Thriver / Mendel Rosenberg / 79 pages

What drew me to this book is that the author lived in St. Louis when he wrote this book.  Mendel Rosenberg lived with his family in Lithuania.  When the Germans invaded Lithuania in World War II the Rosenberg family was forced to move to the ghetto created for Jews in 1941.  Mendel was 14 years old at the time. Eventually the family is transferred to concentration camps.  Mendel's father, grandmother, and brother do not survive the war.  Only Mendel and his mother survive.  The author does a good job telling his story of his life surviving WW II and what he did after the war.

Escape From Paris / Stephen Harding / 206 pages

This is the true story of a small group of downed American aviators in World War II who are hidden and guided out of Nazi occupied France by the French resistance fighters.  The story specifically focuses on American Joe Cornwall and the daughter of the family sheltering him, Yvette Morin.  Yvette and her parents lived and worked at the Hotel des Invalides, a complex of buildings which includes the tomb of Napoleon.  The Morin family with the help of other resistance fighters were able to smuggle in , hide, and help downed Allied flyers escape Nazi France.  Joe Cornwall spent more time with the Morin family due to unexpected circumstances which allowed time for Yvette and Joe to fall in love.  By the time Joe is able to escape he and Yvette are engaged.  Shortly after Joe gets out of France Yvette and her parents are arrested by the Nazis for their resistance activities.  The book follows the story of what happened to Yvette and Joe during the rest of the war and after WWII ends.

Al,l Saints / Michael Spurlock and Jeanette Windle / 207 pages

This book is the true story of Michael Spurlock on his journey to becoming a pastor and his first assignment to a church in Smyrna, Tennessee.  A movie was made about this story that I saw before I read the book.  Of course, the book provides more details of the actual story and events.  All Saints was a struggling church that was down to only twenty-five devoted members and a huge mortgage when Michael came to be their pastor.  He was looking at the decision to close the church and sell the property.  However, with the help of God and a group of Karen refugees from Burma the church is saved.  The congregation embraces the Christian Karen refugees who help them turn their church property into farm land.  There are so many God moments in this journey!  The story is amazing.  All Saints is saved and their congregation grows.  The book goes beyond the movie in telling about Michael leaving the All Saints and the two pastors that followed him and continued the revitalization of All Saints Church.

Dark Agenda: The War to Destroy Christian America / David Horowitz / 172 pages

This was a fascinating book that, although it is not very long, took me awhile to read because I took notes so I could refer back to the wealth of information.  The author shows that the rising attacks on Christians by the extreme leftists is a threat to all Americans, not just Christians.  Judeo-Christian values are at the root of our country's democracy and destroying these values endangers our freedoms.  The author documents what is happening with what has happened in the history of our country in the past fifty years.  It is fascinating and scary.

The Prisoners of Breendonk / James M. Deem / 320 pages

This is the story of  Breendonk, a small concentration camp in Antwerp, Belgium.  I had never heard of this camp in the many books I have read about World War II, so it caught my attention.  It is well researched and written.  It is also well documented with many pictures, drawings, and archives that helped to follow the story of the many people who were imprisoned at this camp.  This book helps document the history of World War II that must not be forgotten.

Farewell,Titanic: Her Final Legacy / Charles Pellegrino / 281 pages

I have always been interested in the story of the Titanic.  This is the author's account of his 2001 dive to document the Titanic.  Along with this journey the author tells the first hand accounts of several survivors in their own words.  This was the most fascinating part of the book for me.  The author does a good job telling the story of the Titanic's voyage and disaster as well as what it is today.  I just would have liked to have more pictures included.

The Tattooist of Auschwitz / Heather Morris / 254 pages

Lale Sokolov is a young Jewish man who has been sent to Auschwitz in 1942.  Because of his fluency in several languages he is given the job of tattooing numbers on incoming prisoners.  This job gives him more freedoms that he uses to help people.  It is here that he meets the woman he falls in love with, Gita.  This book is based on the true story of Lale Sokolov and the love of his life, Gita.  It gives the reader insight to how some prisoners of concentration camps managed to survive their grueling treatment and conditions.

White Fragility/ Robin DiAngelo/ 169 pgs

This book should be required reading for white people for ages high school and up. The author, a consultant and trainer on issues of racial and social justice for over 20 years, thoroughly details how racism is a constant, persistent presence in American society and culture, how white people derail conversations about racism, and how we can work on not doing that. This book is written in a very readable style and DiAngelo gives examples from her work and her own life (she is well aware she is not perfect). I can attest that I've seen this "white fragility" rear its ugly head (because it is very ugly once you are aware of it) a number of times this year in my life. Highly recommended.

