Here are 100 books that Children of the House of Cleves fans have personally recommended if you like
Children of the House of Cleves.
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I hesitate to call myself an expert on empathy and humor, but I am absolutely passionate about both. As a performer in my earlier years, I find no greater joy than making people laugh. As a human who was lucky enough to be raised with love, I find no greater purpose, no greater hope for our survival as a species than caring for one another. The science and technology that may save humanity from extinction should spring forth from the same place as the love and humor that may save our souls (presuming we have them 😊): Compassion for one another. When you find these lessons in books, they stick.
The only non-fiction book on my list, though you could put any of Vonnegut’s fiction titles on a list about cultivating empathy in humor. However, this late-career non-fiction work from one of, if not my favorite author(s), had a dramatic impact on me. To read the thoughts, often so close to despair, of a man so skilled at telling jokes… Vonnegut directly expressed so many human insights and emotions in this book that I felt a kinship to him on another level, only heightening my appreciation for his works of fiction.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “For all those who have lived with Vonnegut in their imaginations . . . this is what he is like in person.”–USA Today
In a volume that is penetrating, introspective, incisive, and laugh-out-loud funny, one of the great men of letters of this age–or any age–holds forth on life, art, sex, politics, and the state of America’s soul. From his coming of age in America, to his formative war experiences, to his life as an artist, this is Vonnegut doing what he does best: Being himself. Whimsically illustrated by the author, A Man Without a…
The dragons of Yuro have been hunted to extinction.
On a small, isolated island, in a reclusive forest, lives bandit leader Marani and her brother Jacks. With their outlaw band they rob from the rich to feed themselves, raiding carriages and dodging the occasional vindictive…
A professor of business at the University of Cambridge, I've spent over two decades studying innovation. I've been particularly interested in “frugal innovation”: how small teams now use ubiquitous tools and technologies to achieve what only large corporations or governments could a decade ago. I've written two books about this phenomenon: Jugaad Innovation and Frugal Innovation about the private sector. Whenever I gave talks about them, there was always the question: What does this mean for governments? I began to study how the state could use new technologies and ways of organizing to deliver services to its citizens better, faster and cheaper, and how governments should regulate and cultivate such tools used by the private sector.
The author of this book, Aneesh Chopra, became the first chief technology officer of the United States government in 2009. Prior to that, he was the Secretary of Technology for Virginia and managing director for a health care think tank. As CTO for the US government, Chopra led the administration’s attempts to create a more open, tech-savvy government. In this book, he draws on his experience and interviews with policy experts and tech insiders to show how government can establish a new paradigm for the internet era, one that allows us to tackle the most challenging problems, from economic development to veteran affairs. Once again, it was a source of inspiration for me. My own book extends his discussion of the US federal government to the state and city level, as well as looks at many other countries around the world, both developed and developing.
Over the last twenty years, our economy and our society have been completely revolutionized by technology. As Aneesh Chopra shows in Innovative State, once it became clear how much this would change America, a movement arose around the idea that these same technologies could reshape and improve government. But the idea languished, and while the private sector innovated, our government stalled. The election of Barack Obama offered a new opportunity. In 2009, Aneesh Chopra was named the first Chief Technology Officer of the United States. Previously the Secretary of Technology for Virginia and managing director for a health care think…
I am a historian of early America who previously practiced law for 20 years. I have both my PhD and JD from the University of Virginia. I have taught at the University of Virginia, George Washington University, Hamilton, Oberlin, and Randolph Colleges. I have also worked at Jefferson’s Monticello for many years. While American history is often misused for narrow political ends, I am convinced that good history is not only fascinating but can assist us in understanding our world and current challenges.
Some things seem so embedded in our understanding of the nation that they must have existed forever. I was fascinated by Chervinsky’s story about how the president’s Cabinet came about: It’s not really called for in the Constitution, and, as with so many other things, George Washington had to make it up as he went along.
I am always interested in stories that show so much of what we think of as our nation was not a given but a matter of careful (and changeable) choices.
