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The Stanford Marshmallow Experiment (11/17)
In Perfect Little World, Dr. Preston Grind and his team of researchers conduct the 'Marshmallow Experiment' on the children living at the Infinite Family Project. A marshmallow is placed before a child and he/she has a choice: eat it right away, or wait fifteen minutes and receive two marshmallows instead of one. The experiment was ...
An Interview with Maxine Beneba Clarke (10/17)
Maxine Beneba Clarke came to fiction through poetry, both written and spoken word. She was born in Australia to a Jamaican father and Guyanese mother. Her parents immigrated to the UK before settling in Australia. Her books include a memoir, The Hate Race; a children's book, The Patchwork Bike; and the poetry collections Carrying the ...
The Triangle Shirtwaist Company Fire (10/17)
Immigrants to New York City have always faced impediments in their efforts to assimilate. A new landscape, a new culture, and even a new language invariably pose challenges to the most determined recent arrivals. Often, the jobs available are at the lowest rung of the economic ladder, and especially in the days of unregulated workplaces, ...
Building a Wall Between Impartiality and Personal Opinion (10/17)
The protagonist in The Boat Rocker, Feng Danlin, is a journalist who prides himself on being impartial in his reporting and principled about expressing his opinion. Throughout the book he wrestles with the importance of maintaining objectivity. He researches facts and scrupulously reports his findings, calling out fraud where he sees it. ...
The Roots of the True Crime Genre (10/17)
As evidenced in her novel, Little Deaths, author Emma Flint is an aficionado of true crime. These books that chronicle the grim details of actual murders are written with a sensitive ear to readers' morbid curiosity about sensational crimes. The genre has been popular for centuries – people have long been willing to shell out cash to...
A 2015 Snapshot of the Global Refugee Crisis (10/17)
Go, Went, Gone is set in Berlin during the thick of the ongoing international refugee crisis. Germany and many other countries have become a destination for those who leave home for reasons of violence, conflict, persecution, human rights violations, poverty, and war.

The historic event, now termed the Global Refugee Crisis or European...
African American Women and the Black Church (10/17)
In Brit Bennett's debut novel, the mothers are the elderly African African women who devote themselves to Upper Room, the black church in town. 'If we laid all our lives toes to heel, we were born before the Depression, the Civil War, even America itself,' they report.

The mothers in the book depend on the church for much of their...
The November 2015 Paris Attacks (10/17)
On Friday, November 13, 2015, suicide bombers and gunmen launched coordinated terrorist attacks in Paris, France. Antoine Leiris's wife Hélène was among the victims.

The first sign of trouble came at the Stade de France, a stadium in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis. On the night in question, France was playing Germany in an ...
Biosphere 2 (10/17)
In Oracle, Arizona, sits one of the more intriguing experiments in 'closed-system' science ever devised: Biosphere 2, which forms the backdrop for the novel, The Terranauts. Originally built to demonstrate that humans could construct and live sustainably for long periods in an artificially created world, the huge glass domes that make up ...
From Facebook Dabbler to Memoirist (10/17)
Glennon Doyle Melton, author of Love Warrior, started her writing career in 2009. Badly needing a break one day, the stay-at-home mother of three turned to Facebook, where she noticed several of her friends were participating in a series of posts called '25 Things About Me.' She immediately began sharing incredibly honest and personal ...
Age of Consent (10/17)
The age of consent, according to western law, is the age at which a person is capable of agreeing to engagement in sexual activity. Stephen Robertson, in his article 'Age of Consent Laws', states: 'Narrowly concerned with sexual violence, and with girls, originally, since the 19th century the age of consent has occupied a central place in...
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (09/17)
Of Arms and Artists: The American Revolution Through Painters' Eyes focuses on the ideal of a country-in-making and how the arts helped educate and manipulate its political leanings. In this drive for perfection, there was a need, once the Revolution was a success, to continue the young country's unique standing in the world by ...
The MIA in Vietnam (09/17)
In The Signal Flame, the Konar family grapples with the fact that Sam, the youngest son, is missing in action in Vietnam.

