I'm getting closer to being caught up with my mail call posts now, although I'm still a little bit behind. I won't bore you with aimless chatter this time around though. Shall we see what books I got in the short month of February?
Amazon
Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker
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| Photo credit: Goodreads |
Synopsis
The follow-up to Pinker's groundbreaking The Better Angels of Our Nature presents the big picture of human progress: people are living longer, healthier, freer, and happier lives, and while our problems are formidable, the solutions lie in the Enlightenment ideal of using reason and science.
Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: In seventy-five jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing.
Far from being a naïve hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, it needs a vigorous defense. The Enlightenment project swims against currents of human nature--tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, magical thinking--which demagogues are all too willing to exploit. Many commentators, committed to political, religious, or romantic ideologies, fight a rearguard action against it. The result is a corrosive fatalism and a willingness to wreck the precious institutions of liberal democracy and global cooperation.
With intellectual depth and literary flair, Enlightenment Nowmakes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress.
A Midwife in Amish Country by Kim Woodard Osterholzer
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| Photo credit: Goodreads |
Synopsis
Kim Osterholzer, a midwife who's caught over 500 babies since 1993, ushers readers behind the doors of Amish homes as she recounts her lively, entertaining, and life-changing adventures learning the heart and art and craft of midwifery. In A Midwife in Amish Country, Kim chronicles the escapades of her nine-year apprenticeship grappling with the nuance and idiosyncrasies of homebirth as she tagged along after the woman who helped her birth her own babies at home. With drama and insight, she recounts the beauty and painstaking effort of those early years spent catching babies next to crackling woodstoves, by oil lamp and lantern light, and in farmhouses powered by windmills for running water and sporting outhouses for the unmentionables. She found herself catching babies born into leaky wading pools and through howling snow storms: huge babies, tiny babies, breech babies, and twin babies. Some births kept her from home for days on end, others she missed by heart-pounding seconds, yet every birth enthralled her, whether halting hemorrhages, sharing breath with tiny lungs, or bouncing through wild rides in ambulances. Too many times to count, Kim stumbled home feeling overwhelmed and inadequate, yet as she strained against her misgivings, self-doubts, and seemingly insurmountable challenges, those intimate, sacred moments transformed her as time after time she rocked back upon her heels to soak in the spellbinding magic of hearty cries filling the air–the cries of brand-new lives with newly expanding lungs, of hardy men with overflowing hearts, of life-bearing women with the reward of their labors filling their arms–a harmony of cries that mingled with Kim's own and that, together, rose heavenward from rumpled beds speckled and splattered with the sweat, tears, and blood of those births. The very beds of those conceptions became sacred spaces awash with love and joy and gratitude. She persevered, and her experiences became profoundly empowering as she unearthed the foundation and cornerstone of true midwifery–how to use her heart as well as her hands to serve, and to serve in the simplest of womanly ways---stroking, smoothing, wiping, tidying, nourishing, comforting, hearing, encouraging, validating, and witnessing. Slowly, steadily, Kim learned to play her part as midwife to the Amish–her part in a symphony of inimitable women–a single, piping strain among the melodies of those skilled, focused, strong, and harmonious–women unflagging in their passion to welcome new lives earth-side effectively and gently. And at last, tried and tested, Kim took her rightful place among them.
Reborn From Above by Sandra L. Henriksen
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| Photo credit: Goodreads |
Synopsis
What could happen if Jesus Christ revealed Himself to non-believers in love? Selena and Ahmed will find out in a tale of conversion and revelation just in time to save them; a rescue they will never doubt again. "Reborn From Above" shows to us the heart of a Christian woman, and of a Muslim man. And when both are reborn by God in love, their love will have no end. It is a vision of a grand future we may each in our own turn experience, in our own measure--a vision of hope and redemption that will change their lives forever.
This I Know by Laura Dingman
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| Photo credit: Goodreads |
Synopsis
How to live like God's in control
Do you worry often about what the future holds? Do you long for peace but don’t know how to have it? Do you know factually that God is trustworthy, but not practically how to live that out?
