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Jewish Resistance in Mandatory Palestine (05/17)
Stewart O'Nan's City of Secrets begins in Mandatory Palestine when there were three main organizations in the Jewish resistance: the Haganah, Irgun, and Lohamei Herut Israel, commonly known as the Stern Gang. The first organization was the Haganah, which means 'defense' in Hebrew. It began in 1920 in response to Arab violence against the ...
The Round-up at Vélodrome d'Hiver (05/17)
In the early morning hours of July 16, 1942, the French police took Jews living in Paris into custody. In the two days that followed, over 13,000 Jews were arrested – 4000 of those were children – in what became the biggest arrest in France during World War II. Seven thousand of these people were taken to the Vélodrome d'...
New York City's SoHo District (05/17)
Tuesday Nights in 1980 is set in the SoHo district of New York City, a neighborhood that was once far removed from the boutiques and arts destination it is today. SoHo is located in lower Manhattan and derives its name from its geography: South of Houston street and perhaps after its sister equivalent, Soho in London. It is widely ...
Ann Patchett (05/17)
Ann Patchett has said that her book Commonwealth, more than any of her others, is autobiographical. It seems close given what we know about her life from various sources.
The bare bones information is that she was born on December 2, 1963 in Los Angeles to nurse-turned novelist Jeanne Ray and Los Angeles police officer Frank Patchett....
A Satirical Elegy on the Death of a Late Famous General (05/17)
Louise Penny often includes poetry in her books, and
A Great Reckoning is no exception. Throughout the novel,
A Satirical Elegy on the Death of a Late Famous General by Jonathan Swift is quoted.
His Grace! impossible! what dead!
Of old age too, and in his bed!
And could that mighty warrior fall?
And so inglorious, after all!
Well...
Fascinating Facts About Orchids (05/17)
Each of the main characters in The Seed Collectors inherits a seed pod from a rare orchid, and these play a key role in the story.
People have been fascinated with orchids since the time of the Victorians, devoting much energy and resources to raising the myriad variety of these admired beauties. Between 1838 and 1910, orchid hunters ...
Deadly Viruses (05/17)
Ebola, the viral disease at the core of Steven Hatch's medical memoir, Inferno, is among the most deadly diseases in the world. It is not alone, however, in its lethality; other viruses are at least as likely to be fatal.
There's some debate as to the 'most fatal' virus in the world since it depends on what criteria you use (e.g., ...
The Rainbow Bridge (05/17)
The Rainbow Bridge spanning Tokyo Bay plays a fundamental role in Blue Light Yokohama. It becomes almost a character, as if the 800 meters (2,625 feet) spanning Tokyo's Shibaura Pier to Odaiba's waterfront is a metaphor for crossing the chasm between good (the enforcement of the law) and evil (murder).
But the double-deck ...
Personal Recollections of Romania Under Ceausescu's Rule (05/17)
The whole world watched the Romanian revolution and the fall of the country's leader Ceausescu (pronounced chow-shess-ku) in December 1988. Before that historic time, not many outsiders had any idea of what was really going on in this Eastern European country. Although I did not visit Romania until 1992, I did have an inkling of what was ...
The Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center (04/17)
Consequence author Eric Fair first prepared for his role as an interrogator by enrolling in the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center (DLIFLC).
According to its
website, the DLIFLC is the 'premier school for culturally based foreign language education and training, with classroom instruction, mobile training teams, and ...
Lourdes (04/17)
It might not be surprising to learn that about three million people a year visit the Taj Mahal, the world-famous opulent marble mausoleum in Agra, India. It is often referred to as the world's most beautiful building. But would you be surprised to discover that fully twice as many people a year visit a muddy, rocky cave on the site of a ...
The Tango (04/17)
Fans of the ballroom dance known as the 'tango' probably think of it as synonymous with elegance and sophistication, with dazzlingly turned out women and men striding gracefully amid a throng of champagne-and-caviar glitterati. A fair impression, given the tango's portrayal in Hollywood movies and musicals. But the tango began more than a...