War, by its very nature, means that not all who leave to fight will return home. In addition to those who die in service to their country, conflicts yield prisoners of war (POWs) and soldiers missing in action (MIA)...
Adoption From China (09/17)
In The Fortunes, one of the main characters is adopting a baby from China. The U.S. Department of State reports that a total of 76,026 children were brought from China to the USA through adoption between 1999 and 2015. Of these, 87.1% were female and 12.9% male – a result of China's historical one-child policy and the frequent ...
Bernard Heuvelmans: Father of Cryptozoology (09/17)
The eponymous guardian in Dolores Redondo's The Invisible Guardian refers to a mythical Basque creature called a basajaun. According to a character in the book, '[B]asajauns are real creatures, hominids about two and a half meters tall, with broad shoulders, long hair on their heads, and thick hair all over their bodies…They ...
Bletchley Park (09/17)
Bletchley Park, the setting for Lucy Ribchester's The Amber Shadows, is situated about an hour's train ride north of London. The estate has been turned into a heritage museum open to the public since 1993.

Bletchley was originally a manor house on about 500 acres with rural outbuildings, but by the 1930s had fallen into disuse. The ...
The Native American Tradition of Winkte (09/17)
The two main characters in Sebastian Barry's Days Without End, Thomas McNulty and John Cole, are white soldiers who at various points dress up as women for entertainment or disguise. They are thus surprised but bemused when they take part in the Indian Wars and encounter the Native Americans' winkte or berdache tradition of men who dress ...
Food Insecurity and Education (09/17)
There is no question that Little's life is affected by both his circumstances and the environment he lives in – and the Pierce, Idaho in which Hoffneister sets Too Shattered For Mending is not a figment of his imagination, but a real place, which means that it isn't a question of if there are real teens with the same ...
Grupos Beta (09/17)
In the beginning of Lucky Boy, as Soli makes her way from Mexico to the United States, she spends several nights in a relief camp set up by Grupos Beta, a service agency operated by Mexico's National Institute of Migration (INM), that offers water, shelter, medical aid, and information to migrants at risk.

There are currently 22 Grupos...
Storyboarding (09/17)
In The Animators, best friends Sharon and Mel spend hours hunched over their artwork that will form the basis of an animated movie. 'I know a day of work has been really good when I have to look up from the board and recall who I am and what I'm doing,' Sharon says. That 'board' that she refers to is one of a series of images that ...
Hospice Care (09/17)
Hospice is a medical specialty that focuses on end-of-life care for individuals and support for their families. Its roots come from the Latin for hostis meaning stranger, and more specifically from hospitem meaning a guesthouse - from these roots we also get hospital, hotel and hospitality.

The idea of caring for those suffering from ...
The Tucson Samaritans (09/17)
'I feel sorrow. Anger. And sometimes a little desperation,' says Maria Ochoa, one of the people Sasha Abramsky interviews in his book, Jumping at Shadows. As a member of the Tucson Samaritans, a humanitarian group which aids migrants who cross the borders through the Arizona desert, she has reason to be. For more than a decade, she has ...
The Fasting Girls (09/17)
The Wonder was inspired by several real-life instances of girls who claimed to be beyond the earthly requirement of eating. The tradition dates back to at least medieval times when it was common for devoutly religious women to abstain from food, among other essentials. Intermittent fasting is a common custom in many religions and viewed ...
William and Caroline Herschel (09/17)
John Pipkin brings the astronomer siblings, William and Caroline Herschel, vividly to life in The Blind Astronomer's Daughter. While the novel shines light on Caroline in particular, William, with his impressive discoveries and status as England's astronomy golden boy, provides motivation for the fictional Arthur Ainsworth's quest for ...
Books About Empathy (09/17)
Empathy seemed to take a huge hit in 2016. I can't think of many weeks that went by where blatant hate or some form of intolerance wasn't at the forefront of the news. I got to a point where I decided to disconnect from media. I couldn't take it anymore.

When Will Schwalbe's Books for Living arrived on my doorstep, ...
A Quick Tour of the Mexican Revolution (09/17)
Most of El Paso is set toward the tail end of the Mexican Revolution, which played out between 1910-1920. One of its primary players, General Pancho Villa, is a principal character in the novel.

