en-US Sat, 29 Mar 2025 23:18:13 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 207298822
“Sharing food is one of the purest human acts.�

Food has always been an integral part of Stanley Tucci’s life: from stracciatella soup served in the shadow of the Pantheon, to marinara sauce cooked between scene rehearsals and costume fittings, to home-made pizza eaten with his children before bedtime.

Now, in What I Ate in One Year Tucci records twelve months of eating—in restaurants, kitchens, film sets, press junkets, at home and abroad, with friends, with family, with strangers, and occasionally just by himself.

Ranging from the mouth-wateringly memorable to the comfortingly domestic and to the infuriatingly inedible, the meals memorialised in this diary are a prism for him to reflect on the ways his life, and his family, are constantly evolving. Through food he marks—and mourns—the passing of time, the loss of loved ones, and steels himself for what is to come.

Whether it’s duck a l’orange eaten with fellow actors and cooked by singing Carmelite nuns, steaks barbequed at a gathering with friends, or meatballs made by his mother and son and shared at the table with three generations of his family, these meals give shape and add emotional richness to his days.

What I Ate in One Year is a funny, poignant, heartfelt, and deeply satisfying serving of memories and meals and an irresistible celebration of the profound role that food plays in all our lives.]]> 368 Stanley Tucci 1668055686 Debra 0 currently-reading 3.86 2024
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]]> 211119902
Behind the locked doors of the Sistine Chapel, one hundred and eighteen cardinals from all over the globe will cast their votes in the world’s most secretive election.

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

Over the next seventy-two hours one of them will become the most powerful spiritual figure on earth.]]> 286 Robert Harris 0593689585 Debra 5 4.09 2016
author: Robert Harris
name: Debra
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2016
rating: 5
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]]> 205478787
From the summer of 1870 to the spring of 1871, Paris and its people were forced into surrender by Germans and imperiled as rebel republicans established a breakaway Commune, ultimately crushed by the French army after the burning of central Paris. As Pulitzer Prize–winning art critic Sebastian Smee shows, it was against the backdrop of these tumultuous times that the Impressionist movement was born—a reaction to violence, civil war, and political intrigue. Smee tells the story of Paris’s “Terrible Year� through the eyes of the Impressionists, with a focus on the relationship between Edouard Manet, the father of the movement, and Berthe Morisot, the group’s preeminent woman. With narrative sweep and vivid detail, Paris in Ruins captures the shifting passions and politics of the art world, revealing how the pressures of the Siege and the chaos of the Commune had a monumental effect on the development of modern art.]]> 384 Sebastian Smee 1324006951 Debra 3 4.08
author: Sebastian Smee
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]]> 123271227 272 Cat Jarman 0008447330 Debra 0 to-read 4.05 2023
author: Cat Jarman
name: Debra
average rating: 4.05
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]]> 42832961
A close proximity to Greenwich Village in the 1960s fueled Waterman's growing interest in folk music and led to an unlikely trip that resulted in the rediscovery of Delta blues artist Son House in 1964. Waterman began efforts to revive House’s music career and soon became his manager. He subsequently founded Avalon Productions, the first management agency focused on representing black blues musicians. In addition to booking and managing, he worked tirelessly to protect his clients from exploitation, demanded competitive compensation, and fought for royalties due them.

During his career, Waterman befriended and worked with numerous musicians, including such luminaries as B. B. King, Buddy Guy, Taj Mahal, and Eric Clapton. During the early years of his career, he documented the work of scores of musicians through his photography and gained fame as a blues photographer. This authorized biography is the crescendo of years of original research as well as extensive interviews conducted with Waterman and those who knew and worked with him.]]> 304 Tammy L. Turner 1496822692 Debra 0 to-read 4.33
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]]> 199820684
In London, twenty-six-year-old Venetia Stanley—aristocratic, clever, bored, reckless—is part of a fast group of upper-crust bohemians and socialites known as “The Coterie.� She’s also engaged in a clandestine love affair with the Prime Minister, H. H. Asquith, a man more than twice her age. He writes to her obsessively, sharing the most sensitive matters of state.

As Asquith reluctantly leads the country into war with Germany, a young intelligence officer with Scotland Yard is assigned to investigate a leak of top-secret documents. Suddenly, what was a sexual intrigue becomes a matter of national security that could topple the British government—and will alter the course of political history.

An unrivaled master of seamlessly weaving fact and fiction, Precipice is another electrifying thriller from the brilliant imagination of Robert Harris.]]> 464 Robert Harris 0063248050 Debra 0 to-read 3.86 2024
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average rating: 3.86
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]]> 74951739 Sing As We Go is an astonishingly ambitious overview of the political, social and cultural history of the country from 1919 to 1939.

It explores and explains the politics of the period, and puts such moments of national turmoil as the General Strike of 1926 and the Abdication Crisis of 1936 under the microscope. It offers pen portraits of the era's most significant figures. It traces the changing face of Britain as cars made their first mass appearance, the suburbs sprawled, and radio and cinema became the means of mass entertainment. And it probes the deep divisions that split the between the haves and have-nots, between warring ideological factions, and between those who promoted accommodation with fascism in Europe and those who bitterly opposed it.
__________________________________________
Praise for the

'Scholarly, objective and extremely well written. A masterclass . . . Heffer's eye for the telling detail is evident on almost every page.' Andrew Roberts, 5*, Telegraph

'Gloriously rich and spirited . . . colourful, character driven history.' Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times

'Enlightening . . . Robust opinion, an eye for telling detail and a gift for bringing historical figures alive.'
History Books of the Year, Daily Mail]]> 941 Simon Heffer 152915264X Debra 0 to-read 3.98
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]]> 204316858 A shocking and revelatory account of the murder of Emmett Till that lays bare how forces from around the world converged on the Mississippi Delta in the long lead-up to the crime, and how the truth was erased for so long. Wright Thompson’s family farm in Mississippi is 23 miles from the site of one of the most notorious and consequential killings in American history, yet he had to leave the state for college before he learned the first thing about it. To this day, fundamental truths about the crime are widely unknown, including where it took place and how many people were involved. This is no the cover-up began at once, and it is ongoing.ĚýIn August 1955, two men, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, were charged with the torture and murder of the 14-year-old Emmett Till in Money, Mississippi.ĚýAfter their inevitable acquittal in a mockery of justice, they gave a false confession to a journalist, which was misleading about where the long night of hell took place and who was involved.ĚýIn fact, Wright Thompson reveals, at least nine people can be placed at the scene, which was inside the barn of one of the killers, on a plot of land within the six-square-mile grid whose official name is Township 22 North, Range 4 West, Section 2, West Half, fabled in the Delta of myth as the birthplace of the blues on nearby Dockery Plantation. Even in the context of the brutal caste regime of the time, the four-hour torture and murder of a boy barely in his teens for whistling at a young white woman was acutely depraved; Till’s mother Mamie Till-Mobley’s decision to keep the casket open seared the crime indelibly into American consciousness. Wright Thompson has a deep understanding of this story—the world of the families of both Emmett Till and his killers, and all the forces that aligned to place them together on that spot on the map.ĚýAs he shows, the full horror of the crime was its inevitability, and how much about it we still need to understand. Ultimately this is a story about property, and money, and power.ĚýIt implicates all of us.ĚýIn The Barn, Thompson befriends the few people who have been engaged in the hard, fearful business of bringing the truth to light, people like Wheeler Parker, Emmett Till’s friend, who came down from Chicago with him that summer, and is the last person alive to know him well.ĚýWheeler Parker’s journey to put the killing floor of the barn on the map of Township 22 North, Range 4 West, Section 2, West Half, and the Delta, and America, is a journey we all need to go on if this country is to heal from its oldest, deepest wound.]]> 448 Wright Thompson 0593299825 Debra 0 to-read 4.37 2024
author: Wright Thompson
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average rating: 4.37
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]]> 143196604 'Enormously enjoyable' Sunday Times

'Genial and entertaining' Daily Telegraph

'A joyous celebration of the founding fathers of British youth culture' Alwyn Turner, author of All in it Together and Little Englanders

With their draped suits, suede creepers and immaculately greased hair, the Teddy Boys defined a new era for a generation of teenagers raised on a diet of drab clothes, Blitz playgrounds and tinned dinners.

From the Edwardian origins of their fashion to the tabloid fears of delinquency, drunkenness and disorder, the story of the Teds throws a fascinating light on a British society that was still reeling from the Second World War. In the 1950s, working-class teenagers found a way of asserting themselves in how they dressed, spoke and socialised on the street. When people saw Teds, they stepped aside.

Musician and author Max Décharné traces the rise of the Teds and the shockwave they sent through post-war Britain, from the rise of rock 'n' roll to the Notting Hill race riots. Full of fascinating insight, deftly sketching the milieu of Elvis Presley and Derek Bentley, Billy Fury and Oswald Mosley, Teddy Boys is the story of Britain's first youth counterculture.]]> 344 Max Décharné 1782830375 Debra 0 to-read 4.05
author: Max Décharné
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]]> 978689 Ěý
That’s Milton Mayer, writing in a foreword to the 1966 edition of They Thought They Were Free. He’s right about the critics: the book was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1956. General readers may have been slower to take notice, but over time they did—what we’ve seen over decades is that any time people, across the political spectrum, start to feel that freedom is threatened, the book experiences a ripple of word-of-mouth interest. And that interest has never been more prominent or potent than what we’ve seen in the past year.
Ěý
They Thought They Were Free is an eloquent and provocative examination of the development of fascism in Germany. Mayer’s book is a study of ten Germans and their lives from 1933-45, based on interviews he conducted after the war when he lived in Germany. Mayer had a position as a research professor at the University of Frankfurt and lived in a nearby small Hessian town which he disguised with the name “Kronenberg.� “These ten men were not men of distinction,� Mayer noted, but they had been members of the Nazi Party; Mayer wanted to discover what had made them Nazis. His discussions with them of Nazism, the rise of the Reich, and mass complicity with evil became the backbone of this book, an indictment of the ordinary German that is all the more powerful for its refusal to let the rest of us pretend that our moment, our society, our country are fundamentally immune.
Ěý
A new foreword to this edition by eminent historian of the Reich Richard J. Evans puts the book in historical and contemporary context. We live in an age of fervid politics and hyperbolic rhetoric. They Thought They Were Free cuts through that, revealing instead the slow, quiet accretions of change, complicity, and abdication of moral authority that quietly mark the rise of evil.]]> 346 Milton Sanford Mayer 0226511928 Debra 0 to-read 4.14 1955
author: Milton Sanford Mayer
name: Debra
average rating: 4.14
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]]> 42360846
For both sides, the challenges were enormous. The Allies confronted a disciplined German army stretched to its limit, which nonetheless caused tactics to be adjusted on the fly. Ultimately ingenuity, determination, and immense materiel strength--delivered with operational brilliance--made the difference. A stirring narrative by a pre-eminent historian, Normandy '44 offers important new perspective on one of history's most dramatic military engagements and is an invaluable addition to the literature of war.]]> 650 James Holland 0802129420 Debra 0 to-read 4.39 2019
author: James Holland
name: Debra
average rating: 4.39
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]]> 212900939 The New York Times and USA Today bestselling memoir by one of the most important leaders of our time

For 16 years, Angela Merkel bore the governmental responsibility for Germany, leading the country through numerous crises and shaping German and international politics and society with her actions and attitude. But Angela Merkel was not born a Chancellor. In her memoirs, co-written with her long-standing political advisor Beate Baumann, she looks back on her life in two German states � 35 years in the GDR (German Democratic Republic), 35 years in reunified Germany. More personally than ever before, she talks about her childhood, youth, and her studies in the GDR, and the dramatic year of 1989, when the Wall fell and her political life began. She shares insights into her meetings and conversations with the world's most powerful leaders and elucidates, with clear and precise examples, significant national, European, and international turning points and how decisions were made that shape our times. Her book offers a unique insight into the inner workings of power � and is a decisive plea for freedom.


“What does freedom mean to me? This question has occupied me my entire life. Naturally, politically, because freedom needs democratic conditions, without democracy there is no freedom, no rule of law, no protection of human rights. But this question also occupies me on another level. Freedom, for me, is finding out where my own limits are, and pushing my own limits. Freedom is for me not to stop learning, not to have to stand still but to be allowed to continue, even after leaving politics.� - Angela Merkel]]> 720 Angela Merkel 1250319900 Debra 0 currently-reading 3.76 2024
author: Angela Merkel
name: Debra
average rating: 3.76
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]]> 396250
Berlin, 1964. The Greater German Reich stretches from the Rhine to the Urals, and keeps an uneasy peace with its nuclear rival, the United States.ĚýAs the Fatherland prepares for a grand celebration honoring Adolf Hitler’s seventy-fifth birthday and anticipates a conciliatory visit from U.S. president Joseph Kennedy and ambassador Charles Lindbergh,Ěýa detective of the Kriminalpolizei is called out to investigate the discovery of a dead body in a lake near Berlin’s most prestigious suburb.

But when Xavier March discovers the identity of the body, he also uncovers signs of a conspiracy that could go to the very top of the German Reich. And, with the Gestapo just one step behind, March, together with the American journalist Charlotte Maguire, is caught up in a race to discover and reveal the truth—a truth that has already killed, a truth that could topple governments, a truth that will change history.

Praise for Fatherland

“A singular achievement displaying original and carefully wrought suspense . . . Fatherland easily transcends convention.� � The Washington Post

“A solid thriller, vividly imagined and genuinely frightening.� � The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“Ingenious . . . a triumph . . . suspenseful and elegant.� � San Francisco Chronicle

“A dazzler . . . fast-paced . . . Historical fact is blended skillfully with fiction.� � Detroit Free Press

“Absorbing . . . expertly written.� � The New York Times Book Review

“Truly captivating.� —Robert Ludlum

“A strong premise for a police thriller with rich foreign atmosphere and political texture galore? Absolutely!� � Entertainment Weekly

“A sly and scary page-turner.� � Los Angeles Times

“A well-plotted, well-written detective tale and a fascinating trek through parallel history.� � Chicago Tribune

� Fatherland works on all levels. It’s a triumph.� � The Washington Times

“Distinguished by vivid details based on impeccable research, the thriller is a crackling-good read in the le Carré tradition.� � Time

“Wonderful.� � Newsday

“A gripping detective story as well as a chilling visit to the Germany that might have been. It is so plausibly written it seems quite real. Robert Harris is a name to watch for.� � BookPage]]> 339 Robert Harris 0812977211 Debra 4 3.98 1992
author: Robert Harris
name: Debra
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1992
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]]> 213792608
After more than seventy years of fighting to live her life on her own terms, Cher finally reveals her true story in intimate detail, in a two-part memoir.

Her remarkable career is unique and unparalleled. The only woman to top Billboard charts in seven consecutive decades, she is the winner of an Academy Award, an Emmy, a Grammy, and a Cannes Film Festival Award, and an inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame who has been lauded by the Kennedy Center.

She is a longtime activist and philanthropist.

As a dyslexic child who dreamed of becoming famous, Cher was raised in often-chaotic circumstances, surrounded by singers, actors, and a mother who inspired her in spite of their difficult relationship.

With her trademark honesty and humor, The Memoir traces how this diamond in the rough succeeded with no plan and little confidence to become the trailblazing superstar the world has been unable to ignore for more than half a century.

