Nonfiction Challenge

Hello fellow readers!

I am the new moderator for this group. I have been a member of this group for many years ( I didn't want to go back to check exactly how many it was) and am happy to try my hand at taking over the moderation of this group. I have been moderating another group for several years and am a newly retired academic librarian. Since I have more time I am taking on more responsibility for moderating here on LT. We are not saying goodbye to Chatterbox/Suzanne, but her life has changed in the last year and she finds that she doesn't have the time to moderate this group. We hope that when she has the time she will still make comments on this thread.

Late last year the group from 2023 decided on a few changes for 2024. We are not going to have a separate thread for each month. We will run a continuous string until we reach the 250 posts line and then I will establish a new thread. This will enable us to have better linkage when we start new threads.

This group was established to encourage reading and discussion of works of nonfiction using a guided topics format. That means that you get to read what you want, but the moderator sets the parameters for the topics. At the end of the year, the group decides what topics they will pursue for the coming year. The moderator then assigns months in which these topics will be read and discussed. The list for 2024 will be in the next post on this thread.

The 2023 group decided on the monthly topics and that list will be posted in the next post along with the explanations of what the boundaries are for the topic. Each person generally will post the title and other information about the book they have chosen for the month at the beginning (or whenever they make the decision about what to read) and when they have finished the book write about their opinions, recommendations, and other comments about the book. Thoughts of this nature generally elicit comments so sometimes there will be discussion about the book. In fact, that is what this thread is, a forum for discussing nonfiction titles. You can attack the title you have chosen to read for whatever reason you as a reader have, but do not attack the people in this discussion group. We want to be critical readers, not critical people.

There is no publication limit for the books chosen by readers. If you want to read a classic published in 1820, go ahead.

If you don't finish a book in the month that topic was to be read, don't feel bad, just let us know when you finished the book, and your thoughts about it, then move on to the next topic.

I will try to make a reminder announcement about the next topic on the last day of the month for the next month. Please don't jump the gun and announce what you are going to be reading for the month until the first day of the month. It will get confusing if you post your selection before the moderator has made the beginning post for the month.

Along with the posting of the topic for the month I will sketch out the parameters for that topic. If there are questions about those parameters bring them forward in the discussion posts so that I can clarify the parameters for you. If you can make a good case for choosing that title, even if it may not appear there is a connection between the book and the topic, bring your good reasons to the discussion screen and make your argument. We are a wide open group so generally this type of title is acceptable. Just remember, this is a Nonfiction group, so keep the works read to nonfiction.

I am looking forward to sharing this nonfiction reading year with you.

And here they are - the nonfiction topics for 2024!

January - Prize Winners - prize winning books that won literary prizes that are off the beaten tracks. Not the National Book Award, Pulitzer, or other prizes of that ilk. There will be more details in subsequent posts.

February - Women's Work - what women do or did. This could be books about WWII pilots, civil war nurses, the women who sued Newsweek over pay and promotion issues, or the history of home economics.

March - Forensic Sciences - forensics is a wide open topic so read about criminal forensics, genetic forensics, even astronomical forensics.

April - Globalization - all things global, exports, international banking, terrorism, pandemics.

May - Wild Wild West - books about the western U.S. Historical or modern. Indian wars, water wars, conservation, settlement, etc.

June - Middle Europe - anything about Europe from the Elbe to the Ural's, from Finland to Turkey. History, language, travel, etc.

July - Insect World - insects are important. Butterflies, honey bees, mosquitoes, ants, roaches, etc.

August - Being Jewish - this topic is wide open as long as it is nonfiction. Zionism, modern Israel, history, religion, Kabbalah, Judaism.

September - Essays - any book of essays. Scientific, religious, political, racial, social commentary, etc.

October - Music, more music - lots of books being published now about composers, the music industry, history of music, and even memoirs and biography's from the Boss to Bach.

November - Too Small to See - books about Bacteria, Viruses, Atoms, Dust. maybe even microaggressions?

December - This is a dual topic month. As You Like It - whatever you want to catch up on that is nonfiction
OR
Political Biography - ancient or modern, any person who had a role in politics of their day. Even people who might not have had a job or title, like historian Theodore White, or women like Madam Chiang Kai-Shek or Nancy Regan. People who had influence in the politics of their day, but not a job title that would indicate the scope of their power.

Details about these topics will come monthly.

January - Prize Winners

It has been traditional for this group to start off the year with one of our most popular themes - Prize Winners and nominees. This year we are going to change it up a bit and request that you read a winner of a literary prize from off the beaten track. Any prize, any year. Try not to read the well known prizes like the National Book Award, Pulitzer Prize, or other prizes of that ilk, unless these same titles also won a more off the beaten track award. Just make sure it is a work of nonfiction. While it is true that some of these prizes bring large monetary rewards to authors, many of the prizes are not well known. Give some of these prize winning titles a look and see what might be out there hiding in obscurity but be a great read!

Here is a list of prizes and some examples of titles in those prizes to get you started. Web addresses are included in some of these entries so you can go their directly.

Baillie Gifford Prize, formerly Samuel Johnson Prize
An Odyssey: A Father, a Son and An Epic by Daniel Mendelsohn; The Spy and the Traitor by Ben Macintyre; Negroland by Margo Jefferson

PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award

Wellcome Book Prize -- mixed fiction/nonfiction, so you'll need to pay attention!

The Orwell Prize -- 2017 longlist -- includes some fiction so read the reviews to see if it is fiction or nonfiction.
Recent nominees include What You Did Not Tell by Mark Mazower and Islamic Enlightenment by Christophe de Bellaigue

Andrew Carnegie Medals of Excellence
Educated by Tara Westover; The Line Becomes a River by Francisco Cantú, The Poisoned City by Anna Clark (about Flint, Mich.), The Feather Thief by Kirk Johnson Wallace, Dopesick by Beth Macy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Carnegie_Medals_for_Excellence_in_Fiction_a...

Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards
(Where the Wild Winds Are by Nick Hunt; also Border by Kapka Kassabova. The Epic City, about Calcutta, by Kushanava Choudhury.

The James Tait Black Memorial Prize
There's a great biography category here.

Los Angeles Times book prizes -- any non-fiction category
The Death and Life of the Great Lakes by Dan Egan, Democracy in Chains by Nancy MacLean

Royal Society Trivedi Science Book prize
https://royalsociety.org/grants-schemes-awards/book-prizes/science-book-prize/
Testosterone Rex by Cordelia Fine, A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth by Henry Gee

And there's a bio category for the Costa prize (used to be Whitbread).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Costa_Book_Awards
In the Days of Rain by Rebecca Stott; H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald; Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore.

the Wainwright Prize
Books (with a focus on England) about nature, the outdoors, and English-focused travel.
The Seabird's Cry by Adam Nicolson

The J. Anthony Lukas Prize Project
The Nieman School at Harvard and the Columbia Journalism School award two book prizes each year to published works and one to works in progress.

The Frederick Douglass Prize
Awarded to books writing about the themes of slavery, abolition, resistance, etc.

The Phi Beta Kappa Society Awards
Rather academic in nature; includes books like Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder or Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher by Timothy Egan (winners of the Ralph Waldo Emerson Award, one of the categories). Siddhartha Mukherjee won their science award for his book on the gene; there's also an award for literary criticism.

The Hawthornden Prize
The majority of books here are fiction, but occasionally a work of non-fiction creeps through, such as Bruce Chatwin's In Patagonia and Stalingrad by Anthony Beevor.

The Chatauqua Prize
NOTE: The nominees include both fiction and non-fiction, so do your due diligence!! The prize goes to "a book of fiction or literary/narrative nonfiction that provides a richly rewarding reading experience and honors the author for a significant contribution to the literary arts."
(examples, Why Read Moby Dick by Nathaniel Philbrick; In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson, Devil in the Grove by Gilbert King, It's What I Do by Lynsey Addorio.)

Hilary Weston Writers Trust Prize for Non-Fiction
Awarded to a top work of non-fiction by a Canadian author -- All Things Consoled by Elizabeth Hay, a memoir, by a great Canadian novelist. Nominees in recent past include Mad Enchantment by Ross King, about Monet and his water lily paintings, Seven Fallen Feathers by Tanya Talaga, an indigenous writer, about racism; Pumpkinflowers by Matti Friedman, A Disappearance in Damascus by Deborah Campbell and a book about the Arctic by novelist Kathleen Winter, Boundless: Tracing Land and Dream in a New Northwest Passage.

The Wolfson History Prize
The Wolfson History Prizes are literary awards given annually in the United Kingdom to promote and encourage standards of excellence in the writing of history for the general public.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfson_History_Prize

The Financial Times & McKinsey Business Book of the Year
Formerly the Financial Times & Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year. Titles like Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb; Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg; McMafia by Misha Glenny, Dragnet Nation by Julia Angwin and More Money Than God by Sebastian Mallaby.

Edna Staeble Award for Creative Non-fiction
The Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction is an annual literary award recognizing the previous year's best creative nonfiction book with a "Canadian locale and/or significance" that is a Canadian writer's "first or second published book of any type or genre".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edna_Staebler_Award

William Hill Sports Book of the Year
The William Hill Sports Book of the Year is an annual British sports literary award sponsored by bookmaker William Hill.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Hill_Sports_Book_of_the_Year

Cundill History Prize
The Cundill History Prize is an annual Canadian book prize for "the best history writing in English". It was established in 2008 by Peter Cundill and is administered by McGill University. The prize encourages "informed public debate through the wider dissemination of history writing to new audiences around the world" and is awarded to an author whose book, published in the past year, demonstrates "historical scholarship, originality, literary quality and broad appeal". No restrictions are set on the topic of the book or the nationality of the author, and English translations are permitted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cundill_Prize#Recipients

Ondaatje Prize
Be careful with this one it can be fiction or nonfiction
The Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize is an annual literary award given by the Royal Society of Literature. The award is for a work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry that evokes the "spirit of a place", and is written by someone who is a citizen of or who has been resident in the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ondaatje_Prize

Lincoln Prize
The Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize, founded by the late Richard Gilder and Lewis Lehrman in partnership with Gabor Boritt, Director Emeritus of the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College, is administered by the Gilder Lehrman Institute for American History. It has been awarded annually since 1991 for "the finest scholarly work in English on Abraham Lincoln, the American Civil War soldier, or the American Civil War era.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Prize

Silver Gavel Awards
The Silver Gavel Award (also known as the ABA Silver Gavel Awards for Media and The Arts) is an annual award the American Bar Association gives to honor outstanding work by those who help improve comprehension of jurisprudence in the United States.

National Outdoor Books Awards
The National Outdoor Book Awards (NOBA) is the outdoor world's largest and most prestigious book award program. It is a non-profit, educational program, sponsored by the National Outdoor Book Awards Foundation, Association of Outdoor Recreation and Education, and Idaho State University.
http://www.noba-web.org/

Rachel Carson Environmental Book Awards
The Society of Environmental Journalists' annual Awards for Reporting on the Environment honor the best environmental journalism in 10 categories, bringing recognition to the stories that are among the most important on the planet.
https://www.sej.org/rachel-carson-environment-book-award-sej-22nd-annual-awards-...

Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award
The Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Awards recognize the best in environmental writing in adult nonfiction
https://www.northland.edu/centers/soei/sonwa/

If you are looking through your own list of To-Be-Read (TBR) books and want to know if the book has won an award or was a nominee for an award go to the main page for that work, scroll down until you come to the section called "Awards and Honors." If the book has won an award or was nominated for one it will show up in that section.

Great to see you will be "rooted" this year in hosting this challenge and you have pretty big (I don't mean literally) shoes to fill in taking over from Suz.

I will certainly join in where I can. I want to read much more Non-Fiction in 2024.

For January, I will read Persian Fire by Tom Holland which won the Runciman Prize in 2006.

As a retired academic librarian I always had to deal with the question of "is it fiction or nonfiction?" An easy way to tell if a book is fiction is to look at the Library of Congress (LC) call number assigned to it. If that call number starts with any letter other than P it is nonfiction.

P's are tricky because P is the class for Language and Literature. This class includes works of fiction as well as biographies, works of criticism, and works about a language or a work of literature. So be careful is your title has been classed in the P's in Library of Congress system.

The LC classification of a title can be found in the "work details" page of your titles LT entry.

If you are more familiar with the Dewey Decimal System (DDS) use that. It is a bit trickier to decipher than is Library of Congress and I did not spend 30 years working with it, as I did with LC. However, the "work details" page will be your friend in figuring out if a work is fiction or nonfiction. Generally, in DDS, fiction does NOT have a number assigned to it. If a book is a work of fiction it will be filed under Fiction alphabetically by author's last name. So if it doesn't have a DDS number it is probably fiction. If it has a DDS number it is probably nonfiction.

The important thing to remember is that neither of these systems has a hard and fast rule about separating fiction from nonfiction and mistakes are made in the classification of works. If you can do so, read the publishers blurbs as that will give you a good clue about whether it is fiction or nonfiction.

Found and starred! :)

For January, I will also be reading Persian Fire by Tom Holland which won the Runciman Prize in 2006. I am also reading The Archive Thief by Lisa Moses Leff which won the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature in 2016.

>3 benitastrnad: How about the Allisfield-Wolf Award?

Starred the thread, but expect I'll be only an intermittent participant.

>6 PaulCranswick: >9 alcottacre: I've got a hold on Persian Fire myself, intending to read it in January for the War Room challenge. If I get it in time, I'll have the chance to satisfy two challenges with a single book.

Thank you for pointing out that it qualified; I am utterly not plugged in to literary awards. (With fiction, winning a literary award almost guarantees I won't like the book. Hopefully that won't be true for non-fiction.)

I am going to read Ed Yong's An Immense World, which a few weeks ago won the 2023 Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Award.

Also, re the Wainwright Prize, it is more UK than England focused, but has included books that are focused outwith the UK (for example most recently Dorthe Nors book A Line in the World, translated from Danish, was shortlisted).

I am going to read Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and the Making of an American Imagination by Brian Jay Jones. This biography was longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction in 2020. It was also a Kirkus Reviews Best Biography of the year in 2019. I am reading this one because one of my real life book discussion groups does a biography month in January and this was the book I picked to read for that discussion.

