[GaliWalker]

[grannyhiker]

Just finished Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals. Should be required reading for modern politicians! We certainly could use more like Lincoln!

[olderthanIusedtobe]

Trying to read "Turn Right at Machu Picchu" by Mark Adams on my brother's recommendation. Having a hard time getting into it. Part history and part modern adventure travel. Set it aside to start "Caraval" by Stephanie Garber. I can't seem to leave the YA stuff alone. Anyway entertaining so far. Two teenage women are suppressed by their jerk of a father and are about to steal away to partake in some kind of annual mind bending magical interactive theater spectacle, but from reading the book jacket things don't go as planned, of course.

[Mike Collins]

Michael Odaatje (author of The English Patient) has returned his birthplace of Sri Lanka twice in pursuit of answers about himself. He delves into that self-identity quest in his autobiographical Running in the Family. He is remarkably open about the plague of alcoholism within his family. His words knit an evocative story of the struggle he experienced with the emptiness of his family life. Odaatje's insight provides vivid imagery to the black hole which is found in alcoholism.

[MtnGoat]

[Mike Collins]

The Zookeeper's Wife by Diane Ackerman is a non-fictional recounting of the heroic actions of two Poles, Jan and Antonia Zabinski. Their noble endeavors saved the lives of hundreds of Jews in Warsaw during WWII. Jan directed the zoo and managed with his wife to hide Jews in various areas of the zoo to facilitate their survival. By using the zoo as a lens to view the Holocaust, Ackerman successfully allows the redemptive power of nature to ease the sorrow from that horrible chapter of human history.

[zephyr]

I just finished reading Mary Beard's SPQR, A History of Ancient Rome. It's a fairly dense book and I completed it just as it was coming due at the library. Unable to renew since 8 borrowers were waiting for it. Here's a good review in the Guardian. I discovered it after MtnGoat posted about it recently. The author is a professor of Classics at Cambridge University. Great maps and lots of illustrations and several color plates. Rome has quite a complex and violent past. Modern archaeology has revealed much in understanding how the Romans lived and worked. ~z

[zephyr]

[olderthanIusedtobe]

[thunderhead]

Ya... good book.

[zephyr]

Just finished Glass House, The 1% Economy and the Shattering of the All-American Town by Brian Alexander. This is the story of Anchor Hocking Glass Company, once the world's largest maker of glass tableware. It's also the story of Lancaster, Ohio once declared to be the epitome of American towns by Forbes magazine in 1947. The author grew up in the town with a family history in the glass business and went on to become a writer for The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Science, Outside, Esquire, and a contributing editor for Wired magazine. I just happened to catch the tail end of an interview of the author by Teri Gross of Fresh Air one night in my car. What I heard was enough to make me go online and research the interview and find this book to read. It's excellent and thorough in recounting not only the history of Anchor Hocking, but documenting the lives of many of the Lancaster citizens. Lancaster is a shadow of its former self, troubled by deteriorating community, infrastructure, drug addiction and the crimes it fosters. The company has been besieged and ravaged by corporate raiders for the past 35 years. This tale has echoed across America and this particular version of it explains a lot of what we are seeing around us across the country today. Lots to learn about here--industrial glass-making, corporate structure and finance, labor relations, community organization, addiction issues and small town politics in the Midwest. ~z

[wickerman323]

Just started Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer, which I am sure is a common book on this forum. I picked it up at a Half Price Books Warehouse sale and had it sitting on a table from April 2016 until November 2016 when we moved. Just now sat down to start it. Obviously not reading now since I'm posting here.

[Mike Collins]

In the middle of the sixth century Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes bubonic plague, laid waste to the Roman Empire. Twenty-five million people died from that scourge during the reign of last great emperor, Justinian. William Rosen proposes in Justinian's Flea-Plague, Empire, and the Birth of Europe that the plague left behind distinctive regions that provided the cohesive groups of proto-European nations. Franks, Lombards, Saxons, Goths, Slavs, and others evolved into the members of the European complex that we know today.

[olderthanIusedtobe]

Veronica Roth wrote the Divergent series. She has a new book, Carve the Mark, that is completely unrelated. I almost gave up on it right away, the first 30 pages or so seemed poorly written or executed or something. But it picked up nicely since then. It's set on another world, with 2 different cultures that are odds with each other. A young man and woman from each culture are gaining a bit of perspective about the other from each other. Only about 1/4 of the way through it but enjoying it at this point.

[MtnGoat]

Cobweb, another Neal Stevenson novel. Just as great as all the rest. Less esoteric than many of his works, it takes place during the first gulf war as the novel follows international intrigue in the US heartland. Playing dual roles in exposing it but each unaware of the other, a Mormon woman from Idaho and a small town Iowa deputy sheriff find themselves enmeshed in a plot spawned in Baghdad and unfurling at Iowa State. His humor plays a huge role here and I'm enthralled with the lively descriptions of the deputy's life and of course, Murder Car.