The following titles are available in sets of approximately fifteen copies; sometimes more. Those with an asterisk * have a study guide to accompany the title. Please call (801) 359-9670 to check availability.

Request Form for Books and/or Discussion Leader (pdf)

* 1776 - (David McCullough, 2005) An intensely human story of those who marched with General George Washington in the year of the Declaration of Independence -- when the whole American cause was riding on their success, without which all hope for independence would have been dashed and the noble ideals of the Declaration would have amounted to little more than words on paper.

“A” is for Alibi – (Sue Grafton, 1982) The pretty, young wife of a slick divorce lawyer and slippery ladies man is convicted of his murder by a jury. Out on parole after eight years in prison, she hires a detective to discover who really killed her husband. But the trail is eight years cold, and at the end is a chilling unexpected twist, a second eight year old murder and a brand-new corpse. Newsweek calls this book, “smart, well-paced, and very funny.”

Alexander Hamilton, American - ( Richard Brookhiser, 1999) In these pages, Alexander Hamilton sheds his skewed image as the "bastard brat of a Scotch peddler," sex scandal survivor, and notoriously doomed dueling partner of Aaron Burr. Examined up close, throughout his meteoric and ever-fascinating (if tragically brief) life, Hamilton can at last be seen as one of the most crucial of the founders.

The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook – (Alice B. Toklas, 1954) A collection of stories of meals shared with famous friends such as Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso, and Ernest Hemingway, with recipes and memories of wartime in Paris. Toklas’s long association with Gertrude Stein is well known; less well known is her extraordinary skill with food. James Beard called her “one of the really great cooks of all time.” A culinary treat!

* America’s Dream – (Esmeralda Santiago, 1996) This brutal yet sensitive tale of a woman’s journey from hotel worker in Puerto Rico to nanny and housekeeper in New York tackles issues of class and power common to many immigrant experiences.

American Pastoral - (Philip Roth, 1997) Symbolic of turbulent times of the 1960s, the explosion of a bomb in his own bucolic backyard sweeps away the innocence of Swede Levov, along with everything industriously created by his family over three generations in America.

American Sphinx - (Joseph Ellis, 1996) Thomas Jefferson may be the most imporatant American president; he is certainly the most elusive. Following his subject from the drafting of the Declaration of Independence to his retirement in Monticello, Joseph Ellis unravels the contradictions of the Jeffersonian character. Winner of the National Book Award.

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business – (Neil Postman, 1985) Television has conditioned us to tolerate visually entertaining material measured out in spoonfuls of time, to the detriment of rational public discourse and reasoned public affairs. In this book, Postman alerts us to the real and present dangers of this state of affairs, and offers compelling suggestions on how to withstand the media onslaught.

And Then There Were None – (Agatha Christie, 1939) Ten strangers are gathered together on an isolated island by a mysterious host.  One by one the guests share the darkest secrets of their wicked pasts. And one by one, they die. (Also published as Ten Little Indians).

* Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir – (Frank McCourt, 1996) McCourt’s account of his parents’ return to Ireland from New York when he was four chronicles a childhood through extreme poverty and “swerves flawlessly between aching sadness and desperate humor…a work of lasting beauty.”

* Annapurna: A Woman’s Place - (Arlene Blum, 1980) A book about inspiration and achievement. A special edition to the original Annapurna: A Woman’s Place announces the twentieth anniversary of the American Women’s Himalayan Expedition that ended both in triumph and tragedy. See how the climbers lives were affected by this tremendously strenuous journey, and apply the spirit shown to you own life!

Appetite: Food as Metaphor: An Anthology of Women Poets, Vol. 1 - (Phyllis Stowell & Jeanne Foster, 2002) In poems by Jane Kenyon, Lucille Clifton, and Anne Sexton, food emerges as a re-occurring and central metaphor in the way women live, in the pulse of the everyday, and as a vehicle for the exotic. From coffee to caviar, from potatoes to dandelions-even in hunger and anorexia-the metaphors of food have worked like yeast in the imagination of these poets.

* Autobiography of a Yogi - (Paramahansa Yogananda, 1946, 1998).  
Yogananda, a recognized saint, takes us into the world of yogis, enlightenment, meditation, and miracles.  He reveals his life with saints (Therese Neumann), poets (Nobel laureate Tagore), and world leaders (Mahatma Gandhi and President Wilson). “Yoga” means “union with the divine” and is an ancient science, not a religion.  With candor and humor, Yogananda shares details of his remarkable childhood, training with a yoga master, and thirty years of teaching in America.  He discloses his human foibles and emotions, showing us that everyone, regardless of gender or religion, can realize our oneness with the divine and become yogis
or yoginis. 

* Balm in Gilead, Journey of a Healer – (Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, 1988) The author recounts the extraordinary life of her mother, Dr. Margaret Morgan Lawrence, one of the first African-American women to graduate from Cornell University and Columbia University School of Medicine. This book captures both the life of an inspiring woman and the social, cultural, historical, and psychological forces that shaped the destinies of four generations of African-American women and their families.

* The Bean Trees – (Barbara Kingsolver, 1988) Taylor Greer grew up poor in rural Kentucky with the goals of avoiding pregnancy and leaving town as soon as she could. But when she heads west with high hopes and a barely functional car, she meets the human condition head on. By the time Taylor arrives in Tucson, Arizona, she has acquired a completely unexpected child, a three year old American Indian girl named Turtle, and must somehow come to terms with both motherhood and the necessity of putting down roots.

Bee Season -  (Myla Goldberg, 2000) This bestselling novel about a young girl who stuns her family—and herself—by winning a spelling bee, sending her family’s life into a tailspin, is also a masterful portrayal of modern family life.  Eliza wants more than anything to win the praise of her parents, but in her attempt to shine, she also discovers self-confidence and independence.  “A gripping portrait. . . .Goldberg is a terrifically smart, acutely talented writer,” writes the San Francisco Chronicle.

The Bluest Eye – (Toni Morrison, 1970) Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Morrison began her career with this novel, heralded for its richness of language and boldness of vision. Set in the author’s girlhood hometown of Lorain, Ohio, it tells the story of Pecola Breedlove, an African-American girl of eleven. Pecola prays for her eyes to turn blue so that she will be as beautiful and beloved as all the blond, blue-eyed children in America. In the autumn of 1941, the year the marigolds in the Breedloves’ garden do not bloom, Pecola’s life does change, in painful, devastating ways.

The Book Thief - (Markus Zusak, 2007) It’s just a small story really, about among other things: a girl, some words, an accordionist, some fanatical Germans, a Jewish fist-fighter, and quite a lot of thievery. . . .
Set during World War II in Germany, Markus Zusak’s groundbreaking new novel is the story of Liesel Meminger, a foster girl living outside of Munich. Liesel scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist–books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement before he is marched to Dachau. This is an unforgettable story about the ability of books to feed the soul.

