We’ve been reading nonfiction exclusively and in the year and a half we’ve been reading together we’ve ranged widely through various genres of narrative nonfiction with some great discussions. I’ve linked the titles to my reviews or to Amazon.
Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime by John Heilemann
This is the book we’re currently reading.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
There’s a good reason why this book has been so popular–it’s a blend of social history and medical history, with a fascinating personal story. It’s what my friend Phil used to call a “20 minute burn book.” You read for 20 minutes then you have to stop to let the steam out of your ears. Racism and medial ethics are the burning issues. Henrietta Lacks was an African-American woman living in the Baltimore area, whose cancerous cells, by their amazing replicative abilities, helped drive advances in medical science via cell research. All of our lives are better because of Henrietta Lacks’s unknowing contribution. That’s the problem; neither Lacks nor her family were aware that she was donating her cells. it wasn’t until 20 years after her death that her daughter discovered–by accident–that her mother was famous as the HeLa culture, found in labs all over the world, a source of profit for the companies that manufactured it, and the subject of conferences and controversies. Although I read the book, I couldn’t attend the discussion, but I knew that it would stimulate great discussion.
Ho
w Doctors Think by Jerome Groopman
Groopman’s book is empowering; he reminds us that we’re medical consumers and need to evaluate our interactions with our doctors, not checking our critical faculties at the examining room door. His stories of diagnostic successes and failures illustrate the types of logical errors that doctors–and all of us–are subject to. I especially like the error of “availability” where the diagnosis fits what’s handy–how many times have doctors told us that we have “what’s going around?” How many times have we fallen into the same pattern of thought? Groopman’s an elegant writer; his medical essays often appear in the New Yorker where he’s a staff writer. (He’s also on the faculty of Harvard Medical School.) How Doctors Think is an engrossing blend of patients’ stories and medical thinking. Groopman’s other books include The Anatomy of Hope and Second Opinions.
Cartwheels in a Sari: A Memoir of Growing Up Cult by Jayanti Tamm. See my review and interview with the author. Jayanti came to our discussion; it was wonderful to be able to ask her questions. A very memorable evening.
Out of Mao’s Shadow: The Struggle for the Soul of a New China by Philip P. Pan
Journalist Pan uses stories about remarkable women and men who have defied the Chineses government to fight for basic civil liberties and human rights. Their stories paint a grim picture of a country that has strayed far from Mao’s Communist vision of a society of workers. A vast, corrupt, hypocritical bureaucracy maintains order with an iron fist, re-writing history, suppressing information, and enriching itself at the expense of the peasantry. The stories of the people who stand up to the government, some with fatal consequences, are riveting and inspiring.
Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? by Michael J. Sandel
Sandel teaches a wildly popular course at Harvard on justice that attracts hundreds of students each semester. In the course (and the book), Sandel discusses how the ideas of happiness, freedom, and morality have driven political philosophy. Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Immanuel Kant, Aristotle, and John Rawls are some of the political theorists whose ideas are used to examine the knotty questions of the day. Sandel writes with remarkable clarity; the book is a delight to read and discuss.
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson
I was alone in finding this book heavy going, mainly because I was unhappy with the writing and the ponderous tone. Single-sentence paragraphs meant to sound portentous (“of all people”), frequent use of verbs created from nouns (“nuggeted”), adjectives that didn’t match up with nouns (“garish self-confidence”), and an unrelenting sense of gloom, made me cranky every time I opened it. I wanted it to be better; there’s great material here. Larsen pairs the story of how the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago was planned and built with the story of serial killer H.H. Holmes who did his nasty work in a hotel he built near the Fairgrounds. Since the two strands of the story never intersect, the reader is asked to make the connection between the group of architects with the hubris to attempt to create a fairytale world of light and magic with the murderer who created a world of death. We did have a good discussion but wished there were more photographs of the Fair.
A side note: Chicago wanted to host the Fair to show that it was a first-class city. San Francisco felt the same way about hosting the Panama Pacific Int’l Exposition in 1915–there was a need to prove to the world that the city had recovered from the devastating earthquake in 1906. Part of the fair was built on hastily filled-in land at the edge of the Marina district–when the next big earthquake struck in 1989, that neighborhood suffered some of the worst damage because the land was unstable.
Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford
This exhaustive biography of Millay’s astonishing life is not for the casual reader. Milford has read every letter, examined the lives of everyone Millay knew, painting an in depth portrait of the charismatic poet. Millay was a complex blend of childish, savvy, and self-aware–especially of her sexual appeal to men and women. Her poetry sold like hotcakes and made her the equivalent of a rock star in the 1920s and her love life, even after marriage, was quite active. Her life was indeed the candle that burned at both ends, as she wrote in her most remembered lines. It’s clear that Milford herself was smitten with Millay (who was usually known as Vincent). When she began researching the book, Millay’s sister Norma was still alive and Milford inserts accounts of her often strange–and strained–conversations with Norma, who is certainly an informant with an attitude. Milford has concentrated so intently on the details of Millay’s life, that there is almost no social or historical context to the book. It feels claustrophobic, although that may well be what Millay’s self-absorbed life was exactly like.
Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire by Alex Von Tunzelman
See my review of this book elsewhere on this site, also a list of fiction and non-fiction about India that I have enjoyed. When I was in England 2 years ago, I had lunch in a very ordinary pub one day and found Chicken Tikka Masala on the menu. I was unaware until recently, that this may be the most popular dish in British restaurants. I find the relationship between England and India fascinating–how two countries so very different became so closely intertwined.
Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life by Winifred Gallagher
We had high hopes for this book–the topic sounded so now–how what we pay attention to shapes our thoughts and ultimately our behavior. Gallagher reports on current research into attention issues and combines it with her own ruminations on how we organize sensory input. Although the issues were fun to discuss, we ultimately felt that the book read more like a research overview than anything else and it didn’t cover some aspects of the topic that we thought were important.
She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders by Jennifer Finney Boylan
Boylan’s accomplishment in this wonderful memoir is to make the reader truly understand his inner thoughts and feelings. From the time he could respond to the world around him, Boylan knew that he was in the wrong body, destined to be a woman. The memoir tells his journey to the age of 42, happily married, father of 2, a professor of literature, when biology could no longer be ignored. The book is filled with wonderful set pieces, humor, sadness, and insight. Great for discussion.
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel
I loved this graphic memoir, which we read in tandem with the title above, She’s Not There. Unfortunately, we were so caught up in the other memoir that we gave this one short shrift. Such a shame; maybe it’s not good to read 2 great books together or maybe we needed a double session to do them both justice. Bechdel’s memoir is a brilliant marriage of text and pictures, making the story of her difficult childhood so much more engrossing than it would have been with text alone. Her use of literary and mythological themes adds depth and resonance as well. Her family ran–and lived in–the local funeral home in a small Pennsylvania town, a Victorian mansion obsessively restored by her father, whose inability to express emotion marked Bechdel’s childhood like a curse. As she grows up, Bechdel comes to understand how her father differs from other fathers, and how she is different as well.
The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court by Jeffrey Toobin
In The Nine, Toobin uses significant cases to illuminate how the personalities and philosophies of the justices affect their decisions. It’s a brilliant combination of the personal, the political, and the philosophical, with some social history thrown in for good measure. Toobin covers the big issues that the Court has dealt with and will continue to address in the coming years: separation of church and state, abortion, Affirmative Action, etc. Of course, he covers the debacle in 2000 when the political biases of the Court were revealed. The book was written about the Court as it was constituted during the administration of George W. Bush, so that we’re primed to understand the consequences of the upcoming retirements. The Nine is rich in material for discussion; it touches on so many of the hot button issues of our times in such a compelling way, that I can’t recomment it strongly enough.
The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World by Michael Pollan. Bloomsbury, 2002.
There’s been a flurry of books about food–what we should/shouldn’t eat, how our food is processed, how we don’t know what it is we’re eating, etc. Pollan’s a great writer on this subject and in this book he’s picked four plants illustrate aspects of the human-plant relationship, past and present. After reading the first chapter, about the apple, I finally understood why there are so many beautiful, complicated flowers in the world and how all the apples that came from Johnny Appleseed’s trees were used (not as snacks for children). In the other three chapters he discusses the tulip, marijuana, and the potato, using the four plants to discuss sweeetness, beauty, intoxication, and control. There’s lots of material for discussion here; the chapters on marijuana and potatoes are especially interesting.
The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope by Jonathan Alter. Simon & Schuster, 2007.
This was the first book we read, in January, 2009, and the timing couldn’t have been better, with Obama’s inauguration coming up and the financial meltdown the biggest news item. FDR, the patrician with the common touch, didn’t really have a plan to solve the economic woes he inherited in 1933; he and his advisors made it up as they went along, abandoning efforts that didn’t look like they would bear fruit, sticking with the ones that looked like they’d work. The times were so dire that Congress was willing to pass legislation that FDR proposed without opposition or even much scrutiny–something Obama has certainly not experienced! We were startled to read that Hoover, FDR’s predecessor, tried to rope FDR into endorsing his policies in the period between Election Day and Inauguration Day. FDR wasn’t buying and Hoover became progressively more insistent and angry. By Inauguration Day (which was in March), the two men were not on speaking terms. The author, journalist Jonathan Alter, provides a journalist’s view of the man and the times–popular, entertaining, but also filled with the details that make it come alive. We had a good discussion and felt that it we were off to a good start. I was pleased, since I suggested the book!
