The Origins of the School Lunch in the United States
A.R. Ruis
Ruis’s book, adapted from his PhD thesis, gives a detailed overview of the history of U.S. School lunches. Attention to health and malnutrition in children started coming to the fore in the late 1880s. Schools found that their …
Douglas Preston
Preston, part of the writing duo of Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, have brought us so many exciting titles: Utopia, Relic, Riptide, Thunderhead and all the fabulous Special Agent Pendergast stories (including the hair-raising Still Life with Crows). Now Preston brings us his own, real …
The Bizarre and Disturbing Adventures of Hitler’s Limousine in America
Robert Klara
T
hree generations after the Holocaust and WWII, Hitler still has the ability to fascinate and repulse us, as does nearly anything even vaguely related to him. His (or possibly his) car (or possibly cars) are no exception. …
Alastair Bonnett
At first glance, Bonnett’s book may look like another interesting guide to off-the-beaten-track places. Unruly Places goes a step further. Divided into eight categories, Bonnett looks at truly unique geographical places and concepts. Lost Spaces include cities that have been …
Molly Oldfield
In many ways, this is an excellent and intriguing book. Oldfield managed to gain access to sixty museums and was allowed to view objects never seen by the public. Each entry covers one of these objects. They range from the sad – Anne Frank’s friendship book, and sketches …
John Timpson
Any of my fellow Anglophiles will love this collection of country churches, collected by former BBC news reporter John Timpson. Each church is featured with a short description of the most unique features and a photo or two. The tidbits of fascinating history Timpson ferreted out are not …
Ian Frazier
Frazier’s dense and fascinating look at Siberia from seven trips over two decades makes a nowhere place into somewhere. Most often associated with gulag camps and cold, Siberia is as as vast and varied hunk of land as the US. Starting with his early fascination with the country, …
Graeme Kent
Kent has managed to create one of the rarest of novels. Set in the Solomon Islands in the 1960s as colonial rule is disintegrating, many of the bright boys are given a European education in preparation to take over control of the country. These men vacillate between their …
Huw Lewis-Jones
This is a brilliant and gripping collection of photos, some almost 150 years old, of the brave (and possibly insane) women and men who explore the poles. The book gives a wide range of vignettes – the big names like Robert Scott and Ernest Shackleton – but also …
Matt Latimer
Matt Latimer is one of those fortunates who has a dream, a plan and the ability to reach his goals. Not so fortunately, once he obtained his dream job, he found his dream was not all he had hoped. A political junkie and the only conservative in a …
Erik Larson
Thunderstruck, by the author of The Devil in the White City, is another action- and fact-filled non-fiction book. Weaving together the stories of Guglielmo Marconi, inventor of the wireless, and the infamous murderer Dr. Crippen, Larson makes two disparate stories overlap and interweave into one. Based …
T
erry Bennett
The actual text of this book is dull beyond words. It chronicles the various European photographers who first photographed Japan, along with later European and Japanese photographers and their studios. Yep, dull.
The images are magnificent. They show an exotic and beautiful world, now long gone. Narrow …
Traudl Junge – Ed. Melissa Muller
Like the accounts written by Hitler’s best friend August “Gustl” Kubizek, Until the Final Hour shows the weirdly human side of Hitler. There is something so very disconcerting about the idea of a madman having friends, normal conversations, afternoon tea and all the …
August “Gustl” Kubizek
The Young Hitler I Knew is by far the most engrossing book I have ever read about Hitler. Gustl Kubizek was a man in a position no one else had ever been – he was Hitler’s best friend from age 15-19. In all likelihood, he was also …
David Hatcher Childress
I first ran about Nan Madol last month in Oliver Sack’s Island of the Colorblind. The city of Nan Madol is located deep in Micronesia. The partially sunken city once covered 11 square miles and was cut through with Venetian style canals and ringed with man-made …
J
ack Larkin
Despite the uninspiring title and cover, Larkin’s book was thoroughly enjoyable. Focusing on homes of the common family from the times of the founding fathers, Larkin uses a wealth of images taken by the HABS (Historic American Buildings Survey), a project created during the Depression for out-of-work …