The Boy in the Stiped Pajamas - (John Boyne, 2006) When Bruno returns home from school one day, he discovers that his belongings are being packed in crates. His father has received a promotion and the family must move from their home to a new house far far away, where there is no one to play with and nothing to do. A tall fence running alongside stretches as far as the eye can see and cuts him off from the strange people he can see in the distance. But Bruno longs to be an explorer and decides that there must be more to this desolate new place than meets the eye. While exploring his new environment, he meets another boy whose life and circumstances are very different to his own, and their meeting results in a friendship that has devastating consequences.

Braided Lives, An Anthology of Multicultural American Writing – (Minnesota Humanities Commission, 1991) This anthology brings together the most powerful stories and poems of some of the best Native American, Hispanic American, African American, and Asian American writers. Braided Lives reveals the remarkable diversity that enriches the nation.

* Bread Givers – (Anzia Yezierska, 1925) Sara Smolinsky, the youngest daughter of an Orthodox rabbi, watches as her father marries off her sisters to men they don’t love. But Sara rejects this conception of Jewish womanhood. She wants to live for herself and to marry for love. Set during the 1029’s on New York’s Lower East Side, the story of Sara’s struggle toward independence and self-fulfillment - through education, work, and love – is universal and resonates with a passionate intensity that all can share.

* Burning the Days: Recollection – (James Salter, 1997) James Salter commemorates his life with a precision of thought and language that is at once clarifying and intoxicating. His descriptions of attending a military academy, flying in the Korean War, learning about the naivete of a mistress, making movies, or relishing the smile of a girl in a skimpy dress in a Roman café – they are all made by an incomparable observer and storyteller. Weaving the recollections of time, desire, pleasure, and regret, Salter creates an unforgettable memoir.

Canaries on the Rim: Living Downwind in the West – (Chip Ward, 1999) A father recounts how his family sought neighborliness and safety in a small Utah town and became enmeshed in a drama involving hazardous waste, industrial pollution, and the devilish choice between jobs and health.

* Catfish & Mandala – (Andrew X. Pham, 1999) In a search for cultural identity and personal history, Vietnamese-American Pham sets out on a solo bicycle voyage around the Pacific Rim to Vietnam.

* Ceremony – (Leslie Marmon Silko, 1977) Tells the story of how a young mixed-blood Laguna Indian returning from World War II finds his own identity through a rediscovery of Laguna traditions, his relationship with the land, with storytelling, and with American Indian values.

* Changing the Face of Hunger - (Tony Hall, 2006) The story of how liberals, conservatives, republicans, democrats, and people of faith are joining forces in a new movement to help the hungry, the poor, and the oppressed.

84, Charing Cross Road – (Helene Hanff, 1970) Helene Hanff writes to a second-hand London bookstore for copies of books she cannot find in New York City. A correspondence ensues, and this novel is the product of a relationship between a rather reserved Englishman and a brash American. It evolves into a friendship and correspondence between herself and the entire shop. Their shared love for books and authors leads to a friendship which often has little to do with the books, but a great deal to do with human nature.

*The Chosen – (Chaim Potok, 1967) In a world of New York’s East side, a loving father has not spoken to his son for six years except to discuss the Talmud. Danny is expected to become the seventh rabbi in his family and eventually to lead the tightly-knit religious community that has survived in transplantation to America. But his brilliant intellect is powerfully drawn to the secular prophets of Darwin and Freud. Told from the perspective of his best friend, Reuven, whose family represents the liberal tradition in Judaism, the novel recounts Danny’s search for religious identity.

* Citizen Washington – (William Martin, 1999) A meticulously researched novel that intermingles extraordinary historical characters with brilliantly imagined fictional ones, Martin brings to life the flesh-and-blood man behind the frozen face on the dollar bill.

Cold Mountain - (Charles Frazier, 1997) An adventure story and love story are intertwined in this powerful and majestically moving book about a man who had been fighting at Petersburg and decides to walk back to his home in the Blue Ridge Mountains where the woman he loves fights to revive her fathers farm and survive. He encounters slaves, marauders, bounty hunters and witches either try to help or hurt him. An Authentic American Odyssey.

* The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother – (James McBride, 1996) As an adult, McBride finally persuaded his mother to tell her story as a rabbi’s daughter, born in Poland and raised in the South, who fled to Harlem, married a black man, founded a Baptist church, and put twelve children through college. McBride’s tribute to his remarkable, eccentric, determined mother is also an eloquent exploration of what family really means.

Community and the Politics of Place – (Daniel Kemmis, 1990) Eloquently written and wonderfully readable, this book describes what communities might be and how they might work together. Kemmis makes a relatively new point in the ancient field of political history, that location is crucial to our very concept of community.

* A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court – (Mark Twain, 1889) A nineteenth century Connecticut man wakes to find himself in King Arthur’s England, facing a world whose idyllic surface masks fear, injustice, and ignorance. From broad comedy to biting social satire, wild high jinks to deeply probing insights into the nature of man, the reader falls under the book’s enchantment and finds that the grim truths of Twain’s Camelot strike a resounding contemporary note.

* The Crown of Columbus – (L. Erdrich & M. Dorris, 1991) To her amazement, Vivian Twostar, a single Native American working mother and a very pregnant anthropologist of uncertain tenure, has found Columbus’ legendary lost diary buried among forgotten papers in the basement of the Dartmouth Library. Lured by the wild promise of redeeming the past, characters are plunged into a harrowing race against time and death that changes all their lives forever.

* Dakota: A Spiritual Geography – (Kathleen Norris, 1993) Norris’s eloquent prose evokes the Great Plains and its influence on the human spirit. This book describes the harsh, desolate, yet sublime landscape that embodies the contradictions of American life as lived in the small towns where history and myth have become indistinguishable.

Dancing at the Rascal Fair – (Ivan Doig, 1987) From its opening on the quays of a Scottish port in 1889, to its close on a windswept Montana homestead three decades later, this story is a passionate and authentic chronicle of an American experience.

Davita’s Harp - (Chaim Potok, 1985) For Davita Chandal, growing up in the New York of the 1930s and '40s is an experience of joy and sadness. Her loving parents, both fervent radicals, fill her with the fiercely bright hope of a new and better world. But as the deprivations of war and depression take a ruthless toll, Davita unexpectedly turns to the Jewish faith that her mother had long ago abandoned.

* Death of a Salesman – (Arthur Miller, 1949) In two acts and a requiem, this 1949 play shows how the illusions and false Gods of an aging suburban salesman have turned his life into a nightmare. A tragic hero of the American theatre, Willy Loman might be Everyman, his life the chronicle of a broken American dream.

* The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories – (Leo Tolstoy, 1960) Tolstoy exposes the egotism that tragically blinds average people as they search for ways to become respected by their societies. In addition to the title story, the collection includes “Family Happiness,” “The Kreutzer Sonata,” “Master and Man.”
“Declaration of Independence” (1776) & “Preamble to the Constitution of the United States” (1787) – Let the discussion about where it all began start at the beginning with our foundational documents which contain essential statements on the first principles of citizenship and the common good.