I am also going to try to finish reading Unwarrented: Policing Without Permission by Barry Friedman. This book won the Silver Gavel Award from the American Bar Association in 2018. The award is given for books that help improve comprehension of jurisprudence in the U.S. I started this book a year ago and got half way through it and then set it aside. It is time to finish it.

Hello! I will jump/join in when able. My question for January: Will the Sunday Times Literary Award be substantial enough?

>11 ArlieS: My thinking too, Arlie!

I’ll be reading Edith Wharton by Hermione Lee , winner of the Ambassador Award in 2008.

The Ambassador Award was quite short-lived and was designed to recognize books that fostered the understanding of American culture.

So I hope that works. Please let me know if it doesn’t.

>14 Tess_W:
As long as the title you select is nonfiction that is exactly the kind of under the radar type of award we are striving for this month. Let us know what book you are going to be reading and then let us know what you think of it when you finish. Of course you can comment and discuss other posts as well.

This thread is starred and will be very interesting to follow. Thanks for all your hard work in organizing and setting it up!

I will be reading The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron which is a travel memoir written by Byron about his trip to Oxiana, Afghanistan, located on the Russian border. I understand there is a lot of descriptive material on Islamic architecture. This book won The Sunday Times Literary Award in 1937.

>19 Tess_W: I read that one last year, Tess, and enjoyed it. I hope you do too!

>13 benitastrnad: Becoming Dr. Seuss looks tempting. Thanks for drawing my attention to it.

I am going to choose the 2016 winner of the Edna Staebler prize for creative non fiction. It is a Canadian prize and I am a very fond admirer of E.S. as I have 3 of her Mennonite cookbooks that are now very old but have scrumptious recipes (an apple pie that can't be beat!). The book is by Ann Walmsley The Prison Book Club. A zillion years ago, as a young Speech Language Pathologist working at the General Hospital, i went to the prison in Kingston, Ontario to help treat an inmate who had suffered a stroke after self administering drugs. It was quite the experience for me and perhaps reading the book will bring back some memories.

>3 benitastrnad: Ill be a newbie on this group but I have posted in the non fiction current reads thread. I like the topics and will be interested to see how this runs
for this month, Ill go for where the wild winds are winner of theEdward Stanford Travel Writing Awards. I love travel books and Jan Morris reviewed it here https://patrickleighfermor.org/2017/09/09/jan-morris-review-of-nick-hunts-where-...

>13 benitastrnad: oh this is one of my favorite bios. I think youll enjoy it. Ive read him so much to my preschoolers, it was a joy to get more background into how he developed the books and what influenced him. There are some non pc cartoons that come up in the WWII section. Id be interested in your thoughts abour it

>19 Tess_W:, I've also read that one and really enjoyed it. A 5 star read.

Count me in, as also planning to read Persian Fire.

I think I found one!

Stonewall by Jean Fritz (Horn Book Fanfare Best Book 1980)

>25 Kristelh: Kristel, if you take part in the TIOLI challenges, I have put Persian Fire into Challenge #6 for January :)

>27 alcottacre: Stasia, Okay, thanks!

I'm probably the slowest reader in the 75ers group, but I can throw in a book now and then and report having read it a few months later. 🤣😂 I conveniently just started Dopesick, by Beth Macy, which won an Andrew Carnegie Medal of Excellence.

ETA: Ok, I have 320 pages to read and 32 days to read it in. That's 10 pages a day. That's more than twice as fast as I read, but I'll try.

>28 Kristelh: No problem! I love shared reads!

Do January's books include ones that were short listed for prizes? I have The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature which was short listed for the 1994 Rhone-Poulenc Prize for Science Books.

I will join Jackie >12 Jackie_K: and read An Immense World.

My first non-fiction read was H is for Hawk by by Helen Macdonald. It has been languishing on my shelf for several years. This is the story of Helen, who is grieving the death of her father. As something to take her mind off the passing of her father, she decides to train a falcon. She was heavily influenced by T. H. White's book, The Goshawk. (He is better known for his book, The Once and Future King). White was a tortured individual and so is Helen. The writing is beautiful and transfixing when describing nature. However, the reader is unsure if at times Helen is describing her own experience or relating something that happened in White's book. The entire book has an mystic quality; making the reader decipher what is real, imagined, or being retold. 300 pages Non-Fiction 3 stars (average)



Honorable Mention – Natural History Literature – 2015

I plan to read 1812: War with America, which won the Society for Military History's Distinguished Book Award.

>31 Familyhistorian:
yes. nominees and winners - both work.

>33 Tess_W:
It was also the winner of many awards including the Costa Book Prize in biography back in 2014. I have a copy of that book, but haven't read it yet. Your review makes me want to pull it from the book stacks but right now they are 1200 miles away from where I am. It is a book that will have to wait a bit, but one that I look forward to reading.

>29 The_Hibernator:
Don't worry about getting it read in one month. If you hang over into another month, just put your post regarding what you read here on this thread and let us know what you thought of it. I often don't get my nonfiction book read in one month. In fact, my current book is one I have been reading since November 2023. I hope to finish it this week.

>23 cindydavid4:
I have that book on my TBR shelves and hope to get to it at some point. I bought my copy at the Country Bookshelf in Bozeman, MT during a Thanksgiving vacation to visit my sister. It struck me as a very interesting title, so I had to purchase it.

I did not participate in the group last year and only read 8 nonfiction books in 2023: 2 on decluttering, 3 on religion, 1 on reading, 1 on pottery, and 1 on Kansas breweries.

My January book will be the winner of the British Science Fiction Association Award (Winner – Non-Fiction – 2022) and the Hugo Award (Winner – Related Work – 2023), as well as winner of the 2023 LOCUS Award For Non-fiction and shortlisted for the British Fantasy Award for best Non-fiction. Ta Da!

Terry Pratchett: A Life with Footnotes: The Official Biography by Rob Wilkins

>39 ronincats: I've heard really good things about that Pratchett biography. My friend who's a huge Pratchett fan loved it.

It is very good. there were times tho that it felt like a calendar: hes was here, then there, and I wanted to know how more of his books were put together, but I learned a lot about him, and of course cried at the end

I'm trying to decide between a few very different books (or possibly reading all of them!)!

First option is The Keeper: Soccer, Me, and the Law That Changed Women's Lives. It won the Ohioana Award fin the "About Ohio or an Ohioan" category. I've never been to Ohio but I love that they have their own state book awards. It is a graphic memoir, which is a bit outside of the box for me.

The second option is The Death and Life of Great American Cities. It has been on my list for a long time and won the Hillman Prize way back in 1961 (is that prize nontraditional enough?)

The third option is William Morris: A Life for Our Time. It won the Wolfson History Prize in 1995. It's a longer book so it will be a much bigger commitment than the other two. I may need to start following the Wolfson History Prize winner announcements because I love books that meet its standards. It is a UK prize that promotes research and readability of history books.

Has anyone in this group read any of these books and can you recommend one?

>42 Kyler_Marie: I read William Morris: A Life for Our Time years ago, and loved it. I actually live not too far from the house he was born in, now a museum and gallery, and visit it often.



And a mural on a building nearby:

>43 Caroline_McElwee: Thank you for sharing those pictures! Glad to hear you enjoyed that book. His designs are so gorgeous and I'm a bit envious that you are able to visit.

>43 Caroline_McElwee: ❤️❤️❤️

>43 Caroline_McElwee: Oh wow. I am very curious to know the floor plan of the William Morris Gallery - that is, the floor plan when it was a house. I suspect there have been some changes!

>43 Caroline_McElwee: I'd love to see that museum! When I lived in south London I did visit his former home the Red House, in Bexleyheath, which was fascinating.

I see that one of the books on my wishlist, Burning the Books: A History of the Deliberate Destruction of Knowledge, was shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize, so I will try to get a copy to read for this month. Unfortunately, my local library does not have a copy, so I will have to get it elsewhere.

>48 atozgrl:
I end up using our Inter-Library Loan service quite a bit. If your local library can do ILL requests you might try that. Mine has a generous check-out length for ILL's so that helps me make a decision about whether or not to use it or make a purchase.

>49 benitastrnad: I haven't tried their ILL service yet, and I really do need to check it out. However, the subject is interesting to me so I'll probably try to purchase a copy of this particular book.

>48 atozgrl: I read this book a few years ago and enjoyed it immensely.

I'd like to know if the following book is OK, as I have had it on my shelf for several years and would really like to read it now (don't think it will fit any other month):

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (2016)

It won a lot of big prizes (Pulitzer finalist, National Book Award), but also won some smaller prizes:

Alex Award (2016)
Dayton Literary Peace Prize (Shortlist – Nonfiction – 2016)
Green Mountain Book Award (Nominee – 2017)
Indies Choice Book Award (Winner – Adult Nonfiction – 2016)
Kirkus Prize (Winner – Nonfiction – 2015)
Meilleurs livres de l'année du magazine Lire (Essai – 2016)
NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work (Winner – Biography/ Auto-Biography – 2016)
Pacific Northwest Library Association Young Reader's Choice Award (Nominee – Senior – 2018)
PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay (Finalist – 2016)
Street Literature Book Award (Adult Non-Fiction – 2016)

I'd like to know if the following book is OK, as I have had it on my shelf for several years and would really like to read it for this month:
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (2015)

It has won a lot of big prizes (Pulitzer finalist, National Book Award), but also won or nominated for some smaller prizes:
Alex Award (2016)
Dayton Literary Peace Prize (Shortlist – Nonfiction – 2016)
Green Mountain Book Award (Nominee – 2017)
Indies Choice Book Award (Winner – Adult Nonfiction – 2016)
Kirkus Prize (Winner – Nonfiction – 2015)
Meilleurs livres de l'année du magazine Lire (Essai – 2016)
NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work (Winner – Biography/ Auto-Biography – 2016)
Pacific Northwest Library Association Young Reader's Choice Award (Nominee – Senior – 2018)
PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay (Finalist – 2016)
Street Literature Book Award (Adult Non-Fiction – 2016)

When I picked up the book, I didn't know it had won any prizes at all--I'd just seen the author on a "Finding Your Roots" program with Dr. Henry Louis Gates, and was interested in his story.

>52 kac522:
Yes. Any of those prizes will work.

I should have made it clear that the major prizes are not prohibited. We are using this category as a way to expose all of us to pull those lesser known award winning nonfiction books off of our shelves to read. That doesn't mean that you can't read books that won more well known prizes.

I absolutely think Between the World and Me is a book that qualifies for this months category. This book would also fit into the September challenge "Essays." Ta-Nashi Coates is a well know essayist and this book is a series of essays about race. But it absolutely works for this month's category.

>54 benitastrnad:, >55 benitastrnad: Thanks for clarifying, Benita. I have some other reading commitments this month and so this shorter book is one I've wanted to read for a while, and will fit in between the other things.

I didn't realize it was a series of essays; for some reason I thought it was more a memoir. Either way, I'm looking forward to it. I have loads of essay collections on my TBR that I'm saving for September.

>53 kac522: - I enjoyed the Coates book when I read it some years back, Kathy. It reminded me of one of James' Baldwin's book, The Fire Next Time, which contained an essay that was a letter to his nephew. Coates's format in this one is a letter to his son. I can't remember reading if that was an intentional tip of the hat to Baldwin or not but both were powerful reads.

>57 jessibud2: Thanks for the rec, Shelley...I'll be getting to it sooner rather than later.

>57 jessibud2: >58 kac522: IMHO, both books are well worth the read. I am thinking of rereading The Fire Next Time as it was mentioned often in a book I finished last night, Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man by Emmanuel Acho.

I seldom reread but I did reread the Baldwin around the same time I read Coates. I first read the Baldwin in high school so it was well time to revisit it. The book you mention, Stasia, sounds interesting. I will see if our library has it.

>60 jessibud2: I hope you appreciate (enjoy is definitely the wrong word here!) the Acho book if and when you get to it, Shelley.

I finally finished The little bookstore of big Stone Gap : a memoir of friendship, community, and the uncommon pleasure of a good book by Wendy Welch. I started this one for the December "As You Like It" thread back on Christmas day, and if we had not had so much to do post-funeral, or had the long drive home, I'm sure I would have finished it before the end of the year. I needed something that would be gentle and sweet, not political or otherwise difficult, so I picked this one out of the books I had brought with me. It definitely hit the spot.

This is a book about a married couple who are burned out by the rat race and wind up setting down in the Appalachians and following an old dream of running a used book store. It tells of their struggles trying to open the store, their ignorance about what it would take to do so, and their efforts to fit into a small town in a part of the country that tends to be suspicious of outsiders. Eventually, they and their store become a centerpiece of the community. Near the end of the book, Welch shares some of her own recommendations of books to read, and I wound up with a few more titles added to the TBR list. I found it to be a heartwarming story.

I just started American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis, by Adam Hochschild, which won the following prizes:
Commonwealth Club of California Book Awards (Winner – Nonfiction, Gold – 2023)
Cundill History Prize (Longlist – 2023)
Goodreads Choice Awards (Nominee – History & Biography – 2022)

I really appreciate the great diversity of books in this thread!

>63 PocheFamily:
The Commonwealth Club of California Book Awards has been a source of interest of mine. I find the history of the Club and its book awards fascinating. I have not been attracted to reading any of Hochschild's books so far, but do have a couple of them on my TBR list. It will be interesting to hear what you think of this book.

>64 benitastrnad: Well now I'll have to go read about the Club as well! This book was recommended by a couple of friends and seemed to fit this challenge well. Last year I read/listened to TR's Last War and Lindbergh, as well as some other books about the 1910-1930 era, and I'm thinking back to them as I'm listening to this one (American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis). I'm woefully ignorant about this period of history outside of the trenches, so really motivated to read this! (and thanks for your thoughts/reply as I might not have looked into what the awards actually were without it)

now reading Edward Stanford Travel Writing AwardsWhere the Wild Winds Are by Nick Hunt

I'll be reading Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World by John Valliant. It won the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction as well as being shortlisted for the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction as well as being a finalist for the National Book Award.

