect that Lindbergh was their father and made her suspicions public, after finding among her dead mother's effects snapshots of, and letters from, Charles. He is also suspected of having fathered children by a sister of his Bavarian mistress, and by his personal secretary. All this may have contributed to the stoic character of Anne's later life.
All told, Anne Morrow Lindberg published 13 books:
North to the Orient (1935)
Listen! The Wind (1938)
The Wave of the Future (1940)
The Steep Ascent (1944)
Gift from the Sea (1955)
The Unicorn and other Poems (1956)
Dearly Beloved (1962)
Earth Shine (1969)
Bring Me a Unicorn (1972) *
Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead (1973) *
Locked Rooms and Open Doors (1974) *
The Flower and the Nettle (1976) *
War Without and Within (1980) *
* Based on her diaries...and all subtitled "Diaries and Letters of Anne Morrow Lindberg" with dates. (Author bio from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
(There are few, if any, mainstream press reviews online for older works. See Amazon customer reviews for helpful ones.)
Though it deals with the essential needs, gifts, obligations and aspirations of a woman...it is in no sense....a woman's book. A sensitive, tensile, original mind probles delicately into questions of balance and relationship in the world today, and the result is a book for human beings who are mature or in search of maturity, whether men or women. It is a short book, but not a slight one.
New York Times (3/20-1955)
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Gift from the Sea:
1. Perhaps the best place to start is to discuss some of your favorite passages in Gift from the Sea (you did underline, star or highlight as you read, didn't you?) and what they mean...or mean to you. Here's one for starters:
I want...to live "in grace" as much of the time as possible.... By grace I mean an inner harmony, essentially spiritual, which can be translated into outward harmony.
2. Is this strictly a woman's book? Why...or why not? What wisdom, if any, might a man find in its pages? If you are a woman, would you urge a man to read it? If you are a man, were you hesitant to read the book? What did you experience as you read it?
3. Is this a book for our times, 35-40 years into the woman's movement? Does it speak to modern life—less or more so than when it was first written?
4. What does Anne mean when she speaks of the dangers of a "life of multiplicity"?
5. Discuss these two (separate) passages:
I find I don't bustle about with unnecessary sweeping and cleaning here. I have shed my Puritan conscience about absolute tidiness and cleanliness. Is it possible that, too, is a material burden?
Neither is the answer in dissipating our time and energy in more purposeless occupations, more accumulations which supposedly simplify life but actually burden it, more possessions which we have not time to use or appreciate, more diversions to fill up the void.
The subject in both passages is simplicity. How is simplicity a pre-requisite for a spiritual life? Even more important, how can any of us achieve simplicity in our own crowded, 21st-century lives? Can you?
6. How is life like the sea shell in Anne's hands—what lessons does she draw from it? Or, put another way, what is the symbolic significance of the book's title?
7. Anne says that marriage is a "web" as much as it is a "bond." What does she mean? How does a marriage change through time?
8. Discuss this quotation she uses by Saint Exupery—"Love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction." What does it mean?
9. Do you agree with this statement from the book: "woman's normal occupations are counter to creative life, or contempla-tive life, or saintly life"? If you've read Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, in what ways is that book similar to Lindbergh's?
10. Does Anne's message have personal meaning for you? What have you taken away from her book that might apply to your own life?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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Girl Logic: The Genius and the Absurdity
Iliza Shlesinger, 2017
Hachette Book Group
264 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781602863231
Summary
From breakout stand-up comedian Iliza Shlesinger comes a subversively funny collection of essays and observations on a confident woman's approach to friendship, singlehood, and relationships.
Girl Logic is Iliza's term for the way women obsess over details and situations that men don't necessarily even notice.
She describes it as a characteristically female way of thinking that appears to be contradictory and circuitous but is actually a complicated and highly evolved way of looking at the world.
When confronted with critical decisions about dating, sex, work, even getting dressed in the morning, Iliza argues that women will by nature consider every repercussion of every option before making a move toward what they really want. And that kind of holistic thinking can actually give women an advantage in what is still a male world.
In Iliza's own words: "Understanding Girl Logic is a way of embracing both our aspirations and our contradictions. GL is the desire to be strong and vulnerable. It's wanting to be curvy, but rail thin at the same time. It's striving to kick ass in a man's world while still being loved by the women around you.
"This book is also for me, because apparently expounding on a stage for two hours a night wasn't enough. (Trust me, if I could start a cult I would, but I hate the idea of deliberately dying in a group.)" (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—February 22, 1983
• Where—Dallas, Texas, USA
• Education—B.A., Emerson College
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California
Iliza Vie Shlesinger is an American comedian. She was the 2008 winner of NBC's Last Comic Standing and went on to host the syndicated dating show Excused and the TBS comedy/game show Separation Anxiety. Currently, she hosts a late-night talk show called Truth & Iliza on Freeform. In 2017, she published a memoir and collection of humorous essays titled Girl Logic: The Genius and the Absurdity.
Early life
Shlesinger was born in Dallas to a Reform Jewish family. She attended the private Greenhill School and participated on the school's improvisation team and also performed with ComedySportz Dallas. She started college at the University of Kansas for but transferred aftervher freshman year to Emerson College in Boston, where she majored in film. At Emerson, Shelesinger was a member of the campus's comedy sketch group, Jimmy's Traveling All Stars, and refined her writing and editing skills.
Career
Shortly after graduating from Emerson, she moved to Los Angeles, California, to pursue stand-up comedy. Becoming one of the most popular members of the Whiteboy Comedy group of standup comedians in Los Angeles, she headed to the stage at The Improv in Hollywood.
In 2007, Shlesinger won Myspace's "So You Think You're Funny" contest and has been featured as the G4 network's Myspace Girl of the Week. Her television credits include E! Network's Forbes Celebrity 100, TV Guide's America's Next Top Producer, Comedy Central Presents (Season 14 Episode 18), John Oliver's New York Stand Up Show, Byron Allen's Comics Unleashed, and History Channel's History of a Joke. She has written for Heavy.com and had her own show on GOTV's mobile network.
In 2008, Shlesinger became the first woman, and the youngest, winner of NBC's Last Comic Standing, in the series' sixth season. She was twice selected, by other comedians, to compete in the head-to-head eliminations, and won each time. She appeared in The Last Comic Standing Tour.
Shlesinger contributed to Surviving the Holidays, a History Channel holiday special, with Lewis Black, and narrated the 2009 documentary Imagine It!² The Power of Imagination. In 2010, she released an on-demand comedy video, Man Up and Act Like a Lady, and an on-demand comedy album, iliza LIVE, on her website, via The ConneXtion. Around the time of these releases, Shlesinger appeared in a business comedy video series for Slate.
Shlesinger hosted The Weakly News on TheStream.tv from July 7, 2007 to April 9, 2012. She also hosted Excused, a syndicated American reality-based dating competition series, which ran from 2011 to 2013. She co-stars in the 2013 film Paradise and began a podcast called Truth and Iliza in August 2014. Featuring celebrity guests & personal friends, the semi-weekly podcast is a forum for discussing things which bother her and those on the show, with punk theme song performed by Being Mean to Pixley.
Albums
Shlesinger's first comedy album and video, War Paint, was recorded at the Lakewood Theater in Dallas, Texas, and released on Netflix in September, 2013. Her second stand-up special, Freezing Hot, was recorded in Denver, Colorado, and premiered on Netflix in January, 2015. Her third Netflix stand-up special, titled Confirmed Kills, was recorded at The Vic Theatre in Chicago, Illinois, and premiered on Netflix in September, 2016.
Other
Shlesinger was comic co-host of StarTalk Radio Show with Neil DeGrasse Tyson for season 7, episode 12 titled "Cosmic Queries: Galactic Grab Bag," post date: 20 May 2016.
On July 13, 2016, the ABCdigital original short-form digital comedy series Forever 31, created by and starring Shlesinger was released. Truth & Iliza began airing on May 2, 2017. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Released 11/14/2017.)
Book Reviews
Iliza is funny, fierce, and lightning fast, but don't let all that wit and beauty fool you — she's a feminist with the heart of a mommy, a truth teller who just wants us all to feel better so we can get what we want, dammit! She's thought long and hard about why women are so hard on themselves, and she's not afraid to say she's been there herself, which has endeared her already to millions of fans. Take my advice: take her advice. Iliza is a comedian wrapped in social critic wrapped in the good friend you need.
Robbie Myers - Elle, editor in chief
A successful comedian tries to square gender stereotypes with the realities of how women really live…. Unfortunately, the intended lessons are often lost in the author's frenetic chatter.… [T]his reads like a series of theories not yet fully formed.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, please use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for Girl Logic … then take off on your own:
1. How would you describe the tone of this book? Is it chatty, light, serious, angry, engagingly friendly? Were you pulled in right at the beginning … or a bit further in … or not at all?
2. Are you familiar with Iliza Shlesinger's stand-up comedy? If you are or not, do you think it helps (or would help) readers appreciate Girl Logic? Does she write like a stand-up comedienne talks? Does her brand of comedy translate to the page, or is it lost in translation?
3. Shlesinger talks about her upbringing. How did her childhood and early years prepare her for stand-up, a fiercely competitive and rigorous career?
4. What does she have to say about her treatment on the road by her male counterparts?
5. Some readers have complained that Shlesinger's observations about women are overly generalized and unhelpful. Some found her examples irrelevant — they didn't relate to a pair of designer trousers possibly changing their lives. Does some of the material in the book strike you similarly: as overly broad or irrelevant? Or is this just mild carping? What are your thoughts? Are any of Shlesinger's observations, suggestions, and insights helpful to you? Does age, older or younger, play a role in how a reader might experience the book?
6. How do the workings of the female mind differ from the male mind. Does the explanation ring true — does it make sense to you?
7. So … why are women so hard on themselves?
8. Describe the theory of Girl Logic and its many conundrums. Shlesinger, for instance, believes that women's desires are often in conflict with one another. What are examples from you own life? What else does Shlesinger have to say about GL? Does anything in particular resonate with you?
9. Do you find some of Shlesinger's language offensive, bordering on offensive, or refreshingly honest?
10. What are some of the take away tips you got from Girl Logic? Consider, for example, the author's advice about cultivating both confidence and courage to be different? What else struck you?
11. Is this a book that males, young or old, could or should read? Would you pass it on to one?
(Questions issued by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Girl Meets God: A Memoir
Lauren F. Winner, 2002
Random House
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812970807
Summary
Like most of us, Lauren Winner wants something to believe in. The child of a reform Jewish father and a lapsed Southern Baptist mother, she chose to become an Orthodox Jew. But as she faithfully observes the Sabbath rituals and studies Jewish laws, she finds herself increasingly drawn to Christianity. Taking a courageous step, she leaves behind what she loves and converts. Now the even harder part: How does one reinvent a religious self? How does one embrace the new without abandoning the old? How does a convert become spiritually whole.
In Girl Meets God, this appealingly honest young woman takes us through a year in her search for a religious identity. Despite her conversion, she finds that her world is still shaped by her Jewish experiences. Even as she rejoices in the holy days of the Christian calendar, she mourns the Jewish rituals she still holds dear. Attempting to reconcile the two sides of her religious self, Winner applies the lessons of Judaism to the teachings of the New Testament, hosts a Christian seder, and struggles to fit her Orthodox friends into her new religious life. Ultimately she learns that faith takes practice and belief is an ongoing challenge. Like Anne Lamott's, Winner's journey to Christendom is bumpy, but it is the rocky path itself that makes her a perfect guide to exploring spirituality in today's complicated world. Her engaging approach to religion in the twenty-first century is illuminating, thought-provoking, and most certainly controversial. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—October 13, 1976
• Where—Asheville, North Carolina, USA
• Education—B.A., Columbia University; M.A., Cambridge
University
• Currently—lives in Charlottesville, Virginia
The child of a Jewish father and a lapsed Southern Baptist mother, Lauren F. Winner chose to become an Orthodox Jew. But even as she was observing Sabbath rituals and studying Jewish law, Lauren was increasingly drawn to Christianity. Courageously leaving what she loved, she eventually converted. (From the publisher.)
More
(From a 2003 Barnes & Noble interview)
Q: What was the book that most influenced your life or your career as a writer?
A: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson. This had something of a cult following when I was in high school, and I read it at the urging of my then beau. It didn't lead me to take up gonzo journalism, but it was the book that taught me that being a writer didn't mean necessarily writing fiction. I'd heard of "creative non-fiction" before I read Thompson, but I didn't have a sense of what it was, or how it worked.
Q: What are your favorite books, and what makes them special to you?
A: Ashley Warlick's first novel The Distance from the Heart of Things—Gorgeous prose. Also, encouraging for young writers. Warlick wrote The Distance from the Heart of Things in her early 20s. And yet she is wise and believable and masterful.
• Kristen Lavransdatter by Sigird Undset—I didn't discover Kristen till last year. A lot of my friends read this as girls, when they were reading Anne of Green Gables and Little House on the Prairie. But they missed out! It is worth reading, or rereading, as an adult, not least so that you can read Tina Nunnally's marvelous new translation.
• Mystery and Manners by Flannery O'Connor—She's known, of course, for her fiction, but this summer I reread the occasional essays in Mystery and Manners and thought—as brilliant as her fiction is, her prose is even more transparent; deadlier.
• Home Comforts by Cheryl Mendelson—This is no mere collection of household hints. I wish I could write like Mendelson. Her prose does not suffer fools.
• The Strange Career of Jim Crow by C. Vann Woodward—Not merely one of the most influential American history books of the twentieth century. Strange Career is also a lesson in why history matters in the present day. And, like Mendelson, Woodward suffers no fools.
• M.F.K Fisher's The Art of Eating and Supper of the Lamb by Robert Capon. What is there more pleasing to the senses than good food writing?
• W H Auden's poetry. Yes, I admit it, I was turned on to Auden by the reading of "Funeral Blues" in Four Weddings and a Funeral, but I subsequently discovered the wide wonderful Auden world.