* Democracy in America – (Alexis de Tocqueville, ed. by Richard D. Heffner, 1956) Tocqueville’s original work, edited and arranged for the modern reader. This study of a nation’s institutions and culture from a foreign perspective sheds new light on the idea and reality of America.

* Desert Wife – (Hilda Faunce, 1928) In this compelling narrative, the wife of an Indian trader adjusts to life in the desert of the Navajos before World War I. A revealing portrayal of the land and the people, and exploration of the racial differences still confronting us today.

Devil in a Blue Dress – (Walter Mosley, 1990) In 1948 Los Angeles, Easy Rawlings is a black war veteran just fired from his job at a defense plant. Easy is drinking in a friend’s bar, wondering how he’ll meet his mortgage, when a white man in a linen suit walks in, offering good money if Easy will simply locate Miss Daphne Monet, a blond beauty known to frequent black jazz clubs.

The Devil’s Highway – (Luis Alberto Urrea, 2004) Based on a true story, this national bestseller traces twenty-six men who in May 2001 attempted to cross the Mexican border into the desert of southern Arizona, through the dry and deadly region known as the Devil’s Highway.  Urrea’s account of their story challenges the stereotypes we have of illegal immigrants and of the Border Patrol who search for them and, in many cases, save them. Urrea’s narrative is a deftly written, searing tale of the tragedy happening along America’s border. 

* Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood – (Fatima Mernissi, 1994) In an exotic and rich narrative of a childhood behind the iron gates of a domestic harem, Mernissi weaves her own memories with the dreams and memories of the women who surrounded her in the courtyard of her youth, women who, deprived of access to the world outside, recreated it from sheer imagination. A provocative story of a girl confronting the mysteries of time and place, gender and sex in the recent Muslim world.

Earth in Mind: On Education, Environment and the Human Prospect – (David Orr, 1999) In clear, moving prose, Orr argues for a new education in what it means to live in a finite world and for “an ecological intelligence” that does not alienate us from life.

Eating in America: A History – (Waverly Root & Richard de Rochemont, 1976) The story of American eating begins and ends with the fact that American food, by most of the world’s standards, is not very good. This is a rather sad note considering the “land of plenty” the first American settlers found, and even sadder considering that with the vast knowledge of food we possess, we have still managed to create things such as the TV dinner and “Finger Lickin’ Good” chicken. Nevertheless, America’s eating habits, the philosophy behind these habits, and much of the food itself are deliciously fascinating. Wavery Root and Richard de Rochemont, in a style that is rich, tasty, and ironic, chronicle the history of American food and eating customs from the time of the earliest explorers to the present.

Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability - (Paul Hawken, 1993) The bestselling author of Growing a Business presents a visionary new program which businesses can follow to help restore the planet.

The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin – (Brands, H.W., 2000) Drawing on previously unpublished letters to and from Franklin, as well as the recollections and anecdotes of Franklin's contemporaries, H. W. Brands has created a portrait of the eighteenth-century genius who was in every respect America's first Renaissance man, and arguably the pivotal figure in colonial and revolutionary America. 

Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation - (Joseph Ellis, 2002) Ellis focuses on six discrete moments during the 1790’s that exemplify the most crucial issues facing the fragile new nation: Burr and Hamilton's deadly duel; Hamilton, Jefferson, and Madison's secret dinner; Franklin's petition to end the "peculiar institution" of slavery; Washington's precedent-setting Farewell Address; Adams's difficult term as Washington's successor; and finally, Adams and Jefferson's renewed correspondence at the end of their lives.

* The End of the Affair – (Graham Greene, 1951) This frank, intense account of a love-affair and its mystical aftermath is set in a suburb of London and told with the intimate informality of the first person. The story tells of the strange and callous steps taken by a middle-aged writer to destroy, or perhaps reclaim, the mistress who had unaccountably left him eighteen months before.

The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era – (Jeremy Rifkin, 1995) Rifkin argues that we are entering a new phase in history, one characterized by the steady and inevitable decline of jobs as sophisticated computers, robotics, telecommunications, and other Information Age technologies are fast replacing human beings in virtually every sector of human industry.

Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm – (Davis Mas Masumoto, 1996) An eloquent, humorous memoir of one critical year in the life of an organic peach farmer. Masumoto reflects on saving a family and a way of life, and the market values that threaten both. An author with “a farmer’s calluses and a poet’s soul.”

Faces of Utah – (Shannon Hoskins, 1996) In an inspired centennial project, the Mountain West Center at USU and the Utah Humanities Council put out a call around the state: tell us your feelings about living in Utah. Collected in this volume are entries picked out of over 500,000 responses to represent the diverse voices of the state’s people.

Farewell, My Lovely - (Raymond Chandler, 1940) Gritty, well-plotted and brutally realistic, Raymond Chandler's novels depict the lowlife of the City of Angels in the 30s and 40s. They feature tough guy Philip Marlowe, the archetypal private eye who spawned countless imitators.

* A Farewell to Arms - (Ernest Hemingway, 1957) “A story of love and pain, of loyalty and desertion, A Farewell to Arms.” A story about World War I and the experiences of an ambulance driver on the Italian front and “his passion for a beautiful nurse.” Intense, glowing, and descriptive fit this wonderful work.

* Fierce Attachments, A Memoir – (Vivian Gornick, 1987) Gornick “takes her readers deep into that primitive no-man’s-land where mothers and daughters struggle, separate, reconcile, try to talk, try to understand and, sometimes, devour one another alive,” according to The Boston Globe.

Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation - (Joseph Ellis, 2002) Ellis focuses on six discrete moments during the 1790’s that exemplify the most crucial issues facing the fragile new nation: Burr and Hamilton's deadly duel; Hamilton, Jefferson, and Madison's secret dinner; Franklin's petition to end the "peculiar institution" of slavery; Washington's precedent-setting Farewell Address; Adams's difficult term as Washington's successor; and finally, Adams and Jefferson's renewed correspondence at the end of their lives.

Founding Mothers: The Women who Raised Our Nation - (Cokie Roberts, 2005) While the "fathers" were off founding the country, what were the women doing? Running their husband’s businesses, raising their children plus providing political information and advice. At least that’s what Abigail Adams did for John Adams.  Abigail Adams is the best known of the women who influenced the founders, but there are many more, including Martha Washington.

* For Love of the Game – (Michael Shaara, 1991) Pulitzer prize winning novelist Michael Shaara (Killer Angels) writes this story of a major league pitcher pitching his last game, an all out effort to finalize his career and prepare for life away from sport.

Forty (40) Ways to Raise a Nonracist Child – (Barbara Mathias, Mary Ann French, 1996) A practical guide for all parents desiring to teach their children to shun prejudice, narrow-mindedness and hatred.

Frankenstein – (Mary Shelly, 1963 Edition) The original story of Victor Frankenstein and of the monstrous creature he created. Shelley's classic hints in part at the possible dangers inherent in the pursuit of pure science; it also portrays the injustice of a society which persecutes outcasts such as the "Monster." Disturbing and profoundly moving, Frankenstein has become part of our own mythology.