Winner of the Daughters of the American Revolution's Excellence in American History Book Award Winner of the Thomas J. Wilson Memorial Prize
"Cogent, lucid, and concise, Lindsay Chervinsky's book gives us an indispensable guide to the creation of the cabinet. With her groundbreaking study, we can now have a much greater appreciation of this essential American institution, one of the major legacies of George Washington's enlightened statecraft."-Ron Chernow, author of Washington: A Life
The US Constitution never established a presidential cabinet-the delegates to the Constitutional Convention explicitly rejected the idea. So how did George Washington create one of the most…
At five years old, Kasiel was found with the pointed ends of his ears cut off. Despite that brutal start, he’s lived twelve peaceful years with the man who took him in. Keeping his hair long over his mutilated ears helps him hide the fact that he is Vanrian, a…
After a life of teaching and writing, I have been reading widely in the literature on the Civil War North to set the stage for my next project, a book on the life and times of my great-grandfather, who has loomed over my imagination since I was a boy during the years of the Civil War Bicentennial. Both a soldier and politician, he emerged as one the most militant of the Radical Republicans in the early years of Reconstruction. What follows is my personal list of very important, very readable, recent books on the Northern experience of the war that I will have by my side as I start writing.
How did the war start? Certainly, the South seceded after Lincoln’s election, but was apocalyptic war inevitable? Why did the North rise to defend the Union so passionately? If I may be so bold, Adam Goodheart’s 2011 book reads like the gripping sequel to my book.
In a series of powerful, beautifully written geographically and biographically focused stories, running from the 1860 election to the electric response to Fort Sumter, the rising of the state militias, the horrors of Bull Run, and the first moves toward emancipation at Fort Monroe.
In wonderful narrative form, Goodheart tracks the eruption of Union sentiment and the emergence of Lincoln as president, both so essential to carrying the North through the war. A great read, presenting important perspective on coming of the Civil War.
A gripping and original account of how the Civil War began and a second American revolution unfolded, setting Abraham Lincoln on the path to greatness and millions of slaves on the road to freedom.
An epic of courage and heroism beyond the battlefields, 1861 introduces us to a heretofore little-known cast of Civil War heroes—among them an acrobatic militia colonel, an explorer’s wife, an idealistic band of German immigrants, a regiment of New York City firemen, a community of Virginia slaves, and a young college professor who would one day become president. Their stories take us from the corridors of…
I love writing historical fiction. I enjoy the research and creating long-lost worlds filled with little-known historical accuracies that intrigue my readers. It is no surprise then that I enjoy reading about the future - the other side of the coin. I always find it interesting to see how writers create a post-apocalyptic society. What was the catastrophic event? (TCE) What caused it and how do the different characters react to adversity when their old world is taken away from them? Inevitably they have to survive in the new system but will they have learned their lesson or will they return to their old ways?
What happens when you take the meritocracy to extremes and you can only access the best of food and housing etc when your Q is the highest? Dalcher creates an interesting future world, damning of social engineering and genetic manipulation, and reminds us that it was less than a hundred years ago that certain war-hungry fellas (and a few women) salivated over thoughts of a perfect Aryan race. A great page-turner but with a few ‘Deus ex Machina' plot twists with which I’m still struggling. Nevertheless a very worthy read.
**CHRISTINA DALCHER'S GRIPPING NEW THRILLER FEMLANDIA IS AVAILABLE TO PRE-ORDER NOW!**
'Terrifyingly plausible' Louise Candlish
'Devastating and brilliant' Woman & Home
'Thought-provoking' Alice Feeney
'Shocking . . . A powerful tale' Cosmopolitan
'Timely' Kia Abdullah
IN THIS WORLD, PERFECTION IS EVERYTHING.
It begins as a way to make things fairer. An education system that will benefit everyone. It's all in the name of progress.
This is what Elena Fairchild believes. As a teacher in one of the government's elite schools for children with high 'Q' scores, she witnesses the advantages first-hand.