• Lately, I have been reading that wonderful sub-genre of mysteries, The Cozy— My favorites are Murder at the PTA Luncheon by Valerie Wolzien, and, most recently, the Hemlock Falls mysteries by Claudia Bishop.
Q: What are some of your favorite films, and what makes them unforgettable to you?
A: I am not a big film buff. I think this is a negative comment on me, not a comment on films! Somehow they don't hold my attention as books do. I could, however, happily watch a Maggie Smith film every day.
Q: What types of music do you like? Is there any particular kind you like to listen to when you're writing?
A: I'm pretty eclectic when it comes to music. I like ragtime, and folk, and choral music. If I were sent to a desert island with just one genre, though, it would be chamber music. Specifically string quartets.
Q: If you had a book club, what would it be reading—and why?
A: Sometimes I think I am the only woman in Charlottesville who is not in a book club. This is a very book club-ish town—I have often thought of starting a book club at my church. I'd like to read books that are not explicitly "Christian," and then discuss them through the lenses of Christianity. That might mean reading The Lobster Chronicles or Sophia Peabody Hawthorne's 19th-century travel writing, or...practically anything!
Q: What are your favorite kinds of books to give—and get—as gifts?
A: There is no more satisfying feeling than giving the perfect book to the perfect person. This Christmas, I'll be giving several people Vinita Hampton Wright's new novella, The Winter Seeking, and I'll also be giving several special folks Marguerite Yourcenar's novel Memoirs of Hadrian. I think I've given away more copies of Hadrian than any other single book.
Q: Do you have any special writing rituals? For example, what do you have on your desk when you're writing?
A: I am incredibly disorganized, so my computer just barely carves out space on my des—it keeps good company with heaps of papers and books. This fall, my mother was dying, so my writing schedule got fairly knocked out of whack, but in a good, theoretical universe, I start writing at 4 in the morning. Otherwise, I am too easily distracted by incoming email and ringing phones! Only folks on the other side of the world (and I don't know that many) email me at 4:00 a.m.
Q: Many writers in the Discover program are hardly "overnight success" stories. How long did it take for you to get where you are today? Any rejection-slip horror stories or inspirational anecdotes
A: My most thorough writing training came in academia. My dissertation advisor is one of the best writers going, and if I've learned 1/10 of what she knows about crafting prose, I'm doing well. But it still has been quite a process to turn away from the rules of academic prose and write more fun, more popular books (it's even harder to turn back and finish the aforementioned dissertation, but that's another story).
Q: If you could choose one new writer to be "discovered," who would it be—and why?
A: The novelist Nancy Lemann. I feel a little absurd saying that she needs to be "discovered," because she certainly has more acclaim than I. But I am always stunned when my friends let slip that they have not read her. She is a poet who writes in prose, and her prose sounds like what it describes— the decadence of New Orleans. Her first novel, The Lives of the Saints, is hard to beat. (From Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
A passionate and thoroughly engaging account of a continuing spiritual journey within two profoundly different faiths.
New York Times Book Review
A charming, humorous, and sometimes abrasive recollection of a religious coming-of-age.... A compelling journey from Judaism to Christianity.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A book to savor.... Winner is an all-too-human believer, and the rest of us can see our own struggles, theological and otherwise, in hers.
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Raised by a lapsed Baptist mother and secular Jewish father, Winner feels a drive toward God as powerful as her drives toward books and boys. Twice she has attempted to read her way into religion to Orthodox Judaism her freshman year at Columbia, and then four years later at Cambridge to Anglican Christianity. Twice she has discovered that a religion's actual practitioners may not measure up to its theoretical proponents. (Invariably the boyfriends or their mothers disappoint.) It is easier to say what this book is not than what it is. It is not a conversion memoir: Winner's movement in and out of religious frames, but does not tell, her tale. It is not a defense of either faith (there is something here to offend every reader); and Winner, a doctoral candidate in the history of religion, is in her 20s young for autobiography. Because most chapters, though loosely related to the Christian church year, could stand alone, it resembles a collection of essays; but the ensemble is far too unified to deserve that label. Clearly it is memoir, literary and spiritual, sharing Anne Lamott's self-deprecating intensity and Stephen J. Dubner's passion for authenticity. Though Winner does not often scrutinize her motives, she reveals herself through abundant, concrete and often funny descriptions of her life, inner and outer. Winner's record of her own experience so far is a page-turning debut by a young writer worth watching.
Publishers Weekly
A senior writer for Christianity Today and an essayist whose works have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Winner is a recently converted Episcopalian and former Orthodox Jew. The daughter of a lapsed Southern Baptist mother and secular Jewish father, this young writer offers a fresh perspective on the ways religion relates to the lives of Gen Xers (born between 1965 and 1976). She has structured her spiritual autobiography as linked reflections based on annual religious festivals, beginning with a chapter titled "Sukkot" and followed by essays based on the names of Christian celebrations. The book is a humorous, sexually frank portrait of a deeply engaged faith shopper, "stumbling her way towards God." The memoir focuses on her undergraduate years (when she converted to Judaism and then to Christianity) and her life as a doctoral student in religious history at Columbia University. One has a sense that Winner's head is still spinning and that she is still catching up with her changes of heart. The turbulent narrative is at first hard to follow, but its disorder becomes a delight as the author's gentle, self-effacing humor emerges. Winner offers a rare perspective, connecting Christian and Jewish traditions in unexpected ways. Recommended for larger public libraries. —Joyce Smothers, M.L.S., Princeton Theological Seminary, NJ
Library Journal
I have spent my whole life since middle school, and actually even before that, seeking God. In this collection of biographical and theological musings, structured around Jewish festivals and the seasons of the Christian liturgical year, Winner considers her path from Reform Jew to Orthodoxy to self-described evangelical Episcopalian. Frank, often funny, sometimes sexy, and disarmingly honest, her story is far from the "how I found Jesus" tract one might expect. Sophisticated, well-educated with degrees from Columbia and Cambridge, and the child of a secular Jewish father and a lapsed Baptist mother, Winner at age twenty-something is very much a modern, worldly wise young woman. Her spiritual self-examination could almost be a caricature of the self-absorption sometimes considered characteristic of GenX'ers. Her writing what amounts to an autobiography while still in her twenties might be considered premature. How, the reader wonders, does one know that she will not go off to become a Buddhist next year, but she even addresses this question. The book's appeal lies in Winner's sincerity and her willingness to share her struggle to be honest and faithful to God. Many young seekers fumbling their way to faith will appreciate the example of someone who is not a stereotypical, good-girl Sunday schooler but whose belief is heartfelt and hard-won. Her well-written, absorbing account provides an important validation for those readers who may not be ready for Kathleen Norris or Anne Lamott, but who share their bumpy paths to spirituality. Better than most, marred only by occasional lapses.
Kathleen Beck - VOYA
In her debut memoir, Christianity Today senior writer Winner recounts her two religious conversions, first to Orthodox Judaism, then to Evangelical Christianity. The author's Southern Baptist mother and Jewish father agreed to raise their children within Judaism, although according to religious law the girls were not officially Jews. A bookworm who loved studying and practicing the ins and outs of tradition, Lauren decided to officially convert as soon as she began her undergraduate education at Columbia University. Despite her wholehearted efforts, however-6 a.m. study sessions, her commitment to observe the laws of kashrut-she couldn't ignore the fact that just two years after her conversion, Jesus seemed to be calling her. How? There was the dream about being captured by mermaids, Winner writes, and there was the undeniable appeal of the mass-market, Christian-themed Mitford novels by Jan Karon. As a child of divorce, she may have been seeking the most stable, familial religion, Winner acknowledges, although that argument ignores a central fact: "Conversion is complicated.... It is about family, and geography, and politics, and psychology, and economics. [But] it is also about God." When pondering the author's double conversion, one could also consider the fact that Winner was raised in the Christian South by a Christian mother. This is all secondary, however, to her narrative's real strength, which is its addictive readability combined with the author's deep knowledge of, delight in, and nuanced discussion of both Christian and Jewish teachings. Loosely structured around the progression of the Christian calendar, Winner's text weaves together meditations on the meanings of theholidays, different modes of observance, and the day-to-day difficulties of switching teams and convincing people that this time she means it. Intriguing, absorbing, puzzling, surprisingly sexy, and very smart.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. A major theme in Girl Meets God is friendship. Who are some of Lauren's friends, and what role do they play in her spiritual journey? Do friends play a similarly important role in your own life?
2. Fidelity is a motif in Girl Meets God. How does Lauren respond to her friend Hannah's infidelity? Why is infidelity such a poignant and pointed topic for her?
3. Two different chapters in this book have the title "Conversion Stories." Why do they have the same title? Do they tell similar or different stories about religious conversion?
4. Lauren's book is structured according to the Jewish and Christian calendars–it is organized around liturgical seasons and holidays like Sukkot and Advent. Why is the book structured this way? What effect does it have on you, the reader?
5. Lauren suggests that "ruptures are the most interesting part of any text, that in the ruptures we learn something new." (p. 8) How is Lauren's story marked by ruptures, and what do we learn from them?
6. Upon converting to Christianity, Lauren gives up all things Jewish–she even says that "trading my Hebrew prayer book for an Episcopal Book of Common Prayer felt exactly like filing for divorce." (p. 9) Is divorce an apt metaphor for Lauren's relationship with Judaism? Does she eventually recover some of her Jewish practice?
7. What is the plot of Girl Meets God? Is it a coming-of-age story? A story of a quest? Does it present clear questions at the outset, and, if so, does it offer tidy answers to those questions at the end? When Lauren is a teenager, a woman from her synagogue gives her a poem that instructs "Return with us, return to us, /be always coming home." (p. 34) Is Girl Meets God a story of homecoming?
8. Lauren says that the "very first thing I liked about Christianity, long before it ever occurred to me to go to church or say the creed or call myself a Christian, was the Incarnation." (p. 51) What is appealing to Lauren about the Christian story of the Incarnation?
9. Lauren's story is one of spiritual change and conversion, or making and remaking her spiritual self. In what ways is the story of reinvention a distinctively American story? Have you experienced an analogous remaking or reinvention of self?
10. Geography and place play a central role in Lauren's narrative. To what extent do the landscapes of the American South and New York City shape her experiences?
11. Lauren readily admits to being a bookworm. What role do books and reading play in her spiritual development? How have books been important in your own life?
12. Memoir, as a genre, involves the author presenting a particular self to her audience. To what extent does Lauren suggest she has "arrived" as a Christian? Does she readily admit to spiritual failings, or is she eager to present herself as someone with all the answers?
(Questions from the publisher.)
The Girl Who Fell to Earth: A Memoir
Sophia Al Maria, 2013
HarperCollins
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061999758
Summary
When Sophia Al-Maria's mother sends her away from rainy Washington State to stay with her husband's desert-dwelling Bedouin family in Qatar, she intends it to be a sort of teenage cultural boot camp. What her mother doesn't know is that there are some things about growing up that are universal. In Qatar, Sophia is faced with a new world she'd only imagined as a child. She sets out to find her freedom, even in the most unlikely of places.
Both family saga and coming-of-age story, The Girl Who Fell to Earth takes readers from the green valleys of the Pacific Northwest to the dunes of the Arabian Gulf and on to the sprawling chaos of Cairo. Struggling to adapt to her nomadic lifestyle, Sophia is haunted by the feeling that she is perpetually in exile: hovering somewhere between two families, two cultures, and two worlds. She must make a place for herself—a complex journey that includes finding young love in the Arabian Gulf, rebellion in Cairo, and, finally, self-discovery in the mountains of Sinai.
The Girl Who Fell to Earth heralds the arrival of an electric new talent and takes us on the most personal of quests: the voyage home. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1979-80
• Where—Puyallup, Washington, USA
• Raised—Doha, Qatar; Washington State
• Education—American University (Cairo,
Egypt); University of London
• Currently—lives in Doha, Qatar
Sophia Al-Maria is an artist, writer, and filmmaker. She studied comparative literature at the American University in Cairo, and aural and visual cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her work has been exhibited at the Gwangju Biennale, the New Museum in New York, and the Architectural Association in London. Her writing has appeared in Harper's, Five Dials, Triple Canopy, and Bidoun.
Al Maria coined the term "Gulf Futurism" to explain an existing phenomenon she has observed in architecture, urban planning, art, aesthetics and popular culture in the post-oil Persian Gulf. Her interest in these areas arises from her youth growing up in the Persian Gulf area during the 1980s and 1990s, experiences she describes in The Girl Who Fell To Earth.
Gulf Futurism
Sharing some qualities with 20th century movements like Futurism, Gulf Futurism is evident in the agenda of the dominant class of this region, concerned with master planning and world building, and with a local youth culture that exhibits an asset bubble fuelled sense of entitlement and is preoccupied with fast cars and fast technology.
In an online 2007 essay, "The Gaze of Sci Fi Wahabi," Al Maria wrote:
The Arabian Gulf is a region that has been hyper-driven into a present made up of interior wastelands, municipal master plans and environmental collapse, thus making it a projection of a global future.
The themes and ideas present in Gulf Futurism include the isolation of individuals via technology, wealth and reactionary Islam, the corrosive elements of consumerism on the soul and industry on the earth, the replacement of history with glorified heritage fantasy in the collective memory and in many cases, the erasure of existing physical surroundings.
Informed by texts such as Baudrillard’s The Illusion of the End, As-Sufi’s Islamic Book of the Dead and Zizek’s The Desert of the Unreal, Gulf Futurism also uses imagery from Islamic eschatology, corporate ideology, posthumanism and the global mythos of Science Fiction.
