After following the Northern Alliance troops around Afghanistan and reporting on the fall of the Taliban, journalist Åsne Seierstad finds herself in Kabul. She stumbles upon a bookshop and goes in. She and the proprietor, Sultan, hit it off at first and she is invited to spend a little time with his family. She thinks […]
“‘I think this is the greatest generation any society has ever produced.’ I know that this was a bold statement and a sweeping judgment, but since than I have restated it on many occasions. While I am periodically challenged on this premise, I believe I have the facts on my side.” So writes Tom Brokaw […]
Celie is only a young teen when her stepfather marries her off to their widowed acquaintance, Albert. Celie is little more than a slave to the family. Albert has several spoiled children who terrorize her and he regularly beats her himself. Celie just puts her head down, writes letters to God, and tries to go […]
Telling the story of an epic flood of the Mississippi River in 1927, this book explores the early history of flood control efforts and a rivalry that made flood controls at the time practically a joke, the politics involved in decisions for handling the flood itself, the politics of disaster relief, and the impact of […]
The first volume in Maya Angelou’s autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is not an easy read. It picks up when she’s three and her brother is four and they’re being shipped from California to Arkansas–alone on a train. They live with their paternal grandmother for years. Maya writes poignantly and heart-breakingly, but […]
In Jackson, Mississippi during the Civil Rights era, a white woman stumbles on the idea of writing a book about the black maids of the area and the white families they work for. There have been so many great reviews written for this book, that I don’t know if I have a whole lot more […]
Aslaug has lived an isolated life with her mother in the woods of Maine. A disturbing story is revealed in alternating chapters. One set of chapters reveals the course of Aslaug’s life in the summer of 2003. The other reveals Aslaug on trial in 2007, for a crime that isn’t even revealed until very late […]