The President's House / Margaret Truman / 396 pages

This book caught my eye because it was written by Margaret Truman, President Harry Truman's daughter.  She tells the story of the White House.  I thought it would be even more interesting since she had an inside perspective after having actually lived at the White House.  The author writes in easy to read style.  It is as if she is just talking to the reader.  She writes about the history of the White House and how it evolved into what it looks like today.  The book is filled with MANY interesting stories of past first families.  There are lots of photographs as well.  If you like American history I think you would enjoy this book.

Forty Autumns / Nina Willner / 355 pages

This is a true story about the author's family.  The author's mother, Hanna, was born in Germany a few years before World War II.  There are eight children in the family and Hanna is the second oldest.  After the war ends Germany is split into East and West Germany.  Hanna and her family are living in what becomes East Germany.  The author tells the story of how Hanna escapes and how the family survives in East Germany.  I had little knowledge of East Germany, but this book does an excellent job of telling what life was like living in East Germany.  It is an amazing and interesting book that held me captive to the very end.  I even cried at some parts!  It will make you appreciate the freedoms we have in our country.

The Mascot / Mark Kurzem / 396 pages

In this book the author tells the story of his Jewish father's Nazi boyhood.  Alex Kurzem kept his past a secret for sixty-three years.  Then one day in 1997 he shows up on his son's doorstep carrying his old suitcase ready to share his secret with his son.  Inside the suitcase were papers and photographs from his past.  His father always carried this suitcase with him whenever he left the house and no one was permitted to see what was inside.  Alex was five years old and lived in Russia when a Nazi death squad came to his village and massacred all the Jewish people including Alex's family.  Alex escaped into the forest.  After wandering around for several weeks he was picked up by a group of Latvian SS soldiers.  They ended up taking him in and turning him into a mascot soldier giving him a new name and his own uniforms.  He spent most of his time with the soldiers, but was also living some with a member's family.  At the end of the war he emigrates to Australia with this family.  Alex does not remember his own name, his family's names, or the name of his village.  He does know that he is Jewish.  The author tells the story of how he and his father, with the help of the contents of the suitcase,  solve the mystery of who Alex is, where he is from, and what happened to his family.

The Dictionary of Body Language/Joe Navarro/197 pgs

This is a nicely organized little book that goes over the various ways our bodies and movements "speak" for us. The author is a former FBI agent and well-versed on the topic. I really liked that he often cautioned that a sign might not be an indication of deception or nervousness but something that a person naturally does. The book is laid out in an orderly fashion, going over the various body language by each body part from head to toe and everything in between. This is a nice quick read if you'd like to know more about "reading" other people.

Catnip: A Love Story/ Michael Korda/ 187 pgs

The author of this "graphic" book is a writer and former editor-in-chief of Simon & Schuster. He's also a talented sketch artist and this book is full of little sketches he did for his Margaret in the year before she died. The couple were avid horsepeople and lived on a farm in New England with an assortment of indoor/outdoor/stable cats. Korda drew the sketches to amuse his wife as she dealt with cancer. They are cute, often funny, and sometimes poignant sketches of their cats (and a couple of horses). There are one-page bios on most of the cats, plus a few notes about the Kordas life.

The Stranger in the Woods / Michael Finkel / 203 pgs / Audiobook

"In 1986, a shy and intelligent twenty-year-old named Christopher Knight left his home in Massachusetts, drove to Maine, and disappeared into the forest. He would not have a conversation with another human being until nearly three decades later, when he was arrested for stealing food."

The subtitle for this book is The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit, which the author actually contradicts in the last part of the book, so I don't know how I feel about that. The difference between two and three stars on this one was, for me, personal preference. Let me start with what I liked about the book. 1) Christopher Knight has lived an unusual life, and his experiences are intriguing. 2) There is a bit of pondering on the psychological reasons for Knight's choices and actions. And 3) I didn't mind the parts about Finkel's developing "friendship" with his interviewee. (Although it did seem a little strange and obsessive, as others have pointed out, I didn't find it dishonest or creepy.) Now for my issues with The Stranger in the Woods: 1) Christopher Knight's story isn't that long. He doesn't give enough detail about his experiences in the woods to fill a book like this, and it should have either been shorter or filled out with more extras than it was. 2) The filling that there was felt sparse and out-of-context to me. For example, when Finkel is talking about Asperger's, he gives examples of some people who are retroactively suspected to have had it. One of these people is Virginia Woolf, and Finkel implies that she committed suicide as a result, not even taking into account her sexual abuse at a young age or many other psychological disturbances throughout her life. This seems to be putting a harsh stamp on the future of those with Asperger's without even doing justice to Woolf's legacy. 3) Although I don't mind the author inserting himself into the book, I would have liked it if he hadn't written the factual parts through a haze of his own opinions. An example of an author who separates her own story from facts well is Mary Roach. She writes about a situation in a completely objective way and then writes about her own experiences with it in subjective language. I can see the facts in this book, but I have to sift through Finkel's (maybe unintentional) hero worship wording and Knight's own prideful descriptions. Having to separate it all myself made the experience less enjoyable. I ended up rating the book two stars. Overall, I found the subject interesting but would have preferred it in a different writing style or possibly a shorter format.

