Biography
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A Little House Traveler
I picked up A Little House Traveler by chance on the juvenile biography shelf last week. Barbara at Stray Thoughts hosts a Laura Ingalls Wilder Challenge this month, and when I saw this…
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The Summer of the Great Grandmother
Summer of the Great Grandmother tells the story of Madeleine L’Engle’s last summer with her mother. It’s the second of L’Engle’s four “Crosswicks Journals,” but since I read them out of order it…
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The Comstocks of Cornell
We’ve been using the Handbook of Nature Study for science this year, and I’ve grown curious about its author. I decided to read Anna Botsford Comstock’s autobiography, The Comstocks of Cornell. She had…
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Deeper Experiences of Famous Christians
Let’s get the embarrassing part out of the way first: yes, I read the large-print, abridged version of this book. It wasn’t my first choice. I’d put the original version on my Christmas…
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Decision Points
Former President George Bush’s Decision Points hasn’t been an easy read for me. Politics isn’t a world where I feel very at home or savvy, and of course this book is an account…
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The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
In 1951, a black woman named Henrietta Lacks was treated for cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins. She died very quickly from the disease, but during treatment researcher George Gey biopsied her tumor without…
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Son of Hamas
Son of Hamas recounts the story of Mosab Hassan Yousef, son of one of the founders of the Palestinian Islamic organization Hamas. The book takes us in roughly chronological order from his youth…
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The Hiding Place
The Hiding Place is the story of Corrie Ten Boom, a Dutch woman best known as a participant in the Dutch underground during the second world war whose home had a hidden room…
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The Narnian
Alan Jacobs’s The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C.S. Lewis has been recommended to me twice by commenters here. I’ve been working through it slowly and savoring its even-handed, discerning discussion of…