Loving where the wild winds are a travelogue of wind across the ages, through greek mythology all the way to our satellites. Have already marked many lines to share and am enjoyin the word origins of many of our commone thoughts about the wind and weather. my first non fiction for the year, and finding it quite lovely

Just found another book he has written Walking the Woods and the Water: In Patrick Leigh Fermor's footsteps from the Hook of Holland to the Golden Horn Ive been a fan of Fermors writing since first finding time of gifts and a small bookstore in a small town. also love that the cover is styled much like Fehmoors first two books. This sounds fun, Id love to travel the same trails as he did through this authors newer eyes

>68 cindydavid4: I really enjoyed Walking the Woods and the Water (I read it immediately after a reread of all 3 of Fermor's trilogy so that his walk was fresh in my mind). I definitely want to read more of Nick Hunt's work.

I would like to try this group for the first time. I am currently reading The Destructive War a Lincoln Prize winner from 1992. I hope that will suffice for the January list.

I'm reading All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten and a look at the works page says I think it qualifies for January's challenge.
Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award and Washington State Book Award, both 1989.

>70 AndrewPNW: Welcome!That does look like a keeper. come back when you finish and tell us about it! ETA just saw your profile and wow youve got a lot of history there! May have to give it a good look and see what Id like to read

>62 atozgrl: That sounds like a wonderful book! Thank you for providing that short description. I'm adding it to my TBR.

While it is a bit more difficult, I highly recommend The Library at Night as another book about books, this one nonfiction. I don't think it won any awards to fit into the January category, but it fits September's category for collections of essays. His use of language in describing his love of books was very heartwarming.

>70 AndrewPNW:
The Lincoln Prize does qualify for the January category. In the history world this is a significant literary prize but it is not well known outside of that circle. As was already said - read it and let us know what you think of the book.

>71 elorin:
That book does qualify as those are awards that are given each year. The state awards are often lesser know outside of the states in which they are located, but the object here is to read lesser known award winners thereby informing the other members of the group about these awards and the books that get them. After all, we can't have a static TBR (To Be Read) list!

I am making significant progress on one of my titles for this month. I have been reading 4-5 pages a day on Unwarrented: Policing Without Permission by Barry Friedman. I had started this book last year for this category and didn't finish it, so I thought I would get'er done on 2024. The book is meticulously written and has over 100 pages of notes at the end. There are so many notes that a reader could get lost in them. Friedman raises some pointed questions about our court system and the lack of guidance that the courts give our law enforcement agencies. I am now on the last chapters and the author is talking about how new technologies are encroaching on our privacy and the freedoms associated with our 4th Amendment rights.

This book won the American Bar Association Silver Gavel Award for books in 2018. This award is given by the American Bar Association for the book that best helps improve the comprehension of jurisprudence in the United States. I have read several of these award winning titles over the years (most of them for this category in the Nonfiction Challenge) and have learned much from them. Some were more enjoyable to read than others, (this one is not particularly enjoyable reading - too scholarly for that) but all of them have been enlightening.

>73 Kyler_Marie: that sounds fascinating to me as well! will add it to sept

>73 Kyler_Marie: I hope you enjoy it! And you got me with that one. I hadn't come across The Library at Night before. On the TBR list it goes!

>78 atozgrl:
Library At Night sounds like it is the prequel to Packing My Library by the same author. Packing My Library is a book of essays about moving all of his books from France to Canada.

>73 Kyler_Marie:, >78 atozgrl:, >79 benitastrnad: Some years ago I read Manguel's A Reading Diary: A Year of Favourite Books, in which he focused on re-reading one beloved book each month for a year. The book tracks his reactions/ruminations on the books for each month, and often juxtaposes it with current events in the world or his own life. I really enjoyed it, even though I had only read 1 of the books he re-reads.

>79 benitastrnad: ok thats why it sounds familiaar, I read that a few years back

>80 kac522: I have also read Manguel's A Reading Diary and enjoyed it as well as his A History of Reading.

Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes by Rob Wilkins 435 pp.

Pratchett's long-time personal assistant relates Terry's early life and upbringing, and then his professional career from Rob's perspective up until his death. Using materials from Terry's autobiography file plus his own history and observations, this is often amusing and makes ample use of Terry's favorite device, footnotes. It does not cover Terry's inner life or familial relationships. The last few chapters chronicling Terry's decline from early onset Alzheimer's and his death are heart-breaking.

>82 alcottacre: I learned so much from his History of Reading, really incredible.

>84 cindydavid4: Yeah, I am really overdue for a re-read of that one!

>32 Caroline_McElwee: Probably not going to finish this until next month. I need to read it slowly, but have several other books on the go, one may meet this month's theme too.

>45 kac522: >46 quondame: >47 Jackie_K: Thought the website might have had the floor plan, but alas no Susan.

I finished All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. This is a multiple re-read for me and a big mood lifter. The stories and essays are overwhelmingly positive and bring back memories of when I first read them (high school) and shared them with a beloved friend. My favorite essay is about crayons, as it was almost 30 years ago, but there are many essays here that I love.

Finished a reread of The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women across the Ancient World today. For the purposes of the Nonfiction challenge, it won the Independent Publisher Book Awards (Silver – History - World – 2015). For the purposes of the War Room challenge, it talked a lot about the myths about Amazons created by the ancient Greeks, which centered mostly about war with the Amazons, individually and collectively.

Mayor does indeed talk a lot about the Greeks and their legends of warrior women and a women-only society centered in the barbarian east. But it's mostly about how those legends were sourced in Scythian and other steppe cultures of the areas north and east of the Black Sea all the way to China. So there's some description of archaeological finds related to women warriors, and even discussion of Caucasus cultures' mythology, to support the thesis that the Amazon myths were inspired by a steppe culture in which women were equals to men in war and leadership.

This thesis probably won't shock anyone, but when the book was published 10 years ago, this idea was relatively novel. I had the privilege of hearing Mayor talk about her work at the 2014 National Book Festival, where I picked up my copy. It's all in all a great book for looking at the ties between myth and reality as related to the role of women in Greek and "barbarian" cultures.

>88 drneutron: I attended the 2012 National Book Festival, still out on the Mall in tents. Heard two great authors, Colson Whitehead and Marilynne Robinson, both interesting speakers. Looking at next year's line-up, I'd be tempted by the opportunity to hear David Grann. There are always great surprises to be found just dropping in on a talk as well!

Still working on American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis. It's rather unhappy, if enlightening, and I needed a break. Back at it today ...

I finished and did a write up about The Prison Book Club by Ann Walmsley for this month's challenge. It won the Edna Staebler prize in 2016 which is a Canadian prize for creative non fiction writing. It was about 2 bookclubs that the author participated in as a resource. My review is at post #69 here. At the end of the book there is a list of about 125 books mentioned in the bookclubs I think these books alone could give anyone the most wonderful entry into the reading world. And these men greatly needed an entry back to the world. I'm sure these bookclubs had a big impact for the participants.

>89 PocheFamily: Yeah, I really miss the tents on the Mall, it was a great experience. The year I saw Mayor was the first year it was at the convention center and was pretty chaotic. I haven't been since covid - will probably try to make it this year.

I have a good start on Becoming Dr. Seuss. I am about 50 pages into it and Ted has just graduated from high school and trying to decide if he wants to go to college or not. He started drawing cartoons for his high school newspaper. His family was wealthy. They made their money from brewing and selling beer. The 18th Amendment has just been passed and the family's resources have taken a big blow.

Hi all, I hope to join in this year on occasion. I plan to start a book in February that fits the women's work theme: The trials of Madame Restell by Nicholas L. Syrett. I hope I can finish at least one of the two nonfiction works I have on the go this month, but they don't fit the January theme.

Finished American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis, by Adam Hochschild. Not a happy story, yet a wonderful perspective on WWI and the subsequent century of history in America. This country hasn't yet shed the legacy of the excesses of the years around WWI, and sometimes even the children and grandchildren who participated in those violent times' excesses. While the origins of those themes pre-dates the book's subject matter, this book shows how the political pressures of WWI and Wilson's presidency fueled the flames. Free speech, the labor movement, immigrants, and African Americans paid the heaviest price: the book ends with Juneteenth in Tulsa, OK.

I found this book a fascinating companion piece to Killers of the Flower Moon and other works about 20th c. labor struggles, the Red scare, and vigilante groups in America. Having read TR's Last War last year, I enjoyed feeling the puzzle pieces start to fit and a picture forming out of the mists of time.

The book takes a slightly exhaustive approach to these various problems but remained interesting throughout. There are missing stories that are present at the edges of the story but hurried past - while others briefly mire the author down. For example, what happened to the women who took men's jobs during the war once the labor pool expanded again? Perhaps spending a little time with this in exchange for some of the prison reform activities of one activist might have helped balance the sense of a society in turmoil. Not that the story included wasn't colorful and interesting! Personalities drive a lot of this book, whether it be President Wilson, outspoken labor activists, or someone like J.E. Hoover. I really appreciated the focus, however, on a seemingly small player in this world of large personalities, Louis F. Post, who played the bureaucrat's hand to win a very practical battle on Free Speech.

This work won the 2023 Commonwealth Club of California book award (with others) in the Non-Fiction category. This award is awarded to "work of exceptional literary merit" by California writers and publishers. This work also was on the long list for The Cundill History Prize, which "recognizes and rewards the best history writing in English". It's a 2022 NYT Notable Book of the Year and made several other lists. Glad I read it, certainly recommend it, it's in the 4-5 star range, and grateful for this thread for causing me to go read it!

I finished reading The Archive Thief, which was mentioned by alcottacre and got my attention. I enjoyed reading the book and am glad I read it. It got me thinking about archives and how looting and wars impact our ability to preserve documents from the past.

I am afraid my read of where the wild winds arewas a DNF dont get m e wrong, the writing was lovely and I did learn much about the winds. but there was so much tramping the snow and setting camp and talking to other winders about the topic. and over and over again of what feels like the same thing has he goes from place to place, which make the book boring to me lots oI thinkcatching the wind I was expecting this to be more of a travel book along with a science study,so my reaction is not his fault

Whats funny is that he has written a book describing his journey following Patrick Leigh Fermor time for gifts that he started in the 30s through europe. It probably my favorite travel book, Eager to see how he pulls this off, he has big shoes to fill, hope he is successful and I like this book more.

I finished Tom Holland's Persian Fire a couple of days ago. I read it for the War Room Challenge, but since it won the Runciman prize, it also counts for the January non-fiction challenge.

From what I read above, several of us were planning to read this book, but I'm the first to report back in this thread.

I wound up rating it 3 out of 5 - OK, but not great. Some of that will just be that I wanted something a bit different, or have specific tastes in history which include more attention to how we know things as well as to what happened, particularly when what information we have is scanty and unreliable, so historians differ in their evaluations.

sorr wrong thread

I finished Persian Fire a while back. It was my first book for 2024. I rated it a bit higher than Arlie but Arlie's review of it is very good and right on.

I read 1812: War with America for this month's challenge. It's a history of the war written from the British perspective, which makes it unusual. It won the Society for Military History's Distinguished Book Award in 2008.

>95 annushka: I am glad to see that you enjoyed the book! I still need to get it read before the month is out.

>97 ArlieS: >100 Kristelh: I am currently plugging away at Persian Fire, Arlie and Kristel, but am only about 100 pages in. I still believe I will be able to finish it before the month ends.

>102 alcottacre:, You can do it Stasia.

>103 Kristelh: Thank you for the encouragement, Kristel!

I am reading and enjoying Edith Wharton, but I know have company, so my reading will now be more on the light side for a while.

This is a well-written book, however my, and I hope to finish it in perhaps another nonfiction category this year.

>3 benitastrnad: That's a great list of prizes and source for book ideas. Thank you. Have book-marked a number of them.

My copy of Burning the Books: A History of the Deliberate Destruction of Knowledge, which was shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize, has come in and I have started reading it. Given what my schedule looks like for the rest of this month, I don't know that I'll be able to finish it before the end of the month, but if it takes until February, I'll still report on it. So far, just a few pages in, it looks interesting.

>107 atozgrl: I have read that one and thought it was pretty good, Irene. I hope you like it as well. I am pretty sure that "enjoy" when it comes to a book about burning books is definitely not the right word!

I could not locate my book for this challenge. Hope to do better next time.

is the feb link up?

>108 alcottacre: Yes, you're right, "enjoy" is probably not the word to use. I probably should have said that I found it interesting so far and think I will like the book, even if the subject is disturbing.

>111 atozgrl: I will be interested to see what you think of the book once you are done with it.

>110 cindydavid4: Please read Benita's post in >1 benitastrnad: where she explains:

We are not going to have a separate thread for each month. We will run a continuous string until we reach the 250 posts line and then I will establish a new thread. This will enable us to have better linkage when we start new threads.

AND:
Please don't jump the gun and announce what you are going to be reading for the month until the first day of the month. It will get confusing if you post your selection before the moderator has made the beginning post for the month.

Since we haven't reached 250 posts, we will be posting on this thread for February AFTER Benita posts the introductory post for the February topic.

>113 kac522: oh sorry,i did see that but not really knew what they meant but I see now. thx

I finished The Archive Thief tonight for January's nonfiction challenge. It was a good and interesting read.

For February, I am going to try and get Code Girls by Liza Mundy and The Six by Loren Grush read.

>110 cindydavid4:
We are not going to have a month-by-month link. We are going to run a continuous string. When the current string reaches 250 posts a new thread will be established at that point. This will make it easier for all the strings to be connected.

I finished my first book for the January challenge of "Prize Winners." The book I had selected for this month was Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and the Making of an American Imagination by Brian Jay Jones. This biography was shortlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction in 2020. The Carnegie Medal for Excellence in nonfiction is given each year by the American Library Association for the best contribution to American literature. There are two categories for which the award is given - fiction and nonfiction. It was also a Kirkus Reviews Best Biography of the year in 2019. I am read this one because one of my real life book discussion groups does a biography month in January and this was the book I picked to read for that discussion. One title served double duty in this case. I generally try to read a biography of a literary person and this year I picked Dr. Seuss as my literary selection.

This was a fairly straight forward biography of Theodor Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss. It was organized chronologically so there is a great deal of information about Geisel's family background and his early years. I was surprised at the length of his service in the U. S. Army with the Army Signal Corps. He went into the army in 1942 and was discharged in 1946. He credits his service under Frank Capra with teaching him how to be a writer and this surprised me. Geisel said that Capra taught him the importance of story - anything that doesn't support the plot should be eliminated. The big question was always "Does this sentence support the story?" and Geisel tried to stick to that rule for the rest of his life.

