Book - Area 51 - An Uncensored History
Author - Annie Jacobsen
Summary - It was a good book but I did not agree with her premises regarding the history of Area 51. I guess I have read extensively on Area 51 and have become very biased. For newbies it is a good book to read.
Book - Bright-Sided - How the Relentless Positive Thinking Undermined America
Author - Barbara Ehrenreich
Summary – Really a good book. Ehrenreich explores how medical, academic, and business gurus persuade the public that wishing, done in the right way, can make things happen.
Book - A Short History Of Nearly Everything
Author - Bill Bryson
Summary – I read this book the first time in 2004. This year I read it again. I love Bryson’s writing style. I read everything he writes at least once. This book is about what happened and how humans figured it out.
Book - At Home- A Short History of Private Life
Author – Bill Bryson
Summary – he goes through every room in the house and relates the extraordinary stories behind the seemingly commonplace, he examines how everyday items--things like ice, cookbooks, glass windows, and salt and pepper--transformed the way people lived, and how houses evolved around these new commodities. It is really an informative and funny book.
Book - The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid
Author - Bill Bryson
Summary – This is a memoir and for me it was a laugh out loud book. The Setting is Iowa and it is his growing up years.
Book – Escape
Author- Carolyn Jessop
Summary – Seventeen years after being forced into a polygamous marriage, Jessop escaped from the cultlike Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints with her eight children. She recounts the horrid events that led her to break free from the oppressive world she knew and how she has managed to survive since escaping, despite threats and legal battles with her husband and the Church. Last week her husband was sentences to life in prison.
Book - Idiot America - How Stupidity Became a Virtue
Author - Charles P. Pierce
Summary - Pierce delivers a gut-wrenching, side-splitting lament about the glorification of ignorance in the United States, and how a country founded on intellectual curiosity has somehow deteriorated into a nation of simpletons more apt to vote for an American Idol contestant than a presidential candidate. It was so true and funny.
Book – 1776
Author - David McCullough
Summary- If you are into American History then this book is for you. I loved it. It is the gripping story of the American Revolution.
Book - Me Talk Pretty One Day
Author - David Sedaris
Summary – Almost every book Sedaris writes is somehow autobiographical. He is another laugh out loud author. All of his books are great….
Book - 90 Minutes in Heaven - A True Story
Author - Don Piper
Summary – Interesting but I don’t really believe in this kind of stuff. I couldn’t wait to finish it.
Book - Homer & Langley - A Novel
Author - E. L. Doctorow
Summary – This is a true story about the New York Collyer brothers. They were hoarders and really mentally ill. It was interesting but nothing I would re-read. My neighbor loved it and insisted that I would love it. But then I have never liked anything she recommended.
Book - Committed - A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage
Author - Elizabeth Gilbert
Summary – This gal is a great writer. Unfortunately this book was not nearly as good as her first book..Eat, Pray, Love. I loved that book and Committed is nothing to brag about.
Book - In the Garden of Beasts
Author - Erik Larson
Summary – I like all of the books this guy wrote. The y are all historical fiction or outright non fiction. The book centers on the Diplomat to Germany during Hitler’s insanity. I liked his first book better. Isaac’s Storm.
Book - Isaac's Storm
Author - Erik Larson
Summary- I finished reading this book two weeks ago. It is about the hurricane that washed over Galveston Island and killed 7,000 people. I lived on the island for many years so it was of particular interest to me. It is more importantly the story of how the National Weather Service began. A good read.
Book - No Way Down - Life and Death on K2
Author - Graham Bowley
Summary – This was a page turner. It is about climbing Mt. Everest. If you ever were a winter outdoors person this book is for you. You were right on that mountain with these guys and suffered right along with them.
Book - Three Cups of Tea
Author - Greg Mortenson
Summary – This was a feel good story about this guy building schools in Afghanistan. Of course since his last book came out – Stones into Schools- it has pretty much been debunked.
Book - The Forgotten 500 - The Untold Story
Author - Gregory A. Freeman
Summary – since my father was in Korea I had to read this book. I like WWII and Korean War books.
Book - The Girls of Room 28 - Friendship, Hope
Author - Hannelore Brenner-Wonschick
Summary- You must think I am a nut reading all these books about the Holocaust but I am going through them because my 17 year old grandchild wants me to find some good books for her on the subject. This was a good one for her because it was not too graphic and left the reader filled with hope at the end. Really a good read.