But when Elena's own daughter scores lower than expected,…
I came to Hong Kong as a journalist in 1987, expecting to stay a few years and then move on to the next story. But the former British colony quickly got its teeth into me, not least because I was there during the tumultuous years of transition to Chinese rule. I am always in the market to understand more about this wonderful place, which I left reluctantly in 2021 in fear that the fast-bellowing crackdown on freedom of speech was coming my way. Departure has, if anything, given me a greater appetite for reading more about Hong Kong and China. I hope these books will explain why this is so.
This is arguably the best history of Hong Kong I have read. It is strongest in covering the colonial period, and I constantly find myself going back to it for reference.
The author carefully charts how a colony that the British never wanted in the first place evolved into a great financial and commercial center and played a pivotal role in the development of China as a whole.
In 1842 a "barren island" was reluctantly ceded by China to an unenthusiastic Britain. "Hong Kong", grumbled Palmerston, "will never be a mart of trade". But from the outset the new colony prospered, its early growth owing much to the energy and resourcefulness of opium traders, who soon diversified in more respectable directions. In 1859 the Kowloon Peninsula was sold to Britain, and in 1898 a further area of the mainland, the "New Territories", was leased to Britain for 99 years - the arrangement from which the present difficulties spring. Despite its extraordinary economic success, which has made it one…
Resonant Blue and Other Stories
by
Mary Vensel White,
The first collection of award-winning short fiction from the author of Bellflower and Things to See in Arizona, whose writing reflects “how we can endure and overcome our personal histories, better understand our ancestral ones, and accept the unknown future ahead.”
During the later Cold War, I grew up in neutral and peaceful Switzerland. My German mother’s family lived apart in divided Germany. I knew as a child that I would become a historian because I wanted to find out what had happened to my mother’s home and why there was a Cold War in the first place. My father’s service as a Swiss Red Cross delegate in Korea after 1953 raised my interest in East Asia. After learning Russian and Chinese, I wrote my first book on The Sino-Soviet Split. When I was finishing the book, I resolved to reinvent myself as a global historian, which is why I wrote my second book as a reinterpretation of the global Cold War as a series of parallel regional Cold Wars in Asia, the Middle East, and Europe.
Ned Richardson-Little explores the mostly forgotten history of the human rights discourse in a Communist dictatorship. Believe it or not, East Germany tried to pose as a promoter of human rights in international and domestic affairs. It spent much effort and many resources on constructing an alternative to Western-dominated human rights debates. Even if Communist Germany disappeared in 1989/90, its warped human rights discourse beforehand had exerted a major influence on dissidents and their increasing opposition to the authoritarian police state in which they were living.
Richardson-Little exposes the forgotten history of human rights in the German Democratic Republic, placing the history of the Cold War, Eastern European dissidents and the revolutions of 1989 in a new light. By demonstrating how even a communist dictatorship could imagine itself to be a champion of human rights, this book challenges popular narratives on the fall of the Berlin Wall and illustrates how notions of human rights evolved in the Cold War as they were re-imagined in East Germany by both dissidents and state officials. Ultimately, the fight for human rights in East Germany was part of a global…
I am an emeritus professor of criminology and criminal justice who came of age in the 1960s at the UC Berkeley School of Criminology where I developed a passion for the administration of criminal justice and the securing of human rights. I have authored more than 20 books, including five award winning titles such as: Criminology on Trump (2022) and Indicting the 45th President: Boss Trump, the GOP, and What We Can Do About the Threat to American Democracy (2024). My third book to complete the Trump trilogy is underway, Regime Change, Authoritarian Treason, and the Outlaw-in-Chief: President Donald Trump’s Struggle to Kill U.S. Democracy & Realign American Global Power.
Who better to tell the inside story about the racketeer-in-chief than Trump’s “fixer” Michael Cohen, who for 10 years would have taken a bullet for Donald? Attorney Cohen’s betrayal and insider account of his former Boss is the most informative for understanding Trump’s modus operandi of lawlessness, corruption, and greed.
