Non-Fiction - Results from #210

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

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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.)

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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.)

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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

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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.)

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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.)

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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.)

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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.)

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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.)

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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.)

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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 This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and she will be in touch to finalize details. Thank you!
(Questions from the author's website.)

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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.)

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An Interview with Helene Wecker
by HarperCollins Publishers

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interview-helene-wecker In 2013 Helene Wecker sat down with her publisher HarperCollins to talk about the inspiration behind her debut novel, The Golem and the Jinni.

Q: How did the idea for your novel originate?

A: When I was working on my MFA at Columbia, I started writing a series of short stories that combined tales from my family and from my husband’s family. I’m Jewish and he’s Arab American, and so in that sense we come from two different (and, in many eyes, opposing) cultures. But I’ve always been struck by the similarities between our families, the way that certain themes echo between them. We’re both the children of immigrants, with all that entails. As a result my husband and I both grew up in suburban, picket-fence America—but with the intimate and sometimes uncomfortable burden of another place’s history, and the complications of living as a cultural minority, which affects our relationships with those we love and those we meet.

In any case, I was writing these stories, but I wasn’t having much luck with them. One day I was complaining about it to a friend. She suggested I try something different. She knew I loved stores that used elements of the fantastical, and was surprised I never wrote like that. By the end of the conversation, the seed had been planted. Instead of two families of different cultures meeting and interacting, I now had two supernatural characters: a golem and a jinni. And somehow it seemed likeliest that these two would meet in New York in the late 1800s, when immigrants from Eastern Europe and Syria were coming to America in droves.

Q: When you thought about writing a golem character, did you think about other legends and myths about people being created out of inanimate matter? Adam from earth? The famous Golem of Prague, the greek myth of Prometheus, or Pygmalion? Frankenstein’s monster? Or even the idea of creating a modern robot? Did you want to write from those traditions or come up with something completely different?

A: I certainly wrote the Golem’s character with those legends and stories in mind. In fact, in early drafts she was much closer to something like the Golem of Prague. She had less emotion, and less insight into the emotions of others. But it became clear that that wouldn’t do for a main character. So I made her more empathic, more “human” in that sense, and I think that brought her closer to the androids and cyborgs of modern science fiction, like the replicants of Blade Runner and Star Trek’s Lt. Commander Data. But I think all these stories have the same sources at heart, and the same central question, of what happens when we create life that approaches human but isn’t quite.

Q: Your male jinni Ahmad arrives in turn of the century NYC’s Little Syria neighborhood (now Lower Manhattan) from inside of an old Syrian copper vase. How is your Jinni different or similar to those of legend? From the Book of One Thousand and One Nights, and the TV show “I Dream of Jeannie,” we have some preconceived ideas about what a jinni is. When you were writing his character, what were you thinking about getting across to the reader?

A: I started out on less certain footing with the Jinni than with the Golem, and it took me longer to figure him out. I didn’t realize until I started researching the jinn how much they are an everyday truth for many in the modern Middle East and the Muslim world, and I wanted to be respectful of that. But I also realized that a Western audience would be more familiar with the Thousand and One Nights and pop culture versions. In the end, I kept coming back to the idea of a creature created from fire, and how that might translate to his personality: impulsive, passionate, dazzling, dangerous. It struck me that such a creature would have a very hard time camouflaging himself in New York society. Whether consciously or not, I think I drew from Western fantasy as well, from elves and brownies and so on, which are sort of like the British and European cousins of the jinn: strong-willed, mischevious, and usually hidden. But one thing I was certain of, pretty much from the beginning, was that my jinni wouldn’t be granting any wishes!

Q: You decided to give your golem and jinni free will and fairly strong-willed personalities, even though they are both bound to masters. How did you come to this decision, and what are the consequences?

A: Funny enough, it was never really a decision. I think their strong personalities came about because they’re both bound and limited, and forced to live in a state that isn’t quite natural to either of them. I knew the interesting stuff would happen when they came up against those limitations. As for the consequences, it meant that they’re constantly arguing!

Q: Besides the main characters, who else was the most fun to write?

A: It’s hard to choose, but I think Saleh was my favorite supporting character to write. He was a huge surprise to me. I was researching Little Syria, and I found an article in the New-York Daily Tribune written in 1892. One of the illustrations was of a man in a turban, sitting in front of a wooden churn. The caption was “An Ice-Cream Seller.” I thought, who is that guy? And suddenly I knew. I wrote his backstory in one long, frenzied session. It felt like an unlooked-for gift. I grew very attached to Saleh – he’s such a great curmudgeon.

Q: In writing and researching this novel, what most surprised you?

A: One thing that surprised me quite a bit, and shouldn’t have, was the diversity of Jewish religion and philosophy at the turn of the century. It’s far too easy to think of past peoples as monolithic, and the past as “a simpler time,” when of course it was anything but. I hadn’t realized the extent of the Socialist movement in the Jewish community, or the vehement variety of opinions on the budding Zionist movement. They probably tried to teach me all this at Sunday school, but I was too busy reading Dragonlance novels in the back.

Q: What makes your novel relevant today?

A: A good question, considering it’s set over a hundred years ago, and has two supernatural creatures for main characters. But over and over, my research told me that the concerns and dilemmas of 1900s-era New Yorkers would be very familiar to the modern reader. They worried about multiculturalism and globalism, the tensions between science and religion, between tradition and assimilation. It became clear to me that we have always been finding and losing our faiths; we have always struggled to defend or flaunt propriety, to follow or ignore the dictates of our hearts.

As for the main characters themselves, apparently folklore and fantasy can still capture the modern reader—at least, if the continuing proliferation of vampires, werewolves, and the like is any indication. They're our own all-too human urges and struggles, embodied and made explicit. I wanted to use creatures of imagination to offer possible answers to the question of what it means to be human—hopefully while also delivering a fun and engaging tale

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Summary | Author | Book Reviews | Discussion Questions

The Good Good Pig: The Extraordinary Life of Christopher Hogwood
Sy Montgomery, 2006
Random House
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780345496096

In Brief
Christopher Hogwood came home on my lap in a shoebox. He was a creature who would prove in many ways to be more human than I am.

A naturalist who spent months at a time living on her own among wild creatures in remote jungles, Sy Montgomery had always felt more comfortable with animals than with people. So she gladly opened her heart to a sick piglet who had been crowded away from nourishing meals by his stronger siblings. Yet Sy had no inkling that this piglet, later named Christopher Hogwood, would not only survive but flourish–and she soon found herself engaged with her small-town community in ways she had never dreamed possible. Unexpectedly, Christopher provided this peripatetic traveler with something she had sought all her life: an anchor (eventually weighing 750 pounds) to family and home.

The Good Good Pig celebrates Christopher Hogwood in all his glory, from his inauspicious infancy to hog heaven in rural New Hampshire, where his boundless zest for life and his large, loving heart made him absolute monarch over a (mostly) peaceable kingdom. At first, his domain included only Sy’s cosseted hens and her beautiful border collie, Tess. Then the neighbors began fetching Christopher home from his unauthorized jaunts, the little girls next door started giving him warm, soapy baths, and the villagers brought him delicious leftovers. His intelligence and fame increased along with his girth. He was featured in USA Today and on several National Public Radio environmental programs. On election day, some voters even wrote in Christopher’s name on their ballots.

But as this enchanting book describes, Christopher Hogwood’s influence extended far beyond celebrity; for he was, as a friend said, a great big Buddha master. Sy reveals what she and others learned from this generous soul who just so happened to be a pig–lessons about self-acceptance, the meaning of family, the value of community, and the pleasures of the sweet green Earth. The Good Good Pig provides proof that with love, almost anything is possible. (From the publisher.)

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About the Author

• Birth—February 7, 1958
• Where—Frankfurt, Germany
• Education—3 B.A's., Syracuse University (USA)
• Currently—lives in Hancock, New Hampshire, USA

Known for her books that illuminate the wonders of nature for both children and adults, Sy Montgomery "is a modern miracle," says Book magazine, "bawdy, brave, inventive, prophetic, hellbent on loving this planet." (From the publisher.)

Montgomery writes the Boston Globe's nature column, and her articles have been collected into several books including The Wild Out Your Window and The Currious Naturalist. She has also scripted and been the subject for National Geographic films—including Explorer (her experiences writing The Spell of the Tiger) and Mother Bear Man. (From Authorwire.com.)

More
From an interview with Barnes & Noble editors:

• My companion pig, Christopher Hogwood, age 12, lost 60 pounds on his new diet and now weighs in at a trim 690 pounds."

• My first known act of Eco-Conscience: I was sent home from kindergarten for biting a little boy who had pulled the legs off a daddy longlegs. I would do it again today."

• When asked what book most influenced her career as a writer, she answered:

The Outermost House by Henry Beston. You will not find Henry Beston's 1928 classic in the "Spirituality" section of your bookstore. It is a chronicle of the naturalist's solitary year on a Cape Cod beach, observing the migrations of the alewives, listening to the music of the waves, feeling the hot sun on the dunes and smelling the keen, vivid reek of hot salt grass. It is a book about least terns nesting on the open beach; the flattened sharks called skates that sometimes wash up in the shallows; the character and poetry of September light on sand; and winter surf and shipwrecks.

But it is also a book of worship, one that helped me to define the prayer that is my life's work chronicling the natural world. It is a book that today continues to shape an emerging American consciousness of a spiritual connection to the land. It is a book that helps redefine spirituality itself.

(Interview from Barnes & Noble.)

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Critics Say . . .
Montgomery's books on exotic wildlife (Journey of the Pink Dolphins, etc.) take her to the far corners of the world, but the story of her closest relationships with the animal kingdom plays out in her own New England backyard. When she adopts a sickly runt from a litter of pigs, naming him Christopher Hogwood after the symphony conductor, raising him for slaughter isn't an option: Montgomery's a vegetarian and her husband is Jewish. Refitting their barn to accommodate a (mostly) secure sty, they keep Christopher as a pet. As he swells to 750 pounds, he becomes a local celebrity, getting loose frequently enough that the local police officer knows to carry spare apples to lure him back home. The pig also bonds with Montgomery's neighbors, especially two children who come over to help feed him and rub his tummy. Montgomery's love for Christopher (and later for Tess, an adopted border collie) dominates the memoir's emotional space, but she's also demonstrably grateful for the friendships the pig sparks within her community. The humor with which she recounts Christopher's meticulous eating habits and love of digging up turf is sure to charm readers.
Publishers Weekly

"What is more jolly and uplifting than a pig?" asks nature writer Montgomery (Journey of the Pink Dolphins); judging by her book's charming cover of a black-and-white spotted pig, bushy eyebrows and all, peering flirtatiously at the camera, one can only agree. The subject is Christopher Hogwood, the sickly runt that the author and her husband adopted and raised to become a 750-pound local celebrity in their small New Hampshire town. As she recounts Christopher's adventures (his many escapes into neighbors' gardens, his picky delight in the slops offered to him by his many fans), Montgomery throws in fascinating tidbits of pig lore and natural history. All this is great fun to read, but when Montgomery talks about the "deep" life lessons she and her friends learned from Christopher, who lived to the ripe old age of 14, the book treads dangerously close to becoming sentimental hogwash, a porcine Tuesdays with Morrie or Marley & Me. People loved those aforementioned books, so there will be demand for Montgomery's latest; still, one wishes for a little less treacle and a lot more of Christopher. —Wilda Williams
Library Journal

(Adult/High School) For writer and world traveler Montgomery, the grounding force of her New Hampshire home was a 750-pound pig. This book is not merely a chronicle of her love for and life with Christopher Hogwood, but also a testament to the lessons learned through her 14-year relationship with him. Usually preferring the company of animals to most people, Montgomery developed an extensive network of friends who were willing to cache and freeze their food scraps for the always grateful, bottomless pig. In turn, these friends witnessed an enjoyment of life's bounty as only a pig can experience-with utter abandon. Montgomery's delightful anecdotes about Christopher's personality, neighborhood wanderings, and haute skin care la Pig Spa are entwined with biographical details about her family life and fascinating animal-research projects. Christopher was undoubtedly Montgomery's muse for this introspective account of personal growth and her underlying mantra of caring for all the Earth's creatures. He also helped her weather the pain of intractable parents who would not accept their Jewish son-in-law. Like Montgomery's earlier books, this title blends facts about animal behavior, natural history, geography, and culture with myths, legends, and a large helping of adventure. The color photographs of Christopher from runt to virtual behemoth are an added attraction. More importantly, the author's engaging writing style will captivate even the most uninspired teen readers. —Claudia C. Holland, Chantilly Regional Library, Fairfax County, VA
School Library Jounal

Naturalist Montgomery describes her version of pig heaven. The author (Search for the Golden Moon Bear, 2002, etc.) and her husband rescued a runt covered with black and white spots and named him after Christopher Hogwood, a noted conductor, musicologist and exponent of early music. They took the pig home to their New Hampshire farm, fully expecting him to stay modest of proportion. Fat chance. Succored by the author's loving attention, Hogwood quickly put on 700 pounds and started to act like a pig, his musical affinities confined to a gamut of sonorous grunts. Montgomery reverently chronicles her charge's behavior. He is diabolically smart, notorious for his neighborhood trespasses. He works his snout like a force of nature; practically dissolves when his belly is rubbed; and is worthy of performance-artist status as an eater. In his exuberant passage through life, he sets a standard by which Montgomery can measure her own comportment. In particular, he teaches someone keen on animals and leery of people how to be comfortable in the presence of human beings. "Animals had always been my refuge, my avatars, my spirit twins," the author writes. When someone asks what she is going to do with her pig, she is tempted to inquire, "What are you going to do with your grandson?" While death haunts this book from start to finish, Montgomery learns a good deal from Hogwood about celebrating the evanescent pleasures of living. May well spark a stampede in porcine acquisitions, not as consumables, but as companions.
Kirkus Reviews

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Book Club Discussion Questions

1. Did reading The Good Good Pig make you feel differently about your relationship to animals and the natural world? If you eat meat, for example, did it make you question that? Or question other aspects of your lifestyle?

2. Sy Montgomery writes about the extended interspecies family that coalesces around "The Good Good Pig," Christopher Hogwood. If you have a pet or pets, do you think of the animal as a central part of your family unit, or as a kind of appendage to it? In what ways does your pet affect the family dynamic?

3. Lavishing as much money and attention on any animal as the author did on Christopher Hogwood is wasteful when there are human beings in need of assistance. Do you agree or disagree with this statement?Why?

4. Do you think you would have enjoyed having Christopher Hogwood and Sy Montgomery for neighbors? Why or why not?

5. We humans seem to have a love-hate view of pigs. On the one hand, there are beloved and humorous fictional characters like Miss Piggy, Piglet, Porky, Babe, and Wilbur. Yet at the same time, in many religions pigs are considered to be unclean animals, and in common parlance, calling someone a "pig" is far from a term of endearment. What do you think accounts for this divergence of views?

6. Do you feel a special connection to any particular kind of animal? If you could be an animal for one day, which would you choose and why?

7. At the beginning of the previous century, most Americans still lived and worked on farms and had close relationships with a variety of animals, both wild and domesticated. Now only a minority of people in this country experiences a close relationship with animals other than dogs, cats, and other familiar pets. What affect do you think that has had on our sense of connection to the natural world, both individually and as a society? Is it important to have that kind of a connection? Why?

8. Consider this quote from St. Francis: "Not to hurt our humble brethren is our first duty to them, but to stop there is not enough. We have a higher mission: to be of service to them whenever they require it." What might this service consist of? If St. Francis were alive today, how do you think he would react to the animal testing of drugs and other products, livestock farming practices, and the like?

9. What are your thoughts about the animal rights and animal welfare movements? Are they following the advice of St. Francis or taking matters too far? What can people do to make a difference in the way animals-pets, livestock, and wild-are treated in our society?

10. Do animals possess inherent rights that human beings are morally obligated to respect? If so, what is the source of these rights? Should animals have legal or civil rights beyond what is currently accorded them?

11. Do animals have souls?

12. Is the hunting and killing of wild animals an important part of human heritage that should be preserved?

13. The people of Sundarbans regard the local tiger population as manifestations of the divine, and thus do not hunt the animals even when they prey upon human beings. Montgomery finds much to admire in this attitude. Do you agree with her? Why or why not?

14. There are many anecdotes reflecting the extraordinary, even uncanny, sensitivity of animals toward the natural world and toward people. What examples can you give from your own experience, and how do you explain them?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames
Kai Bird, 2014
Crown Publishing
448 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307889751

Summary
The Good Spy is Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Kai Bird’s compelling portrait of the remarkable life and death of one of the most important operatives in CIA history—a man who, had he lived, might have helped heal the rift between Arabs and the West.

On April 18, 1983, a bomb exploded outside the American Embassy in Beirut, killing 63 people. The attack was a geopolitical turning point. It marked the beginning of Hezbollah as a political force, but even more important, it eliminated America’s most influential and effective intelligence officer in the Middle East – CIA operative Robert Ames.

What set Ames apart from his peers was his extraordinary ability to form deep, meaningful connections with key Arab intelligence figures. Some operatives relied on threats and subterfuge, but Ames worked by building friendships and emphasizing shared values—never more notably than with Yasir Arafat’s charismatic intelligence chief and heir apparent Ali Hassan Salameh (aka “The Red Prince”). Ames’ deepening relationship with Salameh held the potential for a lasting peace. Within a few years, though, both men were killed by assassins, and America’s relations with the Arab world began heading down a path that culminated in 9/11, the War on Terror, and the current fog of mistrust.

Bird, who as a child lived in the Beirut Embassy and knew Ames as a neighbor when he was twelve years old, spent years researching The Good Spy. Not only does the book draw on hours of interviews with Ames’ widow, and quotes from hundreds of Ames’ private letters, it’s woven from interviews with scores of current and former American, Israeli, and Palestinian intelligence officers as well as other players in the Middle East “Great Game.”

What emerges is a masterpiece-level narrative of the making of a CIA officer, a uniquely insightful history of twentieth-century conflict in the Middle East, and an absorbing hour-by-hour account of the Beirut Embassy bombing. Even more impressive, Bird draws on his reporter’s skills to deliver a full dossier on the bombers and expose the shocking truth of where the attack’s mastermind resides today. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1951
• Where— Eugene, Oregon, USA
• Education—B.A., Carleton College; M.S., Northwestern University
• Awards—Pulitizer Prize; National Book Critics Circle Award
• Currently—lives in Miami Beach, Florida and/or Lima, Peru

Kai Bird is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning author and columnist, best known for his biographies of political figures.

Kai Bird was born in Eugene, Oregon. His father was a U.S. Foreign Service officer, and he spent his childhood in Jerusalem, Beirut, Dhahran, Cairo and Mumbai. He finished high school in 1969 at Kodaikanal International School in Tamil Nadu, South India. He received his BA from Carleton College in 1973 and a M.S. in Journalism from Northwestern University in 1975. Bird is married to Susan Goldmark, country director of the World Bank. They have a son.

Literary career
After graduation from Carleton, Bird received a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, which enables students to do a year of independent study outside the United States. He used the fellowship to do a photojournalism project in Yemen. Two years later, Goldmark was also awarded a Watson fellowship and the two of them spent 15 months as freelance journalists traveling through Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan. "We filed weekly stories with papers like the Christian Science Monitor and Hong Kong’s Far Eastern Economic Review," Bird says. "We hardly made any money, but we enjoyed what we were doing." Bird was an associate editor of The Nation magazine from 1978–82 and then a Nation columnist.

Published works
Bird's biographical works include The Color of Truth: McGeorge Bundy and William Bundy, Brothers in Arms (1998), The Chairman: John J. McCloy and the Making of the American Establishment (1992) and Hiroshima's Shadow: Writings on the Denial of History and the Smithsonian Controversy (1998), which he co-edited with Lawrence Lifschultz.

In April 2010, his Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956–1978, was released by Scribner. It is a meld of memoir and history, fusing his early life in the Arab world with an account of the American experience in the Middle East.

The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames was released in 2014.

Recognition
Bird is a recipient of a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship (1973), an Alicia Patterson Journalism Fellowship (1981), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1982), and a John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Grant for Research and Writing (1993–95). In 2001-2002 he was a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Bird and co-author Martin J. Sherwin won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in biography for American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (2005). He and Sherwin also won the 2005 National Book Critics Circle Award for their biography of Oppenheimer. In 2008, they also won the Duff Cooper Prize.

Crossing Mandelbaum Gate was a finalist for the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award in the "Autobiography" category. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 5/12/14.)

Book Reviews
(Starred review.) [E]xciting...Bird recreates the life of C.I.A. superspy Robert Ames, an operative with a skill for appreciating the turns and twists of Mideast politics.... Bird’s meticulous account of Ames’s career amid an ongoing Mideast climate of caution and suspicion is one of the best books on American intelligence community.
Publishers Weekly

(Starred review.) This is a moving biography within a balanced presentation of the complex diplomacy over the Palestinian quest for statehood and the Israeli need for security, complicated by a disintegrating Lebanon and a revolutionary Iran. Bird's view of a CIA committed to analysis and policy development contrasts with the agency depicted in Hugh Wilford's recent America's Great Game. —Elizabeth Hayford, formerly with Associated Coll. of the Midwest, Evanston, IL
Library Journal

A poignant tribute to a CIA Middle East operative who helped get the Palestinians and Israelis to talk to each other—and died for it. Accomplished, wide-ranging author Bird...has great sympathy for Philadelphia native Robert Ames (1934-1983).... A low-key, respectful life of a decent American officer whose quietly significant work helped lead to the Oslo Accords.
Kirkus Reviews

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GPS Your Best Life: Charting Your Destination and Getting There in Style
Charmaine Hammond, Debra Kasowski, 2012
Bettie Youngs Book Publishers
165 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781936332267

Summary
Bestselling author and transformational speaker Charmaine Hammond teams up with fellow speaker and founder/CEO of the Millionaire Woman Club, Debra Kasowski, to bring you a unique method for getting clear and achieving what you want in your life, your career, your relationships.

GPS Your Best Life gives you simple, practical strategies, accompanied by down to earth assessment tools. This book will put you behind the wheel to guide you from figuring out what revs your engine and what’s blocking your view, and following your unique road map to your desired destination while learning to navigate the obstacles and road blocks along the way.

You don’t have to be a motor head to appreciate the GPS step-by-step approach. Whether you’re trying to determine what you really want in life, to clarify your goals, or how to get where you want, GPS Your Best Life will help you map your destination and put you on the road to personal fulfillment, happiness, and success! (From the publisher)

Author Bio
• Charmaine Hammond, is the best selling and award winning author of the memoir On Toby's Terms (2010), about her family dog. The book is in development to be a motion picture with Impact Motion Pictures. She also co-authored GPS Your Best Life (2012)—charting your destination and getting there in style. In addition to her adult novels, Charmain has also published a series of children's books—Toby The Pet Therapy Dog & His Hospital Friends (2011), and Be a Buddy Not a Bully (2012).

Toby, the dog, has given Charmaine much to write about. From learning to put on his own seat belt, making a difference in the lives of many through his visitation at local hospitals as a therapy dog, and dressing up in a jail uniform to raise money from charity, Toby has given people much to smile about. Toby has presented in front of more than 10,000 students and some 1500 adults.

As a professional speaker in her other life, Charmaine has spoken to audiences internationally and is a sought after speaker at corporate events, conferences and author conventions. She also hosts three wildly popular radio shows.

Charmain is the winner of the 2012 Business Matchmaker of the Year award, an international award (eWomenNetwork) and has been nominated for the 2012 RBC Woman Entrepreneur of the Year Award.
She has been featured in the Metro USA, Metro Canada, Edmonton Journal, Edmonton and Spruce Grove Examiner, Calgary and Edmonton Sun, Del Mar Times, National Post, Global TV, CTSTV, Alberta Prime Time (CTV) and on many radio stations in the US and Canada. (From the author.)

• Debra Kasowski has a BSc in Nursing and has practiced nursing for over seventeen years. She has combined her passion and love of helping people with her professional speaking career to inspire and help people transform their lives; she also leads several workshops and provides personal coaching. She is the founder of the Millionaire Woman Club, a global community of women who are highly motivated and passionate about helping women become “rich from the inside out.”

Debra is also a founding member of the Evolutionary Business Council and a transformational speaker who inspires her audiences to take action. She is published in Today’s Business Woman Magazine and has been featured on the online magazine Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise, as well as radio and television media.

Debra and her husband started the “Spirit of Christmas” Shoebox program from one of her bucket list ideas. The program has recently doubled in capacity and provided gifts and breakfast to more than 1,200 children. (From the author.)

Book Reviews
Not knowing what you want is the biggest obstacle in living your best life. Charmaine and Debra take you on an exquisite journey of discovery—a discovery that has you expertly navigate through hidden fears and procrastination to embrace passion and adventure in creating your best life. I highly recommend this compelling tool that could change the direction of your life forever.
Shawne Duperon - ShawneTV (SixTime EMMY winner)

Charmaine Hammond and Debra Kasowski have created the perfect guide book and repair manual for servicing your most important vehicle - yourself. No matter where you are in your life their concepts and solid directions will help you get to a better place. It's a must read.
Ken Kragen - Author (Life Is A Contact Sport) and Organizer ("We Are The World," "Hands Across America" and other historic humanitarian events)

A very satisfying labor of love—a book by two writers about navigation into our best life. This book inspires us to follow our inner guidance to our goals.
Debbi Dachinger - Author (Dare to Dream: This Life Counts) and Radio Host ("Dare to Dream")

This book packs a powerful message. It puts you in the driver’s seat, making you an unstoppable force. If there are any areas of your life where you’re not getting the results you want, the answers to achievement can be found in these pages.
Marilyn Suttle - Author (Who’s Your Gladys? How to Turn Even the Most Difficult Customer into Your Biggest Fan)

If you are in a life or career transition you must read “GPS Your Best Life”. It’s like having a personal GPS for the next chapter of your life. In this book, Charmaine & Debra share simple self-analysis questionnaires and real world examples to help you discover and reach your next destination.
April Morris - Actress (Shark Tank, ABC), Product Innovation Expert, Inspirational Speaker.

This book is quick and easy to read, easy to understand and simple to follow. And best of all it really works! It helps you to focus on what you do want. If you want to be clear about your priorities and know what is important to you, read this book! This book is easy to read, easy to understand and simple to follow. And best of all it really works! If you want to be clear about your priorities and know what is important to you, this book is a must read.
Lori Raudnask

A most useful guide to charting and traversing the many options that lay before you.
Suzi Kenyon - Kenyon Communications

There are a lot of self-help books on the market, but this takes a unique, creative approach to help you figure out where you want to go in your life and how to get there, in an easy, fun, step-by-step manner.
Christine Belleris - Beyond Words, Inc.

This terrific book shows you how to focus on what you want, clear away obstacles, and chart a course to make your dreams come true. A must-read for anyone who is serious about living a life of purpose and passion.
Gail Z. Martin - Author (30 Days to Social Media Success)

A valuable guide to help you think and rethink your next move—personal and professional.
Jennifer L. Youngs - Author (7 Ways a Baby Will Change Your Life the First Year)

Discussion Questions
Each Chapter concludes with Mapping Your Way questions which are very suitable for Book Club discussions and for personal reflection.

1. In the first chapter, the authors present a personal diagnostics questionnaire to help readers understand where they perceive themselves to be now, and where they want to go. What was your experience working through these questions? Were there surprises? What stood out for you as your strengths and areas to capitalize on in your life?

2. The authors write about getting started with a clean windshield and finishing incompletes. What does this reference mean to you? What gets in the way of completing tasks or having a clean windshield in life? What do you need to finish so you can start with a clean slate?

3. GPS Your Best Life has many references to the importance of mindset and managing your thoughts. How has your mindset impacted (positive or otherwise) your results? How can you remind yourself to shift your mindset?

4. Finding your true calling is an important element of this book. Many people struggle to find their true calling. Do you think most people are living their true calling? How would we know? How do you nurture your true calling and passions? How is life different when you are “on purpose” or living in accordance with your true calling?

5. The authors walk the reader through different ways to visualize their future, and their dreams. What challenges do people face with visualizing their future? How will their Daily 5 GPS activities help readers accomplish their goals and move toward their best life?

6. Excuses and habits are often at the root of procrastination and not taking action. What examples of this do you have in your life? Part of changing behavior involves creating a new mindset and behaviors that support the mindset and goal. When have you had to do this in your life? What worked well, and what did you learn then that you still do?

7. In GPS Your Best Life, the authors acknowledge that readers are likely wearing many hats (and have different or perhaps competing demands in their life). What are the hats you wear? How do you keep your head above water and juggle them all?

8. There is a theme of gratitude woven throughout the book. What was your perception on the role gratitude plays in shaping the life you want to live? How do you express gratitude to others? How does coming from a place of gratitude impact communications, and relationships?

9. GPS Your Best Life chapter titles and many of the tips use analogies from a GPS, going on journey, and maps, as well as situational examples of different individuals . What was your experience with these concepts as you read the book?

10. The book ends with a chapter about knowing when the goals have been achieved, and celebrating the success. Have you ever achieved a goal and didn’t notice you had arrived? How have you celebrated your achievements, and what was the impact of these celebratory activities? What is your biggest, most memorable or most proud accomplishment on your journey thus far?

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Grand Ambition: An Extraordinary Yacht, the People Who Built It, and the Millionaire Who Can't Really Afford It.
G. Bruce Knecht, 2013
Simon & Schuster
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781416576006

Summary
Doug Von Allmen, a self-made man who grew up in a landlocked state dreaming of the ocean, was poised to build a 187-foot yacht that would cost $40 million.

Lady Linda would not be among the very largest of the burgeoning fleet of oceangoing palaces, but Von Allmen vowed that it would be the best one ever made in the United States. Nothing would be ordinary. The interior walls would be made from rare species of burl wood, the floors paved with onyx and exotic types of marble, the furniture custom made, and the art specially commissioned.

But the 2008 economic crisis changed everything. Von Allmen’s lifestyle suddenly became unaffordable. Then it got worse: desperate to reverse his losses, he fell for an audacious Ponzi scheme. Would Von Allmen be able to complete Lady Linda? Would the shipyard and its one thousand employees survive the financial meltdown?

The divide between the very rich and everyone else had never been greater, yet the livelihoods of the workers, some of them illegal immigrants, and the yacht owners were inextricably intertwined. In a sweeping, high-stakes narrative, the critically acclaimed author of The Proving Ground and Hooked weaves Von Allmen’s story together with those of the men and women who are building his yacht.

As the pursuit of opulence collides with the reality of economic decline, everyone involved in the massive project is forced to rethink the meaning of the American Dream. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Morristown, New Jersey, USA
• Education—B.A., Colgate University; M.B.A., Harvard
University; Reuters Fellowship, Oxford University
• Awards—Human Rights Press Award; University of
Misouri Journalism School Award
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York

A former senior writer and foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, G. Bruce Knecht is the author of three works of nonfiction—The Proving Ground: The Inside Story of the 1998 Sydney to Hobart Race (2001); Hooked: Pirates, Poaching and the Perfect Fish (2006), and Grand Ambition: An Extraordinary Yacht, the People Who Built It, and the Millionaire Who Can't Really Afford It (2013).

After joining the Journal in 1993, he wrote about the banking industry and pursued investigative projects until 1995 when he began covering publishing—books, magazines, newspapers, and the press. In 1998, the Journal nominated his articles, about how advertisers and retailers secretly influenced the editorial content of major magazines, for two Pulitzer Prizes. The same stories won an award from the University of Missouri Journalism School.

In 1998, Bruce moved to Hong Kong to become the Journal’s Asia Correspondent. His article about children of American servicemen who were still living in Vietnam won a Human Rights Press Award.

He was a London-based free-lance writer from 1991 to 1994, focusing on business and economic topics, particularly those involving the collapse of the Soviet Union. His articles have appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, tNew York Times Magazine, Barron’s, Conde Nast Traveler, SAIL, Smithsonian, The Independent (UK), National Review, and Men’s Journal.

Born in Morristown, New Jersey, Bruce received a bachelor’s degree from Colgate University and has served on the board of directors of its alumni corporation. He earned an M.B.A. from Harvard University and was a Reuters Fellow at Oxford University.

An avid sailor, Bruce raced across the Atlantic Ocean in 2005 aboard Mari-Cha IV, which broke the 100-year-old transatlantic race record. He is a member of Seawanhaka Corinthian Yacht Club and the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club. (Adapted from the author's website.)

Book Reviews
Illuminative and utterly engaging.
Wall Street Journal

Bruce Knecht is my kind of reporter—a master storyteller with a great eye for the tales of our time. Grand Ambition is centered around the building of a huge yacht, but it is ultimately about our bipolar society—the rarefied lifestyles of the very, very rich and the day-to-day realities of blue-collar laborers who have never worked indoors or been paid more than $20 an hour.
Tom Brokaw

If this lively book doesn't "lift your boat," nothing will!
Steve Forbes

A meticulous account of the building of one of the largest American-made yachts since the Gilded Age. Royal families have long enjoyed large pleasure vessels.... In modern times, yachts have been the playthings of Russian oligarchs, Greek shipping magnates and Arabian sheiks. In the United States, the leisure vessels became a hallmark for a new kind of nobility, including J.P. Morgan, in the gilded 1890s and remain so for today's self-made entrepreneurs. This readable account tells the story of a former milkman's son, Doug Von Allmen, now a successful private equity investor in his late 60s, and his experience building a mammoth $40 million, 187-foot yacht.... Revealing and well-written.
Kirkus Reviews

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Grandma Gatewood's Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail
Ben Montgomery, 2014
Chicago Review Press
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781613747186

Summary
Winner of the 2014 National Outdoor Book Awards for History/Biography

Emma Gatewood told her family she was going on a walk and left her small Ohio hometown with a change of clothes and less than two hundred dollars. The next anybody heard from her, this genteel, farm-reared, 67-year-old great-grandmother had walked 800 miles along the 2,050-mile Appalachian Trail.

And in September 1955, having survived a rattlesnake strike, two hurricanes, and a run-in with gangsters from Harlem, she stood atop Maine’s Mount Katahdin. There she sang the first verse of "America, the Beautiful" and proclaimed, "I said I’ll do it, and I’ve done it."

