One Year Lived by Adam Shepard

Apr18

Adam Shepard, the author of Scratch Beginnings: Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream, has a new book out. It’s called One Year Lived and like Scratch Beginnings it’s a memoir of a a year in the life of the author, Mr. Shepard. However, this time Mr. Shepard decided find out how the other half lives in a different way: he saved up his money and spent his 29th year traveling the world. He spent less than a year of college would have cost him (>$20,000), and he visited seventeen countries on four continents.

What did Adam Shepard do on his journey around the world? Well, according to the publisher’s blurb, he dug wells in Nicaragua, rode an elephant in Thailand, mustered cattle in Australia, and went bungee-jumping in Slovakia, among other exploits and escapades.

Even better than all of that adventure, Mr. Shepard read seventy-one books on his way around the world, including one in Spanish. Who says you can’t read and experience the world at the same time?

From the back of the book:

“I’m not angry. I don’t hate my job. I’m not annoyed with capitalism, and I’m indifferent to materialism. I’m not escaping emptiness, nor am I searching for meaning. I have great friends, a wonderful family, and fun roommates. The dude two doors down invited me over for steak or pork chops–my choice–on Sunday, and I couldn’t even tell you the first letter of his name. Sure, the producers of The Amazing Race have rejected all five of my applications to hotfoot around the world–all five!–and my girlfriend and I just parted ways, but I’ve whined all I can about the race, and the girl wasn’t The Girl anyway. All in all, my life is pretty fantastic. But I feel boxed in. Look at a map, and there we are, a pin stuck in the wall. There’s the United States, about twenty-four square inches worth, and there’s the rest of the world, seventeen hundred square inches begging to be explored. Career, wife, babies–of course I want these things; they’re on the horizon. Meanwhile, I’m a few memories short. Maybe I need a year to live a little.”

I haven’t actually read the book yet because it’s been kind of crazy-busy here in Semicolonland lately, but I’m looking forward to immersing myself in Adam Shepard’s around the world adventure. Mr. Shepard seems to have a knack for challenging himself and his readers with projects that demand a fresh outlook on life and inspire readers to try something a little crazy.

Like maybe fighting a bull in Nicaragua???

If you’re interested in a FREE copy of Adam Shepard’s book, One Year Lived, share a link to this post on your Facebook or Twitter either today or tomorrow. By special arrangement with the author, if you email me (sherry.early@gmail.com) or leave a comment here (with your email address) telling me that you have linked to this post on Facebook or Twitter, I will send you the link where you can download the book in an electronic format for free.

Mr. Shepard says: “People need to travel more, not only because it is satisfying and fun and inspires purpose and provides service to a world that needs it and sparks creativity, but because we need to open up our eyes to what is really going on out there. . . . The bottom line is this: in this increasingly global world, it is essential that more people (young Americans, especially) step foot out of their country.”

I agree.

Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan

Mar25

At first, there’s just darkness and silence.
“Are my eyes open? Hello?”
I can’t tell if I’m moving my mouth or if there’s even anyone to ask. It’s too dark to see. I blink once, twice, three times. There is a dull foreboding in the pit of my stomach. That, I recognize. My thoughts translate only slowly into language, as if emerging from a pot of molasses. Word by word the questions come: Where am I? Why does my scalp itch? Where is everyone? Then the world around me comes gradually into view, beginning as a pinhole, its diameter steadily expanding. Objects emerge from the murk and sharpen into focus.
I know immediately that I need to get out of here.

Unfortunately, the after-effects of Susannah Cahalan’s rare and newly discovered auto-immune disorder, Anti-NMDA-Receptor Autoimmune Encephalitis, lasted much longer than a month. Patients with this disease are often misdiagnosed and given psychiatric treatment when they really need a neurologist. And sometimes they go into a coma or die from the disease. As you can see in the video, Susannah Cahalan was given a miracle: a correct diagnosis and treatment that brought her back from madness and near-death.