This I Know is a Bible study for those who want to walk upon the water. It guides women into biblical truths about the character of God so they can step faithfully into the unknown, confident in the God they do know. Corrie Ten Boom said it best, “Never be afraid to trust your unknown future to a known God.”
Join Laura Dingman as she journeys through Acts 17, James 1, Habakkuk 3, Psalm 46, 2 Chronicles 20, and Joshua 3, diving into subjects like abundance in Jesus, the goodness of God in trial, and the value of remembering God’s past faithfulness. Each week offers opportunity for prayer, interaction with the biblical text, journaling, and group discussion. Using Scripture, insights from her own life, and prompts for reflection, Laura points readers continuously to the unchanging character of God, helping them surrender their lives to Him and give Him all their trust.
Survival of the Richest by Donald Jeffries
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| Photo credit: Goodreads |
Synopsis
Survival of the Richest scrutinizes how the collective wealth of America has been channeled from the poor and middle class into the hands of a few elitists.
American industry has been gutted, with wages and benefits stagnant or reduced, thanks to a disastrous trade deals, outsourcing, and the crippling of unions. The Occupy Wall Street movement, and the presidential campaigns of both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, reveals how more and more people who are struggling understand that the system is rigged against them.
While Americans have been trained to direct their scorn at welfare recipients and the poor in general, a tiny handful of plutocratic elites have profited on an unfathomable scale, through corporate welfare and other perks. Unimaginable salaries and bonuses for the One Percent, contrasted by layoffs and reduced pay for the majority of the workforce, along with increasing calls for austerity measures and lowered standards of living, has become the “new normal” in America.
Donald Jeffries argues that this record economic inequality is more than an unintended consequence of globalism. In Survival of the Richest, he shows how the consolidation of wealth may well prove to be the greatest conspiracy of all.
The Lost Pilots by Corey Mead
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| Photo credit: Goodreads |
Synopsis
The saga of two star crossed pilots who soar to the greatest heights of fame, tailspin into scandal and crime, and go the ultimate lengths for a chance at redemption.
During the height of the roaring twenties, Jessie Miller longs for adventure. Fleeing a loveless marriage (though without divorcing) in the backwaters of Australia, twenty-five-year-old Jessie arrives in London and promptly falls in with the Bright Young Things, those boho-chic intellectuals draped in pearls, and flapper dresses with martinis in hand. At a gin soaked party Jessie meets William Lancaster, married himself and fresh from the Royal Air force, with a scheme in his head to become as famous as Charles Lindbergh, who has just crossed the Atlantic. Lancaster will do Lindy one better: fly from London to Melbourne, and in Jessie Miller he’s found the perfect co-pilot.
Imperfect Chemistry by Mary Frame
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| Photo credit: Goodreads |
Synopsis
This is the first book in the Imperfect series and it can be read as a stand alone. All books in this series feature different main characters in the same story world.
Lucy London puts the word genius to shame. Having obtained her PhD in microbiology by the age of twenty, she's amassed a wealth of knowledge, but one subject still eludes her—people. The pendulum of passions experienced by those around her confuses and intrigues her, so when she’s offered a grant to study emotion as a pathogen, she jumps on the opportunity.
Enter Jensen Walker, Lucy's neighbor and the one person she finds appealing. Jensen's life is the stuff of campus legend, messy, emotional, and complicated. Basically, the perfect starting point for Lucy's study. When her tenaciousness wears him down and he consents to help her, sparks fly. To her surprise, Lucy finds herself battling with her own emotions, as foreign as they are intense. With the clock ticking on her deadline, Lucy must decide what's more important: analyzing her passions...or giving in to them?
When They Call You a Terrorist by Patrise Khan-Cullors and asha bandele
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| Photo credit: Goodreads |
Synopsis
A poetic and powerful memoir about what it means to be a Black woman in America—and the co-founding of a movement that demands justice for all in the land of the free.
Raised by a single mother in an impoverished neighborhood in Los Angeles, Patrisse Khan-Cullors experienced firsthand the prejudice and persecution Black Americans endure at the hands of law enforcement. For Patrisse, the most vulnerable people in the country are Black people. Deliberately and ruthlessly targeted by a criminal justice system serving a white privilege agenda, Black people are subjected to unjustifiable racial profiling and police brutality. In 2013, when Trayvon Martin’s killer went free, Patrisse’s outrage led her to co-found Black Lives Matter with Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi.
