Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

All the good stuff that wasn’t in your history books

Mobituaries: Great Lives Worth Reliving by Mo Rocca and Jonathan Greenberg

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Cbr14bingo Bodies – Bingo Mobituaries is a fascinating, eminently readable collection of humorist Mo Rocca’s obituaries for people and phenomena that didn’t get the attention they deserved at their passing. It’s the kind of book you can just pick up, open at random and immediately be drawn in. Certainly, some of the subjects of Mobituaries are people you have heard of (Audrey Hepburn, Herbert Hoover) but Mo Rocca will reveal things about them that might not have been featured in a traditional obituary or that […]

A Gendered History

Gender: A World History by Susan Kingsley Kent

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Gender: A World History found its way to my ears (I went audiobook form for this one) due to a sale. For $2.99 this sounded like just the sort of thing I’d like to read. For the most part this book did fit my needs and meets the criteria of being as advertised: this was in fact a history that was serious about being global in scope and a historical survey of the topic of gender and how it has been understood through the ages. […]

History is Made by Persistence and Knowing the Right People

A Woman of Valor: Clara Barton & the Civil War by Stephen B. Oates

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Clara Barton is one of those historical figures that sits as a vaguely understood fact in my mind. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know about her existence, but beyond being the founder of the American Red Cross, she never bore much significance to me. But then I wrote a little article about visiting small historical sites and the “Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office” came up in my search. A cursory perusal of the website had me fascinated, and I needed to know […]

The Story the Torn Gown Told

The Sewing Girl's Tale: A Story of Crime and Consequences in Revolutionary America by John Wood Sweet

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CBR 14 Bingo: Question Lanah Sawyer was questioned again and again in an effort to get at a truth she had already told. One evening, a teenage girl and a man who called himself a lawyer went for a walk on the Battery. But Lanah Sawyer refused to stay silent about what he had done to her – and charged Harry Bedlow with rape. I have heard of Lanah Sawyer before, briefly, though I cannot recall whether it was in history class or in Gail […]

Tonight on the Titanic

A Night to Remember by Walter Lord

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CBR 14 Bingo: Cold It’s cold out on the water, cold enough for icebergs – which is half the trouble. Lord recounts the last night of the Titanic, for the moment just before it hit the iceberg to how the rescued passengers were picked up by the Carpathia. I know about as much about the sinking of the Titanic as I’ve gleaned from the movie, but it was fascinating to see myths set straight and learn more in this short book. Lord meticulously gathered firsthand […]

A Job No One’s Ever Heard of But Sounds Kinda Cool

The Incredible Journey of Plants by Stefano Mancuso

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Bingo 7: Elephant This is going to be more of a thematic elephant and a major issue I had with key bits of the ideas; The Incredible Journey of Plants is about plant migration, and the various mechanisms plants have to get themselves places or grow in places you’d think would be impossible. The author blurb includes the following: “Stefano Mancuso is one of the world’s leading authorities in the field of plant neurobiology”. First of all, did anyone know this was a thing one […]



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