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Swarthmore College (10/19)
Much of Kurt Eichenwald's memoir, A Mind Unraveled, takes place while he attended Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania.
Swarthmore is the product of a meeting of the Joint Committee of Friends (aka Quakers) in 1861. The liberal Hicksite branch of the Society of Friends pushed for the establishment of a co-ed school 'under the care of ...
Simone de Beauvoir (10/19)
Lucy Adler, the teenage protagonist in
The Falconer, is influenced by her older cousin, Violet, a painter and feminist who provides a model of independent womanhood (albeit an imperfect one). In one scene, Violet takes Lucy to a bookstore and buys her copies of French existentialist Simone de Beauvoir's seminal texts,
The Ethics of ...
Melmoth the Wanderer: Inspiration for Sarah Perry's Melmoth (10/19)
Though the story encapsulated in Sarah Perry's
Melmoth is entirely her own, it derives its name and legend from Irish playwright, Charles Maturin's
Melmoth the Wanderer. Published in 1820,
Melmoth the Wanderer follows John Melmoth, a young student in Dublin, as he visits his dying uncle. Upon his arrival, he discovers an old ...
The History of the Condom (10/19)
Women's health clinics like the one depicted in A Spark of Light offer many services beyond abortion, including providing access to pregnancy prevention tools like condoms. The condom is arguably the oldest pregnancy prevention method used by men that's still widely used today, albeit its early popularity was more to do with protecting ...
New York Society in the Gilded Age (10/19)
Most of the first half of Therese Anne Fowler's A Well-Behaved Woman focuses on Alva Vanderbilt's efforts to break into New York society, which was ruled by a small group of families during what is known as the Gilded Age (1870s-1900). The doyenne of New York society at the time was Caroline Astor who, aided by Ward McAllister, a ...
Musings on A Nation of Reinvention (10/19)
In Beautiful Country Burn Again, author Ben Fountain posits that the United States reinvents itself to survive times of extreme crisis. He believes that these severe times of change happen approximately every 80 years, making the Civil War the first great reinvention, followed by the Great Depression and the New Deal in the 1930s, and ...
Gothic Romance and the Rise of the Lady Sleuth (10/19)
Gothic novels typically have a few common elements: a haunted setting, an atmosphere of mystery and suspense, supernatural (or seemingly so) occurrences, a tortured hero, a heroine in distress and high emotions. The genre's origins are generally traced back to Horace Walpole's 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto, which features a medieval ...
D-Day at Normandy (10/19)
In the dramatic final pages of The Kites, the Allies arrive in Normandy to liberate its inhabitants from Nazi occupation, an event that occurred on June 6, 1944 and drastically altered the landscape of World War II. It was the most expansive amphibious invasion in history, with British, American, and Canadian flotillas storming five ...
The Bard of the Yukon (10/19)
The Great Alone takes its title from a line in '
The Shooting of Dan McGrew,' a poem composed by Robert W. Service, whose work inspires the main character throughout the book.
Robert W. Service (1874-1958), known as 'The Bard of the Yukon,' was born in Lancashire, England, the son of a banker and an heiress. He was sent to Kilwinning,...
Is There Room for the Amateur in Modern Scientific Research? (10/19)
Scientific discoveries were once often made by amateurs (often self-educated, curious members of the upper class), who carved out disciplines based on their interests in fields such as medicine, astronomy, physics and natural history, to name a few. The word 'amateur' has a Latin etymological root – amator – meaning 'lover.' ...
The Real Lives of London's 18th Century Courtesans (10/19)
Angelica Neal, one of the central protagonists in The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock, is a well-known, glamorous and beautiful courtesan (a high-priced prostitute or paid escort) to wealthy members of the London aristocracy. She lives a lavish lifestyle, purchasing the latest fashionable gowns, eating the most expensive treats and residing in ...
