LAVA Discussion Book Candidates for 2016

 

These candidate books come from several sources, including suggestions from LAVA members, lists of award-winning books, favorites of other book clubs, the Harvard Bookstore’s best-seller list, literary blogs, etc.  Several were carried over from the previous voting list.  There are 28 books on this list, but we will choose only 8 of them in this balloting, which unfortunately means that many worthwhile books will be excluded from next year’s reading schedule.  As before, the most popular runners-up will be included in the next list of candidates.

 

Why do we need to choose only 8 books to cover 12 meetings?  We don’t read a book for January because that month is occupied with choosing the next list of books.  In March we read the book chosen by Writers and Books for their "Rochester Reads" program.  In July and September we see a film at The Little Theater instead of discussing a book.  That leaves us eight books to choose for the year.

 

LAVA members are encouraged to research these book candidates in bookstores, libraries, on the web, etc.  Bring this list and your thoughts to the special January meeting at Bill and Andi's house on Saturday, January 9, which will be devoted to sharing information and opinions on these books (and sharing good food).

 

After the January meeting and prior to the voting deadline of Sunday February 7, please "mark your ballots" and return them to Bill.  First review the guidelines for choosing LAVA discussion books, which reflect some of the things we have learned about choosing books over the years.  Then, using a system similar to the one used in the Olympics, rate each book individually on a scale of 1 to 10, using 10 to indicate books that you think would generate the best Lava discussions.  The system works best if you provide a rating for every book on the list.  If you wish, you can write your rating for each book in the margins of this document.  Members often rate each book as we discuss it during the January meeting and then hand in their marked list before they leave, but you can use any method you prefer as long as you get your ratings to Bill by the voting deadline.

 

The candidates are divided into three groups: shorter fiction, shorter nonfiction, and longer works.  This division doesn’t affect how you cast your vote, but it does affect how the final schedule is created.  If no nonfiction book is among the top vote-getters, the most popular nonfiction book will go on the list anyway to assure that we get a little variety in our reading.  Any of the longer books among the top vote-getters will be assigned to the August and October meetings because that will give us two months to read them.

 

 

Candidates for Regular Meetings (fiction)

 

Billy Budd, Sailor, and Other Stories, by Herman Melville, 1891.  100-160 pages for Billy Budd alone, depending on edition, and about 350 pages for the entire collection of stories.  In this classic short novel, Billy Budd is a likable seaman aboard British warship.  One of the ship’s officers, envious of his innocence and popularity, falsely charges Budd with conspiracy to mutiny.  Overcome with indignation, Budd strikes his accuser a single blow, which kills him.  Despite the general belief that Budd’s anger was justified and that he did not intend to kill the officer, the captain convinces the court martial panel that he must hang.  Later, when the captain dies of wounds received in battle, his last words are "Billy Budd, Billy Budd."  This story became the basis for an opera by Benjamin Brittan and a film by Peter Ustinov. Here is a review of the film in the New York Times. Suggested by Terence.  16 copies in the library system.

 

The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout.  320 pages, 2013. Two brothers from Maine work in New York City.  Rivals since childhood, one works for a prestigious law firm and the other is a Legal Aid lawyer.  After returning home to deal with the legal consequences of a nephew's appalling behavior (he tossed a pig's head into a mosque during prayer), they are eventually forced to come to terms with a tragic event from their own childhood.  Washington Post: "No one should be surprised by the poignancy and emotional vigor of Elizabeth Strout’s new novel. But the broad social and political range of The Burgess Boys shows just how impressively this extraordinary writer continues to develop."  Chicago Tribune: What truly makes Strout exceptional—and her latest supple and penetrating novel so profoundly affecting—is the perfect balance she achieves between the tides of story and depths of feeling."   Boston Globe: "The Burgess Boys, her most recent novel, is her best yet."  LAVA read Strout's Pulitzer-Prize–winning Olive Kitteridge in 2010. Review in the New York Times.  67 copies in the library system