Sixteenth Century Venice (04/17)
The history of Venice begins with the end of the Roman Empire at around 400 A.D. As Roman rule collapsed across Europe groups of Huns, Barbarians and Goths disrupted communities, and on the north-eastern shore of the Adriatic Sea people sought safety from Attila the Hun in the shallow islands of the Venetian Lagoon. With two or three ...
New France (04/17)
Annie Proulx's historical novel, Barkskins, covers 320 years from 1693 to 2013. While it focuses more on the social and ecological impact on the lives it follows, the story wouldn't exist without the context of the political situation that brought these Frenchmen onto North American soil.
French interest in the New World ...
Missed Signals (04/17)
Could the tragedy of the RMS Titanic that unfolded on 15 April 1912, have been prevented or the casualty toll severely decreased? This is the question that anchors The Midnight Watch. The SS Californian, which left Liverpool and was headed for Boston with cargo, was in close enough range of the Titanic for some kind of rescue operation to...
Zoos of the Future (04/17)
Bill Broun's debut novel,
Night of the Animals, features the London Zoo - but in the future. What
will zoos look like in the years to come? Animals roaming free while visitors lurk underground for a glimpse of them? Fewer elephants and more amphibians? No zoos at all?
According to various sources, including
The Guardian and
The ...
Magical Objects from the Past (04/17)
It doesn't take long for magic to sneak into Mariko Tamaki's YA novel, Saving Montgomery Sole. In fact, much of the story relies on suspending one's belief, as we follow the life and peculiar happenings of Montgomery 'Monty' Sole. Monty is an outcast looking for a way to connect with those around her. After participating in...
The Rise and Fall of the Khmer Empire (04/17)
The Khmer Empire was a powerful state in South-East Asia that existed between 802-1431 AD. At the height of its power, it covered modern-day Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, and southern Vietnam. Made up of 90 provinces, its capital Angkor was, at one point, a thriving city of over one million people. The empire was founded upon extensive ...
A Florida Reading List (04/17)
Sarah Gerard's
Sunshine State celebrates her coastal Florida upbringing. We've chosen five more books that also showcase Florida.
Swamplandia! by Karen Russell
Ava Bigtree is 12 and reeling from her mother's death. She and her siblings participate in the family business, a gator-wrangling theme park on Swamplandia!, their (fictional...
The United Arab Emirates (04/17)
Temporary People is set largely in the United Arab Emirates, a federation of seven states located on the Persian Gulf. Each of the seven, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman, Fujairah, Ras al-Khaimah, and Umm al-Qaiwan have their own local governments, which are overseen by a federal president in Abu Dhabi, the nation's capital. The current ...
False Memory (04/17)
One of the primary plot drivers for What Lies Between Us is the concept of false memory.
As the term implies, false memory is when a person recalls an event or a detail that has not happened or is untrue in some particular way. While research into why false memory takes root is still being conducted, a number of factors have been ...
The Best FLOTUS? (04/17)
In 2014, for the fifth time in 31 years, the Siena Research Institute conducted its
survey of historians, political scientists and scholars, aimed at identifying the 'best' First Lady of the United States. Each presidential spouse was ranked on a scale of one to five in ten different categories ranging from Background, to Courage, to ...
A Selection of Literary Prizes (04/17)
Lucy Wood, the author of Weathering, won a Somerset Maugham Award, named after the famous author.
What does it take to get a literary prize named after you? Some amount of money and/or influence in the literary world, to be sure, but also a personal connection to the prize being offered and its specific criteria. Here are a few ...
Queen Caroline (04/17)
The Last Confession of Thomas Hawkins is set during the eighteenth century in England, the time when King George II and his wife, Queen Caroline, ruled Great Britain. As reviewer Becky H. says, in the novel, 'the picture presented of Queen Caroline is delightful — and convincingly nefarious.'
Queen Caroline was a native ...
A Maritime Reading List (04/17)
The North Water is a gritty, graphic novel about 19th-century whaling. Here are a few additional maritime adventures.