Medicine and World War I (10/19)
The Winter Soldier shines light on the desperate measures taken to save lives during a war that produced casualties in the millions. When Lucius Krzelewski arrives in the small Eastern European village of Lemnowice, Sister Margarete informs him that she has lost many soldiers to typhus (typhoid fever) and that chronic infections of lice ...
Poverty is Expensive (10/19)
Contrary to many deeply guarded beliefs about people living in poverty in the United States, most who can't afford the necessities of life are, in fact, employed.
The United Way calls these people Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed (ALICE). More than 34.7 million families in the United States (10.6%) fell into this category in ...
An Introduction to Graphic Novels (10/19)
If David Small's Home After Dark is your first introduction to visual storytelling through book-length graphics, you're in for a treat. There is a wealth of wonderful, accessible yet profound books that can serve as a terrific introduction for new graphic novel fans. This list just scratches the surface of this fantastically rich and ...
Books about the History of Race in America (10/19)
In Andrea Bobotis' The Last List of Miss Judith Kratt, an affluent white woman nearing the end of her life in the 1980s takes stock of her family estate in Bound, South Carolina, while recounting the years she spent there as a child during the 1930s. The novel offers a riveting tale of family secrets, revenge, and, especially, racial ...
Maternity Leave in America (10/19)
Early on in The Golden State, Daphne details the havoc wrought upon her life by her university job's standard maternity leave policy, per state regulations: 'six weeks off at 50 percent of your salary.'
Surprisingly, her California university's meager policy ranks among the best in the nation. The Family and Medical Leave Act...
SERE (10/19)
In Elliot Ackerman's novel Waiting for Eden, a pivotal scene is set at the Marine Corp's SERE school.
SERE is an acronym that stands for 'Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape.' Created by the U.S. Air Force at the end of World War II, the program was modeled after the experiences of British and US aviators who were able ...
Living Off the Grid (09/19)
In Jonathan Lethem's The Feral Detective, New York City journalist Phoebe Siegler ventures into the often perilous world of people living a hardscrabble existence in a California mountain range. She is trying to find a college-age girl who may have become enthralled with the notion of a life independent of modern society and its ...
The Lavender Scare (09/19)
Louisa Hall's Trinity touches on many subjects and looks at many personalities. One of the most interesting of these is the fictional Lia Peon, a lesbian who escaped discrimination in Washington D.C. in the early 1950s. Peon and her girlfriend moved to St. John's, and there became friends with J. Robert Oppenheimer (who was ...
Famous Writers Who Have Plagiarized (09/19)
The main character in John Boyne's novel A Ladder to the Sky plagiarizes others' work to gain his fame and fortune.
Many famous authors have been accused of 'borrowing' the writings of others and claiming it as their own work, sometimes even ending up in court. Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling and Dan Brown, creator of the ...
The Original Darius the Great (09/19)
In Darius the Great Is Not Okay, Darius has two main concerns about his name: it starts with 'D' (which provides ample opportunity for bullies to give him horrible nicknames), and it has connotations of an unattainable legacy. His namesake is Darius the Great, king of Persia from 522-486 BCE.
Darius I was born circa 550 BCE to a ...
Sitting Bull (09/19)
Tatjana Soli's historical fiction novel, The Removes, culminates at Custer's Last Stand, a battle between the U.S. 7th Cavalry and Native American tribes that took place near the Little Bighorn River in Montana in 1876. Sitting Bull was the chief of the entire Sioux nation at the time, and his vision of success over the soldiers...
The Cold War UFO Craze (09/19)
In A Girl's Guide to Missiles, Karen Piper overhears her father talking about a coworker's belief in aliens. It's just one of many moments in which she associates her childhood at the top secret China Lake Naval Station with paranoia, secrecy and fear of the unknown. While Piper knows that the secrecy of her home is due to weapons ...
The Kidnapping of John Paul Getty III (09/19)
Alex Perry's book, The Good Mothers, focuses on an Italian mafia family known as the 'Ndrangheta. This organization was behind the kidnapping of John Paul Getty III.
The story of Getty's kidnapping begins with the 16-year-old's grandfather, J. Paul Getty (1892-1976), founder of the Getty Oil Company in the 1940s. In...