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers / Mary Roach / 303 pages

Bonus category: Audiobook

Not for the faint of stomach!

Mary Roach is the master of really digging in and approaching a subject from every angle--this time with corpses. It may seem like a strange subject for a book, but most adults in my acquaintance have thought about death at some point in their lives, as well as what they may or may not want done with their bodies after the fact.

Roach divides her chapters by different methods of body "disposal." She discusses bodies that have been donated to science and various scientific studies that need to use a human body for accurate testing--anatomy, decomposition, crash injuries, and more. Then she writes about the history of these studies and others. There's even some information about differences between cultures and variations on the memorial ritual. Lastly, Roach discusses some advances that have been made in the field of ecologically-improved burial methods, as well as her thoughts and decisions on what she wants done with her own body when she dies.

As I said before, Stiff is not for the squeamish. It's very detailed, and even I had trouble eating breakfast while listening to the chapter on decomposition studies. But it gave me a lot to think about and a well-rounded viewpoint on why donated corpses are needed for scientific studies. If you're a science buff or even just vaguely fascinated in studies on the human body, this book is for you!

Moneyball/ Michael Lewis/ 288 pgs

This is the book the Brad Pitt movie is based on. I've seen bits and pieces of the movie but I don't think I've ever watched it start to finish. The author follows a season of the Oakland A's and their different approach to putting a team on the field. The book delves into some of the statistical theory behind the A's and their general manager Billy Beane's decisions but it's never too technical. It's quite a fascinating blend of psychology, mathematics, economics, and essential humanness. I loved it for the inside glimpse at baseball operations and the history behind the new way of looking at baseball stats.

The View from the Cheap Seats:selected nonfiction/Neil Gaiman/507 pgs.

This is a collection of essays by Neil Gaiman on a variety of topics: authors that inspired his writing; speeches given at various award ceremonies; forewords to other authors' works; etc. One of my favorite sections of the book was made into a separate book, and illustrated by Chip Kidd: Make Good Art. I have never been a big science fiction or fantasy fan, but after reading this book, I feel that I have a better understanding and appreciation for these genres. I can't recommend this book highly enough--Neil Gaiman has acquired another fan!

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End/Atul Gawande/282 pgs.

Dr. Gawande, a practicing physician and surgeon, discusses how the improvements in modern medicine impacts the growing elderly population and their quality of life. It's a moving book which should be read by baby boomers and all medical professionals. It has the reader thinking about the difference between being kept alive and the quality of living. Dr. Gawande has experienced this enigma in his practice and his personal life. It's eye opening book, a difficult read at times, but highly recommended!

As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Princess Bride/ Cary Elwes/ 259 pages

As You Wish, written by Cary Elwes, takes the reader behind the scenes of the Princess Bride.  From screenplay to the 25 Anniversary of the movie' release, Cary, aka the 'Dread Pirate Roberts, aka Westley, shares information on how the project was started, stalled and finally brought to life by Rob Reiner.  Along the way the reader learns how much work went into the 'greatest sword fight in modern times' and how performed with a broken toe.  Cary tells the story through his experience and members of the cast and crew relate their impressions.  Who played the ROUSes?  Which actor had a fear of heights?  What is 'the American'?  If you liked the Princess Bride, now some what of a cult film, you will enjoy this book.  For more information check out the SCCCLD website.

All Dogs Go to Kevin/ Jessica Vogelsang / 323 pages

All Dogs Go to Kevin is a nonfiction work by veterinarian Jessica Vogelsang.  In her book, Jessica follows her life through the lessons learned from her three dogs, Taffy, Emmett and Kekoa.  While the book follows Jessica through childhood, vet school and as a practicing vet, the underlying theme is dealing with the loss of a pet a friend, or a parent without being depressing.  While not filled with the wonderful characters of James Herriot, the book does have it's own charm.  This book would appeal to readers who likes dog stories, and veterinarian medicine.  For more information and similar reads see the SCCCLD website.