Grandma Gatewood, as the reporters called her, became the first woman to hike the entire Appalachian Trail alone, as well as the first person—man or woman—to walk it twice and three times. Gatewood became a hiking celebrity and appeared on TV and in the pages of Sports Illustrated.

The public attention she brought to the little-known footpath was unprecedented. Her vocal criticism of the lousy, difficult stretches led to bolstered maintenance, and very likely saved the trail from extinction.

Author Ben Montgomery was given unprecedented access to Gatewood’s own diaries, trail journals, and correspondence, and interviewed surviving family members and those she met along her hike, all to answer the question so many asked: Why did she do it?

The story of Grandma Gatewood will inspire readers of all ages by illustrating the full power of human spirit and determination. Even those who know of Gatewood don’t know the full story—a story of triumph from pain, rebellion from brutality, hope from suffering. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1978
• Where—Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA
• Education—Arkansas Tech University
• Awards—Dart Award and Casey Medal (more below)
• Currently—lives in Tampa, Florida

Ben Montgomery is a reporter for the Tampa Bay Times and author of Grandma Gatewood's Walk. Ben grew up in Oklahoma and wanted to be a farmer before he got into journalism at Arkansas Tech University, where he played defensive back for the football team, the Wonder Boys.

He worked for the Courier in Russellville, Ark., the Standard-Times in San Angelo, Texas, the Times Herald-Record in New York's Hudson River Valley and the Tampa Tribune before joining the Tampa Bay Times, Florida's biggest and best newspaper, in 2006.

He is also founder of the popular narrative journalism site, gangrey.com, and co-founder of the Auburn Chautauqua, a writers’ collective.

His stories have appeared in national magazines, such as Parade and Seventeen Magazine, and he has contributed to NPR’s Radiolab. He also contributed to the 2008-09 edition of Best Newspaper Writing.

Montgomery has taught narrative journalism at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies and at universities and workshops across the country, including the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, the National Writers Workshop and the University of North Texas’ Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference.

He lives with his wife and three children in Tampa, Florida.

Awards
In 2010, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in local reporting and won the Dart Award and Casey Medal for a series called "For Their Own Good," about abuse at Florida's oldest reform school.

His work has been honored by the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors, the Society for Features Journalism, the Florida Society of News Editors, the New York Newspaper Publisher’s Association and the Association of Food Journalists. One of his stories was republished in Cornbread Nation 6: Best of Southern Food Writing. (Adapted from the author's Facebook page.)

Book Reviews
Before Cheryl Strayed, there was Grandma Gatewood. Ben Montgomery lets us walk with her—tattered sneakers, swollen ankles, and not an ounce of self-pity—and with each step experience our conflicted relationship with nature, the meanness and generosity of humanity, and the imperative to keep moving. This book makes me long for my backpacking days, and grateful for writers who keep history and spirit alive.
Jacqui Banaszynski - Missouri School of Journalism

In a perfect world, Grandma Gatewood’s Walk will hit the shelves with high praise and great acclaim. Readers deserve to have gems like this presented with fanfare.
Paste Magazine

[A] portrait of a determined woman, whose trek inspired other hikers and brought attention to the neglect of the Appalachian Trail. She became a hiking celebrity.... Maps of the trail and photos from Gatewood’s early life enhance this inspiring story. —Vanessa Bush
Booklist

A journalist's biography of the unassuming but gutsy 67-year-old Ohio grandmother.... Gatewood's exploits...not only brought national attention to the state of hikers' trails across a nation obsessed with cars and newly crisscrossed with highways; it also made Americans more aware of the joys of walking and of nature itself. A quiet delight of a book.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
(The following questions were written by Kathleen Loudon, Reference Librarian for the Haverford Township Free Library in Havertown, Pennsylvania. Thank you, Kathleen!)

1. Author Ben Montgomery portrayed “Grandma” Emma Gatewood as a strong, resilient women throughout her many journeys in this book. How did these character traits serve her well during her many hikes?

2. What challenges did she face in her marriage to P.C. Gatewood? Do you feel that she showed strength and resiliency in her personal life? Can you give some examples?

3. What were some of the main obstacles that Emma faced during her first successful through-hike of the Appalachian Trail? Do you feel she was prepared for all of the challenges that were presented to her on this hike? Looking back, what could she have done differently?

4. Do you think Emma Gatewood anticipated all of the publicity that arose from being the first woman to hike the full length of the Appalachian Trail? How did she respond to this publicity and the many reporters that asked her for interviews? How did she benefit from meeting other people on the trail? What did she learn for herself? What did people learn from her?

5. Many reporters called Emma Gatewood the “Queen of the Appalachian Trail” and asked Emma questions along her journey; however some may feel that she never really conveyed a solid purpose for the walk. Why do you think Emma decided to walk the Appalachian Trail? Do you think she conducted her walks for fame, personal reasons, exercise, or something other? What passages in the book support your ideas?

6. In 1955, after she had been gone for nearly a month on her walk on the Appalachian Trail, Emma Gatewood’s “children hadn't heard from her, had no idea where she was or what she was doing, but not one of them was worried” (p. 45). Why do you think this was the case? Do you think that times have changed and her unexplained absence would be overlooked in today’s times?

7. This story depicts not only Emma Gatewood’s journey on the trail, but also the journey of America’s progression into modern times. What were some of the advancements discussed in this book at the time of her journey? What other types of advancements has our country incurred after Emma Gatewood’s time? What types of innovations that exist in our present time could have assisted her on her hikes?

8. In your opinion, did Emma adequately prepare for her first successful through hike of the Appalachian Trail in 1955? Were you surprised to find that she had a failed attempt of hiking the trail the prior year? What would you want to bring if you were to take a journey such as this one? Do you believe that you would have succeeded on such a venture?

9. What were some significant results, events, or movements that occurred in our country as a result of Emma Gatewood’s walks and the publicity that she brought to the Appalachian Trail?

10. What will you take away from this book in reading the stories about Grandma Emma Gatewood’s life, her inspirational hikes, and all of her achievements?
(Questions courtesy of Kathleen Loudon, Reference Librarian, Haverford Township Free Library, Havertown, PA.)

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Grayson
Lynne Cox, 2006
Knopf Doubleday
160 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780156034678

Summary
Grayson is Lynne Cox's first book since Swimming to Antarctica ("Riveting"- Sports Illustrated; "Pitch-perfect" - Outside). In it she tells the story of a miraculous ocean encounter that happened to her when she was seventeen and in training for a big swim (she had already swum the English Channel, twice, and the Catalina Channel).

It was the dark of early morning; Lynne was in 55-degree water as smooth as black ice, two hundred yards offshore, outside the wave break. She was swimming her last half-mile back to the pier before heading home for breakfast when she became aware that something was swimming with her. The ocean was charged with energy as if a squall was moving in; thousands of baby anchovy darted through the water like lit sparklers, trying to evade something larger. Whatever it was, it felt large enough to be a white shark coursing beneath her body.

It wasn't a shark. It became clear that it was a baby gray whale-following alongside Lynne for a mile or so. Lynne had been swimming for more than an hour; she needed to get out of the water to rest, but she realized that if she did, the young calf would follow her onto shore and die from collapsed lungs.

The baby whale-eighteen feet long!-was migrating on a three-month trek to its feeding grounds in the Bering Sea, an eight-thousand-mile journey. It would have to be carried on its mother's back for much of that distance, and was dependent on its mother's milk for food-baby whales drink up to fifty gallons of milk a day. If Lynne didn't find the mother whale, the baby would suffer from dehydration and starve to death.

Something so enormous-the mother whale was fifty feet long-suddenly seemed very small in the vast Pacific Ocean. How could Lynne possibly find her?

This is the story-part mystery, part magical tale-of what happened. (From the publisher.)

Author Biography
• Birth—1957
• Where—Manchester, New Hampshire, USA
• Reared—from 12 years on in Los Alamitos, California
• Education—N/A
• Awards—Alex Award.
• Currently—lives in Los Alamitos, California

Lynne Cox has set records all over the world for open-water swimming. She was named a Los Angeles Times Woman of the Year, inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame, and honored with a lifetime achievement award from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is the author of Swimming to Antarctica, which won an Alex Award. She lives in Los Alamitos, California. (From the publisher.)

More
Lynne Cox is an American long-distance open-water swimmer and writer. In 1971 she and her teammates were the first group of teenagers to complete the crossing of the Catalina Island Channel in California. Ironically she was always the slowest swimmer in her swim classes. She has twice held the record for the fastest crossing (men or women) of the English Channel (1972 in a time of 9h 57 mins and 1973 in a time of 9h 36 mins). In 1975, Cox became the first woman to swim the 10°C (50°F), 16 km (10 mi) Cook Strait in New Zealand. In 1976, she was the first person to swim the Straits of Magellan in Chile, and the first to swim around the Cape Point in South Africa, where she had to contend with the risk of meeting sharks, jellyfish, and sea snakes.

Cox is perhaps best known for swimming the Bering Strait from the island of Little Diomede in Alaska to Big Diomede, then part of the Soviet Union, where the water temperature averaged around 4°C (40°F). At the time, in 1987, people living on the Diomede Islands, only 3 km (two miles) apart, were not permitted to see each other, although many people had close family members living on the other island. Even more remarkably, her accomplishment eased Cold War tensions as Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev both praised her success.

Cox's most remarkable accomplishment was swimming more than a mile in the freezing waters of Antarctica. Although hypothermia would set in most humans inside of five minutes, Cox was in the water for 25 minutes swimming 1.06 miles. Her first book, Swimming to Antarctica, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 2004.

Her second book, Grayson, the true account of her encounter with a lost baby gray whale during an early morning workout off the coast of California, was published in 2006.

Extras
• In August 2006 she swam across the Ohio River in Cincinnati from the Serpentine Wall to Newport, Kentucky to bring attention to plans to decrease the water quality standards for the Ohio River.

• The asteroid 37588 Lynnecox was named in her honor.

• Cox swam in the Nile River after she had broken the record of the English Channel. She had to be pulled out of the water during the race because she was suffering from dysentery she had gotten while in Egypt. (From Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews
On a clear California morning when Cox (Swimming to Antarctica) was 17 years old, she had an unusual experience that stayed with her for 30 years, creating a spiritual foundation for her personal and professional success. In this slim and crisp memoir, Cox details a morning swim off the coast of California that took an unexpected turn: returning to shore, she discovered that she was being followed by a baby gray whale that had been separated from its mother. As Cox developed a rapport with the whale, she took on the responsibility of keeping it at sea until it was reunited with its mother. Cox expertly weaves fine details together, from the whale's mushroom-like skin to how other fish react to such a large creature. At times Cox's prose is uneven, alternating from emotional to factual, but her pure joy at connecting with Grayson (her name for the baby whale) overrides any technical inconsistencies. The combination of retelling her once-in-a-lifetime experience with her observations on life ( "If I try, if I believe, if I work toward something... the impossible isn't impossible at all") will have timeless appeal for all ages.
Publishers Weekly

(Adult/High School) In a simple but suspenseful narrative, the author recounts her mystical encounter with a baby whale and his mother on a March morning 30 years ago. Then 17 years old, Cox was just completing her swim off Seal Beach, CA, and heading toward shore when the ocean became unusually rough and swarming with small fish. A large animal that she at first mistook for a shark was swimming just beneath her. In fact, it was an 18-foot-long baby gray whale. Cox was frightened and then enchanted by the playful creature that seemed to want to follow her to shore, an act that would be fatal for him. She developed an emotional bond with the whale she calls Grayson, guiding him away from the shore. Both teen and calf were hungry, fatigued, and dehydrated, but Cox, frozen to the bone in 55-degree water, was determined to find the baby's mother. With incredible optimism and courage, and the guidance and encouragement of nearby fishermen and lifeguards, Cox finally united Grayson with his huge, barnacled parent. This true adventure is as breathtaking as the exotic underwater life that the author describes in vivid detail.—Jackie Gropman, Chantilly Regional Library, Fairfax County, VA
School Library Journal

Predawn swimming in fifty-degree water off the coast of California was routine for seventeen-year-old Lynne Cox. But for Cox, the author of Swimming to Antarctica (Knopf, 2004), one morning workout became anything but typical when she discovered an eighteen-foot baby gray whale swimming with her. Continuing to shore would spell doom for the whale if he followed, so Cox decided that even though she was already exhausted, she would stay in the water to help the baby whale, whom she named "Grayson," find his mother. Despite a number of setbacks and moments of near panic when she lost sight of Grayson for significant amounts of time, Cox refused to give up. Drawing on her inner strength and optimism, she kept going, thinking that "If I try, if I believe, if I work toward something ... the impossible isn't impossible at all. Cox's remarkable journey and amazing encounters with all variety of ocean life, including a particularly vivid and moving description of a large group of dolphins "just clowning around," clearly illustrate why the experience has remained etched in the memory of the famous long-distance swimmer for more than thirty years. Her lyrical prose, understated wisdom, and obvious reverence and respect for the ocean and everything that lives in it give the story a spiritual feel. Although the initial chapters lack the suspense and action of the latter half of the book, teens who stick with this quiet tale of hope and perseverance will be richly rewarded. (Grades 7-12)
Paula Brehm-Heeger - VOYA

This book is moving and thrilling in its simple language as Cox laments the inadequacy of words to express profound feelings but demonstrates the exhilaration of the effort. —Vanessa Bush
Booklist

In a sequel of sorts to Swimming to Antarctica (2004), renowned distance swimmer Cox tells the story of an ordinary practice swim that took a decidedly extraordinary turn. She was about to wrap up her workout when she realized that she was being followed by a baby whale, who had somehow been separated from his mother. Cox was dog-tired, but realized that if she came ashore, the whale would try to follow her and would die. So she stayed in the water for hours, swimming around with the baby she dubbed Grayson, waiting and watching and hoping his mother would return. Cox vividly recreates the experience of the exhausting swim. Commenting on her hunger, she writes: "All I wanted was a ... cup of hot chocolate with a mound of whipped cream as big as Big Bear Mountain in the distance ... or carrot cake with pecans and cinnamon and clove, pineapple and coconut, or a slice of hot apple strudel-any of these would do." The narrative transports readers to the majestic, wonderful world of the ocean, filled with dolphins, small fish and odd plants. When Grayson's mother finally turns up, Cox is astounded by her size, her girth, the barnacles on her chin, the rubbery roughness of her cheek. Still, transforming the story of one afternoon into a book-length fable, even a short book-length fable, is a bit of a stretch. The tale is burdened with overwrought musings on the meaning of the time spent with Grayson: "The waiting is as important as the doing; it's the time you spend training and the rest in between; it's the painting the subject and the space in between." Nonetheless, an inspirational, almost spiritual read.
Kirkus Reviews

Book Club Discussion Questions
1. Grayson opens with descriptions of the eerie yet magical encounters Lynne had with grunion. What makes the oceanic world alluring for her? How does it change us to be immersed in a realm where humans are in the minority?

2 . What made this mission so important to Lynne? Would others have taken such care to protect Grayson?

3. Lynne was determined to believe that Grayson’s mother was alive. Did you share her optimism? How did you respond to her words about positive energy? How would the world be different if everyone followed her philosophy?

4. On the morning she met Grayson, Lynne was assisted by many people, from Carl the fisherman to a platoon of seasoned lifeguards. Teamwork among people who watched out for each other and shared wisdom was essential to a successful outcome that day. Who plays a similar role in your life? Who provides the best guidance?

5. Lynne recalls that her friends in high school had been outsiders and that she had enjoyed knowing a variety of people who did not focus on superficial concerns. How did this perspective shape her outlook at the age of seventeen, when she was confronted with the task of helping Grayson?

6. Discuss Lynne’s attempts to communicate with Grayson and vice versa. How does sonar compare to human vocal chords and words in terms of its limitations and its range of possibilities? How do animals (including humans) “explain themselves” to one another?

7. What were the implications of size and degrees of power as Lynne searched for Grayson’s mother? As she swam farther out, a tiny person in the wake of ships and massive creatures, was she in fact so “small”? In emotional terms, was Grayson so huge?

8. Lynne describes the oil rig’s hum as reminding her of Manhattan: intriguing but mechanized, the opposite of the earth’s natural energy. How did you react to the types of dangers she encountered that day? Did you feel differently about man-made dangers versus natural ones?

9. What did you discover about the anatomy and physical needs of a baby whale compared with those of a human infant? What is the mother’s role in her offspring’s survival?

10. How does Lynne cope with fear and anxiety when she first encounters Grayson? How is she affected by his fearlessness around jellyfish and the pier’s fishing lures? What does he teach her about being agile and confident?

11. Whales appear frequently in storytelling, from the biblical narrative of Jonah to Melville”s classic Moby-Dick. How does Lynne”s account of her experience with whales, in which she was able to physically touch both Grayson and his mother, compare with other accounts of whales that you may have read?

12. When Lynne returns home and is reunited with her own parents, she downplays the events of that morning. Why do you suppose she does this? How does anyone effectively tell such a story?

13. The image of beautiful dolphins served as a good omen in Grayson. What makes them special among sea creatures? What will you take with you from the image of Lynne and Grayson interacting with them?

14. Ultimately, what is the source of Lynne’s endurance? What is your equivalent to the moments when she tells herself, “Go, go!” despite tremendous exhaustion?

15. What do you believe was being communicated when Grayson and his mother were reunited? How did you interpret that scene? How might the book have unfolded if it had been “written” by Grayson or his mother? How would they have described Lynne?

16. Lynne’s previous book, Swimming to Antarctica, features many missions that take her around the world—even placing her in the midst of geopolitical change. How does her goal to reunite a mother whale and her baby compare with those future missions, or with her previous experience of swimming the English Channel at the age of fifteen? What appears to drive all of her endeavors?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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The Great Pandemic: The History of the Deadliest Pandemic in History
John M. Barry, 2004
Penguin Publishing
526 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780143036494

Summary
Over a year on The New York Times bestseller list when first published.

At the height of WWI, history’s most lethal influenza virus erupted in an army camp in Kansas, moved east with American troops, then exploded, killing as many as 100 million people worldwide.

It killed more people in twenty-four months than AIDS killed in twenty-four years, more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century.

But this was not the Middle Ages, and 1918 marked the first collision of science and epidemic disease.

Magisterial in its breadth of perspective and depth of research and now revised to reflect the growing danger of the avian flu, The Great Influenza is ultimately a tale of triumph amid tragedy, which provides us with a precise and sobering model as we confront the epidemics looming on our own horizon.

John M. Barry has written a new afterword for this edition that brings us up to speed on the terrible threat of the avian flu and suggest ways in which we might head off another flu pandemic. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
John M. Barry is the author of four previous books: Power Plays: Politics, Football, and Other Blood Sports (2001); Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America (1997); The Transformed Cell: Unlocking the Mysteries of Cancer (1992, cowritten with Steven Rosenberg); and The Ambition and the Power: A True Story of Washington (1989), which the New York Times called one of the "11 best books ever written on Congress and Washington." He lives in New Orleans and Washington, D.C. (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
Easily our fullest, richest, most panoramic history of the subject.
New York Times Book Review

A sobering account of the 1918 flu epidemic, compelling and timely.
Boston Globe

ReviewMonumental… powerfully intelligent… not just a masterful narrative… but also an authoritative and disturbing morality tale.
Chicago Tribune

Hypnotizing, horrifying, energetic, lucid prose.
Providence Observer

History brilliantly written… a masterpiece.
Baton Rouge Advocate

Barry captures the sense of panic and despair that overwhelmed stricken communities and hits hard at those who failed to use their power to protect the public good.… Society's ability to survive another devastating flu pandemic, Barry argues, is as much a political question as a medical one.
Publishers Weekly

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 of THE GREAT INFLUENZA … then take off on your own:

1. How does John M. Barry present the state of U.S. science and medicine in the pre-World War I era? Consider, for instance, that admission to medical school had more to do with one's ability to pay tuition than on academic achievement.

2. What role did the founding of John Hopkins Medical School and William Welch play in the development of modern medicine in the U.S.?

3. Talk about the many misguided decisions by military and politial leaders that eventually led to so many influenza causalities.

4. Hiram Johnson said that "the first causality when war comes is truth." What does he mean, and how does that bear on the subject of Barry's book?

5. As a layperson rather than physician or scientist, were you able to follow Barry's descriptions of the research at the time into the mechanisms of the influenza virus in the cell? Why, for instance, is influenza such a formidable opponent? Talk about the role of RNA in the spread of the disease.

6. Talk about the toll of the disease, both in terms of number of people who contracted it and in terms of its effect on the human body.

7. Despite the horrific devastation, what were some of positive benefits that came about in the wake of the influenza?

8. Do you see any parallels between the 1918-1919 pandemic and the Coronavirus pandemic of 2019-2020? Did we forgotten the lessons of history?
(Resources by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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The Great Pretender: The Undercover Mission that Changed Our Understanding of Madness
Susannah Cahalan, 2019
Grand Central Publishing
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781538715284

Summary
Doctors have struggled for centuries to define insanity—how do you diagnose it, how do you treat it, how do you even know what it is?

In search of an answer, in the 1970s a Stanford psychologist named David Rosenhan and seven other people—sane, healthy, well-adjusted members of society—went undercover into asylums around America to test the legitimacy of psychiatry's labels.

Forced to remain inside until they'd "proven" themselves sane, all eight emerged with alarming diagnoses and even more troubling stories of their treatment.

Rosenhan's watershed study broke open the field of psychiatry, closing down institutions and changing mental health diagnosis forever.

But, as Cahalan's explosive new research shows in this real-life detective story, very little in this saga is exactly as it seems. What really happened behind those closed asylum doors? (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—January 30, 1985
• Raised—Summit, New Jersey, USA
• Education—Washington Uiversity
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York City, New York

Susannah Cahalan is the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness, a memoir about her struggle with a rare autoimmune disease of the brain that affected her at the age of 24.

Cahalan writes for the New York Post. Her work has also been featured in the New York Times, Scientific American Magazine, Glamour, Psychology Today, and other publications. She lives in Brooklyn. (From the publisher.)

Read this account of Cahalan's own illness.

Book Reviews
The Great Pretender reads like a detective story, with Cahalan revealing tantalizing clues at opportune moments so we can experience the thrills of discovery alongside her.… What she unearthed turned out to be far stranger, as documented in her absorbing new book…. [It is the] fraught history of psychiatry and the pursuit of scientific knowledge.
Jennifer Szalai - New York Times

Cahalan's passionate and exhaustive reexamination of the famous research On Being Sane in Insane Places by Stanford psychologist David Rosenhan is a riveting read.… A terrific piece of detective work [with] fascinating insights into the mental health controversies that have swirled ever since the study's publication.
Forbes

This is a well-crafted, gripping narrative that succeeds on many levels. Cahalan, who gained the trust of Rosenhan's family, is meticulous and sensitive in her research; compelling and insightful in her writing.
Financial Times

[A]n impressive feat of investigative journalism--tenaciously conduct, appealingly written... as compelling as a detective novel.
Economist

A stranger-than-fiction thrill ride exposing the loose screws of our broken mental health system.
O Magazine

A thrilling mystery--and a powerful case for a deeper understanding of mental illness.
People

Cahalan's research is dogged and her narrative riveting, leading us from red herring to clue and back with the dexterity of the best mystery novelists. Then she builds her case like a skilled prosecuting attorney.
New York Journal of Books

Cahalan sets a new standard for investigative journalism in this fascinating investigation…. Her impeccable inquiry into the shadowy reality of Rosenhan’s study makes an urgent case that… [psychiatry] must recover the public trust that "Rosenhan helped shatter."
Publishers Weekly

Cahalan's brilliant book… diligently traces and interviews people associated with the study, the circumstances of which became increasingly suspect. In the end, she provides a convincing argument that Rosenhan largely fabricated his research. —Lynne Maxwell, West Virginia Univ. Coll. of Law Lib., Morgantown
Library Journal

A sharp reexamination of one of the defining moments in the field of psychiatry.… Her pursuit reads like a well-tempered mystery…. A well-told story fraught with both mystery and real-life aftershocks that set the psychiatric community on its ear.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Discuss the book’s title. Does the term "the great pretender" change meaning for you over the course of the book, and if so, how? What different things does it represent to you by the end of the book versus the beginning?

2. In chapter 1, Susannah encounters a woman whose disease was similar to her own, but her fate was drastically different. She begins to refer to her as her "mirror image." How does this figure—and the author’s awareness of her background presence—help shape the rest of the book? What would such a person look like in your own life?

3. Why do you think "On Being Sane in Insane Places" hit such a nerve in American culture in1973, and caused such a sea change in the history of psychiatry? How was it different from the work done by Nellie Bly and other brave pseudo patients and reporters in previous decades?

4. Try to imagine what mental health care in this country would look like now if Rosenhan had never published his work. Would we be in a better place? A worse one? Why?

5. Dr. Levy described Susannah as a ninth pseudo patient. In what ways do you feel that Susannah fills this role in the book?

6. The central mystery of the book propels Susannah down a number of rabbit holes, and to a frustrating series of dead ends, before she discovers the truth. Once she does, she realizes that the answer has been staring her in the face the whole time. How did you feel about this revelation? Have you had any experiences in your own life that have been similarly surprising?

7. From the beginning, psychiatry has struggled with identifying the divide between the body and the mind, between the biological and the psychological, between the "real" and the idea that something is "all in your head." Do you agree that this line needs to be drawn, and if so,where would you draw it and why? Is there a better system of diagnosis than the one we have currently?

8. If you had to write policy for revamping the mental health care system in this country, what would you tackle first? What approach do you feel is the most likely to succeed long term?

9. What was the most exciting, dramatic twist, or piece of evidence, that stuck with you over the course of the book?

10. Susannah describes herself as in awe of Dr. Rosenhan, early in the book, and her drive to understand his study is fueled by her admiration for him; his students frequently describe him as "charismatic" and "charming." But of course, the secrets she uncovers considerably complicate her—and our—portrait of him as a man and a scientist. Have you had any experiences in your own personal or professional life with the fall of a hero, someone you admired who, in one way or another, failed to live up to your expectations? Discuss.

11. If you were Rosenhan’s student and he recruited you to participate as a pseudo patient in the study, would you have done it? Why or why not?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War
Mary Roach, 2016
W.W. Norton
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780393245448

Summary
Best-selling author Mary Roach explores the science of keeping human beings intact, awake, sane, uninfected, and uninfested in the bizarre and extreme circumstances of war.

Grunt tackles the science behind some of a soldier's most challenging adversaries—panic, exhaustion, heat, noise—and introduces us to the scientists who seek to conquer them.

Mary Roach dodges hostile fire with the U.S. Marine Corps Paintball Team as part of a study on hearing loss and survivability in combat. She visits the fashion design studio of U.S. Army Natick Labs and learns why a zipper is a problem for a sniper.

She visits a repurposed movie studio where amputee actors help prepare Marine Corps medics for the shock and gore of combat wounds. At Camp Lemmonier, Djibouti, in east Africa, we learn how diarrhea can be a threat to national security. Roach samples caffeinated meat, sniffs an archival sample of a World War II stink bomb, and stays up all night with the crew tending the missiles on the nuclear submarine USS Tennessee.

She answers questions not found in any other book on the military: Why is DARPA interested in ducks? How is a wedding gown like a bomb suit? Why are shrimp more dangerous to sailors than sharks? Take a tour of duty with Roach, and you’ll never see our nation’s defenders in the same way again. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—March 20, 1959
• Raised—Etna, New Hampshire, USA
• Education—B.A., Weslyan University
• Awards—see below
• Currently—lives in Oakland, California

Mary Roach is an American author, specializing in popular science. To date, she has published five books: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (2003), Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife (2005) (published in some markets as Six Feet Over: Adventures in the Afterlife), Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex (2008), Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void (2010), and Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal (2013).

Roach was raised in Etna, New Hampshire. She received a bachelor's degree in psychology from Wesleyan University in 1981. After college, Roach moved to San Francisco, California and spent a few years working as a freelance copy editor. She worked as a columnist and also worked in public relations for a brief time. Her writing career began while working part-time at the San Francisco Zoological Society, producing press releases on topics such as elephant wart surgery. On her days off from the SFZS, she wrote freelance articles for the San Francisco Chronicle's Sunday Magazine.

From 1996 to 2005 Roach was part of The Grotto, a San Francisco-based project and community of working writers and filmmakers. It was in this community that Roach would get the push she needed to break into book writing. While being interviewed by Alex C. Telander of BookBanter, Roach answers the question of how she got started on her first book:

A few of us every year [from The Grotto] would make predictions for other people, where they'll be in a year. So someone made the prediction that, "Mary will have a book contract." I forgot about it and when October came around I thought, I have three months to pull together a book proposal and have a book contract. This is what literally lit the fire under my butt.

Early career
In 1986, she sold a humor piece about the IRS to the San Francisco Chronicle. That piece led to a number of humorous, first-person essays and feature articles for such publications as Vogue, GQ, The New York Times Magazine, Discover Magazine, National Geographic, Outside Magazine, and Wired. She has also written articles for Salon.com and tech-gadget reviews for Inc.com. An article by Roach, entitled "The C word: Dead man driving," was published in the Journal of Clinical Anatomy. Roach has had monthly columns in Reader's Digest (“My Planet”) and Sports Illustrated for Women (“The Slightly Wider World of Sports”).

Besides being a best selling author, Roach is involved in many other projects on the side. Roach reviews books for The New York Times and was the guest editor of the Best American Science and Nature Writing's 2011 edition. She also serves as a member of the Mars Institute's Advisory Board and was recently asked to join the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary.

Personal life
Roach has an office in downtown Oakland and lives in the Glenview neighborhood of Oakland with her husband Ed Rachles, an illustrator and graphic designer. She also has two step-daughters.

While Roach has often been quoted saying that she does not have much free time between writing books, she is very fond of backpacking and travel. The latter she has been able to do a great deal of while doing research for her articles and books. Roach has visited all seven continents twice. She has been to Antarctica a few times as part of the National Science Foundation's Polar Program. In 1997, she visited Antarctica to write an article for Discover Magazine on meteorite hunting with meteorite hunter Ralph Harvey.

Recognition
In 1995, Roach's article "How to Win at Germ Warfare" was a National Magazine Award Finalist. In the article, Roach conducts an interview with microbiologist Chuck Gerba of the University of Arizona who describes a scientific study where bacteria and virus particles become aerosolized upon flushing a toilet: "Upon flushing, as many as 28,000 virus particles and 660,000 bacteria [are] jettisoned from the bowl."

In 1996, her article on earthquake-proof, bamboo houses, "The Bamboo Solution", took the American Engineering Societies' Engineering Journalism Award in the general interest magazine category. In this article the reader learns from Jules Janssen, a civil engineer, that bamboo is "stronger than wood, brick, and concrete...A short, straight column of bamboo with a top surface area of 10 square centimeters could support an 11,000-pound elephant."

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers was a New York Times Bestseller, a 2003 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick, and one of Entertainment Weekly's Best Books of 2003. Stiff also won the Amazon.com Editor's Choice award in 2003, was voted as a Borders Original Voices book, and was the winner of the Elle Reader's Prize. The book has been translated into 17 languages, including Hungarian (Hullamerev) and Lithuanian (Negyveilai).[6] Stiff was also selected for Washington State University's Common Reading Program in 2008-09.

Roach's column "My Planet" (Reader's Digest) was runner-up in the humor category of the 2005 National Press Club awards. Roach's second book, Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, was the recipient of the Elle Reader's Prize in October 2005. Spook was also listed as a New York Times Notable Books pick in 2005, as well as a New York Times Bestseller. In 2008, Roach's book, Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, was chosen as the New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice, it was in The Boston Globe's Top 5 Science Books, and it was listed as a bestseller in several other publications.

In 2011, Roach's book, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void, was chosen as the book of the year for the 7th annual One City One Book: San Francisco Reads literary event program. Packing for Mars was also 6th on the New York Times Best Seller list.[22]

In 2012, Roach was the recipient of the Harvard Secular Society's Rushdie Award for her outstanding lifetime achievement in cultural humanism. The same year, she received a Special Citation in Scientific inquiry from Maximum Fun.

Style
The common theme throughout all of Roach's books is a literary treatment of the human body. Roach says of her publication history,

My books are all [about the human body], Spook is a little bit of departure because it's more about the soul rather than the flesh and blood body, but most of my books are about human bodies in unusual circumstances.

When asked by Peter Sagal, of NPR, specifically how she picks her topics, she replied, "Well, its got to have a little science, it's got to have a little history, a little humor—and something gross."

While Roach does not possess a science degree, she attempts to take complex ideas and turn them into something that the average reader can understand. She takes the reader with her through the steps of her research, from learning about the material to getting to know the people who study it, as she described in a public dialog with Adam Savage:

Make no mistake, good science writing is medicine. It is a cure for ignorance and fallacy. Good science writing peels away the blindness, generates wonder, and brings the open palm to the forehead: "Oh! Now I get it!"

