After reading Melba Patillo’s memoir of the integration of Little Rock’s Central High School, I wanted to know more details about what happened next. Instead of letting the black teenagers have a second year in Central High, the governor closed […]
Warriors Don’t Cry
You’ve seen the pictures of the Little Rock Nine being escorted into the school by soldiers and the famous picture above of the angry mob around Elizabeth Eckford. What I never heard about or considered was what happened after they […]
Bringing Columbia Home
I clearly remember aimlessly watching the news that included in passing a brief mention of the landing of Columbia. There was a pause and then the notification that they had lost contact with the shuttle. I remember my then husband […]
You Can’t Go Wrong Doing Right
My first thought reading this book was, “Why have I never heard of this man?” My second was, “This is like real-life Forrest Gump.” The man popped up at many of the major events of the 20th century in two […]
West of the Revolution
American history gets all excited about 1776 without ever considering that for most of the continent the fight with the English wasn’t the main news. Alaska The Russians were running the fur trade. I was interested in the description of […]
Victoria and Abdul
The central mystery in this story is Who Was Abdul Karim? Was he a selfless aide and friend to Queen Victoria or was he an enterprising, self-promoting, dangerous con man like the people around her believed? I think the answer […]
Book Versus Movie – How to Survive A Plague
Think back to a time not that long ago when: The New York Times banned the use of the words gay and lesbian in the newspaper Hospitals and funeral homes turned away people they suspected were infected with AIDS Weekly […]
Black Titan – The Story of A.G. Gaston
I had never heard of A.G. Gaston before this book showed up on Book Bub last year. I’m glad I found out about him. He had a remarkable life. A.G. Gaston’s grandparents were slaves. His grandfather worked with horses and […]
Hidden Figures
“Set against the backdrop of the Jim Crow South and the civil rights movement, the never-before-told true story of NASA’s African-American female mathematicians who played a crucial role in America’s space program—and whose contributions have been unheralded, until now. Before […]
Neither Snow Nor Rain
“The United States Postal Service is a wondrous American creation. Seven days a week, its army of 300,000 letter carriers delivers 513 million pieces of mail, forty percent of the world’s volume. It is far more efficient than any other […]
How Do You Solve a Problem Like Sophia?
Ranjit Singh was the last ruling emperor of the Punjab. After his death, the British used the confusion surrounding his heirs’ succession to move into the area. Most of the adult heirs died suspiciously. When it was over, the ruler […]
Ada’s Algorithm
Ada Lovelace’s life sounds like it was made just for the tabloids. Her father was the poet Lord Byron. He was famous in England for his legendary affairs as well as for his poetry. He decided to marry when he […]
Suffragette: A Movie Experience With The Clueless
One of the nice thing about having a scheduled day off during the week is ability to see matinees. (Since this was my first day off in three weeks, I was celebrating. I had moved on from yelling, “Dobby is […]
The Residence
The Residence is an interesting look into the life of The White House. It is a subject that has always interested me. I’ve read books about the lives of the First Ladies by Margaret Truman and watched an old mini-series […]
Plain Vanilla?
Vanilla is my favorite scent. I choose it for candles and air fresheners and perfumes and body washes. I love vanilla flavored food and drinks. My mother used to laugh at me because I’d go to ice cream parlors and […]
The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson
“..epidemics create a kind of history from below: they can be world-changing, but the participants are almost inevitably ordinary folk, following their established routines, not thinking for a second about how their actions will be recorded for posterity. And of […]