Examples of Gulf Futurism can be seen in urban planning in cities such as Dubai and architectural bids such as the Al-Haram Masjid Mecca Expansion. The obsession with master plans is evident in the Qatar 2030 Vision document. There are also individual artists, such as musician Fatima Al Qadiri, who are concerned with its ideas as well as artists from previous generations such as Khalifa Al Qattan, Hassan Sharif and Mahmoud Sabri. Further examples compiled by Sophia Al Maria and Fatima Al Qadiri are included in a Dazed Digital article. (Adapted from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
This is a tale of strangers in strange lands: of Sophia's father…of Sophia's mother…and of Sophia herself, who navigates the chasms between cultures and places, tribal allegiances and interior spaces…[Al-Maria] offers us an original outlook on ancient ground—what any artist hopes to achieve.
Dalia Sofer - New York Times Book Review
[A] story as full of culture shock as it is of human candor…There's a scattered, unfinished quality to Al-Maria's story…And yet there is much to beguile you: a desperate search for identity, a frenzied motion between two worlds, the sheer love that impels that transit. For all the awkwardness of The Girl Who Fell to Earth, there is an undeniable urgency here. It's hard to look away from a heart cracked in two.
Marie Arana - Washington Post
In this funny, insightful memoir, artist, filmmaker, and writer Al-Maria chronicles being raised by an American mother from rural Washington State and a Bedouin father from Qatar. When Al-Maria’s father takes a second wife, Al-Maria and her mother return to America. But tensions mount when the author enters fifth grade and becomes quite curious about sex, culminating with Al-Maria being sent back to her father in the Arabian Gulf..... Her story is a satisfying trek through a complex cross-cultural landscape toward a creative and satisfying life.
Publishers Weekly
An Arab-American woman's riveting coming-of-age story.... [T]he author's account of living with her extended family [in Qatar] and noting class differences really shines. From an intimate vantage point, Al-Maria sees and translates challenges that the Bedouin, who lived for ages in the desert navigating by the stars, now face in the era of big cities and washers and dryers. What makes Al-Maria's story unique is not only its rare insider's glimpse of modern Bedouin life, but the outsider's sensibility that magnifies her exquisite observational gifts. Frank, funny and dauntless.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.
The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After
Clemantine Wamariya, 2018
Crown/Archetype
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780451495327
Summary
Clemantine Wamariya was six years old when her mother and father began to speak in whispers, when neighbors began to disappear, and when she heard the loud, ugly sounds her brother said were thunder.
In 1994, she and her fifteen-year-old sister, Claire, fled the Rwandan massacre and spent the next six years migrating through seven African countries, searching for safety—perpetually hungry, imprisoned and abused, enduring and escaping refugee camps, finding unexpected kindness, witnessing inhuman cruelty.
They did not know whether their parents were dead or alive.
When Clemantine was twelve, she and her sister were granted refugee status in the United States; there, in Chicago, their lives diverged. Though their bond remained unbreakable, Claire, who had for so long protected and provided for Clemantine, was a single mother struggling to make ends meet, while Clemantine was taken in by a family who raised her as their own. She seemed to live the American dream: attending private school, taking up cheerleading, and, ultimately, graduating from Yale.
Yet the years of being treated as less than human, of going hungry and seeing death, could not be erased. She felt at the same time six years old and one hundred years old.
In The Girl Who Smiled Beads, Clemantine provokes us to look beyond the label of "victim" and recognize the power of the imagination to transcend even the most profound injuries and aftershocks. Devastating yet beautiful, and bracingly original, it is a powerful testament to her commitment to constructing a life on her own terms. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1987-88
• Where—Kigali, Rwanda
• Raised—Chicago, IL, USA
• Education—B.A., Yale University
• Currently—lives in San Francisco, California
Clemantine Wamariya is a storyteller and human rights advocate. Born in Kigali, Rwanda, displaced by conflict, Clemantine migrated throughout seven African countries as a child. At age twelve, she was granted refugee status in the United States and went on to receive a B.A. in Comparative Literature from Yale University. She lives in San Francisco.
Awards and honors
Hive Global Leader
The Emerging Trailblazer Award
Appointee to The United States Holocaust Memorial Council
(Adapted from the publisher.)
Book Reviews
(Starred review) [N]ot a conventional story about war and its aftermath [but] a powerful coming-of-age story in which a girl explores her identity in the wake of a brutal war that destroyed her family and home. Wamariya is an exceptional narrator and her story is unforgettable.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) This beautifully written and touching account goes beyond the horror of war to recall …a child trying to make sense of violence and strife.… [T]he narrative flows from Wamariya's early experience to her life in the United States with equal grace. A must-read. —Gricel Dominguez, Florida International Univ. Lib., Miami
Library Journal
In her prose as in her life, Wamariya is brave, intelligent, and generous. Sliding easily between past and present, this memoir is a soulful, searing story about how families survive.
Booklist
Record of a childhood in flight from war and terror.… Not quite as attention-getting as memoirs by Ismail Beah or Scholastique Mukasonga, but a powerful record of the refugee experience all the same.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The title of the book is taken from a story Clemantine’s nanny, Mukamana, tells her as a child. How is the story connected to the themes of the book?
2. After fleeing Rwanda, Clemantine fears losing her sense of self in refugee camps. In what ways does her longing to preserve her individuality express itself?
3. In the first chapter of the book, Clemantine tells us: "I have never been Claire. I have never been inviolable." As the story unfolds, she and her sister react to trauma in very different ways, and rely on different survival strategies. How would you characterize their differences? Which events best illustrate those differences?
4. Clemantine’s experience as a "stateless" person is harrowing, yet there are times when she and her sister experience great kindness and generosity. Describe some of the kindnesses that stood out to you.
5. Why do Clemantine’s sister and mother instruct her not to accept gifts? And why does Clemantine come to see acts of charity as a negative thing? Do you agree with her view of charity?
6. Clemantine sets forth an alternative to charity, an ethic of sharing. What are the origins of this practice in her life?
7. The authors write: "In Rwanda, if you’re female, you are born with great value—not because of who you are as an individual or your mind, but because of your body." What do they mean by that? How has that mind-set affected Clemantine’s life, both during the time she was seeking refuge and in the United States? Do you see any parallels to this attitude about the female body in your own culture?
8. After she arrives in the United States, there are times when Clemantine feels alienated by American culture. What is most surprising to her about American culture? What are some of the things that make her uncomfortable or anger her?
9. Clemantine takes issue with the word genocide, which she describes as "clinical, overly general, bloodless, and dehumanizing." In her view, that one word cannot adequately capture the atrocities of racialization and war in Rwanda. Do you agree that words and abstract concepts can distort or overwrite people’s experience? Are there words about which you feel similarly?
10. Clemantine sometimes speaks at events about being a survivor of genocide. In some ways she finds it rewarding but more often she finds it unsatisfying. What is it that she finds objectionable and why?
11. Clemantine writes about how important her katundu, or stuff, is to her. What do you think the objects she collects represent to her? What cherished objects have you saved, and what do they mean to you?
12. Clemantine talks about how meaningful the works of Eli Wiesel, Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, Walter Benjamin, and W. G. Sebald have been for her. In what ways did these writers equip her to grapple with her past, her pain, and her feelings of loneliness and isolation? In what ways did they expand her worldview? Who are the writers whose work has been most valuable to you in making sense of difficult events of your own past?
13. Clemantine goes on a trip to Kenya with fellow students when she is at Yale, but she ends up returning early. What does she find difficult about the trip?
14. Clemantine describes returning to Rwanda for Remembrance Day, where the government has an official historical narrative, seen in the Kigali Genocide Memorial and President Kagame’s speech. Describe the Rwandan government’s version of the country’s history. In what ways does this narrative give Rwandan people "a way to tolerate an intolerable truth"?
15. Claire tells Clemantine: "Everything is yours, everything is not yours. The world owes you nothing; nobody deserves more or less than the next person." What does she mean by that? If those values were universally practiced, how might our society and the global community look different?
16. Why do Clemantine and Claire feel so differently about the adage "Forgive and forget"? Do you believe in forgiving and forgetting wrongs that have been done to you?
17. At age twenty-eight, Clemantine invites her mother on a trip to Europe. What does she hope to achieve with the trip? In what ways is she disappointed?
18. Why do you think the authors chose to structure the book so that it oscillates between Clemantine’s time in Africa and her life after emigrating to the United States, rather than as a linear story?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo
Amy Schumer, 2016
Gallery Books
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781501139888
Summary
A refreshingly candid and uproariously funny collection of (extremely) personal and observational essays.
In The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo, Amy mines her past for stories about her teenage years, her family, relationships, and sex and shares the experiences that have shaped who she is—a woman with the courage to bare her soul to stand up for what she believes in, all while making us laugh.
Ranging from the raucous to the romantic, the heartfelt to the harrowing, this highly entertaining and universally appealing collection is the literary equivalent of a night out with your best friend—an unforgettable and fun adventure that you wish could last forever.
Whether she’s experiencing lust-at-first-sight while in the airport security line, sharing her own views on love and marriage, admitting to being an introvert, or discovering her cross-fit instructor’s secret bad habit, Amy Schumer proves to be a bighearted, brave, and thoughtful storyteller that will leave you nodding your head in recognition, laughing out loud, and sobbing uncontrollably—but only because it’s over. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 1, 1981
• Where—New York City, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Towson College
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California
Amy Schumer has become one of the most influential figures in the entertainment industry as a stand-up comedian, actress, writer, producer, director, and now an author. In 2016 she published her memoir, The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo.
Schumer's smash hit television series Inside Amy Schumer, has won a Peabody award, a Critics Choice Television Award, and two primetime Emmy awards.
She wrote and starred in her first feature-length film, Trainwreck, which dominated the 2015 summer comedy international box office and was nominated for two Golden Globes and won both the Critics Choice award for Best Actress in a Comedy, and a Hollywood Film Award for “Comedy of the Year.”
As a stand-up comedian, she continues to perform to sold-out audiences around the world. Her 2016 tour was voted Pollstar’s Comedy Tour of the Year. (From the publisher.)
Early life
Schumer was born on the Upper East Side of New York City's Manhattan to Sandra (nee Jones) and Gordon Schumer, who owned a baby furniture company. She has a younger sister, Kim Caramele, who is a comedy writer and a producer, and a brother, Jason Stein, who is a musician in Chicago, Illinois. Her father is second cousin to U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer. Schumer's father was born Jewish; her mother, born a Protestant, converted to Judaism. Schumer was raised Jewish and experienced antisemitism as a child.
Schumer began life in a wealthy family. At age nine, however, her father's business went bankrupt, and he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Three years later, her parents divorced, and Amy moved to Long Island where she attended high school in Rockville Centre. Upon graduation, she was voted both "Class Clown" and "Teacher's Worst Nightmare."
Schumer moved to Baltimore, Maryland, and attended Towson University, graduating with a degree in theater in 2003. After college she returned to New York City where she studied at the William Esper Studio for two years and worked as a bartender and a waitress.
Early Career
After a brief stint on Off-Broadway, Schumer started doing stand-up comedy in 2004, when she first performed at Gotham Comedy Club. In 2007, she recorded a "Live at Gotham" episode for Comedy Central, an event she considers her "big break."
After auditioning and failing for the early seasons of NBC's Last Comic Standing, Schumer was finally brought into the show. She made it to the finals of the fifth season, placing fourth. Schumer has said she enjoyed her time on the show:
[T]here was no pressure on me; I had been doing stand-up around two years. I wasn't supposed to do well. So every time I advanced it was a happy surprise. I kept it honest on the show and it served me well.
In 2008, Schumer co-starred in the Comedy Central reality show Reality Bites Back and, between 2007 and 2001, became a recurring guest on Fox News late-night program Red Eye w/ Greg Gutfeld. Her first Comedy Central Presents special aired on April 2, 2010. In 2011, she served as a co-host of A Different Spin with Mark Hoppus.
She has also appeared in roles on the NBC comedy series 30 Rock, the Adult Swim mockumentary series Delocated, and two HBO series: Curb Your Enthusiasm and Girls.
In 2011, Schumer appeared on the Comedy Central Roast of Charlie Sheen. That year she also released a standup comedy album, Cutting.
In 2012, she acted in three indie films (Price Check, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, and Sleepwalk with Me) and appeared on Comedy Central's Roast of Roseanne Barr. Her standup comedy special, Mostly Sex Stuff, premiered that year to positive reviews on Comedy Central. Of her approach to stand-up, Schumer said
I don't like the observational stuff. I like tackling the stuff nobody else talks about, like the darkest, most serious thing about yourself. I talk about life and sex and personal stories and stuff everybody can relate to, and some can't.
Also in 2012, Schumer began work on a sketch comedy series for Comedy Central. The show features single-camera vignettes of Schumer playing "heightened versions" of herself. The vignettes are linked together with footage of Schumer's stand-up. The show, Inside Amy Schumer, premiered on Comedy Central in 2013. A behind-the-scenes miniseries entitled Behind Amy Schumer premiered in 2012.
In 2014, Schumer embarked on her Back Door Tour to promote the second season of her show. The show featured closing act Bridget Everett, whom Schumer cites as her favorite live performer. She also appeared as a guest on an episode of comedian Jerry Seinfeld's Internet series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee in 2014.
The year 2015 proved another rewarding year: Schumer hosted the 2015 MTV Movie Awards; her film, Trainwreck, which she wrote and in which she played her first leading role, was released; she performed as the opening act for Madonna on three New York City dates of the singer's Rebel Heart Tour; and on October 17, her comedy special, Amy Schumer Live at the Apollo, premiered on HBO. (In 2016, the special was nominated for three Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Variety Special, Writing and Directing.)
On June 23, 2016, during her sold out performance at Madison Square Garden, Schumer announced her first world tour starting later that summer in Dublin. Her memoir, a collection of personal essays, The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo was published to solid reviews.
Personal life
Schumer has dated professional wrestler Nick Nemeth a.k.a. Dolph Ziggler, and comedian Anthony Jeselnik. In January 2016, she indicated she was in a relationship with Chicago furniture designer Ben Hanisch. She has been friends with Taking Back Sunday drummer Mark O'Connell since childhood.
