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Not his everyday view |
I'd categorize "A Gentleman in Moscow" as historical fiction with a humorous slant. The titular gentleman is Alexander Rostov, a Russian aristocrat who returns to the country after the Communist revolution of 1917. To his own surprise, rather than being put to death, he's sentenced to live under house arrest in the Hotel Metropol in the center of Moscow, never again to leave its premises.
A few first chapter details below.
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| Not the film adaptation cover, which ironically obscures the actual people! |
"Hidden Figures" is a historical account of the important and often unrecognized role African American women have played in U.S. aeronautical and space research. It focuses on the contributions of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson from the 1930s through the 1960s as computers (all that rocket science math used to be done by hand!), researchers, and engineers at NACA, and its successor organization NASA.
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Redundant Subtitle: A Novel |
I added Anthony Doerr's "All The Light We Cannot See" to my reading list after hearing about it on the radio. I remember that someone said it's a different take on a French World War II story. Besides that, I was going in blind.
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Could have just as easily been subtitled "Four principles of values-based living" |
Last winter, I heard Northwestern faculty member Harry Kraemer give a talk about the importance of discovering one's values through intentional self-reflection. Otherwise, it's too easy to lose sight of the life we actually want to lead. He was giving away copies of his book "From Values to Action" afterward and I picked one up, interested to see what a business-oriented book had to say about values.
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The one-name author Gives us a one-word title (This is a haiku) |
What can I say about "Republic"? Before reading a single page, I already knew
that it's considered one of the great works of the Western canon, setting in
motion centuries of philosophical debate about the nature of justice and
purpose of government. What I didn't realize is that it's also something of a
page-turner.
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"Ten Reasons We're Wrong About The World—and Why Things Are Better Than You Think" |
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I read "Factfulness" with a book club this spring. Hans Rosling makes a
convincing case that most people have an unreasonably pessimistic view of the
world based on old beliefs that have never been examined or checked against current evidence.
For example, we hear a lot about global overpopulation. Here's a question from Rosling's factfulness quiz:
There are 2 billion children in the world today, aged 0 to 15 years old. How many children will there be in the year 2100, according to the United Nations?
A. 4 billion
B. 3 billion
C. 2 billion
Fewer than 10% of Americans get this question right.1