Regarding her skepticism about the world around her, Roach states in her book Spook,

Flawed as it is, science remains the most solid god I've got. And so I've decided to turn to it, to see what it had to say on the topic of life after death. Because I know what religion says, and it perplexes me. It doesn't deliver a single, coherent, scientifically sensible or provable scenario… Science seemed the better bet. (Author bio from Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews
Covering these topics and more, Roach has done a fascinating job of portraying unexpected, creative sides of military science.
New York Post

A mirthful, informative peek behind the curtain of military science.
Washington Post

Roach...applies her tenacious reporting and quirky point of view to efforts by scientists to conquer some of the soldier’s worst enemies.
Seattle Times

Extremely likable…and quick with a quip….[Roach’s] skill is to draw out the good humor and honesty of both the subjects and practitioners of these white arts among the dark arts of war.
San Francisco Chronicle

Mary Roach is one of the best in the business of science writing...She takes readers on a tour of the scientists who attempt to conquer the panic, exhaustion, heat, and noise that plague modern soldiers.
Brooklyn Magazine

From the ever-illuminating author of Bonk and Stiff comes an examination of the science behind war. Even the tiniest minutiae count on the battlefield, and Roach leads us through her discoveries in her inimitable style.
Elle

Nobody does weird science quite like [Roach], and this time, she takes on war. Though all her books look at the human body in extreme situations (sex! space! death!), this isn’t simply a blood-drenched affair. Instead, Roach looks at the unexpected things that take place behind the scenes.
Wired

With compassion and dark humor, Roach delves into the world of military scientists and their drive to make combat more survivable for soldiers.... [This] book is not for the squeamish or those who envision war as a glorious enterprise; it is a captivating look at the lengths scientists go to in order to reduce the horrors of war.
Publishers Weekly

(Starred review.) [An] insightful look into the lives of soldiers—not the stories in the news but untold tales, such as how people on submarines sleep.... A must-read for fans of Roach and for those who relish learning about the secret histories of everyday things. —Cate Hirschbiel, Iwasaki Lib., Emerson Coll., Boston
Library Journal

(Starred review.) A rare literary bird, a best selling science writer...Roach avidly and impishly infiltrates the world of military science....Roach is exuberantly and imaginatively informative and irreverently funny, but she is also in awe of the accomplished and committed military people she meets.
Booklist

(Starred review.) [Roach] is mostly seeking laughs...work[ing] hard to find humor wherever she turns. When material runs thin, the author inserts breezy anecdotes...so readers who can tolerate the author's relentless flippancy will not regret the experience.
Kirkus Reviews

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Summary | Author | Book Reviews | Discussion Questions

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
Jared Diamond, 1997 (revised 2005
W.W. Norton
512 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780393061314 (2005 rev. ed.)
9780393317558 (1999 paperback)

In Brief
Jared Diamond convincingly argues that geographical and environmental factors shaped the modern world.

Societies that had had a head start in food production advanced beyond the hunter-gatherer stage, and then developed religion—as well as nasty germs and potent weapons of war—and adventured on sea and land to conquer and decimate preliterate cultures.

A major advance in our understanding of human societies, Guns, Germs, and Steel chronicles the way that the modern world came to be and stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science, the Rhone-Poulenc Prize, and the Commonwealth club of California's Gold Medal. (From the publisher.)

The book became a National Geographic Society film in 2005.

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About the Author

• Birth—September 10, 1937
• Where—Boston, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—B.A., Harvard University; Ph.D, Cambridge
   University
• Awards—Pulitizer Prize; National Science Medal; Cosmos
   Prize (Japan); Rhône-Poulenc Prize; Aventis Award; Phi
   Beta Kappa Award in Science.
• Currently—lives in southern California

Jared Mason Diamond is an American scientist and author whose work draws from a variety of fields. He is currently Professor of Geography and Physiology at UCLA. He is best known for the award-winning popular science books The Third Chimpanzee; Guns, Germs, and Steel; and Collapse.

Diamond was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to a Bessarabian Jewish family. His father was the physician Louis K. Diamond, and his mother the teacher, musician, and linguist Flora Kaplan. He attended the Roxbury Latin School, earning his A.B. from Harvard College in 1958, and his Ph.D. in physiology and membrane biophysics from the University of Cambridge in 1961.

After graduating from Cambridge, he returned to Harvard as a Junior Fellow until 1965, and, in 1968, became Professor of Physiology at UCLA Medical School. While in his twenties, he also developed a second, parallel, career in the ornithology of New Guinea, and has since undertaken numerous research projects in New Guinea and nearby islands.
In his fifties, Diamond gradually developed a third career in environmental history, and became Professor of Geography at UCLA, his current position. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by Westfield State University in 2009.

He is married to Marie Diamond (née Marie Nabel Cohen), granddaughter of Polish politician Edward Werner, and has two adult sons named Josh and Max Diamond. In 1999, he was awarded the National Medal of Science. His sister Susan Diamond is a novelist. She wrote a book titled What Goes Around.

Books
As well as scholarly books and articles in the fields of ecology and ornithology, Diamond is the author of a number of popular science books, which are known for combining sources from a variety of fields other than those he has formally studied.

The first of these, The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal (1991), examined human evolution and its relevance to the modern world, incorporating insights from anthropology, evolutionary biology, genetics, ecology, and linguistics. It was well-received by critics, and won the 1992 Rhône-Poulenc Prize for Science Books and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. In 1997, he followed this up with Why is Sex Fun?, which focused in on the evolution of human sexuality, again borrowing from anthropology, ecology, and evolutionary biology.

His third and best known popular science book, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, was published in 1997. In it, Diamond seeks to explain Eurasian hegemony throughout history. Using evidence from ecology, archaeology, genetics, linguistics, and various historical case studies, he argues that the gaps in power and technology between human societies do not reflect cultural or racial differences, but rather originate in environmental differences powerfully amplified by various positive feedback loops.

As a result, the geography of the Eurasian landmass gave its human inhabitants an inherent advantage over the societies on other continents, which they were able to dominate or conquer. Although certain examples in the book, and its alleged environmental determinism, have been criticised, it became a best-seller, and received numerous awards, including a Pulitzer Prize, an Aventis Prize for Science Books (Diamond's second), and the 1997 Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science. A television documentary based on the book was produced by the National Geographic Society in 2005.

Diamond's next book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005), examined a range of past civilizations in an attempt to identify why they either collapsed or succeeded, and considers what contemporary societies can learn from these historical examples. As in Guns, Germs, and Steel, he argues against traditional historical explanations for the failure of past societies, and instead focuses on ecological factors. Among the societies he considers are the Norse and Inuit of Greenland, the Maya, the Anasazi, the indigenous people of Rapa Nui (Easter Island), Japan, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and modern Montana.

While not as successful as Guns, Germs and Steel, Collapse was again both critically acclaimed and subject to accusations of environmental determinism and specific inaccuracies. "Collapse" was the third book written by Diamond that was nominated for Royal Society Prize for Science Books (previously known as the Rhône-Poulenc and Aventis Prize) but this time he did not win the prize, losing out to David Bodanis's Electric Universe.

Most recently Diamond co-edited Natural Experiments of History, a collection of essays illustrating the multidisciplinary and comparative approach to the study of history that he advocates. (From Wikipedia.)

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Critics Say . . .
In a boldly ambitious analysis of history's broad patterns, evolutionary biologist Diamond (The Third Chimpanzee) identifies food production as a key to the glaring inequalities of wealth and power in the modern world. Dense, agriculture-based populations, unlike relatively egalitarian hunter-gatherers, bred chiefs, kings and bureaucratic "kleptocracies" that transferred wealth from commoners to upper classes. Such bureaucracies, Diamond maintains, were essential to organizing wars of conquest; moreover, farming societies were able to support full-time craft specialists who developed technical innovations and steel weapons. As a result, European conquerors and their colonizing descendants, bringing guns, cavalry and infectious diseases, overwhelmed the native peoples of North and South America, Africa and Australia. Using molecular biological studies, Diamond, a professor at UCLA Medical School, illuminates why Eurasian germs spreading animal-derived diseases proved so devastating to indigenous societies on other continents. Refuting racist explanations for presumed differences in intelligence or technological capability and eschewing a Eurocentric worldview, he argues persuasively that accidental differences in geography and environment, combined with centuries of conquest, genocide and epidemics, shaped the disparate populations of today's world. His masterful synthesis is a refreshingly unconventional history informed by anthropology, behavioral ecology, linguistics, epidemiology, archeology and technological development.
Publishers Weekly

Most of this work deals with non-Europeans, but Diamond's thesis sheds light on why Western civilization became hegemonic: "History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples' environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves." Those who domesticated plants and animals early got a head start on developing writing, government, technology, weapons of war, and immunity to deadly germs.
Library Journal

MacArthur fellow and UCLA evolutionary biologist Diamond (The Third Chimpanzee, 1992, etc.) takes as his theme no less than the rise of human civilizations. On the whole this is an impressive achievement, with nods to the historians, anthropologists, and others who have laid the groundwork. Diamond tells us that the impetus for the book came from a native New Guinea friend, Yali, who asked him, "Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?'' The long and short of it, says Diamond, is biogeography. It just so happened that 13,000 years ago, with the ending of the last Ice Age, there was an area of the world better endowed with the flora and fauna that would lead to the take-off toward civilization: that valley of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers we now call the Fertile Crescent. There were found the wild stocks that became domesticated crops of wheat and barley. Flax was available for the development of cloth. There was an abundance of large mammals that could be domesticated: sheep, goats, cattle. Once agriculture is born and animals domesticated, a kind of positive feedback drives the growth toward civilization. People settle down; food surpluses can be stored so population grows. And with it comes a division of labor, the rise of an elite class, the codification of rules, and language. It happened, too, in China, and later in Mesoamerica. But the New World was not nearly as abundant in the good stuff. And like Africa, it is oriented North and South, resulting in different climates, which make the diffusion of agriculture and animals problematic. While you have heard many of these arguments before, Diamond has brought them together convincingly. The prose is not brilliant and there are apologies and redundancies that we could do without. But a fair answer to Yali's question this surely is, and gratifyingly, it makes clear that race has nothing to do with who does or does not develop cargo.
Kirkus Reviews

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Book Club Discussion Questions

1. What are the other commonly espoused answers to “Yali’s question,” and how does Jared Diamond address and refute each of them?

2. Why does Diamond hypothesize that New Guineans might be, on the average, “smarter” than Westerners?

3. Why is it important to differentiate between proximate and ultimate causes?

4. Do you find some of Diamond’s methodologies more compelling than others? Which, and why?

5. What is the importance of the order of the chapters? Why, for example, is “Collision at Cajamarca”—which describes events that occur thousands of years after those described in the subsequent chapters—placed where it is?

6. How are Polynesian Islands “an experiment of history”? What conclusions does Diamond draw from their history?

7. How does Diamond challenge our assumptions about the transition from hunter-gathering to farming?

8. How is farming an “auto-catalytic” process? How does this account for the great disparities in societies, as well as for the possibilities of parallel evolution?

9. Why did almonds prove domesticable while acorns were not? What significance does this have?

10. How does Diamond explain the fact that domesticable American apples and grapes were not domesticated until the arrival of Europeans?

11. What were the advantages enjoyed by the Fertile Crescent that allowed it to be the earliest site of development for most of the building blocks of civilization? How does Diamond explain the fact that it was nevertheless Europe and not Southwest Asia that ended up spreading its culture to the rest of the world?

12. How does Diamond refute the argument that the failure to domesticate certain animals arose from cultural differences? What does the modern failure to domesticate, for example, the eland suggest about the reasons why some peoples independently developed domestic animals and others did not?

13. What is the importance of the “Anna Karenina principle”?

14. How does comparing mutations help one trace the spread of agriculture?

15. How does civilization lead to epidemics?

16. How does Diamond’s theory that invention is, in fact, the mother of necessity bear upon the traditional “heroic” model of invention?

17. According to Diamond, how does religion evolve along with increasingly complex societies?

18. How is linguistic evidence used to draw conclusions about the spread of peoples in China, Southeast Asia, the Pacific, and Africa?

19. What is the significance of the differing outcomes of Austronesian expansion in Indonesia and New Guinea?

20. How does Diamond explain China’s striking unity and Europe’s persistent disunity? What consequences do these conditions have for world history?

21. How does Diamond refute the charge that Australia is proof that differences in the fates of human societies are a matter of people and not environment? In what other areas of the world could Diamond’s argument be used?

22. What aspects of Diamond’s evidence do lay readers have to take on faith? Which aspects are explained?

23. Diamond offers two tribes, the Chimbu and the Daribi, as examples of differing receptivities to innovation. Do you think he would accept larger, continent-wide differences in receptivity? Why or why not? How problematic might cultural factors prove for Diamond’s arguments?

24. How, throughout the book, does Diamond address the issues he discusses in the last few pages of his final chapter, when he proposes a science of human history?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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H Is for Hawk
Helen MacDonald, 2014
Grove/Atlantic
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780802123411

Summary
Winner, 2014 Samuel Johnson Prize
Winner, 2014 Costa Book of the Year and Biography Award

When Helen Macdonald's father died suddenly on a London street, she was devastated. An experienced falconer—Helen had been captivated by hawks since childhood—she'd never before been tempted to train one of the most vicious predators, the goshawk.

But in her grief, she saw that the goshawk's fierce and feral temperament mirrored her own. Resolving to purchase and raise the deadly creature as a means to cope with her loss, she adopted Mabel, and turned to the guidance of The Once and Future King author T.H. White's chronicle The Goshawk to begin her challenging endeavor. Projecting herself "in the hawk's wild mind to tame her" tested the limits of Macdonald's humanity and changed her life.

Heart-wrenching and humorous, this book is an unflinching account of bereavement and a unique look at the magnetism of an extraordinary beast, with a parallel examination of a legendary writer's eccentric falconry. Obsession, madness, memory, myth, and history combine to achieve a distinctive blend of nature writing and memoir from an outstanding literary innovator.. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1970
• Where—Chertsey, Surrey, England, UK
• Education—B.A., M. Phil., Cambridge University
• Awards—Costa Award (Best Book and Biography); Samuel Johnson Award
• Currently—lives in The Fens (Cambridgeshire), England

Helen Macdonald is a writer, poet, illustrator, historian, and naturalist, and an affiliated research scholar at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses. She also worked as a Research Fellow at Jesus College, Cambridge.

She is the author of a cultural history of falcons, titled Falcon, and three collections of poetry. As a professional falconer, she assisted with the management of raptor research and conservation projects across Eurasia. Her memoir H Is for Hawk was published in 2014. (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
Helen Macdonald's beautiful and nearly feral first book…is so good that, at times, it hurt me to read it. It draws blood, in ways that seem curative…H Is for Hawk seems to me a small, instant classic of nature writing, expansive in ways that recall Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974), and as in touch with cruelty. It has, as well, some of the winding emotional reverb of Cheryl Strayed's Wild (2012). Yet this book is very English. Ms. Macdonald's sentences, like David Bowie's teeth (pre-veneers), are appealingly crooked. Nearly every paragraph is strange, injected with unexpected meaning.
Dwight Garner - New York Times

If birds are made of air, as the nature writer Sy Montgomery says, then writing a great bird book is a little like dusting for the fingerprints of a ghost. It calls for poetry and science, conjuring and evidence. In her breathtaking new book, H Is for Hawk…Helen Macdonald renders an indelible impression of a raptor's fierce essence—and her own—with words that mimic feathers, so impossibly pretty we don't notice their astonishing engineering…Although "animal as emotional healer" is a familiar motif, Macdonald's journey clears its own path—messy, muddy and raw.
Vicki Constantine Croke - New York Times Book Reviews

To categorize this work as merely memoir, nature writing or spiritual writing would understate [Macdonald’s] achievement...her prose glows and burns.
Karin Altenberg - Wall Street Journal

[Macdonald’s] writing—about soil and weather, myth and history, pain and its slow easing—retains the qualities of [her hawk] Mabel's wild heart, and the commanding scope and piercing accuracy of her hawk's eye.
Joanna Scutts - Newsday (Long Island)

An elegantly written amalgam of nature writing, personal memoir, literary portrait and an examination of bereavement.... It illuminates unexpected things in unexpected ways.
Guy Gavriel Kay - Washington Post

Assured, honest and raw...a soaring wonder of a book.
Daneet Steffens - Boston Globe

One of a kind...Macdonald is a poet, her language rich and taut.... As she descends into a wild, nearly mad connection with her hawk, her words keep powerful track.... [She] brings her observer's eye and poet's voice to the universal experience of sorrow and loss.
Barbara Brotman - Chicago Tribune

[A] singular book that combines memoir and landscape, history and falconry...it is not like anything I've ever read.... what Macdonald tells us so eloquently in her fine memoir [is] that transformation of our docile or resigned lives can be had if we only look up into the world.
Susan Straight - Los Angeles Times

What [Macdonald] has achieved is a very rare thing in literature—a completely realistic account of a human relationship with animal consciousness.... Her training of Mabel has the suspense and tension of the here and now. You are gripped by the slightest movement, by the turn of every feather. It is a soaring performance and Mabel is the star.
John Carey - Sunday Times (UK)

A dazzling piece of work: deeply affecting, utterly fascinating and blazing with love...a deeply human work shot through, like cloth of gold, with intelligence and compassion—an exemplar of the mysterious alchemy by which suffering can be transmuted into beauty. I will be surprised if a better book than H is for Hawk is published this year.
Melissa Harrison - Financial Times (UK)

More than any other writer I know, including her beloved [T.H.] White, Macdonald is able to summon the mental world of a bird of prey...she extends the boundaries of nature writing. As a naturalist she has somehow acquired her bird's laser-like visual acuity. As a writer she combines a lexicographer's pleasure in words as carefully curated objects with an inventive passion for new words or for ways of releasing fresh effects from the old stoc.... Macdonald looks set to revive the genre.
Mark Cocker - Guardian (UK)

A talon-sharp memoir that will thrill and chill you to the bone.... Macdonald has just the right blend of the scientist and the poet, of observing on the one hand and feeling on the other.
Craig Brown - Daily Mail (UK)

A well-wrought book, one part memoir, one part gorgeous evocation of the natural world and one part literary meditation...lit with flashes of grace, a grace that sweeps down to the reader to hold her wrist tight with beautiful, terrible claws. The discovery of the season.
Erica Wagner - Economist (UK)

"Had there been an award for the best new book that defies every genre, I imagine it would have won that too.... Coherent, complete, and riveting, perhaps the finest nonfiction I read in the past year.
Kathryn Schulz - New Yorker

Captivating and beautifully written, it’s a meditation on the bond between beasts and humans and the pain and beauty of being alive (Book of the Week).
People

One of the loveliest things you’ll read this year.... You’ll never see a bird overhead the same way again.
Jason Sheeler - Entertainment Weekly

In this elegant synthesis of memoir and literary sleuthing...Macdonald describes in beautiful, thoughtful prose how she comes to terms with death in new and startling ways.
Publishers Weekly

In this profoundly inquiring and wholly enrapturing memoir, Macdonald exquisitely and unforgettably entwines misery and astonishment, elegy and natural history, human and hawk. —Donna Seamen
Booklist

(Starred review.) An inspired, beautiful and absorbing account of a woman battling grief—with a goshawk.... Writing with breathless urgency...Macdonald broadens her scope well beyond herself to focus on the antagonism between people and the environment. Whether you call this a personal story or nature writing, it's poignant, thoughtful and moving—and likely to become a classic in either genre.
Kirkus Reviews

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Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide
Nicholas D. Kristof, Sheryl WuDunn, 2009
Knopf Doubleday
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307387097

Summary
From two of our most fiercely moral voices, a passionate call to arms against our era’s most pervasive human rights violation: the oppression of women and girls in the developing world.

With Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn as our guides, we undertake an odyssey through Africa and Asia to meet the extraordinary women struggling there, among them a Cambodian teenager sold into sex slavery and an Ethiopian woman who suffered devastating injuries in childbirth. Drawing on the breadth of their combined reporting experience, Kristof and WuDunn depict our world with anger, sadness, clarity, and, ultimately, hope.

They show how a little help can transform the lives of women and girls abroad. That Cambodian girl eventually escaped from her brothel and, with assistance from an aid group, built a thriving retail business that supports her family. The Ethiopian woman had her injuries repaired and in time became a surgeon. A Zimbabwean mother of five, counseled to return to school, earned her doctorate and became an expert on AIDS.

Through these stories, Kristof and WuDunn help us see that the key to economic progress lies in unleashing women’s potential. They make clear how so many people have helped to do just that, and how we can each do our part. Throughout much of the world, the greatest unexploited economic resource is the female half of the population. Countries such as China have prospered precisely because they emancipated women and brought them into the formal economy. Unleashing that process globally is not only the right thing to do; it’s also the best strategy for fighting poverty.

Deeply felt, pragmatic, and inspirational, Half the Sky is essential reading for every global citizen. (From the publisher.)

Author Bios
Nicholas Kristof
• Birth—April 27, 1959
• Raised—Yamhill, Oregon, USA
• Education—B.A., Harvard; J.D., Oxford University
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in suburban New York City

Nicholas Donabet Kristof is an American journalist, author, op-ed columnist, and a winner of two Pulitzer Prizes. He has written an op-ed column for the New York Times since 2001.

Life and career
Kristof was born in Chicago, Illinois, and grew up on a sheep and cherry farm in Yamhill, Oregon. He is the son of Jane Kristof (nee McWilliams) and Ladis "Kris" Kristof (born Wladyslaw Krzysztofowicz), both long-time professors at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon.

Nicholas Kristof graduated from Yamhill Carlton High School, where he was student body president and school newspaper editor, and later became a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Harvard College. At Harvard, he studied government and worked on The Harvard Crimson newspaper; "Alums recall Kristof as one of the brightest undergraduates on campus," according to a profile in the Crimson.

After Harvard, he studied law at Magdalen College, Oxford, as a Rhodes Scholar. He earned his law degree with first-class honors and won an academic prize. Afterward, he studied Arabic in Egypt for the 1983–84 academic year. He has a number of honorary degrees.

New York Times
Kristof joined the New York Times in 1984, initially covering economics and later serving as a Times correspondent in Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Beijing, and Tokyo. He also covered presidential politics and is the author of the chapter on President George W. Bush in the reference book The Presidents. He rose to be the associate managing editor, responsible for Sunday editions.

In 2001 Kristof became a Times op-ed writer. His twice-weekly columns often focus on global health, poverty, and gender issues in the developing world. In particular, since 2004 he has written dozens of columns about Darfur and visited the area 11 times.

According to his New York Times bio, Kristoff has traveled to more than 150 countries—and not without incident. During his travels, he contracted malaria, was threatened by mobs, and survived an airplane crash. Jeffrey Toobin of CNN and The New Yorker, a Harvard classmate, once said...

I’m not surprised to see him emerge as the moral conscience of our generation of journalists. I am surprised to see him as the Indiana Jones of our generation of journalists.

Kristoff also pioneered the use of multimedia for the Times: he was both the first blogger on the paper's website and the first to make a video for the website. He also tweets, has Facebook and Google Plus pages and a YouTube channel. According to Twitter lists, he has more followers (almost 1.5 million) than any other print journalist in the world.

Kristof resides outside New York City with his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, and their three children. He enjoys running, backpacking, and having his Chinese and Japanese corrected by his children.

Impact
Because of his emphasis on human rights abuses and social injustices—namely, human trafficking and the Darfur conflict—the Washington Post said that Kristoff has "shaped the field of opinion journalism."

Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa has called Kristof an "honorary African" for shining a spotlight on neglected conflicts.

Bill Clinton said of Kristof in 2009:

There is no one in journalism, anywhere in the United States at least, who has done anything like the work he has done to figure out how poor people are actually living around the world, and what their potential is.... So every American citizen who cares about this should be profoundly grateful that someone in our press establishment cares enough about this to haul himself all around the world to figure out what's going on....I am personally in his debt, as are we all.

In 2013 Joyce Barnathan, president of the International Center for Journalists, called Kristof "the conscience of international journalism."

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation names Kristof as one of its inspirations. A January 1997 page-one article by Kristof, about child mortality in the developing world, helped forcus the couple's philanthropy on global health. A framed copy of that article hangs in the gallery of the Gates Foundation.

Books
Kristof has co-authored four books with his wife, Sheryl WuDunn:

China Wakes: The Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power (1994) and Thunder from the East: Portrait of a Rising Asia (2000). The two books examine the cultural, social, and political situation of East Asia largely through interviews and personal experiences.
Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide (2009), a best-seller, the book was the basis of an award-winning PBS documentary, which featured WuDunn. The book was also made into a Facebook game with more than 1.1 million players.
A Path Appears: Transforming Lives, Creating Opportunity (2014) explores how altruism affects all of us and presents various ways that we can make a difference. It, too, became a widely watched PBS documentary in 2015, and featured Jennifer Garner, Eva Longoria, Alfre Woodard, Blake Lively, in early 2015.

Half the Sky
Perhaps the best known of Kristof and WuDunn's books is their 2009 Half the Sky, which hit the top of the bestseller charts. The idea for the book was sparked by the Tiananmen Square protests. After reporting on the 500 deaths from that event, the authors learned that some 39,000 girls died every year—far more than had died at Tiananmen—from being denied access to the same food and medical treatment offered to boys. Yet there was no mention or coverage of this stastic anywhere.

Stunned, Kristof and WuDunn decided to dig deeper into overall issues of gender, everywhere—sex trafficking, modern slavery, domestic violence, and rape as both weapon of war and form of "legal justice." The resulting book, Half the Sky, shines in a light onto the dark recesses of female oppression and abuse around the world. The book has since been called a classic, a call to arms, and even comparable in significance to Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. Carolyn Seen of the Washington Post called it one of the most important books she had ever reviewed, as did Counter Punch's Charles Larson.

Awards and recognition
1989 - George Polk Award for Foreign Reporting (on human rights and environmental issues).
1990 - Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting (with Sheryl WuDunn)
2006 - Media Web's Journalist of the Year
2007 - Fred Cuny Award for Prevention of Deaadly Conflict
2007 - U.S. News & World Report: one of "America's Best Leaders."
2008 - Anne Frank Award
2009 - Dayton Literary Peace Prize Lifetime Award (with WuDunn)
2009 - World of Children Lifetime Achievement Award (with WuDunn)
2011 - Harvard Kennedy School / Washington Post: one of seven "Top American Leaders."
2013 - Advancing Global Health Award from Seattle Biomed
2013 - Goldsmith Award for Career Excellence in Journalism by Harvard University
2013 - International Freedom Conductor by the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. (The prevous "Conductor" was the Dalai Lama.)
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 1/17/2016.)

Sheryl WuDunn
• Birth—November 16, 1959
• Raised—New York City, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Cornell University; M.B.A., Harvard University; M.P.A., Princeton Univeristy
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in suburban New York City

Sheryl WuDunn is a business executive, best-selling author, journalist, and international women’s rights advocate.

A third generation Chinese American, Sheryl WuDunn grew up in New York City on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. In 1981 she graduated from Cornell University with a B.A. in European History. In 1987, she earned her M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and, in 1994, an M.P.A. from Princeton's School of Public and International Affairs. She married reporter Nicholas Kristof in 1988.

In 1989 she joined the New York Times, becoming the first Asian-American hired by the paper. She served as a foreign correspondent in the Beijing and Tokyo bureaus where she and Kristof covered the Tiananmen Square protests and massacre. They received the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting—a first for Pulitzer: the first married couple to win for journalism, and the first Asian-American to win a Pulitzer, ever. In addition to her reporting on Tiananmen, WuDunn covered international business, including global energy, global markets, foreign industry and technology.

WuDunn was also one of the few people to move between the editorial and the business sides of the New York Times. In 2000 she was appointed executive director of the Times Circulation NexGen project. She held several other business positions before leaving for the investment bank Goldman Sachs where she became a vice president of asset management.

Since 2009, she has been managing director at the boutique investment firm Mid-Market Solutions.

WuDunn continues her work in media as a commentator on television and radio regarding China and global affairs. She has appeared on Bloomberg TV, NPR, The Colbert Report, and Charlie Rose. She has also lectured at the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and Council on Foreign Relations.

WuDunn resides outside New York City with her husband, Nicholas Kristof, and their three children.

Books
WuDunn has co-authored four books with her husband, Nicholas Kristof:

China Wakes: The Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power (1994) and Thunder from the East: Portrait of a Rising Asia (2000). The two book examine the cultural, social, and political situation of East Asia largely through interviews and personal experiences.
Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide (2009), a best-seller, the book was the basis of an award-winning PBS documentary, which featured WuDunn. The book was also made into a Facebook game with more than 1.1 million players.
A Path Appears: Transforming Lives, Creating Opportunity (2014) explores how altruism affects all of us and presents various ways that we can make a difference. It, too, became a widely watched PBS documentary in 2015, and featured Jennifer Garner, Eva Longoria, Alfre Woodard, Blake Lively, in early 2015.

Awards and recognition
1990 - Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting (with Kristof).
1990 - George Polk Award and an Overseas Press Club award for reporting in China.
2009 - Dayton Literary Peace Prize Lifetime Achievement Award (with Kristof).
2009 - World of Children Lifetime Achievement Award (with Kristof).
2011 - Newsweek: listed as one of "150 Women who Shake the World."
2012 - Fast Company magazine: listed in its "League of Extraordinary Women."
2013 - PBS The Makers documentary: listed as one of the "Women Who Make America."
2013 - Harvard Business School film: featured as one its most prominent female alumni.
2015 - Business Insider: listed as one of the 31 most prominent alumni of the Harvard Business School.

Boards
WuDunn served for more than a decade on the Cornell University board of trustees, including as a member of the board's finance committee and investment committee. Initially appointed to the Cornell board by the university president, she was later reappointed by the New York governor and served under two governors.

She also served for many years on the advisory council of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and in 2013 was elected by alumni to the Princeton University board of trustees. She currently serves on the board of advisers for Fuel Freedom Foundation. WuDunn is also on the advisory boards of a number of start-up companies in a variety of fields, including healthcare and mobile security. (Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 1/17/2016)

Book Reviews

[T]his gripping call to conscience…tackles atrocities and indignities from sex trafficking to maternal mortality, from obstetric fistulas to acid attacks, and absorbing the fusillade of horrors can feel like an assault of its own. But the poignant portraits of survivors humanize the issues, divulging facts that moral outrage might otherwise eclipse.
Irshad Manji - New York Times Book Review

Half the Sky is a call to arms, a call for help, a call for contributions, but also a call for volunteers. It asks us to open our eyes to this enormous humanitarian issue. It does so with exquisitely crafted prose and sensationally interesting material. It provides us with a list of individual hospitals, schools and small charities so that we can contribute to, or at least inform ourselves about, this largely unknown world. I really do think this is one of the most important books I have ever reviewed. I may be wrong, but I don't think so.
Carolyn See - Washington Post

Urgent.... Passionate... Compelling.... Half the Sky is a grab-the-reader-by-the-lapels wake-up call.
Bill Williams - Boston Globe

Superb.... As Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring once catalyzed us to save our birds and better steward our earth, Half the Sky stands to become a classic, spurring us to spare impoverished women these terrors, and elevate them to turn around the future of their nations.
Susan Ager - Cleveland Plain Dealer

While we rightly roared at racial apartheid, we act as though gender apartheid is a natural, immutable fact. With absolutely the right Molotov cocktail of on-the-ground reporting and hard social science, Kristof and WuDunn blow up this taboo. . . . A thrilling manifesto for advancing freedom for hundreds of millions of human beings.
Johann Hari - Slate.com

The most important book of the year.... Half the Sky is the kind of book that could change the course of history.
William Petrocelli - Huffington Post

New York Times columnist Kristof and his wife, WuDunn, a former Times reporter, make a brilliantly argued case for investing in the health and autonomy of women worldwide. “More girls have been killed in the last fifty years, precisely because they were girls, than men were killed in all the wars of the twentieth century,” they write, detailing the rampant “gendercide” in the developing world, particularly in India and Pakistan. Far from merely making moral appeals, the authors posit that it is impossible for countries to climb out of poverty if only a fraction of women (9% in Pakistan, for example) participate in the labor force.
Publishers Weekly

Kristof and WuDunn...expose the brutal horrors endured by millions of women throughout Asia and Africa, putting names and faces to these individuals and their suffering. They argue that the key to change is social entrepreneurs who can empower at the grassroots level through such means as education and microloans. —Risa Getman, Hendrick Hudson Free Lib., Montrose, NY
Library Journal

Critics, universally inspired by Half the Sky, used their reviews as an opportunity to take up its message. They praised not only Kristof and WuDunn's clear moral stance and explanation of the issues but also the way they combined individual women's stories and practical advice to give the book an optimistic tone. Reviewers pointed out some flaws, particularly the authors' focus on individual action...while neglecting to criticize the policies of Western governments.
Bookmarks

A Pulitzer Prize-winning husband-and-wife reporter team track the growing movement to empower women in the developing world. Kristof and WuDunn (Thunder from the East: Portrait of a Rising Asia, 2000, etc.) traveled through Africa and Southeast Asia meeting with victims of sex trafficking, forced prostitution and various forms of gender-based neglect and violence, as well as interviewing those who are making a difference in the lives of impoverished and abused women. While they provide historical background and cite grim statistics to back their claims of oppression, the impact of their report comes from the personal stories of remarkable women.... The authors are especially effective at getting women to speak openly about their lives, and ....the authors' willingness to say what is politically incorrect: When microloans aremade to men, the money is likely to go toward instant gratification-alcohol, drugs and prostitutes-while women are more apt to spend it on family health and educating children.... Intelligent, revealing and important.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. "It appears that more girls have been killed in the last fifty years, precisely because they were girls, than men were killed in all the battles of the twentieth century” (p. xvii). Why is the dire state of women in impoverished cultures, as set out by the authors in the introduction, also a great opportunity for them?

2. “The modern global slave trade is larger in absolute terms than the Atlantic slave trade in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries” (p. 11). Given the scale of the problem, what do Kristof and WuDunn suggest as reasonable efforts towards ending human trafficking?

3. What do the stories about Srey Momm and Srey Neth indicate about the complexities of the trafficking problem in places like Thailand and Cambodia? Why do Kristof and WuDunn say “it’s most productive to focus efforts on prevention and putting brothels out of business” (p. 45)?

4. What difficulties do “the new abolitionists,” like Sunitha Krishnan and Abbas Be, face in trying to shut down the brothel trade? How does Sunitha’s story highlight the kind of bravery required to save women from enslavement in brothels?

5. The judge in the rape and kidnapping case of Woineshet, in Ethiopia, disapproved of the fact that this young girl was insisting on prosecuting her rapist: “He wants to marry you. Why are you refusing?” (p. 65). How is this story emblematic of the much larger problem of “tradition” in countries like Ethiopia?

6. Kristof and WuDunn argue that “universities should make it a requirement that all graduates spend at least some time in the developing world” (p. 88), and that “time spent in Congo and Cambodia might not be as pleasant as in Paris, but it will be life-changing” (p. 89). Do you agree that young Americans should be required to widen their knowledge by direct experience? How might such a requirement change the lives of young Americans, and their view of poverty and privilege?

7. How does the story of Prudence Lemokouno illustrate the dangers of pregnancy and delivery in the developing world (pp. 109–13)? Does it seem an obvious and desirable principle that reproductive health should be considered an international human rights issue, as argued by Dr. Allan Rosenfield (p. 122)? What does the example of Sri Lanka prove about the possibilities of reducing women’s mortality rates in childbirth?