The book is fascinating. Ms. Cahalan does get bogged down in some of the medical details for a few pages/paragraphs here and there, but she always comes back to human interests and how this illness affected her, her family, and the friends and colleagues who witnessed her descent into what can only be described as insanity. The fact that this disease is a physical, neurological condition in which the body’s immune system attacks the brain could be a source of hope for others who are suffering from the same disease. However, Ms. Cahalan is careful to say that the disease is rare, although maybe not as rare as originally thought, and certainly does not explain all or even the majority of cases of schizophrenia and schizoid behavior.

Brain on Fire is a readable, riveting entry in a genre that is one of my guilty favorites: memoirs of madness and people on the edge of mental illness or simple eccentricity. I don’t intend to take pleasure from someone else’s misfortune, but it helps and interests me to read about people who are “outliers”. From them, I believe we can learn what sanity and wisdom and even outlandish creativity really look like.

Duck Dynasty and The Duck Commander Family

Mar18

Other than K-dramas, the other culture I’ve been exploring via television lately is that of redneck Louisiana and duck-hunting as portrayed in the A&E series Duck Dynasty. It’s just as fascinating, if not quite as foreign, as Korean drama culture.

Duck Dynasty is a “reality TV” series starring the Robertson clan, owners of a multi-million dollar business that creates products for duck hunters, including duck calls, hunting videos, and other hunting paraphernalia. The company is called Duck Commander, and there’s a companion company, Buck Commander, that sells stuff for deer hunters. The show, however, isn’t about hunting so much as it is about the Robertsons and their weird and wonderful family dynamic.

Meet the Robertsons:

Phil is the family patriarch, the man who founded Duck Commander, a fanatical and skilled duck hunter, designer of the double reed duck call that is Duck Commander’s featured product. Phil wants everyone to be “happy, happy, happy” without bothering him too much, and he doesn’t have much use for “yuppies” and modern technology.
Ms. Kay is Phil’s wife and mother to the four Robertson boys. Ms. Kay can cook anything and make it taste great; her speciality is fried squirrel and squirrel brains. She says the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, and squirrel brains make you smart.
Three of the “boys” are featured in the TV show:
Willie is the CEO of Duck COmmander. He spends most of his time on the TV show trying to get the rest of the family to work and build duck calls instead of taking naps, going hunting, and generally goofing off.
Jase is Willie’s older brother, but he’s more interested in working in the duck call room, designing duck calls and testing them. Jase and Willie have different,complementary roles in the business, but outside of business hours they are highly competitive in everything from fishing to sports to cooking to outwitting one another.
Jep is the baby of the family, kind of quiet, but according to the book he does a lot of the filming for the hunting videos.
The other main character in the TV shows is Uncle Si, a Vietnam veteran who has the best and funniest lines in the show. Uncle Si makes the reeds for the duck calls. He also drinks sweet tea by the gallon from a plastic Tupperware glass that he carries with him everywhere. Uncle Si reminds me of a combination of Engineer Husband’s two brothers: the storytelling, the exaggerations, the beard, the eccentricity.

After I watched most of seasons one and two of Duck Dynasty, I wanted to know how much of the show was true and how much was put-on. So I read The Duck Commander Family: How Faith, Family, and Ducks Built a Dynasty by Willie and Korie (Willie’s wife) Robertson (with Mark Schlabach). The book isn’t a classic, but it serves the purpose of giving more information about the Robertson family background. Each TV episode closes with the entire clan gathered around the table, and Phil prays a blessing over the food and the family. The book tells how the family came to have such a strong heritage of faith in God. It wasn’t easy. Phil and Kay married young, and Phil became an alcoholic and deserted the family for a time. After God brought him to a realization of his need for Christ and his love of his family, Phil returned to Ms. Kay and his sons and became a strong man of God, still a little quirky but grounded in the Bible and faith in God’s provision.