The Mexican Revolution got its start during the rule of Porfirio Diaz, a dictator who perpetuated a feudal system in the country with just a ...
Contemporary YA Novels about 9/11 (08/17)
Over 3,000 people died on September 11, 2001. With the impact of that catastrophe being so far-reaching, it's no surprise that there have been a plethora of films and books released that recall 9/11. Oliver Stone's World Trade Center and Paul Greengrass' United 93 are two of the most popular movies to recreate that day. Jonathan Safran ...
The Manson Girls (08/17)
Cruel Beautiful World is set in the early '70s against the specter of the Manson girls.

The horrific story of Charles Manson, the cult leader who believed he was the Messiah and who then orchestrated murders in Los Angeles to spark a race war, is fairly well-known at least in American culture.

More recently, his 'girls,' women ...
Young Adult Novels Exploring Depression (08/17)
According to Suicide Awareness Voices of Education (SAVE), suicide is the second leading cause of death in people 15-24 years of age, and ranks tenth when considering all ages. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that in the United States, eight percent of all people over the age of twelve suffer from depression in ...
Luxury Watches (08/17)
According to Michael Honig's imagined life of Vladimir Putin in his novel The Senility of Vladimir P., the dictator-president could be impressed by the gift of a fine wristwatch – 'fine' meaning anything beyond the standard Rolex.

In this era, a good majority of the younger generation keeps track of time by using a smart phone, ...
Lieutenant Henry Tureman Allen - Alaskan Explorer and Decorated US Major General (08/17)
Just as reading a Russian folktale inspired her to write The Snow Child, so too did the concept for Eowyn Ivey's second novel arise from a piece of literature - this time on the fragile pages of a rare book she discovered at the bookshop where she worked.

Too expensive to purchase, she asked the owner's permission and took it home...
Persistent Cloaca (08/17)
Miss Jane is based on Brad Watson's great-aunt's life. She, like the central character in his novel, suffered from a genital birth defect. But what exactly was it?

In an interview at W.W. Norton, Watson says:

As was common in her day (she actually lived from 1888-1975, but it applies to my Jane's day and time, too), no one ...

The Underground Railroad (08/17)
The U.S. government changed the portrait image on the U.S. $20 bill. It used to be President Andrew Jackson and now includes abolitionist Harriet Tubman. By 21st century standards, 19th century military hero and politician Jackson could be classified as a racist and an indirect perpetrator of genocide. By 21st century and 19th century ...
Books About Books (08/17)
In The Book That Matters Most, literature turns out to be an important lifeline to Ava as she joins a book club to offer her some soul sustenance through trying times. Here a few other recommendations for books about other books, whose theme is the joy of the written word.

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin

The ...
The Brixton Riots (08/17)
With his nappy black hair and dark complexion, the boy at the center of Kit de Waal's debut, My Name is Leon, is caught up in the middle of the racial tensions of 1981 South London. The biracial child has a nine-year-old's agenda, born of anger, and stumbles innocently into a roiling stew of grownup rage and frustration. The ...
Gardens of Heligan (08/17)
The grounds of Black Rabbit Hall (In Eve Chase's eponymously named novel) are depicted as lush and untamed, a state of wildness that could be the site of enchantment or of danger. Several times Chase mentions 'giant rhubarb' growing wild in the woods around Black Rabbit Hall, a detail that immediately reminded me of a real Cornish garden ...
The Concept of Sainthood (08/17)
In The Guineveres, Sarah Domet weaves the stories of eight saints—Rose of Lima; Cecelia; the sister saints, Irmina and Adela; Ita; Agatha; Alice and Christina the Astonishing. These holy figures have a relevance to certain themes in the novel including the concept of sacrifice, the sanctity of the female body, and the recognition of...
A Whiff of Papal Controversy (08/17)
In Conclave, Robert Harris creates an imaginary world of Cardinals meeting in the Sistine Chapel to elect a new Pope. The Bishop of Rome, known as the Pope or Holy Father, is the leader of the Catholic Church, a religion with over one billion members worldwide.

