Being consumed with writing and research, I’ve neglected my first love: literature. Then I picked “Angela’s Ashes” from my shelf and began reading.
The book left me with a vivid impression of WWII-era Ireland. It’s the story of a boy growing up in dire poverty with a passive mother and an alcoholic father incapable of fulfilling his responsibility as a breadwinner. The story is heartbreaking, but McCourt tells it with such warmth, humor, and Irish practicality that it leaps from the page. If there is such a thing as tragic joy, this memoir captures it.
The author recounts his childhood in Depression-era Brooklyn as the child of Irish immigrants who decide to return to worse poverty in Ireland when his infant sister dies.
While rushing to get ready for a long flight, I grabbed “A Little History of the World” from the bottom shelf of my bookcase and headed out. I had bought the book years ago because any competent telling of thousands of years of history in under 300 pages appealed to me.
It didn’t matter that it was written for younger readers. It covers the basics most of us learned in school, and then some. Its perspective is largely European and light on its treatment of Central Asia and China. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth wasn’t even mentioned, but I attribute this to a need for brevity. Overall, the book takes us from Neanderthals to WWI with clarity and insight.
It’s easy to read, interesting, and informative. What more could you ask for?
The international bestseller: E. H. Gombrich's sweeping history of the world, for the curious of all ages
"All stories begin with 'Once upon a time.' And that's just what this story is all about: what happened, once upon a time." So begins A Little History of the World, an engaging and lively book written for readers both young and old. Rather than focusing on dry facts and dates, E. H. Gombrich vividly brings the full span of human experience on Earth to life, from the stone age to the atomic age. He paints a colorful picture of wars and…
I reread this book while researching material for a new novel. I love it because it tells the tales of traveling across Siberia through the author’s interactions with Russians. It’s intimate, a little strange, and a bit touching. Politics are the backdrop, not the focus.
To give you an idea, if you manage to get to Chernyshevsky and someone agrees to help you, your safety becomes their responsibility. In parts of Siberia, driving over roads made of human bones is thought an oddity rather than a tragedy.
It’s human, compelling, and makes me glad I live in Florida.
The author describes his eight-thousand-mile overland journey through Russia, describing his encounters with lawlessness, bureaucratic apathy, the disorder caused by widespread alcohol abuse and poverty, and the inescapable legacy of toxic waste
After AI developer Grace Urban sells her revolutionary communications technology, she learns the buyer is backed by a Russian criminal network with ties to the Kremlin.
Now the app is gone. The investor has disappeared. The woman who helped her create it has vanished.
When Grace discovers her code has been transformed into a digital weapon, she barely survives a brutal attack. The trail leads to Lithuania and to men willing to exchange her missing partner for the app.
If she recovers it, her partner lives. If she fails, her weaponized technology will wreak havoc on Western democracies without one shot being fired.
Recommended for fans of David Ignatius, David McCloskey, and Olen Steinhauer.