When she was 21, she and her sister Kim Schumer were arrested for grand larceny, as part of a shoplifting scheme. During an interview, she stated that it was her connection to Senator Schumer that enabled her to plead down the charge.
Book Reviews
Schumer keeps it real in The Girl with the Lower Back Tattooo. [She] is a talented storyteller.... Readers will laugh and cry, and may put the book down from moments of honesty that result in uncomfortable realistic details from her life. More important, the essays challenge readers to harness their own stories and rest in the fact that they’re good enough. Experience the world. Be bold. Love your body. It’s OK to fail and make mistakes. And lower-back tattoos can only make you stronger.
Associated Press
What [Schumer] offers here is a better, more deeply felt life-so-far book than most I've read...Schumer weaves a brave, vulnerable tale without falling into the usual celebrity traps of neediness and defense.
Chicago Tribune
[An] excellent new essay collection.... [The book] is, contrary to the postmodern parfait that is Schumer’s standard act, decidedly un-layered. It is Schumer, the celebrity, shedding Schumer, the schtick. It is a memoir that is also an unapologetic paean to self-love. In that, The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo finds a new way for Schumer to be radical: It treats feminine self-confidence not in the way it is too often regarded, as a BrainyQuotable truism or an inborn gift or a fuzzy aspiration or, indeed, a source of shame, but rather as a skill like any other—something that is developed and worked at and thus, most importantly, earned.... Schumer’s stories are really, particularly good.
Atlantic
Amy Schumer's book will make you love her even more. For a comedian of unbridled (and generally hilarious) causticity, Schumer has written a probing, confessional, unguarded, and, yes, majorly humanizing non-memoir, a book that trades less on sarcasm, and more on emotional resonance.
Vogue
The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo is laugh-out-loud funny when Schumer wants it to be...but more often, it’s surprisingly honest and raw.... If you’re here for humor, of course, you won’t be disappointed.... But on the whole, this book is far less a portable joke factory than it is a real, deep dive into Schumer’s life, and what it’s like to be an imperfect woman and content and proud of yourself despite that.
Entertainment Weekly
The comedian's essay collection isn't just bitingly funny—it's also raw, honest, and often heartbreaking. We dare you to walk away without even greater understanding and respect for Schumer (Must List).
Entertainment Weekly
The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo is an alternatingly meditative, sexually explicit, side-splittingly hilarious, heart-wrenching, disturbing, passionately political and always staggeringly authentic ride through the highs and lows of the comedic powerhouse's life to date.
Harper's Bazaar
Beyond the many powerful and empowering takeaways of The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo—from loving the hustle to self-love—perhaps the must overlooked is that of a woman's right to not only make mistakes, but to make art out of them.
Salon.com
(Starred review.) Her prose, like her popular comedy act, is plucky, forthright, hilariously raunchy—and honest.... Amid ill-fated dates, alcohol-induced blackouts, and late-night eating binges, Schumer, in these candid, well-crafted essays, wears her mistakes "like badges of honor."
Publishers Weekly
[P]rovocative...unabashed....Though the narrative sometimes lacks the literary appeal that distinguishes books from live comedy...it’s consistently funny and highly readable.... A hilarious and effective memoir from a woman with zero inhibitions.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use these LitLovers talking points to start a discussion for The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo...then take off on your own:
1. What do you think of Amy Schumer after having read The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo? If you're familiar with her comedy specials and her film Trainwreak, did you read anything about her to surprise you?
2. Much of Schumer's book revolves around being an imperfect woman learning to be content despite those imperfections. Was that your take on the book? How does Schumer achieve her sense of contentment with who she is...or does she? Does the book have resonance with you (and your own imperfections...that is, if you have any!)?
3. Schumer insists at the beginning that this is NOT a self-help book and that it offers no advice. Is she correct? What about urging women to leave abusive relationships? Does she offer other encouragement elsewhere?
4. Talk about Schumer's father and her relationship with him. She says that she has "been mourning him while he's still alive." How does that section affect you, especially when she writes of the two of them surfing for the last time?
5. In addition to writing about her father, are there other sections of The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo that your find particularly poignant?
6. What does Schumer write about her mother? Is it fair to remain angry at your parents' past mistakes once you reach adulthood? (Nora Ephron once said there was a statute of limitations for anger toward parents.)
7. Follow-up to Questions 4-6: What impact have Schumer's childhood and teenaged years had on her life and her career? In what way do you think her past has inspired her comedy?
8. Early in the book, Schumer writes, "Damn, it’s hard to write a book and not get yelled at.” What does she mean? Is that observation more true of women then men?
9. What does Schumer have to say about women's magazines? Do you agree or disagree?
10. Schumer mentions her vagina nearly two dozen times in her memoir: is that too much...just right? Is it funny? Do you appreciate her frankness when it comes to what has long (i.e., forever) been a taboo subject for female conversation?
11. Does the humor in this book live up to your expectations? Does Schumer's writing have the same voice as her stage, film, and tv performances? What sections, if any, do you find laugh-out-loud funny?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online of off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape
Peggy Orenstein, 2016
HarperCollins
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062209726
Summary
A clear-eyed picture of the new sexual landscape girls face in the post-princess stage—high school through college—and reveals how they are negotiating it.
A generation gap has emerged between parents and their girls. Even in this age of helicopter parenting, the mothers and fathers of tomorrow’s women have little idea what their daughters are up to sexually or how they feel about it.
Drawing on in-depth interviews with over seventy young women and a wide range of psychologists, academics, and experts, renowned journalist Peggy Orenstein goes where most others fear to tread, pulling back the curtain on the hidden truths, hard lessons, and important possibilities of girls’ sex lives in the modern world.
While the media has focused—often to sensational effect—on the rise of casual sex and the prevalence of rape on campus, in Girls and Sex Peggy Orenstein brings much more to the table.
She examines the ways in which porn and all its sexual myths have seeped into young people’s lives; what it means to be the "the perfect slut," and why many girls scorn virginity; the complicated terrain of hookup culture and the unfortunate realities surrounding assault.
In Orenstein’s hands these issues are never reduced to simplistic "truths;" rather, her powerful reporting opens up a dialogue on a potent, often silent, subtext of American life today—giving readers comprehensive and in-depth information with which to understand, and navigate, this complicated new world. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—November 1961
• Where—Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
• Education—B.A., Oberlin College
• Awards—(see Recognition below)
• Currently—lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, California
Peggy Orenstein is an American essayist and author of nonfiction books. A native of Minneapolis, Minnesota, she attended Oberlin College where she earned a B.A.
After college, she moved to New York City, where she worked as an associate editor at "Esquire," later acquiring senior editing positions at Manhattan, Inc. and 7 Days. In 1988, after moving to San Francisco, California, she became managing editor of Mother Jones and, in 1991, a writer and producer at Farallon Films. She is married to filmmaker Steven Okazaki. They have a daughter and live in San Francisco's Bay Area.
Books
♦ 2020 - Boys & Sex: Young Men on Hookups, Love, Porn, Consent, and Navigating the New Masculinity
♦ 2016 - Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape
♦ 2011 - Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl
Culture
♦ 2007 - Waiting for Daisy: A Tale of Two Continents, Three Religions, Five Infertility Doctors, an Oscar, an Atomic Bomb, a Romantic Night and One Woman's Quest to Become a Mother
♦ 2000 - Flux: Women on Sex, Work, Love, Kids and Life in a Half-Changed World
♦ 1994 - Schoolgirls: Young Women, Self Esteem, and the Confidence Gap
Other
A contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, Orenstein has also written for the Los Angeles Times, Vogue, Elle, More, Mother Jones, Slate, O: The Oprah Magazine, New York Magazine and The New Yorker.
She has contributed commentaries to NPR’s All Things Considered. Her articles have been anthologized multiple times, including in The Best American Science Writing.
She has been a keynote speaker at numerous colleges and conferences and has been featured on, among other programs, Nightline, Good Morning America, Today Show, NPR’s Fresh Air and Morning Edition and CBC’s As It Happens.
Recognition
In 2012, Columbia Journalism Review named Orentstein one of its "40 women who changed the media business in the past 40 years."
She has been recognized for her "Outstanding Coverage of Family Diversity," by the Council on Contemporary Families and received a Books For A Better Life Award for Waiting for Daisy. Her work has also been honored by the Commonwealth Club of California, the National Women’s Political Caucus of California and Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Additionally, she has been awarded fellowships from the United States-Japan Foundation and the Asian Cultural Council. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 4/3/2016 .)
Book Reviews
[T]hought-provoking….The interesting question at the heart of Girls & Sex is not really whether things are better or worse for girls. It's why—at a time when women graduate from college at higher rates than men and are closing the wage gap—aren't young women more satisfied with their most intimate relationships? "When so much has changed for girls in the public realm," Orenstein writes, "why hasn't more…changed in the private one?"
Cindi Leive - New York Times Book Review
(Starred review.) [A]n eye-opening, sometimes horrifying look at sex for today’s girls and young adults.... In this smart, earnest, and timely assessment, Orenstein urges frank, open communication...declaring it the best way to encourage girls and boys to make safe, healthy decisions.
Publishers Weekly
[A]ccessible prose and narrative style will bring the work of many thoughtful experts to a wider audience.... While this book largely documents our systemic failure to support young women's sexual thriving, the final chapters point toward potential solutions, including an important reminder that men and boys must be included in any successful intervention. —Anna J. Clutterbuck-Cook, Massachusetts Historical Soc. Lib., Boston
Library Journal
Sex and teenagers have always gone together, but parents reading Orenstein’s frank exploration of current trends may still be in for a shock…. This isn’t a comfortable book to read (Orenstein herself admits twinges a few times), but it’s an important one.
Booklist
[A]n eye-opening study of the way that girls and women in America think, feel, and act regarding sex.... What she discovered was both intriguing and highly disturbing.... Ample, valuable information on the way young women in America perceive and react to their sexual environment.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also, consider using these LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for Girls & Sex...and take off on your own:
1. Orenstein finds the contraries in the beliefs held by today's young women: the dismissal of male patriarchy coupled with the desire for male sexual approval. How do you, or any woman, align those divergent views?
2. The teenaged girl get ready for a date in her college dorm tells Orenstein that her desire for the night "is to be just slutty enough, where you're not a prude but you're not a whore." What do you think of her attitude toward sex? It's modern, but is it freeing...is it healthy...is it empowering? Is it moral? What is the difference between "slutty" and a "whore"? What is the perfect slut?
3. Follow-up Question to 2: How did the young woman, a college economics major with, presumably, a fair amount of intelligence, come to acquire her attitudes toward sex and "getting attention from guys"?
4. Talk about the "hookup culture." Why does Orenstein find it so disturbing--aside from the fact that she doesn't want to appear judgmental? And that begs the question about the rightness or wrongness of "judging" our children's behavior. What do you think?
5. Why aren't women more satisfied with their intimate relationships, especially given the fact that they're graduating at a higher rate than men and closing the wage gap? In other words, they're finding success in the public sphere...why not in the private one?
6. What affect does pornography have on male expectations?
7. Is taking your clothes off a sign of empowerment or self-determination? One young woman tells Orenstein, "I love Beyonce. She’s, like, a queen. But I wonder, if she wasn’t so beautiful, if people didn’t think she was so sexy, would she be able to make the feminist points she makes?" What's your opinion?
8. How does Orenstein feel about abstinence-only sex-ed programs? Should sex education be left to parents?
9. Talk about the role of alcohol in the youth culture.
10. What would be the ideal sexual code appropriate for today's young women...and men? How could we go about, as a society, promulgating it?
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher. In the meantime feel free to use these, online of off, with attribution. Thanks.)
The Girls from Corona del Mar
Rufi Thorpe, 2014
Knopf Doubleday
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385351966
Summary
"Why did Lorrie Ann look graceful in beat-up Keds and shorts a bit too small for her? Why was it charming when she snorted from laughing too hard? Yes, we were jealous of her, and yet we did not hate her. She was never so much as teased by us, we roaming and bratty girls of Corona del Mar, thieves of corn nuts and orange soda, abusers of lip gloss and foul language."
An astonishing debut about friendships made in youth, The Girls from Corona del Mar is a fiercely beautiful novel about how these bonds, challenged by loss, illness, parenthood, and distance, either break or endure.
Mia and Lorrie Ann are lifelong friends: hard-hearted Mia and untouchably beautiful, kind Lorrie Ann. While Mia struggles with a mother who drinks, a pregnancy at fifteen, and younger brothers she loves but can’t quite be good to, Lorrie Ann is luminous, surrounded by her close-knit family, immune to the mistakes that mar her best friend’s life. Then a sudden loss catapults Lorrie Ann into tragedy: things fall apart, and then fall further—and there is nothing Mia can do to help. And as good, brave, fair Lorrie Ann stops being so good, Mia begins to question just who this woman is, and what that question means about them both.
A staggeringly honest, deeply felt novel of family, motherhood, loyalty, and the myth of the perfect friendship, The Girls from Corona del Mar asks just how well we know those we love, what we owe our children, and who we are without our friends. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—?
• Raised—Corona del Mar, California, USA
• Education—B.A., New School; M.F.A., University of Virginia
• Currently—lives outside of Los Angeles, California
Rufi Thorpe is an American writer, the author of three novels: The Knockout Queen (2020), Dear Fang, with Love (2016), and The Girls from Corona del Mar (2014), which was long listed for the 2014 International Dylan Thomas Prize and for the 2014 Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize.
Thorpe received her B.A. from the New School in New York City and her M.F.A. from the University of Virginia in 2009. Raised in Corona del Mar, the setting of her first novel, she married and returned to California where she currently lives outisde of Los Angeles with her husband and sons. (Adaoted from the publisher.)
Book Reviews
The Girls From Corona del Mar is a slim book that leaves a deep impression. Mia and Lorrie Ann are vivid and fully formed, and their stories provoke strong emotions that linger like lived memory. Thorpe is a gifted writer who depicts friendship with affection and brutality, rendering all its love and heartbreak in painstaking strokes.
