Nonfiction
By Conor Gallagher
Here’s an unusual approach for managing work, marriage, and children in our frantic age. CEO Conor Gallagher applies business principles learned from years of reading and experience to family dynamics and organization. To six general areas, like vision, systems, and metrics, he brings the successful tools of workplace management, including dozens of charts and suggestions to make life more productive and enjoyable. His expertise also derives from lessons learned as the father of 16 children.
Mystery
By S.J. Rozan
Lydia Chin and Bill Smith are private investigators in New York City, partners professionally and, recently, personally. Smith is a Southerner, who migrated to New York. Chin is a city native, who grew up in New York’s Chinatown. It is the 15th novel of the two—this one narrated by Smith. He is recruited by a former flame, now chief of staff to New York City’s first female mayor, to find the mayor’s runaway 15-year-old son. With Chin’s help, he conducts his search, uncovering a web of corruption.
Film History
By Michael Benson and Craig Singer
Nicholas and Joseph Schenck came to the United States as children in the late 19th century, escaping Czarist Russian antisemitism. They went from being pharmacists to film pioneers, becoming the two most powerful men in Hollywood. “Moguls” tells their story and that of the film industry in the first half of the 20th century. It presents a wild and wonderful story about the movie industry’s origins, its scandals, eccentricities, and glamour, highlighting the colorful characters populating it.
Military History
Edited by Robert Cowley
Cowley accomplished a great task by assembling some of the most piercing and thoughtful perspectives on the varying moments and outcomes of World War I. It was, in many ways, the turning point for what the world is today and has been for the past century. This book presents 30 essays from the likes of military historians Sir Michael Howard, John Keegan, Ronald H. Spector, and Cowley himself. Covering the European trenches to the entrance of the Americans to the fall of the Ottomans, it is a worthy read.
Classics
By Anne Bradstreet
With Thanksgiving almost here, now is a good time to read this 17th-century Puritan and America’s first poet. She wrote verse about her husband, children, her home, her faith, and even an elegy to Queen Elizabeth I. This slim collection includes the well-known poems “The Author to Her Book” and “The Flesh and the Spirit.” Other poems speak to her tragedies, such as her house catching fire and the death of a 3-year-old grandchild. It is verse that reaches across time and touches our hearts.
For Kids
By Wende Devlin and Harry Devlin
Maggie and her grandmother live on a cranberry bog in New England. Grandmother has prepared her famous cranberry bread for the Thanksgiving feast and has carefully hidden the recipe. They each invite “someone poor or lonely” to dinner each year, but this year’s guests bring unexpected excitement. This charming story adds delight to holiday reading.