This was a very readable biography. It didn't patronize Geisel, justify, or sanctify him. There was lots of information about his writing process and his reasons for putting what he did on the page. It was also full of information about his personal life and relationships. Geisel's life was an interesting story and he was an interesting person so the author had plenty to write about.

As a former teacher and school librarian I was surprised to learn about Geisel's educational philosophy. The "Cat in the Hat" (his first mega best seller) was written as a response to a challenge to produce a reading book text for use in the classroom. The vocabulary words to be used was limited to 50 words from a list of words that 1-3 grades should know and be able to recognize. Seuss wrote and illustrated "Cat in the Hat" in response. The challenge was issued by the president of the textbook publisher Houghton Mifflin and after the book was produced and selling Houghton Mifflin did not get to publish it in their reading primer. It was a gold mine for Random House and Dr. Seuss and Houghton Mifflin got nothing out of it.

I have to admit that I didn't know much at Dr. Seuss as a person or an author. I only knew him by the two or three books of his that I read. I wanted to read about him because the brouhaha about his foundation withdrawing from print some of his books because they were racist directly affected me in my professional life. Somehow, Dr. Seuss became associated with the Read Across America Day and the announcement about the withdrawal from publication of those 6 titles was made close to the Read Across America Day. In my library that meant that every one of our multiple copies of the Dr. Seuss books was checked out. Three days after the announcement the Dean of the Libraries called and asked me to remove all of our copies of those titles because they were selling for $500.00 apiece on EBay and the library would not be able to afford replacing them if they were stolen. I had to explain that our copies were all checked out. I also tried to explain that library copies of these books would not sell for $500.00 because they were damaged due to normal library wear and tear. In the end that didn't matter. When the books were returned they were all sent to our Archival Facility were they will never be used again by teachers. For that reason I decided that I wanted to learn more about Dr. Seuss.

>117 benitastrnad: Your book bullet has scored; after reading this review, I've added the book to my virtual TBR.

>116 benitastrnad: yes Kac522 explained that to me, thank you!

>117 benitastrnad: I don't understand the logic...pull the books before they get stolen and can't be replaced, but then remove them?

So glad you liked the bio as much as I did. Loved his parntership with darn cant remember his name, other famous cartoonist who helped with Grinch and other stories. I found the section on colors used in prints to be so interesting. amazing life

>117 benitastrnad: Three days after the announcement the Dean of the Libraries called and asked me to remove all of our copies of those titles because they were selling for $500.00 apiece on EBay and the library would not be able to afford replacing them if they were stolen. I had to explain that our copies were all checked out. I also tried to explain that library copies of these books would not sell for $500.00 because they were damaged due to normal library wear and tear. In the end that didn't matter. When the books were returned they were all sent to our Archival Facility were they will never be used again by teachers. For that reason I decided that I wanted to learn more about Dr. Seuss.

Soooo once again the front line workers (be they librarians, teachers, or pick your job) are not consulted when big decisions are made. This is just ludicrous. so who got the money the dean of libraries were making by selling said books on ebay? some one should look at that. found an interesting quote from the good dr. " “Adults are obsolete children, and the hell with them.”

>117 benitastrnad: I liked some Dr. Seuss books when I was a child (Green Eggs and Ham, Hop on Pop, Fox in Socks, and One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish come to mind), but my childhood favorites were by P. D. Eastman. I wore out my copy of Go, Dog. Go!. I also loved Are You My Mother? I was not a Cat in the Hat fan as a child.

>120 fuzzi:
That was exactly my thought. Besides, our books were in such bad shape I thought they would bring 50 cents at most. Collectors want books that are in good shape, not beat up library copies. Now all of our copies of the 6 titles are in our archives where they can't be checked out or even looked at without the use of archival gloves. In a teaching university what good is that? I can understand keeping one copy in the archives, but all of them? Ridiculous.

>121 cindydavid4:
To clarify - The Dean of the Libraries was afraid that others would steal our copies and offer them for sale on Ebay. He was not selling them. However, if the copies went missing we would not be able to purchase replacement copies at those prices. Never mind that newly printed copies are still available on Amazon and will be until the wholesalers run out.

Yes - Dr. Seuss did say that. It was one of his favorite things to say.

>122 cbl_tn:
The P. D. Eastman books you mentioned were part of the Beginning Books series that Ted Geisel headed up and edited. He recruited the authors and oversaw the production and publication of these books as well as writing some of them. In the book, Geisel said that P. D. Eastman was his favorite illustrator and in fact Geisel wrote the text for a couple of books and had Eastman do the illustrations. For this reason it doesn't surprise me that you liked the Eastman books. They are quality books - even Dr. Seuss said so!

>117 benitastrnad: I must admit the morning I heard Seuss was retiring I drove straight to B&N and bought 1 of each copy of his that they had. I have 12 nice, new Seuss books for my two granddaughters to read--they like them! And every so often I pick one of the shelf and stand there and read it. Every time my 5 year old granddaughter comes over in the winter, she asks: "Do you like my hat" I reply yes or no and finish the quote from Dr. Seuss! She still giggles each time.

>122 cbl_tn: oh I didn't car for cat and the hat either, tho I wasnt a child when I read it,I was in college taking a 'kiddie lit' class. It was a fav of kids that I taught tho. I do love Eastman, and oh are you my mother is an all time favorite

one of my fav Seuss was what pet should I get an older worK that wasn't released until a few years back. I also Loved the grinch, green eggs and ham , yertle the turtle, the sneetches, any of them that I could get the kids acting out which was great fun. tho to think I saw it on Mulberry street was a favorite of mine as a kid and a fav to my students as well

>124 benitastrnad: thanks for the clarification Still its a ridiculous thing to do but there we are.

Horton Hears a Who was my special favorite.

>122 cbl_tn: I love Go, Dog, Go! and bought it for my Grands. Oh, and Hop on Pop by Dr. Seuss.

"Dad is sad. Very very sad. He had a bad day. What a day Dad had." Bwahaha!

The first book I read all by myself was How the Grinch Stole Christmas. A few years ago my adult son bought me a new copy for Christmas. I loved it.

I finished another book for the January category of prize winners. Unwarrented: Policing Without Permission by Barry Friedman was the 2018 winner of the American Bar Associations Silver Gavel Award for the book that helps improve comprehension of jurisprudence in the United States. And this book does just that.

The book is about the intrusion of policing into our privacy and consequently into the daily lives of all of us. The author points out throughout the book that unwarranted policing affects minorities in greater proportions than it does white America, but the book points out that all of us are at risk in the policies that our government endorses because they "might" need the information. The book is full of examples, and the resulting court cases, brought by excessive policing and the author advocates for greater democratic input from the citizenry. The author believes that the citizens have failed and abdicated their democratic responsibility for setting the policing boundaries. The police are doing what they do because nobody is stopping them. The author states that it is the duty of the citizens to provide clear boundaries for police and other law enforcement bodies so that they don't overstep the bounds of the law as they are doing currently. He also gives judges a drubbing in saying that judges should not be the only arbiters of the interpretation of laws. Citizens need to pressure lawmakers to make laws that the citizens agree upon and in the current political state of affairs that is hard to do.

This book was published in 2018 and there is an epilogue/appendix in which the author briefly outlines the incidents in Minneapolis, MN and Baton Rouge, LA in which black men were unlawfully searched and then murdered during an arrest that should not have happened. This brief chapter contains a prescient warning that the people are not going to tolerate this kind of behavior from the police for very long, but again he hits on his point that the people must set the rules for the police and they are not doing so. He was hopeful that the latest crisis would provide the impetus for citizens to step up and force lawmakers to pass bills and enforce regulations that are already in place to stop this kind of behavior.

This is a big book - 400 pages of text and it took me two years to read it. I started it for the Nonfiction Challenge of January 2022. It is a meaty book that demands concentration when being read. However, I believe that it is the kind of book that more citizens of the U.S. should read in order to understand why our policing is the way it is, how our policing functions currently, and reinforces the idea that "we" need to step up and tell our law enforcement agencies what we will and will not accept from them.

I just finished Unwarranted: Policing without permission and found it a very good description of the way policing can be abused when it is not regulated from within Police departments, lack of direction or oversight by local governments, and the continued granting by the legal and court systems of siding with law enforcement in judicial decisions. Most judges were once prosecutors and therefore often will side with law enforcement in their opinions at trial and subsequent hearings. Our legislature often relies on the judicial branch rather than writing specific laws that would make it easier for law enforcement and preventing some of the gray area that our Law Enforcment must work in. The most depressing part of this book is knowing that we are in a worse position today, than when the book was written. Law enforcement has broad scope in gathering personal data from phone companies, tech companies, and other means when trying to solve a crime, and rather than being restricted to proving why they need specific information, Law enforcement is often allowed to throw out a wide net gather information on many citizens when trying to solve a crime. I think Thomas Jefferson said it best " A well informed citizenry is the best defense against tyranny." Books like this may be hard to read compared to a non-fiction story, but are important and serve society well.

I've already started my choice for February, What the Nurses Saw. The interviewed are almost exclusively women.

Today is the first day for our new monthly thematic reading. It is a short month and we have a BIG topic: Women's Work - what women do or did. This could be books about WWII pilots, civil war nurses, the women who sued Newsweek over pay and promotion issues, or the history of home economics. It can be a biography, narrative nonfiction, or a book of essays about women's work, or women's place in the workplace they have chosen. The kind (or genre) of nonfiction isn't what is important, it is what women do that is work, including the fact that housework is women's work, and for too long that was undervalued. If you want to read the biography of Isabella Beeton, the British woman who wrote the first bestseller cookbook, do that. There have been a spate of books published recently about the Women's Movement, so if that interests you read that. A book about women in science such as the memoir Lab Girl would also work. Memoirs of trailblazing women such as the book written by the woman who was the first forest fire watcher, or Beryl Markham's memoir West With the Night could be titles that pique the interest of some of you. Women in the entertainment business would be good subjects. A recent publication on the history of Home Economics The Secret History of Home Economics might be of interest to some of you. Just make sure that women and what they do that is considered work, whether in the home or in the workplace, are the major part of the book.

Happy Reading Folks! and be sure to let us know what you are reading for the month.

I plan to read Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650-1750 by Harvard historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. This is a scholarly work of history about everyday lives of women in colonial New England. I read Ulrich's A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard Based on her Diary 1785-1812, which was excellent and about midwifery in the Revolutionary period, and would also fit this challenge.

>131 AndrewPNW:
I am surprised that somebody else has read this book! It is not a subject that attracts a lot of readers. Like you I found it to be an important book and am totally glad that I finally finished it. It is a big book and even though the author tried very hard to make the writing vibrant and catchy it is hard to do that with legal topics. I think he largely succeeded.

I agree with you regarding our present state of law enforcement. The book was written and published before some of the major protests about violent policing and this book clearly points to that being the result of our failure to provide clear guidelines for our law enforcement personnel.

I read the book slowly. I kept it on my kitchen table and would read a couple of pages or a small section every couple of days, so it did take me a long time to read. The fact that it took me two years to read it might intimidate readers, but it shouldn't since it was never my main reading during that time.

I am glad to see a fellow reader of this important book.

It is good to see all of you who participated in the January topic. I am astonished at the number of posts to this thread in the month of January. I believe that the five of us who participated in this thread in 2023 didn't accomplish that number in the entire year! I hope that we, as a group can sustain this level of reading for the year 2024.

In January 2024 this group of readers read a wide variety of books that won a plethora of prizes. Reading the books and posting the names of the literary prizes they won exposes the rest of us to many really good books (and a few stinkers that we found unsuitable to our individual reading tastes) that we would not have known about previously. Over the years, I have found that this is the danger in LT - finding out about other books that I want to read. This just adds to my ever increasing TBR (To Be Read) list.

I hope that our February reading will be just as interesting and productive.

I have started The Girls of Atomic City, about the women who worked in Oak Ridge during WWII when it was one of the sites for the Manhattan Project.

I participate in an online book group that reads on women's history topics, including women's work. We read The Secret History of Home Economics a couple of years ago and I highly recommend that one. Some others we've read that I would recommend are The Glass Universe, The Queen of the Ring (about a woman professional wrestler), The Doctors Blackwell, All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days, The Pirate's Wife.

I am going to read a collective biography for this months topic. Susan, Linda, Nina & Cokie: The Extraordinary Story of the Founding Mothers of NPR by Lisa Napoli. A few years ago I read You Don't Belong Here: How Three Women Rewrote the Story of War by Elizabeth Becker. This book was about three women reporters who reported on the war in Vietnam from the late 1950's through the end of the war and it blew me away. It was written by a woman who also had an extraordinary back story. She was the only reporter in Cambodia after the fall of South Vietnam and during the Pol Pot takeover. (It is a great book - if you can find it - read it.) Today I take it for granted that women are the reporters of all aspects of our lives, but that was not always the case. I want to read more about the women who were groundbreakers in providing us with the news and selected Susan, Linda, Nina & Cokie because I am a financial supporter of NPR and value its amazing reporting and analysis of our news, and want to know more about the women's whose voices I heard for thirty years on my radio. Susan, Linda, Nina, & Cokie had good reviews when it was published in 2021 so I am looking forward to reading it.

This is the publishers blurb about this book:
In the years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, women in the workplace still found themselves relegated to secretarial positions or locked out of jobs entirely. This was especially true in the news business, a backwater of male chauvinism where a woman might be lucky to get a foothold on the "women's pages." But when a pioneering nonprofit called National Public Radio came along in the 1970s, and the door to serious journalism opened a crack, four remarkable women came along and blew it off the hinges. Susan, Linda, Nina, and Cokie is journalist Lisa Napoli's captivating account of these four women, their deep and enduring friendships, and the trail they blazed to becoming icons. They had radically different stories. Cokie Roberts was born into a political dynasty, roamed the halls of Congress as a child, and felt a tug toward public service. Susan Stamberg, who had lived in India with her husband who worked for the State Department, was the first woman to anchor a nightly news program and pressed for accommodations to balance work and home life. Linda Wertheimer, the daughter of shopkeepers in New Mexico, fought her way to a scholarship and a spot on-air. And Nina Totenberg, the network's legal affairs correspondent, invented a new way to cover the Supreme Court. Based on extensive interviews and calling on the author's deep connections in news and public radio, Susan, Linda, Nina, and Cokie will be as beguiling and sharp as its formidable subjects.

