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