Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

This is a letter that Coates has written to his son to help him understand how he is to understand his place in contemporary America.  It is spectacular writing. I had twenty passages identified for book group discussion in the first 44 pages.  I am not sure what I could say that would be a worthy commentary so I will just quote Toni Morrison from the back of the book jacket, "The language of (this book), like Coates journey, is visceral, eloquent, and beautifully redemptive. And its examination of the hazards and hopes of black male life is as profound as it is revelatory. This is required reading."  I agree.

Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson

In 1983 Stevenson went from Harvard Law School to Georgia to intern with the Southern Prisoners Defense Committee.  He found a lot to horrify him in the prisons but when he began to talk to the prisoners on death row who had been so poorly defended in court and were likely to be put to death for crimes they did not commit, he knew where his law degree would lead him.  This is the story of many of those prisoners and Stevenson's attempt to fine justice for them.  It is the story of blatant racism and hidden corruption in the court system.  The combination of statistics and stories is enough to anger anyone but it is the rare person who channels that anger into a way to make a difference. Stevenson is that person who continues his work within the Equal Justice Initiative he founded.  This is the kind of change we need.

Missoula by Jon Krakauer

Subtitle: "rape and the justice system in a college town"
I was initially interested in this book because one of the main characters accused of rape was a very successful football player at a local high school and the son of a very respected teacher in our school district.  How would this affect my reading of this book?  He is acquitted in the end but this is just a small part of the story.  The failure of the law enforcement departments involved is infuriating.  This is really a story of the way power and entitlement corrupt - not just the individual but the system that supports that sense of entitlement.  This isn't unique to the University of Montana - it could be any college campus - or high profile politician - or powerful CEO.  It is clear that alcohol plays a big role in many of these college cases and that raises a whole other area of confusion about fault.  As the mother of both a daughter and a son in the contemporary sexual environment, this book is downright scary.  Krakauer's clear journalistic style makes for easy reading and he is definitely on the victims side but he raises many other grey areas.  Given how this kind of thing is in the news, the book is a timely read.

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vrs. the Climate by Naomi Klein

According to Klein, all the attempts that individuals make to reduce our carbon footprint - solar panels, recycling, etc - are worthy contributions to saving the planet but it will not be enough without a fundamental change in the structure of the world's economies.  Wealth must be more evenly distributed with economic power placed in small local businesses and utilities.  The carbon based resources currently in the ground must stay there and not be used to serve the requirements of big business.  She takes on NAFTA and similar agreements which put trading power in the hands of the 1%.  She urges each of us to use the power we have with our voices and our votes to take aim at the environmental damage being done to our planet or she fears our individual efforts will be for naught.  It is pretty dense reading with some odd personal connections towards the end but an important read for anyone who is serious about reversing climate change.

The 6th Extinction: an Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert

Through fossil records we have been able to identify five times in the history of the world when 50% or more of the known biology has been lost - an extinction.  The causes have all been natural events - ice ages, asteroids, great shifts in the surface of the earth - stuff like that.  We are currently in the middle of a sixth extinction and it is all on us - humans abusing mother earth.  In a highly readable naturalist style we travel with Kolbert while she visits the sites of a few of these observable losses and explores the likely causes one domino after another.  Add this to the list of wake up calls for the current environmental crisis.  The science is made accessible through humor and adventure but the warning is no less serious.

Dead Wake by Erik Larson

Although this telling of the last voyage of the Lusitania lacks the gruesome criminal parallel story Larson often includes, there is intrigue and terror enough. It took only 20 minutes for the ship to sink and so many of the safety features designed to avoid a repeat of the Titanic disaster failed again.  But this is as much about the German U-boats and their effect on the fighting in WWI as it is about one ship.  The Lusitania was lost in 1915.  The United States didn't enter the war until two years later.  But it is the failed security and the idea that this new way of war would sacrifice women and children as well as seasoned soldiers that forever connects the two disasters.

The Underground Girls of Kabul by Jenny Nordberg

The social culture of Afghanistan dictates the a family's status is determined by the number of its sons.  To avoid the stigma of too many daughters, one of the infant girls is often raised as a boy - a "bacha posh."  This fiction is frequently accepted by the community as well as the family.  Not only is this "boy" entitled to all the male freedoms in this society but his sisters also benefit as they are now properly allowed out in public because they are accompanied by a "male" family member.  The intention is that as the young girls reach puberty, they will switch back in time to be properly ready for what often seems to be the marriage barter.  Swedish journalist Nordberg observes two interesting things as she interviews many of these young women and their families.  Firstly, in spite of the fact that some of the female babies are treated as male from birth, they so overtly female that the ruse fails.  On the other hand, there are some women who are unwilling to give up the freedoms allocated to their male status and resist the transition back to the traditional female role.  The window into this unusual rebellion of sorts is food for thought about cultures, gender, and individual choice.  Fascinating.

