Call Me American: A Memoir

by Abdi Nor Iftin

Abdi Nor Iftin first fell in love with America from afar. As a child, he learned English by listening to American pop artists like Michael Jackson and watching films starring action heroes like Arnold Schwarzenegger. When U.S. marines lan...

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

by Ocean Vuong

Reviewed by Linda:A faculty member in the UMass MFA Program and recently named a 2019 MacArthur Fellow, Ocean Vuong earned comparisons to Emily Dickinson with his first book, a collection of poetry. For his second, he turned to autobiographi...

Becoming: A Memoir

by Michelle Obama

In a life filled with meaning and accomplishment, Michelle Obama has emerged as one of the most iconic and compelling women of our era. As First Lady of the United States of America, she helped create the most welcoming and inclusive Whit...

A Gentleman in Moscow

by Amor Towles

Reviewed by Linda:An utterly charming and moving tale of a Russian count, one Alexander Ilyich Rostov, who is called before a Bolshevik tribunal in 1922 for having written an incendiary poem, and is sentenced to house arrest at the Metropol,...

Educated: A Memoir

by Tara Westover

Reviewed by Linda:The author of this remarkable book was raised by survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, where she and her six siblings prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling food. Born at home, Tara had no birth certificate; n...

The Overstory

by Richard Powers

Reviewed by Linda:This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, although perhaps overly long, is a profound and insightful look at our understanding of trees. Joining The Secret Lives of Trees and other recent works, it causes the reader to re-evalu...

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration

by Isabel WilkersonIn this epic, beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern an...

A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II

by Sonia Purnell

Reviewed by Linda:Open this book and meet a truly remarkable woman, one who was instrumental in liberating France from the Nazis. Virginia Hall was considered a most unlikely candidate to be a spy: a socialite from Baltimore who had a pros...

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teaching of Plants

by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Reviewed by Linda:Robin Wall Kimmerer has written a very personal book about plants and our relationship to them and the natural world. She is both a biologist and a Native American who is steeped in traditional knowledge. Her book h...

The Water Dancer

by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Reviewed by Janet:This Oprah’s Book Club pick takes us to Virginia, where the elevated white culture based on the tobacco crop is eroding as the fields produce less and less. Hiram, who Tasks on the Lockless plantation, cannot remember ...