Read and Selected by Ruth A. Sheets
Here is the second installment of my excellent books of the
year collection. I hope you like some of these too.
- The
Naked Don’t Fear the Water, An Underground Journey with Afghanistan
Refugees by Matthieu Aikins (Matt left Afghanistan with his Afghan
interpreter who wanted a life in Europe. They used smugglers and
scary strategies to get first to Turkey, then to Greece, then
beyond. They survived when many didn’t. )
2. Go Back to Where You Came From and Other Helpful
Recommendations on How to Become American by Wajahat Ali (The writer describes
growing up in CA and the biases against himself and his family even though he
was born in America. The book is funny, sad, and a peek into the lives of
an immigrant family that has been here 50 years.)
3. Making Numbers Count, The Art and Science of
Communicating Numbers by Chip Heath & Karla Starr (A great book about the
way we can simplify number examples to make them more comprehensible and able
to change minds: 3 of 10 instead of 30%, 1 every ____ minutes, on the 1st
yardline of the football field instead of 1%, using terms and sizes people can
relate to.)
4. The End of Bias, A Beginning by Jessica Nordell (Everyone
has biases and they are started early. However there are many strategies
we can use as a people to make those biases less harmful and destructive.
The book includes police departments working to change their culture of
violence and businesses working to become truly inclusive.)
5. A Christmas Legacy by Anne
Perry (I loved this book about the rich getting theirs. Gracie goes to
sub for a friend at a rich house where the servants are like family but there
is something wrong. The old woman being nearly starved to death is the
owner of the house.
6. Until Justice Be Done , America’s First Civil Rights
Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction by Kate Masur (So many Black
Americans and their allies were working for their rights at this time, but
being fought at every turn by white men who just couldn’t bear to imagine that
Black people were equal to themselves. A shameful history for this
nation)
7. The Best Strangers in the World, Stories From a Life
Spent Listening by Ari Shapiro (This is a great memoir of a really good
broadcaster, describing some of his background, his life of interviewing
people, and his caring nature, as well as his other talents like singing with
an indy band and cooking.)
8. Myth America, Historians Take on the Biggest Legends and
Lies About Our Past by Kevin Michael Kruse & Julian E. Zelizer (These were
essays about various events that didn’t happen as people often think:
Black people rarely protested before the 1950s and 60s, there was no “southern
strategy” by the Republicans, the “Great Society” changed nothing. All
lies but people still believe them.)
9. The White Lady by Jacqueline Winspear (Eleanor White
lived I Belgium during WWI when she and her older sister were recruited to work
as spies for a WWII resistance group Because of her skills. After the
war, she tries to make a life for herself and gets connected with a crime
family as she tries to save one of their former members.)
10. A Redbird Christmas by Fannie Flagg (A man with serious
lung disease goes south to possibly recover. He falls in love with the
tiny Alabama town and the people who come to love him too. Sweet and
funny)
11. The Common Good by Robert Reich (On this second reading
of this book, I found it is still relevant and important. It looks at our
need to pay more attention to working for the common good.)
12. Nine Black Robes, Inside the Supreme Court’s Drive to
the Right and Its Historic Consequences by Joan Biskupic (An excellent
retelling of the transformation of an already-failing SC into the right-wing
anti-American bastion of male arrogance and desires its conservatives
have become, even the female conservative justice.)
13. Poverty by America by Matthew Desmond (A quick summary
of the ways we the people maintain poverty in this country by what we buy, who
we allow in our neighborhoods, who banks lend to or don’t, the way we permit
landlords to keep people living in squalor while charging outrageous rents,
etc. well-constructed)
14. Science and the Skeptic, Discerning Fact from Fiction by
Marc Zimer (It is a positive to be a skeptic if one is a scientist, but not so
much when the information supporting a theory or finding is overwhelming.
Good overview with good talking points.)
15. Above Ground by Clint Smith
(beautiful poems about fatherhood and the world his son would inherit and how
he feels about it.)
16. Paved Paradise, How Parking Explains the World by Henry
Grabar (I never drove, but found this book fascinating and fun in places to see
what people will go through to get a parking space and how much land is taken
up with such parking spaces.)
17. Off With Her Head, 3,000 Years of Demonizing Women In
Power by Eleanor Herman (I loved this book that took the various misogynistic
tropes like ambition, appearance, female hormones, shrillness of her voice,
neglect of family, being a bitch that are used to tell women that they have no
right to positions of power. It’s been going on for so long even a lot of
women have bought the nonsense and will vote for anyone but a woman and men and
women will malign through social media any woman in power.)
18. Viral Justice, How We Grow the World We want by Ruha
Benjamin (This was a really good book about the way we can look at issues like
racism and connect with others to find ways to change things where we
are. Ruha uses her own personal journey to illustrate. Very
hopeful.)