8. Muslim nations are among those in which women are most severely disadvantaged; so the authors directly address the question of whether Islam is misogynistic (p. 150). What do they conclude? What are the best ways to address the frustrations of women like Ellaha, who feel trapped in conservative Muslim cultures where women are at the mercy of their male relatives (pp. 156–57)? Is religion part of the reason for the oppression of women? Is it part of the solution?

9. The authors present a great deal of information about the troubles surrounding the education of girls. Discuss the thorny problems raised in chapter ten, “Investing in Education” (pp. 167–78), and the ways that Ann Cotton has succeeded in addressing many of them with her Camfed project in Zimbabwe (pp. 179–83).

10. Chapter Eleven, “Microcredit: The Financial Revolution,” focuses on the positive changes that are possible when you lend women money to start businesses, or when women have control of the family purse. Is it surprising to learn that when men control family spending, more is spent on beer and prostitutes, and when women are in control more is spent on food and education (pp. 192–93)? Does India’s law, assuring that one third of village leaders will be women, suggest that putting more women in positions of political power will make the world a better place for children?

11. Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce worked tirelessly to expose the truths about the cruel and gruesome conditions endured by the slaves in the British slave trade (pp. 235–36). Their work is a model for the political effectiveness of bringing atrocities to the forefront of the public mind and conscience. What realities were brought to light for you, as you read this book? What details or stories would you consider most provocative, disturbing, or inspiring for middle-class readers?

12. With the stories they recount in this book, Kristof and WuDunn hope to convince readers to help bring about changes that are desperately needed in the developing world. How effective would you predict Half the Sky will be in its effort to create new activists, donors, and volunteers for the international women’s movement (p. 237)?

13. Kristof and WuDunn make three specific recommendations for immediate action: “A $10 billion effort over five years to educate girls,” focusing on Africa but also encouraging Afghanistan and Pakistan to do better; a drive to iodize salt in poor countries, to improve I.Q. points lost to iodine deficiency in utero; and a twelve-year, $1.6 billion campaign to eradicate obstetric fistula and to reduce maternal mortality (pp. 246–47). What do you think about this vision? What has reading the book done to your sense of what needs to be done and what kinds of action might be most effective? Has reading the book inspired you to develop an action strategy or a personal plan to join the movement to address some of these issues? What kinds of actions personally do you think would be the most effective?

14. Jonathan Haidt has written in The Happiness Hypothesis that “a connection to something larger” can greatly affect our feelings of happiness. As Kristof and WuDunn suggest, “we are neurologically constructed so that we gain huge personal dividends from altruism” (p. 250). Do you feel this to be true? Do you feel, upon finishing this book, that you can have a direct impact on helping to turn women in impoverished parts of the world “into full-fledged human beings” (p. 251)?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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Hamlet Made Simple and Other Essays
David P. Gontar, 2013
New English Review Press
428 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780985439491

Summary
Hamlet Made Simple and Other Essays is a collection of twenty essays on different aspects of Shakespeare's art. What makes it unique is that it is neither a conventional academic work, nor an exercise in popularization, nor just another authorship biography. Rather it seeks to bring all these discourses together in one jargon-free text which addresses the concerns of both scholars and general readers.

What is at the heart of this book is learning to have the patience and courage to ask again the fundamental questions, and go to Shakespeare himself for guidance. In the real world we find that children often raise the best issues, and adults are led astray by their own rashness and presumptions. For example, a child might ask, Why is not Prince Hamlet made King of Denmark after the death of his father? In their haste, teachers may dismiss such queries instead of using them as threads to be followed into the fabric of the play.

There are no wrong questions. Nothing is taboo. When we are young and immature we suppose that "I am right and everyone else is off base." If we gain a little wisdom we realize that everyone is right. That's what makes life so fascinating. Successful teachers learn to build bridges from every student response to the theme of the lesson. We all make a contribution.

Hamlet Made Simple exposes the student to Shakespeare's words without dictating answers based on sophistication and ideology. Instead, it demonstrates in chapter after chapter that you and I are liable to error, and that even prominent professors of English may be most in need of instruction.

The purpose of Hamlet Made Simple is to so present the challenges of Shakespeare's works that the reader is impelled to view them and re-view them, following performance with study. In that way our understanding and appreciation deepen. If we are lucky, we discover that Shakespeare is not writing about strange individuals with funny names like "Shylock" and "Doll Tearsheet." He is writing about us. Out of the corner of our eyes we note something in this or that character that reminds us just a little bit of ourselves, and, even if we never realize that we are reading about ourselves, we change, we grow.

That is the magic of Shakespeare, the kindest of teachers. Distracting us with the beauty of his art, he works upon our souls, and makes us new. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1945
• Where—State of New York, USA
• Education—Ph. D., Tulane University; J.D.,
Loyala Law School.
• Currently—lives in Inner Mongolia, China

David P. Gontar was born in New York State in 1945. He has a Ph.D. in philosophy from Tulane University in New Orleans, and a J.D. from Loyola Law School. He has four grown children.

David served as Assitant Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at Southern University from 1975 to 1982. Thereafter he was engaged in the practice of law in New Orleans, Louisiana and southern California. He is currently Adjunct Professor of English and Philosophy at Inner Mongolia University in China.

In 2010, he was the English editor of China's application to UNESCO for World Heritage Status of the Xanadu site in Inner Mongolia, granted by UNESCO in June of 2012.

David's writings have appeared in Southwestern Journal of Philosophy, Tulane Studies in Philosophy, Plantation Society in the Americas, Loyola Law Review and New English Review. He has monthly publications online at New English Review, including essays on Shakespeare, as well as poetry, aphorisms, parables, stories, and a platonic dialogue.

He hopes to be remembered as the fellow who once observed, "You can't push a wedding cake with a hat pin." (From the author.)

Book Reviews
This book has not yet garnered mainstream press reviews online. See Amazon for helpful customer reviews.

Discussion Questions
1. Which do you think is the more significant character, Romeo or Juliet—and why?

2. Is Lucrece in any way responsible for what happens to her?

3. Why do Posthumous Leonatus and Collatine boast about their wives?

4. What is the prognosis for the marriages of Benedick and Beatrice, Portia and Bassanio, Olivia and Sebastian, Lysimachus and Marina & Leontes and Hermione?

5. Why does Brutus kill Caesar?

6. Why does King Harry banish Falstaff?

7. Why can't Hamlet kill Claudius?

8. Why at the outset of Hamlet is the Prince not the King of Denmark?

9. Can a case be made that Macbeth is not ambitious?

10. What is the best interpretation of the Oedipus myth? How does it stand in relation to other myths such as Phaeton, Prometheus, Bellerophon, and Daedalus and Icarus?

11. How does Prince Hal find his way to Eastcheap? What is his connection with Poins?

12. Does Shylock get a fair trial?

13. What are Shakespeare's religious views?

14. Do Kings Henry IV, V and VI have anything in common?

15. Why does King Henry V invade France?

16. Is Measure for Measure a comedy? How so?

17. If you were to set completely aside all biographical information, and confine yourself to the works of Shakespeare and nothing else, what kind of person would you think the author to have been?

18. Does Prospero have anything in common with Caliban?
(Questions provided courtesy of the author.)

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Hamlet's Dresser: A Memoir
Bob Smith, 2002
Simon & Schuster
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780684852706

Summary
The true story of a boy whose life was saved by literature, Hamlet's Dresser is a portrait of a person made whole by art.

Bob Smith's childhood was a fragile and lonely one, spent largely caring for his handicapped sister, Carolyn. But at age ten, his local librarian gave him a copy of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, and it transformed him.

In Bob's first look at Shakespeare's penetrating language—"In sooth I know not why I am so sad"—he had found a window through which to view the world. Years later, when the American Shakespeare Festival moved into Stratford and Smith was hired as Hamlet's dresser, his life's passion took shape.

Blending tragedy and comedy, Smith gracefully weaves together his childhood memories with his experiences backstage and teaching the plays. The result is a gorgeous, tender, infectious book about the restorative powers of literature and art. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1942-43
• Where—Stratford, Connecticut, USA
• Education—High school degree
• Currently—lives in Stratford, Connecticut

Bob Smith is the American author of Hamlet's Dresser (2002), his memoir centering on his troubled family caring for a severely retarded sister. At the age of 10, Smith found solace in reading Shakespeare and by 16 began working in the summer months as a dresser for the American Shakespeare Festival in his hometown of Stratford, Connecticut.

Smith memorized lines from Shakespeare's plays and sonnets and was considered somewhat of an expert among his theatrical associates, including actors who would come to him for coaching. Eventually, however, Smith became a painter, making a living off the sales of his art.

Then, at the urging of his friends and associates, he turned from painting to teaching his beloved Shakespeare. Though he never went to college, Smith taught graduate and undergraduate students at Temple University and the State University of New York at Purchase. By the 1990s he decided to follow his other passion—working with the elderly at The Y at 92nd Street and The Stein Senior Center. Over the years hundreds of students, of varying ages, attended his classes, and it was a 1996 article about him in The New York Times that led to his contract with Scribner for Hamlet's Dresser.

Writing the memoir prompted Smith to close up his Booklyn Heights apartment and move back to his hometown of Statford to better immerse himself in memories. (Adapted from the New York Times.)

Book Reviews
That words have a healing power may be a cliche for some, but in this intimate, often wryly funny memoir, their ability to transform lives is demonstrable.
Toronto Globe and Mail

Smith depicts characters so vividly and orchestrates their interactions so poignantly that the memoir would work if Shakespeare were absent. His presence makes the book more moving still.
Chicago Tribune

Hamlet's Dresser is touching, mesmerizing, intelligent, poetic, fascinating, and beautiful—you will love it.
Book-of-the-Month Club

In this intimate, inspiring account, Smith concludes that words and ideas possess the ability to heal and transform a life no matter how dire and painful the circumstances, using his own difficult childhood and productive adulthood as proof.... Veteran memoir readers will find this book absorbing, refreshing and touching.
Publishers Weekly

Smith's memoir tenderly breaks your heart into pieces and, with the sagacious insight...weaves it into a resplendent crown of joy.... Smith is the teacher we all should have had to introduce us to Shakespeare. Fortunately, he has given us this bejeweled book. —Barry X. Miller, Austin P.L., TX
Library Journal

Disjointed memoir of a troubled family.... Smith's own passion for the Bard of Avon might have been more fully explained, not because a love of Shakespeare is so hard to understand, but because it is the memoir's primary conceit.... Alternately touching and informative, but it fails to cohere.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Countless people advised Carolyn's parents to "put her away." Were the Smiths' efforts to care for Carolyn at home noble or misguided? Should they have institutionalized her at a younger age? If they had, how might Bob Smith's life have been different? To what extent should parents care for a disabled child at the expense of other siblings?

2. Discuss the role of religion in Bob Smith's childhood. Why was Smith drawn to the priesthood as a boy? Why did Shakespeare eventually offer Smith more solace than God? If this memoir can be read as a vindication of art, can it also be read as a condemnation of religion?

3. How did Smith's childhood immersion in art and literature simultaneously alleviate and deepen his loneliness? Are children with anguished family lives more often drawn to the arts than those in less troubled circumstances? Why or why not?

4. "I was going to school those days and nights in the theater," Smith writes. "I never needed anything so much as what I needed then, and never has so much been given to me." What exactly was he given? Discuss how the "lessons" he learned at the American Shakespeare Festival Theater were different from those available in a conventional classroom.

5. Of his time at the theater, Smith writes: "I was being taught that poetry and beauty are not simply antidotes to horror, sometimes they are the horror. I was learning that art can be a brutal thing, not just some decoration placed over the truth, but...the truth itself." Discuss.

6. "I'm no scholar," the author tells us in the prologue. "I've got no formal education past high school." Smith's relationship to Shakespeare is more personal and heartfelt than academic, yet he has made a vocation of sharing his passion with actors, students, and seniors. Do you think he considers himself a teacher or simply an enthusiast? How do you think Smith would describe his approach to Shakespeare?

7. How does Smith's love of Shakespeare serve as a catalyst in his forming relationships? Recall, for example, the easy camaraderie Smith develops with the actors and directors at the theater and his later affection for his elderly "students." Does Shakespeare's work in particular facilitate friendship and intimacy? Or would such closeness result from the sharing of any enthusiasm or interest?

8. Recall and discuss Smith's relationships with elderly people, from his own grandparents to the seniors he teaches. Why does Smith cherish old people? What do they offer him that others can't or don't? Did this book alter your impressions of the elderly?

9. Throughout the book, Smith quotes passages from Shakespeare. What purpose do these excerpts serve? Did they prompt you to read Shakespeare yourself? If so, which of his works are you most inclined to revisit or explore for the first time and why?

10. Some may consider Shakespeare's writing formal or highbrow—even daunting. What are your own feelings or biases toward Shakespeare? Did Smith's memoir change your perceptions? If so, how and why?

11. "When I talk about the plays I unfold myself to myself," Smith writes. For him, reading Shakespeare elicits myriad memories and emotions. Why does reading Shakespeare afford us unique access to our inner selves, our pasts, and our humanity? Does Smith's memoir imply that reading Shakespeare can make us better people? If so, "better" in what sense?

12. Why, in middle age, does Smith move back to Stratford, Connecticut? What is he trying to recapture or come to terms with? Why have you returned to a particular place from your past? What did you hope to gain? Did you? What does Smith's decision to return to New York signify?

13. Do you blame Smith for withdrawing from his sister, Carolyn, for so many decades, or do you sympathize with his inability to face her? Why does he stay away for so long? Why do you think he finally decides to visit Carolyn at Southbury? What gives him the strength?

14. Although Smith attests that Shakespeare "saved his life," he still retains much of the "invisibility" of his childhood and writes that he has "never completely emerged from that darkness." What does Smith's memoir reveal about the power and limits of art's redemptive qualities?

15. Compare and contrast this memoir with others you've read. What makes a memoir unique or extraordinary? What scene or passage are you most likely to remember from Smith's account several years from now?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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Happiness: A Memoir: The Crooked Little Road to Semi-Ever After
Heather Harpham, 2017
Henry Holt & Co.
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250131560

Summary
A shirt-grabbing, page-turning love story that follows a one-of-a-kind family through twists of fate that require nearly unimaginable choices.

Happiness begins with a charming courtship between hopelessly attracted opposites: Heather, a world-roaming California girl, and Brian, an intellectual, homebody writer, kind and slyly funny, but loath to leave his Upper West Side studio.

Their magical interlude ends, full stop, when Heather becomes pregnant—Brian is sure he loves her, only he doesn't want kids. Heather returns to California to deliver their daughter alone, buoyed by family and friends.

Mere hours after Gracie's arrival, Heather's bliss is interrupted when a nurse wakes her, "Get dressed, your baby is in trouble."

This is not how Heather had imagined new motherhood — alone, heartsick, an unexpectedly solo caretaker of a baby who smelled "like sliced apples and salted pretzels" but might be perilously ill. Brian reappears as Gracie's condition grows dire; together Heather and Brian have to decide what they are willing to risk to ensure their girl sees adulthood.

The grace and humor that ripple through Harpham's writing transform the dross of heartbreak and parental fears into a clear-eyed, warm-hearted view of the world.

Profoundly moving and subtly written, Happiness radiates in many directions — new, romantic love; gratitude for a beautiful, inscrutable world; deep, abiding friendship; the passion a parent has for a child; and the many unlikely ways to build a family.

Ultimately it's a story about love and happiness, in their many crooked configurations. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—May 16, 1967
• Where—San Anselmo, California, U.S.A.
• Education—Gaitlin Schoo, New York University
• Currently—lives in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York

Heather Harpham has written six solo plays, including Happiness and BURNING which toured nationally. Her fiction, essays and reviews have appeared in MORE Magazine and Water~Stone Review. Harpham is the recipient of the Brenda Ueland Prose Prize, a Marin Arts Council Independent Artist Grant and a grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund. She teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and SUNY Purchase and lives along the Hudson River with her family. (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
Utterly gorgeous…heartbreaking…staggering.… If you’re looking for a book to love, I recommend it.… [Happiness] is told in riveting, plot-twisting fashion.… But I’ll say that it’s also told with care and courage and humor, and it will deepen your understanding of not just life with a sick child, but life.
Chicago Tribune

A heartfelt exploration of mortality and life, this memoir also explores the complex pulls and pushes of human relationships, and the deep debt we owe to family, friends, and modern medicine. At heart, it is a sobering mediation on the lasting impermanence of its titular emotion, happiness.
NPR

An amazing story of love (almost) lost, then found.
People

Absorbing.… A beautifully-written, insightful tale.
Good Housekeeping

Heather Harpham's moving memoir, [Happiness] is a page-turner.
Redbook

In this moving memoir…[Harpham] describes with warmth, fearless honesty, and humor the harrowing saga of what happened after she gave birth.… Harpham has written a heartfelt exploration of familial bonds and the sometimes incredibly bumpy journey one must take to get to contentment.
Publishers Weekly

An award-winning writer, performer, and teacher of physical theater/improvisation, Harpham tells a heartrending story of discovering hours after giving birth that something was dangerously wrong with her baby.
Library Journal

Happiness is an incredibly moving account of survival and love that will inspire readers to hold on tight to what’s truly important.
Booklist

[Happiness] is filled with both pain and beauty, and [Harpham] shares a clear-eyed view of messy relationships and the journey toward something resembles joy...[A] powerful memoir.
BookPage

Although a personal story, Harpham's memoir provides a larger, universal picture of unconditional love toward a child and the push-pull of an adult relationship and all its inherent highs and lows. A frank and often affecting memoir from a mother determined to do whatever it takes for her child.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Do you think Happiness is an apt title for this memoir? Why do you think Heather chose this particular, single word as the title?

2. How do you face adversity? Do you hunker down, as Brian described his tactic, or do you reach out for people to huddle with, like Heather did? Or do you take another approach?

3. "I was suddenly afraid of being bitten by a creature whose solitary home I’d invaded" (20). Think about Heather’s early relationship with Brian and what this line means in that context. Do you think her use of the metaphor is intentional?

4. What did you think about the way Brian and Heather’s relationship evolved over the course of the book, and in particular during the medical ordeals they faced? Do your own relationships thrive during challenging times? Do obstacles you’ve had to confront with other people bring you closer to them, or test the relationship?

5. On page 68, Heather describes the Nepalese attitude toward appreciation, how people in Nepal don’t typically express gratefulness because acts of kindness and community are expected in their culture. Discuss gratitude. At what points does it emerge in Heather’s story?

6. At the start of chapter ten, Heather pictures Gracie as a balloon floating into the sky with Heather and Brian holding on tightly to its string. What does this striking metaphor for parenthood mean to you?

7. Though Heather and Brian decide not to risk having a second child (only to have their intentions thwarted), Heather poses the question of whether it is "ethical to have a second child to save the first child" (101). What do you think? If you were forced to make a similar choice, what would you do?

8. Could you see both sides of Heather and Brian’s argument about whether to subject Gracie to the bone marrow transplant? Talk about risk. Is it easier to assume such risks for yourself or on behalf of someone you love? In which scenario would you be more comfortable taking a life-threatening risk? Are you a risk-taker by nature?

9. A fellow parent in the transplant clinic said to Heather, "This will seem crazy, but don’t make friends. You don’t know which kids will make it and which won’t" (179). Talk about Heather’s response to this statement and what it meant to her later as she got closer to some of the families in the clinic. Do you understand both of these perspectives?

10. Reflect on the support Heather and Brian’s Brooklyn neighbors provided, particularly the fundraiser they organized which yielded enough money to cover Gracie’s expenses in North Carolina. Do you believe in the kindness of strangers? Is there a time when you felt the power of an act of kindness, large or small, from a stranger in your life?

11. On the book’s last page, Heather writes: "We find happiness, if we find it at all, on accident," disputing the idea of a "blueprint" or roadmap to happiness. What do you believe? Is happiness a function of design or grace? Architecture or serendipity? What in your own life brings you most happiness, or even joy, and is that something you’ve created consciously or simply found?

12. We watch Heather’s spirituality fluctuate with the many twists of Gracie’s medical journey. Many people who go through traumatic experiences turn toward faith to help them cope and find understanding, whether it’s embracing religion or spirituality for the first time or reaffirming their existing faith in some way. Has there been a time in your own life where you rediscovered, or reinforced, your spiritual understandings? Have you ever turned away from your faith in times of crisis?

13. In Chapter 50, Heather writes, "Parents of perilously sick kids never stop being afraid," (291). Have you gone through something in your life that you are not able to shake even though the event itself is long in the past? How do you cope with lingering fear or uncertainty?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
Gretchin Rubin, 2009
HarperCollins
315 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061583261

Summary
Gretchen Rubin had an epiphany one rainy afternoon in the unlikeliest of places: a city bus. "The days are long, but the years are short," she realized. "Time is passing, and I'm not focusing enough on the things that really matter." In that moment, she decided to dedicate a year to her happiness project.

In this lively and compelling account of that year, Rubin carves out her place alongside the authors of bestselling memoirs such as Julie and Julia, The Year of Living Biblically, and Eat, Pray, Love. With humor and insight, she chronicles her adventures during the twelve months she spent test-driving the wisdom of the ages, current scientific research, and lessons from popular culture about how to be happier.

Rubin didn't have the option to uproot herself, nor did she really want to; instead she focused on improving her life as it was. Each month she tackled a new set of resolutions: give proofs of love, ask for help, find more fun, keep a gratitude notebook, forget about results. She immersed herself in principles set forth by all manner of experts, from Epicurus to Thoreau to Oprah to Martin Seligman to the Dalai Lama to see what worked for her—and what didn't.

Her conclusions are sometimes surprising—she finds that money can buy happiness, when spent wisely; that novelty and challenge are powerful sources of happiness; that "treating" yourself can make you feel worse; that venting bad feelings doesn't relieve them; that the very smallest of changes can make the biggest difference—and they range from the practical to the profound.

Written with charm and wit, The Happiness Project is illuminating yet entertaining, thought-provoking yet compulsively readable. Gretchen Rubin's passion for her subject jumps off the page, and reading just a few chapters of this book will inspire you to start your own happiness project. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Raised—Kansas City, Missouri, USA
• Education—B.A., J.D., Yale University
• Currently—lives in New York, City New York

Gretchen Rubin is the author of The Happiness Project, as well as the bestselling Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill; Forty Ways to Look at JFK; Power Money Fame Sex: A User's Guide; and Profane Waste. (She has three dreadful unpublished novels locked in a drawer.)

Her popular daily blog, The Happiness Project, appears on Slate and the Huffington Post and ranks in the prestigious Technorati "Top 2K." There, she recounts her adventures and insights as she grapples with the challenges of how to be happier. She also blogs for RealSimple.com.

A graduate of Yale and Yale Law School (where she was editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal), Rubin started her career as a lawyer, and she was clerking for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor when she realized she really wanted to be a writer. Raised in Kansas City, she lives in New York City with her husband and two young daughters. She is the daughter-in-law of former US Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
An enlightening, laugh-aloud read.... Filled with open, honest glimpses into [Rubin’s] real life, woven together with constant doses of humor.
Terry Hong - Christian Science Monitor

For those who generally loathe the self-help genre, Rubin’s book is a breath of peppermint-scented air. Well-researched and sharply written.... Rubin takes an orderly, methodical approach to forging her own path to a happier state of mind.
Kim Crow - Cleveland Plain Dealer

Practical and never...the rare self-help tome that doesn’t feel shameful to read.
Daily Beast

Rubin is not an unhappy woman.... Still, she could—and, arguably, should—be happier. Thus, her methodical (and bizarre) happiness project: spend one year achieving careful, measurable goals in different areas of life...and build on them cumulatively, using concrete steps.... Rubin writes with keen senses of self and narrative, balancing the personal and the universal with a light touch. Rubin's project makes curiously compulsive reading, which is enough to make any reader happy.
Publishers Weekly

[C]hatty and intriguing.... [A] yearlong quest for happiness...with specific activities for each month...helped [the author] define happiness and become happier with her very good life.... Peppering the text are quotes from a vast array of people who have considered happiness, including Aristotle, St. Therese, and Viktor Frankl. VERDICT This whole process might have come off as frivolously self-centered but for the excellent points Rubin highlights. —Margaret Cardwell, Memphis, TN
Library Journal

Packed with fascinating facts about the science of happiness and rich examples of how she improves her life through changes small and big The Happiness Project made me happier by just reading it.
BookPage

Discussion Questions
1. Gretchen argues throughout The Happiness Project that striving to be happy is a worthy, not selfish, goal. Do you agree? Do you think that Gretchen was right, or not, to devote so much time and attention to her own happiness? Do you spend much time thinking about your happiness?

2. The Happiness Project is packed with quotations. Which quotation resonated most with you? Do you have a quotation that has been particularly meaningful in your own life—that you've included in your email signature or taped to your desk, for example?

3. One of Gretchen's resolutions is to "Imitate a spiritual master." Do you have a spiritual master? Who is it? Gretchen was surprised to realize that St. Therese of Lisieux was her master. Do you know why you identify with your spiritual master?

4. Gretchen observes that "Outer order contributes to inner calm," and many of her resolutions are aimed at clutter-clearing. Do you agree that clutter affects your happiness?

5. One of Gretchen's main arguments is that "You're not happy unless you think you're happy," and she spends a lot of time thinking about her happiness. However, many important figures have argued just the opposite; for example, John Stuart Mill wrote, "Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so." What do you think? Does striving for happiness make you happier? Or does it make happiness more elusive?

6. Did reading this book make you want to try one of the resolutions? Which one?

7. A criticism of The Happiness Project might be that writing a "year of…" book is gimmicky. Did you like the "experiment for a year" approach, or did it strike you as a cliché? Why do you think so many authors are drawn to this structure?

8. Many memoirs recount the author's struggle to be happiness in the face of a major challenge like cancer, divorce, an unhappy childhood, massive weight loss, and the like. In the book's opening, Gretchen admits that she has always been pretty happy. Did you find her reflections on happiness helpful, nevertheless? Or do you think it's more valuable to read an account by someone facing more difficulties?

9. Gretchen writes, "Everyone's happiness project will be different." How would your happiness project be different from Gretchen's? How might it be the same?

10. What was the one most valuable thing you learned from The Happiness Project about happiness—for yourself?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance
Edmund de Waal, 2010
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780312569372

Summary
Winner, 2010 Costa Book Award for Biography
Winner, 2011 Ondaatje Prize

Edmund de Waal is a world-famous ceramicist. Having spent thirty years making beautiful pots—which are then sold, collected, and handed on—he has a particular sense of the secret lives of objects. When he inherited a collection of 264 tiny Japanese wood and ivory carvings, called netsuke, he wanted to know who had touched and held them, and how the collection had managed to survive.

And so begins this extraordinarily moving memoir and detective story as de Waal discovers both the story of the netsuke and of his family, the Ephrussis, over five generations. A nineteenth-century banking dynasty in Paris and Vienna, the Ephrussis were as rich and respected as the Rothchilds. Yet by the end of the World War II, when the netsuke were hidden from the Nazis in Vienna, this collection of very small carvings was all that remained of their vast empire. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1964
• Where—Nottingham, England, UK
• Education—B.A., Cambridge University; post
graduate studies, University of Sheffield
• Awards—Costa Book Award; Ondaatje Prize
• Currently—lives in London, England

Edmund Arthur Lowndes de Waal OBE is a British ceramic artist, and author of The Hare with Amber Eyes (2010). He has worked as a curator, lecturer, art critic and art historian and is a Professor of Ceramics at the University of Westminster, He has received several awards and honours for his work.

De Waal was born in Nottingham, England, the son of Rev. Dr Victor de Waal, later Dean of Canterbury Cathedral. His grandfather was Hendrik de Waal, a Dutch businessman who moved to England and from whom he got his distinctly Dutch family name. His grandmother Elisabeth was a member of the Ephrussi family, whose history he would chronicle in The Hare with Amber Eyes.

De Waal made his first pot at the age of five after persuading his father to take him to a ceramics evening class. He was educated at The King's School, Canterbury, where he was taught pottery by the potter Geoffrey Whiting, a disciple of Bernard Leach. Aged 17, de Waal obtained a place at Cambridge University and deferred entry to take up a two-year apprenticeship with Whiting. During the apprenticeship he repetitively made hundreds of pots, such as casseroles and honey pots, telling BBC radio interviewer John Tusa, "It’s a bit like doing scales as well—you’d never be surprised by a musician spending five years doing arpeggios, and there is a sense in a ceramic apprenticeship that that’s really what you’re doing."

In 1983, de Waal took up his place at Trinity Hall, Cambridge to read English, being awarded a scholarship in 1985 and graduating in 1986 with first class honours.

Following graduation de Waal followed the path he had decided upon before going up to Cambridge: to make inexpensive domestic pots with good earth colours. He moved to the Welsh borders where he built a kiln and set up a pottery making functional stoneware pots in the Leach tradition, but the enterprise was not successful. He moved to inner-city Sheffield and started to work with porcelain, describing it as “the great taboo material; it doesn't do any of the 'proper' work of a pot. In using it I was trying to find a way out."

In 1991 he obtained a Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation Scholarship, under which he spent a year obtaining a post-graduate diploma in Japanese language at Sheffield University and then another year continuing his study of the language in Japan. While in Japan he also worked on a monograph of Bernard Leach, researching Leach’s papers and journals in the archive room of the Japanese Folk Crafts Museum, and continued to make pots, porcelain jars with the pushed-in, gestural sides that were to epitomise his style.

Work
On returning to Britain in 1993, de Waal began living in London and made his distinctive ceramics, porcelain with a celadon glaze. Their shapes were essentially classical but with indentations or pinches and subtle variations in tone and texture. The pots became very fashionable, and in 1995 he had his first of many solo exhibitions.

De Waal's book on Bernard Leach was published in 1998. He described it as "the first 'de-mystifying' study of Leach."

The great myth of Leach is that Leach is the great interlocutor for Japan and the East, the person who understood the East, who explained it to us all, brought out the mystery of the East. But in fact the people he was spending time with, and talking to, were very few, highly educated, often Western educated Japanese people, who in themselves had no particular contact with rural, unlettered Japan of peasant craftsman.

He noted that Leach did not speak Japanese and had looked at only a narrow range of Japanese ceramics. These opinions attracted criticism from some of Leach's followers.

His work remained broadly within the Anglo-Oriental tradition but he also studied the modernists, and the Bauhaus movement in particular. In visits to gothic cathedrals as a child de Waal had attended to small spaces within large buildings. While at university he began to consider how his work might help to re-order the interior space of the museums and art galleries he visited.

In his current work he has moved away from making single objects to the production of groups of objects to be viewed in relation to openings and spaces. Most of his work consists of cylindrical porcelain pots with pale celadon glazes. He believes that the East and West may meet in porcelain; for example, that there the ethos of China's medieval Sung Dynasty may encounter the modernist ethos of the Bauhaus.

His family memoir The Hare with Amber Eyes: a Hidden Inheritance was published in 2010. In it he tells the story of his relatives, the once wealthy Ephrussi family, through the history of a collection of Japanese netsuke sculptures that are handed down through the generations. As he notes in the book, the collection ended up back in Japan, through de Waall's great-uncle Ignace "Iggie" Ephrussi, who settled in Tokyo in 1947 and towards whom de Waall felt great affection. The book received critical acclaim including the Costa Book Award (Biography 2010) and Ondaatje Prize (2011).

De Waal, who has made installations for Chatsworth, Kettle's Yard, Tate Britain and the Victoria and Albert Museum, works and lives in West Norwood, south London. He is represented by the Alan Cristea Gallery, London and the New Art Centre, Wiltshire. He was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2011 Birthday Honours for services to art.

In October 2011, de Waal was asked to choose and describe music that inspires him in his work. Speaking about music he described how...

you can get yourself into the loops of music... I did a huge porcelain wall—500 porcelain vessels—and there are rhythms in that wall that completely come out of baroque music. More recently there’s installations where things are in very minimalist, black lead-lined boxes, 12 of them in a row with the same number of vessels in each but they're arranged in different ways. That’s the porcelain equivalent of Steve Reich's systems music! It’s the same notes and the same tones repeated and just slightly different each time and it only makes sense if you’ve got all of it. One of them by itself is just a black box with a few pots in it.