Steph Cha - Los Angeles Times
A knockout of a debut novel.... Pugnacious, risk-taking Mia, a child of divorce, grows up envious of Lorrie Ann, with her intact family and her elegant, upturned nose. Then in their junior year of high school, everything changes when a family tragedy strikes, marking “the first tap-tap on Lorrie Ann’s windowpane by those bad luck vultures.”... Thorpe is too firmly in control to let an abundance of plot points crowd out her narrative’s deeper meanings. Her worldly, rambunctious, feminist, morally interrogative prose style galvanizes every episode with smart, almost cosmic insights, tough talk, elegiac moments of love, dumb wonder, and, of course, further tragic events... We can’t help but root for these memorable heroines, and Thorpe’s beautiful twist of an ending is admirably earned.
Lisa Shea - Elle
The divergent paths of two girls raised in a Southern California beach town plot the course for Thorpe's affecting debut novel.... Thorpe unflinchingly examines the psychological tug-of-war between friends, and delves in to the pro-choice debate and issues relating to medical malpractice to give the personal narrative heft. The result is a nuanced portrait of two women who are sisters in everything but name.
Publishers Weekly
This debut novel would be unbearably grim if it were not for the sardonic humor of the first-person narration by Mia, who is so likable that it's hard to see why she has such a poor opinion of herself. The book should appeal to readers who enjoy dark-edged relationship dramas. —Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, Univ. of Minnesota Libs., Minneapolis
Library Journal
Best friends since high school, Lorrie Ann and Mia couldn’t be more different.... As time and distance separate the women, narrator Mia recounts every time the women tried (and mostly failed) to reconnect. This literary novel will leave readers questioning the myths and realities of complicated relationships. —Rebecca Vnuk
Booklist
Thorpe brings sensitivity to her well-trodden terrain of female friendship and dilemmas of choice, but Mia’s journey of discovery about herself and her "opposite twin" feels excessively binary. A slender, overplotted account of finding emotional peace.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The Girls from Corona del Mar opens with a scene in which Mia asks Lorrie Ann to break her toe. How does this scene echo throughout the novel? Can this scene, and other scenes in which feet and toes appear, be read symbolically?
2. How does Mia characterize herself in her youth? How does she characterize Lorrie Ann? Which aspects of their personalities remain the same over the course of the novel? What are some notable changes?
3. Discuss how Mia defines motherhood throughout the novel. How do Mia’s interactions with her own mother affect her understanding of what it means to be a mother? Why do you think Mia is so hesitant to become a mother?
4. Discuss the scene in which Mia hits her brother with a hanger. Did it change your perception of Mia?
5. What is the significance of the anecdote that opens the chapter “Dead Like Dead-Dead,” in which Mia’s dog gets hit by a car? Discuss the phone call that Mia makes to Lorrie Ann afterward. How does this incident change the dynamics of their relationship? Why do you think the author choose to juxtapose the death of Mia’s dog with the death of Jim?
6. Mia and Lorrie Ann’s friendship is rooted in the common experiences of youth, but their lives take completely different paths after high school. Why do you think Mia holds on to the friendship? Is it because of nostalgia? Familiarity? Loyalty? Discuss the moments in which Mia doubts the validity of their friendship. By the end of the novel, how has she come to view their relationship?
7. Lorrie Ann’s romantic relationships are sometimes judged harshly by Mia. Discuss Mia’s first meeting with Arman. What are her impressions of him? How do her assumptions about him change? By the end of the novel, does Mia see Arman in a different light?
8. Consider Mia’s upbringing in Corona del Mar and her surprise when she is admitted into Yale. What value does she place on education, and why? Why do you think Mia chose to study classics? How do her studies shape her worldview?
9. How does Mia describe her relationship with Franklin? Why do you think she is so hesitant about commitment in their relationship? How do her feelings about the topic shift after Lorrie Ann’s visit?
10. On page 8, Mia says that her father “never felt like family.” How does the absence of her father affect her? Discuss the scene in which Mia, Franklin, and her father meet. After Franklin defuses the tense conversation between Mia and her father, how does Mia’s perception of her father change?
11. Discuss the significance of the tea set that Mia purchases at the beginning of the novel. What does her contentious relationship with Bensu symbolize? When Mia discovers the where the tea set has ended up at the end of the novel, how does she react?
12. How does Mia’s anxiety about financial stability manifest throughout the novel? Discuss how wealth and poverty are explored by the author. How does Mia’s relationship with Franklin change these concerns?
13. On page 103, Mia states that “I feared the Inanna in myself.” How does the mythology of Innana factor in The Girls of Corona del Mar? How does Mia use the story of Innana to explore her feelings about motherhood? Parental relationships? Lorrie Ann’s behavior?
14. Discuss the emails that Mia sends to Lorrie Ann after Lorrie Ann leaves Istanbul. Why do you think she sent those notes?
15. On page 19, Mia mentions that “the Corona del Mar in which Lorrie Ann and I grew up actually ceased to exist almost at the exact moment we left it.” What is the significance of this statement? Does she mean that the town physically changes or that her connection to the town has changed over time? Or both?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
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Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon—and the Journey of a Generation
Sheila Weller
Simon & Schuster
592 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780743491488
Summary
A groundbreaking and irresistible biography of three of America's most important musical artists — Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon — charts their lives as women at a magical moment in time.
Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon remain among the most enduring and important women in popular music. Each woman is distinct. Carole King is the product of outer-borough, middle-class New York City; Joni Mitchell is a granddaughter of Canadian farmers; and Carly Simon is a child of the Manhattan intellectual upper crust. They collectively represent, in their lives and their songs, a great swath of American girls who came of age in the late 1960s. Their stories trace the arc of the now mythic sixties generation — female version — but in a bracingly specific and deeply recalled way, far from cliché. The history of the women of that generation has never been written — until now, through their resonant lives and emblematic songs.
Filled with the voices of many dozens of these women's intimates, who are speaking in these pages for the first time, this alternating biography reads like a novel — except it's all true, and the heroines are famous and beloved. Sheila Weller captures the character of each woman and gives a balanced portrayal enriched by a wealth of new information.
Girls Like Us is an epic treatment of midcentury women who dared to break tradition and become what none had been before them — confessors in song, rock superstars, and adventurers of heart and soul. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Sheila Weller is a New York Times bestselling author and award-winning magazine journalist.
She is the author of five previous books, most recently her 2003 family memoir, Dancing at Ciro's, which the Washington Post called "a substantial contribution to American social history." She is the senior contributing editor at Glamour, a contributor to Vanity Fair, and a former contributing editor of New York. To learn more, visit the Girls Like Us website. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Captivating. And it defies expectations, to the point where Ms. Weller's grand ambitions wind up fulfilled…Girls Like Us is a strong amalgam of nostalgia, feminist history, astute insight, beautiful music and irresistible gossip about the common factors in the three women's lives.
Janet Maslin - New York Times
Weller, a journalist whose other books include the 2003 memoir Dancing at Ciro's, is…interested in exploring how these three distinct yet dovetailing artists bucked the expectations that had been laid out for them by previous generations and blazed a new path for women to follow. She's only partly successful: the book unintentionally makes the case that two of these women changed things for themselves more than for anyone else. Then again, even self-determination has value, and much of Girls Like Us is entertaining and intelligent, thanks to Weller's skills as a storyteller and her understanding of the musical traditions that inspired each of her subjects…She's also perceptive about the social milieus that, kicking and screaming, these women had to bust out of.
Stephanie Zacharek - New York Times Book Review
Let's get one thing clear right from the start—this is a fabulous book...Girls like Us unfolds with drama and panoramic detail. Written with a keen journalistic and, more importantly, female eye, [it] works as a healthy, long overdue counterweight to the endlessly repeated, male-sided version of rock 'n roll. Before these women broke the cultural sod during the rock 'n roll years, there were no girls like us. Now there are millions.
Caitlin Moran - Sunday Times (London)
Even at 500-plus pages, the book goes down as easy as a Grisham yarn on a vacation flight... The only flaw to Girls Like Us is that it comes to an end. Few people lead lives as action-packed and spiritually opulent as Carole King, Joni Mitchell and Carly Simon did during such intensely interesting times. And few writers are able to impart so much freight with such vigor. The towering triumvirate got what it deserves.
Toronto Sun
Juicy... I doubt I'll listen to Mitchell's songs again without considering the child she gave up for adoption... and her subsequent bouts with depression or hear the oft-married King's music without thinking of her tumultuous relationships. As for Simon, Weller captures fully both the richness and glamour of her romantic life and the profound sensitivity that made her especially vulnerable to ex-husband James Taylor's drug abuse and the cavalier charm of Warren Beatty.
USA Today
As an avid music reader, sometime reviewer, and teen of the '60s myself, I was sure I knew just about everything there was to know about Carole, Joni, and Carly.... But Girls Like Us, an ambitious collective biography by six-time author and magazine journalist Sheila Weller, showed me exactly how much I didn't know. This absorbing, well-reported book chronicles a time when women in all walks of life were exercising new-found freedom. And as icons of that era, nobody did it better.
Christian Science Monitor
An avid music reader, sometime reviewer, and teen of the '60s myself, I was sure I knew just about everything there was to know about Carole, Joni, and Carly.... But Girls Like Us, an ambitious collective biography by six-time author and magazine journalist Sheila Weller, showed me exactly how much I didn't know. This absorbing, well-reported book chronicles a time when women in all walks of life were exercising new-found freedom. And as icons of that era, nobody did it better.
Ladies Home Journal
Half collective biography, half music-industry dish about three singer-songwriters who represented a generation of women on "a course of self-discovery, change, and unhappy confrontation with the limits of change. Vanity Fair and Glamour contributor Weller (Dancing at Ciro's: A Family's Love, Loss, and Scandal on the Sunset Strip, 2003, etc.) doesn't veer from the traditional image of her subjects. Carole King is the Brill Building tunesmith whose vinyl warmth reflected earth-mother instincts; Joni Mitchell, the Canadian prairie-born poet/artist whose yearning for love and commitment conflicted with the need for freedom (and its concomitant loneliness) that fueled her greatest songs; and Carly Simon, the neurotic, alarmingly candid and sexy Manhattan chanteuse. The author has pored over numerous documents concerning these three and interviewed scores of current or former lovers, friends, colleagues and relatives. Reflecting this prodigious legwork, many pages are crammed with the longest parentheses this side of Faulkner. Weller's prose frequently falls into cliche (Mitchell's "exorcising of demons"), and although she dutifully proclaims her subjects' stories to be tales of feminine empowerment, she more often sounds like Gossip Girl. The narrative frequently becomes a roundelay of ecstasy, insensitivity, drugs, madness, betrayal and loss at the hands of the men that got away, including James Taylor, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson, Jackson Browne, Leonard Cohen and Gerry Goffin (King's first husband and collaborator). Weller neglects the musicianship behind some of the memorable songs of the last half-century: You'd never know, for instance, that Mitchell's open style of tuning landed her on a Rolling Stone list of the 100 greatest guitarists in rock history. Yet the author's research has unearthed so much little-known material (including King's "Rick One/Rick Two period": successive marriages to Idaho mountain men) that her account is essential for understanding how three female superstars survived male chauvinism, romantic disaster and late-career neglect by the music industry to become icons. Definitely a guilty pleasure, but still a solid contribution to the story of 20th-century popular music.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Introduction
Carly Simon, Carole King, and Joni Mitchell remain among the most enduring and important women in popular music. Each woman is distinct, in both her individual vocal style and in her singular transformation of American music history. Carole King is the product of an ethnically diverse Brooklyn neighborhood; Joni Mitchell is a granddaughter of Canadian farmers; and Carly Simon is a child of New York intelligentsia. They collectively represent, in their lives and their songs, every girl who came of age in the late 1960s. Their stories trace the arc of the now mythic sixties generation — female version — but in a bracingly specific and deeply recalled way that altogether avoids cliché. The history of the women of that generation has never been written — until now, through their resonant lives and emblematic songs.
Filled with the voices of many dozens of these women's intimates, who are speaking in these pages for the first time, this alternating biography reads like a novel — except it's all true, and the three heroines are famous and beloved. In Girls Like Us, Sheila Weller captures the character of each woman, giving a balanced portrayal enriched by a wealth of new information.
__________________
Questions
1. "Women's liberation had been the work of female civil rights and antiwar activists in collectives in Berkeley, Boston, New York, and elsewhere...but now [in 1971] it was fully entrenched in the mainstream intelligentsia." To what extent do the early careers of Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon seem animated by the spirit of the women's liberation movement? In what respects does their music seem toaddress the theme of the role of women in a world largely dominated by men? How did the words of their songs — and their personal and professional lives — embody a new spirit of young women being as adventurous as young men had always been?
2. How did Carole King's marriage at seventeen and subsequent early motherhood affect her development as an artist? To what extent could her marriage with Gerry Goffin be considered a partnership of equals? Why did their phenomenally successful pop-soul-plus-Broadway compositions seem less impressive by the time the Beatles and Dylan became popular, and how did that public perception affect Carole's own transformation as a musician in midcareer?
3. What does Joni Mitchell's decision to bear a child out of wedlock (and to refuse to hide in a home for unwed mothers) at a time when pregnant, unmarried women were considered scandalous in Canada reveal about her strength of character and her personal beliefs? How did her decision to give the child up for adoption play out in her music, and — much later — in her own history? How might such a difficult decision have reflected a kind of centuries-later version of the theme of the Child Ballads?
4. How did Carly Simon's complicated family life — her father's open love for a much older woman, her mother's semi-secret affair with a much younger man living in their home — factor into her own feelings about relationships and love? To what extent did her involvement with psychotherapy enable her to come to terms with her discomfort with being in the public eye? How might her insecurity as a professional musician be connected to her own feelings of inferiority in her eminent family?
5. How did Carole King's separation from her husband and collaborator, Gerry Goffin, in 1967, alter the course of her career? How did her move with her two daughters from suburban New Jersey to Los Angeles, a freer, cutting-edge city largely unfamiliar to her, affect her music? How significant was that move to her emergence for the first time as a truly independent woman?