Narratives that Explore the Immigrant Experience (09/19)
Picture Us In the Light adds to readers' consciousness of the immigrant experience – and the experience of children of immigrants in the United States. But it is not the only novel that does this. Children's and young adult texts in particular are consciously addressing these issues from wider and wider lenses, providing unique ...
Cults and Cult Leaders in Contemporary Literature (09/19)
The Parking Lot Attendant's Ayale is an archetypical cult leader – charismatic, intelligent, savage and manipulative. The novel's young narrator finds herself unwillingly ensnared in a cult through her association with Ayale. The cult leader is a fascinating figure, one that is frequently reproduced and reimagined in literature. ...
Tollund Man (09/19)
Anne Youngson's debut work, Meet Me at the Museum is an epistolary novel consisting of letters between a farm wife living in England and a Danish museum curator. The correspondence begins when she writes to inquire about Tollund Man.
The naturally mummified corpse known as Tollund Man (so named because he was found close to the small ...
Bertha Benz and the First Road Trip (09/19)
Leah Franqui's novel, America for Beginners, centers on three people of diverse backgrounds making a road trip together across the United States.
The term 'road trip' conjures up a lengthy car journey across many miles, generally with a vague itinerary and unplanned stops as the travelers find places of interest to explore. Some feel it ...
Persecution of Dissidents in Putin's Russia (09/19)
The political activists in A Terrible Country live in fear of arrest due to the threat of harsh sentences and even bodily harm that is frequently the result of protesting the Putin regime. Putin has a long history of silencing his detractors, using both legal and illegal means, with many critics ending up imprisoned in a gulag (a forced ...
Deaths of Despair (09/19)
The deceased was a middle-age white man who liked to be called Horsey. A working-class Ohioan who left school after 11th grade, he toiled as a mechanic, then as a laborer and then he bounced around from job to job, barely making a living until he died of an opiod overdose. His death wasn't unusual. In 2015, Princeton economists Anne ...
Real-Life Nowhere Girls (09/19)
According to the
New York branch of the National Organization for Women, 93% of juvenile sexual assault victims know their attackers. 60% of those assaults are never reported. Only 16.3% of men who are accused of rape will be prosecuted with only 3% spending a single day in jail. 18.8% of black women will report sexual assault in their ...
Celebrity Status: Books about Fame (09/19)
As one half of the famed Vlogbrothers (a popular YouTube channel with over three million subscribers), Hank Green is no stranger to internet celebrity, albeit perhaps not quite at the level that his protagonist, April May, achieves in his debut novel An Absolutely Remarkable Thing. Though Green's debut is aimed at adult readers (with ...
Sibling Rivalry in Literature (09/19)
In My Sister, the Serial Killer, the narrator Korede protects her younger sister Ayoola at great cost, despite her feelings of bitterness that Ayoola has always been favored by their mother and admired everywhere for her beauty. Sibling rivalry has long been a source of inspiration for conflict in great literature.
Here are a few ...
Family Through the Ages: Multi-Generational Sagas (09/19)
The Latecomers utilizes a multi-generational structure to bring the stories of the Hollingworth family members vividly to life. Here a few more novels I recommend that employ a similar narrative structure:
The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
Allende's first novel follows three generations of the Trueba family. Esteban, the ...
The Shinchonji Church (09/19)
In The Incendiaries, Phoebe Lin is gradually drawn into a fictional Christian cult called Jejah. South Korea is home to a few such apocalyptic religious cults, the most prominent among them being Shinchonji.
Shinchonji, whose full name is Shinchonji, Church of Jesus, the Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony, was founded in 1984 by...
Righteous Among the Nations (09/19)
Righteous Among the Nations refers to non-Jewish people who have been honored by
Yad Vashem, The World Holocaust Memorial Center in Israel, for putting their lives at risk to help Jews at the time of the Holocaust. Yad Vashem set up a commission in 1963 to establish the criteria for the award and examine cases to determine recipients of ...