 

The Condition by Jennifer Haigh.  390 pages, 2008.  LAVA read Faith by the same author in October 2013.  Publisher's description: "Unaware of the long-standing grievances harbored by their divorced parents, three adult siblings embark on a tumultuous summer when the oldest, a successful Manhattan doctor, investigates his sister's chromosomal disorder against his mother's wishes."  New York Times: "Ms. Haigh has a great gift for telling interwoven family stories and doing justice to all the different perspectives they present... A remarkable accomplishment."  Washington Post: "Haigh’s characters are layered and authentic... Haigh is such a gifted chronicler of the human condition."  Kirkus Reviews: "Filled with genuine insight and touching lyricism."  Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: "The central question of the story—how a child whose genetic condition keeps her physically immature can finally be allowed to grow up—is compelling."  List of reviews.  Suggested by Joyce H.  Held over from last year.  25 copies in the library system.

Euphoria by Lily King.  257 pages, 2014.  Loosely based on events in the life of famed anthropologist Margaret Mead, this novel is about three young anthropologists in New Guinea who are caught in a love triangle that threatens their careers and their lives.  San Francisco Chronicle: "It moves fast.  It's grit-in-your-teeth sensuous. The New Guinean bush and its peoples - their concerns, their ordeals - confront us with fierce, tangible exactness, with dignity and wit... Observations are unfailingly acute, and the book is packed with them."  New York Times Book Review (cover review): "a taut, witty, fiercely intelligent tale of competing egos and desires in a landscape of exotic menace—a love triangle in extremis…The steam the book emits is as much intellectual as erotic… King is brilliant on the moral contradictions that propelled anthropological encounters with remote tribes."  This book was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.  Review in the New York Times.  Suggested by Andi.  24 copies in the library system. 

 

Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee.  278 pages, 2015.  Lee, an aspiring young writer, submitted this novel in 1957 to a publisher, who suggested that she continue to work on it with a focus on the protagonist’s (Scout’s) childhood.  Two years later, Lee published the revised story as To Kill a Mockingbird, which won the Pulitzer Prize. In that story, Scout’s father, Atticus, a southern lawyer, heroically defends an innocent African American man who is accused of rape. In Go Set a Watchman, the original novel in which Scout is an adult, her father is shown to be, nevertheless, a racist.  Its publication was praised by some for providing a fuller picture of Atticus, but it was denounced by others as a publisher’s move to cash in on the author’s reputation with an otherwise unpublishable work.  A reviewer in the Washington Post said, "A significant aspect of this novel is that it asks us to see Atticus now not merely as a hero, a god, but as a flesh-and-blood man with shortcomings and moral failing, enabling us to see ourselves for all our complexities and contradictions."  A reviewer in the New York Times, however, pointed out that the author never intended these novels to be published as two connected works and said, "it’s silly to view the Atticus Finch of Go Set a Watchman as the same person as the Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird."  Here is a detailed discussion by Adam Gropnik in the New Yorker. Suggested by Paula.  Over 50 copies in the library system.

 

Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse by Louise Erdrich.  361 pages, 2001.  An elderly Catholic priest (who is secretly a woman living as a man) has served on an Ojibwe reservation for decades.  The Vatican sends an envoy to investigate stories about a woman on the reservation who is possibly a false saint. The author is Ojibwe herself.  The New York Times described it as "A deeply affecting narrative … by turns comical and elegiac, farcical and tragic."  Kirkus Reviews: "The result is a remarkably convincing portrayal of Native American life throughout this century—with the added dimension of an exactingly dramatized and deeply moving experience of spiritual conflict and crisis. The question of Sister Leopolda (a paragon of charity who may also have been a murderer) is posed unforgettably... Comparisons to Willa Cather (particularly her Death Comes for the Archbishop) as well as Faulkner now seem perfectly just. That's how good Erdrich has become." Publishers Weekly: "Her narrative is interspersed with dozens of comic, tragic and all-too-human stories that illuminate her lively, complex and often bizarre Ojibwe people and the priests who come to convert them and minister to their needs."  This novel was a finalist for the National Book Award.  Review in the New York Times.  23 copies in the library system.