The Memoir, Part One follows her extraordinary beginnings through childhood to meeting and marrying Sonny Bono—and reveals the highly complicated relationship that made them world-famous, but eventually drove them apart.

The Memoir reveals the daughter, the sister, the wife, the lover, the mother, and the superstar.

It is a life too immense for only one book.]]> 413 Cher 006286310X Debra 3 4.28 2024
author: Cher
name: Debra
average rating: 4.28
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]]> 22857279 256 Judi Dench 1250071119 Debra 4 3.80 2014
author: Judi Dench
name: Debra
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2014
rating: 4
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]]> 210410458 A powerful, candid, and richly detailed memoir from an American icon, revealing what life looks like after presidency: triumphs, tribulations, and all.

On January 20th, 2001, after nearly thirty years in politics—eight of them as President of the United States—Bill Clinton was suddenly a private citizen. Only fifty-four years old, full of energy and ideas, he wanted to make meaningful use of his skills, his relationships with world leaders, and all he’d learned in a lifetime of politics, but how? Just days after leaving the White House, the call came to aid victims of a devastating earthquake in India, and Clinton hit the ground running. Over the next two decades, he would create an enduring legacy of public service and advocacy work, from Indonesia to Louisiana, Northern Ireland to South Africa, and in the process reimagine philanthropy and redefine the impact a former president could have on the world.

Citizen is Clinton’s front-row, first-person chronicle of his post-presidential years and the most significant events of the twenty-first century, including 9/11 and the runup to the Iraq War, the Haiti earthquake, the Great Recession, COVID-19, the January 6th insurrection, and the enduring culture wars of our times. Yet Citizen is more than a presidential memoir. These pages capture Clinton in a rare and unforgettable light: not only as celebrated former president and foundation leader, but also as a father, grandfather, and husband. He shares his support for Hillary Clinton during her tenure as senator, secretary of state, and presidential candidate, and openly details the frustration and pain of the 2016 election.

With clarity and compassion, President Clinton also weighs in on the unprecedented challenges brought on by a global pandemic, ongoing inequality, a steadily warming planet, and authoritarian forces dedicated to weakening democracy. In this landmark publication, the highly anticipated follow-up to the best-selling My Life, Clinton pens a clear-sighted account of American democracy on a global stage, offering a frank reflection on the past and, with it, a fearless embrace of our future. Citizen is a testament to one man’s unwavering commitment to family and nation, a self-portrait of equal parts eloquence, insight, and candor.]]> 464 Bill Clinton 0525521445 Debra 0 to-read 3.71
author: Bill Clinton
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average rating: 3.71
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]]> 197812400
The United States of 1797 faced enormous challenges, provoked by enemies foreign and domestic. The father of the new nation, George Washington, left his vice president, John Adams, with relatively little guidance and impossible expectations to meet. Adams was confronted with intense partisan divides, debates over citizenship, fears of political violence, potential for foreign conflict with France and Britain, and a nation unsure that the presidency could even work without Washington at the helm.

Making the Presidency is an authoritative exploration of the second US presidency, a period critical to the survival of the American republic. Through meticulous research and engaging prose, Lindsay Chervinsky illustrates the unique challenges faced by Adams and shows how he shaped the office for his successors. One of the most qualified presidents in American history, he had been a legislator, political theorist, diplomat, minister, and vice president--but he had never held an executive position. Instead, the quixiotic and stubborn Adams would rely on his ideas about executive power, the Constitution, politics, and the state of the world to navigate the hurdles of the position. He defended the presidency from his own often obstructionist cabinet, protected the nation from foreign attacks, and forged trust and dedication to election integrity and the peaceful transfer of power between parties, even though it cost him his political future.

Offering a portrait of one of the most fascinating and influential periods in US history, Making the Presidency is a must-read for anyone interested in the evolution of the presidency and the creation of political norms and customs at the heart of the American republic.]]> 440 Lindsay M. Chervinsky 0197653847 Debra 4 4.48 2024
author: Lindsay M. Chervinsky
name: Debra
average rating: 4.48
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rating: 4
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]]> 96177657
'An instant classic' MARINA HYDE
'At last a politician who can write' SEBASTIAN FAULKS
'Candid, angry, funny, and self-revelatory' JONATHAN DIMBLEBY
'Exceptional' RAFAEL BEHR

The Times pick for *The Biggest Books of the Autumn*

Over the course of a decade from 2010, Rory Stewart went from being a political outsider to standing for prime minister - before being sacked from a Conservative Party that he had come to barely recognise.

Tackling ministerial briefs on flood response and prison violence, engaging with conflict and poverty abroad as a foreign minister, and Brexit as a Cabinet minister, Stewart learned first-hand how profoundly hollow our democracy and government had become.

Cronyism, ignorance and sheer incompetence ran rampant. Around him, individual politicians laid the foundations for the political and economic chaos of today. Stewart emerged battered but with a profound affection for his constituency of Penrith and the Border, and a deep direct insight into the era of populism and global conflict.

Uncompromising, candid and darkly humorous, Politics On the Edge is his story of the challenges, absurdities and realities of political life and a remarkable portrait of our age.]]> 436 Rory Stewart Debra 0 to-read 4.33 2023
author: Rory Stewart
name: Debra
average rating: 4.33
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]]> 203956642 From the New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of A WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE, a re-examination of one of the 20th century’s greatest unsung power players When Pamela Churchill Harriman died in 1997, obituaries that followed were predictably sexist. Written off as a party girl, courtesan and social climber, her real legacy was overshadowed by a glamorous social life spent in glittering, elite circles of power. That is, until with a wealth of new research, interviews and newly discovered sources, Sonia Purnell is reclaiming her larger-than-life story of influence and power in full, spectacular depth for the first time. At age 20 Churchill’s beloved daughter-in-law became a “secret weaponâ€� during World War II, wining, dining, and seducing diplomats and envoys to help win over American sentiment (and secrets) for the cause. She transformed Gianni Agnelli into a savvy businessman and heir to the Fiat empire, and after moving to the US brought a struggling Democratic party back to life, hand-picking Bill Clinton from obscurity and vaulting him to the presidency. Picked as Ambassador to France, she deployed her legendary quiet, subtle power to charm world leaders and broker an end to the conflict in Bosnia, in effect rehabilitating the reputation of the US on the world stage. There are few people in history with a greater scope of impact over as many decades and across continents, and there is no one in 20th Century politics, culture, and fashion whom she did not know, including Aly Khan, Kay Graham, Jackie Onassis, Truman Capote, Gloria Steinem, Ed Murrow, and Frank Sinatra among her friends and lovers.ĚýWritten with the novelistic richness and investigative rigor that only Sonia Purnell could bring to this story full of sex, politics, yachts, and fabulous clothes, KINGMAKER re-asserts Harriman’s rightful place in history.]]> 528 Sonia Purnell 0593297806 Debra 4 4.10
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name: Debra
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]]> 210999999 What would it be like to sit down for an impassioned, entertaining conversation with Hillary Clinton? In Something Lost, Something Gained, Hillary offers her candid views on life and love, politics, liberty, democracy, the threats we face, and the future within our reach.

She describes the strength she draws from her deepest friendships, her Methodist faith, and the nearly fifty years she’s been married to President Bill Clinton—all with the wisdom that comes from looking back on a full life with fresh eyes. She takes us along as she returns to the classroom as a college professor, enjoys the bonds inside the exclusive club of former First Ladies, moves past her dream of being president, and dives into new activism for women and democracy.

From canoeing with an ex-Nazi trying to deprogram white supremacists to sweltering with salt farmers in the desert trying to adapt to the climate crisis in India, Hillary brings us to the front lines of our biggest challenges. For the first time, Hillary shares the story of her operation to evacuate Afghan women to safety in the harrowing final days of America’s longest war. But we also meet the brave women dissidents defying dictators around the world, gain new personal insights about her old adversary Vladimir Putin, and learn the best ways that worried parents can protect kids from toxic technology. We also hear her fervent and persuasive warning to all American voters. In the end, Something Lost, Something Gained is a testament to the idea that the personal is political, and the political is personal, providing a blueprint for what each of us can do to make our lives better.

Hillary has “looked at life from both sides now.� In these pages, she shares the latest chapter of her inspiring life and shows us how to age with grace and keep moving forward, with grit, joy, purpose, and a sense of humor.]]> 324 Hillary Rodham Clinton 1668017237 Debra 3 4.17 2024
author: Hillary Rodham Clinton
name: Debra
average rating: 4.17
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rating: 3
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]]> 194934319 High Caucasus is Tom Parfitt's wonderfully atmospheric memoir-cum-travel narrative about the 1,000-mile walk he made to lay to rest a ghost. On the 1 September 2004, at the Beslan siege in Russia when Chechen terrorists took more than 1,000 people captive at celebrations held to mark the first day of the school year. Lasting three days, the siege reached a bloody climax when two bombs exploded inside the school and Russian troops stormed the building, sparking a fire in the gymnasium where the captives were held. In the chaos, 334 hostages, more than half of them children (the youngest two years old), died. Never a war correspondent, Tom was emotionally pulverised, and his solution was to turn back to his lifelong love of walking, to a nature cure of sorts. Having long loved the Caucasus, he also wanted to understand why the mountain peoples there, people like the Chechens, were so angry at Russia.

That was how Tom came to walk 1,000 miles across the North Caucasus, starting in Sochi in the Black Sea and walking the mountain ranges to Derbent, the ancient fortress city on the Caspian. His route took him through the homelands of proud, little-known peoples - the Abkhazians, the Karachays, the Balkars, the Ingush, the few surviving Circassians - through bear-haunted forests, across high altitude pastures and over the shoulder of Elbrus, Europe's highest mountain. That meant crossing the political and tribal fault-lines of seven Russian Adygea, Karachayevo-Cherkesiya, Kabardino-Balkariya, North Ossetia, Ingushetia, Chechnya and Dagestan.

]]> 338 Tom Parfitt 1472294769 Debra 3 3.94 2023
author: Tom Parfitt
name: Debra
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2023
rating: 3
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]]> 157981738
In 1945, Germany lay in ruins, morally and materially. Its citizens stood condemned by history, responsible for a horrifying genocide and war of extermination. But by the end of Angela Merkel’s tenure as chancellor in 2021, Germany looked like the moral voice of Europe, welcoming more than one million refugees, holding together the tenuous threads of the European Union, and making military restraint the center of its foreign policy. At the same time, Germany's rigid fiscal discipline and energy deals with Vladimir Putin have cast a shadow over the present. Innumerable scholars have asked how Germany could have degenerated from a nation of scientists, poets, and philosophers into one responsible for genocide. This book raises another vital How did a nation whose past has been marked by mass murder, a people who cheered Adolf Hitler, reinvent themselves, and how much?

Trentmann tells this dramatic story of the German people from the middle of World War II through the Cold War and the division into East and West to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the struggle to find a place in the world today. This journey is marked by a series of extraordinary moral admissions of guilt and shame vying with immediate economic concerns; restitution for some but not others; tolerance versus racism; compassion versus complicity. Through a range of voices—German soldiers and German Jews; displaced persons in limbo; East German women and shopkeepers angry about energy shortages; opponents and supporters of nuclear power; volunteers helping migrants and refugees, and right-wing populists attacking them—Trentmann paints a remarkable and surprising portrait spanning eighty years of the conflicted people at the center of Europe, showing how the Germans became who they are today.]]> 816 Frank Trentmann 1524732915 Debra 0 to-read 4.00
author: Frank Trentmann
name: Debra
average rating: 4.00
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]]> 207996046 Unearth the incredible story of France with this brief and introductory guide � from Celtic pre-history to the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the modern day.Authentically written with gripping prose and the latest historical facts, this fascinating book invites you on a journey through the ages to discover the intense, turbulent, and often bloody history of a European juggernaut.Shedding light on the fascinating world of French culture and politics � from their mysterious Celtic origins to their rise as a Medieval superpower � A Brief History of France provides history buffs and casual readers alike with a gripping exploration into the many twists and turns that this remarkable country endured.Packed with gritty historical details, readers will uncover the brutal clashes between the Merovingian and Carolingian dynasties, the pivotal role that France played in the Renaissance, and the surprising reasons France was a hotbed for the revolutionary forces that gave birth to their passion for liberty and democracy.Here’s just a little of what you’ll discover Celtic History & Roman How France Became The Pivotal Colony at The Hands of RomeBirth of an Ancient Feuds, Rising Nobles, & The Birth of French Identity In The Middle AgesAn Explosion of Religion & The Renaissance In Paris & BeyondThe Power of The Fall of Monarchy & The End of an EraSeeds of The Surprising Reasons France Became a Bastion of Rebellious Spirit (and The Violence It Left In Is Wake)And Much More...As a brilliant resource for students, amateur historians, and anybody curious about the major events that shaped French culture from pre-Roman times to the present day, A Brief History of France is an invaluable companion guide that provides a comprehensive and easy-to-digest overview of the major eras of French history.Are you ready to uncover the fascinating history of France? Then scroll up and order your copy today...]]> 220 Dominic Haynes 1915710545 Debra 0 currently-reading 4.00
author: Dominic Haynes
name: Debra
average rating: 4.00
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date added: 2024/09/21
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]]> 34955266
Constitutional democracy, equal justice for all, the American Dream, and American Exceptionalism are all part of our country's narrative. But, as Imagining a Great Republic explains, there has never been just a single American narrative--we have competing stories, just as we have competing American Dreams and competing ways of imagining a more perfect political union. Recognizing and understanding these competing values is a key part of being American. Cronin's book explains how this is possible and why we should all be proud to be American.--John Nichols, writer and novelist "CHOICE"]]> 468 Thomas E. Cronin 1538105721 Debra 1
Merged review:

This just wasn’t the book I expected it to be. Suppose it’s not fair to give it one star, but the points raised by the author aren’t enough to outweigh the myriad synopses of books.]]> 3.33
author: Thomas E. Cronin
name: Debra
average rating: 3.33
book published:
rating: 1
read at: 2021/05/23
date added: 2024/09/17
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This just wasn’t the book I expected it to be. Suppose it’s not fair to give it one star, but the points raised by the author aren’t enough to outweigh the myriad synopses of books.

Merged review:

This just wasn’t the book I expected it to be. Suppose it’s not fair to give it one star, but the points raised by the author aren’t enough to outweigh the myriad synopses of books.
]]> 19060535 417 Daniel J. Sharfstein 1101475803 Debra 4
I don't know how to explain the evil that has been done in the name of keeping one group of people above another. What I do know is that this book does a terrific job of illuminating how random that line is/was for three families. To me, the book reads like a good novel - or maybe I just like history and that's the closest analogue I can come up with for people who may NOT like to read history. And the fact that I know one of the members of one family included in this history, makes this read all the more fascinating for me.

If you've ever read "The Sweeter the Juice" this book covers the same territory, but as chronicled by someone not in the families.

I recommend this highly. The only thing keeping it from 5 stars is that there are chunks of family history glossed over that I'd love to know more about! ]]> 4.19 2011
author: Daniel J. Sharfstein
name: Debra
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2012/02/21
date added: 2024/09/11
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Race designations have always baffled me. People attribute behaviors, characteristics, and untold number of other attributes to individuals based on -- on -- something that may be a social construct. I mean, I get anthropological differences in various groups of people, but in the United States, race once (and perhaps for some, still does) meant superior/inferior. And at some point in time, someone MAY have crossed the arbitrary line of color, and produced offspring, making that LINE quite blurry.

