Cannonball Read 15

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Remember the nothing class of Home Ec? Turns out it’s got a past.

The Secret History of Home Economics by Danielle Dreilinger

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What do chemistry, business, politics, and social justice have in common? I’m betting that no one would have automatically though “Home Economics!” but that’s exactly what The Secret History of Home Economics show. It all started with Catharine Beech, Olivia Washington (3rd wife of Booker T.), and Ellen Swallow in the late 1800s where educational opportunities for women were few and far between. By contextualizing studying chemistry as women as a way to develop better household practices, these ladies and more like them developed one […]

December 2022 Leftovers

The Burning Room by Michael Connelly

Nineteen Eighty Three by David Peace

Black Dahlia Avenger: A Genius for Murder by Steve Hodel

And There He Kept Her by Josh Moehling

The Crossing by Michael Connelly

The Nice Guys by Charles Ardai

What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 by Daniel Walker Howe

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Happy Holidays! Here are the books I finished this month that didn’t merit full reviews due to time constraints and/or a lack of 250 words to describe them… The Burning Room**** Usually with Bosch books, I can tell within the first 30 pages if they’re gonna be good or not. This one was different. I didn’t have a sense for it at first and had a little trouble connecting with it but it turned out to be great. I liked Connelly’s integration of Lucia Soto, […]

All That She Carried – a powerful and important book

All That She Carried by Tiya Miles

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What can a simple sack tell us about the past? As it turns out, an absolutely incredible amount. Sometime in the 1850s, a slave named Rose sent her daughter Ashley out of South Carolina to escape slavery with a sack that contained a tattered dress, 3 handfuls of pecans, a braid of her mom’s hair and love. With these talismanic items, Ashley (who was still a child) was able to escape the hellish conditions of the South to freedom in the North. How do we […]

“Our myths have not served us well.”

The 1619 Project by Nikole Hannah-Jones

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I don’t imagine this will be a long review, not because the work doesn’t deserve it, and not because there wasn’t plenty to discuss during our book club earlier this fall, but because after spending months with this work, I don’t know how much more brain space I can give it. In a not insignificant way, I need to be done with this work for now. This book is a discussion. Its various contributors are providing context, new or more in-depth analyses of how so […]

History is Made by Persistence and Knowing the Right People

A Woman of Valor: Clara Barton & the Civil War by Stephen B. Oates

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Clara Barton is one of those historical figures that sits as a vaguely understood fact in my mind. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know about her existence, but beyond being the founder of the American Red Cross, she never bore much significance to me. But then I wrote a little article about visiting small historical sites and the “Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office” came up in my search. A cursory perusal of the website had me fascinated, and I needed to know […]

The wonkier version of “Hamilton”

Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America by Jack Rakove

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A very different account of the putting together of the American system of government.  This is the sort of stuff your high school American History (if you had such a class) textbook glossed over, and it’s fascinating to see, in such detail, how it all came together.  Oh sure, there’s some mention of Washington the general, and the various battles, and the multitude of issues the British Empire was facing at the same time, but that’s not where the heart of this book lies. I […]



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