Book - Hitler's War - The War That Came Early
Author - Harry Turtledove
Summary - Turtledove is always good, but this return to World War II . . . is genuinely brilliant. . . . The characterizations in particular bring the book to extraordinary life and will make most readers hope this is the beginning of another saga. Anytime you get a Turtledove book read it. They are fantastic.
Book - Seal Team Six
Author - Howard E. Wasdin
Summary – This was a good book that outlined the training for Seal Team Six. I read it before they killed Bin Lauden and right after that it became a national bestseller. This book did a good job of describing The Battle of Mogadishu.
Book - The Pacific
Author - Hugh Ambrose
Summary – This is a WWII book and again this guy is almost as good as Turtledove. Fantastic books and great research.
Book - How to Survive the End of the World
Author - James Wesley Rawles
Summary – This was an informative book on what you need if you want to survive the coming crash. Good lists on what to stock up on and where to live.
Book – Patriots
Author - James Wesley Rawles
Summary – This was Rawals first book and I liked it. Again it is his preparation for the coming fall of the US in a fiction form. Gives realistic situations that could happen.
Book - Inside Scientology
Author - Janet Reitman
Summary – I thought this was really an honest look at Scientology. Very interesting.
Book - A Stolen Life
Author - Jaycee Dugard
Summary – This is the story about Duggard who was kidnapped in 1991 and ended up being imprisoned for 18 years. It was good but I wish I did not know the story from the news media coverage.
Book - The Family
Author - Jeff Sharlet
Summary - “Un-American theocrats can only fool patriotic American democrats when there aren’t critics like Jeff Sharlet around—careful scholars and soulful writers who understand both the majesty of faith and the evil of its abuses. A remarkable accomplishment in the annals of writing about religion and politics.” (Rick Perlstein, author of Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America )
Book - Evidence of the Afterlife
Author - Jeffrey Long
Summary - “Dr. Jeff Long and journalist Paul Perry have done a phenomenal job in clarifying current events in the study of near-death experiences. Dr. Long’s work is leading us closer to a rational solution of the afterlife mystery.” (Raymond Moody, M.D., Ph.D., author of Life after Life ) I read it and it was interesting. I read it because I once had an out of body experience and I have had some unusual dreams.
Book - 63 Documents the Government Doesn't Want You to Read
Author - Jesse Ventura
Summary – Jesse used to be the governor of Minnesota and now is into the shadow government and conspiracies. Unfortunately he finds lots of evidence to prove these terrible things going on in our government.
Book - Look Me in the Eye -My Life with Asperses Disease
Author - John Elder Robison
Summary - Robison's thoughtful and thoroughly memorable account of living with Asperger's syndrome is assured of media attention (and sales) due in part to his brother Augusten Burroughs's brief but fascinating description of Robison in Running with Scissors. But Robison's story is much more fully detailed in this moving memoir, beginning with his painful childhood, his abusive alcoholic father and his mentally disturbed mother. Robison describes how from nursery school on he could not communicate effectively with others, something his brain is not wired to do, since kids with Asperger's don't recognize common social cues and body language or facial expressions. Failing in junior high, Robison was encouraged by some audiovisual teachers to fix their broken equipment, and he discovered a more comfortable world of machines and circuits, of muted colors, soft light, and mechanical perfection. This led to jobs (and many hilarious events) in worlds where strange behavior is seen as normal: developing intricate rocket-shooting guitars for the rock band Kiss and computerized toys for the Milton Bradley company.
Book – Running With Scissors
Author - Augusten Burroughs
Summary – I read this book in one sitting. It was that good.
Book - Into the Wild
Author - Jon Krakauer
Summary - After graduating from Emory University in Atlanta in 1992, top student and athlete Christopher McCandless abandoned his possessions, gave his entire $24,000 savings account to charity and hitchhiked to Alaska, where he went to live in the wilderness. Four months later, he turned up dead. His diary, letters and two notes found at a remote campsite tell of his desperate effort to survive, apparently stranded by an injury and slowly starving. They also reflect the posturing of a confused young man, raised in affluent Annandale, Va., who self-consciously adopted a Tolstoyan renunciation of wealth and return to nature.