Rush Oh! by Shirley Barrett
In this rollicking debut novel, Mary Davidson, an Australian whaler's daughter, looks back at 1908 – a catastrophic whaling season but her first chance at romance. At 19 she is ...
Notable Women in the Suffragette Movement in 20th Century Britain (04/17)
In her novel, The Hourglass Factory, Lucy Ribchester has included some notable figures and episodes from the history of the women's suffrage movement in early 20th century Britain.
Emmeline Pankhurst
Emmeline was born in Manchester, England in 1858, to a family with radical political leanings. At the age of twenty-one, she married ...
Jewish Children Smuggled to Safety (04/17)
When Germany invaded The Netherlands in May 1940, few could have imagined the horrors that would follow, including the murder of about three-quarters of the estimated 140,000 Jews living in the country before the war. Almost as soon as occupation began, resistance groups formed to oppose German dictates.
When Ollie, a central character...
The Pew Research Center (04/17)
In
Agnostic, author Lesley Hazelton states: 'The most respected polls on faith and belief are run by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, which has been taking the pulse of both the American and the international soul, as it were, since 2001.'
According to their
website, 'Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that ...
Nestinarstvo or Ritual Fire-Dancing (04/17)
Nestinarstvo, or ritual fire-dancing, plays an important role throughout Stork Mountain.
The practice, which involves walking barefoot across burning coals, is specific to the Strandja Mountain region in southeast Bulgaria, an area that shares both borders and cultural ties with Greece. Indeed, it's believed that the rite originated ...
Crow Facts and Bird Group Names (03/17)
In Elizabeth Church's debut novel, The Atomic Weight of Love, Meridian Wallace studies crow behavior over the course of decades. The Corvid family – which includes crows, rooks, magpies, ravens, and jays – is often considered to have the highest intelligence and most remarkable habits in the bird world. Here are some facts ...
The Joint Family in India (03/17)
In Ghachar Ghochar, the narrator lives in a joint family, and it is really this sociological unit that has been the mainstay of Indian life for centuries.
A joint family is defined as a unit of extended members of a family all living together under one roof, who also cook and eat together. Usually driven by patriarchal order, the ...
Little Saigon Enclaves (03/17)
The name 'Little Saigon' is often given to an area where there are a large number of people of Vietnamese origin. When The Refugees author Viet Thanh Nguyen arrived in the United States in the mid '70s at the age of four, he lived in a refugee camp and then with a couple of sponsor families in Pennsylvania before being reunited with his ...
Creatures from Japanese Mythology (03/17)
Two of the monsters that haunt the island of Kokoro-Jima in the novel The Emperor Of Any Place are borrowed from traditional Japanese mythology.
Jikininki might remind many readers of zombies. In The Emperor of Any Place, they devour the bodies of deceased soldiers who have washed ashore on Kokoro-Jima, but what they are hungry for ...
India's Partition and Its Lingering Effects (03/17)
At the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, Britain withdrew from India and the country split into two so as to form an independent Muslim country to the north-east and north-west of India. Although the British withdrew essentially without incident, the decision to partition India set off a tsunami of violence and what is considered the...
Emotional Support Animals (03/17)
In Spill Simmer Falter Wither, One Eye provides a lot of emotional support to Ray.
Anyone who has owned a pet knows how much they can contribute to emotional well-being — studies at University of Missouri's College of Veterinary Medicine's Research Center for Human and Animal Interaction show that interacting with ...
Malta During World War II (03/17)
The island country of Malta, one of the key settings in Chris Cleave's Everyone Brave is Forgiven, might be tiny, but its location between Italy and North Africa, halfway between the Strait of Gibraltar and Egypt, has made it a strategically important naval base for hundreds, if not thousands, of years - including during World War II.
...
Housing Choice Voucher Program: Does it Work? (03/17)
In Evicted, one of the solutions that Matthew Desmond recommends is the expansion of the government Housing Choice Voucher program. Called Section 8, this aid was created by Congress in 1974, and is different from public housing in that the latter restricts participants to only certain locations and buildings – the infamous Robert ...