Lila by Marilynne Robinson.  261 pages, 2014.  Lila, a former prostitute with an unsophisticated craving for a more meaningful life, wanders into in a small town in Iowa.  There she marries a much older minister who, like her, is beset with loneliness.  Both of them wrestle with doubts about his harsh theology.  Los Angeles Times: "Gorgeous writing, an absolutely beautiful book... This should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with Robinson, a novelist who can make the most quotidian moments epic because of her ability to peel back the surfaces of ordinary lives."  New York Time: "...a meditation on morality and psychology, compelling in its frankness about its truly shocking subject: the damage to the human personality done by poverty, neglect and abandonment.  New York Review of Books: "Robinson has created a small, rich and fearless body of work in which religion exists unashamedly, as does doubt, unashamedly."  This is the third of the author's novels set in the fictional town of Gilead, Iowa. The first, Gilead, which LAVA read in 2007, won the Pulitzer Prize. This novel won the 2014 National Book Critics Circle Award.  Long review in the New Yorker.  Suggested by Connie.  Over 50 copies in the library system.

 

The Martian by Andy Weir.  369 pages, 2014. When the first crew to visit Mars is forced to evacuate because of a dust storm, they unintentionally leave one astronaut behind.  In a desperate struggle to survive, he uses his engineering skills to overcome one obstacle after another. This science fiction novel was made into a popular movie in 2015.   Wall Street Journal: "Brilliant…a celebration of human ingenuity [and] the purest example of real-science sci-fi for many years…Utterly compelling." USA Today: "Terrific stuff, a crackling good read that devotees of space travel will devour like candy…succeeds on several levels and for a variety of reasons, not least of which is its surprising plausibility."  Kirkus Review: "Weir displays a virtuosic ability to write about highly technical situations without leaving readers far behind. The result is a story that is as plausible as it is compelling."  Review in the San Francisco Chronicle.  Suggested by Paula.  Over 50 copies in the library system.

 

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri.  291 pages, 2004.  After an arranged marriage in India, a young couple moves to Cambridge, Massachusetts and names their newborn son after a Russian writer.  Boston Globe: "[A] tricultural collision awaits Gogol from his first few days of life.  He has to endure a Russian name he cannot bear in an America he cannot penetrate with Indian parents he cannot fully accept or understand.  All these ambiguities make for a novel of exquisite and subtle tension, spanning two generations and continents and a plethora of emotional compromises in between."  New York Times: "The Namesake is that rare thing: an intimate, closely observed family portrait that effortlessly and discreetly unfolds to disclose a capacious social vision."  Washington Post: "This is a fine novel from a superb writer.... In the end, this quiet book makes a very large statement about courage, determination, and above all, the majestic ability of the human animal to endure and prosper."  Lahiri's collection of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies, won the Pulitzer Prize.  Several reviews.  Suggested by Vicki.  43 copies in the library system. 

 

Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward.  258 pages, 2012.  On the Gulf coast of Mississippi, four children prepare for a looming hurricane with no mother and an undependable father.  Library Journal: "Ward uses fearless, toughly lyrical language to convey this family's close-knit tenderness [and] the sheer bloody-minded difficulty of rural African American life... It's an eye-opening heartbreaker that ends in hope." Washington Post: "Without a hint of pretention, in the simple lives of these poor people living among chickens and abandoned cars, she evokes the tenacious love and desperation of classical tragedy… A palpable sense of desire and sorrow animates every page here... Salvage the Bones has the aura of a classic about it."  New York Times: "… a taut, wily novel, smartly plotted and voluptuously written.  It feels fresh and urgent, but it's an ancient, archetypal tale... It's an old story—of family honor, revenge, disaster—and it's a good one."  This novel won the 2011 National Book Award.  Several reviews.  25 copies in the library system.