Gaviotas: A Village to Reinvent The World - (Alan Weisman, 1998) More than twenty-five years ago, an intrepid visionary named Paolo Lugari set out to create a village in Columbia that could sustain itself agriculturally, economically, and artistically. He reasoned that if a community could survive in the Colombian llanos, it would be possible to live anywhere.  

The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise & Decline of America’s Man-Made Landscape – (James Howard Kunstler, 1993) Kunstler traces the history of settlements from the Pilgrim village to the modern suburb, with suggestions on how to build communities once again worthy of our affection.

* Gone with the Wind – (Margaret Mitchell, 1936) The immortal love story and historic epic of the old South was published during the deep Depression of 1936.

The Grapes of Wrath – (John Steinbeck, 1939) An American classic looks at the effects of economic and political forces on families and small communities. It is also one of the few works of fiction that explores how people organize independent familial and community associations to build the good society.

Great and Peculiar Beauty – (Thomas Lyon / T.T. Williams, 1995) Personal stories and essays of individuals from a range of perspectives and interests, celebrate Utah’s centennial.

* Growing Up – (Russell Baker, 1982) Winner of the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for biography/autobiography, this is Russell Baker’s story of growing up in America between the world wars. It is a story of adversity and courage, of the poignancy of love and the awkwardness of sex, of family bonds and family tensions. We meet the people who influenced Baker’s early life, and the everyday heroes and heroines of the Depression who faced disaster with good cheer and usually muddled through.

* Growing Up Empty: How Federal Policies Are Starving America's Children - (Loretta Schwartz-Nobel, 2002) Twenty years after Ronald Reagan declared that hunger was no longer an American problem, Schwartz-Nobel shows that hunger has reached epic proportions, running rampant through urban, rural, and suburban communities, affecting blacks, whites, Asians, Christians and Jews, and nonbelievers alike.

* Harvest for Hope: A Guide to Mindful Eating - (Jane Goodall, 2005) Dr. Goodall introduces us to inspiring everyday heroes like a third-generation farmer who battled Monsanto and won; French activists who protest against genetically modified crops; and John Mackey, the founder of whole foods, who has vowed to sell only ethically raised animal products.

* The Hemingway Book of Kosovo - (Paula Huntly, 2004) One year after the 1999 NATO bombings, an American woman accompanied her husband to Prishtina, Kosovo.  Paula Huntley ended up teaching English to a group of Kosovo Albanian refugees and formed an American-style book club with them to study Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea.

A History of Utah’s American Indians – (Forrest Cuch, ed., 2000) In consultation with local scholars, members of each of the state’s six official tribes recount their past and reflect on their present. Brought together for the first time, these stories allow for new understanding of Utah’s native people.

* Home Before Morning: The Story of an Army Nurse in Vietnam - (Lynda Van Devanter, 2001) A suspenseful autobiography that gives a painfully honest look at war through a woman’s eyes. Feel the fatigue, rain, mud, heat and personal danger that Van Devanter felt as she is assigned to an evacuation hospital near the Cambodian border.

Hope's Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet - (Frances and Anna Lappe, 2002) Follow the author and her daughter as they travel to Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe, where they discovered answers to one of the most urgent issues of our time: whether we can transcend the rampant consumerism and capitalism to find the paths that each of us can follow to heal our lives as well as the planet.

The House on Mango Street - (Sandra Cisneros, 1984) A story of harsh realities and beauty unfold as Cisneros describes the story of the young girl, Esperanza Cordero, growing up in a latino section of Chicago. Depicted in a series of vignettes this novel produces a novel about this young girl “coming into her power, and inventing for herself what she will become.”

Housekeeping – (Marilynne Robinson, 1980) After two teenage girls lose their mother to suicide (their father long since disappeared), the girls’ Aunt Sylvie, a 35-year-old interesting misfit, arrives to care for them. She has a gypsy-like quality which one of the teens, Ruth (the narrator) is drawn to, however contrary to the expectations of their 1950's society. A beautifully written, haunting story.

How to Cook a Wolf — (MFK Fisher, 1942) If you love to read and love to cook (or have to cook), you will relish How to Cook a Wolf, by MFK Fisher. Written in 1942 to inspire courage in those daunted by wartime shortages, the book has become a classic. It is a memoir, a cookbook, and a commentary on the war, sprinkled liberally with delicious quotations about food from Emerson, Thackeray, Tolstoy and others. Fisher wrote over a dozen books, most of them focused on the art of cooking and eating. During the bleak years of World War II, rather than counsel hungry people on cutting back and making do, she gave her readers license to dream, to construct adventurous meals, even with simple ingredients, that would feed the spirit as much as the body.

* Hunger of Memory, An Autobiography: The Education of Richard Rodriguez – (Richard Rodriguez, 1982) Here is the poignant story of a “minority student” who pays the cost of his social assimilation and academic success with a painful alienation – from his past, his parents, his culture – and so describes the high price of “making it” in middle-class America.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – (Maya Angelou) Writer and actress Maya Angelou gives a glimpse of her upbringing and rise out of poverty in the segregated south during the 1930's.

* I Married Adventure – (Osa Johnson, 1997) “The essence of this story is that two people, very much in love, followed their dreams, living a life full of risks and far from the comforts of home. Yet this story of their adventures more than sixty years ago will thrill a reader [of today].”—Senator Nancy Landon Kassebaum. The book contains many dramatic photos by these two who traveled the world making popular movies.

* Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit – (Daniel Quinn, 1992) This is the book that corporate leaders, politicians and ordinary citizens credit with changing forever the way they look at human beings’ relationship with the rest of nature. A suspenseful, inventive, and probing dialogue between a teacher and a pupil that may reshape the way you look at your life.

James Madison and the Struggle for the Bill of Rights - (Richard Labunski, 2006) Today we hold the Constitution in such high regard that we can hardly imagine how hotly contested was its adoption. In fact, many of the thirteen states saw fierce debate over the document, and ratification was by no means certain. Labunski offers a dramatic account of a time when the entire American experiment hung in the balance, only to be saved by the most unlikely of heroes--the diminutive and exceedingly shy Madison.

* Joe Hill – (Gibbs M. Smith, 1969) Smith provides a moving account of a labor activist who worked and fought in Utah prior to his death by a firing squad.

The Journey of the Diné - (Ellen G. Callister, Robert Maryboy, 2004) Learn about the Navajo people, the Dine, in this beautifully presented book.   In simple, direct, and lyrical prose, the authors describe the Dine past, their traditional beliefs, their legends, and their intimate, mystical relationship with the earth.  With full color illustrations by Dine artist, Robert Maryboy, The Journey of the Dine helps readers understand the complex spirit of Navajo people.

The King's Shadow (Eliabeth Alder, 1995) After he is orphaned and has his tongue cut out in a clash with the bullying sons of a Welsh noble, Evyn is sold as a slave and serves many masters, from the gracious Lady Swan Neck to the valiant Harold Godwinson, England's last Saxon king.