Condemned as terrorists and as a threat to America, these loving women founded a hashtag that birthed the movement to demand accountability from the authorities who continually turn a blind eye to the injustices inflicted upon people of Black and Brown skin.
Championing human rights in the face of violent racism, Patrisse is a survivor. She transformed her personal pain into political power, giving voice to a people suffering in equality and a movement fueled by her strength and love to tell the country—and the world—that Black Lives Matter.
When They Call You a Terrorist is Patrisse Khan-Cullors and asha bandele’s reflection on humanity. It is an empowering account of survival, strength and resilience and a call to action to change the culture that declares innocent Black life expendable.
Tiny Life and The Monster Head by Rai Gbrym
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| Photo credit: Goodreads |
Synopsis
Artists, bees and chimpanzees: everything that lives fights to survive.
The two heroes of this story – life-size human and miniature non-human – are both little people in a world of tiny lives. They are invisible to anyone that matters, and they have dreams that matter to nobody. But the smallest lives can make the biggest difference: if honeybees disappeared from the face of the Earth, humans might just hang on, but without a rebel or two in the ranks of the biotech chimps, humanity is surely doomed.
So this is a tale about two little people who went out and found something far bigger than themselves. The pages of this book are their first tiny steps toward discovering the extraordinary unreality of their ordinary reality. Could they be yours too?
Frankie Webb is a young beekeeper whose dream is to be an artist. With a father like his, this is a very dangerous secret. The paint is extremely useful, however, to a mouse-like midget called Tiny who is hiding a spectacular secret of his own: a miniature city of dreams, built from anything he can scavenge. When Frankie discovers it, the lives of Tiny and his only friend, Speck, are never the same again.
Thanks to an invasion of escaped lab animals, Tiny’s masterpiece makes an accidental star of Frankie, while the real artist is taken prisoner in his own mini metropolis and lured into the heart of a criminal conspiracy that really makes his tail stump itch. In the human city, the street art is coming out of the alleys and spreading all over town, but some problems can't be painted over. These monster humans have felt like little people for long enough.
In this world, even dreams have a price and small creatures have their uses. Only Frankie can help his tiny friend escape the crooked art dealers and find a way to survive in a city on the brink of anarchy, but only a runaway chimp can offer Tiny a clue to his true identity.
Tiny Life and the Monster Head is a story about survival: from the survival of honeybees in their battles with wasps and microscopic blood-suckers, all the way up to humans in their daily battles to beat the clock and to beat each other. It is a tale of minuscule proportions and giant themes for readers young and old: street artists, beekeepers and futurists among them.
The Family Guide to Preventing Elder Abuse by Thomas Lee Wright
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| Photo credit: Goodreads |
Synopsis
Practical Advice for Taking Care of Loved Ones as They Get Older
The rapid aging of the American population and its accompanying epidemic of dementia and Alzheimer's disease has brought about an awareness of the increasing vulnerability of our elders. Taking care of our parents and protecting them from exploitation and abuse at the hands of others can evolve into a virtual full-time occupation, especially among today’s baby boomers. The Family Guide to Preventing Elder Abuse provides a practical manual to help prepare the reader for the challenges that arise as our parents begin to lose their independence.
In each chapter of this guide, a nationally recognized expert provides specific advice regarding effective actions that can be taken in order to protect loved ones in every area of their lives. They offer practical answers to such questions as:
What qualities should you look for in a caretaker?
What are the pros and cons of trusts and guardianships?
Who do you go to if you suspect abuse of any kind?
How do you best protect your own rights so that you can preserve the rights of your loved one?
What should you know about dealing with hospital staff when it comes to making end-of-life decisions?
The Family Guide to Preventing Elder Abuse addresses every personal, medical, financial, and legal consideration that may arise for adult children of a senior citizen.
