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Marie Antoinette: Mix and Match

January 8, 2016

marie antoinette

It's no secret I'm not a huge reader of non-fiction, but often I am led to it by fiction or movies about real life subjects. For whatever reason, I need to be led to non-fiction by shiny objects and visual effects. Plus, when I do read it it is often about the aristocracy (dreams of a previous life as an Empress, maybe?). So, it's no surprise that I've found Marie Antoinette to ... Read More...

5 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Non-fiction Tagged: France, history

Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II

November 25, 2015

Within the first 15 pages of Savage Continent by Keith Lowe I learned that by the end of World War II: The Germans had destroyed 93% of Warsaw’s buildings 18-20 million Germans were rendered homeless due to the destruction of their cities 70,000 villages in the USSR were obliterated either by the Germans or by their own troops to avoid providing any supplies or ... Read More...

8 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Non-fiction Tagged: Europe, history, St. Martin's Press, WWII

Dead Wake

March 11, 2015

dead wake

When it comes to taking historic international events and looking behind the scenes there are few who do it as well as Erik Larson. Even when the event itself is substantial in its importance he is able to dig into it and find an aspect to make it even more momentous and, at the same time, personal. His newest work is Dead Wake and it’s about the last crossing of the Lusitania, ... Read More...

5 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Non-fiction Tagged: book clubs, Crown, history, World War I

The Girls of Atomic City

August 7, 2014

girls of atomic city

Yesterday was the 69th anniversary of the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Japan by the United States. Now threats of atomic war loom and fade whenever one country gets mad at another. I wondered about the path we took to making the bomb and this led me to Denise Kiernan’s book The Girls of Atomic City: The untold story of the women who helped win World War II, a highly ... Read More...

4 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Non-fiction Tagged: book clubs, history, Touchstone, women, WWII

Starvation Heights: A True Story of Murder and Malice in the Woods of the Pacific Northwest

April 30, 2014

starvation heights

Claire and Dora Williamson are wealthy British women using their inheritance to travel the world in the early 1900s. Like many people of the time they are convinced that they could be in better health and like many women, with so little understanding of their own bodies, they believed that the slightest discomfort was indicative of a greater disorder. To that end they abandoned ... Read More...

11 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Non-fiction Tagged: 20th century, history, Pacific Northwest, true crime

Empty Mansions

September 27, 2013

empty mansions

Throughout American history there have been scintillating stories of “poor little rich girls”—young women who have inherited immense amounts of wealth and yet have not lived happily ever after. There was Doris Duke (tobacco heiress) and Barbara Hutton (Woolworth heiress) whose childhoods and adult lives (including multiple marriages, drug and alcohol problems) were chronicled ... Read More...

3 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Non-fiction Tagged: Ballantine, history, Manhattan, wealth

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