It also explains how the fraudster-in-chief mafioso style grifted and colluded his way to the White House in 2017.
"I read it cover-to-cover. I did not intend to, but I started at the beginning and didn't put it down until it was over."-Rachel Maddow, MSNBC
This book almost didn't see the light of day as government officials tried to bar its publication. The Inside Story of the Real President Trump, by His Former Attorney and Personal Advisor-The Man Who Helped Get Him Into the Oval Office
Once Donald Trump's fiercest surrogate, closest confidant, and staunchest defender, Michael Cohen knows where the skeletons are buried.
This is the most devastating business and political horror…
My friend Lou Cannon, the great reporter and Reagan biographer, once told me, “if you want to really learn about a subject, write a book about it.” As a political journalist and author of several books about current and past politics, wanted to learn more about the Founding Fathers, and as a map buff I tried to understand how they understood a continent most of which was not accurately mapped and how they envisioned the geographic limits and reach of a new republic more extensive in size than most nations in Europe. The book is my attempt to share what I learned with readers, and to invite them to read more about these extraordinary leaders.
Gordon Wood is one of the giants of a generation of historians of the Revolution and the early Republic.
This book covers the 1790s and the years of the nineteenth century up through the War of 1812. Both Federalists and Jeffersonians faced the task of navigating the young republic through the turbulent waters of a world war between revolutionary France, America’s Revolutionary War ally, and mercantile Britain, its chief trading partner, that lasted with only short intervals between 1793 and 1815.
Wood leans somewhat to the Jeffersonians, who were more in line (in his view and, as I was reading him, mine) with most Americans who became less deferential and hierarchical during and immediately after the Revolution.
The Oxford History of the United States is by far the most respected multi-volume history of the USA. The series includes three Pulitzer Prize winners, two New York Times bestsellers, and winners of the Bancroft and Parkman Prizes. Now, in the newest volume in the series, one of America's most esteemed historians, Gordon S. Wood, offers a brilliant account of the early American Republic, ranging from 1789 and the beginning of the national government to the end of the War of 1812. As Wood reveals, the period was marked by tumultuous change in all aspects of American life-in politics, society,…
After her mother is killed in a rare Northern Michigan tornado, Sadie Wixom is left with only her father and grandfather to guide her through young adulthood. Miles away in western Saskatchewan, Stefan Montegrand and his Indigenous family are displaced from their land by multinational energy companies. They are taken…
I am a professor of politics and international relations with a focus on Iran. My passion for the country started while studying Persian or Farsi with an exceptional professor in graduate school. During that time, I had the privilege of traveling to Iran three times to study the language and conduct research on rural politics. This period coincided with the Green Movement uprising, a pivotal moment in the country. Since then, I have been enthralled by Iranian history, politics, and culture. Their richness and complexity make it a subject that can be studied and appreciated for a lifetime.
This book is written by one of the leading historians and commentators on Iran. As the title suggests, the book offers an in-depth and nuanced analysis of the myriad sociopolitical forces and changes in Iran between its Constitutional Revolution (1905-09) and Islamic Revolution (1977-79). Of particular emphasis is the evolution and fate of monarchists, constitutionalists, leftists, nationalists, and Islamists. At times, the book tempts the reader to adopt a teleological perspective and contemplate missed opportunities during critical junctures or inflection points that could have put the country on a more participatory and progressive path.
Emphasizing the interaction between political organizations and social forces, Ervand Abrahamian discusses Iranian society and politics during the period between the Constitutional Revolution of 1905-1909 and the Islamic Revolution of 1977-1979. Presented here is a study of the emergence of horizontal divisions, or socio-economic classes, in a country with strong vertical divisions based on ethnicity, religious ideology, and regional particularism. Professor Abrahamian focuses on the class and ethnic roots of the major radical movements in the modem era, particularly the constitutional movement of the 1900s, the communist Tudeh party of the 1940s, the nationalist struggle of the early 1950s, and…