I don't know how to explain the evil that has been done in the name of keeping one group of people above another. What I do know is that this book does a terrific job of illuminating how random that line is/was for three families. To me, the book reads like a good novel - or maybe I just like history and that's the closest analogue I can come up with for people who may NOT like to read history. And the fact that I know one of the members of one family included in this history, makes this read all the more fascinating for me.

If you've ever read "The Sweeter the Juice" this book covers the same territory, but as chronicled by someone not in the families.

I recommend this highly. The only thing keeping it from 5 stars is that there are chunks of family history glossed over that I'd love to know more about!
]]> 741647 112 Rebecca West 014118065X Debra 3 3.79 1918
author: Rebecca West
name: Debra
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1918
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/08
date added: 2024/09/08
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]]> 58276714
In the aftermath of Germany's defeat in World War I and the failed November Revolution of 1918�19, the conservative government of Bavaria identified Jews with left-wing radicalism. Munich became a hotbed of right-wing extremism, with synagogues under attack and Jews physically assaulted in the streets. It was here that Adolf Hitler established the Nazi movement and developed his antisemitic ideas. Michael Brenner provides a gripping account of how Bavaria's capital city became the testing ground for Nazism and the Final Solution.

In an electrifying narrative that takes readers from Hitler's return to Munich following the armistice to his calamitous Beer Hall Putsch in 1923, Brenner demonstrates why the city's transformation is crucial for understanding the Nazi era and the tragedy of the Holocaust. Brenner describes how Hitler and his followers terrorized Munich's Jews and were aided by politicians, judges, police, and ordinary residents. He shows how the city's Jews responded to the antisemitic backlash in many different ways―by declaring their loyalty to the state, by avoiding public life, or by abandoning the city altogether.

Drawing on a wealth of previously unknown documents, In Hitler's Munich reveals the untold story of how a once-cosmopolitan city became, in the words of Thomas Mann, "the city of Hitler."]]> 392 Michael Brenner 0691191034 Debra 0 currently-reading 3.66
author: Michael Brenner
name: Debra
average rating: 3.66
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date added: 2024/08/29
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]]> 25814404 USA TODAY) with co-host of The View and former White House Communications director Nicolle Wallace in her electrifying insider novel of three powerful women on a day that will change the country forever.

Charlotte Kramer, the 45th President of the United States, has done the unprecedented in allowing a network news team to document a day in her life—and that of her most senior staff. But while twenty news cameras are embedded with the president, the unthinkable happens: five major attacks are leveled on US soil. Her secretary of defense, Melanie, and her press secretary, Dale, must instantly jump into action in supporting the president and reassuring the country that the safety they treasure is in capable hands.

But secrets have always thrived in President Kramer’s White House. With all eyes on them and America’s stability on the line, all three women are hiding personal and professional secrets that could rock the West Wing to its very foundations…and change the lives of the people they love most.

With an insider’s sharp eye and her trademark winning prose, Nicolle Wallace delivers a timely novel of domestic and political intrigue that is impossible to put down.]]> 352 Nicolle Wallace 1476756902 Debra 3 3.57 2015
author: Nicolle Wallace
name: Debra
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/29
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]]> 13041475
Charlotte Kramer, America’s first female president, is beginning her second term and is determined to make her mark on history although events do seem to be conspiring against her. Melanie Kingston, her best friend, just signed on as secretary of defense. Will their relationship survive? Dale Smith is the senior communications advisor to the vice president and knows a secret that could not only ruin her own career but put the credibility of the White House on the line. Tara Meyers is the most popular vice president in recent history, but does her public image match her private life?

When a classified terror threat is made public, all the weaknesses of this presidency are laid bare—and with the country’s safety at stake, someone in the White House isn’t taking any chances.

From the bestselling author of Eighteen Acres comes a novel with a true insider’s look at the lives of Washington’s political elite. It’s Classified reveals the intrigue and drama that go on behind the closed doors of the White House and opens up a world few have access to.]]> 325 Nicolle Wallace 1451610971 Debra 3 3.98 2011
author: Nicolle Wallace
name: Debra
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/25
date added: 2024/08/25
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]]> 58999182
The fascinating story of America’s national anthem and an examination of its powerful meaning today. Most Americans learn the tale in elementary school: During the War of 1812, Francis Scott Key witnessed the daylong bombardment of Baltimore’s Fort McHenry by British navy ships; seeing the Stars and Stripes still flying proudly at first light, he was inspired to pen his famous lyric. What Americans don’t know is the story of how this everyday “broadside ballad,� one of thousands of such topical songs that captured the events and emotions of early American life, rose to become the nation’s one and only anthem and today’s magnet for controversy. In O Say Can You Hear? Mark Clague brilliantly weaves together the stories of the song and the nation it represents. Examining the origins of both text and music, alternate lyrics and translations, and the song’s use in sports, at times of war, and for political protest, he argues that the anthem’s meaning reflects―and is reflected by―the nation’s quest to become a more perfect union. From victory song to hymn of sacrifice and vehicle for protest, the story of Key’s song is the story of America itself. Each chapter in the book explores a different facet of the anthem’s story. In one, we learn the real history behind the singing of the anthem at sporting events; in another, Clague explores Key’s complicated relationship with slavery and its repercussions today. An entire is chapter devoted to some of the most famous performances of the anthem, from Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock to Roseanne Barr at a baseball game to the iconic Whitney Houston version from the 1991 Super Bowl. At every turn, the book goes beyond the events to explore the song’s resonance and meaning. From its first lines Key’s lyric poses questions: “O say can you see?� “Does that banner yet wave?� Likewise, Clague’s O Say Can You Hear? raises important questions about the banner; what it meant in 1814, what it means to us today, and why it matters. 35 illustrations, 1 map]]> 352 Mark Clague 039365138X Debra 0 currently-reading 3.82 2022
author: Mark Clague
name: Debra
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/20
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]]> 10048160
Eighteen Acres, a description used by political insiders when referring to the White House complex, follows the first female President of the United States, Charlotte Kramer, and her staff as they take on dangerous threats from abroad and within her very own cabinet.

Charlotte Kramer, the 45th US President, Melanie Kingston, the White House chief of staff, and Dale Smith, a White House correspondent for one of the networks are all working tirelessly on Charlotte’s campaign for re-election. At the very moment when they should have been securing success, though, Kramer’s White House implodes under rumors of her husband’s infidelity and grave errors of judgment on the part of her closest national security advisor. In an upheaval that threatens not only the presidency, but the safety of the American people, Charlotte must fight to regain her footing and protect the the country she has given her life to serving.

Eighteen Acres combines political and family drama into one un-put-downable novel. It is a smart, juicy and fast-paced read that we’re sure fans of commercial women’s fiction will fall in total love with.]]> 336 Nicolle Wallace 1439195935 Debra 4 3.74 2010
author: Nicolle Wallace
name: Debra
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/20
date added: 2024/08/20
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]]> 195608683 The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Splendid and the Vile brings to life the pivotal five months between the election of Abraham Lincoln and the start of the Civil War—a slow-burning crisis that finally tore a deeply divided nation in two.

On November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln became the fluky victor in a tight race for president. The country was bitterly at odds; Southern extremists were moving ever closer to destroying the Union, with one state after another seceding and Lincoln powerless to stop them. Slavery fueled the conflict, but somehow the passions of North and South came to focus on a lonely federal fortress in Charleston: Fort Sumter.
Ěý
Master storyteller Erik Larson offers a gripping account of the chaotic months between Lincoln’s election and the Confederacy’s shelling of Sumter—a period marked by tragic errors and miscommunications, enflamed egos and craven ambitions, personal tragedies and betrayals. Lincoln himself wrote that the trials of these five months were “so great that, could I have anticipated them, I would not have believed it possible to survive them.�
Ěý
At the heart of this suspense-filled narrative are Major Robert Anderson, Sumter’s commander and a former slave owner sympathetic to the South but loyal to the Union; Edmund Ruffin, a vain and bloodthirsty radical who stirs secessionist ardor at every opportunity; and Mary Boykin Chesnut, wife of a prominent planter, conflicted over both marriage and slavery and seeing parallels between both. In the middle of it all is the overwhelmed Lincoln, battling with his duplicitous Secretary of State, William Seward, as he tries desperately to avert a war that he fears is inevitable—one that will eventually kill 750,000 Americans.
Ěý
Drawing on diaries, secret communiques, slave ledgers, and plantation records, Larson gives us a political horror story that captures the forces that led America to the brink—a dark reminder that we often don’t see a cataclysm coming until it’s too late.]]> 565 Erik Larson 0385348746 Debra 4 4.13 2024
author: Erik Larson
name: Debra
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/16
date added: 2024/08/16
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]]> 127280282 Discover the work of the greatest writer in the English language as you've never encountered it before by ordering internationally renowned actor Dame Judi Dench's SHAKESPEARE: The Man Who Pays The Rent—a witty, insightful journey through the plays and tales of our beloved Shakespeare.

Taking a curtain call with a live snake in her wig...

Cavorting naked through the Warwickshire countryside painted green...

Acting opposite a child with a pumpkin on his head...

These are just a few of the things Dame Judi Dench has done in the name of Shakespeare.

For the very first time, Judi opens up about every Shakespearean role she has played throughout her seven-decade career, from Lady Macbeth and Titania to Ophelia and Cleopatra. In a series of intimate conversations with actor & director Brendan O'Hea, she guides us through Shakespeare's plays with incisive clarity, revealing the secrets of her rehearsal process and inviting us to share in her triumphs, disasters, and backstage shenanigans.

Interspersed with vignettes on audiences, critics, company spirit and rehearsal room etiquette, she serves up priceless revelations on everything from the craft of speaking in verse to her personal interpretations of some of Shakespeare's most famous scenes, all brightened by her mischievous sense of humour, striking level of honesty and a peppering of hilarious anecdotes, many of which have remained under lock and key until now.

Instructive and witty, provocative and inspiring, this is ultimately Judi's love letter to Shakespeare, or rather, The Man Who Pays The Rent.]]> 400 Judi Dench 1250325773 Debra 4 4.51 2023
author: Judi Dench
name: Debra
average rating: 4.51
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/31
date added: 2024/07/31
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]]> 198122929 'Kuper is a shrewd observer [in] this entertaining mix of memoir and anthropology' The Sunday Times

From the bestselling author of Chums comes an explorer's tale of a naĂŻf getting to understand a complex, glittering, beautiful and often cruel city.

Simon Kuper has experienced Paris both as a human being and as a journalist. He has grown middle-aged there, eaten the croissants, taken his children to countless football matches on freezing Saturday mornings in the city's notorious banlieues, and in 2015 lived through two terrorist attacks on his family's neighbourhood. Over two decades of becoming something of a cantankerous Parisian himself, Kuper has watched the city change.

This century, Paris has globalised, gentrified, and been shocked into realising its role as the crucible of civilisational conflict. Sometimes it's a multicultural paradise, and sometimes it isn't. This decade, Parisians have lived through a sequence of terrorist attacks, record floods and heatwaves, the burning of Notre Dame, the storming of the city by gilets jaunes, and the pandemic. Now, as the Olympics come to town, France is busy executing the 'Grand Paris' the most serious attempt yet to knit together the bejewelled city with its neglected suburbs.

This is a captivating memoir of today's Paris without the clichés.]]> 271 Simon Kuper 1800816499 Debra 3 As someone who has some knowledge of French history but little of more recent French culture, this was a worthwhile read.]]> 4.15
author: Simon Kuper
name: Debra
average rating: 4.15
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/17
date added: 2024/07/17
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Planning a trip to Paris next year, so this seemed a timely read. Some of it very good, especially chapters dealing with banlieus and football- and the chapter on the social/ political hierarchy was interesting but rather a snoozer! And the chapter on sex attitudes regarding adolescents (and younger) from a couple of decades ago was utterly appalling.
As someone who has some knowledge of French history but little of more recent French culture, this was a worthwhile read.
]]> 62609178 Celebrated NPR correspondent Nina Totenberg delivers an extraordinary memoir of her personal successes, struggles, and life-affirming relationships, including her beautiful friendship of nearly fifty years with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.Four years before Nina Totenberg was hired at NPR, where she cemented her legacy as a prizewinning reporter, and nearly twenty-two years before Ruth Bader Ginsburg was appointed to the Supreme Court, Nina called Ruth. A reporter for The National Observer, Nina was curious about Ruth’s legal brief, asking the Supreme Court to do something declare a law that discriminated “on the basis of sex� to be unconstitutional. In a time when women were fired for becoming pregnant, often could not apply for credit cards or get a mortgage in their own names, Ruth patiently explained her argument. That call launched a remarkable, nearly fifty-year friendship. Dinners with Ruth is an extraordinary account of two women who paved the way for future generations by tearing down professional and legal barriers. It is also an intimate memoir of the power of friendships as women began to pry open career doors and transform the workplace. At the story’s heart is one, special Ruth and Nina saw each other not only through personal joys, but also illness, loss, and widowhood. During the devastating illness and eventual death of Nina’s first husband, Ruth drew her out of grief; twelve years later, Nina would reciprocate when Ruth’s beloved husband died. They shared not only a love of opera, but also of shopping, as they instinctively understood that clothes were armor for women who wanted to be taken seriously in a workplace dominated by men. During Ruth’s last year, they shared so many small dinners that Saturdays were “reserved for Ruth� in Nina’s house. Dinners with Ruth also weaves together compelling, personal portraits of other fascinating women and men from Nina’s life, including her cherished NPR colleagues Cokie Roberts and Linda Wertheimer; her beloved husbands; her friendships with multiple Supreme Court Justices, including Lewis Powell, William Brennan, and Antonin Scalia, and Nina’s own family—her father, the legendary violinist Roman Totenberg, and her “best friends,� her sisters. Inspiring and revelatory, Dinners with Ruth is a moving story of the joy and true meaning of friendship.]]> 0 Nina Totenberg Debra 4 4.26 2022
author: Nina Totenberg
name: Debra
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2022
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/07/14
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]]> 207689829 The memoir by the doctor who became a beacon of hope for millions through the COVID pandemic, and whose six-decade career in high-level public service put him in the room with seven presidents

Anthony Fauci is arguably the most famous � and most revered � doctor in the world today. His role guiding America sanely and calmly through Covid (and through the torrents of Trump) earned him the trust of millions during one of the most terrifying periods in modern American history, but this was only the most recent of the global epidemics in which Dr. Fauci played a major role. His crucial role in identifying HIV and bringing AIDS into sympathetic public view and his leadership in navigating the Ebola, SARS, West Nile, and anthrax crises make him truly an American hero.

His memoir reaches back to his boyhood in Brooklyn, New York, and carries through decades of caring for critically ill patients, navigating the whirlpools of Washington politics, and behind-the-scenes advising and negotiating with seven presidents on key issues from global AIDS relief to infectious diseaseĚýpreparedness at home. On Call will be an inspiration for readers who admire and are grateful to him and for those who want to emulate him in public service. He is the embodiment of “speaking truth to power,â€� with dignity and results.]]> 464 Anthony Fauci 0593657470 Debra 4 4.47 2024
author: Anthony Fauci
name: Debra
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/09
date added: 2024/07/09
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]]> 196585876 An Unfinished Love A Personal History of the 1960s by Doris Kearns Goodwin, one of America’s most beloved historians, artfully weaves together biography, memoir, and history. She takes you along on the emotional journey she and her husband, Richard (Dick) Goodwin embarked upon in the last years of his life.