* A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains - ( Isabella L. Bird, introduction by Daniel J. Boorstin, 1960) In the late nineteenth century it was very rare to see a woman traveling on her own. Isabella Bird accounts her travels among the Rocky Mountains of the Colorado area, before heading back to England. The book is wonderfully written in the first person with spectacular descriptions of scenery and adventure.

* Land of the Burnt Thigh – (Edith Eudora Kohl, 1938) Thousands of single women settled the American West hoping to gain for themselves a piece of land, and the money and satisfaction that came with it. First published in 1938, this is a lively account of two sister homesteaders on the South Dakota frontier in 1907.

* The Last Gift of Time: Life Beyond Sixty – (Carolyn G. Heilbrun, 1997) At the advent of her seventieth birthday, Heilbrun realized that her golden years had been full of unforeseen pleasures. The astute and ever-insightful Heilbrun muses on the emotional and intellectual insights that brought her “to choose each day for now, to live.” Even the encroachments of loss, pain, and sadness that come with age cannot spoil Heilbrun’s moveable feast.

* Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler’s Ninth Symphony – (Lewis Thomas, 1980) In this third collection of essays, Dr. Thomas turns his inquiring mind to subjects as richly various as our sense of smell, our biological need to be truthful, and the specter of nuclear holocaust that shadows all our lives. These further “notes from a biology watcher” enrich us with what it means to be alive in our uncertain times.

* Laughing Boy – (Oliver La Farge, 1929) This love story, haunting in its poignancy, dramatizes a Native American culture struggling to survive amid the corruptions of an alien civilization.

Left to Tell - (Immaculee Ilibagiza, 2006) grew up in a country she loved, surrounded by a family she cherished. But in 1994 her idyllic world was ripped apart as Rwanda descended into a bloody genocide. Immaculee’s family was brutally murdered during a killing spree that lasted three months and claimed the lives of nearly a million Rwandans. Incredibly, Immaculee survived the slaughter. For 91 days, she and seven other women huddled silently together in the cramped bathroom of a local pastor while hundreds of machete-wielding killers hunted for them.

Let Us Eat Cake: Adventures in Food and Friendship – (Sharon Boorstin, 2002) Sometimes, the smallest things – the aroma of cookies baking, the feel of dough in one’s hands – can trigger poignant food memories. For food writer and restaurant critic Sharon Boorstin, it was the discovery of a long lost notebook of recipes she’d collected from her mother, relatives, and friends that inspired her to reconnect with the loved ones of her past. As she reached out to the recipe givers – many of whom she hasn’t seen in years – she uncovered and embraced the power of cooking and food in establishing bonds among women. Let Us Eat Cake celebrates these connections. With dozens of delicious recipes and vintage photos, this moving book will inspire readers to remember and cherish their own experiences with food, family, and friends.

The Letters of John and Abigail Adams - (Penguin Classics, 2004) Provides an insightful record of American life before, during, and after the Revolution; the letters also reveal the intellectually and emotionally fulfilling relationship between John and Abigail that lasted fifty-four years and withstood historical upheavals, long periods apart, and personal tragedies.

Listening Woman – (Tony Hillerman) This exceptional mystery set in the four corners region is full of excitement as well as sensitivity to the landscape and the Navajo culture.

The Log from the Sea of Cortez - (John Steinbeck, 1951) Steinbeck and biologist Edward F. Ricketts board the Western Flyer, a sardine boat and head out of Monterey, California, on a 4,000-mile journey into the Sea of Cortez. A great book that helps understand Steinbeck and his beliefs about man and the world, combined with adventure, philosophy and science.

Lost in Translation, A Memoir (Eva Hoffman, 1989) This memoir tells the story of a thirteen-year-old girl immigrating to America from Cracow, Poland in 1959, to settle in well-manicured, suburban Vancouver.  Although this is a classic story of immigration, it is so beautifully written that it also becomes an exploration of what it means to change—to incorporate new ways of being and thinking without compromising the integrity of a former self.   “An incisive meditation on coming to terms with one’s own uniqueness, on learning how deeply culture affects the mind and body, and finally, on what it means to accomplish a translation of one’s self,” writes Newsday. 

Lincoln - (David Herbert Donald, 1995) In this beautifully rendered original portrait of the sixteenth president, Lincoln emerges as both a great leader and an imperfect human being. It draws extensively from Lincoln's personal papers and from newly discovered records of Lincoln's legal practice.

* Long Distance: A Year of Living Strenuously – (Bill McKibben, 2000) As author McKibben is reaching peak condition in an Olympic level training regimen as a cross country skier, his father’s life suddenly lurches toward an end. The crisis snaps McKibben out of his self-absorption and forces him to think of his relationship with his father and a totally different kind of endurance.

* Love Medicine – (Louise Erdrich, 1993) Presents a collection of narratives by the members of several Chippewa families as they struggle to make sense of the death of one member of their community by recounting their own personal struggles for identity.

* The Maltese Falcon – (Dashielle Hammett, 1929) A treasure worth killing for. Sam Spade, a slightly shopworn
private eye with his own solitary code of ethics. A perfumed grifter named Joel Cairo, a fat man named Gutman, and Brigid O’Shaughnessy, a beautiful and treacherous woman whose loyalties shift at the drop of a dime. These are the ingredients of Dashiell Hammett’s coolly glittering gem of detective fiction, a novel that has haunted three generations of readers.

* Max Perkins: Editor of Genius - (A. Scott Berg, 1978) A meticulously-researched and engaging portrait of the man who introduced the public to the greatest literary writers as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe.  Perkins was tirelessly committed to nurturing talent no matter how young or unproven the writer.

Mean Spirit – (Linda Hogan, 1990) Brings to life one particularly traumatic moment in the history of Oklahoma’s Osage Indians, the oil boom years of the 1920s and 30s that followed the allotment period; through the experiences of Grace Blanket and those of her relatives and friends, readers are introduced to both the atrocities of that historical period and to the overwhelmingly powerful strength of traditional culture.

The Milagro Beanfield War: Volume One of the Mexican Trilogy – (John Nichols, 1974) Joe’s gardens shriveled in drought because over thirty-five years before some complicated and political maneuvering had relocated the water from the Milagro’s Indian Creek to some big-time farmers in other parts of the state. One day he decides to irrigate the little field in front of his old house to grow some beans, catalyzing tensions which had been building for years.

* Missing Stories: An Oral History of Ethnic and Minority Groups in Utah – (Leslie Kelen and Eileen Hallet Stone, 1996) This extensive volume contains oral histories from some of Utah’s oldest and largest cultural communities: Ute, African-American Jewish, Chinese, Italian, Japanese, Greek, and Chicano-Hispano.

* The Mists of Avalon – (Marion Zimmer Bradley, 1982) Vividly retold through the eyes and lives of the women who wielded power from behind the throne, this is the magical legend of King Arthur.

