This is a very excellent book written by a real visionary. McGhee has a sharp mind which she uses to combine historical facts with personal anecdotes and stories that she gathered from interviews as she crossed the country from Maine to Mississippi to California. She wanted to discover why it is so common for people to
I’ve been reading this book to the wee one hanging around and it is fun to read. I love the illustrations — and the short sentences, such as ‘when a baby is born there should be a parade’ or ‘a screaming song is good to know if you have to scream’ — all true. I
I didn’t want this book to end. Really, I didn’t. Part natural history, part evolutionary biology, part adventure epic, all fascinating. Science, philosophy, history, biography. This book satisfied on so many levels. I just soaked it up. Jonathan Meiburg offers us a riveting portrait of these fascinating birds – genus caracara. Intelligent and resourceful, historically
I was introduced to Joy Harjo through an On Being interview. She is primarily a poet, but she also plays the saxophone both solo and with pulled-together players she often calls the Arrow Dynamics Band. She became the first Native American Poet Laureate in 2019 and will serve through 2021. Crazy Brave is her memoir
The order of books I read is often a product of availability at the library. I reserve items that sometimes take a long time to come. Every once in awhile, a theme happens to emerge. The three books I’ve read most recently are: Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, The Seed Keeper by Diane Wilson,
Oh, grant yourselves these four glorious minutes of light and shadow…
I learned about Farley and her newly published book when I attended a zoom book tour. Farley’s well researched reporting on the popularization of eugenics at the turn of the 20th century is eye-opening. Farley’s work shines a light on very disturbing practices that have been legally supported by the Supreme Court (Buck v. Bell,
Margaret Renkl is a weekly columnist for the New York times. She is a gifted writer of prose with a poet’s sensibility. In this very personal memoir comprised of short essays, she weaves together her intimate relationship with nature and her deep ties to her family. On the book jacket, Alan Lightman writes, “Gracefully written
I became interested in Pauli Murray when I heard an interview on Democracy Now with Julie Cohen and Betsy West. While Cohen and West were making their documentary about RBG, they learned about Pauli Murray. Murray’s amazing life story motivated them to produce a documentary on her life, My Name Is Pauli Murray. I was intrigued, but the
This book was riveting, unexpectedly so. I found myself carrying it with me and reading anytime I had a few extra minutes. Colapinto writes with clarity and curiosity, with compassion, humor, and depth. This is a stunning, intelligent discourse on the voice and how its development has shaped us as a species, while we, as
Seasonal Reading 