August 2018 ~ What non-fiction books are you enjoying?

This will be the final single-month thread.

The next thread will include September and October.

I'm rounding out my reading on the kidnapping of Amanda Lindhout by reading her mother's book: One Day Closer: A Mother's Quest to Bring her Kidnapped Daughter Home by Lorinda Stewart.

I've finished To a Mountain in Tibet which is an account of a trek to a scared mountain. It is also an exploration of faith and how it responds in the face of death. Interesting on both counts.

I've received today an exhibition catalogue, called 100 First Women Portraits. The exhibition is here: https://1stwomenuk.co.uk/contact-us/the-show/
Each image is a portrait of a woman who is the first for some reason. There is a description of her first and a brief biography. Excellent images of a century of woman.

>4 Helenliz: That looks very interesting. Don't have time to get down to London to visit the exhibition, but I might catalogue anyway.

Added
FEAR: Trump in the White House by Bob Woodward
to my TBR list. I pre-ordered the book which will be released on 9/11. This tell-all book features info garnered from people who left the administration. Bob, Carl Bernstein and the Washington Post exposed Nixon/Watergate in the 1970s.

>5 SChant: I know what you mean. I didn't think I'd get down to the exhibition, so went ahead and bought the catalogue. It was worth it and I think I might be able to squeeze a visit in anyway.

I picked up this memoir without any idea what it was but found it excellent. Hamlet's Dresser is a combination of tales of a horrendous childhood, the backstage workings of Shakespearean plays, and observations with great empathy of old people. Sounds rather an odd combination but it all makes sense in the context of his life.

Spaceman, An Astronaut's Unlikely Journey to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe by Mike Massimino

Silent Players: A Biographical and Autobiographical Study of 100 Silent Film Actors and Actresses
By Anthony Slide
3/5 stars
Slide discusses the various actors and actresses that made a living in the silent film era. Each segment on each actor is only a few pages long. Some made it into the talkie era but many of the others' careers ended when talkies took off. He also discusses the studios and I was surprised that the Chicago Essanay Film Manufacturing Company was a fairly big player in the silent film era. It eventually merged with other studios. Definitely for silent film buffs but I wanted more info though I fear a lot of the silent film era information has been lost.

Just finished The Executioners Song Norman Mailer which I somehow missed in the past. Fascinating, so well documented this story about Gary Gilmore's legal fight to die after he is found guilty of first degree murder, is riveting, despite its 1100 whopping 1100 pages

I'm on the final section of Claiming Knowledge: Strategies of Epistemology from Theosophy to the New Age. It's not really a book about epistemologies, it's a book about "strategies of epistemology," which turn out to be tropes and structures of epistemological rhetoric. It's pretty interesting. The author is not especially sympathetic to his subject matter, and seems to be making a somewhat strenuous effort not to call New Age believers a pack of idiots and frauds. His usage of "the modern Esoteric tradition" to designate a rather narrow current of religious culture from Theosophy through the late 20th-century New Age is unfortunate, but it doesn't keep the book from being worthwhile on its own terms.

Started Rise Up Women! by Diana Atkinson - a vast and detailed tome about the lives and work of the Suffragettes, with some excellent photographs:
and Black Hole Blues by Janna Levin - a rather confusingly written work supposedly about the discovery of gravitational waves, but so far it's more about the people than the science.

I finished 100 First Women A book of portraits of 100 women who were first in their role or to achieve something. Disconcerting that someone like the first woman in the UK to achieve equal pay is still alive...

Along the same line, I finished We Shall Fight Until We Win, a graphic novel I help fund. Slightly disappointed in the selection of women to feature in the final 1/3 of the book.

Currently reading The Country Book (can't find the right touchstone) the nature diary of Edward Grey & his wife. He was Foreign Secretary at the outbreak of WW1.

>14 Helenliz:. Along the same vein, I am reading She Caused a Riot which is a completely irreverent cook's tour through 100 of history's notable women. In 2018, this is probably the way that women's history should be taught; laced with snark and profanity. (like: why didn't we know about these women? Of course, that's why.)

Enjoying this OverDrive-Kindle eBook ~

Unhinged: An Insider's Account of the Trump White House
by Omarosa Manigault Newman

(half of the book involves the WH/Trump is a ten-year-old in a senior citizen's body)

I'm reading When Strangers Meet: How People You Don't Know Can Transform You by Kio Stark.