19. When the Angels Left the Old Country by Sacha Land (This
was a hilarious book about an angel and a demon that lived in early 20th
century Poland in a Jewish community who decided they should come to America to
help protect the immigrants from their village while in America. Lots of
Jewish humor!
20. The Teachers, A Year Inside America’s Most Vulnerable
Important Profession by Alexandra Robbins (The book mostly follows 3 teachers
and what it was like during 2021-2022 trying to recover from pandemic times
with limited resources, sometimes support and appreciation, and interesting but
challenging students. The author mentions a variety of other teachers and
their experiences as well.)
21. A Bit of Earth by Karuna Raizi (I loved this retelling
of “The Secret Garden” as the story of an immigrant girl from South Asia coming
to New York, trying to adjust and connect with the family who has taken her in
and the community where they live. Gr.4-7 and anyone who loved “The Secret
Garden”)
22. Weathering, The Extraordinary Stress of Ordinary Life in
an Unjust Society by Arline T. Geronius (an excellent but scary account
of how just living in a society that does not value certain people can
“weather” them causing them to get serious illnesses, to die young, and to live
a whole lifetime with chronic illnesses.)
23. The Wax Pack, On the Road In Search of After Life by
Brad Balukjian (The author ordered a pack of baseball cards from 1985 and set
out in 2015 to find and interview all the guys on the 14 cards in the
pack. He reached most of them. Gary Templeton and Don Cardin were
the most interesting to me.)
24. Welcome to the Circus of Baseball, A Story of the
Perfect Summer at the Perfect Ballpark at the Perfect Time by Ryan McGee (A fun
book about a minor league intern and his adventures in Ashville, NC in 1994.)
25. Accounting for Slavery, Masters and Management by
Caitlin Rosenthal (When looking for accounts of how early American business
records were kept, she is given a plantation account book from SC, the author
realizes that slavery was not just something owners did out of habit, but for
them was good business. She cites records from account books and the
information as well as what else was going on economically at the time.
26. One Fatal Flaw by ?Anne Perry
(This is one of those writers that every book is a gem. In this one,
lawyer Daniel Pitt defends a woman in 2 arson/murder trials.
27. The Librarian Spy, A Novel of WWII by Madeline Martin
(Ava, a Library of Congress librarian is recruited to go to Lisbon to interpret
French and German newspapers and letters. In France, Helenne works on a
printing press after her husband disappears. She learns he was in the
Resistance and she wants to help too. The two women come together at a
distance when Helenne tries to rescue a Jewish mother and son. They
finally meet after the war.)
28. Readme.text by Chelsea Manning (This is the memoir of a
transwoman who did her best to do the male thing, even joining the
military. She released information about the ridiculous, harmful
actions in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, none that put people at risk,
but the military went crazy in their treatment of her.)
29. Finally Seen by Kelly Yang (Lena arrives in the US from
China and finds that things are not as great as her parents wrote and told her
they were. She gradually learns English and to express herself,
particularly through art and her courage. Gr.4-7)
30. The Four Seasons of Jackie Robinson by Kostya Kennedy
(Jackie Robinson was a complex person who believed deeply in human rights for
all and loved baseball and its challenges for a Black man in a white
sport. He was an advocate for both baseball and civil rights for most of
his life.)
31. On Democracy by E.B. White with
John Meacham (This was a collection of essays and letters to the editor by
White from 1928 to 1976. They are remarkably relevant today. It is
almost as though he predicted a lot of what is going on now, people pushing to
end democracy without realizing what it would mean for them.)
32. The Swamp Fox, How
Francis Marion Saved the American Revolution by John Oller (Francis Marion was
one of my heroes growing up. This book let me know I was right to have
him as a hero. He and his men were all partisans surviving mostly on what
they could steal from the British or what was donated by friends. They
harassed the British incessantly despite being betrayed several times by
members of their crew and scared locals.)
33. The Hidden History of the
Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America by Thom Hartmann (In category by
category, the author shows the ways presidents have appointed people to the
Court who would ignore and twist the Constitution to fit their personal beliefs
and do it with impunity. He suggests some changes that could help fix
this.)
34. Better Living Through Birding,
Notes From a Black Man in the Natural World by Christian Cooper (The Black man
who was threatened with the police when he demanded a woman put her dog on a
leash as required in that part of Central Park presents a memoir of his life as
a gay Black man who loves birding and nature in general.)
35. Prequal, An American Fight Against Fascism by Rachel
Maddow (As a follow-up to her podcast “Ultra,” the book looks at the many
people involved in the Fascist movements in this country leading up to
WWII. There were many members of Congress involved, including several
prominent senators. There were also people who did their best to stop
them and hold them accountable.)
OK, there are a few more than last week’s collection, but I
was so fortunate to have read so many excellent books this year. There
were a bunch more too that just missed the arbitrary cut-off. I hope you
pick a few to peruse and enjoy. Have a spectacular
Christmas/Kwanza/winter holiday. Make the New Year remarkable and special
for as many people as you can.
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