6. In her song "Cactus Tree," Joni Mitchell writes that women should keep their hearts "full and hollow, like a cactus tree." How does that line resonate with Mitchell's own life in terms of her romantic and professional choices? How would you characterize the influence of fellow artists Judy Collins, Leonard Cohen, and David Crosby on the musical career of Joni Mitchell?
7. "Too much freedom doesn't help you artistically." To what extent did Carly Simon's musical career bloom in the wake of her marriage to fellow musician James Taylor, and how do you reconcile this fact with her having to juggle the responsibilities of musician, wife, and mother? How did Simon's marriage to Taylor allow her to publicly air her decidedly feminist take on gender politics?
8. "Though this would be hard to imagine in 1956, when standards of feminine beauty were at their most unforgiving, in fifteen years Carole would represent an inclusive new model of female sensuality: the young 'natural' woman, the 'earth mother.'" What role did physical beauty play in the musical successes of Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon? To what extent did physical beauty serve as a barrier of sorts for up-and-coming musicians in the sixties, and how do you think their experiences compare to those of female musicians today?
9. How have the contours of fame changed for Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon as they enter their more mature decades? As they've transitioned from young stars to legends, how has their music changed? How would you characterize their musical preoccupations at this point in their lives?
10. Of the many details about the careers of Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon, which did you find most fascinating and why? How did the author's inclusion of political, social, and historical facts from the era in which these musicians were establishing themselves heighten your appreciation of their accomplishments? To what extent were you surprised by the intersection of their musical careers, given their distinct styles and their different backgrounds?
(Questions issued by publishers.)
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The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II
Denise Kiernan, 2013
Simon & Schuster
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781451617535
Summary
The incredible story of the young women of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, who unwittingly played a crucial role in one of the most significant moments in US history.
At the height of World War II, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, was home to 75,000 residents, consuming more electricity than New York City. But to most of the world, the town did not exist. Thousands of civilians—many of them young women from small towns across the South—were recruited to this secret city, enticed by solid wages and the promise of war-ending work.
Kept very much in the dark, few would ever guess the true nature of the tasks they performed each day in the hulking factories in the middle of the Appalachian Mountains. That is, until the end of the war—when Oak Ridge’s secret was revealed.
Drawing on the voices of the women who lived it—women who are now in their eighties and nineties—The Girls of Atomic City rescues a remarkable, forgotten chapter of American history from obscurity. Denise Kiernan captures the spirit of the times through these women: their pluck, their desire to contribute, and their enduring courage.
Combining the grand-scale human drama of The Worst Hard Time with the intimate biography and often troubling science of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, The Girls of Atomic City is a lasting and important addition to our country’s history. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 31, 1968
• Where—N/A
• Education—M.A., New York University
• Currently—lives in Asheville, North Carolina
Denise Kiernan is an American journalist, producer and author who lives in Asheville, North Carolina. She has authored several history titles, including Signing Their Rights Away (with Joseph D'Agnese, 2011), The Girls of Atomic City (2013), and The Last Castle: The Epic Story of Love, Loss, and American Royalty in the Nation's Largest Home (2017)
Education
Kiernan graduated from the North Carolina School of the Arts with an emphasis in music. She earned a BA degree from the Washington Square and University College of Arts & Science in 1991 and an MA from the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development of New York University in 2002.
Career
Kiernan started out in journalism, and as a freelance writer, her work appeared in the New York Times, Village Voice, Wall Street Journal, and Ms. Magazine among other publications. She served as the head writer for Who Wants to Be a Millionaire during its first season. She has produced pieces for ESPN and MSNBC.
Additionally, she has authored several popular history titles and ghost written books for athletes, entrepreneurs and actresses. Her most recent book, The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II, traces the story of the women who worked on the Manhattan Project, unknowingly helping to create the fuel for the world's first atomic bomb. The book became a New York Times best seller in its first week of publication.
Personal life
Kiernan is married to author and journalist Joseph D'Agnese, with whom she co-authored several books including Stuff Every American Should Know (2012); Signing Their Rights Away (2011); Signing Their Lives Away (2009). (From Wiipedia. Retrieved 2/21/2014 .)
Book Reviews
The image of Rosie the Riveter—women filling in at factories to help the war effort—is well known. But women also assisted on the Manhattan Project, signing up for secret work in Oak Ridge, Tenn., to help build the atomic bomb. Kiernan looks at the lives and contributions of these unsung women who worked in jobs from secretaries to chemists.
New York Post
Fascinating.... Kiernan has amassed a deep reservoir of intimate details of what life was like for women living in the secret city, gleaned from seven years of interviews and research.... Rosie, it turns out, did much more than drive rivets.... The fascinating story of the Manhattan Project has been told often, and often told well.... But given the project's significant and lasting impact, there's plenty more mining to be done, and Denise Kiernan has found a rich vein in The Girls of Atomic City. Rosie, it turns out, did much more than drive rivets.
Scott Martelle - Washington Post
Kiernan…brings a unique and personal perspective to this key part of American history.... Instead of the words of top scientists and government officials, Kiernan recounts the experiences of factory workers, secretaries, and low-level chemists in a town that housed at its peak 75,000 people trained not to talk about what they knew or what they did. She combines their stories with detailed reporting that provides a clear and compelling picture of this fascinating time.
Boston Globe
Much was at stake, and in The Girls of Atomic City, Denise Kiernan tells a fascinating story about ordinary women who did the extraordinary. It may be difficult for today's readers to imagine so many people united behind cause and country to do what the women and men at Oak Ridge's Clinton Engineer Works did in just two years.
Patty Rhule - USA Today
Kiernan’s book, the result of seven years of research and interviews with the surviving 'girls,' sparkles with their bright, WWII slang and spirit, and takes readers behind the scenes into the hive-like encampments and cubicles where they spent their days and nights.... The Girls of Atomic City brings to light a forgotten chapter in our history that combines a vivid, novelistic story with often troubling science.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Kiernan’s focus is on the intimate and often strange details of work and life at Oak Ridge. It’s told in a novelistic style and is an intimate look at the experiences of the young women who worked at Oak Ridge and the local residents whose lives were changed by the presence of the project.
San Francisco Book Review
As most of us are all too aware, the generation who fought in World War II or supported the effort from home are leaving us—their children, grandchildren, and greats—to carry on without them. Thanks to author Kiernan, we hear from a group of that generation's women, now in their eighties and nineties, whose wartime experience matched no one else's. Ever. Anywhere.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Kiernan's interviewees describe falling in love and smuggling in liquor in tampon boxes. But like everyone else, those lives were disrupted by news of Hiroshima. "Now you know what we've been doing all this time," said one of the scientists ... [An] intimate and revealing glimpse into one of the most important scientific developments in history.
Publishers Weekly
Living and working with thousands of others in a secret city built almost overnight, those involved in the "Project" were unaware that they were contributing to the most revolutionary scientific discovery of the 20th century.... Kiernan capably captures the spirit of women's wartime opportunities and their sacrifices in what is ultimately a captivating narrative. —Kathryn Wells, Fitchburg State Univ. Lib., MA
Library Journal
A fresh take on the secret city built in the mountains of Tennessee as part of the Manhattan Project during World War II.... The author parallels her account of the construction of Oak Ridge with chapters on the development of the science that made nuclear fission possible.... An inspiring account of how people can respond with their best when called upon.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Denise Kiernan explains in an author’s note, “The information in this book is compartmentalized, as was much of life and work during the Manhattan Project.” (page 18) How does the book manage to recreate the workers’ experience of months-long ignorance, and the shock of finding out what they were working on?
2. Consider the losses of lives, land, and community that resulted from the Manhattan Project. What were some of the sacrifices that families and individuals made in their efforts to end the war? How do these losses compare to the gains of salary, solidarity, and peace? Do you think the ends of the Project justify the means? Why or why not?
3. Discuss the role that patriotism played in everyday life during World War II. Do you think Americans today would be willing or able to make the same sacrifices—including top-secret jobs, deployment overseas, rationed goods, and strict censorship—that families of that era made? Why or why not?
4. Consider the African-American experience at Oak Ridge. What kinds of discrimination did Kattie and her family face? How did Kattie manage to make the best of her substandard living conditions? What role do you think race played in the medical experimentation on Ebb Cade?
5. Helen was recruited to spy on her neighbors at home and at work. Discuss the ethical implications of this request. Was it fair, necessary, or wise to ask ordinary workers to spy? Why do you think Helen never mailed any of the top-secret envelopes she was given?
6. Although the Clinton Engineer Works was, in many ways, a tightly controlled social experiment, the military didn’t account for women’s impact on the community: “a sense of permanence. Social connectivity. Home.” (page 135) Consider the various ways that the women of Oak Ridge tried to make themselves at home. Which of their efforts succeeded, and which failed? Why were some women so successful at making Oak Ridge home while others were not, were depressed, looked forward to leaving?
7. Consider the legacy of President Truman, who made the decision to use atomic weaponry for the first time. How do Americans seem to regard Truman’s decision today? How does Truman’s legacy compare to other wartime presidents, such as George W. Bush or Lyndon B. Johnson?
8. “The most ambitious war project in military history rested squarely on the shoulders of tens of thousands of ordinary people, many of them young women.” (page 159) Compare how The Girls of Atomic City contrasts “ordinary people” to the extraordinary leaders behind the atomic bomb: the General, the Scientist, and the Engineer. Are the decision-makers portrayed as fully as the workers? Do the workers get as much credit as the leaders?
9. Kiernan sets The Girls of Atomic City entirely in the past, recreating the workers’ experiences from her interviews with the surviving women. How would this book have differed if the interviews from the present day were included? Does Kiernan succeed in immersing us in the era of World War II? Explain your answer.
10. Among the workers at Oak Ridge, whose story did you find most fascinating? Which of these women do you think Kiernan brought to life most vividly, and how?
11. Discuss the scenes in the book that take place far from Oak Ridge, Tennessee: scientific discoveries in Europe, secret tests in New Mexico, political meetings in Washington, and post-atomic devastation in Japan. How does this broad view of the bomb’s creation and aftermath enrich the story of wartime life in Oak Ridge?
12. Discuss how various contributors to the Manhattan Project felt about the use of the atomic bomb, including General Leslie Groves, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Albert Einstein, and Harry S. Truman. What regrets did they express about the bomb’s results, if any? Do you think a weapon of that magnitude could or should be used in present-day warfare? Why or why not?
13. Kiernan writes, “The challenge in telling the story of the atomic bomb is one of nuance, requiring thought and sensitivity and walking a line between commemoration and celebration.” (page 412) What lasting contributions to society have come out of Oak Ridge, Tennessee? Why is it difficult to celebrate or commemorate the work that has been done in that secret city?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
The Glass Castle
Jeannette Walls, 2005
Simon & Schuster
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780743247542
Summary
Jeannette Walls grew up with parents whose ideals and stubborn nonconformity were both their curse and their salvation. Rex and Rose Mary Walls had four children.
In the beginning, they lived like nomads, moving among Southwest desert towns, camping in the mountains. Rex was a charismatic, brilliant man who, when sober, captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and above all, how to embrace life fearlessly.
Rose Mary, who painted and wrote and couldn't stand the responsibility of providing for her family, called herself an "excitement addict." Cooking a meal that would be consumed in fifteen minutes had no appeal when she could make a painting that might last forever.
Later, when the money ran out, or the romance of the wandering life faded, the Walls retreated to the dismal West Virginia mining town—and the family—Rex Walls had done everything he could to escape. He drank. He stole the grocery money and disappeared for days.
As the dysfunction of the family escalated, Jeannette and her brother and sisters had to fend for themselves, supporting one another as they weathered their parents' betrayals and, finally, found the resources and will to leave home.
What is so astonishing about Jeannette Walls is not just that she had the guts and tenacity and intelligence to get out, but that she describes her parents with such deep affection and generosity. Hers is a story of triumph against all odds, but also a tender, moving tale of unconditional love in a family that despite its profound flaws gave her the fiery determination to carve out a successful life on her own terms. (From the publisher.)
See the 2017 Glass Castle film version with Brie Larson, Woody Harrelson, and Naomi Watts.
Listen to our Movies Meet Book Club Podcast as Hollister and O'Toole discuss the movie and book.
Author Bio
• Birth—April 21, 1960
• Where—Phoenix, Arizona, USA
• Education—B.A., Barnard College
• Currently—lives in New York City and Long Island
For two decades, Jeannette Walls hid her roots. A regular contributor to MSNBC.com, she lives in New York and Long Island and is married to the writer John Taylor. (From the publisher.)
Her own words:
When I sat down to write The Glass Castle, there was no doubt in my mind that once the truth about me was out I would lose all my friends and my job. So far, the reaction has been the opposite. I'm just stunned. I think I've shortchanged people and their capacity for compassion. The whole experience has changed my outlook on the world. My brother and I are closer. My sister Lori and I have discussed things we'd never before talked about. I'm back in touch with people I knew in West Virginia whom I hadn't spoken to since I left. My mother wants to correct something in the book: She wants everyone to know that she's an excellent driver.
When I was growing up, I always loved animals. But it was a part of myself that I'd let go dormant as an adult. Writing The Glass Castle, I was reminded of how important animals had always been to me, and that love was reawakened. Not long ago, I rescued two racing greyhounds, Emma and Leopold, and I'm irrationally devoted to them. In the spring of 2005, Jeannette Walls took some time to tell us about some of her favorite books, authors, and interests.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith [is the book that influenced me the most]....It had a powerful effect on my view of the world and first made me realize how much of an emotional wallop — and comfort — a book could deliver. I read it when I was 11 or 12 and was stunned that a character created 50 years earlier seemed so similar to me. She loved her father even though he was a hopeless drunk, she lived in a rough neighborhood but found beauty in it, and she was determined to make something of her life.
