Leisure Reading — Literature

In late August 1619, a ship arrived in the British colony of Virginia bearing a cargo of twenty to thirty enslaved people from Africa. Their arrival led to the barbaric and unprecedented system of American chattel slavery that would last for the next 250 years. This is sometimes referred to as the country's original sin, but it is more than that: It is the source of so much that still defines the United States.The New York Times Magazine's award-winning “1619 Project” issue reframed our understanding of American history by placing slavery and its continuing legacy at the center of our national narrative.

Tales of alien abductions, miraculous relics, and haunted castles have attracted believers and skeptics across the globe for centuries. Paranormal investigator Joe Nickell tackles the world's most seemingly inexplicable myths in Adventures in Paranormal Investigation.

One eats meat. The other doesn’t. Both are professional chefs. And both have recipes that make a deliciously persuasive case for each chef’s point of view. In a delightful culinary turn on “he said, she said,” dueling chefs Maggie Pleskac and Sean Carmichael engage in a delectable debate over the merits of the cuisines of vegetarians and carnivores in the form of recipe one-upmanship in which only the reader is sure to win.

Let your inner geek loose in the kitchen with this book of unofficial recipes from your favorite fantasy and sci-fi movies, TV shows, video games, and books.

Fred Rogers (1928-2003) was an enormously influential figure in the history of television and in the lives of tens of millions of children. As the creator and star of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, he was a champion of compassion, equality, and kindness. Rogers was fiercely devoted to children and to taking their fears, concerns, and questions about the world seriously.

Mimi Schwartz grew up on milkshakes and hamburgers—and her father’s boyhood stories. She rarely took the stories seriously. What was a modern American teenager supposed to make of these accounts of a village in Germany where, according to her father, “before Hitler, everyone got along”? It was only many years later, when she heard a remarkable story of the Torah from that very village being rescued by Christians on Kristallnacht, that Schwartz began to sense what these stories might really mean.

When we interact with animals, we intuitively read thoughts and feelings into their expressions and actions. It is easy--often irresistible--to suppose that they have minds like ours. And as technology grows more sophisticated, we might soon find ourselves interpreting the behavior even of robots in human terms.

The book not only sets 'Star Trek' in dialogue with ideas and stories of utopia, community, self-improvement, that are central to American culture and history, but goes further to examine the complex ways in which these are taken up and used by 'ordinary' fans, who engage with 'Star Trek' in complex and significant ways.

Caroline Murphy illuminates the brilliant life and tragic death of Isabella de Medici, one of the brightest stars in the dazzling world of Renaissance Italy, the daughter of Duke Cosimo I, ruler of Florence and Tuscany.

Leo Beranek, an Iowa farm boy who became a Renaissance man--scientist, inventor, entrepreneur, musician, television executive, philanthropist, and author--has lived life in constant motion. His seventy-year career, through the most tumultuous and transformative years of the last century, has always been propelled by the sheer exhilaration of trying something new.

The sinking of the Titanic and Great Sea Disasters is an exciting collection of first-hand stories describing the catastrophe of Titanic's maiden voyage as told by its survivors shortly after the ship sank. Origonally written and published in 1912, Logan Marshall's book was the first attempt to solve the mystery of the accident and relieve the heartache which it stirred internationally. Marshall narrates the personal stories of Titanic's passengers before, during and after the sinking of the ill-fated ship.

The nearly 350 humorous, heartwarming, and sometimes tragic accounts presented in William Lynwood Montell's latest book, Tales from Kentucky Doctors, offer an unusual perspective on the culture and tradition of Kentucky health-care practice. From the laughable to the laudable, Tales from Kentucky Doctors present illuminating portraits of doctors and patients, drawing stories from physicians with lifetimes of experience serving Kentucky families.

A celebrated foreign policy expert and key impeachment witness reveals how declining opportunity has set America on the grim path of modern Russia--and draws on her personal journey out of poverty, as well as her unique perspectives as an historian and policy maker, to show how we can return hope to our forgotten places.

It’s been a week since your dream date. You thought the night went well but still no word from him. Sound familiar? As the husband-wife duo behind an exclusive New York dating service, the authors of Why Hasn’t He Called? have seen it all and have shocking insights into what guys are really thinking—during your first date and beyond.