Sunny's bookshelf
Sunny's bookshelf photo by Judy Solomon

Online book reviews since 2011, the very best in reviewing – connecting good readers with equally good writers

U.S. History

Facing The Mountain
History
Ann Ronald

Facing The Mountain

    Daniel James Brown’s Facing the Mountain, A True Story of Japanese American Heroes in World War II, is the rich telling of the plight faced

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Flight of The Sparrow
Fiction
Ann Ronald

Flight of The Sparrow

Flight of The Sparrow, Amy Belding Brown’s fresh and non-puritanical retelling of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson’s 1682 published narrative of her abduction by “savages.” Mary Rowlandson,

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The Engineer's Wife
Fiction
Ann Ronald

The Engineer’s Wife

The Engineer’s Wife, a novel of the Brooklyn Bridge. A 21st -century novel about a late 19th and early 20th-century brilliant wife. I’m beginning to

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Overground Railroad
African American Writers
Sunny Solomon

Overground Railroad

Overground Railroad The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America My selection for Black History Month, 2021, was Candacy Taylor’s Overground Railroad.

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A Marriage Out West
Biography
Ann Ronald

A Marriage Out West

A Marriage Out West The Romance of Anthropology. Subtitled “Theresa and Frank Russell’s Explorations in Arizona, 1900-1903,” A Marriage Out West analyzes the Russell’s 1900

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Dutton's Dirty Diggers
History
Ann Ronald

Dutton’s Dirty Diggers

DUTTON’S DIRTY DIGGERS, GIRL SCOUT ARCHEOLOGISTS ON THE MOVE. Anyone who fondly remembers Girl Scout camping days will relish the reminiscences to be found in

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What She Left Behind
Fiction
Ann Ronald

What She Left Behind

WHAT SHE LEFT BEHIND Ellen Marie Wiseman cites the Willard Suitcase Exhibit and a nonfiction book by Darby Penney and Peter Stastny, The Lives They

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Rebel Cinderella
Biography
Ann Ronald

Rebel Cinderella

REBEL CINDERELLA Adam Hochschild renews my faith in biographers and the art of biography. Rebel Cinderella models the very best of this sort of intellectual

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Ordinary Wolves
Fiction
Ann Ronald

Ordinary Wolves

ORDINARY WOLVES Not long ago in Bookin’, I described Susan Orlean’s nonfictional achievement, The Library Book, as a moving meditation coupled with journalism and research.

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Don't Skip Out on Me
Fiction
Sunny Solomon

Don’t Skip Out on Me

DON’T SKIP OUT ON ME Don’t Skip Out on Me by Willy Vlautin is the chosen book for 2019 Nevada Reads. It is the second

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Caleb's Crossing
Fiction
Ann Ronald

Caleb’s Crossing — Unknown history

CALEB’S CROSSING Caleb’s Crossing illustrates Geraldine Brooks’ affinity for little-known historical characters whose nearly-anonymous lives can be enhanced by her fictional imagination. Caleb Cheeshahteaumauk, the

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The Best Land Under Heaven
Nonfiction
Neal Ferguson

Reflections on the Donner Party

MICHAEL WALLIS AND BERNARD DEVOTO ENLIVEN THE DONNER PARTY AND MANIFEST DESTINY In The Best Land Under Heaven, Wallis recounts the history of the Donner

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