Exmoor: Now and Then (08/19)
Exmoor, England is the setting for Hazel Prior's debut novel, Ellie and the Harpmaker. Designated a national park in 1954, the 267-square-mile area is divided 70/30 between Somerset and Devon counties in the southwestern corner of the country and is home to about 10,600 people. The area's landscape is incredibly varied; its rugged ...
The Ferrymen of Souls (08/19)
Quietly the ferryman is a recurring character in
Once Upon a River, a spectral presence that exists somewhere in between truth and fantasy. Radcot's denizens, many of whom believe they have spotted Quietly on the Thames, have constructed dozens of versions of his story, but in essence he is described as 'a man who comes and goes without ...
California Reading (08/19)
One of the most captivating aspects of Lisa Brennan-Jones' Small Fry is the portrayal of California during the 1980s and 1990s. From the small, specific aspects of Northern California culture to the sweeping descriptions of the San Francisco hills, Brennan-Jones creates not just a backdrop, but an atmosphere of a time and place. Here...
Cozy Mysteries (08/19)
The mystery is one of the most popular genres of literature, and the 'cozy mystery,' a term coined in the late 20th century, holds steady as a favorite subset of crime fiction.
Cozy mysteries are marked by compelling, yet relatable characters. The 'detective' is an amateur, thrown into an unexpected, undesired situation. Most often ...
Real Life Tree Houses (08/19)
Unlike Harry in Jon Cohen's Harry's Trees, readers can't stay in the fictional tree house built by Amanda Jeffers's late husband, but there are plenty of other wildly inventive and beautiful tree houses around the world that people can visit, explore - and even sleep in! Here are just a few:
Just 20 miles outside Seattle,...
Popular Los Angeles-area Bookstores (08/19)
In Glen David Gold's memoir's second section, Gold recalls his experiences working at a branch of Hunter's Books in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles (near UCLA) during a gap year he took in college. Hunter's, as Gold notes, was 'part of a local handful of stores that wouldn't survive the new realities of commerce.' Indeed, ...
String Quartets (08/19)
In the second half of the eighteenth century, chamber music, which was played by ensembles (small groups of musicians and thus suitable for smaller rooms), became very fashionable. The term 'ensemble' comes from the Old French word for 'together' and can refer to a grouping of any size, from a duet up to a full orchestra. The Dublin-based...
Angels (08/19)
Angels continue to intrigue many, as evidenced by Sophie Cameron's debut novel, Out Of The Blue. In Zoroastrianism (which dates back to about 1500 BCE) and the Abrahamic religions (the major ones being Judaism, Christianity and Islam), angels are generally considered spiritual beings created by God to serve him in many roles, including ...
John Milton and Paradise Lost (08/19)
In 'The Killer of Kings,' the short story in Anjali Sachdeva's collection
All the Names They Used for God, John Milton (1608-1674), secluded in the English countryside after being charged and fined for publishing a tract that contemplated regicide, writes his epic poem
Paradise Lost with the help of a muse, an angel the blind poet can ...
Godstow Abbey (07/19)
In his first trilogy, His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman brings readers into the story through an intense use of space; he gives us a fantastical Oxford, but described in such a way that readers could visit the real place and trace Lyra's adventures around the city and colleges and thus bring the fantasy world into their own. Pullman's ...
The Art of Capoeira (07/19)
In 'Everything the Mouth Eats,' one of the stories in A Lucky Man, the martial art/dance form of capoeira takes center stage.
Capoeira originated in Brazil possibly among enslaved Africans who were brought to work the land for the Portuguese overlords. The South American country was ruled by the Portuguese from 1500 to 1815 and during...
The Carlisle Indian Industrial School (07/19)
The boarding school in Dread Nation, where children are sent after being taken from their families is based on real schools that existed across the United States. While Miss Preston's, the school in Dread Nation is specifically for girls of color to be combat-trained to fight zombies, in other respects it resembles the Native American ...
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