The playlist includes Keith Jarrett, Johann Sebastian Bach, John Adams and Franz Schubert. (Author bio from Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews
The author was apprenticed as a potter…and his aesthetic sensibility extends to language: there is much wit and dramatic instinct to relish in these pages. But the intelligence and creativity with which de Waal constructs a family history are what make this special book so supremely winning.
Megan Buskey - New York Times

The Hare With Amber Eyes belongs on the same shelf with Vladimir Nabokov's Speak, Memory, Andre Aciman's Out of Egypt, and Sybille Bedford's A Legacy. All four are wistful cantos of mutability, depictions of how even the lofty, beautiful and fabulously wealthy can crack and shatter as easily as Faberge glass or Meissen porcelain—or, sometimes, be as tough and enduring as netsuke, those little Japanese figurines carved out of ivory or boxwood.
Michael Dirda - Washington Post

At one level [Edmund de Waal] writes in vivid detail of how the fortunes were used to establish the Ephrussis’ lavish lives and high positions in Paris and Vienna society. And, as Jews, of their vulnerability: the Paris family shaken by turn-of-the century anti-Semitism surging out of the Dreyfus affair; the Vienna branch utterly destroyed in Hitler’s 1937 Anschluss.... At a deeper level, though, Hare is about something more, just as Marcel Proust’s masterpiece was about something more than the trappings of high society. As with Remembrance of Things Past, it uses the grandeur to light up interior matters: aspirations, passions, their passing; all in a duel, and a duet, of elegy and irony.
Richard Eder - Boston Globe

A beautiful and unusual book...[and] unique memoir of [de Waal’s] family.... De Waal has a mystical ability to so inhabit the long-gone moment as to seem to suspend inexorable history, personal and impersonal.... A work that succeeds in several known genres: as family memoir, travel literature (de Waal’s Japan is the nearest thing to being there, and over decades), essays on migration and exile, on cultural misperceptions, and on de Waal's attempt to define his relationship with his own kaolin creations. His book is also a new genre, unnamed and maybe unnameable.
Veronica Horwell - Guardian (UK)

(Book of the Year.) From a hard and vast archival mass of journals, memoirs, newspaper clippings and art-history books, Mr. de Waal has fashioned, stroke by minuscule stroke, a book as fresh with detail as if it had been written from life, and as full of beauty and whimsy as a netsuke from the hands of a master carver. Buy two copies of his book; keep one and give the other to your closest bookish friend.
Economist

In this family history, de Waal, a potter and curator of ceramics at the Victoria & Albert Museum, describes the experiences of his family, the Ephrussis, during the turmoil of the 20th century. Grain merchants in Odessa, various family members migrated to Vienna and Paris, becoming successful bankers. Secular Jews, they sought assimilation in a period of virulent anti-Semitism. In Paris, Charles Ephrussi purchased a large collection of Japanese netsuke, tiny hand-carved figures including a hare with amber eyes. The collection passed to Viktor Ephrussi in Vienna and became the family's greatest legacy. Loyal citizens of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Vienna Ephrussis were devastated by the outcome of WWI and were later driven from their home by the imposition of Nazi rule over Austria. After WWII, they discovered that their maid, Anna, had preserved the netsuke collection, which Ignace Ephrussi inherited, and he settled in postwar Japan. Today, the netsuke reside with de Waal (descended from the family's Vienna branch) and serve as the embodiment of his family history. A somewhat rambling narrative with special appeal to art historians, this account is nonetheless rich in drama and valuable anecdote.
Publishers Weekly

A duel, and a duet, of elegy and irony (Boston Globe), de Waal's extraordinary family memoir brings his forebears vibrantly to life. To augment his research, de Waal visited his surviving relatives and toured his ancestors' palatial homes, and these intimate explorations, relayed in self-assured and unsentimental prose, imbue his story with the solemn, awe-inspired air of a pilgrimage. The critics praised this sensitive and richly detailed history, particularly de Waal's powerful account of the Nazis' atrocities. While the San Francisco Chronicle, the sole voice of dissent, found de Waal's story boring, the Christian Science Monitor declared that "there isn't a dull moment" in it. The Hare with Amber Eyes—part biography, part travelogue, and altogether a rip-roaring good story—should appeal to readers as well.
Bookmarks Magazine

(Starred review.) Not only did ceramicist de Waal inherit an unusual collection—264 netsuke, miniature figures exquisitely carved in Japan—he was also given the key to the remarkable history of his father’s Russian-rooted, cosmopolitan Jewish family, the Ephrussi, who made a fortune exporting grain. Charles, a cousin of de Waal’s great-grandfather, acquired the netsuke just before the Japonisme craze crested in late-nineteenth-century Paris. A well-known collector and critic, an early champion of the impressionists, and the primary model for Proust’s Charles Swann, he gave his netsuke and vitrine, a customized glass display case, as a wedding gift to his Vienna-based first cousin, Viktor, and Emmy, his much younger, avidly fashionable wife. Their daughter, Elisabeth—a poet who exchanged letters with Rilke, a trail-blazing lawyer, and de Waal’s grandmother—rescued her family from the Nazis. Elisabeth’s brother Iggie, an intelligence officer, brought the collection back to Japan. As today’s keeper of the storied netsuke, famed artist and curator de Waal tells a spellbinding and perceptive tale of extraordinary accomplishment and loss, beauty and terror, reinvention and survival in an intricately dimensional, profoundly involving first book, a sensitive and astute inquiry into culture and family, inheritance and preservation, and the secret life of objects. —Donna Seaman
Booklist

A nimble history of one of the richest European families at the turn of the century. De Waal, a notable London potter, is a descendent of the wealthy Ephrussi family. He seized on an inherited collection of Japanese netsuke—small decorative figures made out of wood or ivory—and traced its ownership down the family line, from patriarch Charles Ephrussi, originally from Odessa, to Great-Uncle Iggie, of Tokyo, who left the 264 elegant figures to the author upon his death in 1993. The family's fabulous wealth derived from the grain-trading business, operating between Paris and Vienna. Charles, who assembled the collection, was a dandyish art collector who settled in Paris at the age of 21, wrote art criticism and a book on Durer and patronized the early Impressionists. He was quite possibly the real-life character on whom Proust modeled his Charles Swann. Subsequently, the netsuke was given to Charles's cousin Viktor on the occasion of his wedding in 1899—just at the height of the Dreyfus Affair, when French anti-Semitism burst forth in full force—and the collection passed to Vienna, where the family resided at the surpassingly beautiful Ephrussi Palais on the Ringstrasse. Anti-Jewish feeling pervaded all facets of their lives, and two world wars wreaked havoc on the Ephrussi fortune. Eventually the netsuke was saved from the rapacious hands of the Nazis by a servant who stuffed it in her mattress. De Waal keeps a pleasantly ironic tone throughout this remarkable journey and nicely handles the clutter of objects and relatives. The roster of characters is daunting at first, but this narrative proves a marvelously absorbing synthesis of art history, detective story and memoir.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Charles, like the rest of Paris, became swept up in the fad of "japonisme", which led to the original purchase of the netsuke. What did these objects represent to their collectors in the Belle Epoque?

2. In addition to his passion for Durer and the Old Masters and Japanese art, Charles radically embraced the Impressionists. What did he love about that new style? Which of these art spheres seems most quintessentially "Charles"?

3. Did you develop any new impressions of the major French art figures—Degas, Renoir, Proust—in light of their interaction with Charles?

4. How did the relationship between collector, patron, and artist evolve from Charles's Paris to Viktor's Vienna to Iggie's Tokyo? Where does Edmund fall in these roles?

5. The word "insatiability" was used by anti-Semites as a way to propagandize against Jewish families' material success. Why does this word become such a slur? How might the term apply more positively to collectors of things—and stories?

6. Why did Charles give away his beloved netsuke to Viktor and Emmy?

7. Edmund remarks on the coldness and lack of texture in the Palais at Vienna. What do the differences between Charles's salon in Paris and Viktor's grand Palais say about the two men?

8. Do you agree with Edmund's assessment that the netsuke need not go back to Japan; that their travels and stories have given them an identity of their own?

9. Are stories more important than objects in a family legacy? How are they related?

10. The Ephrussi patriarch Charles Joachim had a vision for his family, but it was dependent upon the future generations' aptitude and willingness. How do the Ephrussi childrens' responses to their "calling" vary? How does Edmund's book fit into the Ephrussi legacy?

11. You've likely read many accounts of Nazi raid and Jewish persecution at the start of the occupation, but did anything surprise you or stand out in this account of the takeover of the Palais?

12. Viktor and Emmy received vague warnings about the coming threats and were encouraged to flee their home. Would you have been able to walk away from such history and treasures without knowing what was ahead?

13. Viktor essentially sacrificed the Ephrussi dynasty for the sake of his new home country, Austria. Do you think anti-Semetic pressure drove him to become a perfectly loyal citizen, or did Viktor's allegiance represent his true feeling?

14. Edmund originally thought that all the Ephrussi "vagabonding" stemmed from a desire to develop culturally and grow from the provincialism of Odessa. But he realized that Odessa itself was a very culturally rich city. Why do you think it was so important for the Ephrussis to send tendrils of their families to different cities?

15. Why do you think Iggie renounced his American citizenship, a purely symbolic act?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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Having Our Say: The First 100 Years of the Delany Sisters
Sarah Louise Delany, A.Elizabeth Delany, 1993
Random House
299 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385312523

Summary
In their 200+ combined years, Sadie and Bessie Delany have seen it all. They saw their father, who was born into slavery, become America's first black Episcopal bishop. They saw their mother—a woman of mixed racial parentage who was born free—give birth to ten children, all of whom would become college-educated, successful professionals in a time when blacks could scarcely expect to receive a high school diploma. They saw the post-Reconstruction South, the Jim Crow laws, Harlem's Golden Age, and the Civil Rights movement—and, in their own feisty, wise, inimitable way, they've got a lot to say about it.

More than a firsthand account of black American history, Having Our Say teaches us about surviving, thriving, and embracing life, no matter what obstacles are in our way. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Dates —Sarah 1889-1999; Elizabeth, 1891-1995
• Born—Both in Raleigh, North Carolina, USA
• Died —Both in Mt. Vernon, New York,
• Education—Sarah, B.A., M.A., Columbia University
Elizabeth, D.D.S., Columbia University (dentistry)

Dr. Elizabeth Delany and Sarah Delany were born in Raleigh, North Carolina, on the campus of St. Augustine's College. Their father, born into slavery and freed by the Emancipation, was an administrator at the college and America's first elected black Episcopal bishop. Sarah received her bachelor's and master's degrees from Teachers College at Columbia University and was New York City's first appointed black home economics teacher on the high school level. Elizabeth received her degree in dentistry from Columbia University and was the second black woman licensed to practice dentistry in New York City. The sisters retired to Mt. Vernon, New York. Dr. Elizabeth Delany died in September 1995, at the age of 104. Sarah died in 1999 at the age of 109. (From the publisher.)

More
Sarah Louise "Sadie" Delany (September 19, 1889 - January 25, 1999) and Annie Elizabeth "Bessie" Delany (September 3, 1891- September 25, 1995) were American authors and civil rights pioneers.

Sadie, the older of the two, was the first African American woman ever to be allowed to teach Domestic Science in the state of New York. Her sister Bessie was the second black woman to be granted a dentistry license in New York state. While these two positions awarded the sisters freedom from persecution in the workplace, it wasn't until the early 1990s, when both were over 100 years old, that they gained fame.

In 1992, the two sisters published Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years, (with Amy Hill Hearth), which dealt with the trials and tribulations the sisters had faced during their century of life. The book was highly successful on the best seller charts, and even spawned a Broadway play. In 1999 the movie Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years was released on television. It was directed by Lynne Littman with Diahann Carroll as Sadie and Ruby Dee as Bessie.

In 1994 with The Delany Sisters' Book of Everyday Wisdom was published as a follow up to Having Our Say. After Bessie's death in 1995 at age 104, Sadie wrote another book called On My Own At 107: Reflections on Life Without Bessie, dealing with the loss of her sister. Sadie died at the age of 109 in 1999.

The sisters were included in the Guinness Book of World Records in 1993 as the world's oldest authors.

The sisters were the aunts of science fiction author Samuel R. Delany, the son of their youngest brother Sam (1906-63). Their father Henry Beard Delany (1856-1928) was, in the full description they liked to use, "the first elected Negro bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church. (From Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews
I felt proud to be an American citizen reading Having Our Say...the two voices, beautifully blended...evoke an epic history...often cruel and brutal, but always deeply humane.
New York Times Book Review

In this remarkable and charming oral history, two lively and perspicacious sisters, aged 101 and 103, reflect on their rich family life and their careers as pioneering African American professionals. Brief chapters capture Sadie's warm voice ("Now, I was a `mama's child' '') and Bessie's fiestiness (``I'm alive out of sheer determination, honey!''). The unmarried sisters, who live together, tell of growing up on the campus of a black college in Raleigh, N.C., where their father was an Episcopal priest, and of being too independent for the men who courted them. With parental influence far stronger than that of Jim Crow, they joined professions—Sadie teaching domestic science, Bessie practicing dentistry. In 1920s Harlem they mixed with black activists and later were among the first to integrate the New York City suburb of Mount Vernon. While their account of the last 40 years is sketchy, their observations about everything from black identity to their yoga exercises make them worthwhile company. Freelancer Hearth, who wrote an initial story on the sisters in the New York Times in 1991, has deftly shaped and contextualized their reflections.
Publishers Weekly

(Audio version.) When Sadie and Bessie Delany were 104 and 102 years old, respectively, they told their life stories to journalist Hearth in a remarkable contribution to oral history. As the daughters of a freed slave who became America's first elected black Episcopal bishop, the sisters' careers-in education and dentistry-took them to New York during the Harlem Renaissance. Memoirs like this beg to be told aloud. Narrator Iona Morris does not attempt to characterize the voices; instead, her energetic reading captures the sisters' vigor and sense of humor. An interview with the Delanys and Hearth recorded exclusively for this edition makes a nice bonus. One caveat for libraries, though: the cassette casings are held together with glue rather than screws, making in-house repair difficult. Nonetheless, this belongs in most libraries. —Nann Blaine Hilyard, Fargo P.L., ND
Library Journal

In a memoir that's as much a historical record as a testimony to two extraordinary women, the Delany sisters recall their remarkable lives, spanning more than a century of the African- American experience. Daughters of the nation's first black Episcopal bishop, Sadie and Bessie Delany, born in 1889 and 1891 respectively, are a living record of the seismic changes that have affected black America since Emancipation. Their father was born in slavery; their mother was the daughter of an "issue-free negro" and a white Virginian farmer who, though prohibited by law from marrying his beloved Martha Logan, treated her and his children as his lawful family. Raised in the sheltered environment of St. Augustine's School near Raleigh, where their father was the principal, the two girls were expected, like their eight other siblings, to excel both academically and morally. An idyllic childhood was followed by the introduction of Jim Crow legislation that soon made life in the South intolerable, prompting the sisters to move to Harlem. In New York, Sadie graduated from Pratt and became a high-school teacher, while Bessie, graduating from Columbia, became a dentist. The two were soon prominent in Harlem, befriending the black elite (Booker T. Washington, Cab Calloway, Adam Clayton Powell) and actively fighting racial discrimination. Today, looking back, they continue to reflect the wisdom, humor, and feistiness that enabled them to triumph over racism and sexism—the latter, in their opinion, not as corrosive as the former. The Delanys aren't optimistic about the future of race relations, believing that the momentum of the civil-rights struggle was taken away by the Vietnam War. An uplifting and delightful introduction to two splendid women of remarkable good sense and grace—and a fascinating chapter of history as well.
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 Having Our Say:

1. How would you describe the sisters' personalities? How are they similar to one another, and how are they different?

2. What special qualities enabled the two young women to succeed in the academic and professional worlds at a time when it was difficult for any women, let alone women of color, to even consider careers?

3. What early influences shaped the sisters' future paths? Talk about what life was like for them as young girls in the 1890's—their family and life on the campus of St. Augustine's—and how different it was for most African Americans in that time and place.

4. Consider the unusual Delany family background, which included a Virginia slave and his white mistress in 1812, and a free black woman and white farmer forbidden by law to marry but who remained together.

5. Why did neither sister choose to marry? Talk about the ways marriage would have altered the course of their lives. Do you think the two might they have made different choices today? What kind of husbands would you wish for them?

6. The women prefer the use of "colored" and "Negro" to "black" or "African-American." Why is that? How do those terms sound today?

7. Why did Sadie and Bessie believe racism was a more pernicious form of oppression than sexism? Do you agree or disagree?

8. Talk about the ways in which the Jim Crow laws changed the sisters' idyllic childhood. The two reacted differently to the new laws. Which sister would you have been more like?

9. What do you make of Father Delany's remark to Sadie: "You are college material. You owe it to your nation, your race, and yourself to go. And if you don't, then shame on you!" Why "shame on you"—what did he mean?

10. The two women lived during three remarkable eras in US history: the onset of Jim Crow, the Harlem Renaissance, the Civil Rights movement. They befriended luminaries such as Booker T. Washington, Cab Calloway, Marian Anderson, and Adam Clayton Powell. What most surprised you about those times? What did you learn about Jim Crow, the Civil Rights Movement, or Harlem Renaissance that you were unaware of? In other words, what have you learned about US history from this book?

11. What do you think of Bessie's statement that blacks must be sharp to succeed, but that "if you're average and white, honey, you can go far. Just look at Dan Quayle [US vice president under the first George Bush]. If that boy was colored he'd be washing dishes somewhere"? Is that an accurate statement of the forces arrayed against African-Americans?

12. Do you have a favorite sister?

13. There is a good deal of humor in the book. What made you laugh?

14. Consider watching the 1999 film (made for TV) and comparing it to the book. How well does the film do in portraying the book and the Delany sisters?

(Questions issued by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks)

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He Wanted the Moon: The Madness and Medical Genius of Dr. Perry Baird, and His Daughter's Quest to Know Him
Mimi Baird, 2015
Crown Publishing
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780804137478

Summary
A mid-century doctor's raw, unvarnished account of his own descent into madness, and his daughter's attempt to piece his life back together and make sense of her own.

Texas-born and Harvard-educated, Dr. Perry Baird was a rising medical star in the late 1920s and 1930s. Early in his career, ahead of his time, he grew fascinated with identifying the biochemical root of manic depression, just as he began to suffer from it himself.

By the time the results of his groundbreaking experiments were published, Dr. Baird had been institutionalized multiple times, his medical license revoked, and his wife and daughters estranged. He later received a lobotomy and died from a consequent seizure, his research incomplete, his achievements unrecognized.

Mimi Baird grew up never fully knowing this story, as her family went silent about the father who had been absent for most of her childhood. Decades later, a string of extraordinary coincidences led to the recovery of a manuscript which Dr. Baird had worked on throughout his brutal institutionalization, confinement, and escape.

This remarkable document, reflecting periods of both manic exhilaration and clear-headed health, presents a startling portrait of a man who was a uniquely astute observer of his own condition, struggling with a disease for which there was no cure, racing against time to unlock the key to treatment before his illness became impossible to manage.

Fifty years after being told her father would forever be "ill" and "away," Mimi Baird set off on a quest to piece together the memoir and the man. In time her fingers became stained with the lead of the pencil he had used to write his manuscript, as she devoted herself to understanding who he was, why he disappeared, and what legacy she had inherited.

The result of his extraordinary record and her journey to bring his name to light is He Wanted the Moon, an unforgettable testament to the reaches of the mind and the redeeming power of a determined heart. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1938
• Where—Boston, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—B.A., Colby Sawyer College
• Currently—lives in Woodstock, Vermont

Mimi Baird, a Bostonian, is a graduate of Colby Sawyer College. After working at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, she later moved to Woodstock, Vermont, where she worked as an office manager at the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center. There she met a surgeon who had once known her father, a meeting that prompted her quest to finally understand her father’s life and legacy. Mimi has two children and four grandchildren. This is her first book. (From .)

Book Reviews
An extraordinary Möbius strip of a book.... Autobiography, biography, science, history and literature all in one, as instructive as any textbook and utterly impossible to put down...The text of Dr. Baird’s manuscript is haunting. The tone is one a suspense writer might struggle to sustain: The most unreliable of narrators, Dr. Baird is objective, charming, humorous, then suddenly just a little off, and then flat-out gone, leaving an irrational stranger in his place. The reader can almost watch the circuits in his brain surge and dim just as, Ms. Baird reports, the handwriting in the manuscript morphed from disciplined to disorderly and back again.
Abigail Zuger, M.D - New York Times

Extraordinary...a remarkably eloquent account of mental illness, reminiscent of Kay Redfield Jamison’s An Unquiet Mind and Susanna Kaysen’s Girl, Interrupted. Perry Baird emerges as thoughtful and at times eerily aware of his condition as well as his inability to elude either its symptoms or the primitive treatments for them…. The elder Baird’s narrative is cinematic, featuring Ratched-like nurses and an escape scene straight out of The Fugitive.... [Dr. Baird] never really knew his daughter—or her achievement in telling this story.
Nora Krug - Washington Post

Baird’s lonely, angry, grief-stricken, and occasionally grandiose account of his illness and its shattering costs is the reason we can’t put [this book] down. His sharply detailed recollections are sometimes sane and sometimes not, but his writing is lucid even when his thinking isn’t. His manuscript is a plea to understand his experience and, by extension, others.
Laura Collins-Hughes - Boston Globe

Perry Baird was a pioneer in attempting to understand the workings of manic depression…In bringing her father’s harrowing, tragic, and moving story to life, Mimi Baird celebrates him and gives voice to the terrible suffering the mentally ill once endured, and still do today, and challenges the prejudices and misperceptions the public continues to have about the disease.
Publishers Weekly

Through this moving memoir, Baird slowly brings her father back to life and reveals the sordid history of treating mental illness.
Bookpage

Astonishing in its illuminations....This striking and poignant family story evokes compassion for everyone affected by this cruel malady."
Booklist

Moving...[Baird] sketches the life of a man who had done brilliantly in college and medical school—even co-authoring a paper with the eminent physiologist Walter Cannon—but who would be felled by psychosis...A sobering account of how little we knew and how much we still have to learn about mental illness—especially how not to treat it.
Kirkus Reviews

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Heart Berries: A Memoir
Terese Marie Mailhot, 2018
Counterpoint Press
160 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781619023345

Summary
A powerful, poetic memoir of a woman's coming of age on the Seabird Island Indian Reservation in the Pacific Northwest.

Having survived a profoundly dysfunctional upbringing only to find herself hospitalized and facing a dual diagnosis of post traumatic stress disorder and bipolar II disorder, Terese Marie Mailhot is given a notebook and begins to write her way out of trauma.

The triumphant result is Heart Berries, a memorial for Mailhot's mother, a social worker and activist who had a thing for prisoners; a story of reconciliation with her father—an abusive drunk and a brilliant artist—who was murdered under mysterious circumstances; and an elegy on how difficult it is to love someone while dragging the long shadows of shame.

Mailhot trusts the reader to understand that memory isn't exact, but melded to imagination, pain, and what we can bring ourselves to accept.

Her unique and at times unsettling voice graphically illustrates her mental state. As she writes, she discovers her own true voice, seizes control of her story, and, in so doing, reestablishes her connection to her family, to her people, and to her place in the world.

With an Introduction by Sherman Alexie and an Afterword by Joan Naviyuk Kane. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
Terese Marie Mailhot graduated from the Institute of American Indian Arts with an M.F.A. in fiction. Mailhot’s work has appeared in The Rumpus, Los Angeles Times, Carve Magazine, The Offing, The Toast, Yellow Medicine Review, and elsewhere. The recipient of several fellowships―SWAIA Discovery Fellowship, Vermont Studio Center Fellowship, Writing by Writers Fellowship, and the Elk Writer’s Workshop Fellowship―she was recently named the Tecumseh Postdoctoral Fellow at Purdue University and resides in West Lafayette, Indiana. (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
Don't be fooled by the title. Terese Marie Mailhot's memoir…is a sledgehammer.… Heart Berries has a mixture of vulnerability and rage, sexual yearning and artistic ambition, swagger and self-mockery.… [Mailhot] is unsparing to everyone, especially herself.… Her experiments with structure and language …are in the service of trying to find new ways to think about the past, trauma, repetition and reconciliation, which might be a way of saying a new model for the memoir.… So much of what Mailhot is moving toward here still feels nascent—the book wants a tighter weave, more focus. But give me narrative power and ambition over tidiness any day.
Parul Sehgal - New York Times

Sometimes a writer’s voice is so distinctive, so angry and messy yet wise, that her story takes on the kind of urgency that makes you turn pages faster and faster. Terese Marie Mailhot has one of those voices, and her memoir about being raised on a Canadian reservation and coming to understand what it means to be an indigenous person in modern times is breathtaking.
Esquire

A luminous, poetic memoir.
Entertainment Weekly

Poetic is an oft-used descriptor of lovely writing, and this book seems to be something more striking than the word signifies: a memoir and a poem, a haunting and dazzlingly written narrative of Mailhot’s growing up on a reservation in the Pacific Northwest.
Huffington Post

Terese Marie Mailhot's cathartic, moving Heart Berries is one of the bravest and most fearless of such books. Her coming-of-age [novel] … carries larger, universal lessons for the human spirit and its survival. A necessary book. — Rick Simonson, The Elliott Bay Book Company, Seattle, WA
Indie Next List

Mailhot’s first book defies containment and categorization. In titled essays, it is a poetic memoir told in otherworldly sentences.… Not shy, nor raw, nor typical in any way, this is a powerfully crafted and vulnerable account of living and writing about it.
Booklist

Mailhot fearlessly addresses intimately personal issues with a scorching honesty derived from psychological pain and true epiphany.… An elegant, deeply expressive meditation infused with humanity and grace.
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 HEART BERRIES ... then take off on your own:

1. Talk about the horror that was Terese Marie Mailhot's early years—a childhood marked with addiction, poverty, and abuse.

2. In what way is Mailhot's story reflective of the way American Indians have suffered at the hands of white people?

3. In the essay "Indian Sick," what are the multiple diagnoses Mailhot receives in the hospital?

4. What is the significance of the title Heart Berries?

5. At one point, Mailhot quips, "Indian girls can be forgotten so well they forget themselves." She also writes that "no one wants to know why Indian women leave or where they go." Why does it seem that native women are treated worse than white women? Is that what Mailhot is saying?

6. Does the process of writing her memoir generate for Mailhot a burgeoning sense of redemption? Does her story follow the typical arc from suffering to happiness … or not.

7. In her afterward Q&A with Joan Naviyuk Kane, Mailhot insists that she doesn't "feel liberated from the governing presence of tragedy.… [W]e are not liberated from injustice; we're anchored to it." What does she mean? Can anything reverse or correct the injustices done to indigenous people?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Dave Eggers, 2000
Knopf Doubleday
496 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780375725784

Summary
Well, this was when Bill was sighing a lot. He had decided that after our parents died he just didn't want any more fighting between what was left of us. He was twenty-four, Beth was twenty-three, I was twenty-one, Toph was eight, and all of us were so tried already, from that winter.

So when something world come up, any little thing, some bill to pay or decision to make, he would just sigh, his eyes tired, his mouth in a sorry kind of smile. But Beth and I...Jesus, we were fighting with everyone, anyone, each other, with strangers at bars, anywhere — we were angry people wanting to exact revenge. We came to California and we wanted everything, would take what was ours, anything within reach. And I decided that little Toph and I, he with his backward hat and long hair, living together in our little house in Berkeley, would be world-destroyers.

We inherited each other and, we felt, a responsibility to reinvent everything, to scoff and re-create and drive fast while singing loudly and pounding the windows. It was a hopeless sort of exhilaration, a kind of arrogance born of fatalism, I guess, of the feeling that if you could lose a couple of parents in a month, then basically anything could happen, at any time — all bullets bear your name, all cars are there to crush you, any balcony could give way; more disaster seemed only logical. And then, as in Dorothy's dream, all these people I grew up with were there, too, some of them orphans also, most but not all of us believing that what we had been given was extraordinary, that it was time to tear or break down, ruin, remake, take and devour.

This was San Francisco, you know, and everyone had some dumb idea — I mean, wicca? — and no one there would tell you yours was doomed. Thus the public nudity, and this ridiculous magazine, and the Real World tryout, all this need, most of it disguised by sneering, but all driven by a hyper-awareness of this window, I guess, a few years when your muscles are taut, coiled up and vibrating. But what to do with the energy? I mean, when we drive, Toph and I, and we drive past people, standing on top of all these hills, part of me wants to stop the car and turn up the radio and have us all dance in formation, and part of me wants to run them all over. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—March 12, 1970
• Where—Boston, Massachusetts, USA
• Reared—Lake Forest, Illinois
• Education—University of Illinois
• Currently—lives in San Francisco, California

Dave Eggers is the author of four books, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, You Shall Know Our Velocity!, How We Are Hungry, and What Is the What. He is the editor of McSweeney’s, a quarterly magazine and book-publishing company, and is cofounder of 826 Valencia, a network of nonprofit writing and tutoring centers for young people.

His interest in oral history led to his 2004 cofounding of Voice of Witness, a nonprofit series of books that use oral history to illuminate human rights crises around the world. As a journalist, his work has appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, and The Believer. He lives in the San Francisco Bay area with his wife and daughter. (From the publisher.)

More
Eggers was born in Boston, Massachusetts, grew up in suburban Lake Forest (where he was a high-school classmate of the actor Vince Vaughn), and attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He lives in San Francisco and is married to the writer Vendela Vida. In October 2005, Vendela gave birth to a daughter, October Adelaide Eggers Vida.

Eggers's brother Bill is a researcher who has worked for several conservative think tanks, doing research on privatization. His sister, Beth, claimed that Eggers grossly understated her role in raising their brother Toph and made use of her journals in writing A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius without compensating her. She later recanted her claims in a posting on her brother's own website McSweeney's Internet Tendency, referring to the incident as "a really terrible LaToya Jackson moment". On March 1, 2002, the New York Post reported that Beth, then a lawyer in Modesto, California, had committed suicide. Eggers briefly spoke about his sister's death during a 2002 fan interview for McSweeney's.

Eggers was one of three 2008 TED Prize recipients. His TED Prize wish: for community members to personally engage with local public schools.

Eggers began writing as a Salon.com editor and founded Might magazine, while also writing a comic strip called Smarter Feller (originally Swell, then Smart Feller) for SF Weekly. His first book was a memoir (with fictional elements), A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000). It focuses on the author's struggle to raise his younger brother in San Francisco following the sudden deaths of their parents. The book quickly became a bestseller and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. The memoir was praised for its originality, idiosyncratic self-referencing, and for several innovative stylistic elements. Early printings of the 2001 trade-paperback edition were published with a lengthy, apologetic postscript entitled "Mistakes We Knew We Were Making."

In 2002, Eggers published his first novel, You Shall Know Our Velocity, a story about a frustrating attempt to give away money to deserving people while haphazardly traveling the globe. An expanded and revised version was released as Sacrament in 2003 and retitled You Shall Know Our Velocity! for its Vintage imprint distribution. He has since published a collection of short stories, How We Are Hungry, and three politically-themed serials for Salon.com. In November 2005, Eggers published Surviving Justice: America's Wrongfully Convicted and Exonerated, compiling the book of interviews with exonerees once sentenced to death. The book was compiled with Lola Vollen, "a physician specializing in the aftermath of large-scale human rights abuses" and "a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley's Institute of International Studies and a practicing clinician." Novelist Scott Turow wrote the introduction to Surviving Justice. Eggers's most recent novel, What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng (McSweeney's, 2006), was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. Eggers is also the editor of the Best American Nonrequired Reading series, an annual anthology of short stories, essays, journalism, satire, and alternative comics.

Eggers is the founder of McSweeney's, an independent publishing house. McSweeney's produces a quarterly literary journal, McSweeney's, first published in 1998; a monthly journal, The Believer, which debuted in 2003 and is edited by wife Vida; and, beginning in 2005, a quarterly DVD magazine, Wholphin. Other works include The Future Dictionary of America, Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans, and the "Dr. and Mr. Haggis-On-Whey" children's books of literary nonsense, which Eggers writes with his younger brother. Ahead of the 2006 FIFA World Cup, Eggers wrote an essay about the US national team and soccer in the United States for The Thinking Fan's Guide to the World Cup, a book published with aid of the journal Granta, that contained essays about each competing team in the tournament.