If [I] had a book club, [we] would it be reading...Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. I find books that have a moral and spiritual center, that speak to what is really important and lasting, hugely appealing.
Books are my very favorite gift to give. If you give a book to someone and they really respond to it, you feel you've actually changed their life in some way. I recently gave my father-in-law both volumes of William Manchester's biography of Churchill — and we had long, animated conversations about him and history and the psychology and greatness. If a book really moves me, I'll sometimes buy several copies for friends and give them out even if there's no occasion. I bought The Lovely Bones for four or five people. If someone's not much of a reader, I try to find a book that speaks to one of their passions. Whenever I'm reading a book I enjoy, I always develop a mental list of the people I want to share it with. I love it when people reciprocate; when they call me up and tell me they're reading a great book and can't wait for me to read it. That's how I heard about Gilead.
I write on a 19th-century oak table, in front of a window overlooking a wisteria-covered arbor.... [W]hen I wrote The Glass Castle, I wrote it entirely on the weekends, getting to my desk by 7:30 or 8:00 a.m. and continuing until 6:00 or 7:00 p.m. I wrote the first draft in about six weeks — but then I spent three or four years rewriting it. My husband, John Taylor, who is also a writer, observed all this approvingly and quoted John Fowles, who said that a book should be like a child: conceived in passion and reared with care.
I've been a journalist for almost 20 years and wrote one nonfiction book about the history of the tabloid press. But writing The Glass Castle was an entirely different experience. I was writing about myself and about intensely personal — and potentially embarrassing — experiences. Over the last 25 years, I wrote several versions of this memoir — sometimes pounding out 220 pages in a single weekend — but I always threw out the pages. Once I tried to fictionalize it, but that didn't work either. It took me this long to figure out how to tell the story. (From a 2005 Barnes & Noble interviw.)
Book Reviews
The Glass Castle falls short of being art, but it's a very good memoir. At one point, describing her early literary tastes, Walls mentions that ''my favorite books all involved people dealing with hardships.'' And she has succeeded in doing what most writers set out to do — to write the kind of book they themselves most want to read.
Francine Prose - The New York Times
(Starred review.) Freelance writer Walls doesn't pull her punches. She opens her memoir by describing looking out the window of her taxi, wondering if she's "overdressed for the evening" and spotting her mother on the sidewalk, "rooting through a Dumpster." Walls's parents-just two of the unforgettable characters in this excellent, unusual book-were a matched pair of eccentrics, and raising four children didn't conventionalize either of them. Her father was a self-taught man, a would-be inventor who could stay longer at a poker table than at most jobs and had "a little bit of a drinking situation," as her mother put it. With a fantastic storytelling knack, Walls describes her artist mom's great gift for rationalizing. Apartment walls so thin they heard all their neighbors? What a bonus-they'd "pick up a little Spanish without even studying." Why feed their pets? They'd be helping them "by not allowing them to become dependent." While Walls's father's version of Christmas presents-walking each child into the Arizona desert at night and letting each one claim a star-was delightful, he wasn't so dear when he stole the kids' hard-earned savings to go on a bender. The Walls children learned to support themselves, eating out of trashcans at school or painting their skin so the holes in their pants didn't show. Buck-toothed Jeannette even tried making her own braces when she heard what orthodontia cost. One by one, each child escaped to New York City. Still, it wasn't long before their parents appeared on their doorsteps. "Why not?" Mom said. "Being homeless is an adventure."
Publishers Weekly
Not a blissful childhood: MSNBC.com contributor Walls's alcoholic dad stole the grocery money, and her mother would rather paint than parent.
Library Journal
An account of growing up nomadic, starry-eyed, and dirt poor in the '60s and '70s, by gossip journalist Walls (Dish, 2000). From her first memory, of catching fire while boiling hotdogs by herself in the trailer park her family was passing through, to her last glimpse of her mother, picking through a New York City Dumpster, Walls's detached, direct, and unflinching account of her rags-to-riches life proves a troubling ride. Her parents, Rex Walls, from the poor mining town of Welch, West Virginia, and Rose Mary, a well-educated artist from Phoenix, love a good adventure and usually don't take into account the care of the children who keep arriving-Lori, Jeannette, Brian, and Maureen-leaving them largely to fend for themselves. For entrepreneur and drinker Rex, "Doing the skedaddle" means getting out of town fast, pursued by creditors. Rex is a dreamer, and someday his gold-digging tool (the Prospector), or, better, his ingenious ideas for energy-efficiency, will fund the building of his desert dream house, the Glass Castle. But moving from Las Vegas to San Francisco to Nevada and back to rock-bottom Welch provides a precarious existence for the kids-on-and-off schooling, living with exposed wiring and no heat or plumbing, having little or nothing to eat. Protesting their paranoia toward authority and their insistence on "true values" for their children ("What doesn't kill you will make you stronger," chirps Mom), these parents have some dubious nurturing practices, such as teaching the children to con and shoplift. The deprivations do sharpen the wits of the children-leading to the family's collective escape to New York City, where they all make good, even the parents, who are content tolive homeless. The author's tell-it-like-it-was memoir is moving because it's unsentimental; she neither demonizes nor idealizes her parents, and there remains an admirable libertarian quality about them, though it justifiably elicits the children's exasperation and disgust. Walls's journalistic bare-bones style makes for a chilling, wrenching, incredible testimony of childhood neglect. A pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps, thoroughly American story.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Though The Glass Castle is brimming with unforgettable stories, which scenes were the most memorable for you? Which were the most shocking, the most inspiring, the funniest?
2. Discuss the metaphor of a glass castle and what it signifies to Jeannette and her father. Why is it important that, just before leaving for New York, Jeannette tells her father that she doesn't believe he'll ever build it? (p. 238).
3. The first story Walls tells of her childhood is that of her burning herself severely at age three, and her father dramatically takes her from the hospital: "You're safe now" (p. 14). Why do you think she opens with that story, and how does it set the stage for the rest of the memoir?
4. Rex Walls often asked his children, "Have I ever let you down?" Why was this question (and the required "No, Dad" response) so important for him — and for his kids? On what occasions did he actually come through for them?
5. Jeannette's mother insists that, no matter what, "life with your father was never boring" (p. 288). What kind of man was Rex Walls? What were his strengths and weaknesses, his flaws and contradictions?
6. Discuss Rose Mary Walls. What did you think about her description of herself as an "excitement addict"? (p. 93).
7. Though it portrays an incredibly hardscrabble life, The Glass Castle is never sad or depressing. Discuss the tone of the book, and how do you think that Walls achieved that effect?
8 Describe Jeannette's relationship to her siblings and discuss the role they played in one another's lives.
9. In college, Jeannette is singled out by a professor for not understanding the plight of homeless people; instead of defending herself, she keeps quiet. Why do you think she does this?
10. The two major pieces of the memoir — one half set in the desert and one half in West Virginia — feel distinct. What effect did such a big move have on the family — and on your reading of the story? How would you describe the shift in the book's tone?
11. Were you surprised to learn that, as adults, Jeannette and her siblings remained close to their parents? Why do you think this is?
12. What character traits — both good and bad — do you think that Jeannette inherited from her parents? And how do you think those traits shaped Jeannette's life?
13. For many reviewers and readers, the most extraordinary thing about The Glass Castle is that, despite everything, Jeannette Walls refuses to condemn her parents. Were you able to be equally nonjudgmental?
14. Like Mary Karr's Liars' Club and Rick Bragg's All Over But the Shoutin', Jeannette Walls' The Glass Castle tells the story of a wildly original (and wildly dysfunctional) family with humor and compassion. Were their other comparable memoirs that came to mind? What distinguishes this book?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars
Dava Sobel, 2016
Penguin Books
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780670016952
Summary
In the mid-nineteenth century, the Harvard College Observatory began employing women as calculators, or "human computers," to interpret the observations their male counterparts made via telescope each night.
At the outset this group included the wives, sisters, and daughters of the resident astronomers, but soon the female corps included graduates of the new women's colleges—Vassar, Wellesley, and Smith. As photography transformed the practice of astronomy, the ladies turned from computation to studying the stars captured nightly on glass photographic plates.
The "glass universe" of half a million plates that Harvard amassed over the ensuing decades—through the generous support of Mrs. Anna Palmer Draper, the widow of a pioneer in stellar photography—enabled the women to make extraordinary discoveries that attracted worldwide acclaim. They helped discern what stars were made of, divided the stars into meaningful categories for further research, and found a way to measure distances across space by starlight.
Their ranks included Williamina Fleming, a Scottish woman originally hired as a maid who went on to identify ten novae and more than three hundred variable stars; Annie Jump Cannon, who designed a stellar classification system that was adopted by astronomers the world over and is still in use; and Dr. Cecilia Helena Payne, who in 1956 became the first ever woman professor of astronomy at Harvard—and Harvard’s first female department chair.
Elegantly written and enriched by excerpts from letters, diaries, and memoirs, The Glass Universe is the hidden history of the women whose contributions to the burgeoning field of astronomy forever changed our understanding of the stars and our place in the universe. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 15, 1947
• Where—New York, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., State University of New York-Binghamton
• Awards—National Science Board's Individual Public Service Award (more below)
• Currently—lives in East Hampton, Long Island, New York
Dava Sobel is an American author of popular books that explore scientific discoveries and the way they transform humanity's worldview. Her books include Longitude (1995), Galileo's Daughter (2000), The Planets (2005), A More Perfect Heaven (2011), and The Glass Universe (2016).
Sobel was raised in New York City, close enough to walk to the Bronx Zoo and the New York Botanical Garden—which she did frequently at an early age. Both of her parents were readers, and her mother had trained as a chemist, so no one in her family considered it odd for a young girl to be drawn to the sciences.
Following her nose for science, Sobel attended and graduated from the Bronx High School of Science—considering it, as she says on her website, her most impressive credential. She completed her formal education at the State University of New York at Binghamton where she received her Bachelor's degree.
Sobel spent the next 20-some years of her career as a writer, first with a brief stint at IBM as a technical writer, then as a freelance journalist. She wrote for the Cornell University News Bureau, New York Times, Harvard Magazine, Science Digest, Omni, Discover, Audubon, Life, and The New Yorker.
In 1995, she published her first book—Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time. The book became an unexpected success and launched Sobel's career as a full-time author.
More
That first book, Longitude, was adapted as a four-hour television film in 1999 starring Jeremy Irons. It was shown in the U.S. on the A&E channel. In addition, PBS's NOVA produced a science documentary, Lost At Sea—The Search for Longitude, based on the book.
Sorbel's fourth book, A More Perfect Heaven, had a different provenance than any of her other books: it started out as a stage play, a dialogue between Nicolaus Copernicus and his collaborator Georg Joachim Rheticus. From there it grew into a book recounting the tension between the Copernican heliocentric theory and the religious and political backdrop of the era.
Sobel has taught science writing at the University of Chicago, Mary Baldwin College (Staunton, VA), and Smith College (Northampton, MA).
Honors
1999 - Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award, American Academy of Arts & Sciences
2001 - Individual Public Service Award, National Science Board
2001 - Bradford Washburn Award, Boston Museum of Science
2002 - Honorary Doctorates: Middlebury College, University of Bath (UK)
2004 - Harrison Medal, Worshipful Company of Clockmakers (UK)
2008 - Klumpke-Roberts Award, Astronomical Society of the Pacific
2014 - Cultural Award, Eduard Rhein Foundation (Germany)
2015 - Honorary Doctorate: University of Bern (Switzerland)
(Author bio compiled by LitLovers, including the author's website.)
Book Reviews
It takes a talented writer to interweave professional achievement with personal insight. By the time I finished The Glass Universe, Dava Sobel's wonderful, meticulous account, it had moved me to tears.... Unforgettable.
Sue Nelson - Nature
Sobel shines a light on seven 19th- and 20th-century women astronomers who began as 'human computers,' interpreting data at Harvard Observatory, then went on to dazzle.... An inspiring look at celestial pioneers.
People
An astronomically large topic generously explored.
Oprah Magazine
(Starred review.) Sobel knows how to tell an engaging story, and this one flows smoothly, with just enough explication of the science.... With grace, clarity, and a flair for characterization, Sobel places these early women astronomers in the wider historical context of their field for the very first time.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) [Sobel] soars higher than ever before...[continuing] her streak of luminous science writing with this fascinating, witty, and most elegant history...The Glass Universe is a feast for those eager to absorb forgotten stories of resolute American women who expanded human knowledge. —Colleen Mondor
Booklist
Though this title isn't intended as a discipline-specific monograph, at times, it bogs readers down in scientific minutiae.... [Still,] a terrific catalog to match the exceptional work these women created in the course of their careers. —Faye Chadwell, Oregon State Univ., Corvallis
Library Journal
[A] recounting and celebrating the lives and work of these distinguished and decidedly unsung women....though, even after World War II and their contributions to it, women found it as difficult as ever to find scientific work. A welcome and engaging work that does honor to Sobel’s subjects.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, feel free to use these LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for The Glass Universe...and then take off on your own:
1. Sobel is known for her ability as a writer to take hard science, reduce it into manageable bits of information, and then combine it with human interest stories. Does she achieve that goal here? Or was the pace of your reading bogged down with scientific minutae?
2. Talk about the women at the observatory? Consider, say, Williamina Fleming, Annie Jump Cannon, and Dr. Cecilia Helena Payne, What were they like and how did they fit—or not fit—within the confines or expectations of their times?
3.Consider, too, the two directors for whom the women worked—Edward Pickering and Harlow Shapley. How supportive were they to the women under them?
4. What was Williamina Flemming's response when she found that, even when appointed as the Curator of Astronomical Photographs, her salary fell far short of a man's?
5. How would you cast Harvard's track record concerning women in science over the years? Consider, in particular, Annie Jump Cannon and Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin.
6. Can you point to one achievement that especially stunned you? Perhaps Nettie Farrar's calculation (to two decimal places) of the relative-brightness values of stars?
7. Perhaps you might talk about Anna Palmer Draper, who realized the value of telescopic photography with respect to the telescopic view.
