It’s the holiday season and because I am surrounded by books, both for my work and my pleasure, I think about giving books as holiday gifts to family and friends. I would guess that many of you do the same. Consequently, it is time for the my next On Today’s Bookshelf.
There are a goodly number of past On Today’s Bookshelf essays, which you can access by clicking here.
Since my last On Today’s Bookshelf post (On Today’s Bookshelf XXVI), I have acquired the books listed below, among others, for my library. They have been added to my to-be-read pile. Most are hardcovers, but some are ebooks.
Nonfiction –
- Bind Us Apart: How Enlightened Americans Invented Racial Segregation by Nicholas Guyatt
- Children of the Flames: Dr. Josef Mengele and the Untold Story of the Twins of Auschwitz by Lucette Matalon Lagnado and Sheila Cohn Dekel
- The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798: Testing the Constitution by Terri Diane Halperin
- Turner: The Extraordinary Life and Momentous Times of J.M.W. Turner by Franny Moyle
- Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume 3: The War Years and After, 1939-1962 by Blanche Wiesen Cook (previously purchased volumes 1 and 2)
- American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant by Ronald C. White
- Valiant Ambition: George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the Fate of the American Revolution by Nathaniel Philbrick
- The General vs. the President: MacArthur and Truman at the Brink of Nuclear War by H.W. Brands
- A Revolution on the Hudson: New York City and the Hudson River Valley in the American War of Independence by George C. Daughan
- No Mercy Here: Gender, Punishment, and the Making of Jim Crow Modernity by Sarah Haley
- Birth of the Chess Queen: A History by Marilyn Yalom
- The History of the Hudson River Valley: From Wilderness to the Civil War and The History of The Hudson River Valley: From the Civil War to Modern Times (2 vols) by Vernon Benjamin
- The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy 1933-1945 by Robert Gellately
- Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America by Patrick Phillips
Fiction –
- Shadow of Victory by David Weber
- At the Sign of Triumph by David Weber
- Night School by Lee Childs
- Underground Airlines by Ben H. Winters
- A Banquet of Consequences by Elizabeth George
- The Counterfeit Agent by Alex Berenson
- Shadowfever by Karen Marie Moning
- Oath of Fealty by Elizabeth Moon
- Blood Red Snow White by Marcus Sedgwick
- The Hermit by Thomas Rydahl
- The Heavens May Fall by Allen Eskens
- Fall from Grace by Tim Weaver
Finally, if you are looking for a great book on the business of editing (to give or receive), check out The Business of Editing: Effective and Efficient Ways to Think, Work, and Prosper (ISBN: 9781434103727), which is available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble or directly from the publisher, Waking Lion Press.
Please share with An American Editor your suggestions for good books to give as gifts this holiday season. Also share the books you are hoping to receive as gifts or that you have purchased for your own pleasure reading.
Richard Adin, An American Editor
An American Editor 
I recommend “Truevine: Two Brothers, a Kidnapping, and a Mother’s Quest: A True Story of the Jim Crow South,” by Beth Macy. It’s about two young, albino, African American boys who were kidnapped from their “jobs” working in a tobacco field in Truevine, Virginia, in 1899 and forced to appear in circus sideshows for 40 years. In today’s political climate, the horrible racism documented in Macy’s book seems particularly relevant.
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Comment by Bobbi Hoffman — November 29, 2016 @ 10:38 am |
I don’t give books anymore, because my bookish friends are always getting what they want way ahead of me learning about it. Instead, I give calendars, which everyone uses, and there are so many of them now available, you can always find something relevant to the friend’s or relative’s tastes, giving them lovely images to look at all year.
Meanwhile, for myself, I only buy reference books, for business or my more obscure interests (most recently: a tome on what became of all the B-17 bombers after WWII). Fiction, I read so much that I would go bankrupt if I had to purchase every volume. I thus acquire novels only through libraries, advance-review copies, and swaps with friends. When I want/need something for my personal library, however, I go get it. Top of my to-acquire list is “Bark: A Field Guide to Trees in the Northeast,” by Michael Wojtech. Finally, somebody wrote a book on how to ID trees when the leaves are down!
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Comment by Carolyn — November 29, 2016 @ 5:09 pm |