 

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin.  260 pages, 2014.  A widowed bookstore owner whose business is failing, Fikry drinks too much and isolates himself from his friends after his rare collection of Poe poems is stolen. The sudden appearance of a two-year-old orphan on his doorstep transforms his life.  Kirkus Reviews describes it as, "a narrative that is sometimes sentimental, sometimes funny, sometimes true to life and always entertaining."  Washington Post: "Zievin has done something old-fashioned and fairly rare these days. She has written an entertaining novel, modest in its scope, engaging and funny without being cloying or sentimental." Globe and Mail: "The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, the wonderful, thoughtful and touching new novel from Los Angeles writer Gabrielle Zevin, is not, however, about the darkness of Fikry’s existence. Rather, it’s about the power of life to surprise, about how plans – and lives – change in the barest of moments." Suggested by Robert.  Review in the Washington Post.  About 50 copies in the library system.

 

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe.  209 pages, 1958. To be read together with Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.  78 pages, 1899.   Both are classics.  Things Fall Apart, which LAVA read in 2004, has sold over 8 million copies in 50 languages.  Kirkus Reviews: "This novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness.  But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers... One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children."  Review in the Washington Post.   In Heart of Darkness, Marlowe is sent by his employer to the upper reaches of an African river to bring back Kurtz, a rogue ivory trader who has descended into savagery.  Review in the Independent.  Suggested by Connie, who says it would be interesting to compare Achebe’s insider’s view with Conrad’s outsider’s view.  The library system has a few dozen copies of each.

 

Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple.  326 pages, 2013.  Amazon: "Bernadette Fox is notorious. To her Microsoft-guru husband, she's a fearlessly opinionated partner; to fellow private-school mothers in Seattle, she's a disgrace; to design mavens, she's a revolutionary architect, and to 15-year-old Bee, she is a best friend and, simply, Mom. Then Bernadette disappears."  New York Times: "Comedy heaven.... The tightly constructed Where'd You Go, Bernadette is written in many formats: e-mails, letters, F.B.I. documents, correspondence with a psychiatrist and even an emergency-room bill for a run-in between Bernadette and Audrey."  San Francisco Chronicle: "Semple's most ridiculous characters are convinced that they're the normal ones, and it's wonderful fun to watch as they behave abominably, believing themselves blameless.... It's the rare book that actually deserves the term 'laugh-out-loud funny,' but I found myself reading passages from almost every page to anyone who would listen, even as I could barely articulate the words through my own laughter." Review in the Guardian.  Held over from last year.  36 copies in the library system.

 

Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague by Geraldine Brooks.  308 pages, 2002.  Inspired by a true story, this novel is about the outbreak of plague in an isolated English village in 1666.  Some of its inhabitants add to the community's disintegration by engaging in witch-hunting, forcing a housemaid with healing skills to take the lead in dealing with the crisis.  New York Times: "She gives us what we want in historical fiction: a glimpse into the strangeness of history that simultaneously enables us to see a reflection of ourselves."  The Guardian: "Year of Wonders is a staggering fictional debut that matches journalistic accumulation of detail to natural narrative flair."  LAVA has read several novels by Brooks: March (which won the Pulitzer Prize) in 2008, People of the Book in 2011 and Caleb’s Crossing in 2013.  Review in the Guardian.  Suggested by Connie.  45 copies in the library system.