8. Talk about the way in which the women worked in collaboration with one another—how their cooperative relationships furthered scientific understanding.
9. How would you describe the women's relationships with their male colleagues? Would you consider them maternal or nurturing or intellectually dominant? What about Annie Jump Cannon's oatmeal cookies?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
The God Box: Sharing My Mother's Gift of Faith, Love and Letting Go
Mary Lou Quinlan, 2012
Greenleaf Book Group
112 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781608323609
Summary
When Mary Lou Quinlan’s beloved mother, Mary Finlayson, dies, her family is bereft—until Mary Lou searches for her mother’s “God Box,” her private cache of notes to God on behalf of family, friends and strangers. To Mary Lou’s amazement, she finds not one but ten boxes stuffed with hundreds of tiny petitions that spanned the last twenty years of her mother’s life.
Note by note, Mary Lou unearths a treasure of her mother’s wishes and worries and insight. Mary asked God for everything from the right flooring for her daughter’s home to a cure for her own blood cancer. Her requests, penned on scraps of paper, were presented without expectation—the ultimate expression of letting go.
Follow Mary Lou’s emotional journey as she uncovers her mother’s innermost thoughts—nostalgic, surprising and even a bit shocking. As she recalls life with the woman who was her best friend, Mary Lou also discovers her own more empathetic, engaged self—the woman her mother had believed in all along.
Poignantly written and beautifully designed, The God Box is a gift for every mother, every daughter, every person who, regardless of beliefs, trusts in the permanence of love and the power of family. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Raised—Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—B.A., St. Joseph's University; M.B.A., Fordham
University
• Currently—lives in New York City and Bucks County, Pennsylvania
Mary Lou Quinlan has written inspirational features for Real Simple, O, the Oprah Magazine, and MORE, and other magazines and, is the author of the books Just Ask a Woman, Time Off for Good Behavior, and What She’s Not Telling You. She is the nation’s leading expert on female consumer behavior. As the founder and CEO of marketing consultancy Just Ask a Woman and Mary Lou Quinlan & Co., she has interviewed thousands of women about their lives. Mary Lou has keynoted hundreds of conferences around the country; has appeared on television programs such as The CBS Early Show, Good Morning America, and the Today Show; and has been profiled in The New York Times, the Wall St. Journal, and USA Today as well as many other media outlets.
Mary Lou is Jesuit-educated with an MBA from Fordham University. She also holds an honorary doctorate in Communications from her alma mater, Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia where she earned a BA in English.
She and her husband, Joe Quinlan, live in New York City and Bucks County, Pennsylvania along with their dog, Rocky. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
This work has yet to garner mainstream press reviews; we'll add them as they appear. For now, see Amazon and Barnes & Noble for helpful customer reviews.
Discussion Questions
1. If you had to sum The God Box up in one word, what is this story about? What will you remember most? How would you describe this story to a friend?
2. Mary Lou’s book tells the story of her relationship with her mother. They were so close that some have called it a love story. How did this make you feel about your own relationship with your mother? As a mother to your own children? What was it about Mary that made her unusual?
3. The book’s early stories are set in the 1950s and 1960s in a neighborhood in Philadelphia that was largely Catholic. What about those times relate to you now—your neighborhood, your friends, your faith? What has changed? What, if anything, would you wish were the same? Can families be like that today?
4. How would you describe Mary Lou’s family? Do you feel that it was real? Too perfect? Even though they had problems of health and loss, did you wish for more conflict? How did they resolve what came their way?
5. Mary Lou describes her mother as someone who was very empathetic and caring. How does someone resolve being so giving without wearing themselves out or being taken advantage of?
6. Where did Mary get her deep faith? Do you think that there was ever a time she didn’t believe or let go? Why did she write repeated notes for the same thing?
7. Mary had a career, as did Mary Lou. How would you describe the difference between their approaches to work and why? Who are you more like?
8. The men in the book—particularly Ray, Jack and Joe—are supportive but in different ways. Discuss how they are different from each other and how they are different from the men in your own lives? How do you resolve the deep love Ray had for Mary with his policy of ignoring or downplaying illness. What role did Ray’s attitude toward wellness have in Mary’s tendency to put her illness in the God Box—or Mary Lou and Jack’s perfect attendance?
9. When Mary placed messages in the God Box, what do you think she was thinking? Why did she keep the boxes over the years, rather than throw away the resolved messages? Do you think she wanted the boxes to be found? Why did she stash them on a shelf out of sight? Why was Mary Lou the one who found them?
10. Talk about why you think Mary Lou kept her fertility issues to herself? What might have been Mary’s reaction if her daughter had shared her challenges? Is there anything that you keep to yourself like that? If so, can you discuss it now?
11. When Ray lost Mary, he tried to go forward in a positive way, though often long-term couples struggle after a spouse dies. What was Ray’s way of thinking, why do you think it worked for him, and would that work for you?
12. Why did working on a house renovation during their grief create new energy for Mary Lou, Ray and Joe. Do you think they should have taken more time to grieve? Is there anything therapeutic in what is often a stressful process? What have you found to be therapeutic during stressful times in your own life?
13. “Always together, even in heaven” was a mantra for Mary and Ray. Do you think that spoke to their closeness on earth or was it a way for them to anticipate separation by death but seeing themselves still somehow connected?
14. Why did Mary Lou wait so long to start her own God Box? Do you think if her dad were still living she would have still been waiting to start? Why didn’t she tap into it sooner, especially when she saw how consistent her mother was about it? And what about Jack? Why didn’t he use the God Box?
15. Would you consider keeping a God Box for yourself? How would you start? What would you write inside if you started one tonight? Would you share yours or stash it away as Mary did? Would you do it together with your children?
16. Do you host a book club meeting that includes more than 25 members? If so, invite Mary Lou Quinlan to attend your reading group discussion. She can schedule a virtual visit via phone or Skype for either a Q&A session or to do a personal reading from her book, The God Box: Sharing My Mother's Gift of Faith, Love and Letting Go. Just email her at
(Questions from the author's website.)
God Save Texas: A Journey into the Soul of the Lone Star State
Lawrence Wright, 2018
Knopf Doubleday
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780525520108
Summary
With humor and the biting insight of a native, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower explores the history, culture, and politics of Texas, while holding the stereotypes up for rigorous scrutiny.
God Save Texas is a journey through the most controversial state in America.
Texas is a red state in the heart of Trumpland that hasn't elected a Democrat to a statewide office in more than twenty years; but it is also a state in which minorities already form a majority (including the largest number of Muslims).
The cities are blue and among the most diverse in the nation. Oil is still king but Texas now leads California in technology exports. The Texas economic model of low taxes and minimal regulation has produced extraordinary growth but also striking income disparities.
Texas looks a lot like the America that Donald Trump wants to create. And Wright's profound portrait of the state not only reflects our country back as it is, but as it was and as it might be. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—August 2, 1947
• Raised—Abilene and Dallas, Texas, USA
• Education—B.A., Tulane University; M.A., American University in Cairo
• Awards—Pulitzer Prize-Nonfiction
• Currently—lives in Austin, Texas
Lawrence Wright is an American author, screenwriter, staff writer for The New Yorker magazine, and fellow at the Center for Law and Security at the New York University School of Law. He is best known as the author of the 2006 nonfiction book The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11.
Background and education
Wright graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in Dallas, Texas, in 1965 and was inducted into the school's Hall of Fame in 2009. He is a graduate of Tulane University and earned an M.A. in Applied Linguistics at the American University in Cairo, Egypt, where he also taught for two years.
In 1980 Wright began working for the magazine Texas Monthly and contributed to Rolling Stone magazine. He joined the staff of The New Yorker in late 1992.
The Looming Tower
Wright is the author of six books but is best known for his 2006 The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. A quick bestseller, the book was awarded the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, and he is considered by some journalists as one of the most knowledgeable background sources for Al Qaeda and 9/11.
The book's title is from the Quran 4:78: "Wherever you are, death will find you, even in the looming tower," a phrase Osama bin Laden quoted three times in a videotaped speech seen as directed to the 9/11 hijackers.
A 2010 HBO documentary, My Trip to Al-Qaeda, is based on Wright's experience in the Mid-East while researching The Looming Tower. The film looks at al-Qaeda, Islamic radicalism, hostility to America and the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq. It combines Wright's first-person narrative with documentary footage and photographs.
In 2018, Hulu premiered The Looming Tower in a 10-part TV mini-series. Wright co-wrote the series with Alex Gibney. While the book goes back to the founding of Al-Qaeda, which grew out of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in the 1950s, the TV series begins with the bombing of the U.S. Embassies in east Africa in 1998.
Going Clear
Stemming from an earlier New Yorker article, Wright published a full-length book on Scientology—Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief in 2013. During his research for the book, Wright spoke to 200 current and former Scientologists; a number of those conversations are included in the book, along with an examination of the organization's history and leadership.
In an interview with the New York Times, Wright revealed he had received "innumerable" letters threatening legal action from lawyers and celebrities representing Scientology. The Church published an official statement in its newsroom and blog rebutting Wright's claims.
In 2015 the book was adapted as a documentary film. Wright worked with Alex Gibney, with whom he would collaborate three years later on The Looming Tower 2018 drama series.
Other
Wright plays the keyboard in the Austin, Texas, blues collective WhoDo.
He is also a playwright, having worked on a script over several years about the making of the 1963 film Cleopatra, starring Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and Rex Harrison. The play, titled Cleo, was scheduled to open in Houston in October, 2017. The opening was delayed however because of the catastrophic flooding caused by Hurricane Harvey. It finally opened six months later in April, 2018. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 5/10/2018.)
Book Reviews
The book rambles far and wide, and it's a testament to Wright's formidable storytelling skills that a reader will encounter plenty of information without ever feeling lost.… His tone is gentle, occasionally chiding…. Certain readers might crave more righteous anger from someone writing about Texas, especially now, when there's little room for agreement and plenty at stake. But Wright's project is perspective, not conquest.
Jennifer Szalai - New York Times
Lawrence Wright's superb new book …is his most personal work yet, an elegant mixture of autobiography and long-form journalism, remarkably free of elitist bias on the one hand, and pithy guidebook pronouncements on the other. For those seeking the joys of line-dancing or the 10 best rib joints in Waco, this is not your book (cover story).
David Oshinsky - New York Times Book Review
Compelling…timely…. There is a sleeping giant in Texas, and Wright captures the frustration and the hope that reverberate across the state each time it stirs.
Cecile Richards - Washington Post
Terrific…all-encompassing…[fueled] with literary tension.… Wright’s words could speak for both Texas and America.
Chris Vognar - Dallas Morning News
Wright tames his sprawling subject matter with concise sentences and laser-precise word choice.…Gives readers a front-row seat to the battle within the Texas GOP between business-oriented conservatives, led by House Speaker Joe Straus, and the social-conservative wing headed up by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.
Chris Gray - Houston Chronicle
[A] compelling and insightful potpourri of history, encounters, and observations.… Wright has managed to sew together a patchwork quilt of a narrative into a substantive State of the state.
Bob Ruggiero - Houston Press
(Starred review) Wright… takes an unflinching look at Texas… in all its grandeur and contradictions.… Wright’s large-scale portrait, which reveals how Texas is only growing in influence, is comprehensive, insightful, and compulsively entertaining.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) [A]n impressive ode to the Lone Star State.… [A] masterful service of revealing both the warts and beauty of Texas' big state of mind. —Jacob Sherman, John Peace Lib., Univ. of Texas at San Antonio
Library Journal
(Starred review) [A] thoughtful, engrossing, and often-amusing … "waltz through Texas"… whose history, politics and culture Wright finds endearing, repelling, and puzzling.… An important book about a state and people who will continue to have a large impact on the U.S. —Jay Freeman
Booklist
(Starred review) Wright…has illuminated a variety of intriguing subcultures. His native Texas is as exotic as any of them.… A revelation—Wright finds the reflection of his own conflicted soul in the native state he loves and has hated.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for GOD SAVE TEXAS … then take off on your own:
1. Overall, how well do you think Lawrence Wright portrays the state of Texas? Is his assessment fair or unfair? Do you detect a scent of elitism or not? What aspects of Texan history, culture, and politics does he admire? Of what is he critical?
2. Follow-up to Question 1: If you are from Texas (native or transplant), how accurate is Wright's depiction of the state? Do you have familiarity with any of the events and landmarks he mentions? What are your favorite and/or least favorite associations and memories of living there?
3. Follow-up to Question 1: If you are not from Texas, what are your opinions of the state? Has Wright's book altered your perceptions for better or worse? Are you inspired to visit the state? If so, where would you like to go, and what would you like to see or experience while there?
4. Why do Texas and Texans inspire such strong reactions, often outrage as Wright points out, from non-residents?
5. Politically, Wright says of the state: "It should be as reliably blue as California. Instead, he says, "it is the Red Planet in the political universe." Care to comment on that?
6. What does Wright mean when he talks about a state "culture that is still raw, not fully formed, standing on the margins but also growing in influence, dangerous and magnificent in its potential"?
7. Talk about the many stereotypes people have of Texans: "cowboy individualism, a kind of wary friendliness, super-patriotism combined with defiance of all government authority, a hair trigger sense of grievance, nostalgia for an ersatz past that is largely an artifact of Hollywood." Are those fair attributes, overdrawn, or simply a bunch of tiresome cliches? What would you add to the list and what would you remove from it?
8. Why did Wright return to Texas, having fled the state after high school while attempting to do, as he writes, "everything I could to cleanse myself of its influence"?
9. In what way does Texas, according to Wright, portend America's future? Good thing, bad thing, or why bother to judge?
10. Discuss some of the dichotomies that permeate the state—world-class cultural institutions, for instance, juxtaposed with dire poverty?
11. What factors are driving the state's astonishing growth, both economically and demographically?
12. If you live outside of Texas, do you resent Texas, or envy her …or merely wish the state well?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)