ONE SUMMER: AMERICA, 1927

by Bill Bryson

Red, Wine and Bleu

The summer of 1927 in America began with Charles Lindbergh’s nonstop trans-Atlantic flight and culminated with Babe Ruth’s record-setting 60th homerun.

Crammed in between were the tabloid sensational coverage of a murder in Queens, the flagpole sitting record set by Alvin ‘Shipwreck’ Kelly, and a devastating flood in the Mississippi river basin. Al Capone was fortifying his control of the illegal booze trade with murder and municipal corruption in Chicago. Al Jolson was filmed in the movie, The Jazz Singer. The seeds of the future stock market crash and Great Depression were sown when the four most powerful central bankers on earth held a secret meeting at a Long Island estate.

With humor and vivid attention to detail, Bryson weaves all of these events and more into a spellbinding investigation of the summer in which America took the world’s center stage – militarily, culturally, in commerce and technology. This 2004 Aventis Prize-winning author is a true master of popular narrative who conducts in-depth research and then translates it into a fascinating swoop through a pivotal season in American history.

The RW & B members named Bryson’s nonfiction one of their all-time favorite books, with everyone finding a topic of interest.

THE POSIONER’S HANDBOOK: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York

by Deborah Blum

Bend Bookies

You don’t have to be looking for a way to do someone in to read The Poisoner’s Handbook by Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer Deborah Blum. Her 2010 thriller about early 20th-century poisoners and their then undetectable killing methods, is structured around the Roaring ‘20s poisons of choice. New York City’s medical examiner, Charles Norris, and expert toxicologist Alexander Gettler joined forces as indefatigable crusaders during the crime-ridden Prohibition era when bad booze could kill.

Blum capitalizes on her skills as a longtime newspaper science writer and now a professor of science journalism to create an irresistible potion of forensic toxicology, history, and true crime that is informative as well as entertaining. Her tutorial on the biochemistry of poison explores numerous captivating murder cases that will entertain true-crime fans as well as science nerds.

The Bend Bookies found interesting the “recap and telling of the early development of forensic science.” They particularly “enjoyed the case studies she included.” They found it self-evident that Blum had definitely done her research.

ISHMAEL’S ORANGES

by Claire Hajaj

That Book Club

Claire Hajaj’s debut novel is a realistic representation of the convoluted conflicts that have existed, and still do, in this troubled part of the world. Told through the story of a Palestinian man and his wife, an English woman whose Jewish ancestors survived the Holocaust, this beautifully crafted work makes the present-day tragedy of the Middle East palpable by putting human faces on the adversaries.

The author’s writing is captivating, simple yet evocative, and rich in metaphors. Hajaj explores numerous elements of the human condition all set against the clash of two cultures, spanning three generations.

Hajaj understands the Israeli and Palestinian conflict intimately. She grew up in two cultures with a Jewish mother and a Palestinian father. She “strives to illustrate how both sides deal with conflicting viewpoints and how the historical decisions and diverse interests shatter the lives of individuals and families,” said one group member.

TBC thought, “Ishmael’s Oranges gives a human face to the issues so difficult for many of us to understand. While reading and discussing the book we struggled with trying to figure out the good guys and bad guys in the geopolitical mess we call the Mideast… The book does not answer the questions nor does it give us hope, but as a vehicle for discussion it makes the complexities of the issues very, very real.”

REMBRANDT

by Gladys Schmitt

CRS Book Group

CRS discovered a “fabulous read, a real page turner,” that gave rise to “a terrific discussion as passionate as Rembrandt.” Everyone “experienced the same urge to go out and buy a book of Rembrandt’s paintings as we were reading the book so we could see what he was painting.”

Rembrandt’s life and his artistic pursuits were closely intertwined; his main goal in life being creation of his art – not family, friends, faith, or anything else. Now viewed as one of the ‘greats’, in his own day he was quite controversial, ahead of his time.

Schmitt, a poet and novelist, was a professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University. She reportedly read numerous documents, many in the original Dutch, to paint as accurate a picture of the artist’s life as she could.