Eggers currently teaches writing in San Francisco at 826 Valencia, a nonprofit tutoring center and writing school for children that he cofounded in 2002. Eggers has recruited volunteers to operate similar programs in Los Angeles, New York City, Seattle, Chicago, and Ann Arbor, Michigan, all under the auspices of the nonprofit organization 826 National. In 2006, he appeared at a series of fundraising events, dubbed the Revenge of the Book–Eaters tour, to support these programs. The Chicago show, at the Park West theatre, featured Death Cab for Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard. Other performers on the tour included Sufjan Stevens, Jon Stewart and David Byrne. In September 2007, the Heinz Foundations awarded Eggers a $250,000 Heinz award given to recognize "extraordinary achievements by individuals". The award will be used to fund some of the 826 Valencia writing centers. (From Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews
Mr. Eggers demonstrates in this book that he can pretty much write about anything. He can turn a Frisbee game with his brother into an existential meditation on life. He can convey the wild, caffeinated joy he feels after seeing a friend wake up from a coma. And he can turn his efforts to scatter his mother's ashes in Lake Michigan into a story that's both a lyrical tribute to her passing and a crude, slapstick account of his ineptitude as a mourner, lugging about a canister of ashes that reminds him, creepily, of the Ark of the Covenant in the Spielberg movie.... A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius may start off sounding like one of those coy, solipsistic exercises that put everything in little ironic quote marks, but it quickly becomes a virtuosic piece of writing, a big, daring, manic-depressive stew of book that noisily announces the debut of a talented — yes, staggeringly talented new writer.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times

Literary self-consciousness and technical invention mix unexpectedly in this engaging memoir by Eggers, editor of the literary magazine McSweeney's and the creator of a satiric 'zine called Might, who subverts the conventions of the memoir by questioning his memory, motivations and interpretations so thoroughly that the form itself becomes comic. Despite the layers of ironic hesitation, the reader soon discerns that the emotions informing the book are raw and, more importantly, authentic. After presenting a self-effacing set of "Rules and Suggestions for the Enjoyment of this Book" ("Actually, you might want to skip much of the middle, namely pages 209-301") and an extended, hilarious set of acknowledgments (which include an itemized account of his gross and net book advance), Eggers describes his parents' horrific deaths from cancer within a few weeks of each other during his senior year of college, and his decision to move with his eight year-old brother, Toph, from the suburbs of Chicago to Berkeley, near where his sister, Beth, lives. In California, he manages to care for Toph, work at various jobs, found Might, and even take a star turn on MTV's The Real World. While his is an amazing story, Eggers, now 29, mainly focuses on the ethics of the memoir and of his behavior—his desire to be loved because he is an orphan and admired for caring for his brother versus his fear that he is attempting to profit from his terrible experiences and that he is only sharing his pain in an attempt to dilute it. Though the book is marred by its ending—an unsuccessful parody of teenage rage against the cruel world—it will still delight admirers of structural experimentation and Gen-Xers alike.
Publishers Weekly

It's a good guess that Jedediah Purdy—the author of For Common Things and righteous agitator against irony—would hate Eggers and his late satirical magazine, Might, right along with this masterly memoir. That is a shame because, despite Eggers's inability to take anything seriously on its surface, this meandering story rests on a foundation of sincerity that is part of Purdy's rallying cry. Amid countless digressions, Eggers relates two tales: his mostly successful, if unconventional attempt at raising his much younger brother following their parents' deaths and his years founding and then witnessing the slow demise of Might. Throughout, Eggers eschews any contrivance. The expected tales of emotional longing, political alienation, and creative struggle by a smart twentysomething are replaced by a stream of hilarious, how-it-happened anecdotes; often inane, how-we-really-talk dialog; and quick jabs at some of our society's bizarre conventions. In the end one is left with a surprisingly moving tale of family bonding and resilience as well as the nagging suspicion that maybe he made the whole thing up. In any case, as compared with the spate of recent reminiscences by earnest youngsters, Eggers delivers a worthwhile story told in perfect pitch to the material. Highly recommended for public and undergraduate libraries.
Library Journal

This fierce, funny memoir lives up to its tongue-in-cheek title. When Eggers was a senior in college, his parents both died of cancer, only five weeks apart, and he found that he had inherited his eight-year-old brother. He and young Toph (short for Christopher) leave Chicago for Berkley, California, to live near older siblings, but Eggers is the one who serves as chief surrogate parent. The two set up a slovenly bachelor household together, and Eggers attempts to start a career while taking care of his brother, undertaking both endeavors in a rather haphazard but energetic and deeply felt manner. The brothers play Frisbee endlessly and practice sock sliding in their various abodes, eating dishes like "The Mexican-Italian War" (ground beef sautéed in spaghetti sauce, served with tortillas), arriving late to everything but somehow, just barely, keeping it together. The first half of the book, relating the death of Eggers' mother and the move west, is particularly powerful. Wild black humor pops up at the oddest points, however, and Eggers is nothing if not self-conscious, as he keeps pointing out to the reader. Eggers and some friends started a magazine named Might, and much of the second half of the book has to do with keeping this venture afloat. The paperback edition includes a lengthy new appendix, "Mistakes We Knew We Were Making," correcting and annotating parts of the text, and the preface and acknowledgements sections—and even the information on the verso page—are quirky and funny. Eggers is a talented writer, and the story of his patched-together family and his forays into magazine publishing are well worth reading, but strap yourself in for a wild ride. Adult language.
KLIATT

"A memoir," says the book's cover, "based on a true story." Readers are advised in the preface that "many parts have been fictionalized," but it is not really clear how much is "real" here and how much is spoof.... Eggers voices the classic youthful assumption that the world belongs (or should belong) to him. From anyone else this might be incredibly annoying, but so much is tongue-in-cheek in this work.... This is a very entertaining, well-written book. —Grace Fill
Booklist

It isn't but its better than most novel-like objects created by our younger writers, and like them, this one is directly autobiographical, ironic, and self-referential, concluding with a tiny gesture of hope the author no doubt considers brave given the vicissitudes hes retailed in prose. It is a potpourri of young gestures: David Wallaces intricate cataloguing of smart trivia; Rick Moodys detached, incisive portraiture of white suburban America; Bret Elliss seen-it-all spiritual fatigue; and a dollop of Michael Chabons candy-coated, hope-flavored insight. After a relentless preface and introduction (in which readers are instructed they could profitably read only the first 109 pages, a nice length, a nice novella sort of length), Eggers duly produces his imaginations ripe fruit: the death of both parents, by cancer, a month apart, when he was in his 20s. With younger brother Toph in tow, Eggers takes flight to San Francisco, moves about, discovers mild poverty, and tries out for MTVs popular The Real World. His unsuccessful interview, reprinted here, discloses a hard shell of pre-emptive irony, intended, no doubt, to deflect authentic emotions and qualify him for the show. (Eggers doesnt believe in dignity or privacy, for starters.) He doesnt make it, but his unsated desire to demonstrate his grief/rage/detachment leads him, with friends, to found Might magazine, which has a modestly successful run. Mights staging of the death of Adam Rich (Nicholas from Eight Is Enough) is briefly amusing, but only Toph shares Eggers pleasure in mocking celebrities while appearing to valorize them, and as this self-approving account concludes, a frisbee game with the wise kid results in a pure moment of grace, curiously intertwined with a crucifixion-martyr motif, in which Eggers is the suffering truth-teller. It is evidently hard to have been Eggers, though few readers will be satisfied with this nugget of hard-won wisdom in return for their investment of time and good will.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. The material preceding the main text in this book—called "front matter" in the publishing business—has been entirely taken over by the author, including the usually very official copyright page. Why might the publisher have allowed Eggers to take this unconventional route? Why does Eggers work so extensively at disrupting the formality of publication and his status as an author?

2. On the copyright page we find the statement, "This is a work of fiction"; and at the beginning of the preface Eggers writes, "This is not, actually, a work of pure nonfiction." What point is Eggers making by casting all these doubts on the veracity of the book's contents? In his discussion about the current popularity of memoirs [pp. xxi-xxiii], Eggers admits that the book is a memoir but encourages his readers to think of it as fiction. What is the difference, in a work of literature, between fact and fiction, and does it matter?

3. In the remarkable acknowledgments section, which is a brilliant critique and discussion of the book as a whole, Eggers points out that "the success of a memoir...has a lot to do with how appealing its narrator is" [p. xxvii]. What is appealing about Eggers as a narrator?

4. Eggers notes that the first major theme of the book is "The Unspoken Magic of Parental Disappearance" [p. xxviii]. It is a psychological truism that most children occasionally fantasize about being orphans, because parents often stand in the way of their children's desires. Along these lines, Eggers admits that the loss of his parents is "accompanied by an undeniable but then of courseguilt-inducing sense of mobility, of infinite possibility" [p. xxix]. Does he ever find a way to resolve his conflicting emotions of grief and guilt?

5. If it is true, as Eggers points out, that he is not the first person whose parents died or who was left with the care of a sibling, what makes his story unique?

6. Eggers worries that because he is neither a woman nor a neat, well-organized person [pp. 81, 99], people assume that he can't take care of Toph. Which aspects of Eggers' parenting are most admirable? Which are most comic? What are the benefits and drawbacks of each aspect?

7. How do Eggers' memories of his father compare to those about his mother? To what degree are his feelings about his parents resolved, or at least assuaged, through the act of writing this book?

8. Much of the central part of the book relates to the business of launching and producing Might magazine. What does this section reveal about the concerns, desires, and frustrations of thoughtful, energetic twenty-somethings in contemporary America?

9. Eggers expresses ambivalence about having written this book because he feels guilty about exploiting his family's misfortune and exposing a private matter to the public. Among the epigraphs that Eggers considered, and then didn't use, for the book are "Why not just write what happened?" (R. Lowell) and "Ooh, look at me, I'm Dave, I'm writing a book! With all my thoughts in it! La la la!" (Christopher Eggers) [p. xvii]. How do these two epigraphs crystallize the memoir writer's dilemma?

10. Why does Eggers judge himself so harshly for returning to the family's old house in Lake Forest and for trying to retrieve his mother's ashes? Does the trip provide him and his story with a sense of closure, or just the opposite? Is there a central revelation to Eggers' narrative, a strong sense of change or a significant development? Or would you say, on the contrary, that the book has the haphazardness and lack of structure that we find in real life?

11. Eggers refers, half-jokingly, half-seriously, to himself and Toph as "God's tragic envoys" [p. 73]. Is it true, as Eggers suggests, that tragic occurrences give those to whom they happen the feeling of having been singled out for a special destiny? Is it common among those who have suffered intensely to expect some sort of recompense?

12. Recurring throughout the interview for MTV's The Real World [chapter VI] is the image of what Eggers calls "the lattice." What does he mean by this, and does it amount to a kind of spiritual belief on his part?

13. Mary Park, writing for Amazon. com, notes that "Eggers comes from the most media-saturated generation in history—so much so that he can't feel an emotion without the sense that it's already been felt for him.... Oddly enough, the effect is one of complete sincerity." How does Eggers manage to turn his generation's burdens of self-consciousness into strengths? What are the qualities that make his writing so vivid and memorable?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth
Sarah Smarsh, 2018
Scribner
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781501133091

Summary
Longlisted, 2018 National Book Award-Nonfiction

An eye-opening memoir of working-class poverty in the American Midwest.

During Sarah Smarsh’s turbulent childhood in Kansas in the 1980s and 1990s, the forces of cyclical poverty and the country’s changing economic policies solidified her family’s place among the working poor.

By telling the story of her life and the lives of the people she loves, Smarsh challenges us to look more closely at the class divide in our country and examine the myths about people thought to be less because they earn less.

Her personal history affirms the corrosive impact intergenerational poverty can have on individuals, families, and communities, and she explores this idea as lived experience, metaphor, and level of consciousness.

Smarsh was born a fifth generation Kansas wheat farmer on her paternal side and the product of generations of teen mothers on her maternal side. Through her experiences growing up as the daughter of a dissatisfied young mother and raised predominantly by her grandmother on a farm thirty miles west of Wichita, we are given a unique and essential look into the lives of poor and working class Americans living in the heartland.

Combining memoir with powerful analysis and cultural commentary, Heartland is an uncompromising look at class, identity, and the particular perils of having less in a country known for its excess. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1980-81 (?)
• Where—Kansas, USA
• Education—2 B.As., University of Kansas; M.F.A., Columbia University
• Awards—Joan Shorenstein Fellowship, Harvard University
• Currently—lives in Kansas

Sarah Smarsh is an educator, journalist and author, and a fifth generation Kansan. Her family and growing-up years are the subject of her 2018 book, Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth, a book that takes a hard look at the devastation poverty wreaks on rural mid-westerners.

Smarsh became a published author at nine years of age when her school teacher, Mr. Cheatham, sent in a story about her family to a children's magazine. It was published as a two-page spread, complete with illustrations.

Smarsh went on to get undergraduate degrees in English and Journalism from Kansas University and then an M.F.A. from Columbia University. She has taught nonfiction writing at the university level: Columbia University, Ottawa University, Lawrence Center for the Arts, and as an Associate Professor at Wabash University.

Heartland is her fourth book; she has also written two histories of Kansas and a collection of essays.

As a journalist, Smarsh has covered socioeconomic class, politics, and public policy for The Guardian (UK), VQR, NewYorker.com, Harpers.org, Texas Observer, and others. She is currently a Joan Shorenstein Fellow at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.

She lives in Kansas. (Adapted from various online sources.)

Book Reviews
Smarsh is an invaluable guide to flyover country, worth 20 abstract-noun-espousing op-ed columnists.… A deeply humane memoir with crackles of clarifying insight, Heartland is one of a growing number of important works—including Matthew Desmond's Evicted and Amy Goldstein's Janesville—that together merit their own section in nonfiction aisles across the country: America's postindustrial decline. Or, perhaps, simply: class.
Francesca Mari - New York Times Book Review

In her sharply-observed, big-hearted memoir, Heartland, Smarsh chronicles the human toll of inequality, her own childhood a case study …what this book offers is a tour through the messy and changed reality of the American dream, and a love letter to the unruly but still beautiful place she called home.
Boston Globe

A poignant look at growing up in a town 30 miles from the nearest city; learning the value and satisfaction of hard, blue-collar work, and then learning that the rest of the country see that work as something to be pitied; watching her young mother's frustration with living at the "dangerous crossroads of gender and poverty" and understanding that such a fate might be hers, too. This idea is the thread that Smarsh so gracefully weaves throughout the narrative; she addresses the hypothetical child she might or might not eventually have and in doing so addresses all that the next generation Middle Americans living in poverty will face.
Buzzfeed

The difficulty of transcending poverty is the message behind this personal history of growing up in the dusty farmlands of Kansas, where "nothing was more painful …than true things being denied." …The takeaway? The working poor don't need our pity; they need to be heard above the din of cliché and without so-called expert interpretation. Smarsh's family are expert enough to correct any misunderstandings about their lives.
Oprah.com

Startlingly vivid.… [A]n absorbing, important work in a country that needs to know more about itself.
Christian Science Monitor

Smarsh’s family history, tracing generations of teen mothers and Kansas farmer-laborers, forsakes detailed analysis of Trumpland poverty in favor of a first-person perspective colored by a sophisticated (if general) understanding of structural inequality. But most importantly, her project is shot through with compassion and pride for the screwed-over working class, even while narrating her emergence from it, diving into college instead of motherhood.
Vulture

Sarah Smarsh looks at class divides in the United States while sharing her own story of growing up in poverty before ultimately becoming a fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Her memoir doesn’t just focus on her own story; it also examines how multiple generations of her family were affected by economic policies and systems.
Bustle

If you’re working towards a deeper understanding of our ruptured country, then Sarah Smarsh’s memoir and examination of poverty in the American heartland is an essential read. Smarsh chronicles her childhood on the poverty line in Kansas in the ‘80s and ‘90s, and the marginalization of people based on their income. When did earning less mean a person was worth less?
Refinery29

(Starred review) Candid and courageous memoir of growing up in a family of working-class farmers…. Smarsh’s raw and intimate narrative exposes a country of economic inequality that "has failed its children.
Publishers Weekly

[A] countervailing voice to J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy, which blamed individual choices …for any one person ending up in poverty.… While Smarsh ends on a hopeful note, she offers a searing indictment of how the poor are viewed and treated in this country.
Library Journal

(Starred review) [T]he author emphasizes how those with solid financial situations often lack understanding about families such as hers.… A potent social and economic message embedded within an affecting memoir.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. At the beginning of the memoir, Smarsh writes that, as a child, "I heard a voice unlike the ones in my house or on the news that told me my place in the world." What did this other voice tell her? What did the people in her house and on the news say about her?

2. Smarsh is the product of generations of teen pregnancy on her mother’s side. She writes that she was like a penny in a purse, "not worth much, according to the economy, but kept in production." How did this legacy of teenage pregnancy affect her family’s social and economic mobility?

3. Smarsh and her brother were each born just weeks before Reagan won an election, and his economic policies had a tremendous impact on her childhood. Can you describe what that impact looked like?

4. Smarsh describes an incident in which she, as a toddler, pulled a chest of drawers onto herself, forcing her barely postpartum mother to injure herself lifting it up. Smarsh’s father was at work. How does this accident demonstrate the dangers of rural poverty and the fault lines in Jeannie and Nick’s relationship? Are the two related?

5. There were many, many car wrecks in the author’s life and in the lives of members of her family. Why do you think that is?

6. Teresa, Smarsh’s paternal grandmother, had untreated "woman problems" in her youth, according to Nick. What kinds of problems might he have been referring to? How was life in rural Kansas different for women than it was for their farmer husbands?

7. Smarsh writes, "When I was well into adulthood, the United States developed the notion that a dividing line of class and geography separated two essentially different kinds of people." Do you think that’s true? How does Smarsh straddle that line?

8. Betty often said that homeless people should "get a job," even though she and her family struggled economically—and even though she often gave money to those same people. How do you think her values were affected by the class system?

9. Do you believe, as Smarsh writes, that "in America …the house is the ultimate status symbol, and ownership is a source of economic pride"? What do you think the family’s transience meant to Nick, Jeannie, Smarsh, and her brother?

10. How did Bob’s newspaper job and middle-class stability affect the family’s economic situation?

11. Many of the women in Smarsh’s family endured physical violence at the hands of their boyfriends, husbands, and fathers. In what ways does gendered violence inhibit economic stability?

12. Smarsh writes that the women in her family had an "old wisdom" that had more to do with intuition than knowledge or education. Where do you see this in action in the lives of female characters?

13. Consider the specific reality of Smarsh’s life as a high-achieving high school student. What pushed her to excel?

14. What social realities did Smarsh meet in college? How was her life different from those of her fellow students, and how was it similar?

15. Smarsh argues that "this country has failed its children." Do you agree? How does her story demonstrate that, or fail to?
(Questions issued by the publishers.)

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Heaven is for Real: A Little Boy's Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back
Todd Burpo, Colton Burpo, 2011
Thomas Nelson, Inc
163 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780849946158

Summary
A young boy emerges from life-saving surgery with remarkable stories of his visit to heaven.

Heaven Is for Real is the true story of the four-year old son of a small town Nebraska pastor who during emergency surgery slips from consciousness and enters heaven. He survives and begins talking about being able to look down and see the doctor operating and his dad praying in the waiting room. The family didn't know what to believe but soon the evidence was clear.

Colton said he met his miscarried sister, whom no one had told him about, and his great grandfather who died 30 years before Colton was born, then shared impossible-to-know details about each. He describes the horse that only Jesus could ride, about how "reaaally big" God and his chair are, and how the Holy Spirit "shoots down power" from heaven to help us.

Told by the father, but often in Colton's own words, the disarmingly simple message is heaven is a real place, Jesus really loves children, and be ready, there is a coming last battle. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
Todd Burpo is pastor of Crossroads Wesleyan, a wrestling coach, a volunteer fireman, and he operates a garage door company with his wife, Sonja, who is also a children’s minister, busy pastor’s wife, and mom. Colton, now an active 11-year-old, has an older sister Cassie and a younger brother Colby. The family lives in Imperial, Nebraska. (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
Much of the book’s success has been fueled by word of mouth, since it did not begin with the usual best-seller channels: there has been no elaborate book tour, big-name publisher or brand-name author.... [Patricia Bostelman of Barnes & Noble] said, “But what was unusual about this book was that it was the story of a little boy. It deactivated some of the cynicism that can go along with adults capitalizing on their experiences.”
New York Times

Burpo, a Wesleyan pastor in rural Nebraska, recounts the story of his son's mystic vision of heaven while the youngster was suffering from a near-fatal illness in the spring of 2003. Through the course of the work, Burpo recalls conversations he had with his son about what heaven was like. Christians will be encouraged, non-Christians not at all. This work is written in a plain, conversational style that Dean Gallagher narrates with great skill. Gallagher reads at a pace that is never hurried, even when recalling stressful incidents. He is expressive, but never melodramatic, throughout the production--especially when relating the anguish Burpo and his wife felt at nearly losing their child..
AudioFile

Colton's detailed account includes floating away, looking down on his dad praying in the hospital, seeing God's throne, and meeting relatives---including his sister who died in a miscarriage (and whom his parents had never mentioned). Riveting!.
Christianbook.com

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 Heaven Is For Real:

1. Have you read other accounts of those who have experienced heaven? If so, how does Colton's experience compare?

2.Does the way in which Colton reveals his journey—little by little, piece at a time, rather than all at once—make his story more, or less, credible for you?

3. In what way would you say that Colton's young age (he was four) influences his vision of heaven? Would it have been different had he been, say 34...or 64?

4. Do Colton's descriptions of heaven fit your own conception of heaven? If so, how. If not, why not?

5. What do you make of Colton's description of Jesus's blues eyes as and that he was seated on a horse?

6. In what ways do Colton's reporting shift from a descriptive vision of heaven to a more prophetic one?

7. Talk about the scriptural parallels between Colton's descriptions and predictions of heaven.

8. How do you explain the great popularity of this book? Why are people are drawn to books about those who experience heaven? Why is the attraction so powerful? What are people seeking?

9. Some readers wish that Todd Burpo had devoted more time to his son's experience of heaven—that too much of the book revolves around the Burpo family's life and Colton's illness, rather than Colton's "Trip to Heaven and Back." Do you agree ... or disagree?

10. What surprises you most about Colton's journey? What pleases or delights you most...or disturbs you? Overall, what is your reaction to Heaven Is For Real?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please fee free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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Heck on Heels: Still Balancing on Shoes, Love & Chocolate!
Mary T. Wagner, 2009
CreateSpace
206 pp.
ISBN-13: 978148202208

Summary

I thought briefly about packing the shotgun, but the car was nearly full and I was exhausted with 120 miles yet to drive. I also left the chain saw behind. Not that I'm sure I couldn't find a use for it.… Squadrons of geese flew overhead, and a hawk soared over the interstate, utterly unconcerned with the myriad human dramas unfolding below him at seventy miles an hour on six lanes of traffic. I was headed back to Chicago, my home town, for the worst of all possible reasons.

Following in the spike-heeled footsteps of Wagner’s critically acclaimed debut essay collection, Running with Stilettos, this amusing, touching and heartfelt collection of inspiring and empowering essays unfolds in a voice described as “bed time tales for grownups" and "the Midwest’s answer to Carrie Bradshaw. It also includes several dozen of Wagner's nature photos, combining to create a "portable serenity zone" within its pages.

Wagner (once a journalist and now a prosecuting attorney) writes for the modern woman who deftly juggles career, family, love and chocolate all at once...and still sees the whole stack come crashing down from time to time. Weaving tales of humor and heartbreak, triumph and tragedy, Wagner brings her readers along as she savors the post-divorce view from the back seat of a Harley, reflects on the maternal importance of “theme” cupcakes, gets back on a horse after a terrible, life-changing riding accident, and keeps a vigil by her father’s deathbed. She also shares her inspiring journey from stay-at-home soccer mom to arguing cases before the state supreme court…after an accident that put her in a body cast for three months.

For every busy woman who's asked herself "is there one more goal I can shoot for?"...and then answered "YES!!" (From the author.)

Author Bio
• Birth—won't say; will admit to "north of fifty"
• Where—Chicago, Illinois, USA
• Education—B.A., J.D., Marquette University
• Currently—lives in southeastern Wisconsin

Mary T. Wagner is a former newspaper and magazine journalist who changed careers at forty by going to law school and becoming a criminal prosecutor. Her legal experience has ranged from handling speeding tickets to arguing and winning several cases before the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

A mother of four and a recent grandmother, she lives in rural Wisconsin, where she draws much inspiration for writing from daily walks in the countryside with her dog, Lucky, and the cat who thinks he's a dog...The Meatball. While she was still a full-time "soccer mom," Wagner balanced diapers, dinners and driving duty with freelance writing about public broadcasting programming. Her PBS interviews ran the gamut from Fred Rogers and Captain Kangaroo to legendary conservative icon William F. Buckley, Jr.

Wagner's slice-of-life essays have appeared on her signature website, "Running with Stilettos," as well as at Flashionista, More.com, Shortbread Stories, RedRoom, Open Salon, The Front Porch Review, Growing Bolder, and The Write City.

Her third essay collection, Fabulous in Flats, was named "Published Book of the Year" in 2011 by the Florida Writers Association.

Life experience includes motherhood, and stints as a girl scout troop leader, truck stop waitress, office temp, judicial clerk, and radio talk show host. She counts both wearing spike heels and learning to use a cordless drill and chainsaw among her "late blooming" discoveries, and would be hard pressed to surrender either her favorite stilettos or her power tools." (From the author.)

Visit Mary on Facebook.

Book Reviews
Brilliantly entertaining and enjoyable. Heck on Heels is the second book from award winning author, Mary T Wagner. The journalist turned lawyer turned to blogging after an accident and Running with Stilettos was born. Before long a collection of the essays from the blog were gathered and a very successful book by the same name emerged.

Heck on Heels is the second installment of essays from Mary and she has recently repackaged them into an e-book to create what she calls "some lovely `take me away' moments." And they are lovely. Not to mention often funny, sometimes sad, and very inspirational. Whether she is talking about munching M&Ms while trying to stop her promotional poster being blown away at her first book fair or removing a dead mouse from the hood fan over the stove, Wagner is entertaining and down to earth at the same time.

Non fiction can be tricky to write; it often ends up either cringingly self lampooning or so deadly serious it is depressing (which is not to say that it always does, simply that there is that risk). Wagner has deftly sidestepped both pot holes and produced a wonderfully entertaining series of snapshots of her life that will leave you wanting to read more.
Angelique Jurd - The Kindle Book Review (5 stars)

It's hard to live life at full speeds when you have to delicately balance your feet. Heck on Heels: Still Balancing on Shoes, Love, and Chocolate! is a humorous memoir from Mary T. Wagner as she presents her own pursuits in life and faces everything thrown her way. Charming wisdom any woman would peruse, Heck on Heels is a very highly recommended and fun read.
Midwest Book Review (5 stars)

Fascinating Read! Once I started reading this book, I almost could not stop. Which is kind of important when you must do most of your reading on your break time at work. I found myself so fascinated and involved in what I was reading, well, the time just flew and I had to go back to work. Could hardly wait to get back to where I had left off. Absolutely would recommend this book. Especially to anyone who has had to balance a job with taking care of elderly relatives. Mary had me alternately laughing and crying and sometimes both at the same time.
V Jo - Amazon Customer Review (5 stars)

Discussion Questions
1. Mary has often been described as “living in the moment,” letting serendipity guide her choices and experiences. Do you enjoy that as well in your own life…or does that “make it up as you go” quality drive you bonkers? Why or why not? Would you trust Mary to pack your suitcase before a trip abroad?

2. In “Makeshift Christmas,” Mary contrasts the holiday—overshadowed by distant but pressing family emergencies and short on shopping and decorating—with the year before, when she had modeled herself on Martha Stewart, apparently compensating for her recent divorce. What family holiday traditions would you throw overboard if you were thrown into a crisis mode? Which would you try to keep and why? Are there any you would absolutely insist on?

3. In this collection of essays, Mary includes several dozen of her nature photos. Do these add to your connection with her or not? Which photo is your favorite, and why? And which essay is your favorite, and why?

4. Discuss the book’s structure and Mary’s use of language and writing style. Does it draw you in and keep you engaged? Is she someone you would feel comfortable sharing a cup of coffee with?

5. The book’s subtitle is “Still Balancing on Shoes, Love and Chocolate!” What are the “must-haves” in your life that keep you going through the rough stretches? What does each of them bring to you that makes you strong? Is there value just in the thing itself, or is there some history that you draw from as well?

6. Discuss Mary’s relationship with her children. How has motherhood defined her? Can you identify with her perspective in “Love in the Time of Cupcakes”? Is there one thing in your own experience that is a time-honored symbol of love?

7. In the essay “The Volcano Diaries,” Mary confesses to abandoning her quest to reach the summit of a mountain because of her fear of heights…but eventually realizes that she has still gone farther than she thought she could. Is there a time you have “fallen short” in your own life’s journey that still feels like a success of sorts? Is it true that people learn more from failure than success?

8. Do you think that Mary’s introduction to gardening has made her grow as a person? Why? What does her flower garden symbolize for her? Do you have a similar experience to share of taking a wasteland and bringing it to life? How did it make you feel? Were there any surprises along the way?

9. Stepping off the beaten path back into the forest is clearly one of Mary’s “recharging” zones. What have you done, or what would you like to do, to step out of your “pressure cooker” life? Is nature a replenishing place for you, or do you prefer the surroundings of a mall…or a spa? Why?

10. In “Disconnected,” Mary severs nearly all ties with the “wired” world for a few days on a road trip to Michigan, and feels absolutely transported. Do you ever disconnect entirely from your cell phone and email access? Is it easy to do or does it leave you anxious? Discuss how our reliance on technology at our fingertips makes life and parenting different from when you were growing up.

11. Mary is also a criminal prosecutor, and describes her emotional reaction at a sentencing hearing for a young man convicted of rape, fearing that she will never be “tough enough” to do all that her job requires. What combination of factors in her life do you think converged at that moment to bring her to tears? Do you think that was a sign of weakness, or do you think that emotions and experience have a valid place in that position? Would you view her emotional response and perspective that day differently if Mary was male?

12. In “Pelican Lessons,” Mary writes of ignoring her first instincts while standing in the marsh, watching a trio of enormous white birds descend, and the eventual discovery that “logic” had proved wrong and her gut feelings about what she saw were right the first time. Can you think back to something similar in your own life? Is there a single experience that has tipped the balance for you in terms of trusting your instincts in the future? Or do you rely more on logic and caution in making decisions?

13. Riding on the back of a Harley during her “post-divorce” dating spree was clearly a “first” for Mary in her life and relationship history. What do you think that going out with the guy with the bike symbolized for her? Was the act of getting on the back seat just colored by a fear of falling off, or were there deeper fears at work? Do you agree with her “take me away” characterization is a good one? Do you think there’s a wee bit of lingering “rescue fantasy” in her mindset, despite all the competence she’s gained with her power tools?

14. In “Rabbit Season,” Mary describes buying a pet rabbit after going to the county fair, but finds that this was a pet that just did not fit well with the family. Have you ever found yourself in the situation of having to give an animal away after buying or adopting it? Was it an easy or hard decision? Was there an element of guilt that you had to wrestle with? What was your final tipping point in taking that step?”

15. Mary clearly tries to “go the extra mile” for her children, to provide them with at least some of the stability growing up that she lacked. Is this just a one-way street, or does she draw as much or more from her children than she gives? Discuss the complicated ways that parenthood changes the parent as much as the child.
(Questions provided courtesy of the author.)

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Hedy's Folly The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World
Richard Rhodes, 2011
Knopf Doubleday
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385534383

Summary
What do Hedy Lamarr, avant-garde composer George Antheil, and your cell phone have in common? The answer is spread-spectrum radio: a revolutionary invention based on the rapid switching of communications signals among a spread of different frequencies.

Without this technology, we would not have the digital comforts that we take for granted today. Only a writer of Richard Rhodes’s caliber could do justice to this remarkable story. Unhappily married to a Nazi arms dealer, Lamarr fled to America at the start of World War II; she brought with her not only her theatrical talent but also a gift for technical innovation. An introduction to Antheil at a Hollywood dinner table culminated in a U.S. patent for a jam- proof radio guidance system for torpedoes—the unlikely duo’s gift to the U.S. war effort.

What other book brings together 1920s Paris, player pianos, Nazi weaponry, and digital wireless into one satisfying whole? In its juxtaposition of Hollywood glamour with the reality of a brutal war, Hedy’s Folly is a riveting book about unlikely amateur inventors collaborating to change the world. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—July 4, 1937
• Where—Kansas City, Kansas, USA
• Education—B.A., Yale University
• Awards—Pulitzer Prize; National Book Award;
National Book Critics Circle Award
• Currently—lives in California

Richard Lee Rhodes is an American journalist, historian, and author of both fiction and non-fiction (which he prefers to call "verity"), including the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Making of the Atomic Bomb (1986), The Twilight of the Bombs (2010), and Hedy's Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of the Most Beautiful Woman in the World (2011). He has been awarded grants from the Ford Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation among others. He is an affiliate of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. He also frequently gives lectures and talks on a broad range of subjects to various audiences, including testifying before the U.S. Senate on nuclear energy.

Rhodes was born in Kansas City, Kansas. Following his mother's suicide when he was only a year old, Rhodes, along with his older (by a year and a half) brother Stanley, was raised in and around Kansas City, Missouri, by his father, a railroad boilermaker with a third-grade education. When Rhodes was ten their father remarried a woman who starved, exploited, and abused the children. Stan, age 13, standing 5’ 4” and weighing an emaciated 98 pounds, saved both boys by walking into a police station and reporting to the authorities the conditions under which they lived. (For these details and others see Rhodes’ memoir A Hole in the World.) The boys were sent to the Andrew Drumm Institute, an institution for boys founded in 1928 in Independence, Missouri. The admission of the brothers was something of an anomaly as the institution was designed for orphaned or indigent boys and they fit neither category. The Drumm Institute is still in operation today, and now accepts both boys and girls. Rhodes became a member of the board of trustees in 1991.

Richard and Stanley lived at Drumm for the remainder of their adolescence. Both graduated from high school. Rhodes was admitted to Yale University and received a Scholarship, which awarded him full tuition, room, board, and other expenses for four years. Rhodes graduated with honors in 1959.

He went on to publish 21 books and numerous articles for national magazines; his best-known work, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, was published in 1986 and earned Rhodes the Pulitzer Prize and numerous other awards. Many of his personal documents and research materials are part of the Kansas Collection at the Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas.

He is the father of two children, is a grandfather, and currently resides in California with his wife, Dr. Ginger Rhodes.

Nuclear history series
Rhodes came to national prominence with his 1986 book, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, a narrative of the history of the people and events during World War II from the discoveries leading to the science of nuclear fission in the 1930s, through the Manhattan Project and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Among its many honors, the 900-page book won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction (in 1988), a National Book Award, and a National Book Critics Circle Award, and has sold many hundreds of thousands of copies in English alone, as well as having been translated into a dozen or so other languages.

Praised by both historians and former Los Alamos weapon scientists alike, the book is considered a general authority on early nuclear weapons history, as well as the development of modern physics in general, during the first half of the 20th century. According to a citation on the first page of the book, Nobel Laureate Isidor Rabi, one of the prime participants in the dawn of the atomic age, said about the book,

An epic worthy of Milton. Nowhere else have I seen the whole story put down with such elegance and gusto and in such revealing detail and simple language which carries the reader through wonderful and profound scientific discoveries and their application.

In 1992, Rhodes followed it up by compiling, editing, and writing the introduction to an annotated version of The Los Alamos Primer, by Manhattan Project scientist Robert Serber. The Primer was a set of lectures given to new arrivals at the secret Los Alamos laboratory during wartime in order to get them up to speed about the prominent questions needing to be solved in bomb design, and had been largely declassified in 1965, but was not widely available.

In 1993, Rhodes published Nuclear Renewal: Commonsense about Energy detailing the history of the nuclear power industry in the United States, and future promises of nuclear power.

Rhodes published a sequel to The Making of the Atomic Bomb in 1995, Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb, which told the story of the atomic espionage during World War II (Klaus Fuchs, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, among others), the debates over whether the hydrogen bomb ought to be produced, and the eventual creation of the bomb and its consequences for the arms race.

In 2007, Rhodes published Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race, a chronicle of the arms buildups during the Cold War, especially focusing on Mikhail Gorbachev and the Reagan administration.

The Twilight of the Bombs, the fourth and final volume in his series on nuclear history, was published in 2010. The book documents, among other topics, the post-Cold War nuclear history of the world, nuclear proliferation, and nuclear terrorism.

Other works
John James Audubon, published in 2004, is a biography of the French-born American artist, John James Audubon (1785–1851). Audubon is known for his life-sized watercolor illustrations of birds and wildlife, including Birds of America, a multivolume work published through subscriptions in the mid-19th century, first in England and then in the United States. Rhodes also edited a collection of Audubon's letters and writings, The Audubon Reader.

Rhodes' 1997 book Deadly Feasts is a work of verity concerning transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSE), prions, and the career of Daniel Carleton Gajdusek. It reviews the history of TSE epidemics, beginning with the infection of large numbers of the Fore people of the New Guinea Eastern Highlands during a period when they consumed their dead in mortuary feasts, and explores the link between new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (nvCJD) in humans and the consumption of beef contaminated with bovine spongiform encephalopathy, commonly referred to as "mad cow disease."