I highly recommend the TV series, and then the book if you want more information about this wacky, unconventional, and inspirational family. Warning: the Robertsons are NOT your typical rich, sophisticated family. They like to blow things up, shoot animals and eat them, and generally run wild. It’s a great TV show to watch with the young men in your family, older men, too.

Swimming with Scapulars: True Confessions of a Young Catholic by Matthew Lickona

Feb15

My Protestant sensibilities are put off and, yes, somewhat offended by what Mr. Lickona and the Catholic Church call “sacramentals”. A scapular is a sacramental (sacred object or action) worn by lay Catholics to remind them of their devotion to the church and to the Lord:

“The devotional scapular typically consists of two small (usually rectangular) pieces of cloth, wood or laminated paper, a few inches in size, which may bear religious images or text. These are joined by two bands of cloth and the wearer places one square on the chest, rests the bands one on each shoulder and lets the second square drop down the back. In many cases . . . the scapular come(s) with a set of promises for the faithful who wear them. Some of the promises are rooted in tradition, and others have been formally approved by religious leaders. For instance, for Roman Catholics, as for some other sacramentals, over the centuries several popes have approved specific indulgences for scapulars.” ~Wikipedia

It feels superstitious to me, and Mr. Lickona admits in his book that the idea of sacramentals and indulgences sometimes bothers him a bit, too. Nevertheless, as I read about Matthew Lickona’s spiritual journey from cradle Catholic to mature and devout defender of the faith, I was impressed with the centrality of the things that I believe really matter: devotion to Christ and commitment to trust in His grace to carry us through the things that we don’t always understand.

“I am a Roman Catholic, baptized as an infant and raised in the faith, a faith which holds the exemplary and redemptive suffering of Jesus Christ at its core.”

“My faith is weak. I am anxious when I think about the future. I have trouble considering the lilies of the field. I ought to trust in the Lord, I know; it’s His will I’m trying to obey. But He has been known to give crosses as gifts, so I often look elsewhere for comfort.”

“I think about God and the faith, and I hope my thinking has some spiritual worth. But knowing a great deal about God is not knowing God. Faith in Him is bound up with knowing Him, and woe to me if my faith is borrowed from the true faith of others. Because if I do not know Him, I fear He will not know me, and the door will be shut.”

“Just as I don’t base my faith on a personal experience of God, I don’t imagine that any particular personal suffering would make me doubt his existence, any more than it would make me doubt that water is wet. I do not tie up God’s existence, or even His love, with the sufferings of the world. My God is the God of Job.”

My God, too is the God of Job and of Peter, (Mr. Lickona would call him Saint Peter) who said to Jesus, “”Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words that give eternal life.”

As long as we’re both following Jesus for those words that give eternal life, I can ignore the scapulars and the statues of the saints and the other Catholic trappings that Mr. Lickona says draw him to Christ and that I see as distractions at best. I think Matthew Lickona and I would disagree about many things, but it seems to me after reading his spiritual memoir that he and I would agree about Jesus.

I’ll be content to let Him sort out the rest of it at the Judgement, and if Mr. Lickona wants to go swimming with his scapular firmly in place to remind him of the grace and mercy of Our Lord Jesus, who am I to argue?

“Who are you to judge someone elseâ€™s servant? To their own master, servants stand or fall. And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand.” Romans 14:4

Matthew Lickona’s blog, Korrektiv: bad Catholics blogging at a time near the end of the world

Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard

Jan30

Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard.

One of my children used to be particularly interested in naming and researching the four U.S. presidents who were assassinated: Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and Kennedy. This book about the life, presidency, and assassination of President James Garfield would have been above her reading level since she was only 10 or 11 years old when she had the fascination with assassinated presidents, but it definitely is full of information about Garfield and would be absorbing for anyone with a similar interest.