Hot Mess by Emily Belden
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| Photo credit: Goodreads |
Synopsis
Twenty-something Allie Simon never imagined she’d fall for a recovering drug addict—but that was before she met Benji Zane, Chicago’s hottest up-and-coming chef, who’s known as much for his hard partying ways as for his unparalleled culinary skills. Six months into their relationship, the food and chemistry are out of this world, but the reality of living with a cooking wunderkind hasn’t exactly been all hearts and flowers.
Still, Allie’s convinced that her love is the key to fixing this talented man’s broken soul—so when Benji is offered his dream job as chef de cuisine for a new restaurant opening on Randolph Street, Chicago’s foodie hot spot, Allie agrees to invest her life savings in his future. But less than a month after she goes all in, Allie learns a heartbreaking lesson: addicts lie. Benji cracks under the pressure, relapses and disappears, bagging out not only on the restaurant, but on her, too.
Left with nothing but a massive withdrawal slip and a restaurant that absolutely must open in a matter of weeks, Allie finds herself thrust into a world of luxury and greed, cutthroat business and sensory delight. Lost in the mess of it all, she can either crumble completely or fight like hell for the life she wants and the love she deserves.
Myrwen of Amaranaca by Ashley Frerking
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| Photo credit: Goodreads |
Synopsis
Mỹrwen of Amaranaca tells of a young woman’s courage and kind heart as she fulfills her destiny.
As a child Melinda was always sick; she spends as much time in the hospital as out; friends are nonexistent.
One day a boy by the name of Nathan shows up and turns her life upside-down. Can it be true—is she from another world? Not just that, but royalty?
Join Melinda as she morphs into Mỹrwen and takes the biggest adventure possible.
Will she save Amaranaca or die trying?
Oswald the Almost Famous Opossum by Sara Pascoe
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| Photo credit: Goodreads |
Synopsis
When a goose crashes onto their roof, the lives of Oswald, a fame-seeking opossum, and his best human friend, shy, ten-year-old Joey, are turned upside down. Oswald's persistent attempts at stardom alienate all his friends, human and animal, and threaten to ruin Joey’s life when his mother is wrongfully arrested for animal cruelty. Horrified into thinking about someone other than himself, Oswald enlists three raucous raccoons and a sarcastic cat to put things right.
At Home with the Armadillo by Gary P. Nunn
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| Photo credit: Goodreads |
Synopsis
“I want to go home with the Armadillo.”
And you will, too, once you’ve picked up Gary P. Nunn’s new memoir of the life and times of this true Texas original.
As one of the founding fathers of the progressive country music scene in Austin, Texas, Nunn helped change the face of popular music. His anthem “London Homesick Blues” was the theme song of the wildly popular Austin City Limits—the longest-running music series in American television history—for over two decades. His hit songs, such as “The Last Thing I Needed First Thing this Morning” and “What I Like about Texas,” have been recorded by artists from Jerry Jeff Walker and Michael Martin Murphey to Rosanne Cash, Willie Nelson, and most recently, Chris Stapleton.
At Home with the Armadillo is a unique and revealing debut work that showcases Nunn’s exceptional abilities as a storyteller. His obvious songwriting talents have translated naturally into honest, captivating prose as he recounts the story of his life from a humble childhood in rural Oklahoma to playing with members of the famous Crickets to his move to Texas and into the burgeoning Austin music scene of the early 1970s.
The story of this extraordinarily talented musician will captivate a broad audience. It’s a book for lovers of country and rock-and-roll music, students of the history of those genres, people who grew up in Austin or Texas in the sixties and seventies, and those who wish they had! This is a heartfelt narrative that doesn’t hold back as Nunn reflects about the good times and the bad of a young musician on his way to a future that wasn’t always clear. As much as this is the story of Nunn’s life, At Home with the Armadillo is also an homage to Texas, to the rich and star-studded history of Austin music, and to all the musicians and other personalities Nunn met on their respective ways through the music world of the last five decades.
Personal stories of musicians like Murphey, Walker, and Nelson are integrated with tales of the festivals, clubs, and venues from Los Angeles to Nashville where their careers and Nunn’s were made. Nunn shares wild adventures in Mexico, his personal encounter with the Viet Nam War, and the glory days of Austin when the “Live Music Capital of the World” was coming into its own.