I will be reading Code Girls by Liza Mundy about the lady code breakers working during WWII for this challenge as well as The Six by Loren Grush, which is billed as "the untold story of America's first women astronauts. I am looking forward to them both.

>138 benitastrnad: Have you read Dinners with Ruth yet, Benita? It was written by Nina Totenberg about her friendship with Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I enjoyed it when I read it.

>139 alcottacre:
I haven't read Dinners With Ruth yet, but it is on my TBR list.

>133 benitastrnad: If I may, I have a couple of books that Ive read that would be perfect for this month west with the night is a fabulous memoir about her life in Kenya in the 20s and 30s and her record breaking flights. Highly recommended

another book I have already read about another amazing woman is nobody said not to go Emily Hahn was a journalist who was among the early writers of the New Yorker, and from a very young age, traveled around the world. She also challenged traditional gender roles in 1922 when she enrolled in the University of Wisconsin's all-male College of Engineering, wearing trousers, smoking cigars, and adopting the nickname "Mickey". My favorite part was when she drove with a friend; financially supported by their parents, took off on an adventure in a brand-new Model-T Ford across America from Chicago to California and back. "she has written a few memoirs : "Congo Solo: Misadventures Two Degrees North" (1933)...about her 2 years in Africa; "China to Me" (1944)...about her 8 years in China during the war; and "Times and Places" (1970)…which this author, Ken Cuthbertson, uses many quotes from. I'm sure reading her own memoirs would have been much more personal, capturing her real personality. But, this author did a great job in putting all the little snippets of her life together in one place. It almost reads like a novel. He used letters Emily had written back home to family, and he was even able to begin interviewing her in 1992," well worth reading

finallygalileos daughter "This is a fabulous and engaging book about Galileo and his daughter, Suor Maria Celeste. Sobel provides a window into convent life, the power of the Catholic Church, and the emotional relationship between father and daughter. Reads like a novel, but is well-researched and beautifully executed."

I just finished my selection becoming a nun in the age of aquarius picked it up on a lark thinking it would be a hoot, instead found it to be a well written serious look at her two year experience in the early 60s, and esp focuses on Vatican II, which upended the lives of the nuns.

Im planning to read my name is barbra the memoir of Barbra Streiand. Been a fan of hers since I was a little girl listening to my sister play her records. I am not sure I will finish it by the end of the month but surely will have some things to say about it by then!

I have requested The trials of Madame Restell: nineteenth-century American's most infamous female physician and the campaign to make abortion a crime by Nicholas L. Syrett. I'd also like to read Madam Restell: by Jennifer Wright, but one thing at a time.

I'm also curious about A lab of one's own: one woman's personal journey through sexism in science by Rita Colwell.

I second >138 benitastrnad: Benita's recommendation of You don't belong here: how three women rewrote the story of war by Elizabeth Becker. I was in my tweens and teens in the 1970s during the US war in Vietnam, so by the time I took notice of gender in reporting women had been reporting for years. This book was eye-opening for me, and an enjoyable read as well.

>136 benitastrnad: I love to hear that this thread is more active this year! This is my first time doing this reading challenge and it's been great. Thanks for organizing it.

I'm still trying to read books off my own shelves, so for this month I plan to read The H Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness by Jill Filipovic. Hopefully this fits people's interpretation of this month's challenge. This delves into women at work, women's work at home, and women's happiness generally. It's been on my shelves for a while so I'm excited to finally pick it up.

I also plan to read Susan Sontag On Women which fits the American Author's Challenge as well. Because I haven't read it before, I'm not sure how much it discusses women's work but I'm hopeful it does enough to fit this challenge!

>144 Kyler_Marie:
H Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness deals with women's work, so YES - read it. Then let us know what it says and especially what it says about women and work, and women at work.

This is a topic (Women's Work) that might not appeal to all of our readers, but there are so many good books being published about women right now that I hope everybody will find something of interest to them.

>141 cindydavid4: I own Nobody Said Not To Go but doubt I will have time to read it this month. Thank you for the reminder about the book, Cindy.

>143 markon: I would third the recommendation of You Don't Belong Here, lol, along with Benita and Arlene. I read it a couple of years ago and enjoyed it.

>145 benitastrnad: My problem is that I've read most of the books that would fit in this category already!

If I have enough time this month, I'd love to read Radium Girls as well, which fits this category perfectly. It has been on my reading list for a long time but it isn't on my shelves and it is a bit long (16 hour audiobook!). With the short month, I might not get to it.

There are so many great books that fit in this category that I've already read. Last month, I read I'm Glad My Mom Died. It has a large focus on Jennette's work and her mother's work to support her acting career. It was a fast, easy read and I'd recommend it.

Why Have Kids? provides a lot of information about how having children can affect women's careers and work life. And how mothers are treated differently in the workplace than fathers.

Hey Hun is about pyramid schemes. The author actually made it pretty high up in a multilevel marketing company and she talks about how she was treated, what the work was like, and how those business types can exploit women particularly (often stay at home mothers!)

Madame Restell was absolutely fantastic. I read it last year. It is about an abortionist in the late Victorian era in New York. Oh my gosh it was so good.

The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft was also excellent. It was about the mother of Mary Shelley (of Frankenstein fame). Mary Wollstonecraft was a feminist back when feminism was not all the rage. It speaks about her writing and challenges with being an author when women weren't typically authors.

Literally anything by Caitlin Doughty about her work as a mortitian is fantastic. 10/10.

My Beloved World was a fantastic autobiography from Sonia Sotomayor, the U.S. Supreme Court Justice. Her life story is fascinating. And unlike most other politician autobiographies, hers is a manageable length.

>147 Kyler_Marie:
That is an impressive list of books read for this category. Have you looked at your local public library? There just might be something waiting on a shelf there that would appeal to you for reading this month.

Does this one qualify for the February challenge (a biography)? Mary Pratt: A Love Affair with Vision by Anne Koval. She was a stunning artist from Newfoundland that I have long been fascinated with and wanting to know more about her.

>148 benitastrnad: Yes, thanks for the suggestion. Radium Girls would be a library book if I get to it. My focus is reading my own books though, because there are so many books getting dusty on my shelves.

I'm often not very good at following through on planned reads, but I will try to read Headstrong: 52 Women Who Changed Science and the World by Rachel Swaby. It's been on my TBR pile forever!

If I hadn't already read Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years twice I'd dive in again. I recommend it as one of the best written books on ancient textiles and researching them.

>134 kac522: If you haven't come across it, Ariel Lawhon's new novel, The Frozen River, is based on Martha Ballard. I haven't read it, so it's not a recommendation, just an FYI.

>153 ReneeMarie: Thanks for the heads-up. I found the way Ulrich pulled together the factual historical record and created a history of women at the time so fascinating. I'm hoping Good Wives will be the same sort of exploration.

>139 alcottacre: I've read and enjoyed Code Girls. You may also want to look for The Hello Girls by Elizabeth Cobbs. It covers the first women to go overseas in wartime, operating the telephone exchanges in France during WWI.

I would bet Jennifer Chiaverini used it as a research source when writing her historical novel Switchboard Soldiers.

I plan on reading Newsgirls: Gutsy Pioneers in Canada's Newsrooms by Donna Jean MacKinnon. I was at her book launch of this book in 2017 and the discussions were great (the author is a friend of a friend of mine). There doesn't seem to be a touchstone for this one but it highlights the careers of 10 female reporters in Canada between the years of 1930 and 1960, before the feminist movement began. I am only familiar with 4 of the ten but it is a short (in page numbers) book and it's been on my shelf since 2017 so now is as good a time as any.

The mention of journalists reminded me of another book I've read that would fit this month's theme. Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland's History-Making Race Around the World.

>156 jessibud2: I added your book to LT, so you van try a touchstone now.

>138 benitastrnad: I read that and it was good!

>158 kac522: - Hi Kathy. I just tried to edit my post but still not finding a touchstone. What did you do and how did you do it?

>160 jessibud2: "NewsGirls" is one word. Try that.

If that doesn't work, go to "Add Books", be sure you're searching Amazon, and add the book with "NewsGirls" (one word), and it should come up to add to your library. I added it to my "Wishlist" so that there would be a record in LT.

NewsGirls without any of the rest of the title?

Ok, tried that and still nada. That's probably the limit of my tech ability. Whatever...

And how would I know if it's on amazon? I usually just choose from the list touchstones provides. I don't know where they are from. Anyhow, it's a Canadian book so probably not even on amazon, for all I know.

>162 jessibud2: The book is here: https://www.librarything.com/work/31635242/book/257499971

Copy & paste the title into the brackets in your message, and that should bring up the touchstone.

>162 jessibud2: And it's on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/Newsgirls-Gutsy-Pioneers-Canadas-Newsrooms-ebook/dp/B07H2...

>163 kac522: - Thanks, Kathy. I'm sure I would not have found it on my own.

>164 kac522: - Thanks, Kathy. I'm sure I would not have found it on my own. My copy is a paper copy, though, not kindle but it's the same book.

>155 ReneeMarie: Thank you for the suggestion of The Hello Girls, ReneeMarie. I will check to see if my local library has a copy.

Hello, new to this read this year. Is the point what women do in general, or can we read about a specific woman? I have a book on my shelf about a woman who was incarcerated in an insane asylum in the 1920's and when she got out she led the fight against the laws that said husbands were permitted to commit their wives for being "cantankerous." Would that work? If not, I believe I have several of women spies in WWII.

My book club is reading The Wolves at the Door: The True Story of America's Greatest Female Spy by Judith Pearson by Judith Pearson. So I'll use that for this challenge, too. If anyone is interested it's currently on a US Kindle sale for $2.99.

>168 Tess_W:
You can read about a specific woman as long as that woman was engaged in, or doing work and the book you have chosen reflects that. The definition of work is the problem. If you consider what the subject of your book did to be "work" (either paid or unpaid) then go ahead. Women crusaders certainly did much work. They got women the vote, and of course women like Harriet Beecher Stowe probably didn't consider herself to be a full time author. Nonetheless, her work was a cultural milestone.

I think the book I read this evening for a book group discussion next Sunday actually fits this month's theme. Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts is a graphic novel/memoir by Rebecca Hall and illustrated Hugo Martinez. I thought it would be a stretch to count leading slave revolts as women's work, so this isn't the book I selected for this month's theme. However, the book documents Hall's dissertation research on women-led slave revolts in libraries and archives in New York, London, and Liverpool, and it illustrates her work as a historian and as a professor.

>170 benitastrnad: Gotcha! Thanks! I think a woman crusading for humane treatment of those in asylums is "work." And this book especially, since so many men tried to "shut her up."

>171 cbl_tn:
That will work. I read your earlier post about this book and thought that it would be a good one for the current months challenge.

One year one of our topics for this challenge was Nonfiction Graphic Novels. We all thought it was odd that we were reading nonfiction novels! Somehow that is a term (graphic novel) that doesn't really work well when talking about nonfiction. I read a graphic novel about climate change and one that was a history of the IWW and both were very much nonfiction.

I'm falling behind in my challenge reads (blame it on library books). Still working away at The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature, my book for January's challenge.

I looked for a slim book off my shelves for February and picked out East London Suffragettes. While campaigning for the vote wasn't work per se, I think it might fit the category as this is part of the blurb on the back:

Besides campaigning for women to have the right to vote, from their headquarters in Bow the ELFS called for equal pay, a living wage, and better housing. They opened a nursery, a 'cost price' restaurant, and a co-operative toy factory. When the First World War brought mass unemployment and starvation, their relief efforts saved countless lives.

there are so many wonderful books being picked here, I want to read them all!

Another suggestion, The New Yorker has an article about Margaret Cavendish, duchess of New Castle. She was writing in the mid 1600 about philosopy and science, and what some think is the first science fiction novel blazing world The biography is called pure wit

Not sure if this would fit here, or if its better for December when we are reading biographies. But I think shed be considered a working woman one of the first woman to publish so early at a time when such was frowned upon (another contemporary wrote the city of ladies by Christine de Pizan

Here's my review for the first challenge. It seems particularly relevant in the light of the disastrous fires in Chile this week. Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World by John Vaillant

This is not your standard disaster story, although the story of the disastrous forest fire in and around Fort McMurray in Alberta, Canada certainly fulfills that requirement.

The book begins with the history of the he Athabasca oil sands, which are large deposits of bitumen, a very dirty form of petroleum. Although the processing of these sands is complex and environmentally costly, they contribute significantly to Canada’s position of a major exporter of oil, especially to the US. Excavation of this oil is only financially feasible when oil prices are very high. But during such times, the industrial infrastructure and the town of Fort McMurry boomed and became what it is today.

The second section of the book recounts the fire itself which began as a small fire May 1, 2016 and exploded quickly into an unstoppable monster that decimated Fort McMurray two days later and was not fully extinguished until July 5th of the next year. Close to 100, 000 people evacuated in an area that had only one road into it – 2500 homes were burned. Miraculously, no lives were lost.

At the height of the story of the fire itself, when I was at the edge of my seat, the third section of the book began. This backtracks, leaves the story of this particular fire and recounts the decades of the earth’s increasing temperature and the effects on wildfires, including creating monster fire tornados, seen not only in this Alberta fire, but also in Australia, California and Greece among other regions. These occur when the temperatures are record breakingly high and the relative humidity is low creating forest fuels dried to the moisture content of kiln-dried lumber.

An interesting point is that the Fort McMurry fire started in May during record high temperature days, when patches of snow were actually still melting. Small fires are not uncommon in the spring, but they rarely explode until later in the summer.

Of course, the book’s third section eventually continued with the fire stories of heroism and desperation along with the environmental lessons.

It's a cautionary tale of future fire behavior as our climate continues to change. I learned a lot about not just this one particular fire but the increased fire behavior in our warming world and also about Canada’s petroleum industry, (especially interesting to me after reading Ducks last year).

4.5 stars. I had to remove a bit because of the pacing – when the author shifted the story during the burning of Fort McMurray to the history of environmental temperature increases, I was ready to toss the book across the room. I’m glad I didn’t.

Yesterday I finished Burning the books: a history of the deliberate destruction of knowledge. I read this book for the January Challenge. I found that Burning the Books was shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize in 2021, and since it was on my wishlist, I ordered a copy and read it for the challenge.