The Moon and Sixpence – (Somerset Maugham, 1919) Loosely based on the life of French painter, Paul Gaugin, this novel exposes Edwardian society in all its hypocrisy and eccentricity. The unspoken question asked is whose life is more deplorable; that of the appearance-conscious Mrs. Strickland, or the cruel but truthful Charles Strickland.

* Mormon Country – (Wallace Stegner, 1942) A portrait of the subject done with affection and objectivity, every detail standing forth in the light of the author’s trenchant memory.

My Year of Meats (Ruth L. Ozeki, 1998)—An American TV producer meets a beleaguered Japanese housewife in this mesmerizing debut novel that has captivated readers worldwide. Newsweek describes the novel as “a sexy and funny cross-cultural tale of two seemingly disparate women that is a feast that leaves you hungry for whatever Ozeki cooks up next.”

Narrative of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave - (Frederick Douglass, 2000 Edition) This book calmly but dramatically recounts the horrors and the accomplishments of his early years-the daily, casual brutality of the white masters; his painful efforts to educate himself; his decision to find freedom or die; and his harrowing but successful escape.

New Genesis: A Mormon Reader on Land and Community – (Terry Tempest Williams, William B. Smart, 1998) Members of the LDS faith relate personal experiences with the natural world, drawing on scripture and Mormon tradition to develop and environmental ethic and to practice, in the words of Terry Tempest Williams, the “extraordinary acts of faith we can exercise on behalf of life.”

* Night – (Elie Wiesel, 1960) A terrifying account of the Nazi death camp horror that turns a young Jewish boy into an agonized witness to the death of his family, the death of his innocence, and the death of his God. Penetrating and powerful, as personal as The Diary of Anne Frank, Night awakens the shocking memory of evil at its absolute and carries with it the unforgettable message that this horror must never be allowed to happen again.

* Night Flight – (Antoine De Saint-Exupery, 1932) In this gripping, beautifully written novel, Saint-Exupery tells about the brave men who pilot night mail planes from Patagonia, Chile, and Paraguay to Argentina in the early days of commercial aviation. They are impelled to perform their routine acts of heroism by a steely chief named Riviere, whose extraordinary character is revealed through the dramatic events of a single night.

* The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail – (Jerome Lawrence / Robert Lee, 1970) Henry David Thoreau, philosopher, poet, and naturalist, had refused to pay taxes to the government which was engaged in the Mexican War, condemning the war as unjust. For this unprecedented act of protest, he was thrown in jail, an act that has had worldwide repercussions.

The Nine Tailors – (Dorothy L. Sayers, 1934) The nine strokes from the belfry of an ancient country church toll out the death of an unknown man and call the famous Lord Peter Wimsey to one of his most brilliant cases. Steeped in the atmosphere of a quiet parish in the strange, flat fen-country of East Anglia, this is a tale of suspense, character, and mood by an author the critics' rate as one of the greatest masters of the mystery novel.

Nobody’s Son: Notes From an American Life – (Luis Alberto Urrea, 1998) Born in Tijuana to a Mexican father and an Anglo mother from Staten Island, Urrea had a childhood full of opposites, a clash of cultures and languages. In prose that seethes with energy and crackles with dark humor, Urrea tells a story that is both troubling and wildly entertaining.

* O Pioneers! – (Willa Cather) Cather brings to life the sights, sounds, and scents of the windy Nebraska prairie as she tells the story of Alexandra inheriting her father’s failing farm, raising one brother alone, and being torn by the emergence of an unexpected passion.

* Old Books, Rare Friends: Two Literary Sleuths and Their Shared Passion -(Leona Rostenberg & Madeleine B. Stern, 1998) Here's a book about two forthright women who share a passion for literature and who know the true meaning of a lifelong friendship.

* On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey of my Chinese-American Family – (Lisa See, 1995) Out of her memoirs and years of research, See has constructed a sweeping chronicle of a Chinese-American family on “Gold Mountain,” the Chinese name for the United States. Encompassing racism and romance, entrepreneurial genius and domestic heartache, secret marriages, and sibling rivalries, On Gold Mountain is a powerful history of two cultures meeting in a new world.

* One Hundred Years of Solitude – (Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 1967) This Nobel Prize winning author has created a multi-generational story using magical realism. The widely loved novel “is the first piece of literature since the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race,” according to William Kennedy in The New York Times.

* Ordinary People – (Judith Guest, 1976) The Jarretts: Calvin is a determined, successful provider. Beth, is an organized and efficient wife. They had two sons, Conrad and Buck. Now they have one. They are ordinary people. And they are coming apart.

* Out of Africa and Shadows on the Grass - (Isak Dinesen, 1960) This one volume contains both Out of Africa, the well-loved story of Isak Dinesen’s struggle on her coffee plantation in Kenya and additional stories and reminiscences about Africa gathered under the title Shadows on the Grass. The author’s poetic images and language make her book a delight to read.

1185 Park Avenue, a Memoir – (Anne Roiphe, 1999) While the nation was at war abroad, Roiphe, who was coming of age in 1940’s New York City, saw her parents at war in their living room. Roiphe’s evocative writing puts readers right in Apartment 8C, where a constant tension plays out between a disappointed and ineffectual mother, a philandering father who uses his wife’s money to entertain other women, and a difficult brother. Behind the leisure culture of wealthy Jewish society lurks a brutality that strikes a chord with a daughter who longs to heal the wounds of her troubled family.

* Patrimony – (Philip Roth, 1991) This true story touches the emotions as strongly as anything Roth has ever written. He watches as his eighty-six-year-old father--famous for his vigor, his charm, and his repertoire of Newark recollections--battles with the brain tumor that will kill him. The son, full of love, anxiety, and dread, accompanies his father through each fearful stage of his final ordeal, and, as he does so, discloses the survivalist tenacity that has distinguished his father’s long, stubborn engagement with life.

Plainsong - (Kent Haruf, 1999) Flawlessly written, with every emotional note hit just right, this award-winning novel about a community on the Colorado plains is a rarity because it is about a community and the interwoven lives playing out there. This wise and graceful story revolves around a pregnant high school girl, a lonely teacher, a pair of boys abandoned by their mother, and a couple of crusty bachelor farmers.  It is about isolation and trust, abandonment and connection, and the unlikely places people find hope. 

* The Republic – (Plato, 1955) Perhaps the best known of Plato’s dialogues, The Republic is an attempt to apply the principles of his philosophy to political affairs. Ostensibly a discussion of the nature of Justice, it lays before us Plato’s vision of the ideal state, covering a wide range of topics, social, educational, psychological, moral and philosophical.

Prairie Reunion - (Barbara J. Scott, 1995) Part memoir, part social and cultural history, part ecological exploration, Prairie Reunion takes writer Barbara Scot to Scotch Grove, Iowa, the small farming community of her childhood where she succeeds in coming to terms with her parents' legacy, a bittersweet history that involves love, abandonment, and suicide. 

