The Buried by Peter Hessler

May 29, 2019 by Christina

Nonfiction – print. Penguin Press, 2019. 480 pgs. Purchased. After years of living and working in China as a journalist for The New Yorker,Hessler moved with his wife, Leslie, and infant twin daughters to Cairo in 2011. The same year the Egyptian Arab Spring began, resulting in the overthrow of the dictator Hosni Mubarak and the election of the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Morsi. As Hessler documents in his book, Morsi would serve as president for barely a […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Africa, Chunkster, LGBTQA+, Nonfiction • Tags: Peter Hessler

The Space Barons by Christian Davenport

May 13, 2019 by Christina

Nonfiction – print. Public Affairs, 2018. 320 pgs. Library copy. I work on the periphery of the aerospace industry, relying on the industry to build and launch optical satellites whose imagery I can process in support of environmental monitoring and natural disaster response. Despite this proximity, my knowledge about the aerospace industry is limited to the photographs NASA shares on Instagram. Which is why I was intrigued when I saw Davenport’s book on display at my local library. Subtitled “Elon […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Nonfiction, North America, Space, Technology, United States • Tags: Christian Davenport

Kings of the Yukon by Adam Weymouth

May 10, 2019 by Christina

Nonfiction – print. Little, Brown and Company, 2018. 288 pgs. Library copy. Subtitled “One Summer Paddling Across the Far North”, Weymouth’s memoir covers the fourth months he spent canoeing the Yukon River from Canada’s Yukon Territory through Alaska to the Bering Sea. The Yukon is 2,000 miles long, the longest free-flowing river in the United States and the longest salmon run in the world. Each summer, king salmon (known as Chinook in Canada) migrate the distance of the Yukon to […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Canada, Food, Indigenious Peoples, Nonfiction, North America, United States • Tags: Adam Weymouth

Becoming by Michelle Obama

April 17, 2019 by Christina

Nonfiction – audiobook. Read by the author. Random House Audio, 2018. 19 hours, 1 minutes. Purchased.  In 2009, Michelle Obama became the first African-American First Lady of the United States after her husband, Barack Obama, was elected President. Prior to that, Michelle attended Princeton and Harvard Law and worked as both a partner-tracked lawyer for a prestigious firm in Chicago and as an administrator in the University of Chicago medical system. These impressive achievements were – and continue to be […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Audiobook, Book Club, Feminism, Nonfiction, North America, ReadDiverse, United States • Tags: Michelle Obama

Shadows on the Tundra by Dalia Grinkevičiūtė

April 15, 2019 by Christina

Nonfiction – print. Translated from the Lithuanian by Delija Valiukenas. Peirene Press, 2018. Originally published 1997. 192 pgs. Purchased. In 1991, a jar filled with scraps of paper was discovered buried in Kaunas, the former capital of Lithuania. The papers document nearly three years in Dalia Grinkevičiūtė after she deported to a Soviet gulag in Siberia in 1941 at the age of fourteen with her mother and older brother. Grinkevičiūtė had buried the papers in 1950, fearing they would be […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Europe, Genocide, Indigenious Peoples, Nonfiction, Peirene Press, Russia, Translated • Tags: Dalia Grinkevičiūtė

The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

March 18, 2019 by Christina

Nonfiction – print. Vintage, 2011. Originally published 2010. 622 pgs. Purchased.   Subtitled “The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration”, Wilkerson’s book follows three individuals in order to construct a larger narrative about the movement of black Americans between 1915 and the 1970s. Historians estimate roughly six million black Americans moved from majority black southern states governed by white minorities to northern and western states where racism had not (yet) been codified through Jim Crow laws. The three individuals profiled […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Chunkster, Mountain West, Nonfiction, ReadDiverse, United States • Tags: Isabel Wilkerson

Fascism by Madeleine K. Albright

March 15, 2019 by Christina

Nonfiction – Kindle edition. Harper Perennial, 2019. Originally published 2018. 320 pgs. Library copy. In the conclusion of her book, Albright says that some may find the title of her book to be alarmist, but it is her belief that we are living in an alarming time. Her assertion holds gravitas because of her credentials – she served as the United States Secretary of State and the Ambassador to the United Nations from 1993 to 2001 – and her personal […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Asia, Balkans, Europe, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Nonfiction, North America, Poland, Russia, South America, United States • Tags: Madeleine K. Albright

Deep Work by Cal Newport

March 11, 2019 by Christina

Nonfiction – Kindle edition. Grand Central Publishing, 2016. 287 pgs. Library copy.  Subtitled “Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World”, Newport’s book lays out how individuals who master the concept of “deep work” will be successful in an economy to increasingly demands more output. In Newport’s mind, deep work consists of “professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Nonfiction, North America, Technology, United States • Tags: Cal Newport

Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari

February 22, 2019 by Christina

Nonfiction – Kindle edition. Translated from the Hebrew. Harper, 2015. Originally published 2011. 541 pgs. Library copy. Subtitled “A Brief History of Humankind”, Harari’s book covers three “revolutions” that shaped the course of history – the Cognitive Revolution, the Agricultural Revolution, and the Scientific Revolution – before delving into a lesson in how culture binds the world together and a short speculation about the future. Beginning about 70,0000 years, the Cognitive Revolution led to the evolution of Neanderthals and other […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Africa, Chunkster, Economics, Europe, Hebrew, Indigenious Peoples, Middle East, Nonfiction, North America, Religion, South America, Translated, United States • Tags: Yuval Noah Harari

Pound Foolish by Helaine Olen

February 15, 2019 by Christina

Nonfiction – Kindle edition. Portfolio, 2012. 304 pgs. Library copy.  Subtitled “Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry”, Olen covers how a financial illiterate populace is sold bad advice, bad get-quick-rich-schemes, and bad retirement strategies by an entire industry. Her book begins with a frank discussion of how America’s personal finance gurus – Suze Orman, Dave Ramsey, and the authors of The Millionaire Next Door, which I read earlier this year – and investing advocates such as Jim […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Economics, Nonfiction, North America, United States • Tags: Helaine Olen

Squeezed by Alissa Quart

February 11, 2019 by Christina

Nonfiction – print. Ecco, 2018. 320 pgs. Library copy. With its provocative subtitle “Why Our Families Can’t Afford America”, I’ve had my eye on Quart’s book since it was published back in mid-2018. The book promised to examine how and why Americans were finding themselves unable to make ends meet and remain inside the middle class that they were born into. “…65 percent of all Americans worry about paying their bills – as the parents I’ve interviewed, murmuring anxiously at […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Economics, New York, Nonfiction, North America, United States • Tags: Alissa Quart

Hitler’s American Model by James Q. Whitman

February 6, 2019 by Christina

Nonfiction – print. Princeton University Press, 2017. 224 pgs. Library.  The title of Whitman’s book is bold, and it immediately caught my attention while browsing the shelves at a local bookstore. It was hard to pass over a book with the subtitle “The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law”, and I only managed to put it back on the shelf after assuring myself that the local public library had a copy available. The Holocaust professors I had […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Europe, Genocide, Germany, Holocaust, Nonfiction, North America, United States • Tags: James Q. Whitman