This book gives a history of libraries and archives that have been damaged or destroyed from ancient times to today. It is obviously not a complete history, but it tells the story of some of the most notable losses. It also reports on a couple of cases of personal papers or memoirs that were deliberately destroyed to prevent publication and/or protect reputations. Or in the case of governmental archives, to cover up the actions of colonial/government workers. The famous case of the Library of Alexandria is included. Although its destruction has variously been blamed on the Roman army, early Christians, and Muslims in the 7th century, Ovenden believes these are myths and that the library most likely disappeared due to slow decline, underfunding, and neglect. I had first seen that theory when reading Cleopatra: a life last year, and it is confirmed here.

A number of libraries were deliberately attacked and destroyed over the years, in attempts to suppress a religion or a specific culture. All the stories are heartbreaking to me, because of the loss of knowledge and history. And unfortunately it still continues today. Serbia's deliberate destruction of the National Library of Bosnia occurred only 30 years ago.

Ovenden also addresses the move to the digital world, and how much of current social discussion takes place online. He is greatly concerned about the loss of history for future research if what is online is not preserved. So much of it is currently under the control of a few large tech companies, whose purpose is to make money, not to preserve information for the future. Ovenden feels that libraries and archives need much better funding so that they can carry out the task of preserving this information for the future. At the end, he makes a plea to "the holders of power" to adequately fund libraries and archives.

I thought the book was interesting and very well written. Highly recommended.

another book to read: wifedom

from review from bigship ", A woman who gave up so much in so many ways for Orwell, seemingly willingly (even to the deficit of her own health), but in circumstances where Orwell gave so little back. Indeed it could be said that Orwell's writing was better (even so much better) given Eileen's multiple contributions to Orwell's life, day to day existence and literary output (indeed the also the quality of that output)."

I've started another non-fiction that seems to fit this category: Class: A Memoir of Motherhood, Hunger, and Higher Education by Stephanie Land. It's the sequel to her well-received book Maid and continues with her memoir of working as a cleaning woman in order to achieve her dream of advanced education and becoming a writer. It's especially interesting to me as apparently author Debra Magpie Earling was not just one of her instructors but a mentor who first recognized her writing talent and that her essays about being a cleaning woman could become a book - and even a movie.

>179 streamsong:
That book would fit this category exactly. I recently read Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive and thought it a well done memoir. It outlines the many problems of being a single mother in the world of today while working and going to school. I sometimes wished that Land had gone into more detail about these problems as it would have done much to debunk the myth of the welfare mother.

>176 streamsong: I already have that one in the BlackHole or I would be adding it again. Thank you for your thoughts on it, Janet.

>177 atozgrl: Glad to see that you found Burning the Books to be an interesting read, Irene!

I am starting Code Girls tonight.

>179 streamsong: I read Class: A Memoir of Motherhood, Hunger, and Higher Education in January and I did not realize it would work for this category. The book is well done and I appreciate the author's honesty when at times she was not portraying herself in a good way. Not everyone can speak up about their mistakes openly.

decided to drop the striesand book. Yes all her life she dealt with misogony and the like, but Im thinking work means doing something outside of ones self, so Im not sure this memoir fits (plus its way too long and Im probably not going to finish it) If wifedom arrives in time, Ill use that

I've finally decided what my read will be: Behind the Scenes: or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House. It's been described as both an autobiography or a memoir - I'll have to see if I can figure out which it is. I have Emma's War still on my TBR list as a possible alternative choice, about an aid worker in Africa, if I can't get into the first book.

Mary Pratt: A Love Affair with Vision by Anne Koval library p. 269



I read this for the February Non Fiction Challenge with the theme "Woman's Work". I chose this as I have long been fascinated with Mary Pratt's paintings. They are beautiful and powerful. She is considered a photorealist and it was fascinating to read about her life and its influences on her creativity. She did have a gallery in Vancouver (Equinox) and I was able to view some of her paintings years ago. She was married to artist Christopher Pratt had 4 children and lived in rural Newfoundland. She painted everyday objects and became know as an expert on light. She was revered like Alice Munro as portraying every day situations with a huge punch of intensity. The book gives many photo examples of her stunning work. In the book, there are some interesting discussions of how she fits into the various feminist philosophies that were changing over the time of her long standing career and where the creative force came from to balance with her role as devoted mother and wife. Always interesting!

I read The Woman They Could Not Silence by Kate Moore This was a biography of Elizabeth Packard. Elizabeth was involuntarily committed to an insane asylum in 1860 by her husband for not believing in the same religious (denomination) values as himself. (so she must be crazy, right?) This book is the story of her fight for freedom and her fight for the rights of women across the U.S at a very difficult time. (1860-1864) This fight for those diagnosed as "insane" was the catalyst for the fight for women's rights in general, and the right to vote, have custody of your children after a divorce, and own property, specifically. 560 pages 3 1/2 stars

>185 mdoris:
Biographies about women who had careers in fields dominated by men are hard to come by. Your review reminded me of the book that was published last fall titled Brushed Aside: The Untold Story of Women in Art by Noah Charney. Thank you for that good review and for bringing this artist and subject to our attention.

>186 Tess_W:
The role of women as crusader (or reformers as a more "gentle" word) for rights in previous centuries is an underestimated area of importance. Without these rights women would not have been in a position to enter the work force as they do in the world of today. Being a reformer was an accepted role for women in the 19th century and it was, and still is, work that women do.

Has anyone here read The story of art without men by Katy Hessel? This is on my wishlist, but I don't think I'll get to it this month.

I'm late to the party, but it's one I love, so I wanted to speak and encourage and thank Benita for her work here. (Thank you, Benita.) I had already decided to read Common People this month, so I'll keep on with it. I don't think it perfectly fits the category although Alison Light will discuss woman's work as she explores her ordinary ancestors.
Maybe next month! Meanwhile, I appreciate so many book suggestions that I wouldn't have known of otherwise.

>189 markon: I'm reading it at the moment! It's very good.

I am finding Code Girls to be an engrossing read. It is helpful that I am interested in WWII as a whole, but I do not think that interest is absolutely necessary to enjoy the book.

>137 cbl_tn: I am glad you brought The Girls of Atomic City to my attention. It looks like something I would like to read, and the library has it. If I have time, I will try to read it for this month's challenge, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to get to it. If not this month, I'll remember it for later.

>190 LizzieD: Adding that Common People may be in this category after all... I was interested in this quotation from an 1843 government investigator commenting on women who grew up in the Midlands making nails at home forges: "The effects of early work, particularly in forges render these girls perfectly independent. They often enter the beer shops, call for their pints, and smoke their pipes, like men." I'm a bit sad about the way their independence asserted itself, but - 1843!

Behind Closed Doors; The Life of a Swartzentruber Amish Girl is a story of the life of Dena Schrock as an Amish Girl who later decides to leave her community and has become an author, public speaker, and entrepreneur. And has founded Voices of Hope.

I finished Code Girls this evening and very much enjoyed the read, giving it 4.25 stars. I did not realize that so many of the code breakers working during WWII in America were women - somewhere between 70-80% in both the Army and the Navy.

I just got pure wit the revolutionary Life of Margaret Cavendish. this brand new biography looks to be quite good, but I think I will use it in December for political biographies. Waiting for wifedom to pop up for this month

I have just finished The Story of Art Without Men by Katy Hessel. A broad sweep through art history from the Renaissance to the present looking only at women artists, and how much their talent and contribution has been ignored. I am ashamed at how few of these artists I had heard of before now, but also in awe of how many of them managed to forge a career despite the institutional and societal barriers placed before them. I have also discovered so many new artists whose works I can now enjoy for the first time. Obviously this doesn't go into vast amounts of detail on any one artist, but it is excellent as an overview of the last several centuries of women artists. It is also a beautiful book, featuring stunning artworks on nearly every page.

>198 Jackie_K:
The reviews of Story of Art Without Men were very good, and it was a starred review in Publisher's Weekly, so I expected great things from it. It has been a source of irritation for me that women in this field were ignored for so long and their work was given little credit. I am sure that this was because the majority of people selecting works for museum's and who critiqued art for the last three hundred years were men. It is good to see that people are now starting to write about these women and giving them equal footing.

I have had Ninth Street Women on my TBR list for a long time and it may be time for me to take that one off the shelf and read it.

I just finished Radium Girls by Kate Moore. It's a bit of a longer book than I planned to read for this challenge (479 pages) and I wish the editor was a bit more liberal with their red pen, but I still couldn't put it down. It took two days from start to finish.

What an amazing story of perseverence through pain and tragedy. Specific to this topic, it was a bit shocking to me how the husbands sometimes felt more entitled to their wives' medical information than the women themselves. And how doctors would avoid telling the women that their illnesses were fatal to protect them. It was almost as though the companies considered the women to be less than human - in some cases, investigation didn't start until after a man was affected.

I'm now inspired to read my book on Marie Curie. What an interesting history.

I just started Off the Beaten Track women adventures and mountaineers in western Canada. I hope this will work for my February reading. I am trying to read more about the push west and especially pre-civil war exploration of the west. I thought this would cover both areas and sounded interesting. The hardships encountered by the men and women moving west especially those moving over the rocky mountains is truly something hard to comprehend from the world we reside in today.

I finished reading The Six: The Untold Story of America's First Women Astronauts which was my selection of reading for this challenge. It was an interesting and captivating read. Besides shedding some light on how the astronaut selection process works and what kind of training they have to go through, the author highlighted the challenges the first 6 women astronauts had to deal with. I'm glad I picked this book for this month's theme.

Just finished Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race for the February Reading Thru Time challenge thread, but it certainly applies here, too. "Untold" is key here - the stories of these lives would disappear forever if it weren't for the author's efforts, and it was a very worthwhile read.

I'm still hoping to get to Behind the Scenes: or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House this week ...

I finished reading Susan, Linda, Nina, and Cokie: The Extraordinary Story of the Founding Mothers of NPR by Lisa Napoli and found it to be an engrossing read. Basically it is a biography of the four women "stars" of National Public Radio combined with an abbreviated history of NPR. The four women in the title were some of the first people hired by the fledgling NPR when it was founded in 1971. Each of these talented women were unable to find full-time employment with the more traditional media outlets and took low-paying jobs at NPR because it was full time. Two of the women were married with children and so there was discussion of the work-life balance in this book as well as a close look at what the jobs were, how they were done, and of the obstacles that each woman had to overcome in regards to the job discrimination that was deemed acceptable at the time. These four women almost singlehandedly turned an unknown news outlet into one of the most respected sources of news in the U.S. They did it with unparalleled reporting and tenacious (some said pugnacious) pursuit of the truth of a story. The book was quite frank about the discrimination these women endured, but it was also open about the money problems at NPR and congressional questioning of the purpose for NPR and the other public broadcasting outlets funded by the congressional act of 1968 that created the US public broadcasting system. It also shed light on the convoluted financial structure of the various public broadcasting entities involved in our public broadcasting system.

This book was very well written with extensive end notes, indexing, and bibliography. I can recommend this book with out hesitation to any reader who is interested in women's roles in the society of today, and those who are interested in the media in the US and how it has become what it is at this point in time.

I am going to start Good Girls Revolt: How the Women of Newsweek Sued Their Bosses and Changed the Workplace by Lynn Povich. This title will continue my study of the media in the US and its place in our current society that I started several years ago. I don't know if I will finish this one by the end of this month, but I do plan on devoting a goodly amount of time reading it. Since it is 225 pages that might be possible.

>204 benitastrnad: I read that, really liked it

from wifedom:'for more than a year Eileen was working in the censorship department " I have induced her to drop it for a while" Orwell told a friend, some how underestimating how long shed been at the job, 2 years that she hated "he also underestimated her work by shortening it by half and neglected to say that she was supporting them, and painted him as saving her from the job" (ltr to dorothy plowman)

Yeah this is just the book for this month!

Class by Stephanie Land

This is the continuation of author Stephanie Land’s book Maid. In her previous book she and her daughter escaped an abusive marriage and step-by-step worked low paying jobs and organized her life so that she could move to Missoula and attend the University of Montana’s English program. Her goal was to earn an English degree and ultimately, a MFA. She planned to become a writer.

In this sequel Stephanie continues her money struggles, continuing to do housecleaning jobs and caring for her child while juggling the commitments that taking University classes bring. She also deals with her unreliable and manipulative ex-husband, who over and over again, breaks her daughter’s heart. At the same time she is starting to date again.

She begins writing essays and small pieces for local publications and has some small successes, although the overwhelming number of people feel that her English degree is frivolous and won’t lead to a job. One of her instructors, author Debra Magpie Earling recognizes that her essays on single motherhood could be fleshed out into a book – and even a movie.

While disclosing her largest struggle seems like it would be too spoiler-ish, ultimately she believes that it is the major reason that she was turned down to continue in U of M’ s master’s program – that and her arm tatoo sleeves which the department admissions chair feels are unprofessional.

Without an MFA, she could not teach at the University level.

But she perseveres and triumphs when soon after being denied entrance in the MFA program, her book is accepted for publication, becomes a best seller, and is filmed. (Whadya think of me now!)

At times it was hard for me not to become judgmental of some of the author’s choices. And yet she demonstrated time and time again, that no matter the judgement of others she continued on the path that she felt was right for her. Friends, family, government institutions may all throw up roadblocks and let one down – but due to Land’s tenacity, her life became more than she had dreamed.

Still I was not as invested in this book as in her first one. I’ll give it 3.6 stars.

I was going to read another book for the topic of women’s work, but then I realized that Mary Astor’s Purple Diary: The Great American Sex Scandal of 1936 qualified because it was about a working woman, a movie star. The scandal came about because she was in the public eye due to her screen roles. The book also looked at her career which started at an early age. She started out supporting her parents, then moved on to supporting her husband. The scandal came about when she wanted to divorce said husband and get custody of their daughter. It didn’t help that she kept a no holds barred diary which she and the studios wanted to keep out of the trial evidence. It was also an interesting look at the studio system of that era and how it affected the stars, particularly the women.

>202 annushka: I just started The Six today and 100 pages in, I agree that it is an 'interesting and captivating read.' I hope I like it as much as you seem to have done!

