The Lost City of Z

The Lost City of Z

Rating:  The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, by David Grann. Doubleday (2009), 313 pages. There are many reasons to read this book, the primary one being the ending, which I will refrain from saying anything about, even though I...
The Great Mortality

The Great Mortality

Rating:  The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time, by John Kelly. HarperCollins (2005), 356 pages. Thirty million people dead in Europe, a third of the Middle East wiped out, and China...
The Children’s Blizzard

The Children’s Blizzard

Rating:  The Children’s Blizzard, by David Laskin. HarperCollins (2004), 318 pages. From On the Banks of Plum Creek, by Laura Ingalls Wilder: “Then I’d better get the wood up before we go to town,” said Pa. “I don’t like the sound of that wind, and they tell...
Strength in What Remains

Strength in What Remains

Rating:  Strength in What Remains, by Tracy Kidder.  Random House (2009), 277 pages. Kidder tells the story in Strength in What Remains of Deo, a young man from Burundi who survives the Hutu/Tutsi massacres in 1994 and arrives in New York City with only...
The Captured

The Captured

Rating:  The Captured: A True Story of Abduction by Indians on the Texas Frontier, by Scott Zesch. St. Martin’s Press (2004), 382 pages. This is a book about child abductions, perpetrated by the Native Americans against the settlers, in a very specific place...
A Land So Strange

A Land So Strange

Rating:  A Land So Strange: The Epic Journey of Cabeza de Vaca: The Extraordinary Tale of a Shipwrecked Spaniard Who Walked Across America in the Sixteenth Century, by Andres Resendez. Basic Books (2007), 326 pages. This is a must read for anybody with the...