Book - Weekends at Bellevue
Author - Julie Holland
Summary - No one is immune from mental illness. After working at New York City’s Bellevue Hospital for nine years, as the psychiatrist in charge of admissions at the psych E.R. on Saturday and Sunday nights, I came away knowing this for sure. Over the years, I admitted heiresses and art dealers, altar boys and college students, homecoming queens, studio executives, bankers, lawyers, correction officers, and the list goes on. No matter who you are, what you do for a living, how much money you have in the bank, or how often you go to church, circumstances can transpire that will bring you to Bellevue. This is one of the hardest lessons for our patients to learn. The book reminded me of work…I lasted for 15 years on the front lines.
Book - Sh_t My Dad Says
Author - Justin Halpern
Summary – About the dumbest book I ever read.
Book - The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven
Author - Kevin Malarkey
Summary – If you believe in this kind of stuff then it is uplifting and great.
Book - Unbroken -A World War II Story
Author - Laura Hillenbrand
Summary – Hillenbrand unfurls the story of Louie Zamperini--a juvenile delinquent-turned-Olympic runner-turned-Army hero. During a routine search mission over the Pacific, Louie’s plane crashed into the ocean, and what happened to him over the next three years of his life is a story that will keep you glued to the pages, eagerly awaiting the next turn in the story and fearing it at the same time. You’ll cheer for the man who somehow maintained his selfhood and humanity despite the monumental degradations he suffered, and you’ll want to share this book with everyone you know. It was a page turner.
Books – Outliners , The Tipping Point, Blink.
Author – Malcolm Gladwell
Summary – All of these are really good books. Outliners is still on the New York Times Bestselling List and all of them have been there.
Books – Bonk – The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex
Packing for Mars
Spook – Science Tackles the Afterlife
Stiff – The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
Author – Mary Roach
Summary – All of these books are fantastic reads. Witty and informative.
Book - Hallelujah! The Welcome Table-A Lifetime of Memories With Recipes
Author - Maya Angelou
I like all of this gals books. Have read a good number of them.
Book - A Funny Thing Happened
Author - Michael J. Fox
Summary – Don’t waste your time or money
Book - Physics of the Future
Author - Michio Kacku
Summary – Awe inspiring book. I hope he is right.
Book - Orange Is the New Black
Author - Piper Kerman
Summary - Just graduated from Smith College, Kerman made the mistake of getting involved with the wrong woman and agreeing to deliver a large cash payment for an international drug ring. Years later, the consequences catch up with her in the form of an indictment on conspiracy drug-smuggling and money-laundering charges. Kerman pleads guilty and is sentenced to 15 months in a federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut. Entering prison in 2004—more than 10 years after her crime—Kerman finds herself submerged in the unique and sometimes overwhelming culture of prison, where kindness can come in the form of sharing toiletries, and an insult in the cafeteria can lead to an enduring enmity. Kerman quickly learns the rules—asking about the length of one’s prison stay is expected, but never ask about the crime that led to it—and carves a niche for herself even as she witnesses the way the prison system fails those who are condemned to it, many of them nonviolent drug offenders. An absorbing, meditative look at life behind bars.
Book - Beyond Band of Brothers
Author - Richard D. Winters
Summary - In his well-intentioned but impersonal memoirs, Winters tells the tales left untold by Stephen Ambrose, whose Band of Brothers was the inspiration for the HBO miniseries, but Winters's memoir is disappointingly sparse on details unrelated to troop position. It is in the battles and tactical maneuvers of Easy Company that Winters is most at home: on D-Day, when Easy Company's commanding officer is killed, Winters takes charge minutes after landing deep in German territory and leads an assault against a German battery. He carefully explicates the reasoning behind his strategy, leading the reader along as the Company attacks German machine gun and mortar outposts.
Book - The God Delusion
Author - Richard Dawkins
Summary - Richard Dawkins, in The God Delusion, tells of his exasperation with colleagues who try to play both sides of the street: looking to science for justification of their religious convictions while evading the most difficult implications—the existence of a prime mover sophisticated enough to create and run the universe, "to say nothing of mind reading millions of humans simultaneously." Such an entity, he argues, would have to be extremely complex, raising the question of how it came into existence, how it communicates —through spiritons!—and where it resides. Dawkins is frequently dismissed as a bully, but he is only putting theological doctrines to the same kind of scrutiny that any scientific theory must withstand. No one who has witnessed the merciless dissection of a new paper in physics would describe the atmosphere as overly polite.