Like Lincoln, Garfield grew up in poverty. He became an educated man by dint of hard work and his widowed mother’s sacrifice. He married a woman with whom he shared at best friendship, and only many years later, after Garfield had an affair and then re-committed to his marriage, did the two of them become partners in love in the truest sense. This part of the story alone is fascinating, a good example for our age of love’em and leave’em. (This breach of trust and reconciliation is documented in letters that Lucretia, his wife, kept and later left to his presidential library.)

But there are several other fascinating stories in this book:
the story of Vice President Chester Arthur and his conversion from party hack to presidential promoter of honesty and civil service reform.

the saga of Alexander Graham Bell’s desperate attempt to invent a medical device that would locate the bullet lodged inside President Garfield’s body before Garfield died.

the history of medical sterilization techniques that had not yet been accepted as standard practice in the U.S., contributing to the infection that eventually killed the president.

the sad (and currently relevant in light of the attention that is being focused on random shootings after Sandy Hook) story of the assassin, Charles Guiteau, who was obviously as mad as March hare but nevertheless cunning enough to plan a successful presidential assassination all by himself.

Candice Millard also wrote the book I read a couple of years ago about Theodore Roosevelt’s trip into the Amazon rainforest, River of Doubt, and my plan is to read anything she writes in the future. Ms. Millard, by the way, got her master’s degree in literature from Baylor University. Destiny of the Republic won the Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime.

Christmas in Kobe, Japan, 1912

Dec8

Lottie Moon was born into a comfortable life on an antebellum plantation in Virginia. She died on Christmas Eve, 1912, on board a ship off the coast of Japan, some say of sickness due to malnutrition, after a life of ministering to and suffering with the Chinese people she loved. Between her birth and death, she met the power and love of Jesus Christ who forgave her, redeemed her, and sent her to teach the people of China about Jesus and the “great tidings of great joy.”

From her letters:

“Here I am working alone in a city of many thousand inhabitants. It is grievous to think of these human souls going down to death without even one opportunity of hearing the name of Jesus. How many can I reach? The needs of these people press upon my soul, and I cannot be silent.”

“Our hearts were made glad last Sabbath by the baptism of an individual who has interested us by his firm stand under the persecutions of his … family. They fastened him in a room without food or water, and endeavored to starve him into submission. Providentially, they did not take away his Christian books. He studied these more closely than ever. The pangs of hunger he satisfied by eating some raw beans he found in the room, and when he wanted water he commenced to dig a well in the room in which he was confined. Chinese houses are built on the ground and do not have plank floors as with us. When the family discovered the well-digging they yielded. They had no wish to ruin their dwelling. The man has shown that he is made of stern stuff, and we hope he will be very useful as a Christian.”

“Recently, on a Sunday which I was spending in a village near Pingtu city, two men came to me with the request that I would conduct the general services. They wished me to read and explain, to a mixed audience of men and women, the parable of the prodigal son. I replied that no one should undertake to speak without preparation, and that I had made none. (I had been busy all the morning teaching the women and girls.) After awhile they came again to know my decision. I said, “It is not the custom of the Ancient church that women preach to men.” I could not, however, hinder their calling upon me to lead in prayer. Need I say that, as I tried to lead their devotions, it was hard to keep back the tears of pity for those sheep not having a shepherd. Men asking to be taught and no one to teach them.” February 9, 1889.

“How many there are … who imagine that because Jesus paid it all, they need pay nothing, forgetting that the prime object of their salvation was that they should follow in the footsteps of Jesus Christ in bringing back a lost world to God.” September 15, 1887.

“Is not the festive season when families and friends exchange gifts in memory of The Gift laid on the altar of the world for the redemption of the human race, the most appropriate time to consecrate a portion from abounding riches and scant poverty to send forth the good tidings of great joy into all the earth?” September 15, 1887.

You’ll find these quotes and many more from Lottie Moon’s letters in Send the Light: Lottie Moon’s Letters and Other Writings, edited by Keith Harper, published by Mercer University Press.