* The Professor’s House (Willa Cather, 1925) A prize-winning historian and professor feels trapped in his life and tries to authenticate himself by editing a former student’s western journal.
The Quickening of America: Rebuilding Our Nation, Remaking Our Lives – (Frances Moore Lappe, Paul Martin DuBois, 1994) An invisible revolution is taking place in communities all across our country. This book brings that revolution to light with the stories of everyday Americans tackling their toughest problems-- in their communities, schools, workplaces, and lives. This personal, inspiring, and interactive book is full of practical ideas on how to get involved in democracy.

The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary - (Simon Winchester, 1998) Part homage to the greatest reference work of all time, the Oxford English Dictionary, part mystery, part intellectual history of Victorian England, The Professor and the Madman tells the parallel stories of the dictionary's genius editor and one of his most prolific contributors, an insane American doctor committed to an asylum for murder.

Reading Lolita in Tehran – (Axar Nafisi, 2003) Every Thursday morning for two years in the Islamic Republic of Iran, a bold and inspired teacher named Azar Nafisi secretly gathered seven of her most committed female students to read forbidden Western classics. In this extraordinary memoir, their stories become intertwined with the ones they are reading.

* Redcoat - (Bernard Cornwell, 1987) 1777, and the British have taken Philadelphia. Loyalties to a foreign king are tested and families torn apart. This is the story of one redcoat who must choose between his duty and his conscience. “Cornwell’s command of historical detail is one of the great strengths of his writing...One of the finest authors of military historical fiction today.” -Washington Times

Reopening the American West -(Hal K. Rothman, 1998) Take a good look at the American West and you'll see that the frontier is undergoing constant changes. This book re-examines the relationship between people and the environment in the American West over five hundred years, from the legacy of Coronado's search for the Cities of Gold to the social costs of tourism and gaming inflicted by modern adventurers.

* Reservation Blues – (Sherman Alexie, 1996) Funny, tragic, sometimes raw, Alexie’s novel dispels stereotypes and myths of life on a contemporary Spokane Indian reservation.

A Rumor of War – (Philip Caputo, 1977) The Seattle Times called this book “the most eloquent statement yet on what Vietnam was for the lower echelons who had to do the dirty work.” Based on personal experience, the novel is, in the author’s words, “simply a story about war, about the things men do in war and the things war does to them.”

Saving the Soul of Medicine - (Margaret A. Mahony, 2000) Dismayed by the lack of understanding about the true impact of changes brought on by "managed care," she collected stories and viewpoints from her patients which dramatically capture their feelings and opinions about the new health care model.

The Screwtape Letters – (C.S. Lewis, 1942) Set in Great Britain around the time of WWII, this clever and trenchant little book is cast in the form of letters from a senior devil to a much junior and far more bumbling devil, assigned to tempt a recent convert to Anglican Christianity. What would the devil make of such standard Christian doctrines as free will, faith, and the temptations of spiritual pride?

* Seedfolks – (Paul Fleischman, 1997) Thirteen very different voices – old, young, Haitian, Hispanic, tough, haunted, and hopeful--tell one amazing story about a garden that transforms a neighborhood.

Selected Poems of Langston Hughes - (Langston Hughes, 1959) The selected poems celebrated the experience of invisible men and women: of slaves who "rushed the boots of Washington"; of musicians on Lenox Ave; of the poor and the lovesick; of losers in "the raffle of night."

* Shelf Life: Romance, Mystery, Drama, and Other Page-Turning Adventures from a Year in a Bookstore - (Suzanne Stempek Shea, 2004) Shea works at a book store in Springfield Massachusetts, but really she is a novelist, and her memoir shows it as she describes the customers, their requests and reactions, and her thoughts on it all.

* The Sky, the Stars, the Wilderness – (Rick Bass, 1998) In three novellas, Rick Bass lets the reader into characters who describe the world and in doing so tell us a great deal about themselves. The last, the title story, describes the world as we would like to see it.

* Snow Falling on Cedars - (David Guterson, 1995) In 1954 a local fisherman of San Piedro Island, north of Puget Sound is found suspiciously drowned. A Japanese American is charged with his murder and with it brings the memories of a community Japanese residents sent into exile during WWII while its neighbors watched.

So Many Books, So Little Time: A Year of Passionate Reading - (Sara Nelson, 2003) The interplay between our lives and our books is the subject of this unique memoir.  From Solzhenitsyn to Laura Zigman, Catherine M. to Captain Underpants, the result is a personal chronicle of insight, wit, and enough infectious enthusiasm to make a passionate reader out of anybody.

* Something to Declare: Essays – (Julia Alvarez, 1999) As an immigrant from the Dominican Republic, Alvarez reflects on her life before the United States, her assimilation to the Americanized culture. Alvarez eloquently depicts her love of writing and family, and offers insight into what it means to have a place.

Song of Solomon – (Toni Morrison) Awarded Best Novel of the Year by the New York Times Book Review, this novel explores sources of strength in a multi-generational black American family.

* The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures – (Anne Fadiman, 1997) This nonfiction work traces the case of a Hmong refugee child with severe epilepsy, and, in so doing, exposes the numerous culture clashes between Hmong and western understandings.

Straight Parents, Gay Children: Keeping Families Together – (Robert A. Bernstein, 1995) A father comes to terms with his daughter’s homosexuality and discovers that his life is not diminished, as he had originally thought, but enriched by it. Bernstein tells about experiences with P FLAG, an organization that helps parents to achieve a fuller understanding and appreciation of human diversity.

Stuffed: Adventures of a Restaurant Family – (Patricia Volk, 2001) Patricia Volk’s delicious memoir lets us into her big, crazy, loving, and infuriating family, where you’re never just hungry – you’re starving to death; and you’re never just full - you’re stuffed. Volk’s family fed New York City for one hundred years, from 1888 when her great-grandfather introduced pastrami to America until 1988, when her father closed his garment center restaurant. But as seductively as Volk evokes this food, Stuffed is at heart a funny, fresh, and profoundly moving paean to family.

Sum of Our Past: Revisiting Pioneer Women - (Judy Shell Busk, 2004) Pioneer women were as varied as women are today-strong but now without uncertainties and idiosyncrasies. Busk examines how pioneer women dealt with personal issues such as depression, isolation, family planning, and ambition beyond the domestic sphere.

Surfacing – (Margaret Atwood, 1972) When a talented artist sets out for a weekend trip, she can’t imagine that she’ll find the truth about her own life. Journeying to a country cabin with her lover and another couple, she discovers the heights and depths of the human character. But what the artist really discovers is the truth about her past, her inner fears, the strengths she never knew she had.

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - (Dorris Kearns Goodwin, 2005) This multiple biography is centered on Lincoln's mastery of men and how it shaped the most significant presidency in the nation's history. Lincoln won the presidential election, Goodwin determines, because he possessed an extraordinary ability to put himself in the place of other men, to experience what they were feeling, to understand their motives and desires.

Tender at the Bone—(Ruth Reichl, 1998) Hilarity runs through these stories about a young woman who discovered at a young age that “food could be a way of making sense of the world.” From the gourmand Monsieur du Croix , who served Reichl her first soufflé, to the politically correct cooks of Berkeley in the 1970s, championing the organic food movement, Reichl finds humor and poignancy. “Witty, fair-minded, brave, and a wonderful writer,” writes the New York Times Book Review.