Though less well known as a writer of fiction, Rhodes is also the author of four novels. Three of the four are currently out of print, but The Ungodly: A Novel of the Donner Party, his first, was reissued in a new edition in 2007 by Stanford University Press. (Adapted from Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews
Rhodes’s talent is making the scientifically complex accessible to the proverbial lay reader with clarity and without dumbing down the essentials of his topics...along the way he expertly weaves social and cultural commentary into his narrative.... Behind the uniqueness of this story lie deeper themes that Rhodes touches upon: the gender biases against beautiful and intelligent women, the delicate interpersonal politics of scientific collaboration and...the neverending, implacable conflict between art and Mammon in American culture.
John Adams - New York Times Book Review

With admirable and tenacious skill, Richard Rhodes' new book on Hollywood screen legend Hedy Lamarr unveils the inquisitive brain behind the beauty.... [It] reads at turns like a romance novel, patent law primer, noir narrative and exercise in forensic psychology.... Rhodes...ends up shedding valuable insight on the Hollywood mythmaking of the era.
Adam Tschorn - Los Angeles Times

A focused glimpse into one actress’ remarkable life, and the rare mix of war, patriotism and intellect that fomented her unlikely invention.
Alexandria Witze - Dallas Morning News

If the subtitle of this book—The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World—doesn’t make you want to read, nothing we say is likely to change your mind. But we will add this much: Rhodes, who has written about everything from atomic power to sex to John James Audubon, is apparently incapable of writing a bad book and most of what he does is absolutely superior, including this tale that has Nazi weapons, Hollywood stars, 20th century classical music, and the earliest versions of digital wireless.
Daily Beast

Actresses often long to turn director, but how many of them yearn to turn inventor? Given the success that the screen siren Hedy Lamarr achieved in that realm—revealed in Richard Rhodes’s fascinating biography, Hedy’s Folly—it’s a pity more of them don’t consider it.... Rhodes’s beguiling book shows Hedy Lamarr to have been a secret weapon in more ways than one.
Newsweek

[M]ost people were reluctant to believe that the most beautiful woman in the word had an invetor's brain; but one man who came to believe in her was George Antheil.... Richard Rhodes...is the perfect historian to describe the abilities of Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil as scientists and inventors. In Hedy's Folly, Rhodes is also very good on culture-rich Vienna...[and] the Hollywood of the '30s and '40s.
Larry McMurtry - Harpers

[Rhodes] once again interweaves moving biographical portraits with dramatic depictions of scientific discovery.... [He] proves adept at elucidating the science behind this invention and the subsequent development of spread-spectrum systems (which today enable the use of cell phones and Wi-Fi), but his particular genius lies in placing the invention within a tumultuous historical moment.... With crisp, unadorned prose and plentiful quotes from primary sources, [he] paints a compelling history.... [Hedy's Folly] proves a riveting narrative, propelled by the ambition and idiosyncrasies of the inventors at its core.
Nick Bascom - Science News

In symphonic control of a great wealth of fresh and stimulating material, and profoundly attuned to the complex ramifications of Lamarr’s and Antheil’s struggles and achievements (Lamarr finally received recognition as an electronic pioneer late in life), Rhodes incisively, wittily, and dramatically brings to light a singular convergence of two beyond-category artists who overtly and covertly changed the world. —Donna Seaman
Booklist

Take a silver-screen sex goddess (Hedy Lamarr), an avant-garde composer (George Antheil).... What results is a patent for spread-spectrum radio, which has impacted the development of everything from torpedoes to cell phones and GPS technologies.... Hedy Lamarr is experiencing something of a renaissance, and Rhodes's book adds another layer to the life of a beautiful woman who was so much more than the sum of her parts. It will appeal to a wide array of readers, from film, technology, and patent scholars to those looking for an unusual romp through World War II–era Hollywood. —Teri Shiel
Library Journal

[A] surprising story of a pivotal invention produced during World War II by a pair of most unlikely inventors—an avant-garde composer and the world's most glamorous movie star.... Antheil died before earning any recognition for this achievement, but Lamarr, late in her life, did receive awards. The author quotes liberally—perhaps overly so—from the memoirs of his principals. A faded blossom of a story, artfully restored to bright bloom.
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 Hedy's Folly:

1. Author Richard Rhodes has evoked a powerful sense of time and place for Vienna and Paris during the 1920s and '30s. What struck you most about either of those two societies? What, for instance, was Vienna like during Hedwig Kiesler's growing-up years, especially for someone of her talent and ambition? How did her childhood shape Hedy, the woman she would become?

2. What was young George Antheil attempting to express with his style of musical composition? Why did he want to distance his work from the lush Romanticism of the previous generation? Why did he refer to his pieces as "Mechanisms"? How would you have reacted had you been at a performance of his avant-garde creations? In what way could you say that Antheil's purusits prefigured his development of weapons guidance technology?

3. Discuss the increasing brutality of Germany as it headed into the Nazi era. What was the nature of Fritz Mandl's (Hedy's husband) involvement with the rising fascists?

4. What was behind Lamarr's decision to leave her husband and to run off with only a suitcase of clothes and handful of jewels?

5. Rhodes claims that Hedy was no intellectual but rather a "tinkerer." How do you explain her ability to absorb and later recall the complex, detailed information on weapons systems that she picked up while listening around the edges of conversations at parties she hosted? How did her abilities and Antheil's unusual musical interests hook up to create their torpedo guidance system?

6. Rhodes writes that "Hedy invented to challenge and amuse herself and bring order to a world she thought chaotic." Was that truly her motivation? Is it true for most inventors?

7. If you have a technical bent, describe the nature of the spread-spectrum guidance system which Lamarr and Antheil invented during World War II. Can you explain how it helped point the way toward remote controls, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and the cordless phones we take for granted today?

8. Why did the U.S. Navy dismiss Lamarr and Antheil's findings? One reviewer writes that he himself was first taken aback at the thought of Lamarr patenting a weapons system, saying it was like "being told that Ali MacGraw developed the science behind napalm." Was there (is there still) a sort of prejudice at work—or simply a set of realistic expectations as to where scientific capabilities reside? Might there be other reasons why the duo's invention was ignored for so many years?

9. A number of reviewers have remarked that, as biographies go, Rhodes's work offers little indepth character analysis of either Hedy Lamarr or George Antheil—and that the author is not really terribly interested in his two subjects. Do you agree or disagree?

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Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers
Anne Lamott, 2012
Penguin Group (USA)
112 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781594631290

Summary
New York Times-bestselling author Anne Lamott writes about the three simple prayers essential to coming through tough times, difficult days and the hardships of daily life.

Readers of all ages have followed and cherished Anne Lamott’s funny and perceptive writing about her own faith through decades of trial and error. And in her new book, Help, Thanks, Wow, she has coalesced everything she knows about prayer to these fundamentals.

It is these three prayers—asking for assistance from a higher power, appreciating what we have that is good, and feeling awe at the world around us—that can get us through the day and can show us the way forward. In Help, Thanks, Wow, Lamott recounts how she came to these insights, explains what they mean to her and how they have helped, and explores how others have embraced these same ideas.

Insightful and honest as only Anne Lamott can be, Help, Thanks, Wow is the everyday faith book that new Lamott readers will love and longtime Lamott fans will treasure. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1954
• WhereSan Francisco, California, USA
• Education—Goucher College (Maryland)
• Awards—Guggenheim Fellow
• Currently—lives in Northern California

Anne Lamott's recovery from alcoholism and drug abuse helped her career in two ways. First, it marked an artistic rebound for the novelist; second, she's become an inspirational figure to fans who have read her frank, funny nonfiction books covering topics from motherhood to religion to, yes, fighting for sobriety.

Early on, Lamott's hard-luck novels were impressive chronicles of family strife punctuated by bad (but often entertaining) behavior. Everyone in Lamott's books is sort of screwed up, but she stocks them with a humor and core decency that make them hard to resist. In Hard Laughter, she tells the (semi-autobiographical) story of a dysfunctional family rocked by the father's brain tumor diagnosis. In Rosie and its 1997 sequel, Crooked Little Heart, the heroines are a sassy teenage girl and her alcoholic, widowed mom. Another precocious child provides the point of view in All New People, in which a girl rides out the waves of the 1960s with her nutty parents.

Lamott's conversational, direct style and cynical humor have always been strengths, and with All New People—the first book she wrote after getting sober—she turned a corner. Reedeming herself from the disastrous reviews of her messy (too much so, even for the endearingly messy Lamott) 1985 third novel Joe Jones, Lamott's talent came back into focus. "Anne Lamott is a cause for celebrations," the New Yorker effused. "[Her] real genius lies in capturing the ineffable, describing not perfect moments, but imperfect ones...perfectly. She is nothing short of miraculous."

That said, Lamott's sensibility is not for everyone. The faith, both human and spiritual, in her books is accompanied by her unsparing irony and a distinct disregard for wholesomeness or conventionality; and God here is for sinners as much as (if not more than) for saints. Her girls are often not girls but half-adults; her adults, vice-versa. She finds the adolescent, weak spots in all her characters, making them people to root for at the same time.

Among Lamott's most messy, troubled characters is the author herself, and she began turning this to her advantage with the 1993 memoir Operating Instructions, a single mom's meditation on the big experiment—failures included—of new parenthood. It was also in this book that Lamott "came out of the closet" with her Christianity, and earned a whole new following that grew with her subsequent memoirs, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life and Traveling Mercies. However gifted Lamott was at conveying fictional stories, it was in telling her own stories that her self-deprecating humor and hard-earned wisdom really made themselves known, and loved by readers.

Extras
• Lamott's Joe Jones, which is now out of print, was so poorly received that it sent the alcoholic Lamott into a tailspin. "When Joe Jones came out I really got trashed," she told the New York Times in 1997. "I got 27 bad reviews. It was kind of exhilarating in its way. I was still drinking and I woke up every morning feeling so sick, I literally felt I was pinned to the bed by centrifugal force. I wouldn't have very many memories of what had happened the night before. I'd have to call around, and I could tell by people's reaction whether I'd pulled it off or not. I was really humiliating myself. It was bad."

• Lamott's father was a writer who instilled the belief in her that it was a privilege in life to be an artist, as opposed to having a regular job. But she stresses to students that it doesn't happen overnight; that the work has to be measured in small steps, with continual efforts to improve. She said in an NPR interivew, "I've published six books and I still worry that the phone is going to ring and [someone] is going to say, 'Okay, the jig is up, you have to get a job..."'

• In an essay accompanying Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith, Lamott described her decision to begin writing in earnest about Christianity:

Thirteen years ago, I first lurched—very hung over—into a little church in one of the poorest communities in California. Without this church, I do not think I would have survived the last few years of my drinking. But even so, I had written about the people there only in passing. I did, however, speak about the church whenever I could, sheepishly shoehorning in a story or two. But it wasn't really until my fifth book [Operating Instructions] that I came out of the closet as a real believer.... I started to realize that there was a great hunger and thirst for regular, cynical, ragbag people to talk about God...." (Author bio and interview from Barnes & Noble.)

Book Reviews
Filled with Lamott's unique brand of humor, wisdom and profound spiritual insight… She has a gift for putting into words what it means to accept and ultimately embrace the beauty, mystery, and pain that is life.
San Antonio Express-News

[A] prayer manual for people who wouldn’t be caught dead reading prayer manuals. As such it may surprise, a bit, some of Lamott’s most secular readers. But it takes a very familiar voice in a newish direction, and may attract younger readers whose religious preference is more offbeat than orthodox. It reads like it needed longer gestation or one more rewrite to go from casual-casual to casual-polished, but anybody who gets it as a holiday gift will likely just say, “Thanks. Wow.”
Publishers Weekly

An imaginative do-it-yourself approach to spirituality…. With a stand-up comic’s snap and pop, candid and righteous Lamott tells hilarious and wrenching tales about various predicaments that have sparked her prayers and inspired her to encourage others to pray anytime, anywhere, and any way.
Booklist

A refreshingly simple approach to spiritual practice in a pint-sized reflection on prayer.... In what at first may seem like a jumbled mashup of stories and reflections, Lamott manages to deftly convey the idea that in trying to control things, we've largely lost our ability to see the good and the miraculous in everyday life. And those commodities go a long way, she writes, in terms of making a Divine connection that brings a measure of hope and peace. Though fans may be dismayed at the brevity of the book, there's more here than meets the eye.
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 Help, Thanks, Wow:

1. Do you consider Help, Thanks, Wow a helpful guide to prayer? Did you pray (at all? regularly?) before you read Lamott's book? Has the book changed your attitude toward prayer or altered your practice of prayer?

2. What is prayer and what is its purpose? What does Lamott suggest prayer is? What do you pray for?

3. Why does Lamott believe that powerlessness is a spiritual condition? Have you ever felt overwhelmed by a sense of powerlessness in your life?

4. Is this a religious book? A spiritual book? Does it clash with or conform to your beliefs?

5. Comment on Anne Lamott's belief in gratitude:

Gratitude begins in our hearts and then dovetails into behavior. It almost always make you willing to be of service, which is where the joy resides. It means that you are willing to stop being such a jerk. When you are aware of all that has been given to you, in your lifetime and the past few days, it is hard not to be humbled, and pleased to give back.

Is practicing gratitude easy for you personally? When life is difficult, how does Lamott think we find gratitude, and why is it important? Are there times when you feel it's impossible to be grateful?

6. Do you find Lamott's irreverence toward God disturbing or refreshing? She refers to God sometimes as "She," and feels that God shouldn't mind when we say we're angry at Him/Her because things aren't going well for us.

7. What does Lamott mean when she quotes C.S. Lewis's line that says, [prayer] "doesn't change God. It changes me." Do you agree or disagree?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, on line or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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Hemingway's Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost
Paul Hendrickson, 2011
Knopf Doubleday
704 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781400075355

Summary
From National Book Critics Circle Award winner Paul Hendrickson, a brilliantly conceived and illuminating reconsideration of a key period in the life of Ernest Hemingway that will forever change the way he is perceived and understood.

Focusing on the years 1934 to 1961—from Hemingway’s pinnacle as the reigning monarch of American letters until his suicide—Paul Hendrickson traces the writer's exultations and despair around the one constant in his life during this time: his beloved boat, Pilar.

Drawing on previously unpublished material, including interviews with Hemingway's sons, Hendrickson shows that for all the writer's boorishness, depression and alcoholism, and despite his choleric anger, he was capable of remarkable generosity—to struggling writers, to lost souls, to the dying son of a friend.

Hemingway's Boat is both stunningly original and deeply gripping, an invaluable contribution to our understanding of this great American writer, published fifty years after his death. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Raised—in midwestern USA
• Education—St. Louis University; Pennsylvania
State University
• Awards—National Book Critics Circle Award
• Currently—lives near Philidelphia, Pennsylvania

Paul Hendrickson’s most recent book, Hemingway's Boat, was published in 2011. He spent seven years on it. It was a national best-seller and a finalist in biography for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His book previous to this, Sons of Mississippi, won the National Book Critics Circle Award in general nonfiction and the Heartland Prize presented annually by the Chicago Tribune. The research and writing were supported by a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts literature fellowship.

Before joining the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, where he received the Provost’s Award for Distinguished Teaching in 2005, Hendrickson worked for thirty years in daily journalism. He was a staff feature writer at the Washington Post from 1977 to 2001. Eventually, he came to understand the truth of the old saying that the legs are the first to go, and that the honorable and difficult business of writing perishable pieces on deadline belonged to younger people. He needed to try to find a place—a home—where he could continue to work on books and the occasional magazine article and to be involved with gifted, creative people. So now, luck beyond dream, fortune beyond hope, he finds himself conducting writing workshops full time at the University of Pennsylvania in advanced nonfiction.

The neophyte professor, hardly young anymore, was born in California but grew up in the Midwest and in a Catholic seminary in the Deep South, where he studied seven years for the missionary priesthood. This became the subject of his first book, published in 1983: Seminary: A Search. His other books are: Looking for the Light: The Hidden Life and Art of Marion Post Wolcott (a finalist for the 1992 National Book Critics Circle Award); and The Living and the Dead: Robert McNamara and Five Lives of a Lost War (finalist for the National Book Award in 1996).

Hendrickson has degrees in American literature from St. Louis University and Penn State. He is married and has two grown sons (both working in media) and lives with his wife, Cecilia, outside Philadelphia. He has entered the terror, the "long joyful sickness"—as John Updike once called it—of the next book project. It has to do with Frank Lloyd Wright and is being supported at its outset by a second National Endowment for the Arts literature fellowship. (From The University of Pennsylvania faculty page.)

Book Reviews
Heartbreaking.... Hemingway’s Boat includes some of the most moving, beautiful pieces of biography I have ever read.... In the best of these streaming "other lives." ... Hendrickson’s two strongest gifts—that compassion and his research and reporting prowess—combine to masterly effect.
Arthur Phillips - New York Times Book Review

A rich book and a wandering one.... Hemingway’s Boat is about Hemingway, about what was good in him and what was bad, about what brought a man who took pleasure in so much to the point where he could take his own life. It is about the joy he spread and the infection he carried.... For Hendrickson, discovering just how unhappy and unsettled Hemingway was for so long makes him more of a hero. He states his case persuasively, which is why this book is so good.
Allan Massie - Wall Street Journal

Large-minded [and] rigorously fair.... An indispensable documen.... With this sterling summation of the entire Hemingway canon, Hendrickson shows what has eluded some very able scholars. A writer’s life can contain two conflicting existences, one of purely original genius and one of irreversible destructiveness. It’s a lucky genius who gets credit for the first and a free pass on the second. Hendrickson issues no free pass to Papa. He gives the ravaged old man something more honest: a fair summing-up of a life like no other.
Howell Raines - Washington Post

Brilliant.... Through painstaking reporting, through conscientious sifting of the evidence, and most of all, through vivid, heartfelt, luminous writing, Hendrickson gets to the heart of both Hemingway and his world.... Hendrickson writes sentences that seem lit from within—but not in a showy way. Rather, they glow with the yearning of the humble seeker, the diligent observer who understands that we’ll never get to the end of the Hemingway story—yet we have to start somewhere.
Julia Keller - Chicago Tribune -Top Picks of 2011

Writing with stylistic verve, great heart and profound insight, Paul Hendrickson gives us a fresh way to understand one of the most written-about, fascinating characters in American letters.... Hendrickson doesn’t reveal Hemingway’s life as much as he illuminates it with his characteristic passion and intelligence, in a great match of biographer and subject.
Elizabeth Taylor - Chicago Tribune

Hendrickson’s engrossing book offers a fresh slant on the rise and fall of a father figure of American literature.
San Francisco Chronicle - Best Books of 2011

Glorious.... A copious, mystical portrait.... [Pilar] proves that there just might be one more way of telling Papa’s story.... Hendrickson handles her like the relic she is, and makes of her a cunning, capable metaphor for Hemingway’s contradictory drives.... Hendrickson fills in the negative space exuberantly. He imagines each scene completely, and then imagines himself into it. The book becomes a participatory biography—the details are rendered with a hallucinatory intensity.... This big-hearted book leaves us with a litany of sorrows, but also images of grace: of heroism in Gigi’s muddled final moments; of tenderness and lucidity in Hemingway’s paranoid last days; and of Pilar and her promise of escape, renewal, and the open sea.
Parul Sehgal - Cleveland Plain-Dealer

An often lyrical mélange of biography, lit-crit meditation and straight reportage...Hendrickson delves deep into the margins, running down fascinating profiles of a handful of characters who had been treated like bit players in earlier works and searching for renewed significance in some episodes that had previously been relegated to footnotes.... Smart and lovingly crafted, a worthy addition.
Larry Lebowitz - Miami Herald

Paul Hendrickson wrote Hemingway’s Boat almost as a rebuke to the many conflicting Hemingway biographies and "daffy critical studies." If he could ground a narrative in something that existed and still exists, that Hemingway loved, if he could learn about such a treasured possession, then maybe he could learn something about Hemingway, too. He does, in spades, and so do Hendrickson’s lucky readers.... Captivating.
Roger K. Miller - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

This may be the great Hemingway book of the past twenty years. It gives us, at long last, the New Hemingway we’ve needed. We are persuaded that, at long last, we have somehow encountered Hemingway whole—apparition and monster, buffoon and barbarian, literary titan and pretender, macho man and soft-hearted benefactor, and above all, the great artist wrestling with anxieties that are secret gifts and advantages that were vicious impediments.... [Hendrickson is] so attentive to detail that he will notice the polish on a woman’s nails, but, at the same time, so intuitive that he can neutralize some of the oldest toxins flowing through the bloodstream of Hemingway’s life narrative.
Jeff Simon - Buffalo News

Engrossing.... Movingly told...Hemingway’s Boat brings a commanding personality—and all the fears and insecurities that came with it—brilliantly to life side by side with the lives of minor characters, neglected witnesses who have their own stories to tell.
J. Malcolm Garcia - Kansas City Star

The most honest and honestly excellent prose about Papa Hemingway to date.... Hendrickson’s quirky, compelling, and compassionate biography of a literary lion slants great.
Linda Elisabeth Beattie - Louisville Courier-Journal

I read [Hemingway’s Boat] without a pause.... [It’s] a biography that is at once admiring and devastating, and full of material that I wouldn’t have thought even existed and of people who knew Hemingway whom I’d never heard of—an eye opener of a book, full of unexpected riches, fascinating digressions, and leaving one at the end wishing the book were longer, and thinking long and hard about the price of fame and success in America, and the dangers of seemingly getting everything you wanted out of life—it just may be the best book I’ve read this year, and certainly the best book I’ve read about an American writer in a long, long time.
Michael Korda - Newsweek - Favorite Books 2011

Rich and enthralling.... Paul Hendrickson is a deeply informed and inspired guide. He often appears in the first person, addressing the reader and exhorting him or her to speculate, imagine, or feel. He has researched exhaustively, been to the places Hemingway frequented, and talked to whoever was part of or had a connection to the Hemingway days. His diligence and spirit are remarkable. It is like traveling with an irrepressible talker who may go off on tangents but never loses the power to amaze.... Hemingway’s Boat is a book written with the virtuosity of a novelist, hagiographic in the right way, sympathetic, assiduous, and imaginative. It does not rival the biographies but rather stands brilliantly beside them—the sea, Key West, Cuba, all the places, the life he had and gloried in. His commanding personality comes to life again in these pages, his great charm and warmth as well as his egotism and aggression.
James Salter - New York Review of Books

The author, an accomplished storyteller, interprets myriad tiny details of Ernest Hemingway’s life, and through them says something new about a writer everyone thinks they know.
The Economist - Books of the Year 2011

There’s never been a biography quite like this one.... The stories are rich with contradiction and humanity, and so raw and immediate you can smell the salt air.
Publishers Weekly - Best Books of 2011: The Top 10

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 Hemingway's Boat:

1. Having read Henderson's account, what do you think of Ernest Hemingway? Many accounts portray him in a negative light—a difficult man, cruel to family and friends, with a massive ego. Hemingway's Boat, however, also offers a more generous portrait—a man who extended kindness and help to those in need. How much did you know about Ernest Hemingway prior to reading this book? Has your opinion of him changed?

2. Point out or discuss the numerous parallels to Hemingway's life that Hendrickson has found in Hemingway's novels. Do these life parallels enrich the reading experience or are they irrelevant?

3. There have been hundreds of books written about Hemingway—more than ten by family members alone. Does this book add anything new? How is Hendrickson able to uncover stories and people that other writers have overlooked?

4. Many reviewers criticize the “endless speculation” over questions that no biographer is able to answer. Do you think too much of Henderson's book is based on speculation rather than a careful collation of facts?

5. Some reviewers say Hendrickson devotes too many spages to are spent on big game fishing, overly specific jargon. Do you feel this detracts from...or slows the pace of the prose? Or does it enhance the reading experience?

6. Talk about the relationship between Hemingway and his youngest son, Gregory-Gigi. Both men led tortured lives with tragic endings. Do you agree with Henderson's suggestion that Gigi was acting out many of the same tensions that his father felt but suppressed? Do you believe that their tumultuous relationship was because Hemginway recognized parts of himself in Gigi?

7. Why does Hemingway consider Pilar his most treasured possession? Talk about the role the boat plays in his life. Do you have a Pilar in your life?

8. Hendrickson delves deep into the lives on Arnold Samuelson and Walter Hock, including large sections of their lives before meeting Hemingway? Why does he spend so much time on the two characters. Does this enhance, or distract, from the narrative?

9. What are your thoughts about the author moving in and out of the first-person narrative and repetitive mention of his research and methodology? Interesting, distracting?

10. Why did you choose this book? Are you a devoted Hemingway fan...or a new one? Has reading this book enticed you to read (or reread) any of his work?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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Her: A Memoir
Christa Parravani, 2013
Henry Holt & Co.
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780805096538

Summary
A blazingly passionate memoir of identity and love: when a charismatic and troubled young woman dies tragically, her identical twin must struggle to survive

Christa Parravani and her identical twin, Cara, were linked by a bond that went beyond siblinghood, beyond sisterhood, beyond friendship. Raised up from poverty by a determined single mother, the gifted and beautiful twins were able to create a private haven of splendor and merriment between themselves and then earn their way to a prestigious college and to careers as artists (a photographer and a writer, respectively) and to young marriages. But, haunted by childhood experiences with father figures and further damaged by being raped as a young adult, Cara veered off the path to robust work and life and in to depression, drugs and a shocking early death.

A few years after Cara was gone, Christa read that when an identical twin dies, regardless of the cause, 50 percent of the time the surviving twin dies within two years; and this shocking statistic rang true to her. "Flip a coin," she thought," those were my chances of survival." First, Christa fought to stop her sister's downward spiral; suddenly, she was struggling to keep herself alive.

Beautifully written, mesmerizingly rich and true, Christa Parravani's account of being left, one half of a whole, and of her desperate, ultimately triumphant struggle for survival is informative, heart-wrenching and unforgettably beautiful. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1978
• Raised—Guilderland, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Bard College; M.F.A, Columbia University;
M.F.A., Rutgers University
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York City, New York

Christa Parravani is a writer and photographer. Her photographs have been exhibited internationally, and are represented by the Michael Foley Gallery in New York City and the Kopeikin gallery in Los Angeles. She has taught photography at Dartmouth College, Columbia University and UMass, Amherst. She earned her MFA in Visual Art from Columbia University and her MFA in Creative Writing from Rutgers Newark. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, the writer Anthony Swofford (Jarhead) and their daughter. (From the publihser.)

Book Reviews
Christa Parravani powerfully transforms her anguish over the traumatic death of her troubled identical sister into the astonishing Her.
Vanity Fair

A photographer and identical twin tells the intimately delineated, raw story of her beloved sister’s overdose on heroin and untimely death at age 28 in 2006. Emotionally attuned and protectively close to each other since growing up in Schenectady to parents in a rocky marriage before their strong-willed mother essentially raised them on her own, Parravani and her sister, Cara, were obsessed with the other for much of their lives: critical of their shared but subtly different looks; jealous of the other’s boyfriends, then husbands; and certain that the twins would die somehow together. In her mid-20s Cara was violently raped in the woods near her Holyoke, Mass., home, and spiraled into drug abuse (e.g., prescription drugs, heroin) from what was eventually diagnosed as “post-traumatic stress disorder with borderline features.” Her self-destruction imposed an enormous toll on the author, who felt responsible for her sister and riddled by guilt: “I feel like her life is in my hands,” Parravani said to her then-husband. In between Cara’s stays in rehab and mental hospitals, the author took numerous photographs of her sister and herself together as part of her growing artistic and teaching oeuvre, and in acutely observed passages (also alternating with Cara’s diary entries), the author describes her eerie attempts to create for the camera identical likenesses. Cara’s death sent the author into her own drug-induced death wish, before she pulled back from the brink; her memoir is a finely wrought achievement of grace, emotional honesty, and self-possession.
Publishers Weekly

There's great in-house excitement about this memoir by photographer Parravani, writing about what it's been like to have lived with and lost twin sister Cara, a talented writer sucked into a downward spiral of drugs and depression that led to an early death. Raised by a tough-minded single mother, the sisters were stung early by their father's rejection; Cara was also raped as a young adult, which magnified her pain. Christa reflects on their close bond and the struggle to survive without Cara. With a reading group guide and intensive promotion.
Library Journal

(Starred review.) Concise and captivating, Parravani’s prose paints her phoenix-like transformation such that the reader feels the flames of her fire. A poignant, book-arcing metaphor illustrates Christa’s battle to accept herself with a mirror-image. Raw and unstoppable, Her illuminates the triumph of the human spirit – both individual and shared.
Booklist

In this haunting memoir, photographer Parravani deconstructs the intense bonds between identical twins, the trauma of her sister's death and her battle against similar self-destruction. Raised by a strong-willed mother, the twins, Christa and Cara, shared a magical, intense and creative world of their own making. Plagued by unstable and abusive father figures and poverty, they still managed to attend prestigious colleges, begin careers as artists and embark on marriages. But following a rape while out walking her dog, Parravani's twin began a terrifying descent into drugs and self-destruction. A year after the rape, the author began to understand that her sister's situation was serious enough to require a stay at an expensive rehab center. "I was under the impression, the diluted perspective of the desperate," she writes, "that the more money we threw at the problem of Cara's addiction and despair, the more likely it was that she'd recover." Faced with the statistic that when one identical twin perishes, the surviving twin's rate of dying within the next few years spikes, the author chronicles her battle to avoid her sister's fate. Parravani's marriage failed, and as her career as a photography professor at a small college faltered, she checked herself into a personality-disorder wing of a hospital. Delicately weaving lyrical language together with her sister's journals, her mother's correspondence and conversations with family members, Parravani's mesmerizing narrative tapestry reveals the multiple facets inherent within their tangled, complex and loving relationship. "My reflection was her and it wasn't her. I was myself but I was my sister. I was hallucinating Cara--this isn't a metaphor," writes the author, who stepped back from the brink and began life anew with her second husband, the writer Anthony Swofford. Parravani delicately probes the fragile, intimate boundaries among love, identity and loss.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Christa mixes in excerpts from Cara’s writings throughout the book. How did this help in your understanding of Cara and how did it affect the storytelling? In what ways is Christa’s memoir also Cara’s?

2. What makes the relationship between identical twins unique from that of just siblings, or even fraternal twins? Do you think that identical twins are biologically prone to think and feel the same way, or is it something that evolves from their inextricably knit experiences? In what ways is the relationship between Christa and Cara so special? As much as they were alike, how were they also very different?

3. Art is a signifi cant part of the sisters’ lives. Discuss the importance of creating art for Cara and Christa. What do you think it meant for them to be able to create works of art in the midst of their tumultuous lives?

4. After Cara’s death, there were moments when Christa tried to be exactly like her sister, and also moments when she wanted to be completely free of her. Why did she assume these confl icting states of mind? Do you think that as an identical twin you can ever have your own identity?

5. Research shows that when an identical twin dies, the chances of the surviving twin also dying within two years drastically increases. Although coming very close to death, how was Christa able to survive and start a new life without her sister?

6. What is the importance of home and location in the sisters’ lives? How did their constant displacement as children affect their idea and need for a home as adults? What does “home” mean to them? What does it mean to you?

7. The book is mostly comprised of Christa’s memories of her life with her sister. Christa says that it’s hard to tell if her memories are true without Cara; that she is “the sole historian left to record [their] lives.” Think back on the memories you have of growing up. How do we distinguish truth from mere memories? And does truth matter when it comes to your own experiences, or is it the things you take from those moments that really count?

8. Do you think the body is a mere vehicle for the person or is it a part of your whole self? Do you think it is possible to detach yourself from your body? After Cara suffered a horrifi c rape, how was she changed? What seems to have happened to her connection with her body? What happened to Christa’s connection to her body after Cara’s death, and how was she able to fi nd a new connection with her body in the end?

9. What do you make of Christa’s conversation with the psychic? Do you believe in the supernatural and that we can communicate with those who have passed? Do you think that Christa’s visions of Cara were actually visits from another world, or were they illusions of dreams and grief?

10. Christa’s connection to her husband, Anthony, was unlike any other she had with a man. They both experienced much heartache and pain throughout their lives. Why do you think Christa was so drawn to him from the start? Are the best matches the ones who are as equally broken as we are?

11. Discuss the theme of birth and death. How are the two juxtaposed within the memoir? How does the birth of her daughter signal a new beginning for Christa?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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Here If You Need Me
Kate Braestrup, 2007
Little, Brown and Company
224 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316066310

Summary
When the oldest of Kate Braestrup's four children was ten years old, her husband, a Maine state trooper, was killed in a car accident. Stunned and grieving, she decided to pursue her husband's dream of becoming a Unitarian minister, and eventually began working with the Maine Game Warden Service, which conducts the state's search and rescue operations when people go missing in the wilderness.

Whether she is with parents whose 6-year-old daughter has wandered into the woods, or wardens as they search for a snowmobile rider gone under ice, or a man whose sister left an infant seat and a suicide note in her car by the side of the road, Braestrup provides solace, comfort, and spiritual guidance when it's needed most. And she comes to discover that giving comfort is both a high calling and a precious gift.

In her account of her own life and the events of her unusual job, sometimes joyful, sometimes heartbreaking, Braestrup is warm, unsentimental ("No one is immune to the Plucky Widow story!" she acknowledges), and generous. Here if You Need Me is a funny, frank, and deeply moving story of faith and hope. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—June 5, 1962
• Where—Washington, D.C.
• Education—Parsons School of Design, New School for Social
Research; Georgetown University; Bangor Theological
• Currently—Lincolnville, Maine, USA

Kate Braestrup was raised in Washington, D.C., and met her husband-to-be, James Andrew ("Drew") Griffith, when they both were students. They married in 1985 and moved to Maine when Drew was hired as a state trooper. While raising a family, Braestrup found time to do some writing, and in 1990 she published Onion, a first novel whose title derives from a nickname for their son Owen. Drew was planning to retire from police work and begin training for the Unitarian ministry when tragedy struck. En route to work one morning in 1996, he died in a car accident, leaving Braestrup a widow and single mother of four.