“When Moon returned from her second furlough in 1904, she was deeply struck by the suffering of the people who were literally starving to death all around her. She pleaded for more money and more resources, but the mission board was heavily in debt and could send nothing. Mission salaries were voluntarily cut. Unknown to her fellow missionaries, Moon shared her personal finances and food with anyone in need around her, severely affecting both her physical and mental health. In 1912, she only weighed 50 pounds. Alarmed, fellow missionaries arranged for her to be sent back home to the United States with a missionary companion. However, Moon died on route, at the age of 72, on December 24, 1912, in the harbor of Kobe, Japan.” Wikipedia, Lottie Moon

Me, Myself and Bob by Phil Vischer

Oct21

“If God gives you a dream, and the dream comes to life and God shows up in it, and then the dream dies, it may be that God wants to see what is more important to you –the dream or him. And once he’s seen that, you may get your dream back. Or you may not, and you may live the rest of your life without it. But that will be O.K., because you’ll have God.” ~Richard Porter in Me, Myself and Bob by Phil Vischer.

Phil Vischer had a dream, to build the biggest and the best Christian media company ever, to be the next (Christian) Walt Disney. And God blessed that dream and grew Big Idea Productions into a corporation worth millions of dollars, producing videos that encouraged and entertained millions of kids and adults. Then, God took it away.

This story was powerful. I understand what it is to have a dream, a Godly dream, and have it taken away or deferred. I understand what it is to ask God, “Why? Why have You not given me this good thing? This thing that is the desire of my heart and that will honor and glorify You?” It’s really hard. I don’t know real physical suffering, and maybe I would be a wimp when it came to actual suffering. But I know emotional and spiritual suffering and despair because I’ve been there. Sometimes I’m still there. And all know is that I hang on to two verses in the Bible. These are my life verses:

Job 13:15. God might kill me, but I have no other hope. I am going to argue my case with him. (New Living Translation)

John 6:67-68. So Jesus asked the twelve disciples, “You don’t want to leave, too, do you?”
Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

I stand with Peter and Job and Phil Vischer.

“The Christian life wasn’t about running like a maniac; it was about walking with God. It wasn’t about impact; it was about obedience. It wasn’t about making stuff up; it was about listening. . . . God doesn’t love me because of what I can do for Him. He just loves me—even when I’ve done nothing at all.”

If you know who Phil Vischer is and you’re a fan, I highly recommend this memoir. If you’re not familiar with the creator of Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber and Big Idea Productions, I still think you might find Mr. Vischer to be an inspirational guy, in an upside-down kind of way. He tells us in Me, Myself and Bob what God showed him when the Dream, the God-given dream, died in a horribly messy and hurtful way. If you don’t have the book, you can read the short version of What Happened to Big Idea here at Phil Vischer’s blog.

Texas Tuesday: Goodbye to a River by John Graves

Jul24

Published in 1959, this nonfiction narrative tells the story of a November 1957 trip down a piece of the Brazos River in central Texas, just before several dams were built along the river to change its course and character forever. Hence, the title: Goodbye to a River.

Mr. Graves grew up along the Brazos, in Granbury, Texas or nearby as best I can tell, and his writing reflects his love for Texas, the Brazos, country living, and history. It’s also a nature-lover’s book and a chronicle of a lost way of life, the Texas of the 1800’s and early twentieth century. I enjoyed the book immensely, even though it wasn’t exactly about MY part of Texas, too far east for that. It was, nevertheless, about the kind of people that I knew when I was a kid of a girl growing up in West Texas among the fishermen and ranchers and hunters and wannabes. My daddy hunted deer during deer season and fed them out of season (I never really understood that). He also went fishin’, but he never paddled a canoe down the river.

The book and the journey it tells of are a taste of Texas and solitude and reminiscence and homely encounters with classic Texan characters, alive and dead.