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

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

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

Their expedition gave Dick’s last years renewed purpose and determination. It gave Doris the opportunity to connect and reconnect with participants and witnesses of pivotal moments of the 1960s. And it gave them both an opportunity to make fresh assessments of the central figures of the time—John F. Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Robert Kennedy, Eugene McCarthy, and especially Lyndon Johnson, who greatly impacted both their lives. The voyage of remembrance brought unexpected discoveries, forgiveness, and the renewal of old dreams, reviving the hope that the youth of today will carry forward this unfinished love story with America.]]> 480 Doris Kearns Goodwin 1982108665 Debra 4 4.54 2024
author: Doris Kearns Goodwin
name: Debra
average rating: 4.54
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/24
date added: 2024/06/24
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]]> 17315048
It started with the dust storm that holed his suit and nearly killed him, and that forced his crew to leave him behind, sure he was already dead. Now he's stranded millions of miles from the nearest human being, with no way to even signal Earth that he's alive--and even if he could get word out, his food would be gone years before a rescue mission could arrive. Chances are, though, he won't have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old "human error" are much more likely to get him first.

But Mark isn't ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills--and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit--he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. But will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?]]> 11 Andy Weir Debra 4 What a pleasant surprise! Loved the book! Actually, I listened to the audiobook and really enjoyed it. I would recommend audiobook for anyone who prefers to avoid the science sections that may be harder to follow when reading v. listening.]]> 4.41 2011
author: Andy Weir
name: Debra
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2016/10/24
date added: 2024/06/10
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Was not keen on reading but it was a book club choice so I decided to go ahead.
What a pleasant surprise! Loved the book! Actually, I listened to the audiobook and really enjoyed it. I would recommend audiobook for anyone who prefers to avoid the science sections that may be harder to follow when reading v. listening.
]]> 22859447
In Phantom Terror , award-winning historian Adam Zamoyski argues that the stringent measures designed to prevent unrest had disastrous and far-reaching consequences, inciting the very rebellions they had hoped to quash. The newly established culture of state control halted economic development in Austria and birthed a rebellious youth culture in Russia that would require even harsher methods to suppress. By the end of the era, the first stirrings of terrorist movements had become evident across the continent, making the previously unfounded fears of European monarchs a reality.

Phantom Terror explores this troubled, fascinating period, when politicians and cultural leaders from Edmund Burke to Mary Shelley were forced to choose sides and either support or resist the counterrevolutionary spirit embodied in the newly-omnipotent central states. The turbulent political situation that coalesced during this era would lead directly to the revolutions of 1848 and to the collapse of order in World War I. We still live with the legacy of this era of paranoia, which prefigured not only the modern totalitarian state but also the now preeminent contest between society's haves and have nots.

These tempestuous years of suspicion and suppression were the crux upon which the rest of European history would turn. In this magisterial history, Zamoyski chronicles the moment when desperate monarchs took the world down the path of revolution, terror, and world war.]]> 569 Adam Zamoyski 0465039898 Debra 3 3.75 2014
author: Adam Zamoyski
name: Debra
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/07
date added: 2024/06/07
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]]> 199597683
Elvera “Peps� Neuman got lost in the sounds and rhythms of basketball, dribbling and shooting on a hoop affixed to her family's barn in Eden Valley, Minnesota. In the years preceding Title IX, Neuman's dreams of playing the game professionally meant a life away from home on barnstorming tours and even forming a team of her own, the Arkansas Gems.

Sixty years later, she got to witnessĚýwhat a sold-out Target Center in downtown Minneapolis looked like on the Friday night of the 2022 Women’s Final Four. Neuman’s cheers joined with a crowd of 18,268 to send a wall of sound toward Paige Bueckers and her Connecticut teammates.ĚýThe 5â€�11 Bueckers may have worn her ponytail a little differently than Neuman, but Neuman certainly saw something of herself in the young superstar.

This is the storyĚýof the pioneers who shaped so much of the modern infrastructure for women's basketball, whose histories intersect and wind their way through the state of Minnesota.ĚýIt is the story of forcing open doors—to ensure teams even existed, to allow those teams to play in conditions resembling those men could take for granted, to ensure that the color of your skin or who you love would not be a barrier to building a life centered around basketball. To end the double-standard that treats every undeniable success by women as a one-off, but every setback as a referendum.Ěý

Four generations of women have played essential and diverse Neuman and her friend and collaborator of a half-century, Vicky Nelson; Cheryl Reeve and her wife, Carley Knox; Lindsay Whalen, Maya Moore, Seimone Augustus, Sylvia Fowles, and WNBA's Minnesota Lynx; right through to the future of the game in Bueckers and the stars of tomorrow.

Through meticulous research and evocative storytelling, this captivating narrative gives due recognition to the luminaries who ushered in women's basketball's modern era.]]> 256 Howard Megdal 1637271980 Debra 3 3.80 2024
author: Howard Megdal
name: Debra
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/05/31
date added: 2024/05/31
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]]> 198493735 Ěý
More than any baseball player of his generation, Clayton Kershaw has embodied the burden of athletic greatness, the prizes and perils that await those who strive for it all. He is a three-time Cy Young award winner, the first pitcher to win National League MVP since Bob Gibson, and a surefire, first-ballot Hall of Famer. Many of his peers consider him the greatest pitcher to ever climb atop a big-league mound. In an age when baseball became more impersonal, a sport altered by adherence to algorithms and actuarial tables, Kershaw personified the game’s lingering humanity, with his joy and suffering on display each October as he chased a championship. He pitched through pain, placing his future at risk, on the game’s grandest stages. He endeared himself to teammates and foes alike with his refusal to make excuses, with his willingness to shoulder the blame when he failed. And he only further impressed them when he returned, year after year, even as his body broke down from the strain of his profession. The journey captivated fans in Los Angeles and beyond, so much so that when the Dodgers finally won a title in 2020, the baseball world exulted in his triumph.

The Last of His Kind traces Kershaw’s path from a boyhood fractured by divorce to his development as one of the most-heralded pitching prospects in Texas history to his emergence in Los Angeles as the spiritual heir to Sandy Koufax. But the book also charts Kershaw’s place in baseball’s changing landscape, as his own stubbornness butted against the game’s evolution. The story of baseball in the 21st century can be told through Kershaw’s career, from his apprenticeship with icons like Joe Torre and Greg Maddux, to his wary relationship with the implementation of analytics, to his victimhood in the 2017 sign-stealing scandal at the hands of the Houston Astros. The game has changed so much during Kershaw’s illustrious career, and he has changed, ever so slightly, to stay at the top. To understand how baseball is played today, and how it got that way, you must understand the journey of Clayton Kershaw.]]> 400 Andy McCullough 0306832593 Debra 5 4.40
author: Andy McCullough
name: Debra
average rating: 4.40
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rating: 5
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]]> 56769565 400 Ruth Ben-Ghiat 0393868419 Debra 3 4.32 2020
author: Ruth Ben-Ghiat
name: Debra
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2024/05/01
date added: 2024/05/01
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]]> 179311302 512 Natalie Dykstra 1328515753 Debra 4 3.96
author: Natalie Dykstra
name: Debra
average rating: 3.96
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/14
date added: 2024/04/14
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]]> 63946826
In 1785, when the great German poet Friedrich Schiller penned his immortal “Ode to Joy,� he crystallized the deepest hopes and dreams of the European Enlightenment for a new era of peace and freedom, a time when millions would be embraced as equals. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony then gave wing to Schiller’s words, but barely a century later these same words were claimed by Nazi propagandists and twisted by a barbarism so complete that it ruptured, as one philosopher put it, “the deep layer of solidarity among all who wear a human face.�

When it comes to how societies remember these increasingly distant dreams and catastrophes, we often think of history books, archives, documentaries, or memorials carved from stone. But in Time’s Echo, the award-winning critic and cultural historian Jeremy Eichler makes a passionate and revelatory case for the power of music as culture’s memory, an art form uniquely capable of carrying forward meaning from the past.

With a critic’s ear, a scholar’s erudition, and a novelist’s eye for detail, Eichler shows how four towering composers—Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Benjamin Britten—lived through the era of the Second World War and the Holocaust and later transformed their experiences into deeply moving, transcendent works of music, scores that echo lost time. Summoning the supporting testimony of writers, poets, philosophers, musicians, and everyday citizens, Eichler reveals how the essence of an entire epoch has been inscribed in these sounds and stories. Along the way, he visits key locations central to the music’s creation, from the ruins of Coventry Cathedral to the site of the Babi Yar ravine in Kyiv.

As the living memory of the Second World War fades, Time’s Echo proposes new ways of listening to history, and learning to hear between its notes the resonances of what another era has written, heard, dreamed, hoped, and mourned. A lyrical narrative full of insight and compassion, this book deepens how we think about the legacies of war, the presence of the past, and the renewed promise of art for our lives today.]]> 400 Jeremy Eichler 0525521712 Debra 4 A moving, thoughtful book that I can’t do justice to with my words.
Music, memory, horror and honor are presented in words that conjure emotions of the figures that are the focus of this book.
Pay no attention to my feeble ramblings � go read it!]]> 4.47 2023
author: Jeremy Eichler
name: Debra
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/26
date added: 2024/03/26
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Probably deserves 5 stars, but I just don’t give those.
A moving, thoughtful book that I can’t do justice to with my words.
Music, memory, horror and honor are presented in words that conjure emotions of the figures that are the focus of this book.
Pay no attention to my feeble ramblings � go read it!
]]> 195790805 368 Jeff Shaara 1250279968 Debra 0 to-read 4.20 2024
author: Jeff Shaara
name: Debra
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> 199491469 Ěý
“Spare, elegant and poignant. . . . If there is a single contemporary book that should be pressed into the hands of those who decide issues of war and peace, this is it.”—John Gray, New Statesman
Ěý
“It is tragic that Robert D. Kaplan’s luminous The Tragic Mind is so urgently needed.”—George F. Will
Ěý
Some books emerge from a lifetime of hard-won knowledge. Robert D. Kaplan has learned, from a career spent reporting on wars, revolutions, and international politics in Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia, that the essence of geopolitics is tragedy. In The Tragic Mind , he employs the works of ancient Greek dramatists, Shakespeare, German philosophers, and the modern classics to explore the central subjects of international order, disorder, rebellion, ambition, loyalty to family and state, violence, and the mistakes of power.
Ěý
The great dilemmas of international politics, he argues, are not posed by good versus evil—a clear and easy choice—but by contests of good versus good, where the choices are often searing, incompatible, and fraught with consequences. A deeply learned and deeply felt meditation on the importance of lived experience in conducting international relations, this is a book for everyone who wants a profound understanding of the tragic politics of our time.]]> 152 Robert D. Kaplan 030027677X Debra 3 3.00 2023
author: Robert D. Kaplan
name: Debra
average rating: 3.00
book published: 2023
rating: 3
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]]> 197913459 The Sunday Times Sports Book of the Year
A Times Book of the Year
A Financial Times Book of the Year
A Guardian Book of the Year
A New Statesman Book of the Year

'The heartwarming story of the collaboration and friendship between English football’s oddest couple, Elton John and Graham Taylor' The Times

' A wonderful, feel-good account of an ultimately English provincial story' Simon Kuper
_____________________

An unforgettable British underdog story from one of our greatest narrative nonfiction writers, John Preston, and the international musical icon and bestselling author, Sir Elton John.

Britain in the 1970s was beset by unrest and unemployment, as inflation soared, fuel was scarce, and hooliganism was on the rise. And for Watford FC, the outlook was even gloomier. Rundown and rat-infested, Watford were an ailing side with holes in their kit and barely enough fans to fill a stand. Of the 92 clubs in the Football League, spread across four divisions, Watford were in 92nd place.

Meanwhile, Elton John was the most successful rockstar in the world. With six-inch platforms, spangled jumpsuits, and peroxide hair, he was glamorous, gay, and seemingly a world away from the semi-detached house in Pinner where he had supported Watford FC as a child. Many assumed he would move to America. Instead, he bought the football club.

Watford Forever is the remarkable story of Elton John's ownership of Watford FC and its transformational journey to the top of the First Division under iconic manager Graham Taylor. Perhaps most remarkably, four of the same players who had been written off as has-beens went with them all the way from the bottom to the top. Inspiring and infectiously funny, this is a tribute to football's unlikeliest friendship as Elton John and Taylor, a straight-talking former fullback with a love of Vera Lynn, beat the odds and their personal demons to save a club and a community.

Immersed in the grime and glamour of '70s Britain, Watford Forever is one of sport's great underdog stories and a love letter to the beautiful game.
]]> 289 John Preston 0241597919 Debra 4 4.47
author: John Preston
name: Debra
average rating: 4.47
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rating: 4
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]]> 12054673
From London's glittering West End to Broadway's bright lights, from her Academy Award-winning role as Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love to "M" in the James Bond films , Judi Dench has treated audiences to some of the greatest performances of our time. She made her professional acting debut in 1957 with England's Old Vic theatre company playing Ophelia in Hamlet , Katherine in Henry V (her New York debut), and then, Juliet. In 1961, she joined the Royal Shakespeare Company playing Anya in The Cherry Orchard with John Gielgud and Peggy Ashcroft. In 1968, she went beyond the classical stage to become a sensation as Sally Bowles in Cabaret, adding musical comedy to her repertoire. Over the years, Dench has given indelible performances in the classics as well as some of the greatest plays and musicals of the twentieth century including Noël Coward's Hay Fever, Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music, Kaufman and Hart's The Royal Family and David Hare's Amy's View (for which she won the Tony Award). Recently, she made a triumphant return to A Midsummer Night's Dream as Titania, a role she first played in 1962, now played as a theatre-besotted Queen Elizabeth I.

Her film career has been filled with piercing performances of unforgettable women: Queen Victoria in Mrs. Brown , the terrifying schoolteacher Barbara Covett in Notes on a Scandal and the writer Iris Murdoch in Iris. And, for the BBC, Dench created another unforgettable woman when she brought her great comic timing and deeply felt emotions to the role of Jean Pargetter in the long-running hit BBC series As Time Goes By.

And Furthermore is, however, more than the story of a great actress's career. It is also the story of Judi Dench's life: her early days as a child in a family that was in love with the theatre; her marriage to actor Michael Williams; the joy she takes in her daughter, the actress Finty Williams, and her grandson, Sammy. Filled with Dench's impish sense of humor, diamond-sharp intelligence and photos from her personal archives, And Furthermore is the book every fan of the great Judi Dench will cherish.]]> 288 Judi Dench 1250002141 Debra 4
I plan to re-watch some of her films and watch those I missed! ]]> 3.60 2010
author: Judi Dench
name: Debra
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2010
rating: 4
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What a fun read! Dench is such a treasure. What it must have been like to see her on stage!