 

 

Candidates for Regular Meetings (non-fiction)

 

Alcott, Louisa May.  For this discussion, LAVA members would have the choice of reading any biography of Louisa May Alcott.  When you vote, you will be rating this proposal, not each individual book in it.  The author of Little Women, Alcott had an idealistic father who was part of the brilliant Transcendentalist circle in Massachusetts but who found it difficult to get his own life organized enough to support himself and his family.  In 2008 LAVA read March by Geraldine Brooks, a novel whose main character is loosely based on Alcott's father.  Held over from last year.  Suggested by Tess.  These recent biographies are recommended:

 

 

The Boys in the Boat by Daniel Brown.  370 pages, 2013.  This is the true story of a rowing team from the University of Washington. Composed of blue collar students, it beat traditional championship teams from the East Coast and Britain and then defeated the Nazi team at the 1936 Olympics. The story centers on a farm boy from who had been abandoned as a child during the Great Depression.  The Seattle Times: "The individual stories of these young men are almost as compelling as the rise of the team itself… The narrative rises inexorably, with the final 50 pages blurring by with white-knuckled suspense as these all-American underdogs pull off the unimaginable." Associated Press: "Readers need neither background nor interest in competitive rowing to be captivated by this remarkable and beautifully crafted history.  Written with the drama of a compelling novel, it's a quintessentially American story that burnishes the esteem in which we embrace what has come to be known as the Greatest Generation."  This book was a New York Times number one best-seller.  Review in the New York Times.  Suggested by Paula.  Over 50 copies in the library system. 

 

Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan.  252 pages, 2012.  The true story of an investigative reporter who developed a rare and deadly brain disorder.  After being correctly diagnosed only at the last moment, she recovered and later used her parents' journals to write about her descent into paranoia and violent psychosis.  Washington Post: "Cahalan's tale is told in straightforward journalistic prose and is admirably well-researched and described... This story has a happy ending, but take heed: It is a powerfully scary book."  New York Times: "Cahalan's prose carries a sharp, unsparing, tabloid punch in the tradition of Pete Hamill and Jimmy Breslin."  Journal of Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology: "...a superb case study of a rare neurological diagnosis; even experienced neurologists will find much to learn in it."  Review in the Guardian.  26 copies in the library system.

 

Mayflower: a Story of Courage, Community, and War by Nathaniel Philbrick.  358 pages, 2007.  A pivotal event in this history is the rarely discussed King Phillips War, which began in 1675 and resulted in the death of about 8% of the population of the Plymouth Colony and more than half of the native population of the surrounding area.  Library Journal: "Mayflower is a jaw-dropping epic of heroes and villains, bravery and bigotry, folly and forgiveness. Philbrick delivers a masterly told story that will appeal to lay readers and history buffs alike. Clearly one of the year's best books; highly recommended."  New York Times: "Mayflower is a surprise-filled account of what are supposed to be some of the best-known events in the American past but are instead an occasion for collective amnesia."  Philbrick won the National Book Award for nonfiction in 2000 for another book.  Held over from last year.  List of reviews.  50 copies in the library system.

 

Mount Allegro: a Memoir of Italian-American life by Jerre Mangione.  285 pages, 1941. Thinly disguised as fiction at the insistence of his publisher, this is actually Mangione's memoir of growing up in a neighborhood of Sicilian immigrants in Rochester, NY in the early 1900s.  The author is the uncle of musicians Chuck and Gap Mangione. San Francisco Chronicle: "One of the best books yet published in its field--a book in which you will learn more about the making of an American than in the most solemn or fictional volumes that purport to tell you all about the subject."  Mangione's obituary in the New York Times includes a discussion of the book.  Suggested by Robert.  More than 50 copies in the library system.

 

Truth and Beauty: A Friendship, by Ann Patchett.  257 pages. 2005.  This is Patchett's memoir about her intense and difficult friendship with Lucy Grealy.  Publisher's description: "This is a tender, brutal book about loving the person we cannot save.  It is about loyalty, and being lifted up by the sheer effervescence of someone who knew how to live life to the fullest."  The Guardian: "Theirs is a love story, a first-love story, an account of devotion so intense that it compares to conventional friendship as closely as double cream does to Dream Topping...  What Ann and Lucy had in common was their belief in writing as a means of salvation. Poetry for Grealy and fiction for Patchett were going to save their lives."  Washington Post: "These may be the best-natured, most loyal and generous, most optimistic writers ever to have their humble beginnings recounted in a memoir.  Or at least Patchett herself is.  Lucy Grealy, her best friend, had ample reason for a darker side. In her own memoir, Autobiography of a Face, Grealy documented her battle with Ewing's sarcoma, a rare cancer that caused her to lose part of her jaw as a child and undergo endless painful (and ultimately unsuccessful) surgeries for the disfigurement. Grealy died in 2002, at age 39, of a heroin overdose. Truth & Beauty is Patchett's tribute to Grealy, at once a grief-haunted eulogy and a larger meditation on the solace—and limitations—of friendship." Suggested by Tess.  Several revews.  24 copies in the library system.