“We don’t know much about solitude these days, nor do we want to. A crowded world thinks that aloneness is always loneliness, and that to seek it is perversion. Maybe so. Man is a colonial creature and owes most of his good fortune to his ability to stand his fellows’ feet on his corns and the musk of their armpits in his nostrils. Company comforts him; those around him share his dreams and bear the slings and arrows with him.” (p.83-84)

“Mankind is one thing; a man’s self is another. What that self is tangles itself knottily with what his people were, and what they came out of. Mine came out of Texas, as did I. If those were louts they were my own louts.” (p.144)

“I used to be suspicious of the kind of writing where characters are smitten by correct quotations at appropriate moments. I still am, but not as much. Things do pop out clearly in your head, alone, when the upper layers of your mind are unmisted by talk with other men. Odd bits and scraps and thoughts and phrases from all your life and all your reading keep boiling up to view like grains of rice in a pot on the fire. Sometimes they even make sense . . .” (p.151)

“If it hadn’t been for Mexicans, the South Texas Anglos would never have learned how to cope right with longhorn cattle. If it hadn’t been for Texans, nobody else on the Great Plains would have learned how either.” (p.199)

“Neither a land nor a people ever starts over clean. Country is compact of all its past disasters and strokes of luck–of flood and drouth, of the caprices of glaciers and sea winds, of misuse and disuse and greed and ignorance and wisdom–and though you may doze away at the cedar and coax back the bluestem and mesquite grass and side-oats grama you’re not going to manhandle into anything entirely new. It’s limited by what it has been, by what’s happened to it. And a people . . is much the same in this as land. It inherits. Its progenitors stand behind its elbow.” (p.237)

The moral of the story, and I think it’s true, is that I carry Texas and Texans and the Texas landscape in my bones. Even though I’ve never once paddled a canoe down a Texas river or lived rough in a campsite beside the river or caught or shot my own dinner and cooked it up, I am still somehow the inheritor of something that my ancestors, many of whom did all those things and more besides, passed down to me. I’m a city girl, but the Texas wildness and independence and what sometimes turns into a lack of respect for authority and a heedless devil-may-care attitude–all that lives in me, and more besides. I am a daughter of Texas, and Goodbye to a River was a wonderful tribute to some of the places and stories that make Texas great.

For more books about rivers, see last week’s edition of Book Tag with the theme of rivers.

For more books about Texas, see my list of 55 Texas Tales or past editions of Texas Tuesday.

If you love the essays and the localism of Wendell Berry, and especially if you have some connection to Texas, I think you would enjoy Goodbye to a River.