Seva in Sikhism (03/17)
In
The Year Of the Runaways, most of the men are Sikhs as is Narinder Kaur, the only woman character. Sikhism (see Beyond the Book for
A Moment Comes) is an integral part of Narinder's life and it is through practicing one of its central tenets, service or 'seva,' that she comes to be Randeep's wife.
While most religions ...
What Teenagers Value (03/17)
Siobhan Vivian's YA novel, The Last Boy and Girl in the World, tells the story of Keeley Hewitt, who is a normal teenager except for one thing: her world is falling apart. Torrential rains are causing trees to crash and houses to crumble, and adults in the community are doing everything they can to protect the place that they call ...
The Odyssey (03/17)
The New Odyssey brings to mind the original epic with which this book has many parallels. Literary works don't come much more venerable or influential than The Odyssey, a 12,000-line poem written in ancient Greek and composed sometime in the eighth century B.C.E. Granted, it's likely not every contemporary reader's favorite work (although...
Dr. Ian Stevenson (02/17)
Sharon Guskin's debut novel,
The Forgetting Time, explores reincarnation – specifically children who seem to experience it. In an
interview about her research, she explains that after stumbling across a book about Dr. Ian Stevenson and
his intense research of children and reincarnation, she was hooked.
Ian Stevenson (1918-2007) ...
The Maze Prison and Its Most Famous Inmate (02/17)
In
High Dive, Jonathan Lee references many aspects of '
The Troubles,' a term used to describe the turbulent decades in Northern Ireland between 1960 and 2000. At issue was a territorial challenge: the overwhelmingly Protestant Loyalists wanted to remain part of the United Kingdom while the nationalists and mainly Catholic republicans were...
The History of Newspaper Horoscopes (02/17)
In Tender, Catherine Reilly takes up a job writing horoscopes, the kind that you routinely find in newspapers, generic enough to possibly apply to a wide swath of people, yet specific enough to make the individual reader feel like it was written just for him or her.
The word horoscope comes from the Greek words hõra (time or hour...
German Reunification (02/17)
In his memoir All Tomorrow's Parties, Rob Spillman, the son of American expat musicians, includes a flashback to his childhood in Germany. He paints a bleak portrait of East Berlin in the 1970s, with its worthless currency, 'sour-faced' military guards, secret police, and drab institutional architecture. It is not surprising that by the ...
Early African American Authors (02/17)
In
Ginny Gall, the main character is an avid reader who aspires to be much like the black authors he admires. A few early African Americans writers are listed below.
Top, from left to right: James Weldon Johnson, Harriet Wilson, William Wells Brown
Bottom, from left to right: Jessie Fauset,W. E. B. Du Bois, Paul Laurence Dunbar
...
How Is Mental Illness Passed through Families? (02/17)
In Imagine Me Gone, John and his son Michael, both struggle with mental illness.
Significant research has been conducted to search for the genetic basis for mental disorders. Family linkage and twin studies are particularly revealing. At present, there is no simple answer as to how mental illness might pass through families; ...
The Town of Rye (02/17)
The charming town of Rye rests in the county of East Sussex near England's south coast. Rye's recorded history can be traced back to before the Norman Conquest of 1066. For many centuries it was an important port town set in a naturally formed bay. But this changed in the 13th century when a combination of major storms led to its main ...
Kendra's Law (02/17)
While the City Slept is a searing indictment of the mental health system in the United States, showing step-by-step how the failure of an overworked, underfunded bureaucracy led to a likely preventable human tragedy.
Among the many challenges communities face is in ensuring that those experiencing mental illness get proper ...
Vikings on the Isle of Man (02/17)
One of the main storylines of Merrow involves the arrival of a man, Ulf, who Auntie Ushag, using her native Manx language, calls a 'wiggynagh,' or what we'd call a Viking. Like many elements of the novel, this has a basis in historical fact, since the Isle of Man has a significant history of Viking exploration and settlement.
...