Book - A. Lincoln - A Biography
Author - Ronald C White
Summary - In this excellent biography, veteran historian White emphasizes that Lincoln was our most likable major president, lacking Washington's aloofness and the deviousness of FDR and Jefferson. Many young men from the frontier overcame the handicaps of poverty and minimal education, but, White says, Lincoln did better than most, becoming floor leader in the Illinois legislature by age 30 and a prosperous lawyer. BTW there have been over 16,000 books written about Lincoln.
Book - In the President's Secret Service
Author - Ronald Kessler
Summary - In recounting what protectees are like behind the scenes, the book describes as well how difficult Jenna and Barbara Bush were with their agents and how Vice President Joe Biden ignores Secret Service advice about his protection. To make the press think he came to work early, Jimmy Carter would walk into the Oval Office at 5 a.m., then nod off to sleep. Lyndon Johnson would order Secret Service agents to drive on crowded sidewalks so he could make an appointment on time. Johnson would urinate in front of the press corps, which included women reporters. He had a “stable” of women with whom he had sex at the White House and at his ranch. In addition, Vice President Spiro Agnew, a champion of family values, had extramarital affairs while in office. As you can tell…this was an interesting book.
Book – Family of Secrets
Author – Russ Baker
Summary - “Shocking in its disclosures, elegantly crafted, and faultlessly measured in its judgments, Family of Secrets is nothing less than a first historic portrait in full of the Bush dynasty and the era it shaped. From revelation to revelation, insight to insight—from the Kennedy assassination to Watergate to the oil and financial intrigues that lie behind today's headlines—this is a sweeping drama of money and power, unseen forces, and the emblematic triumph of a lineage that sowed national tragedy. Russ Baker’s Family of Secrets is sure to take its place as one of the most startling and influential works of American history and journalism.”—Roger Morris, former senior staff member, National Security Council
Book - The Island at the Center of the World
Author Russell Shorto
Summary - As the song goes, "Even Old New York was once New Amsterdam." Unfortunately, for many Americans, that is the limit of their knowledge about the Dutch colony that was seized by the English in 1664. Shorto, author of two previous books and articles published in the New Yorker and the New York Times Magazine, presents an outstanding and revealing chronicle of the Dutch presence on Manhattan Island. Much of his research is based on recently translated Dutch primary sources that have languished in archives in Albany. Written in elegant prose, this enthralling story provides original perspectives on several historical figures, including Henry Hudson, Peter Minuit, and Peter Stuyvesant. Shorto also highlights the contributions of Andriaen van der Donck, an energetic, charismatic man who played an integral part in creating a dynamic, diverse, and tolerant society that appears refreshing when compared to the neighboring Puritan-dominated colony in Massachusetts. This is an important work. I loved this book and it gave me great perspective on my heritage.
Book - Who Moved My Cheese
Author - Spencer Johnson MD
Summary - This is a brief tale of two mice and two humans who live in a maze and one day are faced with change: someone moves their cheese. Reactions vary from quick adjustment to waiting for the situation to change by itself to suit their needs. This story is about adjusting attitudes toward change in life, especially at work. Change occurs whether a person is ready or not, but the author affirms that it can be positive. His principles are to anticipate change, let go of the old, and do what you would do if you were not afraid. Listeners are still left with questions about making his or her own specific personal changes.
Book - The Grand Design
Author - Stephen Hawking
Summary - The three central questions of philosophy and science: Why is there something rather than nothing? Why do we exist? Why this particular set of laws and not some other? No one can make a discussion of such matters as compulsively readable as the celebrated University of Cambridge cosmologist Hawking (A Brief History of Time). Along with Caltech physicist Mlodinow (The Drunkard's Walk), Hawking deftly mixes cutting-edge physics to answer those key questions. For instance, why do we exist? Earth occupies a "Goldilocks Zone" in space: just the perfect distance from a not-too-hot star, with just the right elements to allow life to evolve. On a larger scale, in order to explain the universe, the authors write, "we need to know not only how the universe behaves, but why." While no single theory exists yet, scientists are approaching that goal with what is called "M-theory," a collection of overlapping theories (including string theory) that fill in many (but not all) the blank spots in quantum physics; this collection is known as the "Grand Unified Field Theories." This may all finally explain the mystery of the universe's creation without recourse to a divine creator. This is an amazingly concise, clear, and intriguing overview of where we stand when it comes to divining the secrets of the universe.
