It would be remiss of my to fail to include Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science Of The Reading Brain by Maryanne Wolf. After all, this site is all about reading about reading and now you can read about how your brain makes sense of all the thins you are reading, which is what this book is all about. Fortunately, Maryanne’s prose is nowhere near as confusing as my own and this wonderful book makes neuroscience and linguistics easy. If you’ve ever wanted to see inside your own mind but …
History
We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to CoverGirl, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement
Moms interested in politics will love this history of the Feminist movement that follows the term from when it was once regarded as a dirty word to the present day, where it is plastered on T-shirts and adopted as a brand by celebrities. In We Were Feminists Once, Zeisler argues that, although the phrase (and its ideas) have been popularized in the mainstream, the acceptance of the phrase doesn’t mean women are any closer to becoming equal. Touching on movies, advertising, fashion and more, …
In Distant Lands: A Short History Of The Crusades
If you think that Christian lands and Muslim lands have only recently had enmity, this is the book that shows it’s not the case. Lars Brownworth’s In Distant Lands is an excellent exploration of what happened following Pope Urban II’s fateful speech in Clemont, France back in 1095. Europe would be mobilized to invade the East. Their mission? To retake Jerusalem from the Muslim hordes. It appeared to be an impossible task given their lack of numbers and the cunning and brilliance of their …
Tinsel: A Search For America’s Christmas Present
Well, it is Christmas Day. This is Hank Steuver’s exploration of the American present industry. Tinsel looks at the half-trillion dollars that will be spent at retail during this holiday and asks, why and how did it come to this? I found Tinsel to be funny and endearing and very much worth the discounted price tag. If you’ve ever wanted to bury yourself in Christmas related trivia for an afternoon, you should enjoy this exceptional non-fiction work. Wondering what other people get for …
The Captured
The Captured: A True Story of Abduction by Indians on the Texas Frontier by Scott Zesch is certainly not going to win any prizes for political correctness. It is 2018 and that means we’re not supposed to acknowledge that there was any conflict between the Native Americans and the settlers. But this story not only does that but pries at a bitter wound. Adolph Korn was snatched on New Year’s Day from his parents by a Comanche raiding party. He would return three years later but he was never the …
Love Cemetery: Unburying The Secret History Of Slaves
This book is for the historians and sociologists out there. Love Cemetery: Unburying The Secret History Of Slaves by China Galland is going to appeal very much to a certain audience. Which is a shame because it deals with a worthy subject that we ought to examine more often in the public eye. The book takes us to Texas and the unmarked and unmourned cemeteries full of the bodies of slaves. She unpacks the complicated relationship between the local people and their dark and brutal past. It is …
Scalia Speaks: Reflections On Law, Faith and Life Well-Lived
Antonin Scalia’s loss on the Supreme Court is still being felt around the country. While I don’t wish to get tied up in the debate over his replacement, I would like to recommend Scalia Speaks: Reflections On Law, Faith and Life Well-Lived which is a collection of his finest speeches and writings. It includes a foreword by another member of the bench, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and a surprisingly warm tribute from his youngest son serves as its introduction. If you’d like to know more about …
We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families
If there was an event of the 1990s that made no sense at all, it was the genocide in Rwanda. Nearly a million people were murdered as two artificial groups of people chose to destroy each other after centuries of living peacefully together. We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families by Philip Gourevitch explores what it was like to live through that period and to lose so much in the process. Rwanda is at peace now, there is a happy ending for the country but you …
Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee
The full title of this is Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West and it’s by Dee Brown. As I am sure you can imagine, this is not a happy story and it instead is the story of the destruction of Native American culture and lands during the 19th century as colonization changed America forever. This was first published back in 1970 and it’s just a shocking and just as gripping today as it was then. It also comes with an illustrated biography of the author which …