More History and Heroes: 55 Biographies and Memoirs I Want To Read

Jul18

Anthony, Carl Sferrazza. Florence Harding: The First Lady, The Jazz Age, And The Death Of Americaâ€™s Most Scandalous President
Berg, A. Scott. Lindbergh.
Brookiser, Richard. James Madison.
Buechner, Frederick. The Sacred Journey: A Memoir of Early Days.
Byrne, Paula. Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead.
Carter, Jimmy. An Hour Before Daylight: Memories of a Rural Boyhood.
Chang, Jung. Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China.
Chesnut, Mary Boykin. A Diary from Dixie.
Colledge, Gary. God and Charles Dickens: Recovering the Christian Voice of a Classic Author. Recommended by Gina Dalfonzo at NRO’s Summer Reading List.
Conroy, Pat. My Reading Life. I just got this one from the library, and Eldest Daughter is reading it. I’ll see if I can get her to post a review when she’s finished.
DeMuth, Mary. Thin Places: A Memoir.
Dineson, Isak. Out of Africa.
Foer, Joshua. Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything.
Freeman-Keel, Tom. The Disappearing Duke: The Improbable Tale of an Eccentric English Family.
Godden, Rumer. A Time to Dance, No Time to Weep.
Goodwin, Doris Kearns. Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.
Gourevitch, Philip. We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families.
Hall, Ron. Same Kind of Different As Me: A Modern-Day Slave, an International Art Dealer, and the Unlikely Woman Who Bound Them Together. I just borrowed this book from the library, too.
Harrer, Heinrich. Seven Years in Tibet.
Harrison, Rosina. Rose: My Life in Service to Lady Astor.
Hemingway, Ernest. A Moveable Feast.
Hirsi, Ayaan. Infidel.
Hitchcock, Susan Tyler. Mad Mary Lamb: Lunacy and Murder in Literary London.
James, Marquis. The Raven.
James, P.D. Time To Be In Earnest: A Fragment Of Autobiography.
Junger, Sebastian. The Perfect Storm A True Story of Men Against the Sea.
Kamara-Ummuna, Agnes and Emily Holland. And Still Peace Did Not Come: A Memoir of Reconciliation.
Kendall, Joshua. The Man Who Made Lists: Love, Death, Madness, and the Creation of Roget’s Thesaurus.
Kirkby, Mary-Ann. I Am Hutterite: The Fascinating True Story of a Young Womanâ€™s Journey to Reclaim Her Heritage.
Korda, Michael. Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia.
Korda, Michael. Ike: An American Hero. Recommended by Patrick Lee at NRO’s Summer Reading List.
Krakauer, Jon. Into the Wild.
Kullberg, Kelly Monroe. Finding God at Harvard.
Mandela, Nelson. Long Walk to Freedom.
Markham, Beryl. West With the Night.
Massie, Robert. Peter the Great: His Life and World.
Massie Robert. Catherine the Great. Recommended by Samuel Gregg in NRO’s Summer Reading List.
Matteson, John. Eden’s Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father.
McCullough, David. Truman. I got a copy of this book for Christmas, but I still haven’t read it. Before next Christmas?
Millard, Candice. Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President.
Morris, Roy. Fraud of the Century: Rutherford B. Hayes, Samuel Tilden, and the Stolen Election of 1876.
Naidi, Azar. Reading Lolita in Tehran.
Nevin, Allan. Grover Cleveland: A Study in Courage.
O’Brien, Michael. Mrs. Adams in Winter: A Journey in the Last Days of Napoleon.
Orwell, George. Down and Out in Paris and London.
Panter-Downes, Mollie. London War Notes 1939 to 1945.
Roe, Dianah. The Rossettis in Wonderland: A Victorian Family History.
Skloot, Rebecca. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.
Steinmeyer, Jim. The Last Greatest Magician in the World: Howard Thurston versus Houdini & the Battles of the American Wizards.
Taylor, Hudson. The Autobiography of Hudson Taylor: Missionary to China. I have this one on my Kindle.
Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812
Ung, Loung. First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers.
White, William Allen. A Puritan in Babylon: The Story of Calvin Coolidge.
Wilbur, Gregory. Glory and Honor: The Music and Artistic Legacy of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Wolff, Tobias. This Boy’s Life.
Wrong, Michaela. Itâ€™s Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistle-Blower.

So many books. So little time. Have you read any of these books? Do you recommend that I move any one or more of them to the top of the TBR list?

History and Heroes: 55 Recommended Books of Biography, Autobiography, Memoir,and History