Their Eyes Were Watching God – (Zora Neale Hurston, 1990) First published in 1937 and now a classic of black literature, this novel tells with haunting sympathy the story of Janie Crawford’s evolving selfhood through three marriages.

And Then There Were None – (Agatha Christie, 1939) Ten strangers are gathered together on an isolated island by a mysterious host. One by one the guests share the darkest secrets of their wicked pasts. And one by one, they die. (Also published as Ten Little Indians).

Things Fall Apart – (Chinua Achebe, 1959) A now classic drama of Africa, this novel focuses on a confrontation between African tribal life and its first encounter with colonialism and Christianity at the turn of the last century. It tells tragic story of a warrior whose manly, fearless exterior conceals bewilderment, fear, and anger at the breakdown of his society. Achebe’s novel is among a small company of highly regarded books that describes a native culture from the inside, before outside forces break up the old ways.

Three Cups of Tea - (Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin, 2006) Greg Mortenson, a homeless mountaineer who, following a 1993 climb of Pakistan's treacherous K2, was inspired by a chance encounter with impoverished mountain villagers and promised to build them a school. Over the next decade he built fifty-five schools-especially for girls-that offer a balanced education in one of the most isolated and dangerous regions on earth.

Three Tales – (Flaubert, 1961) In the first of these tales, A Simple Heart, Flaubert recounts the life of a pious and devoted servant girl. A stained-glass window in Rouen cathedral inspired him to write The Legend of St. Julian Hospitator with its insight into the violence and mysticism of the medieval mind. Herodias is a masterly reconstruction of the events leading up to the martyrdom of St. John the Baptist.

* Tracks: A woman’s Solo Trek Across 1,700 Miles of Australian Outback – (Robyn Davidson, 1980) When Davidson first set out to make her journey across the deserts of Australia, alone but for her dog and four camels, she was called a lunatic, a would-be suicide, and a hsameless publicity seeker. But this high-spirited, engrossing book reveals that she is something more: a genuine traveler driven by a love of Australia’s landscape, an empathy for its indigenous people, and a willingness to case away the trappings of her former identity.

* Travels in West Africa – (Mary Kingsley, 1987) In 1893, defying every convention of Victorian Womanhood, Mary Kingley set off alone for West Africa to collect botanical specimens. Unaccompanied except for native guides, she plunged boldly into forbidding jungle, often the first European – and almost always the first white woman – ever to arrive. These are her memoirs.

Used and Rare: Travels in the Book World - (Lawrence Goldstone & Nancy Goldstone, 1997) The idea that books had stories associated with them that had nothing to do with the stories inside them was new to the Goldstones.  Journey into the world of book collecting where you can begin to appreciate that there is a history and a world of ideas embodied by the books themselves.

The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality - (Dalai Lama, 2005) In this rare, personal investigation, His Holiness the Dalai Lama discusses his vision of science and faith working hand in hand to alleviate human suffering. Drawing on a lifetime of scientific study and religious practice, he explores many of the great debates and makes astonishing connections between seemingly disparate topics–such as evolution and karma–that will change the way we look at our world.

An Unsuitable Job for a Woman – (P.D. James, 1972) This whodunit follows a determined young lady detective along a trail of aristocratic secrets and sins as she reaches the conclusion that the nicest people can do the nastiest things. Time magazine calls P.D. James the “reigning mistress of murder.”

* Voyages: From Tongan Villages to American Suburbs – (Cathy A. Small) Small uses stories of individuals from one village and factual information about Tongan society to help readers understand why Tongans migrate and what they experience in the U.S.

Walden and Civil Disobedience - (Henry David Thoreau, 1960) Meditations on human existence, society, government and other topics.

The War Against Parents: What We Can Do for America’s Beleaguered Moms and Dads – (Sylvia Anne Hewlett and Cornel West) This scathing critique of the social, economic, and political forces that undermine parenting in America is a must-read in kid-rich, parent-harried, income-poor Utah. It is packed with data, analysis, and realistic proposals.

Washington's Secret War: The Hidden History of Valley Forge - (Thomas Fleming, 2005) The defining moments of the Revolutionary War did not occur on the battlefield or at the diplomatic table, claims Thomas Fleming, but at Valley Forge, where the Continental Army wintered in 1777–78. This book tells the dramatic story of how those several critical months transformed a beaten, bedraggled group of recruits into a professional army capable of defeating the world's most formidable military power.

* West With the Night – (Beryl Markham) Growing up in East Africa, Beryl Markham describes her life as a pioneer aviator, a horse breeder, pilot of passengers and supplies in a small plane to remote corners of Africa, and became the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west.

Who Owns the West? - (William Kittredge, 1996) "All of us, of course," says William Kittredge.  Kittredge gives us not easy answers but a sustained meditation on what it means to be a Westerner today. The three essays in the book compose both a celebration of the new West and an elegy for an old West that is fading.

* The Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China – (Jung Chang, 1991) This mesmerizing memoir is a riveting account of the impact of history on the lives of women. A powerful, moving, at times shocking story of three generations of Chinese women, as compelling as Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club.

The Wisdom of Native Americans – (Kent Nerburn, ed, 1999) Original speeches and teachings of 19th and 20th century Native Americans reveal beliefs on how to raise children, be a responsible person, and live in accord with nature. A rich resource of wise solutions to contemporary problems.

With Malice Toward None: A Life of Abraham Lincoln - (Stephen B. Oates, 1994) A biography that has the appeal of a good novel.

* The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts – (Maxine Hong Kingston) This book documents Kingston’s search for identity as a Chinese-American growing up in San Francisco, as well as her triumphs in blending two cultures to create meaning.

Women and the Family in the Middle East: New Voices of Change – (Elizabeth Warnock Fernea) This collection of previously unpublished documents, essays, stories, life histories, poems, and reports constitute progress report on the status of women and the family in the modern Middle East. Men and women articulate their problems and perceptions in their own terms, not those of the western journalist or development specialist.

* Women’s Diaries of the Westward Journey – (Lillian Schlissel) More than a quarter million Americans crossed the continental U.S. between 1840 and 1870. Men of the frontier have become an integral part of history and folklore, but pioneering was a family matter, and the experiences of American women are central to an accurate picture of what life was like on the frontier. These chronicles of women show an absorbing and informative aspect of the westward saga.

Working – (Studs Terkel) For this widely acclaimed book, Terkel interviewed real people, asking them what they do all day and how they feel about it.

A Year in Provence —(Peter Mayle,1989) A book as much about dreams and seasons as about place, Peter Mayle’s story of moving into a 200-year old stone farmhouse in a remote area of Provence is a delight. Follow the movement of the seasons in a culture that has not forgotten how to live in tune with its surroundings, relishing truffles in winter, and tarte au citron in June, Mayle’s tale is light-hearted, and funny. It will have you longing for a trip to France yourself.