Go Down Together was bought immediately after I read and loved Jeff Guinn’s The Road to Jonestown, and was no disappointment. Prior to reading this, I knew the very basics about the pair – Depression era gangsters and snappy dressers, who went down together in a hail of bullets. After reading this, I feel I know the pair rather intimately – and was rather surprised to have some of the more popular myths about them demolished. Both hailing from incredibly poverty stricken backgrounds – the […]
Caught out in the rain in the most dangerous Magic Tree House mission yet!
By my count, this is number 16 in my bingo journey and The Last in a Series! The Magic Treehouse series is an interesting one. Ever since I have heard about it, I wanted to read one. However, I have only read some of the non-fiction companions to the fiction stories and some of her non-Treehouse books. When the read the last in a series came up on the bingo board, I figured why not? Well, the problem is, there are series within the series! […]
A Dual Biography that works
I read Churchill and Orwell because I am a fan of the author, Thomas E. Ricks. Ricks is best known as a military historian who wrote Fiasco and The Generals, both of which I highly recommend. This book is a bit of a departure for Ricks but the topic seemed interesting. Churchill and Orwell is a dual biography of two British men who had similarly parallel lives during WWII-era Great Britain. I was surprised to find how much the two men had in common, especially […]
Delicious morsels of trivia, with hints of cheekiness.
Bill Bryson is a delightfully dorky guy full of interesting and trivial facts. In this book, he utilizes his own English country home as a launching pad to discussing, room by room, the history of the modern home. The concept works well to take us everywhere, from the kitchen (that’s why it’s called “room and board”) to the bathroom (weirdly enough, was once considered something for poor people) to the bedroom (people love sex). I never knew I would care so much about the history […]