Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“This is the man.”

The Crime of the Century: Richard Speck and the Murders That Shocked a Nation by Dennis L. Breo , William J. Martin

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On a hot summer night in 1966, unemployed seaman Richard Speck broke into a Chicago townhouse and murdered eight nurses who lived there – but a ninth, Corazon Amurao, survived to testify against him. I’ve known about the Speck case for several years, and it’s really quite a horrific yet bizarre story that made a great impact on the judicial system in Illinois. I was excited to get into a book that would cover it in depth, but I found myself startled and pleased with […]

50 Years of Feminism

50 Years of Ms.: The Best of the Pathfinding Magazine That Ignited a Revolution by Katherine Spillar, Eleanor Smeal, Gloria Steinem

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Seminal articles, pieces of fiction, and letters to the editor compiled from fifty years’ worth of Ms. magazine provide us with a glimpse into the last half-century of the feminist movement. For someone living in the 21st century, I have a hefty digital collection of midcentury magazines. I find it fascinating to immerse myself in the minutiae of such a different period, seeing how the world was expected to look at the time. I even like reading the advertisements! I haven’t read any old editions of […]

Chocolate used to be considered a health food. Where did we go wrong?

Great Moments in Chocolate History by Howard-Yana Shapiro

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Cbr15bingo edibles (bingo) Back at the beginning of May, my younger son asked me what I would like for Mothers Day. I told him that anything related to books, coffee or chocolate would be nice. He hit two out of three with this book, Great Moments in Chocolate History, published by National Geographic (2015). Howard-Yana Shapiro is a plant scientist and chief agricultural officer for Mars, Inc. This is a guy who knows chocolate science and provides a lot of interesting facts in relating the […]

Who died and made you king?

Unruly: A History of England’s Kings and Queens by David Mitchell

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Cbr15bingo Europe I’m not sure how my husband got his hands on the official UK version of this book; the US version is out tomorrow (Oct. 3) with the subtitle as shown in the photo, not the subtitle on the UK version which I have put in the title bar. But he knew I would love it because we are both fans of David Mitchell from the various British panel shows he has been on. Mitchell describes himself as a comedian, and he is, but […]

The Faces That Launched a Thousand Political Conflicts

Medieval Royal Mistresses: Mischievous Women who Slept with Kings and Princes by Julia A. Hickey

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In an era where women were constrained by their sex and status, royal mistresses managed to have outsized influence of English history through their connections with kings and the children that they bore them. As I got into this book, it occurred to me that when you learn about history, the various favorites of kings and queens are left out except in very few instances where the story would make no sense without their inclusion (Anne Boleyn of course comes to mind). Instead their illegitimate […]

The Road to Hell

Hitler: 1889-1936, Hubris by Ian Kershaw

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Read this as part of CBR15Bingo: Europe. Adolf Hitler’s entire life story takes place in Europe and he, more than any one person, instigated a world war that began in Europe. Many times, Europe is considered a fancy, civilized place and I think we need to own how historically, western Europe has given the world a horrifying amount of barbarism between colonization, the transatlantic slave trade, and the Holocaust.  While far from an expert on Nazi Germany, I perhaps know more about it than the typical […]



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