It was in the course of working through her grief that Braestrup found her true calling. Inspired by Drew's dream of becoming a Unitarian minister, she enrolled in Bangor Theological Seminary, was ordained in 2004, and joined the Maine Game Warden Service as a law enforcement chaplain. In this capacity, she responds to dozens of wilderness emergencies, from lost hikers and accident victims to suicides and the occasional murder, offering comfort and counsel to people in need. She recounted her remarkable odyssey in Here if You Need Me, a memoir filled with insightful observations on grief and loss, life and death, God and nature. Published in 2007, the book was a National Book Award finalist and received the Barnes & Noble Discover Award for Nonfiction.

Braestrup has since happily remarried and now lives in Maine with her blended family. In between her ministerial duties, she contributes freelance articles to various publications.

Extras
From a 2008 Barnes & Noble interview:

• Braestrup comes by her writing ability honestly. Her father, Peter Braestrup, was a noted war correspondent, writer, and journalist; founded The Wilson Quarterly; and served as Senior Editor and Director of Communications for the Library of Congress.

• Braestrup's grandfather, Carl Bjorn Braestrup, worked on the Manhattan Project and co-invented a cobalt-therapy machine used for cancer treatment.

• Braestrup confesses: "I knit too much. I knit my Christmas presents, I knit leg warmers for all the children in my daughter's graduating class; I knit hats for all the editorial staff at Little Brown, I knit all the insulation in my house and am thinking of knitting a cozy for the car. My children are convinced that, if the house caught fire, I would save my knitting basket before I'd save them. (Does my knitting basket have its own perfectly good legs? I ask them.)

• When asked what book most influenced her life or career as a writer, here's what she said—

When I was about seven, my mother handed me the book she had just finished reading. "I think you'll like this," she said. "Even though it is a grownups' book." It was Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals. It was a memoir of a childhood spent on the Greek island of Corfu. Durrell, the younger brother of novelist Lawrence Durrell, was a naturalist, zookeeper, and early advocate of conservation, and he wrote about the animals he encountered and the family and friends of his childhood with equal affection, humor and enthusiasm. My friend Natasha and I went on to read all of Durrell's books. Quite recently, I wrote to Durrell to tell him that Natasha and I each considered him an inspiration for our subsequent careers, mine as a writer and hers as a wildlife biologist. Unfortunately, by the time I sent the letter, Gerald Durrell was dead. (Author bio and interview from Barnes & Noble.)

Book Reviews
Kate Braestrup's Here if You Need Me can be read as a superbly crafted memoir of love, loss, grief, hope and the complex subtleties of faith. Or it can be read as the journey of a strong-minded, warmhearted woman through tragedy to grace.... The meat of the book is Braestrup's description of her work as chaplain to the game wardens who conduct search-and-rescue missions for the state of Maine. And this element of the memoir alone is enough to make it fascinating, as she describes traveling with the wardens in search of murder victims, suicides, straying children and lost hikers. She accompanies the wardens to give comfort to the loved ones of those who are missing, to attend to the remains of those found dead and to minister to the wardens themselves…In Here if You Need Me, she allows us to stand with her while she ministers to those who are lucky enough to have the remarkable, steady, peaceful and wise Kate Braestrup to comfort them.
Jane Ciabattari - Washington Post

Braestrup's narration about her work as a chaplain with Maine's fish and game wardens is filled with the same comfort she offers those she ministers to. Her friendly, easygoing northeastern-accented voice is instantly soothing whether she is talking about the happy outcome of a search-and-rescue mission or her husband's tragic death, which spurred her on the road to her new job. Her reading has an often prayerful cadence, though she goes easy on Bible quotation and her discussions of theological issues are so wise and well-thought-out that even the nonreligious won't be put off. Mixed with cute stories about raising her four kids, she offers keenly observed anecdotes about what she's seen on the job, accompanying wardens as they pick up fishermen without permits or search for kids lost in the woods. "My job is so cool," Braestrup repeats often, and her enthusiasm comes through clearly in her lively narration. Whether listeners are in need of a reassuring voice, Braestrup's brief memoir embraces in a most welcome, heartwarming way.
Publishers Weekly

Braestrup understands that women aren't always allowed the luxury of solitude during the grieving process. After her husband, Drew, a Maine state trooper, was killed in a car accident, she was left to explain the loss to their four children while trying to maintain her own equilibrium. Amazed by the outpouring of kindness-which included brownies from a neighbor with whom she had only a nodding acquaintance and enough casseroles to fill the family freezer- Braestrup decides that God can be found where there is love. Drew had intended to become a Unitarian Universalist minister when the time came for him to retire, continuing to be of service to his brothers and sisters in arms. In the midst of the many changes in her life, Braestrup chose to attend divinity school with the idea of completing Drew's dream. Here if You Need Me is the story of how she makes her husband's dream her own and eventually becomes the chaplain for Maine's Wildlife and Game Service. Braestrup's strength is evident throughout the memoir, which is by turns funny, tender, and frightening, yet always reinforced by the undercurrent of great love. Here If You Need Me is recommended for public libraries.
Pam Kingsbury - Library Journal

The life-and-death experiences of the first female chaplain in the Maine Warden Service. Novelist and journalist Braestrup (Onion, 1990) became a Unitarian Universalist minister after her husband was killed in a car accident. He had planned to join the ministry after he retired from the Maine State Police, and she decided to honor his memory by achieving his goal and devoting herself to law-enforcement-related service. Her stories of search-and-rescue operations in the Maine woods make it clear that she quickly became very good at helping others. When disaster struck, she traveled with the wardens, clad in the same uniform but with a plastic clerical collar attached, sharing their jokes, their cold and discomfort and their bad meals. Though they gently taunted her with such nicknames as "Holy Mother" and "Your Holiness," the wardens seemed to enjoy having Braestrup along and to value her presence. It freed them up to do their own jobs when she reached out to provide on-the-spot comfort to the parents of a lost child, the wife of a man who disappeared while ice fishing, as well as other frightened, stressed-out and grief-stricken people. Interspersed among accounts of violent death and dismemberment in the wilderness are sweeter, sadder essays: detailed recollections of preparing her husband's body for cremation; confessions of her paranoia about their four children's safety; and surprisingly unorthodox thoughts on heaven and hell, miracles, prayer and Jesus. Braestrup's occasionally self-mocking prose conveys a warmth and humor that lighten some heartbreaking, even gruesome scenes. Her characters and story lines seem custom-made for a high-quality television series. A heartening book about applied theology by someone practicing her faith in a rough-and-tumble world.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Kate Braestrup admits that before serving as chaplain to the Maine Warden Service, she had little idea of what the position entailed, joking that people ask her "What does a warden service chaplain do? Bless the moose?" (p. 62) Did you know the role that game wardens play prior to reading Here if You Need Me? Were you in a situation that required the Warden Service, would you want the assistance of a chaplain?

2. In the Author's Note, Kate writes that her favorite definition of the Greek word Logos is "story." Of the many stories Kate tells in Here if You Need Me from her role as Warden Service chaplain, which was your favorite?

3. When Kate was a child, she believed she experienced a vision of Jesus Christ from her family's car, only to find a few days later it was a fiberglass statue placed in a memorial garden. Have you ever encountered an unexplainable situation? Like Kate, did you eventually find the explanation?

4. Early on Kate writes "I love my uniform. Quite apart from whatever unwholesome sartorial fetish this may reflect, my uniform is so useful." (p. 64) Do you share a similar feeling about an aspect of your profession? If so, what is the cause of the attachment?

5. Although Drew was employed as a Maine State Trooper, Kate writes he had planned to begin a second "career" as a minister. Have you ever considered changing professions? If so, what new occupation would you choose?

6. Upon her decision to become an ordained minister, Kate's brother writes to her expressing his skepticism about religion. How are these email interchanges important to Kate in how she regards her own faith?

7. At one point Kate writes "that's where I still feel most religious; when I'm out in the woods." (p. 186) Discuss the role nature plays in her memoir, both as it impacts her profession and her faith.

8. Kate offers several plausible definitions of the word "miracle", then asserts that "a miracle is not defined by an event. A miracle is defined by gratitude." (p. 181) Do you agree with this interpretation? Did reading Here if You Need Me alter the way in which you view miracles in any way?

9. Near the memoir's end, Kate concludes "I can't make those two realities—what I've lost and what I've found—fit together in some tidy pattern of divine causality. I just have to hold them on the one hand and on the other, just like that." Do you agree with Kate's resolution?

10. At one point Kate offers proof that God has a sense of humor, and despite the tragic events described in the memoir, there are many humorous moments as well. How does humor serve Kate and the wardens she works with in their professional capacities? What was your favorite funny moment?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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Heroines of Mercy Street: The Real Nurses of the Civil War
Pamela D. Toler, 2016
Little, Brown & Company
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316392068

Summary
The true stories of the real nurses on the PBS show Mercy Street

The nurses of the Civil War ushered in a new era for medicine in the midst of tremendous hardship. While the country was at war, these women learned to advocate and care for patients in hostile settings, saved countless lives, and changed the profession forever

But they regularly fell ill with no one to nurse them in return, seethed in anger at the indifference and inefficiency that left wounded men on the battlefield without care, and all too often mourned for those they could not rescue.

Heroines of Mercy Street tells the true stories of the nurses at Mansion House, the Alexandria, Virginia, hotel turned wartime hospital and setting for the PBS show Mercy Street. Women like Dorothea Dix, Mary Phinney, Anne Reading, and more rushed to be of service to their country during the war, meeting challenges that would discourage less determined souls every step of the way. They saw casualties on a scale Americans had never seen before; diseases like typhoid and dysentery were rampant; and working conditions-both physically and emotionally—were abysmal.

Drawing on the diaries, letters, and books written by these nursing pioneers, Pamela D. Toler, PhD, has written a fascinating portrait of true heroines, shining a light on their personal contributions during one of our country's most turbulent periods. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1958
• Where—state of Missouri, USA (?)
• Education—B.A., Carlton College; Ph,D, University of Chicago
• Currently—Chicago, Illinois, USA

Pamela D. Toler is an American history writer, the author of Heroines of Mercy Street: The Real Nurses of the Civil War (2016). It is the companion book to PBS's Mercey Street, a dramatic series about the nurses during the Civil War. She is also the author of Mankind: The Story of all of Us (2012) and The Everything Guide to Socialism (2011).

Toler has loved history from the time she was a young girl, quickly swapping our histories and biographies from her school library as soon as a new one would come in. By the time she reached high school, according to Toler, she was the class nerd who "hung out at the local historical society."

From high school, she went on to Carlton College in Minnesota to earn her B.A., and then to the University of Chicago where she attained both her M.A. and Ph.D. in history. In a History News Network interview, Robin Lindley referred to Toler as a "wide-ranging historian and writer." She has tackled subjects ranging from a book on Matt Damon or on socialism to articles on mosquito-borne diseases (Time magazine) and the first European translation of "Arabian Nights."

As she told writing coach Marla Beck, she wants to show the reverse side of history:

I'm committed to telling the historical stories that let my readers see the world from a different perspective. Not just "wow, I didn’t know that," but "wow, I never thought about that."

Before turning to writing full-time, Toler spent 25 years in property management, eventually becoming vice president and part-owner of a firm. It wasn't until she realized how much her corporate work took time away from her writing that she finally decided to devote herself full-time to history and writing.

Her project with PBS began with an email: the network was searching for someone to write the companion book for Mercy Street. The series, about Civil War nurses in Union-held Alexandria, Virginia, was still in development, but Toler said the time frame was tight. She turned to secondary sources, many by the historians who had advised the producers/writers early on. She also used primary sources — letters and diaries to help her flesh out the story. (Adapted from various online sources.)

Read the complete Historian News Network interview with the author.

Book Reviews
Dr. Toler delves into the medical consequences of the Civil War, the bloodiest conflict in U.S. history that left 750,000 troops dead — more than twice the number of American troops killed in World War II and two percent of the population in the 1860s. If a similar number of Americans died in a war today, the toll would reach about 7.5 million. Hundreds of thousands more troops were wounded or seriously ill. As Dr. Toler writes, women stepped into the fray and at least twenty thousand volunteered to serve in capacities related to medicine from nurses to laundresses to hospital staff, including about six thousand Union Army nurses, many under the command of renowned reformer Dorothea Dix, the Superintendent of Army Nurses.
Robin Lindley - History News Network

Accessible and well researched, Toler's book coincides with the recent PBS series Mercy Street and successfully illustrates the beginnings of nursing as a designated field of medical practice. —Rebecca Hill, Zionsville, IN
Library Journal

Discussion Questions
The following questions were graciously offered to LitLovers by Angela Scott, Program Coordinator, Ligonier Library. Thanks, Angela.

1. Did the book create a new set of expectations for you in what a Civil War nurse truly was? Many might previously have the image of an older woman that comes from middle to upper class families and wish to work towards philanthropy, but in reality, they came from a diverse background. How did your expectations of these women change as you read through the book?

2. What did you think of Dorothea Dix and her attempt to create an army of nurses? Was she successful? Did you feel her own preconceived notions limited the nursing field? What did you think of the men that attempted to control her and limit her power?

3. Did you have a concept of how overwhelming the wounded would have been to doctors and nurses who had little training and no real organization to fall back on, especially at the start of the war?

4. Most men were extremely hostile to the nurses when they first working with military. How did this change by the end of the war and how did the women earn their respect?

5. The women felt their duty towards the soldiers was more than just tending wounds. How did they see their roles in relation to their patients?

6. Do you feel that the nurses finally got the recognition that they deserved? By the end of the war? Years later?

7. How did the war change the way women seen themselves? Like during many wars, women were forced to step into the roles of what had primarily been male. Did this give them more power and how did that change them later after the war ended?

8. Was there a story that stuck out for you as a reader or you identified with?
(Questions courtesy of Angela Scott, Ligoniere Library. Please feel free to use online or off, with attribution to both Angela and LitLovers. Thanks..)

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Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race
Margot Lee Shetterly, 2016
HarperCollins
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062363602

Summary
The phenomenal true story of the black female mathematicians at NASA whose calculations helped fuel some of America’s greatest achievements in space.

Before John Glenn orbited the earth, or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as “human computers” used pencils, slide rules and adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space.

Among these problem-solvers were a group of exceptionally talented African American women, some of the brightest minds of their generation. Originally relegated to teaching math in the South’s segregated public schools, they were called into service during the labor shortages of World War II, when America’s aeronautics industry was in dire need of anyone who had the right stuff.

Suddenly, these overlooked math whizzes had a shot at jobs worthy of their skills, and they answered Uncle Sam’s call, moving to Hampton, Virginia and the fascinating, high-energy world of the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory.

Even as Virginia’s Jim Crow laws required them to be segregated from their white counterparts, the women of Langley’s all-black “West Computing” group helped America achieve one of the things it desired most: a decisive victory over the Soviet Union in the Cold War, and complete domination of the heavens.

Starting in World War II and moving through to the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement and the Space Race, Hidden Figures follows the interwoven accounts of Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson and Christine Darden, four African American women who participated in some of NASA’s greatest successes.

It chronicles their careers over nearly three decades they faced challenges, forged alliances and used their intellect to change their own lives, and their country’s future. (From the publisher.)

See the 2017 film with Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, and Janelle Monae.
Listen to our Movies Meet Book Club Podcast—as Hollister and O'Toole discuss the book and movie.

Author Bio
• Birth—1969
• Where—Hampton, Virginia, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Virginia
• Currently— Charlottesville, Virginia

Margot Lee Shetterly was born in Hampton, Virginia, in 1969 where she knew many of the women she later wrote about in her debut Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race.

Shetterly's father worked as a research scientist at NASA-Langley Research Center, and her mother was an English professor at Hampton University. She attended Phoebus High School and graduated from the University of Virginia's McIntire School of Commerce.

After college, she moved to New York and worked several years in investment banking, first on the Foreign Exchange trading desk at J.P. Morgan, then on Merrill Lynch's Fixed Income Capital Markets desk. She then made the transition to the media industry, working at a variety of startup ventures including the HBO-funded website Volume.com.

In 2005, she and her husband, the writer Aran Shetterly, moved to Mexico to found an English-language magazine called Inside Mexico, for expats. The magazine operated until 2009.

From 2010 through 2013, they worked as content marketing and editorial consultants to the Mexican tourism industry.

Shetterly began researching and writing Hidden Figures in 2010. The book was published in 2016, and its 2017 film version stars Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monáe, and Kevin Costner.

In 2013, Shetterly founded The Human Computer Project, an organization whose mission is to archive the work of all of the women who worked as computers and mathematicians in the early days of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 12/6/2016.)

Book Reviews
Much as Tom Wolfe did in The Right Stuff, Shetterly moves gracefully between the women’s lives and the broader sweep of history.... Shetterly, who grew up in Hampton, blends impressive research with an enormous amount of heart in telling these stories.
Boston Globe

Meticulous…. [T]he depth and detail that are the book’s strength make it an effective, fact-based rudder with which would-be scientists and their allies can stabilize their flights of fancy. This hardworking, earnest book is the perfect foil for the glamour still to come.
Seattle Times

Restoring the truth about individuals who were at once black, women and astounding mathematicians, in a world that was constructed to stymie them at every step, is no easy task. Shetterly does it with the depth and detail of a skilled historian and the narrative aplomb of a masterful storyteller.
Bookreporter.com

(Starred review.) Exploring the intimate relationships among blackness, womanhood, and 20th-century American technological development, Shetterly crafts a narrative that is crucial to understanding subsequent movements for civil rights.
Publishers Weekly

(Starred review.) Readers will learn how integral these women were to American aeronautics and be saddened by the racism and sexism that kept them from deserved recognition. Verdict: Shetterly's highly recommended work offers up a crucial history that had previously and unforgivably been lost. —Kate DiGirolomo, Library Journal
Library Journal

[A]mazing...because the women...fought for and won recognition and devotedly supported each other’s work.... They were there from the beginning, perfecting World War II planes and proving to be invaluable to the nascent space program. Much of the work will be confusing to the mathematically disinclined, but their story is inspiring and enlightening.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1.In what ways does the race for space parallel the civil rights movement? What kinds of freedoms are being explored in each?

2. In Chapter 23 we learn that some people thought that spending money on space exploration was wasteful when there were so many other problems in the United States. Do you think the U.S. achieved a balance between innovation in space exploration and advancing the civil rights of all its citizens during this time period? Would you have done things differently?

3. Would you consider NACA and NASA socially progressive institutions for their time? Why or why not?

4. In advocating for herself to work on the Mercury capsule launch, Katherine says to her bosses, “Tell me where you want the man to land, and I’ll tell you where to send him up.” How are the women in Hidden Figures able to express confidence in their work and abilities? In what ways is that confidence validated by their coworkers? Why is this emotional experience such an important part of their story?
(Questions from a teaching guide issued by the publisher.)

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Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family
Robert Kolker, 2020
Knopf Doubleday
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385543767

Summary
The heartrending story of a midcentury American family with twelve children, six of them diagnosed with schizophrenia, that became science's great hope in the quest to understand the disease.

Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream.

After World War II, Don's work with the Air Force brought them to Colorado, where their twelve children perfectly spanned the baby boom: the oldest born in 1945, the youngest in 1965.

In those years, there was an established script for a family like the Galvins—aspiration, hard work, upward mobility, domestic harmony—and they worked hard to play their parts.

But behind the scenes was a different story: psychological breakdown, sudden shocking violence, hidden abuse. By the mid-1970s, six of the ten Galvin boys, one after another, were diagnosed as schizophrenic. How could all this happen to one family?

What took place inside the house on Hidden Valley Road was so extraordinary that the Galvins became one of the first families to be studied by the National Institute of Mental Health. Their story offers a shadow history of the science of schizophrenia, from the era of institutionalization, lobotomy, and the schizophrenogenic mother to the search for genetic markers for the disease, always amid profound disagreements about the nature of the illness itself.

And unbeknownst to the Galvins, samples of their DNA informed decades of genetic research that continues today, offering paths to treatment, prediction, and even eradication of the disease for future generations.

With clarity and compassion, bestselling and award-winning author Robert Kolker uncovers one family's unforgettable legacy of suffering, love, and hope. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
Robert Kolker is the New York Times bestselling author of Lost Girls, named one of the Times's 100 Notable Books and one of Publishers Weekly's Top Ten Books of 2013. It was released as a 2020 Netflix film.

As a journalist, his work has appeared in New York Magazine, Bloomberg Businessweek, The New York Times Magazine, Wired, GQ, O Magazine,and Men's Journal.

He is a National Magazine Award finalist and a recipient of the 2011 Harry Frank Guggenheim Award for Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
[A] feat of empathy and narrative journalism, as [Kolker] coaxes out the struggles of the Galvin family, showing how they embodied the roiling debates over the science of schizophrenia—not just its causes, "but what it actually is."… Kolker recounts the Galvins' home life with such vivid specificity that it can seem as if he's working up to a suggestion that their upbringing determined the course of their mental health. But… Kolker—who skillfully corrals the disparate strands of his story and gives all of his many characters their due—knows better than to settle for pat truths.
Jennifer Szalai - New York Times

(Starred review) [P]owerful.… Kolker concludes that while "biology is destiny, to a point," everyone is a product of the people who surround us…. This is a haunting and memorable look at the impact of mental illness on multiple generations.
Publishers Weekly

(Starred review) Kolker masterfully combines scientific intrigue with biographical sketches, allowing readers to feel as if they are right there with the Galvins as researchers examine their genes in the quest for answers.

(Starred review) A stunning, riveting chronicle crackling with intelligence and empathy…. Kolker tackles this extraordinarily complex story so brilliantly and effectively that readers will be swept away. An exceptional, unforgettable, and significant work that must not be missed.
Booklist

(Starred review) [R]iveting…. Kolker deftly follows the psychiatric, chemical, and biological theories proposed to explain schizophrenia…. Most poignantly, he portrays the impact on the unafflicted children…. A family portrait of astounding depth and empathy.
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.)

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The Hiding Place
Corrie ten Boom (with John Sherrill), 1971
Random House
242 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780553256697

Summary
Holland is under Nazi control.... Thousands of Jewish refugees.... One extraordinary family.

An old watchmaker in Holland. His two daughters, Corrie and Betsie. Simple, ordinary people. Yet these three unlikely heroes became the center of a major underground operation: To hide Jewish refugees from the occupying Germans.

These kindly, law abiding people broke every rule in the book to save the lives of the men, women and children being hunted by the Nazis. Their home became a hiding place, but the cost of their bravery was betrayal and in the dreaded Ravensbruck concentration camp, they had to create another hiding place for those around them. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—April 15, 1892
• Where—Haarlem, The Netherlands
• Death—April 15, 1983
• Where—Southern California, USA

In the years since the closing chapter of this book, Corrie ten Boom has traveled ceaselessly, carrying her message of triumphant living all over the world, especially behind the Iron Curtain. The author of devotional books treasured by millions, she is also a colorful, amusing speaker with a hold on young audiences that is but one of her many intriguing personal mysteries. This is the full story behind the faith that has touched and stirred and changed so many lives everywhere. (From the publisher.)

More
Cornelia Johanna Arnolda ten Boom, generally known as Corrie ten Boom, was a Dutch Christian Holocaust survivor who helped many Jews escape the Nazis during World War II. Ten Boom co-wrote her autobiography, The Hiding Place, which was later made into a movie of the same name. In December, 1967, ten Boom was honored as one of the Righteous Among the Nations by the State of Israel.

Corrie ten Boom was born in the Netherlands, as the youngest of four children. Her mother died of a stroke at the age of 63. Her father Casper ten Boom was a well-liked watch repairman, and often referred to as "Haarlem's Grand Old Man." Her older sister, Elisabeth (Betsie), was born with pernicious anemia. They had two siblings—a sister, Nollie, and a brother, Willem. They lived in a house on Barteljorisstraat 19 with three of her mother's sisters. Her brother Willem graduated from a theology school and warned the Dutch that unless they took action, they would fall to the Nazis. He wrote a dissertation on racial anti-Semitism at theological college in 1927 in preparation for his ordination.

Corrie began training as a watchmaker in 1920 and in 1922 became the first female watchmaker licensed in the Netherlands. She was a devout Christian and an active member of the Dutch Reformed church. In 1923, she helped organize girls' clubs, and in the 1930s these clubs grew to become the very large Triangle club.

In 1940, the Nazis invaded the Netherlands and banned Corrie ten Boom's club. In May 1942, a well dressed woman came to the ten Boom door with a suitcase in hand. She told the ten Booms that she was a Jew and that her husband had been arrested several months before, and her son had gone into hiding. Occupation authorities had recently visited her, and she was too fearful to return home. After hearing about how the ten Booms had helped their Jewish neighbors, the Weils, she asked if she might stay with them, and Corrie ten Boom's father readily agreed.

A devoted reader of the Old Testament, Casper ten Boom believed Jews were indeed "the chosen," and told the woman, "In this household, God's people are always welcome." Thus began "the hiding place", or "de schuilplaats", as it was known in Dutch (also known as "de Beje", with Beje being derived from the name of the street the house was in, the Barteljorisstraat).

Ten Boom and her sister began taking in refugees, some of whom were Jews, others members of the resistance movement sought by the Gestapo and its Dutch counterpart. There were several extra rooms in their house, but food was scarce due to wartime shortages. Every non-Jewish Dutch person had received a ration card with which they could procure weekly coupons to buy food.

The Jews hid in a room that the ten Boom family had built in Corrie's bedroom for them by an architect belonging to the Dutch Resistance. The room was the size of a medium wardrobe, 75 cm (30") deep, with an air vent on the outside wall. The Nazis never found this room because the only entrance was a small hatch which slid open to let the Jews in and out. Also, the room was built in a special way that could make it seem like no one was in there when the Nazi officials would bang on the walls. They would bang on the walls to find out if there were any hollow spaces that could have held Jews.

The Germans arrested the entire ten Boom family on February 28, 1944 at around 12:30 with the help of a Dutch informant. They were sent first to Scheveningen prison (where her father died ten days after his capture). Corrie's sister Nollie, brother Willem, and nephew Peter were all released. Later, Corrie and Betsie were sent to the Vught political concentration camp (both in the Netherlands), and finally to the notorious Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany on December 16, 1944, where Corrie's sister Betsie died. Before she died she told Corrie, "There is no pit so deep that God's love is not deeper still." Corrie was released on New Year's Eve of December 1944. In the movie The Hiding Place, ten Boom narrates the section on her release from camp, saying that she later learned that her release had been a clerical error. The women prisoners her age in the camp were killed the week following her release. She said, "God does not have problems. Only plans."

After the war, Corrie ten Boom returned to the Netherlands to set up rehabilitation centres. This refuge house consisted of concentration camp surivors and sheltered the jobless Dutch who previously collaborated with Germans during the occupation. She returned to Germany in 1946, and traveled the world as a public speaker, appearing in over sixty countries, during which time she wrote many books.

Ten Boom told the story of her family and their work during World War II in her most famous book, The Hiding Place (1971), which was made into a film by World Wide Pictures in 1975.

In 1977, Corrie ten Boom, then 85 years old, moved to Orange, California. Successive strokes in 1978 took away her powers of speech and communication and left her an invalid for the last five years of her life. She died on her birthday, April 15, 1983, at the age of 91.

Extras
• The State of Israel honored ten Boom by naming her Righteous Among the Nations.

• Ten Boom was knighted by the Queen of the Netherlands in recognition of her work during the war, and a museum in the Dutch city of Haarlem is dedicated to her and her family.

• Her teaching focused on the Christian Gospel, with emphasis on forgiveness. In her book Tramp for the Lord (1974), she tells the story of how, after she had been teaching in Germany in 1947, she was approached by one of the cruelest former Ravensbrück camp guards. She was reluctant to forgive him, but prayed that she would be able to. She wrote that, "For a long moment we grasped each other's hands, the former guard and the former prisoner. I had never known God's love so intensely as I did then."

• She also wrote (in the same passage) that in her post-war experience with other victims of Nazi brutality, it was those who were able to forgive who were best able to rebuild their lives.

• She was known for her rejection of the Pre-Tribulation Rapture doctrine. Her writings claim that it is without Biblical foundation, and she has claimed that the doctrine left the Christian Church ill-prepared in times of great persecution, such as in China under Mao Zedong. She appeared on many Christian television programs discussing her ordeal during the Holocaust, and the concepts of forgiveness and God's love. (From Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews
(Excerpts below refer to the audio version. There are no mainstream press reviews online for the print version.)

A story of hope and faith. Its conversational style makes it especially effective in audio.
Indianapolis Star

Narrator Nadia May provides an authentic and engaging vocal presentation of this fine work.
Library Journal

Nadia May does great credit to the writers of this true story.... Her emotional control makes the tension and horror of the family's plight more real and hideous.... The listener is left with a story of extraordinary humanity, goodness and overwhelming love.
AudioFile

Reader May has the right tone and accent to convey Corrie's middle-aged presentation. The soul searching and questioning that Corrie expresses comes out clearly through the reader.
KLIATT

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 Hiding Place:

1. Corrie's father tells her that he pities the Nazi's: "They have touched the apple of God's eye." What does he mean by that statement. Consider the strength of character it takes to feel pity for a people and a system that means to do harm to fellow beings.

2. What are the various hiding places, real and symbolic, to which the title of this book refers? How, for instance, do fleas help lead to a "hiding place" for Corrie and Betsie while they are imprisoned?

3. In addition to the extraordinary kindess and courage of the ten Boom family, what are some of the smaller acts of kindness shown by others in this memoir? Are people inspired to greater compassion, or less, in dire situations? What motivates acts of kindness—in other words, what makes people kind? What makes some people kinder than others?

4. Talk about the kind of woman Corrire ten Boom and her sister Betsie were. What sustained them during their ordeal in the concentration camps? To what do you attribute Corrie's courage and survival in the face of so much death and hardship?

5. Stories like Corrie's always beg comparison to ourselves and our own lives. We wonder how each of us would behave under similar horrific circumstances? How would you? What inner strengths and courage and compassion would you draw on? Would you have risked your life and the lives of your family (especially, if you have children) to help the Jews or any others subjected to brutal persecution? We know what we are called upon to do, but would many of us find the courage needed to do what is right?

6. Comment on what Betsie said to Corrie: "I pray every day that we be allowed to do this! To show [the Nazis] that love is greater!" What do you find extraordinary in that statement?

7. Talk about the incident after the war in which Corrie comes across one of the former SS men at Ravensbruck. How did she respond to him at first...and how did she change? What does this say about the principle of forgiveness—its difficulty and its healing power?

8. What do you find most surprising...or inspiring in this account of the Nazi era? Did this book change you in any way? Did you come away having learned something...about history...about faith...or about yourself?

9. Watch clips from the 1975 film version with Julie Harris and compare it to the book.

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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The Hilarious World of Depression
John Moe, 2020
St. Martin's Press
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250209283

Summary
For years John Moe, critically-acclaimed public radio personality and host of The Hilarious World of Depression podcast, struggled with depression; it plagued his family and claimed the life of his brother in 2007.

As Moe came to terms with his own illness, he began to see similar patterns of behavior and coping mechanisms surfacing in conversations with others, including high-profile comedians who’d struggled with the disease.

Moe saw that there was tremendous comfort and community in open dialogue about these shared experiences and that humor had a unique power. Thus was born the podcast The Hilarious World of Depression.

Inspired by the immediate success of the podcast, Moe has written a remarkable investigation of the disease, part memoir of his own journey, part treasure trove of laugh-out-loud stories and insights drawn from years of interviews with some of the most brilliant minds facing similar challenges.

Throughout the course of this powerful narrative, depression’s universal themes come to light, among them,

• struggles with identity
• misunderstanding of symptoms
• challenges of work-life
• self-medicating
• fallout in the lives of our loved ones
• tragedy of suicide
• hereditary aspects of the disease.

The Hilarious World of Depression illuminates depression in an entirely fresh and inspiring way. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—July 10, 1968
• Raised—Federal Town, Washington, USA
• Education—B.A., Whitman College
• Currently—St. Paul, Minnesota

John Moe has served as host of national public radio broadcasts such as Weekend America, Marketplace Tech Report and, from 2010- 2015, Wits.

His reporting has been heard on All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Marketplace, Day to Day, and more.

Moe's writing appears in humor anthologies, the New York Times Magazine, McSweeney’s, and the Seattle Times. He’s a much in-demand public speaker and the author of multiple books, including The Hilarious World of Depression. (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
(Starred review) Moe… wryly reflects on life as a "saddie" in this stirring memoir.… [S]ide-eye commentary separates Moe’s story from the trite "70s self-help" he loathes…. Moe’s edifying, enjoyable take on the realities of living with depression will uplift any reader.
Publishers Weekly

Moe is exactly the right person to give an attentive, irreverent voice to those suffering with depression.
Booklist

The narrative gains considerable momentum when Moe shifts into his adult years…. Here, the author focuses more attention on the origins and evolution of his series…. The book would have benefited from a tighter structure, but it’s inspiring and relatable .
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 HILARIOUS WORLD OF DEPRESSION … then take off on your own:

1. This book is a personal account of John Moe's battle with depression. He says that after years of depressive thoughts, his wife urged him to find help for what he refers to as his desire "not so much to die as simply not to be alive anymore." Do you understand what Moe means? Does that comment have any resonance with you?

2. Talk about Moe's family background, especially his father's alcoholism and brother's addiction. To what degree has his family history contributed to his own depression?

3. (Follow-up to Question 2) What is known about the hereditary aspects of depression?

4. Moe says he came to recognize the signs of depression early in his life—in middle school. What particular symptoms during those adolescent years did Moe see in himself?

5. What effect does his brother's suicide have on Moe? He writes of a "salad of regret, anger, confusion, and horror."

6. Moe digs deeply into the various characteristics of depression. Talk about the problems of identifying the disorder and then acknowledging it, of self-medicating, and of the way depression affects the lives of families and loved ones.

6. If you are comfortable doing so in a group, talk about how Moe's book relates to your own life—if not to you, specifically, than perhaps to to someone you know and love, a family member or a friend.

7. Why the book's title: what is "hilarious" about depression?

8. Talk about what led up to Moe's podcast, which has the same name as his book. Have you listened to the podcast?

9. Are you surprised at some of the well-known people who suffer with depression? Do you know others?

10. What have you learned about depression after reading this book? What in particular surprised you? Do you ever think that, as a society, we have over diagnosed depression—and we are over-medicated—as some skeptics have claimed? Or do you think the disorder is actually under-diagnosed?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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