I plan to re-watch some of her films and watch those I missed!
]]> 61157654
Dana Milbank sees a clear line from the Contract with America to the coup attempt. In the quarter century in between, Americans have witnessed the crackup of the party of Lincoln and Reagan, to its current iteration as a haven for white supremacists, political violence, conspiracy theories and authoritarianism.

Following the questionable careers of party heavyweights Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove, Mitch McConnell, and Rudy Giuliani, and those of many lesser known lowlights, Millbank recounts the shocking lengths the Republican Party has gone to to maintain its grip on the American people.]]> 405 Dana Milbank 0385548141 Debra 0 currently-reading 4.48
author: Dana Milbank
name: Debra
average rating: 4.48
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]]> 465697 1033 Olivia Manning 0099427486 Debra 0 to-read 4.18 1960
author: Olivia Manning
name: Debra
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1960
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/12
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]]> 61613477 The bestselling author of How to Live and At the Existentialist Café explores seven hundred years of writers, thinkers, scientists, and artists, all trying to understand what it means to be truly human

Humanism is an expansive tradition of thought that places shared humanity, cultural vibrancy, and moral responsibility at the center of our lives. The humanistic worldview--as clear-eyed and enlightening as it is kaleidoscopic and richly ambiguous--has inspired people for centuries to make their choices by principles of freethinking, intellectual inquiry, fellow feeling, and optimism.

In this sweeping new history, Sarah Bakewell, herself a lifelong humanist, illuminates the very personal, individual, and, well, human matter of humanism and takes readers on a grand intellectual adventure.

Voyaging from the literary enthusiasts of the fourteenth century to the secular campaigners of our own time, from Erasmus to Esperanto, from anatomists to agnostics, from Christine de Pizan to Bertrand Russell, and from Voltaire to Zora Neale Hurston, Bakewell brings together extraordinary humanists across history. She explores their immense variety: some sought to promote scientific and rationalist ideas, others put more emphasis on moral living, and still others were concerned with the cultural and literary studies known as "the humanities." Humanly Possible asks not only what brings all these aspects of humanism together but why it has such enduring power, despite opposition from fanatics, mystics, and tyrants.

A singular examination of this vital tradition as well as a dazzling contribution to its literature, this is an intoxicating, joyful celebration of the human spirit from one of our most beloved writers. And at a moment when we are all too conscious of the world's divisions, Humanly Possible--brimming with ideas, experiments in living, and respect for the deepest ethical values--serves as a recentering, a call to care for one another, and a reminder that we are all, together, only human.]]> 464 Sarah Bakewell 0735223378 Debra 0 to-read 3.96 2023
author: Sarah Bakewell
name: Debra
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2023
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]]> 30011003
A “gripping [and] disturbingly vivid� ( The Wall Street Journal ) portrait of the defining tragedy of our time, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of On Tyranny

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR� The Washington Post, The Economist, Publishers Weekly

In this epic history of extermination and survival, Timothy Snyder presents a new explanation of the great atrocity of the twentieth century, and reveals the risks that we face in the twenty-first. Based on untapped sources from eastern Europe and forgotten testimonies from Jewish survivors, Black Earth recounts the mass murder of the Jews as an event that is still close to us, more comprehensible than we would like to think and thus all the more terrifying.Ěý
Ěý
By overlooking the lessons of the Holocaust, Snyder concludes, we have misunderstood modernity and endangered the future. The early twenty-first century is coming to resemble the early twentieth, as growing preoccupations with food and water accompany ideological challenges to global order. Our world is closer to Hitler’s than we like to admit, and saving it requires us to see the Holocaust as it was—and ourselves as we are.Ěý
Ěý
Groundbreaking, authoritative, and utterly absorbing, Black Earth reveals a Holocaust that is not only history but warning.

New York Times Editorsâ€� Choice •ĚýFinalist for the Samuel Johnson Prize; the Mark Lynton History Prize; the Arthur Ross Book Award]]> 480 Timothy Snyder 1101903473 Debra 0 to-read 4.18 2015
author: Timothy Snyder
name: Debra
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2015
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]]> 90590139
“A vibrant, and essential history of America's unending, enraging and utterly compelling struggle since its founding to live up to its own best ideals� It's both a cause for hope, and a call to arms.�--Jane Mayer, author Dark Money

From historian and author of the popular daily newsletter LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN, a vital narrative that explains how America, once a beacon of democracy, now teeters on the brink of autocracy -- and how we can turn back.

In the midst of the impeachment crisis of 2019, Heather Cox Richardson launched a daily Facebook essay providing the historical background of the daily torrent of news. It soon turned into a newsletter and its readership ballooned to more than 2 million dedicated readers who rely on her plainspoken and informed take on the present and past in America.

In Democracy Awakening , Richardson crafts a compelling and original narrative, explaining how, over the decades, a small group of wealthy people have made war on American ideals. By weaponizing language and promoting false history they have led us into authoritarianism -- creating a disaffected population and then promising to recreate an imagined past where those people could feel important again. She argues that taking our country back starts by remembering the elements of the nation’s true history that marginalized Americans have always upheld. Their dedication to the principles on which this nation was founded has enabled us to renew and expand our commitment to democracy in the past. Richardson sees this history as a roadmap for the nation’s future.

Richardson’s talent is to wrangle our giant, meandering, and confusing news feed into a coherent story that singles out what we should pay attention to, what the precedents are, and what possible paths lie ahead. In her trademark calm prose, she is realistic and optimistic about the future of democracy. Her command of history allows her to pivot effortlessly from the Founders to the abolitionists to Reconstruction to Goldwater to Mitch McConnell, highlighting the political legacies of the New Deal, the lingering fears of socialism, the death of the liberal consensus and birth of “movement conservatism.�

Many books tell us what has happened over the last five years. Democracy Awakening explains how we got to this perilous point, what our history really tells us about ourselves, and what the future of democracy can be.]]> 286 Heather Cox Richardson 0593652967 Debra 0 to-read 4.38 2023
author: Heather Cox Richardson
name: Debra
average rating: 4.38
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]]> 62919402
Timothy McVeigh wanted to start a movement.

Speaking to his lawyers days after the Oklahoma City bombing, the Gulf War veteran expressed no regrets: killing 168 people was his patriotic duty. He cited the Declaration of Independence from “Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.� He had obsessively followed the siege of Waco and seethed at the imposition of President Bill Clinton’s assault weapons ban. A self-proclaimed white separatist, he abhorred immigration and wanted women to return to traditional roles. As he watched the industrial decline of his native Buffalo, McVeigh longed for when America was great.

New York Times bestselling author Jeffrey Toobin traces the dramatic history and profound legacy of Timothy McVeigh, who once declared, “I believe there is an army out there, ready to rise up, even though I never found it.� But that doesn’t mean his army wasn’t there. With news-breaking reportage, Toobin details how McVeigh’s principles and tactics have flourished in the decades since his death in 2001, reaching an apotheosis on January 6 when hundreds of rioters stormed the Capitol. Based on nearly a million previously unreleased tapes, photographs, and documents, including detailed communications between McVeigh and his lawyers, as well as interviews with such key figures as Bill Clinton, Homegrown reveals how the story of Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing is not only a powerful retelling of one of the great outrages of our time, but a warning for our future.]]> 426 Jeffrey Toobin 1668013576 Debra 0 to-read 4.12 2023
author: Jeffrey Toobin
name: Debra
average rating: 4.12
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]]> 7719899 0 Robert D. Kaplan 1400033039 Debra 0 to-read 3.00 1994
author: Robert D. Kaplan
name: Debra
average rating: 3.00
book published: 1994
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]]> 24038230 Kaplan uncovers a nation polarized along ethnic, economic, and political lines, where the uneven distribution of rapid technological advances allows some groups to surge forward, cultivating a radically different world-view than their poorer, less educated neighbors. Much of his report is bleak, but despite his insistence on documenting the worst, plenty of examples of prosperity and hope appear in these pages. What comes across most clearly is that there is still plenty of room for speculation on exactly how and where the new boundaries will be drawn. In this respect, America's future still carries the promise of the Wild West: equal parts opportunity, possibility, and uncertainty. --Shawn Carkonen

]]> 479 Robert D. Kaplan 0804153493 Debra 0 to-read 4.41 1998
author: Robert D. Kaplan
name: Debra
average rating: 4.41
book published: 1998
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]]> 30151938 An incisive portrait of the American landscape that shows how geography continues to determine America's role in the world--from the bestselling author of The Revenge of Geography and Balkan Ghosts

As a boy, Robert D. Kaplan listened to his truck-driver father tell evocative stories about traveling across America in his youth, travels in which he learned to understand the country literally from the ground up. There was a specific phrase from Kaplan's childhood that captured this perspective: A westward traveler must "earn the Rockies" by driving--not flying--across the flat Midwest and Great Plains.

In Earning the Rockies, Kaplan undertakes his own cross-country journey to recapture an appreciation of American geography often lost in the jet age. Traveling west, in the same direction as the pioneers, Kaplan traverses a rich and varied landscape that remains the primary source of American power. Along the way, he witnesses both prosperity and decline--increasingly cosmopolitan cities that thrive on globalization, impoverished towns denuded by the loss of manufacturing--and paints a bracingly clear picture of America today.

The history of westward expansion is examined here in a new light--as a story not just of genocide and individualism, but also of communalism and a respect for the limits of a water-starved terrain, a frontier experience that bent our national character toward pragmatism. Kaplan shows how the great midcentury works of geography and geopolitics by Bernard DeVoto, Walter Prescott Webb, and Wallace Stegner are more relevant today than ever before.

Concluding his journey at Naval Base San Diego, Kaplan looks out across the Pacific Ocean to the next frontier: China, India, and the emerging nations of Asia. And in the final chapter, he provides a gripping description of an anarchic world and explains why America's foreign policy response ought to be rooted in its own geographical situation.

In this short, intense meditation on the American landscape, Robert D. Kaplan reminds us of an overlooked source of American strength: the fact that we are a nation, empire, and continent all at once. Earning the Rockies is an urgent reminder of how a nation's geography still foreshadows its future, and how we must reexamine our own landscape in order to confront the challenges that lie before us.

Advance praise for Earning the Rockies:

"A text both evocative and provocative for readers who like to think . . . In his final sections, Kaplan discusses in scholarly but accessible detail the significant role that America has played and must play in this shuddering world." --Kirkus Reviews

"Earning the Rockies is a brilliant reminder of the impact of America's geography on its strategy. An essential complement to his previous work on the subject of geostrategy, Kaplan's latest contribution should be required reading." --Henry A. Kissinger

"Robert D. Kaplan uses America's unique geography and frontier experience to provide a lens-changing vision of America's role in the world, one that will capture your imagination. Unflinchingly honest, this refreshing approach shows how ideas from outside Washington, D.C., will balance America's idealism and pragmatism in dealing with a changed world. A jewel of a book, Earning the Rockies lights the path ahead." --General (Ret.) James Mattis]]> 201 Robert D. Kaplan 0399588213 Debra 0 to-read 3.29 2017
author: Robert D. Kaplan
name: Debra
average rating: 3.29
book published: 2017
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]]> 74841236
I was born at a a crossroads in history, a crossroads in culture, and a geographical crossroad in North Houston County in East Texas.

Born in 1945, Ruth J. Simmons grew up the twelfth child of sharecroppers. Her first home had no running water, no electricity, no books to read. Yet despite this—or, in her words, because of it—Simmons would become one of America’s preeminent educators. The former president of Smith College, Brown University, and Prairie View A&M, Texas’s oldest HBCU, Simmons has inspired generations of students as she herself made history.

In Up Home, Simmons takes us back to Grapeland to show how the people who love us when we are young shape who we become. We meet her caring, tireless mother who managed to feed her large family with an often empty pantry; her father, who refused to let racial and economic injustice crush his youngest daughter’s dreams; the doting brothers and sisters; and the attentive teachers who welcomed Ruth into the classroom, guiding her to a future she could hardly imagine as a child.

From the farmland of East Texas to Houston’s Fifth Ward to New Orleans at the dawn of the civil rights movement, Simmons depicts an era long gone but whose legacies of inequality we still live with today. Written in clear and timeless prose, Up Home is both an origin story set in the segregated South and the uplifting chronicle of a girl whose intellect, grace, and curiosity guide her as she creates a place for herself in the world.]]> 206 Ruth J. Simmons 0593446011 Debra 0 to-read 4.30 2023
author: Ruth J. Simmons
name: Debra
average rating: 4.30
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]]> 63853313 WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE IN HISTORY

An "important, deeply affecting—and regrettably relevant" (New York Times)Ěýchronicle of a sinisterĚýideaĚýof white Americansâ€� freedom to oppress others and their fight against the government that got in their way.ĚýĚý
Ěý
American freedomĚýis typically associatedĚýwith the fight of the oppressed for a better world. ButĚýfor centuries,Ěýwhenever the federal governmentĚýintervenedĚýon behalf of nonwhite people,Ěýmany white AmericansĚýfoughtĚýback in the name of freedom—their freedom to dominateĚýothers.Ěý
Ěý
InĚýFreedom’s Dominion,Ěýhistorian Jefferson CowieĚýtracesĚýthis complexĚýsagaĚýbyĚýfocusing onĚýaĚýquintessentially American ĚýBarbour County, Alabama,ĚýtheĚýancestral home of political firebrandĚýGeorge Wallace. InĚýa landĚýshaped byĚýsettler colonialism and chattel slavery,Ěýwhite people weaponized freedom toĚýseizeĚýNative lands, champion secession, overthrow Reconstruction, question the New Deal, and fight against the civil rights movement.ĚýAĚýriveting history of the long-running clash between white people and federal authority,ĚýthisĚýbookĚýradically shiftsĚýourĚýunderstanding of what freedom meansĚýin America.ĚýĚý]]> 607 Jefferson R. Cowie Debra 0 to-read 4.69 2022
author: Jefferson R. Cowie
name: Debra
average rating: 4.69
book published: 2022
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]]> 74820493 “American RambleĚýis aĚýdazzling mixture of travelogue, memoir, and history. At times profound, funny, and heartbreaking, this is the story of aĚýtraveler intoxicated by life. IĚýcouldn’t put itĚýdown.â€� —ĚýNathaniel Philbrick

A stunning, revelatory memoir about a 330-mile walk fromĚýWashington, D.C., to New York City—an unforgettable pilgrimage to the heart of America across some of our oldest common ground.Ěý

Neil King Jr.’s desire to walk from Washington, D.C., to New York City began as a whim and soon became an obsession. By the spring of 2021, events had intervened that gave his desire greater urgency. His neighborhood still reeled from the January 6th insurrection. Covid lockdowns and a rancorous election had deepened America’s divides. Neil himself bore the imprints of a long battle with cancer.

Determined to rediscover what matters in life and to see our national story with new eyes, Neil turned north with a small satchel on his back and one mission in To pay close attention to the land he crossed and the people he met.

What followed is an extraordinary 26-day journey through historic battlefields and cemeteries, over the Mason-Dixon line, past Quaker and Amish farms, along Valley Forge stream beds, atop a New Jersey trash mound, across New York Harbor, and finally, to his ultimate the Ramble, where a tangle of pathways converges in Central Park. The journey travels deep into America’s past and present, uncovering forgotten pockets and overlooked people. At a time of mounting disunity, the trip reveals the profound power of our shared ground.