Whether you’re a country music fan of any age, a cosmic cowboy, an aging hippie, or anyone who wants to know how it all happened, this book will take you back to the days. To the days of the Armadillo World Headquarters—where, as Nunn states, “It’s been said that our music was the catalyst that brought the s***kickers and the hippies together at the Armadillo.”
Nunn notes, “I have been blessed with good health, and I have driven over two million miles alone without an accident—knock on wood! ‘Success is survival,’ as Leonard Cohen told me many years ago.”
To readers of At Home with the Armadillo: We’re lucky to be along for the ride!
Sir Coffin Graves by Leinad Platz
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| Photo credit: Goodreads |
Synopsis
Jacob Davis led a simple life until everything he thought he knew changed. His girlfriend is murdered. His father is not who he says he is -- and Jacob discovers even his own life has been a lie. As he begins to unravel the truth that had been hidden, a truth which turns out to be more unbelievable than anything he could have imagined, he discovers a plot that has been unfolding against humanity for thousands of years . . . and he has been chosen to both expose and explode it. The dangers he faces are surpassed only by the measures he is forced to take to survive them. Sir Coffin Graves, Book 1, is the story of a young man confronted with the challenges of life, death and faith in a world that is nothing like he thought it was, where reality is a dream, and his dreams are the reality. He not only encounters the extraordinary, but he slowly becomes it."
Standing at the Edge by Joan Halifax
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| Photo credit: Goodreads |
Synopsis
Standing at the Edge is an evocative examination of how we can respond to suffering, live our fullest lives, and remain open to the full spectrum of our human experience.
Joan Halifax has enriched thousands of lives around the world through her work as a humanitarian, a social activist, an anthropologist, and as a Buddhist teacher. Over many decades, she has also collaborated with neuroscientists, clinicians, and psychologists to understand how contemplative practice can be a vehicle for social transformation. Through her unusual background, she developed an understanding of how our greatest challenges can become the most valuable source of our wisdom—and how we can transform our experience of suffering into the power of compassion for the benefit of others.
Halifax has identified five psychological territories she calls Edge States—altruism, empathy, integrity, respect, and engagement—that epitomize strength of character. Yet each of these states can also be the cause of personal and social suffering. In this way, these five psychological experiences form edges, and it is only when we stand at these edges that we become open to the full range of our human experience and discover who we really are.
Recounting the experiences of caregivers, activists, humanitarians, politicians, parents, and teachers, incorporating the wisdom of Zen traditions and mindfulness practices, and rooted in Halifax’s groundbreaking research on compassion, Standing at the Edge is destined to become a contemporary classic. A powerful guide on how to find the freedom we seek for others and ourselves, it is a book that will serve us all.
Stray City by Chelsey Johnson
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| Photo credit: Goodreads |
Synopsis
A warm, funny, and whip-smart debut novel about rebellious youth, inconceivable motherhood, and the complications of belonging—to a city, a culture, and a family—when none of them can quite contain who you really are.
All of us were refugees of the nuclear family . . .
Twenty-four-year-old artist Andrea Morales escaped her Midwestern Catholic childhood—and the closet—to create a home and life for herself within the thriving but insular lesbian underground of Portland, Oregon. But one drunken night, reeling from a bad breakup and a friend’s betrayal, she recklessly crosses enemy lines and hooks up with a man. To her utter shock, Andrea soon discovers she’s pregnant—and despite the concerns of her astonished circle of gay friends, she decides to have the baby.
A decade later, when her precocious daughter Lucia starts asking questions about the father she’s never known, Andrea is forced to reconcile the past she hoped to leave behind with the life she’s worked so hard to build.
A thoroughly modern and original anti-romantic comedy, Stray City is an unabashedly entertaining literary debut about the families we’re born into and the families we choose, about finding yourself by breaking the rules, and making bad decisions for all the right reasons.
February was a pretty good month for book mail for me overall. That's probably due in part because mail that had been sent to my address in Germany was still being forwarded back to the states, and that was a time consuming process. In any case, even though February was short, I got quite a few books in the mail. Which of these books are you most interested in reading my review over? - Katie