The Roman Catholic Church recognizes 266 popes in the Annuario Pontificio ...
The Jonestown Settlement (08/17)
In New People, Maria's dissertation focuses on the Jonestown settlement in Guyana and on the massacre that resulted in the death of some 900 men, women, and children from poisoning on November 18, 1975. Jonestown was developed, and sold to believers, as a sort of utopian community led by Jim Jones, who founded the People's Temple in ...
Child Prodigies in Visual Art (07/17)
When we hear the phrase 'child prodigy,' our minds almost automatically go to Mozart and other musicians, and from there, towards young geniuses in the areas of mathematics and science. One of the shorter lists of child prodigies is in the visual arts: drawing, painting and sculpture. But the world has witnessed some exceptional artistic ...
The Lehman Brothers (07/17)
Clark Edwards, one of the main characters in Behold the Dreamers, works as an executive for Lehman Brothers.

Lehman Brothers Holdings, Inc. was the fourth-largest investment bank in the United States at the time of the housing market crash (2007-2009), employing over 25,000 employees worldwide.

The company began in 1844 as a ...
Immigration to Australia (07/17)
Author Stephanie Bishop's maternal grandparents left England for Australia in 1965. Her grandmother was reluctant to make the move and never truly warmed to the country. Their experience forms the basis of The Other Side of the World. (Bishop's Guardian article gives the whole story.)

Beginning in the latter decades of the eighteenth ...
Spring Temple Buddha (07/17)
Like many kids on the autism spectrum, Tilly has a passionate interest, one she loves to research and that she'll happily talk your ear off about if you ask (or even if you don't). In her case, she's fascinated by massive sculptures past and present, from the Colossus of Rhodes to the Lincoln Monument.

More than ...
Early Aviatrixes (07/17)
In Crossing the Horizon, author Laurie Notaro highlights the lives of three women who dared to attempt flight across the Atlantic Ocean during the early days of air travel. They were not the only ones who defied expectation by taking such risks. The novel mentions three other women who also took on the daunting challenge of transatlantic ...
Belfast (07/17)
In So Say the Fallen, it is murder most foul in Belfast. Northern Ireland's capital city is as much a character in Neville's work as it is a place in the novel. It's where the author lives and, has been the home of a number of famous people; it is the birthplace of the Christian author and philosopher C. S. Lewis; John Wood Dunlop ...
The Cult of Personality (07/17)
In Julian Barnes' The Noise of Time, Dmitri Shostakovich notes that under Stalin, '[Russians] would listen to [Stalin's] insane daily insistence that all was for the best in the best possible of worlds, that Paradise had been created, or would be created quite soon…when a few more saboteurs had been shot. That happier times ...
Young Adults as Unreliable Narrators (07/17)
In How to Set a Fire and Why, Lucia claims to not remember exactly what occurred during an argument with her aunt's landlord, leaving her exact reasoning and motivation somewhat mysterious. In writing Lucia as an unreliable narrator, Jesse Ball draws from an established tradition.

An unreliable narrator lies, expresses uncertainty or ...
London Fog (07/17)
Vyleta's Smoke draws inspiration from the very real issue of smog in Victorian London, the result of fog off the Thames river mixing with smoke from early industrialization and coal-burning fires in homes. This is hinted at when the novel's young protagonists are briefly hidden in a coal mine before making their way into the city. Making ...
Ambulocetus, The Walking Whale (07/17)
Zubaida Haque, the main character in Tahmima Anam's The Bones of Grace, is a marine paleontologist with a particular interest in Ambulocetus, an amphibious (able to live on land and water) cetacean (carnivorous, finned, aquatic marine mammal) that lived over 40 million years ago. Fossils of Ambulocetus are believed to show how whales...
Late 19th Century Texas (07/17)
Paulette Jiles' News of the World takes place in late 19th century Texas. Much of the state's land was untamed and rugged, but in this time between the end of the Reconstruction and the beginning of the Progressive Era, Texas changed and grew, as did much of the western frontier and the New South.

It was the era of cotton, cattle and ...

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