 

Walden (1845, about 360 pages) and Civil Disobedience (1849, about 30 pages) by Henry David Thoreau.  Monroe library summary of Walden: "Perhaps the best known non-fiction book ever written by an American, Walden chronicles Thoreau's stay in a cabin by Walden Pond, on land owned by his friend and compatriot, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Thoreau stayed here for two years and two months and hoped to gain a more objective understanding of society by isolating himself from it."  Amazon summary of Civil Disobedience: "Sparked by Thoreau's outrage at American slavery and the American-Mexican war, Civil Disobedience is a call for every citizen to value his conscience above his government... More than an essay, Civil Disobedience is a call to action for all citizens to refuse to participate in, or encourage in any way, an unjust institution."  Suggested by Robert.  There are many copies in the library system.

 

Longer Books (suitable for August and October)

 

We read no more than two books in this category per year, and we reserve these for our August and October discussions, which gives us two months to read them.  This does not imply that our August and October books must come from this section.  If all of the top choices are shorter books, that is what we read all year.

 

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr.  530 pages, 2014.  When the Nazis occupy Paris, a master locksmith at the Museum of Natural History flees with his blind daughter to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where her life intersects with that of a young German soldier.  Amazon: "Deftly interweaving their lives, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, that people try to be good to one another."  Washington Post: "I'm not sure I will read a better novel this year... Every piece of back story reveals information that charges the emerging narrative with significance, until at last the puzzle-box of the plot slides open to reveal the treasure hidden inside."  New York Times: "What’s unexpected about its impact is that the novel does not regard Europeans’ wartime experience in a new way. Instead, Mr. Doerr’s nuanced approach concentrates on the choices his characters make and on the souls that have been lost, both living and dead."  This novel won the Pulitzer Prize.  Suggested by Andi.  Review in the New York Times.  Over 50 copies in the library system.

 

Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel, by Carl Safina.  409 pages, 2015.  Through narrative portraits of elephants, wolves and dolphins, the author examines their rich social environment and their capacity for perception, thought and emotion. He combines those observations with the latest findings on the human brain, which leads him to question previously held distinctions between humans and other animals.  Safina, a recipient of the MacArthur "genius grant," is a professor at Stony Brook, who hosted a PBS series called "Saving the Ocean."  New York Review of Books: "Along with Darwin's Origin and Richard Dawkins's Selfish Gene, Beyond Words marks a major milestone in our evolving understanding of our place in nature."  Psychology Today: "Wise, passionate, and eye-opening at every turn, Beyond Words is ultimately a graceful examination of humanity's place in the world… Dr. Safina's book truly is a gem."  New York Times: "Dr. Safina is a terrific writer, majestic and puckish in equal measure, with a contagious enthusiasm."  Review in the New York Review of Books.  Suggested by Connie.  10 copies in the library system.

Evening Class by Maeve Binchy.  420 pages, 1996.  Amazon: "In Evening Class, Binchy zooms in on the working-class of Dublin. Schoolteacher Aidan Dunne organizes an evening class in Italian with the help of Nora O'Donoghue, an Irishwoman returning home after 26 years in Sicily. When the somewhat squashed-by-life denizens of the surrounding neighborhood take the unexpected step of enrolling in the class, they find their lives transformed.  Binchy tells her story from the viewpoints of eight different characters and rewards both them and her readers with happy endings after the requisite rocky road. Reading a novel by Maeve Binchy is like catching up with old friends--you know everything will turn out fine in the end, but you're still interested in how things get that way."  Chicago Tribune: "Good storytelling... Binchy deftly focuses on each character in turn, probing the hidden dramas of their lives."  Review in the Chicago Tribune.  Suggested by Robert.  30 copies in the library system.