By turns amusing, inspiring, and sublime,ĚýAmerican RambleĚýoffers an exquisite account of personal and national renewal—an indelible study of our country as we’ve never seen it before.Ěý]]> 369 Neil King Jr. 0063298368 Debra 0 to-read 4.46
author: Neil King Jr.
name: Debra
average rating: 4.46
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]]> 61138494 558 Holger Afflerbach 1108832881 Debra 0 to-read 4.36 2022
author: Holger Afflerbach
name: Debra
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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]]> 66086940 AN ECONOMIST BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

From the critically acclaimed historian Victor Sebestyen, the enthralling  account of historical and cultural events that defined Budapest, a unique city on the fault line between East and West in the heart of Europe.

Victor Sebestyen has written a sweeping, colorful and immersive history of the capital of Hungary from the 5th century to the present day, a metropolis whose location has marked it at different times as a crucial city and one apart at times rich and prosperous and at other times, enduring unbearable hardship. The older side, Buda, looks over the Danube and the panorama of modern Pest, developed in the late nineteen century as the twin capital of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Sebestyen divides the complex history of this city into three parts: The Magyars, The Hapsburgs, and The World at War as we look at the rich cultural legacy of literature, music, architecture as well as the politics and the important role played by its Jewish population when Budapest was called Judapest. We meet the rulers: ruthless early chieftains from the Magyars to the Huns, and Mongols (and many more), medieval kings and princes, Empress Sisi of the Hapsburgs but also Theodor Herzl, the father of modern political Zionism, Alexander and Michal Korda pioneers in film, Edward Teller who invented the H bomb and a sister to the King of Poland who became a serial killer, among many others.
From 1520's for two hundred years, Budapest would be occupied by the Ottoman Turks and Sebestyen points up how throughout its history Budapest has shifted culturally, politically and emotionally between East and West with many revolutions, bloody battles, uprisings and wars of conquest won and lost. Mediterranean Latin, Alpine German and Slavic people and Roman Catholic, North European Protestant and Greek Orthodox/ Byzantine religions all come together in Budapest.
Including an 8 page insert of photographs, this book is a glorious homage to an extraordinary city.]]> 432 Victor Sebestyen 0593317564 Debra 0 to-read 4.30 2022
author: Victor Sebestyen
name: Debra
average rating: 4.30
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]]> 206162693
Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine has reshaped history. In the decades after the collapse of Soviet communism, the West convinced itself that liberal democracy would henceforth be the dominant, ultimately unique, system of governance - a hubris that shaped how the West would treat Russia for the next two decades. But history wasn't over.

Putin is a paradox. In the early years of his presidency, he appeared to commit himself to friendship with the West, suggesting that Russia could join the European Union or even NATO. He said he supported free-market democracy and civil rights. But the Putin of those years is unrecognisable today. The Putin of the 2020s is an autocratic nationalist, dedicated to repression at home and anti-Western militarism abroad. So, what happened? Was he lying when he proclaimed his support for freedom, democracy and friendship with the West? Or, was he sincere? Did he change his views at some stage between then and now? And if that is the case, what happened to change him?

Putin and the Return of History examines these questions in the context of Russia's thousand-year past, tracing the forces and the myths that have shaped Putin's politics of aggression: the enduring terror of encirclement by outsiders, the subjugation of the individual to the cause of the state, the collectivist values that allow the sacrifice of human lives in battle, the willingness to lie and deceive, the co-opting of religion and the belief in Great Russia's mission to change the world.]]> 358 Martin Sixsmith 1399409875 Debra 0 to-read 4.33
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]]> 129309087
It was the most remarkable political about-face in American history. During the Civil War, General James Longstreet fought tenaciously for the Confederacy. He was alongside Lee at Gettysburg (and counseled him not to order the ill-fated attacks on entrenched Union forces there). He won a major Confederate victory at Chickamauga and was seriously wounded during a later battle.

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

Although he was one of the highest-ranking Confederate generals, Longstreet has never been commemorated with statues or other memorials in the South because of his postwar actions in rejecting the Lost Cause mythology and urging racial reconciliation. He is being rediscovered in the new age of racial reckoning. This is the first biography in decades and the first to give proper attention to Longstreet’s long post-Civil War career.]]> 480 Elizabeth Varon 1982148276 Debra 0 to-read 4.03
author: Elizabeth Varon
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]]> 190572 The Diary of Anne Frank and Elie Wiesel's Night as one of the great classics of the Holocaust, I Will Bear Witness is a timeless work of literature, the most eloquent and acute testament to have emerged from Hitler's Germany. Volume Two begins in 1942, the year the Final Solution was formally proposed, and carries us through to the Allied bombing of Dresden and Germany's defeat.]]> 576 Victor Klemperer 0375756973 Debra 0 to-read 4.38 1995
author: Victor Klemperer
name: Debra
average rating: 4.38
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]]> 255161 ĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚý
A Dresden Jew, a veteran of World War I, a man of letters and historian of great sophistication, Klemperer recognized the danger of Hitler as early as 1933. His diaries, written in secrecy, provide a vivid account of everyday life in Hitler's Germany.
ĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚý
What makes this book so remarkable, aside from its literary distinction, is Klemperer's preoccupation with the thoughts and actions of ordinary Germans: Berger the greengrocer, who was given Klemperer's house ("anti-Hitlerist, but of course pleased at the good exchange"), the fishmonger, the baker, the much-visited dentist. All offer their thoughts and theories on the progress of the war: Will England hold out? Who listens to Goebbels? How much longer will it last?
ĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚý
This symphony of voices is ordered by the brilliant, grumbling Klemperer, struggling to complete his work on eighteenth-century France while documenting the ever- tightening Nazi grip. He loses first his professorship and then his car, his phone, his house, even his typewriter, and is forced to move into a Jews' House (the last step before the camps), put his cat to death (Jews may not own pets), and suffer countless other indignities.
ĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚý
Despite the danger his diaries would pose if discovered, Klemperer sees it as his duty to record events. "I continue to write," he notes in 1941 after a terrifying run-in with the police. "This is my heroics. I want to bear witness, precise witness, until the very end."ĚýĚý When a neighbor remarks that, in his isolation, Klemperer will not be able to cover the main events of the war, he writes: "It's not the big things that are important, but the everyday life ofĚýĚýtyranny, which may be forgotten. A thousand mosquito bites are worse than a blow on the head. I observe, I note, the mosquito bites."]]> 544 Victor Klemperer 0375753788 Debra 0 to-read 4.26 1995
author: Victor Klemperer
name: Debra
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1995
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]]> 49348735
In his classic book Devil’s Bargain , Joshua Green chronicled how the forces of economic populism on the right, led by the likes of Steve Bannon, turned Donald Trump into their flawed but powerful vessel. In The Rebels , he gives an epic account of the long struggle that has played out in parallel on the left, told through an intimate reckoning with the careers of the three political figures who have led the charge most prominently. Based on remarkable inside sourcing and razor-sharp analysis, The Rebels uses the grand narrative of a political party undergoing tumult and transformation to tell an even larger story about the fate of America.

For many years, as Green recounts, the Democrats made their bed with Wall Street and big tech, relying on corporate money for electioneering and embracing the worldview that technological and financial innovation and globalization were a powerful net good, a rising tide lifting all boats. Yes, there were howls of pain, but they were written off by most of the elites as the moaning of sore losers mired in the past. There were always some Democratic politicians representing the old labor base who resisted the new dispensation, but these figures never made it very far on a national level. For one thing, they didn’t have the money. But as income inequality ballooned, widening the gulf between the wealthy elite and everyone else, pressures began to build.

With the 2008 crisis, those forces finally erupted into plain sight, turning this book’s protagonists into national icons. At its heart, The Rebels tells the riveting human story of the rise and fight of Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, andĚýAlexandria Ocasio-CortezĚýfrom the financial crisis on, as outrage over the unfairness of the American system formed a flood tide of political revolution.ĚýThat same tide that would sweep Trump into office was blunted on the left, as the Democratic party found itself riven by culture war issues between its centrists and its progressives. But the winds behind economic populism still howl at gale force. Whether the Democrats can bridge their divisions and home in on a vision that unites the party, and perhaps even the country, in the face of the most violently deranged political landscape since the Civil War will be the ultimate test of the legacies of all three characters.Ěý

A masterful account of one of the defining political stories of our age, The Rebels cements Joshua Green’s stature at the first rank of American writers explaining how we’ve arrived at this pass and what lies ahead.]]> 352 Joshua Green 0525560246 Debra 0 to-read 4.13 2024
author: Joshua Green
name: Debra
average rating: 4.13
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]]> 63933641
The Greater Middle East, which Robert D. Kaplan defines as the vast region between the Mediterranean and China, encompassing much of the Arab world, parts of northern Africa, and Asia, existed for millennia as the crossroads of empire: Macedonian, Roman, Persian, Mongol, Ottoman, British, Soviet, American. But with the dissolution of empires in the twentieth century, postcolonial states have endeavored to maintain stability in the face of power struggles between factions, leadership vacuums, and the arbitrary borders drawn by exiting imperial rulers with little regard for geography or political groups on the ground. In the Loom of Time, Kaplan explores this broad, fraught space through reporting and travel writing to reveal deeper truths about the impacts of history on the present and how the requirements of stability over anarchy are often in conflict with the ideals of democratic governance.

In The Loom of Time, Kaplan makes the case for realism as an approach to the Greater Middle East. Just as Western attempts at democracy promotion across the Middle East have failed, a new form of economic imperialism is emerging today as China's ambitions fall squarely within the region as the key link between Europe and East Asia. As in the past, the Greater Middle East will be a register of future great power struggles across the globe. And like in the past, thousands of years of imperial rule will continue to cast a long shadow on politics as it is practiced today.

To piece together the history of this remarkable place and what it suggests for the future, Kaplan weaves together classic texts, immersive travel writing, and a great variety of voices from every country that all compel the reader to look closely at the realities on the ground and to prioritize these facts over ideals on paper. The Loom of Time is a challenging, clear-eyed book that promises to reframe our vision of the global twenty-first century.]]> 384 Robert D. Kaplan 0593242793 Debra 0 to-read 4.29 2023
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]]> 62649163
In this wide-ranging work, Michael Sonenscher traces the origins of modern political thought and ideologies to a question, raised by Immanuel Kant, about what is involved in comparing individual human lives to the whole of human history. How can we compare them, or understand the results of the comparison? Kant’s question injected a new, future-oriented dimension into existing discussions of prevailing norms, challenging their orientation toward the past. This reversal made Kant’s question a bridge between three successive sets of between the supporters of the ancients and moderns, the classics and romantics, and the Romans and the Germans. Sonenscher argues that the genealogy of modern political ideologies―from liberalism to nationalism to communism―can be connected to the resulting discussions of time, history, and values, mainly in France but also in Germany, Switzerland, and Britain, in the period straddling the French and Industrial revolutions.

What is the genuinely human content of human history? Everything begins somewhere―democracy with the Greeks, or the idea of a res publica with the Romans―but these local arrangements have become vectors of values that are, apparently, universal. The intellectual upheaval that Sonenscher describes involved a struggle to close the gap, highlighted by Kant, between individual lives and human history. After Kant is an examination of that struggle’s enduring impact on the history and the historiography of political thought.]]> 584 Michael Sonenscher 0691245630 Debra 0 to-read 4.67
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]]> 122798814 368 Lucy O'Brien 1788708245 Debra 3 One real drawback in this book is the emphasis on Downey being located in Orange County, California- a bastion of conservatism in the 70’s and 80’s (not as much anymore). Fact is, Downey is in Los Angeles county, not OC.
Not sure how the association of Carpenters with conservative OC messes with the author’s narrative when it’s not accurate.
Conservatism exists in LA county too.
]]> 3.94
author: Lucy O'Brien
name: Debra
average rating: 3.94
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/02/09
date added: 2024/02/09
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Karen/Carpenters were a large part of the soundtrack of my high school years. I never lost my enjoyment of their music and was lucky enough to see them in concert in the summer of 1973. Her story has such a sad ending. Wish she’d been strong enough to resist the family that didn’t give her the love and support she needed and deserved.
One real drawback in this book is the emphasis on Downey being located in Orange County, California- a bastion of conservatism in the 70’s and 80’s (not as much anymore). Fact is, Downey is in Los Angeles county, not OC.
Not sure how the association of Carpenters with conservative OC messes with the author’s narrative when it’s not accurate.
Conservatism exists in LA county too.

]]> 134115745 Read by Liz Cheney with 50+ audio source material clips included, Oath and Honor is a gripping first-hand account from inside the halls of Congress as Donald Trump and his enablers betrayed the American people and the Constitution—leading to the violent attack on our Capitol on January 6th, 2021—by the House Republican leader who dared to stand up to it.

In the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump and many around him, including certain other elected Republican officials, intentionally breached their oath to the Constitution: they ignored the rulings of dozens of courts, plotted to overturn a lawful election, and provoked a violent attack on our Capitol.

Liz Cheney, one of the few Republican officials to take a stand against these efforts, witnessed the attack first-hand, and then helped lead the Congressional Select Committee investigation into how it happened. In Oath and Honor, she tells the story of this perilous moment in our history, those who helped Trump spread the stolen election lie, those whose actions preserved our constitutional framework, and the risks we still face.]]> 372 Liz Cheney 0316572063 Debra 3 4.55 2023
author: Liz Cheney
name: Debra
average rating: 4.55
book published: 2023
rating: 3
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]]> 105584138
Barbra Streisand is by any account a living legend, a woman who in a career spanning six decades has excelled in every area of entertainment. She is among the handful of EGOT winners (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony) and has one of the greatest and most recognizable voices in popular music. She has been nominated for a Grammy 46 times, and with Yentl she became the first woman to write, produce, direct, and star in a major motion picture. In My Name Is Barbra, she tells her own story about her life and extraordinary career, from growing up in Brooklyn to her first star-making appearances in New York nightclubs to her breakout performance in Funny Girl (musical and film) to the long string of successes in every medium in the years that followed. The book is, like Barbra herself, frank, funny, opinionated, and charming. She recounts her early struggles to become an actress, eventually turning to singing to earn a living; the recording of some of her acclaimed albums; the years of effort involved in making Yentl; her direction of The Prince of Tides; her friendships with figures ranging from Marlon Brando to Madeleine Albright; her political advocacy; and the fulfillment she’s found in her marriage to James Brolin.

No entertainer’s memoir has been more anticipated than Barbra Streisand’s, and this engrossing and delightful book will be eagerly welcomed by her millions of fans.

Barbra Streisand is an American singer, actress, director and producer and one of the most iconic figures in music and film, the only recording artist in history to have earned #1 albums over six consecutive decades. She has received the American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award, the Kennedy Center Honor, the National Medal of Arts, France’s Légion d’Honneur, and America’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She founded The Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Center at Cedars-Sinai, helping to raise awareness and push for more research into women’s heart disease, the leading cause of death among women. Through the Streisand Foundation, which she established in 1986, she has supported national organizations working on preservation of the environment, voter education, the protection of civil liberties and civil rights, women’s issues, and nuclear disarmament. In 2021 she launched the Barbra Streisand Institute at UCLA, a forward-thinking institution dedicated to finding solutions to the most vital social issues.]]> 1040 Barbra Streisand 0525429522 Debra 4 4.13 2023
author: Barbra Streisand
name: Debra
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2023
rating: 4
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]]> 75457475
The intellectual roots and resources of wokeism conflict with ideas that have guided the left for more than 200 years: a commitment to universalism, a firm distinction between justice and power, and a belief in the possibility of progress. Without these ideas, Neiman argues, they will continue to undermine their own goals and drift, inexorably and unintentionally, towards the right. In the long run, they risk becoming what they despise.

