1. Peggy Pond Church. The House at Otowi Bridge--The Story of Edith Warner and Los Alamos. Here is the tale of a woman who lived on the Rio Grande as a neighbor of the Indians of San Ildefonso Pueblo and friend to the atomic scientists just then gathering at Los Alamos. Nicely done.
2. Jennet Conant. 109 East Palace--Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos. Comprehensive, readable. An excellent telling about many of the scientists and how they took over a former boys' school on a New Mexican plateau and secretly turned it into the birthplace of the atomic bomb.
3. Isak Dinesen. Out of Africa. Elegant. For me, this book is a long pastoral prose-poem describing Kenya in the 1910s and '20s, the Kikuyu and Masai, the animals both domestic and wild, the British and Europeans, and the tribulation and joy of running a coffee farm.
4. Ivan Doig. This House of Sky. A beautifully written, evocative account of the author's childhood in the Montana sheep-herding country with his father and grandmother. They led a tough life but he is always generous in his outlook of the small-town ranchers and herders. Appropriately subtitled, Landscapes of a Western Mind.
5. Timothy Egan. The Worst Hard Time--The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl. Here is disaster in Biblical proportions by first tearing the grass out of millions of acres covering parts of six states, then suffering years of drought and many, many subsequent dust storms (so that when it did rain, it rained mud), followed by millions of grasshoppers eating everything but the knobs on doors. Of those who caused this, many stayed behind, suffering through it if they were lucky, otherwise dying of dust pneumonia along with their animals. Horrific.
6. Jack Kornfield. No Time Like the Present--Finding Freedom, Love, and Joy Right Where You Are. Good compilation. Wise words by one of the most respected meditation teachers around.
7. Margareta Magnussen. The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning--How to Free Yourself and Your Family from a Lifetime of Clutter. In other words, tossing it out yourself while you're still alive so someone else doesn't have to do it later.
8. Sigrid Nunez. Mitz--The Marmoset of Bloomsbury. This is the story of a marmoset who joined Leonard and Virginia Woolf's household, accompanying them everywhere by sitting on Leonard's shoulder or inside his waistcoat. Using Bloomsbury letters, diaries, and memoirs, the author uncovers Mitz's life and describes it in a charming fashion.
9. Lynne Olson. Last Hope Island--Britain, Occupied Europe, and the Brotherhood That Helped Turn the Tide of War. How Britain was the port in the storm for six European nations and how each built its own liberation network. As it turned out, Poland and Czechoslovakia were tossed aside by the West and "given" to Stalin. Norway, Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg were not. Also how three Poles and a Frenchman were the first to crack the Enigma code, then not asked to help Bletchley Park after they reached England. Lots of built-in prejudice, hubris, and down-right stupidity. But also a lot of heroism. Excellent. Good telling, too, about the Polish RAF airmen who helped win the Battle of Britain and who, in fact, had more experience flying than the British at that time.
10. Emily Kaiser Thelin. Unforgettable--The Bold Flavors of Paula Wolfert's Renegade Life. This is a very readable description of Paula's gastronomic explorations around the Mediterranean jotting down recipes for authentic dishes cooked by the locals from Morocco to Turkey. It's also a combination of recipes and biography of this mid/late-20th-century food authority, complete with excellent photos.
11. Lucy Worsley. Jane Austen at Home. Engrossing biography 1775-1817. Very readable, well researched, and well written with a broad sweep of information, domestic and literary, encompassing Austen's entire life, all her family members, all her homes, even every man who might have been interested in her. In her lifetime, she earned just over £600 from her writing. Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, and Emma were published during her lifetime, anonymously (or "By a Lady"). Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, published after her death, were finally published under her name with the notice that the earlier four had been by her as well.
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