Category: NonFiction

  • REVIEW of Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois

    Three months ago I finished out the school year teaching at King’s Academy, and as I “retired” from teaching (in anticipation of the arrival of our twins), I set a new goal for myself: instead of buying bread from the store, I was going to bake all of our bread. So far I have stuck…

  • REVIEW of Up from Slavery, by Booker T. Washington

    Born a slave in 1856, Booker T. Washington was only a child when the American Civil War commenced. After the war ended and the slaves were emancipated, young Booker moved to West Virginia with his mother, brother, and step-father. The newly freed slaves had to work hard to support themselves, and Booker (not even a…

  • REVIEW of Juggling Twins, by Meghan Regan-Loomis

    This post is entirely self-oriented and it is doubtful whether it will be relevant to anyone who ever reads this blog. That said, I am writing it because I am having twins in November! Being somewhat clueless about what to expect and how to handle them when they are born, I decided to find a…

  • REVIEW of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, by Harriet Jacobs

    As my book club presses on with autobiographies in a chronological fashion, we’ve made our way to the American Civil War. The first of two slave narratives that we are reading is Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, by Harriet Jacobs. Next month we’ll be reading The Life of Frederick Douglass. I won’t…

  • REVIEW of Jane Austen, by Peter Leithart

    It is a truth universally acknowledged that Jane Austen has been all the rage for quite some time. Her books have surged in popularity, and many “continuations” or copy-cat novels have surfaced trying to imitate the esteemed Austen canon. The speculation regarding Jane Austen’s life has ranged as far afield as the interpretations of her…

  • REVIEW of Jamie’s Food Revolution, by Jamie Oliver

    I started reading several books last week, most of them novels, but the book that got me the most excited was–of all things–a cookbook. I decided to order this book from the library after watching a couple episodes of “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution,” a show where the British chef comes to the American South and…

  • REVIEW of The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

    Sometimes when my blog sits forlorn for a three week span, it means that I haven’t been reading much and, consequently, have nothing to write about. Other times it means that I’ve been reading too much and I am more interested in cracking open my next book than in writing reviews of old news. Today’s…

  • REVIEW of The Narrative of the Captivity and the Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson

    One of the lovely things about seventeenth century books is that once you’ve read the title you really know what the whole book is about. The Narrative of the Captivity and the Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson is one of these explanatory titles. Mary was a colonial American woman who was seized from her home…