Jul16

Ambrose, Stephen. Band of Brothers.
Bowen, Carolyn Drinker. Miracle at Philadelphia.
Catton, Bruce. Civil War Trilogy: The Coming Fury, Terrible Swift Sword, Never Call Retreat.
Chernow, Ron. Washington: A Life.
Chesterton, G.K. The Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton.
Colson, Chuck. Born Again.
Costain, Thomas. The Conquering Family, The Last Plantaganets, The Magnificent Century, The Three Edwards. A fantastic series of four books telling all the history of medieval England from
Doss, Helen. The Family Nobody Wanted. This story of international adoption made a huge impression on me when I was a teenager.
Eliot, Elisabeth. Through Gates of Splendor.
Forbes, Esther. Paul Revere and the World He Lived In.
Franklin, Benjamin. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.
Gaskell, Elizabeth. The Life of Charlotte Bronte.
Hastings Max. Winstonâ€™s War: Churchill, 1940-1945.
Hautzig, Esther. The Endless Steppe: Growing Up in Siberia.
Hayden, Torey. One Child.
Hillenbrand, Laura. Seabiscuit: An American Legend. Semicolon review here.
Hillenbrand, Laura. Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption. Semicolon thoughts here.
Hochschild, Adam. Bury the Chains. Thoughts on the book and on parallels between slavery and abortion.
Jenkins, Peter. A Walk Across America.
Jordan, River. Praying for Strangers. Prayer adventures after reading this book.
Kennedy, John Fitzgerald. Profiles in Courage. I need to re-read this book. I remember it as inspiring and revealing in its stories of political courage.
Kidder, Tracy. The Soul of a New Machine.
Kililea, Marie. Karen. Another book that captured my attention and my heart when I was a kid of a girl.
Lâ€™Amour, Lois. Education of a Wandering Man. Semicolon thoughts on education and Louis L’Amour.
L’Engle, Madeleine. Crosswicks Journals: A Circle of Quiet, Summer of the Great-Grandmother, The Irrational Season, A Two-Part Invention. Madeleine L’Engle favorites.
Lewis,C.S. Surprised by Joy.
Lindbergh, Anne Morrow. Bring Me a Unicorn: Diaries and Letters of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1922-1928 and the other volumes of Mrs. Lindbergh’s diaries.
Massie, Robert K. Nicholas and Alexandra: An Intimate Account of the Last of the Romanovs and the Fall of Imperial Russia. Reading about the Romanovs.
McCullough, David. 1776. â€¨
McCullough, David. John Adams. Semicolon thoughts here and here.
McCullough, David. Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt.
Metaxas, Eric. Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Prophet, Martyr, Spy. My thoughts on Bonhoeffer and his classic, The Cost of Discipleship.
Millard, Candice. River of Doubt: Theodore Rooseveltâ€™s Darkest Journey. Books about Teddy.
Muller, George. Autobiography of George Muller.
Philbrick, Nathaniel. Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War.
Richardson, Don. Peace Child. Semicolon thoughts about this exciting, classic missionary story.
Saint Exupery, Antoine de. Wind, Sand and Stars.
Shapiro, James. A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare. Semicolon thoughts here.
Sobel, Dava. Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time.
Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr I. The Gulag Archipelago. A Solzhenitsyn Celebration.
Stone, Irving. Men to Match My Mountains: The Opening of the Far West, 1840-1900.
Tada, Joni Eareckson. Joni: An Unforgettable Story.
Ten Boom, Corrie. The Hiding Place. Semicolon thoughts here.
Thoreau, Henry David. Walden, or Life in the Woods. Thoughts on Thoreau and clothing.
Tuchman, Barbara. A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century. Good companion piece to the Costain books listed above on the same time period.
Turkel, Studs. Hard Times. Oral history recorded in this book of memories of the Great Depression.
Twain, Mark. Life on the Mississippi.
van der Bijl, Andrew. With John and Elizabeth Sherrill. God’s Smuggler. Another book that made a deep impression on me when I was a teen.
Vanauken, Sheldon. A Severe Mercy.
Washington, Booker T. Up From Slavery.
Wilkerson, David. The Cross and the Switchblade. Semicolon thoughts about Pastor David Wilkerson and his book about gangs and Jesus in NYC here.
Williams, T. Harry. Huey Long. I read this twenty years ago when Engineer Husband was in college and brought it home for a class he was taking. I still remember scenes and details from the life of this larger-than-life politician.
Winner, Lauren. Girl Meets God. Semicolon review here.
Yutang, Lin. The Importance of Living. A Chinese American man writes about Chinese philosophy and life.
Zacharias, Ravi. Walking from East to West.