One of the world's leading philosophical voices, Neiman makes this case by tracing the malign influence of two titans of twentieth-century thought, Michel Foucault and Carl Schmitt, whose work undermined ideas of justice and progress and portrayed social life as an eternal struggle of us against them. A generation schooled with these voices in their heads, raised in a broader culture shaped by the ruthless ideas of neoliberalism and evolutionary psychology, has set about changing the world. It's time they thought again.]]> 154 Susan Neiman 1509558306 Debra 3 3.93 2023
author: Susan Neiman
name: Debra
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2023
rating: 3
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]]> 152034931 A rollicking historyĚýof England's earliest kings and queens, a story ofĚýnarcissists, excessive beheadings, middle-management insurrection, uncivil wars,Ěýand more, fromĚýaward-winning British actor and comedian David Mitchell

Think you know the kings and queens of England? Think again.

In Unruly , David Mitchell explores how early England’s monarchs, while acting as feared rulers firmly guiding their subjects� destinies, were in reality a bunch of lucky bastards who were mostly as silly and weird in real life as they appear to us today in their portraits.

Taking us right back to King Arthur ( he didn’t exist), Mitchell tells the founding story of post-Roman England right up to the reign of Elizabeth I ( she dies), as the monarchy began to lose its power. It’s a tale of bizarre and curious ascensions, inadequate self-control, and at least one total Cnut, as the English evolved from having their crops stolen by the thug with the largest armed gang to bowing and paying taxes to a divinely anointed King.

How this happened, who it happened to, and why the hell it matters are all questions Mitchell answers with brilliance, wit, and the full erudition of a man who once studied history—and is damned if he’ll let it off the hook for the mess it’s made of everything.Ěý

A funny book that takes history seriously, Unruly is for anyone who has ever wondered how the monarchy came to be—and who is to blame.]]> 433 David Mitchell 0593728491 Debra 0 to-read 4.13 2023
author: David Mitchell
name: Debra
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2023
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]]> 168677579 Ěý
Inspired by her research for the hit podcast Ultra, Rachel Maddow charts the rise of a wild American strain of authoritarianism that has been alive on the far-right edge of our politics for the better part of a century. Before and even after our troops had begun fighting abroad in World War II, a clandestine network flooded the country with disinformation aimed at sapping the strength of the U.S. war effort and persuading Americans that our natural alliance was with the Axis, not against it. It was a sophisticated and shockingly well-funded campaign to undermine democratic institutions, promote antisemitism, and destroy citizens� confidence in their elected leaders, with the ultimate goal of overthrowing the U.S. government and installing authoritarian rule.
Ěý
That effort worked—tongue and groove—alongside an ultra-right paramilitary movement that stockpiled bombs and weapons and trained for mass murder and violent insurrection.
Ěý
At the same time, a handful of extraordinary activists and journalists were tracking the scheme, exposing it even as it was unfolding. In 1941 the U.S. Department of Justice finally made a frontal attack, identifying the key plotters, finding their backers, and prosecuting dozens in federal court.
Ěý
None of it went as planned.
Ěý
While the scheme has been remembered in history—if at all—as the work of fringe players, in reality, it involved aĚýlarge number of some of the country’s most influential elected officials. Their interference in law enforcement efforts against the plot is a dark story of the rule of law bending and then breaking under the weight of political intimidation.
Ěý
That failure of the legal system had consequences. The tentacles of that unslain beast have reached forward into our history for decades. But the heroic efforts of the activists, journalists, prosecutors, and regular citizens who sought to expose the insurrectionists also make for a deeply resonant, deeply relevant tale in our own disquieting times.]]> 416 Rachel Maddow 0593444515 Debra 3 4.36 2023
author: Rachel Maddow
name: Debra
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2023
rating: 3
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]]> 75593480 But Will You Love Me Tomorrow? is an oral history of the girl groups that redefined the early 1960s.

The girl group sound made famous and unforgettable by acts like The Ronettes, The Shirelles, The Supremes, and The Vandellas, took over the airwaves by capturing the mixture of innocence and rebellion emblematic of America in the 1960s.Ěý

As songs like "Will You Love Me Tomorrow," "Then He Kissed Me," and "Be My Baby" rose to the top of the charts, girl groups cornered the burgeoning post-war market of teenage rock and roll fans, indelibly shaping the trajectory of pop music in the process. While the songs are essential to the American canon, many of the artists remain all but anonymous to most listeners.Ěý

Featuring more than one hundred interviews with those who made the music, from singers and songwriters to their agents, managers, and sound engineers—and even to the present-day celebrities inspired by their lasting influence�But Will You Love Me Tomorrow?: An Oral History of the �60s Girl Groups tells a national coming-of-age story that gives particular insight into the experiences of the female singers and songwriters who created the movement and changed American culture.]]> 448 Laura Flam 0306829770 Debra 2 A few interesting bits, and some recollections regarding singers being “robbed� by managers and others of royalties.
Sometimes references to people were not clear - a bit of editorial work would have improved the book.]]> 3.97 2023
author: Laura Flam
name: Debra
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2023
rating: 2
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Kind of an odd book. No evident editing, but quoted material from members of “girl groups� and some song writers and musicians who worked with them in 1950s an �60s.
A few interesting bits, and some recollections regarding singers being “robbed� by managers and others of royalties.
Sometimes references to people were not clear - a bit of editorial work would have improved the book.
]]> 75593808 From the ashes of the Second World War to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the definitive new history of East Germany Ěý
Ěý
In 1990, a country disappeared. When the Iron Curtain fell, East Germany ceased to be. For over forty years, from the ruin of the Second World War to the cusp of a new millennium, the German Democratic Republic presented a radically different Germany than what had come before and what exists today. Socialist solidarity, secret police, central planning, barbed wire: this was a Germany forged on the fault lines of ideology and geopolitics.Ěý
ĚýĚý
In Beyond the Wall, acclaimed historian Katja Hoyer sets aside the usual Cold War caricatures of the GDR to offer a kaleidoscopic new vision of this vanished country, revealing the rich political, social, and cultural landscape that existed amid oppression and hardship. Drawing on a vast array of never-before-seen interviews and documents, this is the definitive history of the other Germany, beyond the Wall.Ěý]]> 496 Katja Hoyer 1541602579 Debra 4 4.09 2023
author: Katja Hoyer
name: Debra
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2023
rating: 4
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]]> 20821221 A magnificent new biography that revolutionizes our understandingĚýof Stalin and his world

It has the quality of myth: A poor cobbler’s son, a seminarian from an oppressed outer province of the Russian empire, reinvents himself as a revolutionary and finds a leadership role within a small group of marginal zealots. When the old world is unexpectedly brought down in a total war, the band seizes control of the country, and the new regime it founds as the vanguard of a new world order is ruthlessly dominated from within by the former seminarian until he stands as the absolute ruler of a vast and terrible state apparatus, with dominion over Eurasia. But the largest country in the world is also a poor and backward one, far behind the great capitalist countries in industrial and military power, encircled on all sides. Shortly after seizing total power, Stalin conceives of the largest program of social reengineering ever attempted: the root-and-branch uprooting and collectivization of agriculture and industry across the entire Soviet Union. To stand up to the capitalists he will force into being an industrialized, militarized, collectivized great power is an act of will. Millions will die, and many more will suffer, but Stalin will push through to the end against all resistance and doubts. Where did such power come from? We think we know the story well. Remarkably, Stephen Kotkin’s epic new biography shows us how much we still have to learn.

The product of a decade of scrupulous and intrepid research, Stalin contains a host of astonishing revelations. Kotkin gives an intimate first-ever view of the Bolshevik regime’s inner geography, bringing to the fore materials from Soviet military intelligence and the secret police. He details Stalin’s invention of a fabricated trial and mass executions as early as 1918, the technique he would later impose across the whole country. The book places Stalin’s momentous decision for collectivization more deeply than ever in the tragic history of imperial Russia. Above all, Kotkin offers a convincing portrait and explanation of Stalin’s monstrous power and of Russian power in the world. Stalin restores a sense of surprise to the way we think about the former Soviet Union, revolution, dictatorship, the twentieth century, and indeed the art of history itself.
]]> 976 Stephen Kotkin 1594203792 Debra 4 currently-reading 3.94
author: Stephen Kotkin
name: Debra
average rating: 3.94
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]]> 62918445 A “terrific, if chilling, account� (The Guardian) of how the Supreme Court’s new conservative supermajority is overturning decades of law and leading the country in a dangerous political direction.

In The Supermajority, Michael Waldman explores the tumultuous 2021­­�2022 Supreme Court term. He draws deeply on history to examine other times the Court veered from the popular will, provoking controversy, and backlash. And he analyzes the most important new rulings and their implications for the law and for American society. Waldman What can we do when the Supreme Court challenges the country?

Over three days in June 2022, the conservative supermajority overturned the constitutional right to abortion, possibly opening the door to reconsider other major privacy rights, as Justice Clarence Thomas urged. The Court sharply limited the authority of the EPA, reducing the prospects for combatting climate change. It radically loosened curbs on guns amid an epidemic of mass shootings. It fully embraced legal theories such as “originalism� that will affect thousands of cases throughout the country.

These major decisions—and the next wave to come—will have enormous ramifications for every American.

It was the most turbulent term in memory—with the leak of the opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, the first Black woman justice sworn in, and the justices turning on each other in public, Waldman previews the 2022­�2023 term and how the brewing fights over the Supreme Court and its role that already have begun to reshape politics.

The Supermajority is “a call to action as much as it is a history of the Supreme Court � (Financial Times) at a time when the Court’s dysfunction—and the demand for reform—are at the center of public debate.]]> 408 Michael Waldman 1668006081 Debra 3 4.30 2023
author: Michael Waldman
name: Debra
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2023/09/18
date added: 2023/09/18
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]]> 30820435
England late in 1323 is a place afflicted by fear. Now that the king’s greatest traitor, Roger Mortimer, has managed to evade royal justice, the king and his beloved Despenser see dissidents and rebels everywhere � among Mortimer’s former men, but also in the queen, Isabella of France.

Yet again, Kit and Adam are forced to take part in a complicated game of intrigue and politics. Yet again, they risk their lives � and that of those they hold dear � as Edward II and Mortimer face off. Once again, England is plunged into war � and this time it will not end until either Despenser or Mortimer is dead.

Days of Sun and Glory is the second in Anna Belfrage’s series, The King’s Greatest Enemy, the story of a man torn apart by his loyalties to his lord, his king, and his wife.
]]> 367 Anna Belfrage 9198324535 Debra 3 4.42 2016
author: Anna Belfrage
name: Debra
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2023/09/16
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]]> 62039162 A memoir of coming of age in a conservative Southern family in postwar America.

To grow up in the 1950s was to enter a world of polarized national alliances, nuclear threat, and destabilized social hierarchies. Two world wars and the depression that connected them had unleashed a torrent of expectations and dissatisfactions--not only in global affairs but in American society and Americans' lives.

To be a privileged white girl in conservative, segregated Virginia was to be expected to adopt a willful blindness to the inequities of race and the constraints of gender. For young Drew Gilpin Faust, the acceptance of both female subordination and racial privilege proved intolerable and galvanizing. Urged to become "well adjusted" and to fill the role of a poised young lady that her upbringing imposed, she found resistance was the necessary price of survival. During the 1960s, through her love of learning and her active engagement in the civil rights, student, and antiwar movements, Faust forged a path of her own--one that would eventually lead her to become a historian of the very conflicts that were instrumental in shaping the world she grew up in.

Culminating in the upheavals of 1968, Necessary Trouble captures a time of rapid change and fierce reaction in one young woman's life, tracing the transformations and aftershocks that we continue to grapple with today.

Includes black-and-white images]]> 320 Drew Gilpin Faust 0374601801 Debra 4 3.92 2023
author: Drew Gilpin Faust
name: Debra
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/08/28
date added: 2023/08/28
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]]> 62217089 432 Julian T. Jackson 024145025X Debra 0 to-read 4.08 2023
author: Julian T. Jackson
name: Debra
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> 56769524

In a sweeping narrative spanning more than six centuries, Howard W. French does just that, for Born in Blackness vitally reframes the story of medieval and emerging Africa, demonstrating how the economic ascendancy of Europe, the anchoring of democracy in the West, and the fulfillment of so-called Enlightenment ideals all grew out of Europe’s dehumanizing engagement with the “dark� continent. In fact, French reveals, the first impetus for the Age of Discovery was not—as we are so often told, even today—Europe’s yearning for ties with Asia, but rather its centuries-old desire to forge a trade in gold with legendarily rich Black societies sequestered away in the heart of West Africa.


Creating a historical narrative that begins with the commencement of commercial relations between Portugal and Africa in the fifteenth century and ends with the onset of World War II, Born in Blackness interweaves precise historical detail with poignant, personal reportage. In so doing, it dramatically retrieves the lives of major African historical figures, from the unimaginably rich medieval emperors who traded with the Near East and beyond, to the Kongo sovereigns who heroically battled seventeenth-century European powers, to the ex-slaves who liberated Haitians from bondage and profoundly altered the course of American history.


While French cogently demonstrates the centrality of Africa to the rise of the modern world, Born in Blackness becomes, at the same time, a far more significant narrative, one that reveals a long-concealed history of trivialization and, more often, elision in depictions of African history throughout the last five hundred years. As French shows, the achievements of sovereign African nations and their now-far-flung peoples have time and again been etiolated and deliberately erased from modern history. As the West ascended, their stories—siloed and piecemeal—were swept into secluded corners, thus setting the stage for the hagiographic “rise of the West� theories that have endured to this day.


“Capacious and compelling� (Laurent Dubois), Born in Blackness is epic history on the grand scale. In the lofty tradition of bold, revisionist narratives, it reframes the story of gold and tobacco, sugar and cotton—and of the greatest “commodity� of them all, the twelve million people who were brought in chains from Africa to the “New World,� whose reclaimed lives shed a harsh light on our present world.]]> 512 Howard W. French 1631495828 Debra 0 to-read 4.30 2021
author: Howard W. French
name: Debra
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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]]> 57293228 �The execution of the king took place on a bleak, bitterly cold afternoon in January. As the executioner landed the single blow that severed Charles I’s head, the crowd let out a deep collective moan. Within weeks both the monarchy and the House of Lords were abolished. The future was in the hands of the people.�

The Restless Republic tells the story of what life was like during the unprecedented and unrepeated decade when Britain was governed without a king. Who cut radical paths? And who suffered the monumental costs?

Acclaimed historian Anna Keay follows nine figures who made names for themselves during this time. Among them Anna Trapnel, the young prophet whose visions transfixed the nation. John Bradshaw, the Cheshire lawyer who found himself trying the king. Gerrard Winstanley, the man who saw a utopia where land was shared and no one went hungry. William Petty, the precocious academic whose audacious enterprise to map Ireland led to the dispossession of tens of thousands. The redoubtable Countess of Derby who defended fiercely the last Royalist stronghold on the Isle of Man. And Marchamont Nedham, the irrepressible newspaper man and puppet-master of propaganda.

