Classics, Nonfiction, and Children's Literature
Much of the life of William Shakespeare is a mystery. He carefully did not keep a diary nor send love letters to his wife. Shakespeare, the prolific writer who, in just over 50 years wrote an almost unbelievable number of remarkable poems and plays, did not leave many personal details of his life beyond public
I know next to nothing about Philosophy, so when it came time to approach the “100s” century (Philosophy and Psychology) for the Dewey Decimal Challenge, I decided to read something from the half more challenging for me (Philosophy). This is about learning, after all, right? But between packing and moving, I felt the need to
A few weeks ago, I overheard an eight-year-old girl say to an adult in all seriousness, “I’m so hungry, I’m going to die!” I couldn’t help thinking to myself that she had no idea what true hunger was; nor do I. In Hunger: An Unnatural History, Sharman Apt Russell details what it means, physiologically, to
In a similar manner to What the World Eats (reviewed here), Material World by Peter Menzel attempts to illustrate the material wealth (or material poverty) of various families around the globe by photographing a family’s household belongings and illustrating the family’s daily life in photographs. Using full-color photography, each country is highlighted first with a
Tom Ang’s Fundamentals of Photography is aptly subtitled “the essential handbook for both digital and film cameras.” As a very amateur photographer, I was fascinated by the technical explanations for photography: how cameras work, how light is best captured, and how to process photographs appealingly. While I will never again photograph using film cameras, I
To my surprise, I greatly enjoyed reading The Book that Changed My Life, edited by Roxanne J. Coady and Joy Johannesson. The Book that Changed My Life is a collection of essays by writers, and since I don’t often read modern fiction, I didn’t expect to recognize many of the authors highlighted, much less did
What do you eat in one week? What does a typical American eat? What does a typical Brit eat? What does a family in the Darfur Refugee Camp in Chad eat? What do the people of the world eat? These are the questions that photographer Peter Menzel seeks to answer through his coffee table book
While very few parents and parenting books still argue that corporal punishment will help turn out a well-balanced child, most do propose time-outs, bribes, and praise as successful disciplining techniques for raising well-behaved children. In Unconditional Parenting, Alfie Kohn goes further. He argues that conventional techniques (such as time-outs, bribes, and even praise) may harm
In The Planets by Dava Sobel, one learns of the trivia and facts associated with each planet, as well as the moon and sun, in poetic terms. Scientist Dava Sobel, a New York Times bestselling author, shows that science can be beautiful and lyrical, not technical. Among other things, she tells of the mythology of
Last week I reread Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal: For Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public as a part of the Martel-Harper Challenge. While I was well aware that Jonathan Swift’s short essay is classic satire,
I saw How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas Foster on the “New Nonfiction” shelf at the library. I thought I’d take a glance through it when I got home, but I certainly had no intention of reading it: I have a lot of books either in progress or on my bedside table,
The life of the Mormon Prophet Joseph Smith, although short, was full of faith and controversy. In his cultural biography, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling, Richard Lyman Bushman approaches Joseph Smith’s life for all it was, without apology. Bushman does not omit controversy from Joseph’s life; rather, controversy surrounding Joseph is carefully researched in the
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