>209 alcottacre: I hope you continue to enjoy the book! This is one of those books that kept me engaged and taught me quite a bit.

Im a bit more than 50 pages into Wifedom, and have already marked 20 paragraphs of interest. Suffice to say I am enjoying this immensly

Last night, I watched a fascinating PBS American Experience episode called Fly With Me, about how young women became "stewardesses" as they were called then and ended up changing the world.

I'd highly recommend this two hour episode. It was engrossing. Lots of information on legal issues/battles affecting these early flight attendants. For instance, they were obligated to retire at 32 or 35. They lost their jobs if they got married. Or if they failed to meet a strict weight limit based on their height.

I've come across quite a few books on the topic by women who were there but I intend to read Julia Cooke's Come Fly the World: The Jet-Age Story of the Women of Pan Am.

>212 lindapanzo: I remember a book I read back in hs i think called coffee, tea or me?Talks alot about that very subject,I would say times have changed but now have to deal with drunks, angry people or just jerks, so maybe not. and then there is this review of the book by tlight showing this book is not as it seemed

I bought this book in order to read 2 sassy women's notes from a life of being stewardesses. What I found, was that Donald Bain used a small dash of their stories (and changed their names to Rachel and Trudy), a dash of his own personal flight experiences and a large dose of his imagination. Imagination. Yes, you read that right. He used his imagination as he states, himself, in the start of the book) and stories an "uninhibited memoir" about 2 women. Two women who were used largely for their marketing appeal.

I really do not think this book should be allowed to be listed as a work of non-fiction. I want to read it though, based off the scathing reviews of how 'controversial' it apparently was when it was released. I'll just have to wait until I can convince my brain that it is not truly a memoir, but a work of fiction that is lightly sprinkled with partially true stories.

>212 lindapanzo:
Ann Hood also wrote a memoir of her time as a Pan Am stewardess. It is titled Fly Girl: A Memoir. Hood was one of the women featured on the PBS episode. Her book got good reviews and it is already on my shelves. I need to get it read.

>214 benitastrnad: Thanks for the tip. Julia Cooke was a featured commenter/writer on that episode and, since I have her book, I'll read that one first but I would love to read about someone who was actually there and doing that job.

>212 lindapanzo: I will see if I can get to that particular American Experience episode. Thanks for the recommendation, Linda!

>212 lindapanzo: It's been on a few times in the past few days here in Chicago. PBS does seem to repeat shows.

I read The Girls of Atomic City about the work that women did on the Manhattan Project at the Clinton Engineer Works in Oak Ridge, Tennessee during World War II. The women profiled did a variety of jobs, from office work to equpiment monitoring, chemical analysis, janitorial work, nursing, and journalism. All of the employees knew only what they needed to know to perform their jobs. They knew what their job was, but not why it was important or how it connected with anyone else's job, and they couldn't talk with anyone else about the work they performed.

As a Knoxville native, I've always known about Oak Ridge and visited it regularly on school field trips. I'm glad to know more about its "secret history" and how the city came to be.

>212 lindapanzo: I saw that episode Tuesday as well, and I thought just how well it fit this month's theme. I agree, I would also highly recommend it. The show has not been repeated here in NC; it must be different in Chicago.

I was unaware until I read mdoris's thread that the Women's Prize has added a non-fiction award category this year. The long list is below, the short list will be announced March 27th and the winner June 13th.

https://www.womensprize.com/prizes/womens-prize-for-non-fiction/

I just finished Marie Curie by Robert Reid. It was a bit outdated due to the author's 1970s views on things, but overall I was very impressed with how the book was written, the understandable descriptions of chemistry discoveries, and the in depth look on Marie Curie's life, as developed through her letters and records. This might be a book I reread in the future. I recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more about her discoveries and her life.

I finished reading The Six: The Untold Story of America's First Women Astronauts by Loren Grush tonight and found it to be a very good read. I gave it 4.25 stars.

>212 lindapanzo: I was able to find that complete documentary out on YouTube and watched it last night. Thanks for that recommendation, Linda. I enjoyed watching it - and disturbed at all of the sexism inherent (evidently) in being a stewardess.

Wow! wifedom is one of the best books I have read about womens issues, and actually one of the best non fiction books Ive read. Im astounded by what I have learned and in the end cried abit, not just for Mrs Orwell, but for all the women who are invisible then and now

Like me, Funder was a big fan of Orwell She started on this project by discovering a first edition of collected Essays, Journals and Letters in a bookstore She had already read several biographies of him, and read all of his works. Reading this book she discovers this from his letters and was rather shocked but what she found

'There are two great facts about women....which you could only lean by getting married and which flatly contradicted the picture of themselves that women hadmanaged to impose upon the world. One was their incorrible dirtiness and untidiness, The other was their terrible, devouring sexuality... women demand sex more and m ore until she despising her husband for his lack of virility'...referring to a recent nortorious murder he writes writes of the 'sympathy everyone feels for murdering his wife'

this is why the author moved from the work to the life, and from the man and his wife

This book is 392 pages, not included extensive notes. I wanted to share many tidbits I found interesting. Rather then list them all I will summarize what Orwell is: a liar, a cheat, a rapist, a narcicist;misogynist, he cares for his wife only what she can do for him:cooking cleaning, feeding the goats and o yeah helping him write, including Animal Farm. The absolute worst tho - that he abandons her when she needed him most, especially at her death bed. he really did kill her with his lack of care.

This was an intellgent woman who was helping in the Spanish Civil War, during WWII in many ways. But no bios seem to address that so Funder did.

This a perfect book to read for this theme; well written page turner, focusing on Eileen, her life, following her husband at the same time describing major events. I was furious reading this, and saddened at the loss of this vital woman. Some people do not like that the author puts herself in to the book as a narrator, but it didn't bother me, I thought they acted as a reminder that even now some men feel this way about women, and treat them as invisible We really have not come a long way baby

recommended to anyone really who cares about the truth.

rating 5*+

I finished my second book for the February category of "Women's Work" on Monday. It was Good Girls Revolt: How the Women of Newsweek Sued Their Bosses and Changed the Workplace by Lynn Povich. This book was a history of how the women employees of Newsweek filed a class action lawsuit against the Washington Post, Inc. They took on their employers and sued for back pay, and a route to promotions. They were the first group of women to do so in the US. This was simply a history of that event and my reading was prompted by what I had read in the previous book I read for this category which was Susan, Linda, Nina, and Cokie. The Newsweek lawsuit was talked about in the book on the founding women of NPR, and since it was the second time in the last couple of years that I had found this lawsuit mentioned, I decided it was time to get more background on that historical event. This lawsuit was one of the first anti-discrimination against women lawsuits that the EEOC had ever filed and the lawyer in charge of the case was Eleanor Holmes Norton, who went from this lawsuit to become one of the premier anti-discrimination lawyers in the country and is now the Representative for Washington, D.C. This book was written by one of the women, Lynn Povich, who was part of the original grievance filed against Newsweek, and then one of the employees named in the class action suit. Eventually, she was promoted and was the first women to achieve the rank of Editor at Newsweek. The book was written by a journalist and it shows. It was short and fast-paced. Even though it was short it provided the background I was seeking on this subject. It was well written and moved fast through about 6 years of history while also providing background. Due to the style in which it was written it also read fast.

The book was well worth reading for anybody who wants background information about the Women's Movement and the history of the fight for women's rights.

>223 cindydavid4:
>224 benitastrnad:

Picking up both of these for sure!

It is now March 1st - time for a new category for our Nonfiction reading for the year. The topic for March is Forensic Sciences. This term is derived from Latin. Forensic comes from the word Forum. This is where the public debated issues of all kinds in ancient Rome. People accused of crimes would present their cases, either side, in the public forum, and the judges would make a decision based on the evidence presented. Eventually the same term "forensic" was applied to criminology. The first use of science to solve crimes was in France and Germany starting in the 1870's. The use of science to solve crimes caused the field to widen out considerably and today the term Forensic Science is applied to many different fields of science. What they all have in common is that they use scientific methods to trace and track things back to their origins. This means that the term Forensic Sciences is now used for all kinds of tracking and tracing.

For purposes of our reading this topic is pretty much wide open for interpretation. Listed below are some of the possible avenues of reading that we can pursue.

Art forensics concerns the art authentication cases to help research the work's authenticity. Art authentication methods are used to detect and identify forgery, faking and copying of art works, e.g. paintings.

Computational forensics concerns the development of algorithms and software to assist forensic examination

Election forensics is the use of statistics to determine if election results are normal or abnormal. It is also used to look into and detect the cases concerning gerrymandering.

Forensic anthropology is the application of physical anthropology in a legal setting, usually for the recovery and identification of skeletonized human remains. It is also used in archeology.

Forensic archaeology is the application of a combination of archeological techniques and forensic science, typically in law enforcement.

Forensic astronomy uses methods from astronomy to determine past celestial constellations for forensic purposes.

Forensic botany is the study of plant life in order to gain information regarding possible crimes. It is also used in the study of paleobotany.

Forensic chemistry is the study of detection and identification of illicit drugs, accelerants used in arson cases, explosive and gunshot residue. It is also used in archeology.

Forensic engineering is the scientific examination and analysis of structures and products relating to their failure or cause of damage.

Forensic entomology deals with the examination of insects in, on and around human remains to assist in determination of time or location of death. It is also used in paleontology.

Forensic geology deals with trace evidence in the form of soils, minerals and petroleum.

Forensic geomorphology is the study of the ground surface to look for potential location(s) of buried object(s).

Forensic geophysics is the application of geophysical techniques such as radar for detecting objects hidden underground or underwater.

Forensic intelligence process starts with the collection of data and ends with the integration of results within into the analysis of crimes under investigation.

Forensic psychology is the practice of psychology and is most commonly used in jury selection and eyewitness testimony.

Forensic meteorology is the scientific study of weather, applied to the process of reconstructing weather events for a certain time and location.

Forensic accounting forensic accountancy or financial forensics is the specialty practice area of accounting that investigates whether firms engage in financial reporting misconduct, or financial misconduct within the workplace by employees, officers or directors of the organization.

You can see that there are lots of areas inside of Forensic Science available to explore in this months nonfiction reading. Take a look at what you have in your TBR lists or on your shelves and see what you have that might apply to this topic.

I am going to start with Written in Bones, which is about forensic archaeology. I am not sure if I will get any further reading done this month, especially since I will be out of town for a week.

Here are some suggestions for book titles that would work as reading material for Forensic Sciences and a bit more clarification about the topic.

If you want to read about the True Crime cases of the Boston Strangler, or the Green River Killer go ahead. If you want to read about the hunt for the beginning of time using Forensic Astronomy that works too. The discovery of DNA back in the late 1950's opened up a whole new area of Forensic Science that uses DNA to hunt for the beginnings of man as well as the hunt for criminals. For that reason the book Unlocking the Past: How Archaeologists Are Rewriting Human History With Ancient DNA might be a good place to start.

For those of you interested in traditional criminal forensics here are a couple of titles that would work. There is the recent best seller I'll Be Gone in the Dark would work as would the latest book on Jack-the-Ripper.

Emperor of All Maladies would be a good one for those of you interested in medical forensics and DNA.

Super Volcanoes: What They Reveal About Earth and the Worlds Beyond would be a good one combining forensic science and geology.

If you are interested in some of the Forensic Science things that have gone wrong here is an excellent title.
Cadaver King and the Country Dentist by Radley Balko.

Take a look through what you have in your TBR lists and see what pops out at you as being forensic in nature and let us know what you are reading on this topic.

Ive never really had an interest in this topic tho i might be intereted in forensic psychology. can you givve me suggestionfor appro reads?

I am going to pull out a book that I have had on my shelves for ages. Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry by Bryan Sykes is my choice for this month's reading. I got this book in the 2016 75'ers Christmas Swap and it is finally speaking to me to get it read. This book is by the man who was called in to analyze the DNA of the Ice Man found in the Alps back in 1994. Sykes used forensic science to trace the Ice Man's DNA to modern Europeans.

If I can manage it, I am going to switch gears completely and read about forensic geology. The book I have on tap for that topic is Super Volcanoes: What They Reveal About Earth and the Worlds Beyond by Robin George Andrews.

>229 cindydavid4:
The first title that came to my mind was Devil You Know: Encounters in Forensic Psychiatry by Gwen Adshead. Devil in the White City by Erik Larson would be a more general look at the beginnings of forensic science that has lots of other things in it besides forensic science. For somebody who is not really interested in the topic of forensic science that book would provide enough other kinds of subjects that it wouldn't get boring. Thunderstruck by Erik Larso also has forensic science in it - even though the book is also about the beginning of radio.

I have Beyond the Body Farm ready to go for this challenge. Fun fact - Dr. Bass was the graduation speaker when I got my master's in library science.

>231 benitastrnad: I do have Devil in the White city, Ive read several of Larsons books but been avoiding this one. I dont like reading the details of crimes Ive read the library book dealing with the fir at the Los Angeles Library. I do like books like midnight in the garden of good and evil and see he has another book that might be interesting the city of fallen angels which I will try.

>230 benitastrnad: I love Bryan Sykes. He even makes hamster poop interesting. (It'll make sense when you read Seven Daughters of Eve.)

>234 ReneeMarie:
I have to dig around and find the book first. I found Super Volcano easily enough and will start on it tonight.

>228 benitastrnad: I plan to read The Emperor of All Maladies for next month's globalization topic! But if anyone reads it this month, I'd love to hear what they think.

I'm a big fan of Sue Black, so I plan to read All That Remains for this month's challenge. Her book Written in Bone is one of my favorites, so I'm looking forward to reading another one by her.

I also started the Dead Men Do Tell Tales audiobook last night and it is interesting! It isn't hitting me in the same way that Sue Black's books do though.

Happy reading!

>236 Kyler_Marie: I've got All That Remains lined up for this month too!

>233 cindydavid4: I really liked The City of Falling Angels when I read it a few years ago.

amazon tells me that I bought that book in 2005 have no idea where it is, and cant find my Midnight in the garden...... Cant remember reading it so Ill just get it on Kindle

>236 Kyler_Marie: I very much enjoyed All That Remains when I read it a couple of years ago. If you have not seen Black's Christmas lectures from the Christmas at the Royal Institute on YouTube, you might check them out.