The Restless Republic ranges from the corridors of Westminster to the common fields of England. Gathering her cast of trembling visionaries and banished royalists, dextrous mandarins and bewildered bystanders, Anna Keay brings to vivid life the most extraordinary and experimental decade in Britain’s history. It is the story of what happened when a conservative people tried revolution.]]> 496 Anna Keay 0008282021 Debra 0 to-read 4.38 2022
author: Anna Keay
name: Debra
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2022
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]]> 60323125 A fearless deep dive into the 2020 election from former MSNBC "Road Warrior" and now NBC Capitol Hill correspondent Ali Vitali, who covered the campaign trail every step of the way--investigating the gendered double standards placed on women presidential candidates of that cycle and those who came before, and what it will take for a woman to finally break the glass ceiling and win the White House.

Opening with the moment when Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were finally declared the winners of the 2020 race--the long, drawn-out journey towards who would next inhabit the White House, and the resulting and disputed defeat of Donald Trump, Electable is a sweeping look at a lingering question from that Presidential race. Why, when we saw more women run for President of the United States than ever before in our history, did we still not cross that final hurdle?

Following the 2020 race minute by minute as the reporter embedded with Elizabeth Warren, Ali Vitali witnessed up-close the way that our most recent election was unique--not simply for the way in which the incumbent conducted himself, but for the ways in which the field, rich with Democrats from all kinds of backgrounds, was both modern but also more of the same. With more female candidates than ever before, this was a history-making race, and yet these women--most of them incredibly qualified with decades of public service on their resumes--dealt once again with a different level of scrutiny than their male counterparts. Woven throughout is close examination of the treatment of Hillary Clinton, Geraldine Ferraro, Shirley Chisholm, and those on the right as well. Grappling with ideas around the "likeability" and "electability" issues, as well as fundraising hurdles many female candidates face, Vitali asks the same questions she and so many have been grappling with for decades, but especially since Hillary Clinton's devastating defeat in 2016: Why is it so hard for a woman to be taken seriously as a presidential contender? What will it take for men and women to be held to the same standard? What happens next?

Electable tackles these questions, with specific, behind-the-scenes, play-by-play detail.

Gabbard, Harris, Williamson, Gillibrand, Warren, Klobuchar...and then there were none.


]]> 352 Ali Vitali 0063058634 Debra 3 3.76
author: Ali Vitali
name: Debra
average rating: 3.76
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rating: 3
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]]> 30776908 384 Anna Belfrage 1785893505 Debra 3 3.83 2015
author: Anna Belfrage
name: Debra
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at: 2023/08/14
date added: 2023/08/14
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]]> 60647674
A president who governed a divided country has much to teach us in a twenty-first-century moment of polarization and political crisis. Abraham Lincoln was president when implacable secessionists gave no quarter in a clash of visions inextricably bound up with money, power, race, identity, and faith. He was hated and hailed, excoriated and revered. In Lincoln we can see the possibilities of the presidency as well as its limitations.

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

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

Lincoln was not all he might have been—few human beings ever are—but he was more than many men have ever been. We could have done worse. And we have. And, as Lincoln himself would readily acknowledge, we can always do better. But we will do so only if we see Abraham Lincoln—and ourselves—whole.]]> 676 Jon Meacham 0553393960 Debra 4 4.44 2022
author: Jon Meacham
name: Debra
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2022
rating: 4
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]]> 227981
The long, dark days of struggle provide the poignant background to the third book of the Cazalet Chronicle. As the war enters its fourth year, chaos has become a way of life.]]> 341 Elizabeth Jane Howard 0671527967 Debra 3 4.27 1993
author: Elizabeth Jane Howard
name: Debra
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1993
rating: 3
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]]> 59523097
Home Place, Sussex, 1939. As the shadows of the Second World War roll in, banishing the sunlit days of childish games and trips to the coast, a new generation of Cazalets take up the family's story.

Louise, who dreams of becoming a great actress, finds herself facing the harsh reality that her parents have their own lives with secrets, passions and yearnings. Clary, an aspiring writer, learns that her beloved father is now missing somewhere on the shores of France. And sensitive, imaginative Polly feels stuck � stuck without a vocation, stuck without information about her mother's illness, stuck without anything except her nightmares about the war.

With cover artwork exclusively designed by artist Luke Edward Hall, this is the second volume of the extraordinary Cazalet Chronicles and a perfect addition to your collection. Marking Time is followed by Confusion , the third book in the series.

'Charming, poignant and quite irresistible . . . to be cherished and shared' � Times]]> 592 Elizabeth Jane Howard 1529049431 Debra 3 4.37 1991
author: Elizabeth Jane Howard
name: Debra
average rating: 4.37
book published: 1991
rating: 3
read at: 2023/07/15
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]]> 57698570 The prequel to The the first truly candid portrait of George V and Mary, the Queen's grandparents and creators of the modern monarchy

The lasting reputation of George V is for dullness. His biographer Harold Nicolson famously quipped that 'he did nothing at all but kill animals and stick in stamps'.

But is that really all there was to King George, a monarch confronted by a series of crises thought to be the most testing faced by any twentieth-century British sovereign? As Tommy Lascelles, one of the most perceptive royal advisers, put 'He was dull, beyond dispute -- but my God, his reign never had a dull moment.'

Throughout his reign, George V navigated a constitutional crisis, the First World War, the fall of thirteen European monarchies and the rise of Bolshevism. The suffragette Emily Davison threw herself under his horse at the Derby, he refused asylum to his cousin the Tsar Nicholas II and he facilitated the first Labour government.

How this supposedly limited man steered the Crown through so many perils is a gripping tale. With unprecedented access to the archives, Jane Ridley has been able to reassess the many myths associated with this dramatic period for the first time.]]> 560 Jane Ridley 0062567497 Debra 4 4.16 2021
author: Jane Ridley
name: Debra
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2021
rating: 4
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]]> 62919005
From the outset, Caroline Lamb had a rebellious nature. From childhood she grew increasingly troublesome, experimenting with sedatives like laudanum, and she had a special governess to control her. She also had a merciless wit and talent for mimicry. She spoke French and German fluently, knew Greek and Latin, and sketched impressive portraits. As the niece of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, she was already well connected, and her courtly skills resulted in her marriage to the Hon. William Lamb (later Lord Melbourne) at the age on nineteen. For a few years they enjoyed a happy marriage, despite Lamb's siblings and mother-in-law detesting her and referring to her as 'the little beast'.

In 1812 Caroline embarked on a well-publicised affair with the poet Lord Byron - he was 24, she 26. Her phrase 'mad, bad and dangerous to know' became his lasting epitaph. When he broke things off, Caroline made increasingly public attempts to reunite. Her obsession came to define much of her later life, as well as influencing her own writing - most notably the Gothic novel Glenarvon - and Byron's.

Antonia Fraser's vividly compelling biography animates the life of 'a free spirit' who was far more than mad, bad and dangerous to know.]]> 224 Antonia Fraser 1639364056 Debra 2 Meh. 3.50
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name: Debra
average rating: 3.50
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Meh.
]]> 61685822 From the author of the New York Times best seller Poser and the acclaimed memoir Love and Trouble, a passionate, provocative, blisteringly smart interrogation of how we make and experience art in the age of #MeToo, and of the link between genius and monstrosity.

In this unflinching, deeply personal book that expands on her instantly viral Paris Review essay, What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men? Claire Dederer asks: Can we love the work of Hemingway, Polanski, Naipaul, Miles Davis, or Picasso? Should we love it? Does genius deserve special dispensation? Is male monstrosity the same as female monstrosity? Does art have a mandate to depict the darker elements of the psyche? And what happens if the artist stares too long into the abyss? She explores the audience's relationship with artists from Woody Allen to Michael Jackson, asking: How do we balance our undeniable sense of moral outrage with our equally undeniable love of the work? In a more troubling vein, she wonders if an artist needs to be a monster in order to create something great. And if an artist is also a mother, does one identity inexorably, and fatally, interrupt the other? Highly topical, morally wise, honest to the core, Monsters is certain to incite a conversation about whether and how we can separate artists from their art.]]> 257 Claire Dederer 0525655115 Debra 3 3.75 2023
author: Claire Dederer
name: Debra
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2023/06/11
date added: 2023/06/11
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Thoughtful, although it wasn’t quite what I expected.
]]> 29808760 #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY BOOKLIST
In her now classic novel Outlander, Diana Gabaldon told the story of Claire Randall, an English ex-combat nurse who walks through a stone circle in the Scottish Highlands in 1946, and disappears . . . into 1743. The story unfolded from there in seven bestselling novels, and CNN has called it a grand adventure written on a canvas that probes the heart, weighs the soul and measures the human spirit across [centuries]. Now the story continues in Written in My Own Heart s Blood.
1778: France declares war on Great Britain, the British army leaves Philadelphia, and George Washington s troops leave Valley Forge in pursuit. At this moment, Jamie Fraser returns from a presumed watery grave to discover that his best friend has married his wife, his illegitimate son has discovered (to his horror) who his father really is, and his beloved nephew, Ian, wants to marry a Quaker. Meanwhile, Jamie s wife, Claire, and his sister, Jenny, are busy picking up the pieces.
The Frasers can only be thankful that their daughter Brianna and her family are safe in twentieth-century Scotland. Or not. In fact, Brianna is searching for her own son, who was kidnapped by a man determined to learn her family s secrets. Her husband, Roger, has ventured into the past in search of the missing boy . . . never suspecting that the object of his quest has not left the present. Now, with Roger out of the way, the kidnapper can focus on his true target: Brianna herself.
Written in My Own Heart s Blood is the brilliant next chapter in a masterpiece of the imagination unlike any other.
]]> 1131 Diana Gabaldon 110188424X Debra 3 4.55 2014
author: Diana Gabaldon
name: Debra
average rating: 4.55
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2023/06/01
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]]> 60097447 A brutal, bloody, and at times hopeful history of the vote; a primer on the opponents fighting to take it away; and a playbook for how we can save our democracy before it's too late--from the former U.S. Attorney General on the front lines of this fight

Voting is our most important right as Americans--"the right that protects all the others," as Lyndon Johnson famously said when he signed the Voting Rights Act--but it's also the one most violently contested throughout U.S. history. Since the gutting of the act in the landmark Shelby County v. Holder case in 2013, many states have passed laws restricting the vote. After the 2020 election, President Trump's effort to overturn the vote has evolved into a slow-motion coup, with many Republicans launching an all-out assault on our democracy. The vote seems to be in unprecedented peril.

But the peril is not at all unprecedented. America is a fragile democracy, Eric Holder argues, whose citizens have only had unfettered access to the ballot since the 1960s. He takes readers through three dramatic stories of how the vote was won: first by white men, through violence and insurrection; then by white women, through protests and mass imprisonments; and finally by African Americans, in the face of lynchings and terrorism. Next, he dives into how the vote has been stripped away since Shelby--a case in which Holder was one of the parties. He ends with visionary chapters on how we can reverse this tide of voter suppression and become a true democracy where every voice is heard and every vote is counted.

Full of surprising history, intensive analysis, and actionable plans for the future, this is a powerful primer on our most urgent political struggle from one of the country's leading advocates.]]> 304 Eric Holder 0593445740 Debra 0 currently-reading 4.29
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name: Debra
average rating: 4.29
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]]> 52591370 432 Frank Andre Guridy 1477321837 Debra 3 4.22
author: Frank Andre Guridy
name: Debra
average rating: 4.22
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rating: 3
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]]> 61353786
As the Congress progresses, Koba begins to take daring risks-with the young Finnish idealist, with his past relationships to the Russian government, and with his future in the party. But as he manipulates those loyal to him and seeks to discover who he will remain loyal to in return, we see a great political mind in the works, and witness the development of a dictator.]]> 240 Stephen May 1639731431 Debra 0 currently-reading 3.48
author: Stephen May
name: Debra
average rating: 3.48
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date added: 2023/05/07
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]]> 13172302 Inglis tells the story of the Beatles in Hamburg, Germany, where their agent, Allan Williams, first sent them in August of 1960. In addition to showing how Hamburg itself played a role in the Beatlesâ€� remarkable story, Inglis details the difficulties they facedâ€� unusualĚýperformance venues, age restrictions, and deportations—and the experiences and personalities that shaped them as performers and composers. Ultimately, Inglis explains, the Beatles not only became proficient musicians in Hamburg, but while there they began to build the reputation that would eventually make them the most popular band in the world.

Ěý

An illuminating look at the group’s formative years, The Beatles in Hamburg is the perfect book for any one in thrall of Beatlemania or fan of popular music history.]]> 208 Ian Inglis 1861899157 Debra 4 4.11 2012
author: Ian Inglis
name: Debra
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2012
rating: 4
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]]> 63224519
The route of his 1,000 kilometre journey was inspired by a young British soldier of the First World War, Alexander Douglas Gillespie, who dreamed of creating a 'Via Sacra' that the men, women and children of Europe could walk to honour the fallen. Tragically, Gillespie was killed in action, his vision forgotten for a hundred years, until a chance discovery in the archive of one of England's oldest schools galvanised Anthony into seeing the Via Sacra permanently established.

Tracing the historic route of the Western Front, he traversed some of Europe's most beautiful and evocative scenery, from the Vosges, Argonne and Champagne to the haunting trenches of Arras, the Somme and Ypres. Along the way, he wrestled heat exhaustion, dog bites and blisters as well as a deeper search for inner peace and renewed purpose. Touching on grief, loss and the legacy of war, The Path of Peace is the extraordinary story of Anthony's epic walk, an unforgettable act of remembrance and a triumphant rediscovery of what matters most in life.]]> 368 Anthony Seldon 1838957405 Debra 4 3.82
author: Anthony Seldon
name: Debra
average rating: 3.82
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rating: 4
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]]> 863338 The Mansion completes Faulkner’s great trilogy of the Snopes family in the mythical county of Yoknapatawpha, Mississippi, which also includes The Hamlet and The Town. Beginning with the murder of Jack Houston, and ending with the murder of Flem Snopes, it traces the downfall of this indomitable post-bellum family, who managed to seize control of the town of Jefferson within a generation.]]> 448 William Faulkner 0394702824 Debra 0 to-read 4.14
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name: Debra
average rating: 4.14
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]]> 59819516
All three happening together brings a moment of reckoning.

Medieval historian Elizabeth Boyle made sense of these events the best way she knew how - by immersing herself in the literature that has been her first love and life's work for over two decades.

Fierce Appetites is the exhilarating and deeply humane result. Not only does Elizabeth Boyle write dazzling accounts of ancient stories, familiar and obscure, from Ireland and further afield, but she uses her historical learning to grapple with the raw and urgent questions she faces, questions that have bedevilled people in every age. She writes on grief, addiction, family breakdown, the complexities of motherhood, love and sex, memory, class, education, travel (and staying put) with unflinching honesty, deep compassion and occasional dark humour.

Fierce Appetites is captivating and original - as an insight into the mind and heart of a groundbreaking scholar, and as a wise and reassuring account of what it is to be human.]]> 338 Elizabeth Boyle 1844885445 Debra 3 3.98 2022
author: Elizabeth Boyle
name: Debra
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2023/04/28
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]]>