Free: Coming of Age at the End of History by Lea Ypi is the remarkable memoir of an Albanian girl, told in the first person starting when she was just seven years old. Ypi sees the world and her homeland through the perspective of her very complicated family. Her grandmother, Nini, who lives with them, …
Continue reading Authoritarianism versus liberalism: a political memoir
A Woman of No Importance by Sonia Purnell is a wonderful biography about an extraordinary woman who played a key role in the defeat of the Nazis in the 1940’s, a woman of courage and powerful leadership skills, a woman of whom most people have never heard, a woman whose life should be instructive to …
Continue reading A message to Pete Hegseth about women in combat
This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud is a fictional drama based on the author’s own multi-generational family, covering seven decades of family history and moving from Salonica in Greece, to French (colonial) Algeria to France, Switzerland, Brazil, Canada, Australia and the United States. Each chapter is told from the perspective of another family member, …
Continue reading Historical fiction that expands our minds and feeds our senses
It was a scorcher of a day in the summer of 1975, more than a year before the presidential election to determine whether Jerry Ford could withstand public contempt for his decision to pardon Richard Nixon and win a four-year term on his own. Foot traffic in Concord, New Hampshire was subdued under the blazing …
Hunting the Falcon: Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, and the Marriage That Shook Europe by historians John Guy and Julia Fox (husband and wife team)is a deeply researched tome larded with the tumultuous history of the reigns of Henry VIII, Francis I of France, and Charles V Holy Roman Emperor and ruler of the Hapsburg Empire, …
Continue reading 16th C. England: leaders worse than ours today
So, now he's said it. President Biden told Howard Stern recently that he'd be willing to debate Donald Trump. With all due respect, I disagree. I just don't think there's anything to be gained. I have always embraced the high-minded goals of candidate debate: well-reasoned,fact-based discussion; values-driven argumentation; clarification, prioritization of positions. Dignified dialogue serves …
Continue reading To debate or not debate: new rules are the question
Master, Slave, Husband, Wife: an epic journey from slavery to freedom by Ilyon Woo is the story of Ellen Craft, a light-skinned enslaved woman and skilled seamstress, and her husband William, also enslaved and a skilled cabinet maker, and their 1848 flight from their masters in Macon, Georgia to Philadelphia, Boston, Canada and England. Ellen …
Continue reading During frigid temps, some non-fiction books to warm you
Facing the Mountain by Daniel James Brown is the story of Japanese American patriots fighting for the U.S. in World War II while their parents and siblings were incarcerated in concentration (euphemistically termed relocation) camps in the West and South. In this intensely moving and deeply researched narrative, Brown lays out in grueling detail the …
Continue reading More winter reading – pt. 2, non-fiction books
Marjorie Arons-Barron 