by Bryan Stevenson, 2014 Excellent book! I’m not sure where I heard about it but I’m so glad I read it. Bryan Stevenson is a lawyer who started the Equal Justice Initiative. We needed him and, unfortunately, we still do. He works tirelessly to free innocent men from death row, to end the death penalty […]
by Erik Larson, 2003 Heard this book mentioned by Karen, our Old Town Library Book Club leader. True story about the building of the World’s Columbian Exposition, a world’s fair, in Chicago in 1893, and a psychopathic serial killer, H. H. Holmes. The fair is completed against all odds: Architects not completing their designs on […]
by Isabel Wilkerson, 2010 Fantastic book! Heard about it from Karen, the leader of the Old Town Library Book Club, during our discussion of American Prison. It’s long (550 pages) but gripping and eye-opening. We learn about ‘America’s great migration’ through the true stories of 3 black people who left (really, escaped) the South (Ida […]
Seven Days at the Links of Utopia by David L. Cook, PhD, 2006 Adam recommended the movie, “Links of Utopia,” as being very, very good. I ordered it via Prospector at the Library but didn’t pick it up before they closed for Covid-19. Then, when they reopened the Library, again I didn’t pick it up […]
by Hope Jahren, 2020 Book about climate change by the author of Lab Girl. Excellent! No BS, just the facts, but she’s funny and honest, and ‘hope’-ful. Love this scientist-author. She’s a gift. Her thesis is that the developed countries use more than they need of everything, resulting in carbon dioxide output that is causing […]
by Shane Bauer, 2018 This was one of the books for our Old Town Library Book Club. We are going to discuss it tonight via Zoom. Shane Bauer is a reporter for Mother Jones and goes undercover as a guard in a for-profit prison in Louisiana for 4 months in 2014. The company that runs […]
by Jenny Odell, 2019 Too many big words and thoughts! This young lady is just too smart! She doesn’t appear to believe in God so all of her deep philosophizing is for naught because, “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.” Psalm 127:1 Without reading the book, Wayne predicted […]
Matt Kracht, 2019 This was supposed to be one of the funniest books of 2019, but it’s mainly an unfunny, potty-mouthed berating of birds. He likes to use the f-word, butt, dumb, gd, etc. I didn’t read it for that reason, just scanned a few. Here’s what he says about the wonderful chickadee that is […]
Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America by Beth Macy, 2018 Painful, scary book about the opioid epidemic, which started with the release of Oxycontin by Purdue Pharma in the mid 1990s. This was a drug so powerful and so over-prescribed by doctors in the Appalachian areas, that many were addicted and when […]
by Kate O’Neill, 2019 Interesting, short (189 pages), academic book on garbage, particularly e-waste, food waste, and plastic. Main take-away is we are producing more and more waste and it will take all of us to manage it. For e-waste, that means changing the way things are produced so that they can be repaired (Right […]
by Cheryl Mendelson, 1999 What an amazing book! Everything you could ever want to know about keeping a home in 837 pages! She gives instructions on EVERYTHING – cleaning, what to do in what order and with what products, the actual chemistry behind cleaning products, how to set a table, stock a kitchen, clean anything […]
by James W. Loewen, 2018 Eye-opening book about the sorry state of American History textbooks in high schools. This was one of our Old Town Library Book Club selections for 2019-2020. He provides the truth about Woodrow Wilson (extremely racist), Helen Keller (ardent socialist), Christopher Columbus (extreme brutality to the natives), the first Thanksgiving, how […]
by James E. Hansen II, Gordon A. Hazard, Linda M. Meyer, 2018 Very complete book giving pictures and history of EVERY building and even the places of Colorado State University. Especially liked the pictures of the first buildings in the late 1800s (the Pioneer Era from 1870-1909). They divided it into The Pioneer Era (1870-1909), […]
by Jessica Bruder, 2017 Eye-opening book about a subculture of aging Americans living in RVs, vans, or cars and traveling around the country. Gretchen recommended this book. These Americans lost homes in the 2008 Great Recession, went through messy divorces, had physical injuries or illnesses, or a combination of factors that made them unable to […]
by Robert B. Reich, 2018 Adam saw this book over at Ben’s house so I got it from the library. Mom read it first and said, “This was an excellent read. I sense a slipping away of everyone in the U.S.A. focusing on ‘me!’ and self only.” It’s true and he gives three reasons for […]
by Sy Montgomery, 2015 Who would have thought an octopus had a soul? But after reading this book, you can’t help but believe it! How sweet and precious this story is! She spends most of the book with octopuses in the New England Aquarium, and with the people who work and volunteer there. Through her […]
The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump by John Fea, 2018 Excellent book by an Evangelical who is an American history professor and chair of the history department at Messiah College in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. He dedicates the book, “To the 19 percent.” He seeks to explain how 81% of evangelical Christians voted for Donald Trump. He […]
by Bob Goff, 2018 Al H. recommended this book. Redeemer Lutheran was reading it. It’s about loving everyone always, even your most despised enemies. It’s full of stories about the creative ways in which he has loved others. There’s a chapter about not telling people about the good you have done because you’ve done it […]
by Siddhartha Mukherjee, M.D., 2010 Fantastic book about the history of cancer. The hundreds of years of unnecessary, radical mastectomies, and the evilness of Big Tobacco stand out. Also, the futility of trying to cure cancer. There are only a few cancers for which we’ve discovered what might be termed cures: CML, Hodgkin’s, breast cancer […]
2012 Lygon Stevens died in an avalanche on January 10, 2008, while climbing Little Bear Peak in the Sangre de Cristos in Colorado. She was 20 years old. “Swept downhill over 1000 feet and buried under a mass of snow, she would not be recovered until late June when the snows melted.” (This written by […]