 

Napoleon: A Life, by Andrew Roberts.  810 pages, 2014.  Napoleon was a French general and emperor.  This is the first one-volume biography to take advantage of the recent publication of his thirty-three thousand letters.  Library Journal: "This voluminous work is likely to set the standard for subsequent accounts of Napoleon's life. It should appeal widely to readers of all types." New York Times: "An epically scaled new biography… Roberts brilliantly conveys the sheer energy and presence of Napoleon the organizational and military whirlwind who, through crisp and incessant questioning, sized up people and problems and got things done… His dynamism shines in Roberts’s set-piece chapters on major battles like Austerlitz, Jena, and Marengo." The Telegraph:  "A huge, rich, deep, witty, humane and unapologetically admiring biography that is a pleasure to read. The Napoleon painted here is a whirlwind of a man—not only a vigorous and supremely confident commander, but an astonishingly busy governor, correspondent and lover, too."  Review in the Washington Post.  Suggested by Terence.  11 copies in the library system.

 

On His Own Terms: A Life of Nelson Rockefeller, by Richard Norton Smith. 721 pages, 2014.  Rockefeller was governor of New York and Vice President under Gerald Ford.  Smith was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for another book.  New Yorker: "[An] enthralling biography… Richard Norton Smith has written what will probably stand as a definitive Life… an absorbing, deeply informative portrait of an important, complicated, semi-heroic figure who, in his approach to the limits of government and to government’s relation to the governed, belonged in every sense to another century."  New York Times: "A compelling read… What makes the book fascinating for a contemporary professional is not so much any one thing that Rockefeller achieved, but the portrait of the world he inhabited not so very long ago."  Wall Street Journal: "[A] clear-eyed, exhaustively researched account of a significant and fascinating American life."  Review in Washington Post.  Suggested by Terence.  12 copies in the library system.

 

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand.  407 pages, 2010.  This is the true story of Louie Zamperini, a runner in the 1936 Berlin Olympics whose airplane crashed in the Pacific Ocean during World War II.  After 47 days adrift in a lift raft, he and his buddies were captured and placed in a Japanese prisoner of war camp run by a sadistic commander who chose the defiant Zamperini as the object of special attention.  Barely alive at the end of the war, he returned home and married, only to be plagued by nightmares, drinking problems and other signs of what is now known as PTSD.  Eventually, however, he finds his way to peace.  New York Times: "A celebration of gargantuan fortitude... full of unforgettable characters, multi-hanky moments and wild turns... Hillenbrand is a muscular, dynamic storyteller."  Boston Globe: "Intense... You better hold onto the reins."  Hillenbrand is the author of the best-selling Seabiscuit: An American Legend.  Several Reviews.  Suggested by Rod.  More than 50 copies in the library system. 

 

The Witches: Salem, 1692 by Stacy Schiff.  512 pages, 2015. In 1692, in Salem, Massachusetts, the young daughters of a minister are overcome by convulsions and screaming.  In the ensuing panic, twenty people and two dogs are executed for witchcraft.  The Guardian: "Schiff writes movingly as well as wittily; this is a work of riveting storytelling as well as an authoritative history."  Milwaukee Journal SentinaI: "Schiff is astute when exploring why the girls were pointing fingers [and she] is equally good when tussling with the harder question of why these unreliable witnesses and their spectral evidence were so readily believed."  Newsday: "Schiff expertly unknots what drove the Puritans to mass delusion… [W]e remain fascinated because we sense in our skin (and see in the news) that the same could be happening right now." The author won the Pulitzer Prize for another book.  Review in The Atlantic.  Suggested by Tess.  25 copies in the library system.