Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A “tumultuous time” of Reform

Benito Juárez Fights for Justice by Beatriz Gutierrez Hernandez

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Benito Juárez Fights for Justice by Beatriz Gutierrez Hernandez was in a collection of old online reader links I had. This book is from 2023 so it is not as old as some I recently found, but it is not new either. However, the great thing about it is that it is relevant any time. Of course, that also is one of the drawbacks to things as it is dealing with the injustices minority peoples are still facing all over the world, even in the […]

August 2023 Leftovers

Red Cat by Peter Spiegelman

You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters by Kate Murphy

Gangland by Chuck Hogan

Death and the Good Life by Richard Hugo

You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington by Alexa Coe

Britt-Marie Was Here by Frederik Backman

Occupied City by David Peace

Sleepless City by Reed Farrel Coleman

Bad Summer People by Emma Rosenblum

Run Time by Cathy Ryan Howard

Loyalty by Lisa Scottoline

None Of This Is True by Lisa Jewell

The Club by Ellery Lloyd

Not in Bronxville by Rita K. Farrelly

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Unquestionably the worst month in the calendar. Red Cat*** It’s not the writer’s fault that I just finished Robert Kolker’s excellent Lost Girls in light of the apprehension of the man they think is the Gilgo Beach murderer. But my threshold for murdered sex workers was low going into this. I only finished it because it filled a specific square for my library summer reading game. It’s not bad; the mystery is done well but it doesn’t stand out as far as the rest of […]

Mediocre White Men

The Shadow of Blooming Grove: Warren Harding in His Times by Francis Russell

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For the last few years, I’ve had a curiosity about Warren Harding. While he was an unexceptional president, he apparently lived a very…shall we say…interesting social life. He also presided over the Teapot Dome Scandal, probably the biggest political scandal until Watergate, and his death was shrouded in mystery. When I read that James Ellroy once considered writing a fictional DC quartet with this book as a guide…well I had to get my hands on it. Holy crap was this bad. It’s tough to tell […]

More American Leadership

Leadership: In Turbulent Times by Doris Kearns Goodwin

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This book was a birthday gift from my sister last year and I loved it. I previously read Team of Rivals which deserves every word of praise it garners so I was excited to read another book by DKG. This book highlights four different American presidents: Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson. DKG points out that she is only focusing on LBJ’s civil rights policies, and avoiding his handling of the Vietnam War. I also learned that DKG was an intern for […]

Learn about your different voices

I Am Kind: A Little Book about Abraham Lincoln by Brad Meltzer

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I Am Kind: A Little Book about Abraham Lincoln talks about the personality of Lincoln with the backdrop of being kind (a trait he was known for) as the moral to the story. And while being kind is a subject or moral for all ages to learn, the overall feeling of the book (the fact that it is being told by the point of view of Lincoln and dealing with in simple terms, the personality and events of Lincoln) seems a bit mature for the […]

America was born in the crucible of the civil war, and Ulysses Grant was the avatar for its renewed life.

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This was a marvelous biography of an iconic American who’s life coincided with some of the most tumultuous and divisive events in American history. But I find myself struggling to review it. H.W. Brands doesn’t skimp on the details. His Ronald Regan biography tips the scales with more than 800 pages. His book on FDR is even more ambitious, being close to 900 pages – though, when you consider that FDR had nearly twice as much time in office as Regan, it may be said […]



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