Kate Moore’s The Radium Girls: The Dark Side of America’s Shining Women tells the stories of the many women who worked at the United States Radium Corporation in Orange, New Jersey and the Radium Dial Company, which operated in nearby Ottawa, Illinois from 1922 until the mid-30s. These women painted watch, clock and other instrument … Continue reading
Lab Girl is the most recent Non-Fiction Book Discussion pick, and participants for the most part said they enjoyed the book. It is the memoir of Hope Jahren, a geobiologist and teacher. Divided into three sections, it chronicles her hopes and dreams, as well as her setbacks. The first section discusses her early years growing … Continue reading
“The Soul of an Octopus” surprised me. If I’m honest, I’m not even entirely sure of what brought me to pick this book up in the first place, but in the end, I’m glad I did. “The Soul of an Octopus” follows author Sy Montgomery’s interactions with octopuses both in captivity and in the wild. … Continue reading
Who would ever imagine that a book about the Periodic Table of the Elements could be so enjoyed by anyone other than chemists or physicists? Well, Sam Kean did and the outcome was the VERY interesting Disappearing Spoon. And the attendees of the Non-Fiction Book Discussion could not agree more. First, any ideas where the … Continue reading
This title was discussed at the Bartlett Library’s non-fiction book discussion on February 22, 2016. Stiff is, simply put, a book about dead bodies and how we, in this country, treat and feel about them. Reading about such taboo subjects as decomposition and dissection made for a lively discussion! Highlights included: Whether or not you would … Continue reading
It’s likely there have been enough books on the Wright brothers to fill up every inch of a small, or maybe even a medium size, library, but in The Wright Brothers, his new biography of the pioneers of flight, award-winning historian David McCullough adds another very worthy and very accessible volume on Wilbur and Orville. Continue reading
The Pittsburgh Pirates had one of the longest streaks of losing seasons in professional sports history (20 straight) before posting a winning record in 2013. Travis Sawchik’s BigData Baseball: Math, Miracles, and the End of a 20-Year Losing Streakexplains in depth what The Pirates organization did to finally get back on the right track. Not … Continue reading
In Being Mortal, Gawande looks at how medicine treats dying, both in terms of the old and the terminally ill. Through interviews and personal stories he discusses how medicine’s (and by extension nursing homes’) approach to dying is to put it off for as long as possible, but in countless situations this can run … Continue reading
Author Mary Roach enjoys exploring the unexplored, the odd, out right weird, and amusing details of events that are everyday (well her space travel book, Packing for Mars, may not cover everyday life, but it does look at space travel in a way that you won’t find in most histories). Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human … Continue reading
Never in a million years would I think of the word fascinating in association with the periodical table of the elements, but The Disappearing Spoon has changed all that. The periodic table is fascinating if you know about what went/goes on in discovering, proving, and naming all of the different elements. This book is full of fun … Continue reading
