Why Women Should Rule the World by Dee Dee Myers

Here’s a semi-political book I read in honor of the U.S. presidential election today. Now, if only women could rule the world!

Why Woman Should Rule the World isn’t just another cliché: rather, in her well-researched social memoir of women, Dee Dee Myers shares what she’s learned about being a woman, both from her experiences as the press secretary to the U.S. President and from a life time of being a woman.  While only 10-15% of her book is memoir, the social history Myers shares and the interviews she conducts with other successful women (in politics and otherwise) support Myers’s argument for why women ruling the world could change the world.

I thought, at first, that it would be hard to engage in a social and historical review of women in leadership, but I was pleasantly surprised. Why Woman Should Rule the World was a quick read and an enlightening book that illustrated how women are different than men – and why those differences should be celebrated, not ignored. Continue reading »

Palestine by Joe Sacco

I spent two months in Jerusalem in 2000 as part of a religious study abroad experience. While our focus was on Old and New Testament Biblical studies, I also got a healthy dose of Jewish and Palestinian history and religious information. I loved my time there and I loved the people I met – Jew, Muslim, and Christian.

When I found Palestine, Joe Sacco’s journalistic report of the intifada circa 1992, I thought I’d experience another graphic novel, this time an account of a place I’ve lived. But the world Sacco explores is not the world I visited.

Sacco’s account focuses on the horrible conditions of the Palestinian refugees in Israel, the torture of the Isreali Defense Forces, and the reasons why the youth felt the need to rise up in rebellion in the intifada. While I can’t say I loved the blatant anti-Jewish slant of the book (which was to be expected), it was a fascinating experience to read it and I learned a lot that I hadn’t realized. Continue reading »

Three Cups of Tea: Counterpoints (Guest Post)

I disliked Three Cups of Tea; my mother loved it. Read our counterpoints. Continue reading »

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls + Blog Action Day 2008

I was sitting in a taxi, wondering if I had overdressed for the evening, when I looked out the window and saw Mom rooting through a Dumpster.

Jeannette Walls lives comfortably. She’s a married woman, a successful gossip reporter, and a strong individual. She knows what she wants out of life. And yet she has a secret.

Her parents live on the street.

Thus begins her powerful memoir of a childhood: The Glass Castle. Jeannette’s childhood is full of pain, but also love. Jeannette and her siblings rise to success despite their environment. Her story shows that love is almost enough to get by. Continue reading »

The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch

Randy Pausch was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer at age 46, when his youngest daughter was just 3 months old. As a well-known computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University, he was a world leader in virtual reality training. But the focus of his last lecture to the university is not about programming a computer: It’s about how to live life. In Randy Pausch’s The Last Lecture, Randy tells his three young children what it means to be happy, despite the odds, and what it means to truly live. His words, given with his own death date in mind, may inspire everyone. Continue reading »

The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester

In The Professor and the Madman, Simon Winchester delves into two contrasting yet similar personalities who helped to create the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). One is the professor, Dr. James Murray, a prolific scholar who undertakes the daunting task of creating a comprehensive dictionary; the other is a madman, Dr. William C. Minor, a schizophrenic American residing in England at an insane asylum for criminals and reading prolifically to find the words so needed for the dictionary.

The Professor and the Madman is not primarily about the making of the dictionary. (For a comprehensive history of the Oxford English Dictionary’s genesis and early creation, I would suggest The Meaning of Everything, also by Simon Winchester, which I also enjoyed.) Rather, The Professor and the Madman is a dual-biography of two odd characters, how they came together, and how they were different. While Winchester argues that the story has two protagonists, I felt that William C. Minor was the actual protagonist of this story. This was his story: how, despite madness, he could be of inestimable use to the makers of the dictionary. Continue reading »

On Writing by Stephen King

At age five, my mother was my scribe as I wrote my first book (“The Three Little Pigs”). Since then, I have wanted to be a writer.

I picked up Stephen King’s memoir, On Writing, because it seems to be a commonly recommended book for aspiring writers. I’ve never read any Stephen King. I am not often drawn to best-selling authors. (By best-selling author, I mean an author who writes a book every year that ends up selling millions of copies.) I’ve heard of Stephen King, of course. Unfortunately, I found little in his memoir about writing that helps me in my personal craft. I think his memoir should have been named On Writing Best-Selling Horror Novels.

There were a few gems in On Writing, most of them obvious. For example, to improve your writing, you need to make the time to write. (King suggests a goal of words, like 4,000 a day: I think “quantity” as a standard is ridiculous.) He also discusses the need to read good writing (obviously) and learn grammar so you can actually write (doubly obvious). However, for me, the most inspiring thing I learned was the realization I had every time I picked up On Writing: I don’t want to be a best-selling author. Continue reading »

The Complete Maus: A Survivor’s Tale by Art Spiegelma

In The Complete Maus, Art Spiegelman tells not just his mother’s and father’s story but the story of all Jews in World War II Poland. The Complete Maus is the story of the Holocaust.

In a break-through way, he tells this story in the form of a graphic novel. I was amazed not just with how approachable this made the horrible story of the Holocaust, but also with how appropriate it was. The story of the Holocaust is not an easy story to tell. By telling his father’s story from the perspective of a son watching his father and via a graphic medium, Spiegelman captured the effects of the events on his father. As a reader, I could see the aftermath of the story because Spiegelman had captured the emotions in the illustrations. The Complete Maus is an essential story in the body of work about the Holocaust and rightly deserves the special Pulitzer Prize awarded it in 1992. It is a book anyone, even those who don’t consider themselves readers, can approach to learn about the Holocaust. Continue reading »

Personal History by Katharine Graham + Why I Love a Great Biography

Katharine Graham was most well-known to me for being publisher of The Washington Post during the newspaper’s reporting of Watergate. However, her life extended far beyond the walls of the Washington Post city room. In a sense, her life was a life of contrasts and similarities. After reading Katharine Graham’s Pulitzer Prize-winning autobiography, Personal History, I am impressed once again with how powerful a great biography can be. I loved her story, and I loved her approach to her own life.

Katharine Graham was born to great privilege. Such a statement, however, cannot even begin to encapsulate the spoiled upbringing this woman enjoyed. As I read about her financially privileged birth, I wondered how I could like such a “spoiled brat.” However, Katharine Graham’s life illustrates that monetary security does not guarantee happiness, security, love, health, or an easy life. She grew just as anyone grows. Continue reading »

Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return by Marjane Satrapi

While I loved reading Persepolis 1: The Story of a Childhood, I was not as impressed with Marjane Satrapi’s continued memoir, Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return. Part of the problem was that while I liked the young girl striving to find herself, I no longer liked the angst-ridden teenager narrating the story of her foolish mistakes. Continue reading »