Book - Freakonomics
Author - Steven D. Levitt
Summary - Forget your image of an economist as a crusty professor worried about fluctuating interest rates: Levitt focuses his attention on more intimate real-world issues, like whether reading to your baby will make her a better student. Recognition by fellow economists as one of the best young minds in his field led to a profile in the New York Times, written by Dubner, and that original article serves as a broad outline for an expanded look at Levitt's search for the hidden incentives behind all sorts of behavior. There isn't really a grand theory of everything here, except perhaps the suggestion that self-styled experts have a vested interest in promoting conventional wisdom even when it's wrong. Instead, Dubner and Levitt deconstruct everything from the organizational structure of drug-dealing gangs to baby-naming patterns. While some chapters might seem frivolous, others touch on more serious issues, including a detailed look at Levitt's controversial linkage between the legalization of abortion and a reduced crime rate two decades later. Underlying all these research subjects is a belief that complex phenomena can be understood if we find the right perspective. Levitt has a knack for making that principle relevant to our daily lives.
Book - Super Freakonomics
Author - Steven D. Levitt
Summary - SuperFreakonomics challenges the way we think all over again, exploring the hidden side of everything with such questions as:
How is a street prostitute like a department-store Santa?
Why are doctors so bad at washing their hands?
How much good do car seats do?
What's the best way to catch a terrorist?
Did TV cause a rise in crime?
What do hurricanes, heart attacks, and highway deaths have in common?
Are people hard-wired for altruism or selfishness?
Can eating kangaroo save the planet?
Which adds more value: a pimp or a Realtor?
Levitt and Dubner mix smart thinking and great storytelling like no one else, whether investigating a solution to global warming or explaining why the price of oral sex has fallen so drastically. By examining how people respond to incentives, they show the world for what it really is – good, bad, ugly, and, in the final analysis, super freaky.
Book - Heaven is for Real
Author - Todd Burpo
Summary - Heaven Is for Real is the true story of the four-year old son of a small town Nebraska pastor who during emergency surgery slips from consciousness and enters heaven. He survives and begins talking about being able to look down and see the doctor operating and his dad praying in the waiting room. The family didn't know what to believe but soon the evidence was clear.
Colton said he met his miscarried sister, whom no one had told him about, and his great grandfather who died 30 years before Colton was born, then shared impossible-to-know details about each. He describes the horse that only Jesus could ride, about how "reaaally big" God and his chair are, and how the Holy Spirit "shoots down power" from heaven to help us.
Told by the father, but often in Colton's own words, the disarmingly simple message is heaven is a real place, Jesus really loves children, and be ready, there is a coming last battle.
Book - The Other Wes Moore - One Name, Two Fates
Author - Wes Moore
Summary - Two hauntingly similar boys take starkly different paths in this searing tale of the ghetto. Moore, an investment banker, Rhodes scholar, and former aide to Condoleezza Rice, was intrigued when he learned that another Wes Moore, his age and from the same area of Greater Baltimore, was wanted for killing a cop. Meeting his double and delving into his life reveals deeper likenesses: raised in fatherless families and poor black neighborhoods, both felt the lure of the money and status to be gained from dealing drugs. That the author resisted the criminal underworld while the other Wes drifted into it is chalked up less to character than to the influence of relatives, mentors, and expectations that pushed against his own delinquent impulses, to the point of exiling him to military school. Moore writes with subtlety and insight about the plight of ghetto youth, viewing it from inside and out; he probes beneath the pathologies to reveal the pressures—poverty, a lack of prospects, the need to respond to violence with greater violence—that propelled the other Wes to his doom. The result is a moving exploration of roads not taken.
Book - Twelve by Twelve-A One-Room Cabin Off the Grid and Beyond the American Dream
Author - William Powers
Summary - Take four giant steps forward. Turn right; do it again. Turn right again; repeat. Right; repeat. Now imagine living in a space roughly the size of the area just paced off. Without electricity or running water. In the middle of nowhere. Having recently returned from years in the Bolivian rain forest, environmental activist Powers experienced a nearly debilitating form of culture shock upon his reentry into the heart of American consumerism. His salvation came from ardent permaculturist Dr. Jackie Benton, who offered Powers the use of her spartan cabin in rural North Carolina. Living among other “wildcrafters”—organic farmers, furniture artisans, and eco-developers—Powers learned firsthand what it means to be self-sufficient in the midst of a nation that profligately squanders its resources and looks askance at those who choose to live deliberately. While there are no easy answers to be found in such an extreme experiment, Powers’ eloquent memoir reveals the breadth of this conflict and the depth of one man’s commitment to himself and his community.