1944 by Jay Winik

A lot about Roosevelt but even more about the war particularly the conditions in Auschwitz and other death camps.  There is some new information here but mostly Winik raises a lot of questions. He chooses 1944 because it is the year that Roosevelt fully commits to defeating Germany, gives an even bigger green light to the invention of the nuclear bomb, and finally acknowledges the need to stop the horror of the camps.  Why did it take so long?  How much did Roosevelt's post war plans interfere with a more aggressive approach to ending the war?  Winik might suggest that as a country we may have failed to learn the lessons this particular history taught us. Read and draw your own conclusions.

The Thing with Feathers by Noah Strycker

The writing is elegant from this young local author but it is really a book for bird lovers.  Full of fascinating details and bird / human comparisons, the research is extensive -  full of bird lover stories and scientific birdy discoveries.  An added perk are the wonderful drawings by the author.  The book is certainly a testament to Strycker's passion and knowledge of all things bird.

Zealot by Resa Aslan

Aslan did extensive research to provide a possibility of a political Jesus. He even provides a rational explanation for the reporting of the "miracles".  It provides an interesting historical perspective on the friction between Roman rule in the biblical Middle East and the need for a charismatic political rebel.  Like most books on this subject, some will find this interesting history and others will find it heretical.

Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown

The University of Washington eight man crew team rowed their way into the 1936 Olympics in Hitler's Berlin.  This is their story.  Although it is primarily about the sport - its coaches, the boats, the competition - it is also about the era.  One of the young men on the team, Joe Rantz, provides us the life story that is a window into the times - the poverty, the desire to get an education, the Depression in general.  Many of the details of the story come from his daughter who was interviewed for the book. This is also a fascinating look at Hitlers Germany.  So many life lessons attached to this one event.  I started it Eugene waiting for my red-eyed flight and finished it that morning in the Newark airport.  It was great to read it from cover to cover.  It is a non-fiction book that reads like a novel - AND - you can actually still see the boat on the UW campus.

The Reason I Jump by Naoki Higashida and David Mitchell

At the time of the writing of this book, Naoki was a 13 year old severely autistic boy in Japan. Although he has very limited communication skills, his mother and teacher have taught him to use a an alphabet grid to share his thoughts.  He has revealed himself to be an intelligent, articulate, very self aware young man.  Mitchell is the father of an autistic son.  His Japanese wife discovered the original text doing research about their own son and did most of the translating.  It is an enlightening series of questions answered with great insight by Naoki - in many ways flying directly in the face of much of the current thinking about autism.  Mitchell writes the preface explaining Naoki's situation and his own life changing reading of the book.  Following the question / answer style of the main text is one of the stories Naoki wrote himself.  Fascinating reading.

The Mockingbird Next Door by Marja Mills

As believable and as unlikely as this story is, it has become even more controversial following the disclosure of another possible novel by Harper Lee.  When Chicago decides to make To Kill a Mockingbird its city wide read in 2001, Mills, as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, travels to Monroeville, Alabama to gather background information never dreaming that she would actually get a chance to speak to the reclusive Harper Lee.  She takes a chance and knocks in the door of the Lee house where she is greeted by Harper's (known as Nell in her hometown) ninety year old sister Alice on a break from her law office where she still practices. The right time? - the right attitude?- for whatever reason, she is invited in.  It turns out to be the beginning of a two year friendship with Mills eventually moving into the house next door.  Mills is suffering from lupus and maybe it is this shared fragility that invites the confidences of the hard of hearing Lee sisters.  Maybe Mills got it right and Alice thinks that it is time to "set the story straight" about the rumors of Nell's connection to Truman Capote, about why there was never a second novel, about many things.  Maybe the whole friend next door story isn't exactly as Mills tells it.  Fourteen years later, Alice is gone, Harper Lee can see and hear even less than she could in 2001 and maybe there is a second novel.  It seems that by providing this window into Lee's reclusive life, Mill has created even more mystery.

God's Hotel by Victoria Sweet

In the late 1980's Dr. Victoria Sweet took a temporary position at Laguna Honda Hospital in San Francisco.  She stayed for 20 years.  This book is the story of her time at the hospital and it's unusual care.  Based on the medieval idea of the Hotel-Dieu where doctors practiced "slow medicine" and patients experienced extended stays and personalized care, it essentially served as an almshouse for many of San Francisco's poorest citizens who were housed in its 36 bed wards.   It is also a story of Sweet's research into Hildegard von Bingen who practiced medicine as a nun in the 1100's  as well as Sweet's own personal journey as a physician.  There is also a lot to think about regarding the current state of health care as she describes the changes at Laguna Honda through the stories of individuals that worked there and the patients they cared for.  In fact, for me, it was  about too many things - thought provoking but missing a focus.  It did however make me very interested in learning more about Hildegard.

The Johnstown Flood by David McCullough

Being a Pittsburgh girl I have often heard references to the Johnstown Flood and can't imagine a better telling then McCullough's.  Incredibly well researched, it is not just about the flood.  There is also much about the industrial caste system generated by the burgeoning steel industry.  Did the people in Carnegie and Frick's circle really ignore the condition of the dam that created their recreational lake?  Were they unaware of the danger?  Were the down-river immigrant blur collar communities that powered their wealth expendable? Using individual stories as well as broad historical perspective,  McCullough shares a tale of both hubris and heroics - all part of a tragedy in which the extremes of nature played only a small part.