William Maples' Dead Men Do Tell Tales is one of the books that stirred my interest in forensic anthropology. I hope you continue to find it of interest.

>237 Jackie_K: That's awesome! Can't wait to hear what you think of her writing!

>240 alcottacre: Oooo thanks for the recommendation! I'll definitely check out her lectures.

>241 Kyler_Marie: I am not sure if you are aware or not, but Dr Black also had a short-lived series on the BBC, History Cold Case, which is also available on YouTube.

I loved her Christmas lectures because they were directed at young people, hoping to stir their interest in the forensic sciences by introducing them to real life situations. I kept asking my husband why they were not available when I was a kid. (Probably because Dr Black is only 1 year older than I am, lol)

A discussion on another LT thread reminded me that I read Justinian's Flea: Plague, Empire and the Birth of Europe by William Rosen a few years ago. Justinian survived the plague but Theodosia, his wife, did not.
Even the rich are not exempt from a bacteria. This book is chock full of forensic medicine and forensic science in tracing just how Bubonic Plague works, where it came from, and what the future of this disease might be. This might be a book that would appeal to those of you who are not thrilled with True Crime but want to know how forensic science works in the biological world.

>243 benitastrnad: I have had that book in the BlackHole for a while now. I will have to see if I can locate a copy and get it read this month. Thank you for the suggestion, Benita!

would this work as archaeolgy forensics? Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age

>245 cindydavid4:
That would work as from the description it would fall into the category of Forensic Archeology. I imagine that there is going to be discussions of using all kinds of data gathering devices and technology to gather information, so it would work for this category.

>226 benitastrnad: Forensic meteorology will be a perfect fit for me. In high school, my planned college major was going to be meteorology but, instead, I went with political science/pre-law. So reading Weather in the Courtroom : Memoirs from a Career in Forensic Meteorology by William H. Haggard is my choice. Looking forward to it.

>247 lindapanzo:
I have not heard about that title and so that is a BB. (I am heading off to the add books in LT so I can add to my ever growing TBR list.)

>247 lindapanzo: Oh, Linda--did you watch all the specials/good-byes for Tom Skilling? I'm so sad to see him go, but he deserves it.

Can I join in? Will this work? Before the Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe and What Lies Beyond

>246 benitastrnad: thx, shes a journalist with an interest in the subject If it doesn't include "I imagine that there is going to be discussions of using all kinds of data gathering devices and technology to gather information, " I hope so, but if not, Ill stop reading :)

>243 benitastrnad: I'm reading this one for a challenge in another group--didn't think of it for forensics, because I haven't got that far yet. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. It's a bit tedious to read. So far, it's more about the history of Byzantium than the plague, but I've just been introduced to yersinia pestis--things should get interesting!

>228 benitastrnad: Is the Jack the Ripper book you mentioned Patricia Cornwell's Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper Case Closed? I have that one on my shelves. I also have The Inheritor's Powder: A Tale of Arsenic, Murder, and the New Forensic Science which sounds interesting.

>250 dianeham:
I think that qualifies as Forensic Astronomy, so yes, read it and report back to us what you think about it.

>252 Tess_W:
There is lots of Forensic Biology in the book, and some about climate as well. Things had to be just right for the pestilence to spread. The science of that, and the data on the population decline in the Byzantine Empire are all things that make this book a Forensic Science book as much as a history book.

>253 Familyhistorian:
I didn't name a specific title for Jack-the-Ripper, but there are lots of books out there on the subject. I would think that a book by Patricia Cornwell would have lots of Forensic Science in it. Many of her novels rely on that for their plots. In fact, either of the books you mentioned would work for this month's topic.

>249 kac522: We loved Tom Skilling and watched all of the Tom retrospective specials, the show from the Music Box Theater, the big get together on his last day. I think I just graduated from high school when he started on WGN.

>257 lindapanzo: I'm so glad you saw all of it--I caught a few here & there throughout the month, and then on his last evening forecasts. He seems like such an incredibly nice person, along with being a great meteorologist.

I completed Justinian's Flea by William Rosen. I feel that I have been fleeced by the ole bait & switch! I thought the book would be about the plague under Justinian's rule in AD 500-600's. Instead, I got a massive sweeping history of Byzantium, clear through WWI! This was a monumental task and not done well IMHO. It is rambling and there is no clear thesis. The author jumps from topic to topic and some of them I can not even connect to yersinia pestis, which had 15 pages dedicated to its evolution. I was 200 pages into the book (6 chapters) before the lil flea was introduced. And that was it--just one chapter. The remaining chapters dealt with how the flea helped to cause the downfall of Byzantium and also how it helped to rebuild Europe. I wanted pestilence and disease and misery and suffering! What I got was a scientific/historical treatise of 300 years of history and some of it so specialized that I had never even heard of it before--and I'm a history prof. (Sasanian Empire) This seems like it could be a book of separate historical essays that are only lightly connected. I read about the architecture of the Sophia Hagia as well as the yaka (?) timber used to build it; the entire chapter! I read about the Sub Atlantic Climate Change in Rome from about AD 100-750. I "think" the premise of the book was that all these things had to work together to create the perfect storm for the flea to evolve and wreak its havoc. I'm a simple woman with simple needs, I wanted more FLEA! 364 pages 3 mediocre stars

>256 benitastrnad: Thanks, Benita. I started The Inheritor's Powder although the Cornwall book does look interesting especially as i can see there are pictures.

>230 benitastrnad: that first book actually sounds interesting...

I'm going 'cheap and easy' - an 'included' item on Audible: Solving Infamous Cases with Artificial ChatGPT-4's Crime-Fighting Capabilities Compact Edition by Harvey Castro. I'm leery ... I'll let you know if it's more PT Barnum than scientific ...

Editing on 20240316: I gave up on Castro's book. It announced early on that it was read by AI ... I highly suspect it has been written by AI as well. It constantly says, "ChatGPT could have helped investigators," without any real explanation of how. Halfway through - a rather labored half at that - I'd rather move on to something informative. I'm interested in several of the books mentioned above, so although my experiment with this book was a bust for me, I remain interested in how AI might augment crime investigation and forensic medicine.

I finished Beyond the Body Farm last night. The cases Dr. Bass selected for the book highlight different aspects of forensic anthropology and technological and methodological advances over time. Many of those advances can trace their origins to the groundbreaking research facility colloquially known as the "Body Farm." I remember most of the local cases in the book from our local news coverage, so it was really interesting to me to get a behind the scenes look at the details of those cases.

I completed Forensic History: Crimes, Frauds, and Scandals Elizabeth Murray I listened to this on audio. It's from the Great Courses library. This was a general history overview of various types of crimes and an example of each. Most were very general and it was nothing new. A lot of time was spent telling about what was NOT available at the time of the crime. The most interesting was the Romanov's and mitrochondrial DNA testing that is now available, which cleared up who was found in the graves and excluded all of the Anastasia wannabees. Also a good chapter on archaeological forensics in dealing with genocides and mass graves. 13 hours 32 mins/25 lectures 3.5 stars March NONFICTION: Forensics

I have finished Professor Sue Black's All That Remains: A Life in Death and found it a fascinating account. She is the UK's leading forensic anthropologist, and has been involved in many high-profile cases throughout the world (including the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, and early 2000s Kosovo). The first half of the book is more memoir-like in tone, and there is a lot of more philosophical discussion about attitudes towards death, but the second half of the book which covers many of the cases she has been involved in showcased the nuts and bolts of the work that the forensic anthropologist does and how important it is in identifying the deceased.

I finished Written in Bones, edited by Paul Bahn tonight. This is a good book for those with an interest in forensic archaeology. There is nothing in depth here, but there are a lot of photographs and some 30+ examples of bog people, mummies, etc scattered across the world. The reader learns about the various disciplines that are involved in discovering as much as possible from the remains of people whose bodies could conceivably be thousands of years old. The inclusion of a bibliography separated out by the specific find is a nice touch for those who would like to study a particular subject in more depth.

I finished my first book for the March challenge of forensic sciences. It was Ends of the World: Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans, and Our Quest to Understand Earth's Past Mass Extinctions by Peter Brannen

I purchased this book at Ashfall Fossil Beds State Park in Antelope County, Nebraska when I visited that park in July 2022. On first glance this might seem like a strange choice for the topic. However, as I read the book it became more apparent that this is a detective story on a massive scale. Geologists, paleontologists, biologists, astronomers, explosive specialists, and big data specialists are all a part of this story.

This book is an overview of the five mass extinctions documented in the fossil records. It is extremely readable and makes much of the science behind these mass extinctions accessible. It is written by a journalist who writes about science and as such this book is a short explanation. It is not a detailed scientific report. That is a blessing for the reader but it will also give science doubters room in which to maneuver and therefore refute some of what is in this book.

One of the most enlightening aspects of the book is the time taken to explain big numbers and deep time. The last extinction discussed is that caused by man in the last 50,000 years. The book also discusses the coming extinction caused by man. One of the most impressive things the author does is to make the science of carbon and carbon dioxide accessible. In fact the author goes into great detail on the role of carbon dioxide in life on this planet. He also explains the role of excessive carbon dioxide in all of these mass extinctions and proves to be one of the main drivers of these extinctions, and probably the next one. He also explains how the planet has managed to recover from high dosages of carbon dioxide in the past. This is why he has to talk about big numbers and deep time.

The most effective part of this book (for me) is the very detailed and yet VERY understandable explanation of why big numbers and deep time are so important to the story of mass extinctions. Key to this process is the role of carbon dioxide in the extinctions. The author takes the time to explain in detail that EVEN if we started following strict carbon emissions guidelines it will take hundreds of thousands of years (200,000 - 500,000 thousand years) and those are huge numbers that seem meaningless to those of us alive today. Our live spans are so short in comparison that these numbers don't have much meaning. However, the planet doesn't work on the same time scale. This is important to understanding the amount of time it will take to bring the carbon dioxide back in line with what it was at the beginning of written history. For the first time, I started to understand the numbers and how they work in relation to deep time.

The second part of this book that was important for me was the explanation of how the planet naturally sequesters carbon dioxide via the carbon cycle. The carbon cycle takes hundreds of thousands of years to cycle through. Again, the number of years for the process to complete is staggering. I never understood the scientific process of the carbon cycle and Brannen managed to write a lightbulb moment for me.

The downside of this book is that there isn't much about forensic science in this book except for the discussion of carbon dioxide and its rehabilitation cycles, including ocean acidification and rock weathering. How geologists use mass spectrometers, DNA samples, microbiology, and micro zoology techniques to date rocks, fossils, and other physical evidence to date the mass extinctions and determine what happened that caused the mass extinctions as best they can. The author also points out that the fossil record is incomplete and that means that there are incomplete answers to some questions.

I would recommend this book to anybody who is trying to understand the deep past and the deep present as well. It is both a book about the past and about the future. The author ends the book with a discussion of the probable future based on what part of the carbon cycle we are currently in, and the scientific evidence that tells us that point, and based on the past scientific evidence what the likely outcome will be. This is not a book for creationists or people who don't trust science.

I finished The Seven Daughters of Eve for this month's challenge. The book is good although the information the author is sharing is somewhat outdated due to all of the recent breakthroughs in the field.

>268 annushka:
I am glad that you read this book. I had planned to read it, but couldn't find my copy so I opted to read a different book about forensic geology instead. I wondered about the contents. I had a friend who go her PhD in Biology in 2006. She had read this book and couldn't stop talking about it. That is why I had it on my shelves and in my TBR list. However, when the time came to read it, I just simply couldn't find the book. That might be a function of simply holding on to the book too long. Oh well! The hazards of a book lover.

>269 benitastrnad: Thank you! The book is interesting even though it is a bit outdated. It sparked a lot of interesting conversations between me and my husband and research of the latest discoveries in this field.

I have a question. I didn't think I had anything on my shelves that fit this topic, so I wasn't planning to read something for it. However, I read Neanderthal: Neanderthal man and the story of human origins for the Reading Through Time: Prehistory challenge, and it has occurred to me that it might possibly fit for forensic archaeology. I see that archaeologists can use forensic techniques to help them support or refute hypotheses. This includes DNA evidence, and at the time Neanderthal was published (1999), they had done some DNA analysis of Neanderthal remains. They only had results for mtDNA at the time, which showed no link between Neanderthals and modern humans. However, the DNA analysis is not a major focus of the book. The main discussions are about most (maybe all) of the known Neanderthal finds at the time, and the bones and tools found, comparing them with finds of other ancient humans, to show where Neanderthals fit in the evolutionary history of modern humans. The information given is very detailed and technical. There is also some discussion of chemical analysis related to finds of ochre, and whether or not it can be proven that Neanderthals were using it for cosmetic or artistic reasons. Would these things count as forensic archaeology?

>271 atozgrl:
This title would count for this challenge. When I looked up the topic of forensic sciences, forensic archaeology was listed as one of those sciences.

It is amazing how much we have learned since 1999 using many of the techniques of chemistry, physics, and biological chemistry. In the book I read on mass extinctions, the book talked about using spectrometers to date rocks and fossils, so those have become machines used in all kinds of sciences not just criminal science. It became clear to me as I researched what titles I had that would fit this topic, that the term forensic science might need to be changed. It is true that forensic science is a term that most people associate with criminal science, but that is not the case. It is a much broader topic than that. The FBI even uses the term forensic accounting. I am currently reading a book published in 2001 and I find myself laughing at some of the things that were said in this book. Who knew things would change that much?

>272 benitastrnad: Thanks, Benita! Yes, things have changed a lot since 1999. There is more DNA evidence now that shows modern humans do carry some Neanderthal DNA, so I really want to find a more recent book that has more information about this. And this topic has certainly opened my eyes to all the subjects that have a relationship to some form of forensic science. I never realized how broad it is.

I am very surprised at the response to this Nonfiction Challenge 2024 and didn't expect that we would reach 250 posts until sometime far into the year. Instead we have achieved 273 posts in three months. That is good! - but surprising.

Let's keep the momentum going and hop on over to the second quarter thread. I have posted the guidelines for the new topic over there.

If you haven't posted here about the book you read for March, please do so, either here or there. The new thread is going to start with April 1. It won't hurt anything if you post in both places. None of us here are that picky.

The topic for April is Globalization, so head over there and find out what the possibilities for exciting, stimulating, and thought-provoking books this group of people will be reading in April.