Nonfiction  Suggestions

#1 Recommendation –   The Ravine: a family, a photograph, a Holocaust massacre revealed – Wendy Lower.

Holocaust historian/Claremont College Professor Lower shares her research techniques in this compelling volume, which traces the story behind a single, horrific photograph – of a Jewish mother and her children being shot by German and Ukrainian executioners. The author, a graduate of Hamilton College (B.A.) and American University (PhD), describes her travels to Ukraine and the Czech Republic and her examination of Soviet era archives, all undertaken to reveal and recapture the events on that fateful massacre day. Readers will find themselves following the author’s travels along a research trail that leads to historical truth – a fascinating, sometimes frustrating, journey. Lower has also penned Hitler’s Furies: German women in the Nazi killing fields (2013) and Nazi Empire Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine (2005), both part of the NHPL’s collection.

Biography

The Double Life of Bob Dylan: a restless, hungry feeling – Clinton Heylin

The Outlier: the unfinished presidency of Jimmy Carter – Kai Bird

My Brother, Muhammad Ali: the definitive biography – Rahaman Ali

American History

A Worse Place than Hell: how the Civil War battle of Fredericksburg changed a nation – John Matteson

Nuclear Folly: a history of the Cuban Missile Crisis – Serhii  Plokhy

Facing the Mountain: a true story of Japanese-American heroes in World War II – Daniel James Brown

The Indispensables: the diverse soldier-mariners who shaped the country, formed the Navy, and rowed Washington across the Delaware – Patrick K. O’Donnell

Science

Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, gene editing, and the future of the human race – Walter Isaacson

Earth’s Wild Music: celebrating and defending the songs of the natural world: new and selected essays – Kathleen Dean Moore

How to Hold Animals – Toshimitsu Matsuhashi

Religion/Philosophy

The Bible With and Without Jesus: how Jews and Christians read the same stories differently – Amy-Jill Levine

The Universe in a Single Atom: the convergence of science and spirituality – Dalai Lama

Republican Jesus: how the right has rewritten the Gospels – G. Anthony Keddie

 Social Issues

Pain and Prejudice: how the medical system ignores women and what we can do about it – Gabrielle Jackson

Julian Bond’s Time to Teach: a history of the southern Civil Rights Movement – Julian Bond

Big Kibble: the hidden dangers of the commercial pet food industry and how to do better by our dogs – Shawn Richard Buckley