David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell

Gladwell uses various case studies to explain how thinking outside the box and the old lemonade from lemons idea makes it possible for the little guy to succeed.  I liked the explanation for the David victory but thought comparing overcoming dyslexia with placing ones self in harms way in the Civil Rights movement a stretch.  Some information seemed to be very similar to information used in his earlier book, Outliers.  What I wonder is if he would consider us David or Goliath in the current terrorist struggles.  Are they the David that has found a way to attack and hide that makes our superior firepower useless?  Or..?

Savage Harvest by Carl Hoffman

In March of 1961, Michael Rockefeller, privileged son of Nelson Rockefeller,  arrived in a remote section of then Dutch New Guinea to gather articles of primitive art from the Asmat region.  The Asmat people lived in an almost Stone Age culture.  Their only form of transportation were 12 inch wide canoes they hand carved to ply the swampy rivers along the coast.  Houses were pole structures with palm frond roofs.  Their wildly painted bodies were pierced through the nose.  Food came mostly from the sago palm or the river.  They were hunter gatherers - and they were cannibals.  In November of 1961, on an excursion for more artifacts, Michael Rockefeller's boat capsized.  His friend stayed with the boat and was eventually rescued.  Michael tried to swim for shore.  What happened next is widely disputed.  Officially he drowned.  In 2012, Hoffman follows the documents, interviews and the Asmat stories to an entirely different conclusion.  As fascinating as that story is, I found the questions Hoffman raises about culture much more interesting.  He explores how much we can really know about any people so different from ourselves.  Is it possible to see them through their lens or must we always try to understand them in the context of our own life?  It is a troubling story about a place that is as much other as a place can be.  What is our responsibility to places and people like this?  Can we explore and strive to understand without exploiting?  Can we accept a society based on ritual revenge or are we "called" to "save" it?  I could hardly put this book down.  I am so sad that I read this too late for this years book club list.  For sure next year.

Quiet by Susan Cain

Cain argues that in a world where the culture of personality has replaced the culture of character, there is not enough opportunity to hear the voice of the introvert.  To the introverts of the world this book provides validation of their quieter nature and multiple examples of the contributions made by people like them.  To the extroverts of the world the request is clear - slow down, step back, leave space for the voices and opinions of the introverts.  Cain has done a lot of reading and research for the book but although she is former lawyer and a current author, she is not a trained scientist.  The fact that all the research she references supports her premise puts this is the pop psychology category for me.  I did enjoy the chapters about how partners argue (or discuss - depending on whether you are an introvert or an extrovert) and the teacher/student examples are worth thinking about for both teachers and parents.  Wherever you place yourself on the introvert/extrovert continuum, there is much to think about and it is great book group fodder - just make sure the extroverts don't dominate the conversation.

One Summer by Bill Bryson

Lindbergh crosses the Atlantic, Babe Ruth, Sacco and Vanzetti, Calvin Coolidge, Mt. Rushmore...and the list goes on.  I wonder if it is possible that any summer would have been just as historically significant. The bibliography suggests many reasons why Bryson may have chosen to focus on the summer of 1927 but they way in which he weaves the stories of all the fascinating characters of this summer together is impressive.  Pick any page and prepare to read history as you may have never read it before. 

The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt

Once there was a poem containing such radical thinking that it changed the direction of the world - it caused a swerve.  Somewhere around the year 50 BCE a philosopher known as Lucretius wrote a poem called De rerum natura - On the Nature of Things.  In this poem he questioned the notion of powerful gods and goddesses controlling the world, suggested the possibility that everything in the world from the smallest insect to the greatest star in the solar system were all made from small particles he called atoms, and proposed that the pursuit of pleasure was an acceptable part of living - to name a few.  At a time that required actually physically copying a book onto fragile material, copies were difficult to obtain and, centuries later, it was seemingly lost to the world.  Then in 1417 a secretary of a disposed pope was in search of ancient texts which he believed would help elevate thinking out of the dark ages.  Poggio was one of a group of questioning thinkers who referred to themselves as humanists.  He traveled from monasteries to private libraries and back looking for these ancient handwritten texts sometimes finding just single pages.  His discovery of Lucretius' poem set in motion one of the waves in the ocean of change which we now call the Renaissance.  Along the way, many of the individuals who carried the message of the poem fell victim to the Inquisition.  Many others found ways to hide that message in works of art.  Once the conversation started there was no turning back.  And it wasn't just scientific discovery that was unleashed.  One of the many familiar characters involved in this journey of ideas had five Latin versions and multiple translation of the poem in his private library.  Was it just coincidence that our mystery man insisted on including "...pursuit of happiness.." in a very important familiar document?  As dense as this book sometimes gets, it is definitely a fascinating testament to the power of the pen.