Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I am a fan of her music, but didn't expect to love this book as much as I did.... and I agree, it was a bit feeling when finishing it. She is making it into a tv show for Showtime
John Adams by David McCullough is my favorite biography. I learned so much from that book and enjoyed it thoroughly.
Who Moved My Cheese by Spencer Johnson. One of the best business books ever but is also very applicable to personal life.
The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt. This is also a business book and was so helpful to me when I was trouble shooting production issues with one of our companies.
For animal lovers I also recommend The Scent of the Missing by Susannah Charleson. It's about training and working with a search and rescue dog.
Another book for animal lovers is No Better Friend by Robert Weintraub. It is the true story of Judy the dog who was an official prisoner of war (the only dog designated so) in Japanese POW prisons during ww2. She was the reason her friend/owner Frank Williams survived 3 years in those prison camps. Both made it back home after the war.
The amazing things this dog did (including saving many lives) seems like a Disney film but it was all true. And documented.
Emerging Viruses: AIDS and Ebola: Nature, Accident, or Intentional? by Leonard G. Horowitz
Dr. Leonard G. Horowitz's national best-seller (that the New York Times refused to review) provides the first in-depth exploration into the origins of HIV and Ebola.
Oranges & Sunshine by Margaret Humphreys Now a major film, the book that exposed the incredible scandal of Britain's forgotten and abused child migrants
In 1986 Margaret Humphreys, a British social worker, investigated a woman's claim that at the age of four she had been put on a boat to Australia by the British government. At first thinking it incredulous, Margaret discovered that this was just the tip of an enormous iceberg. Up to 150,000 children, some as young as three years old, had been deported from children's homes in Britain and shipped off to a "new life" in distant parts of the British empire, right up until 1970. Many were told that their parents were dead, and parents often believed that their children had been adopted in Britain. In fact, for many children it was to be a life of horrendous physical and sexual abuse far away from everything they knew. Here, Margaret reveals how she unraveled this shocking secret and how it became her mission to reunite these innocent and unwilling exiles with their families in Britain. Originally published as Empty Cradles
Inside the Kingdom: My Life in Saudi Arabia by Carmen Bin Ladin
She Married Osama Bin Laden's Brother. Now She Dares to Tell Her Story. This international bestseller gives the shocking account of what it's like to be a woman-even a wealthy woman from a privileged family-in Saudi Arabia today. In an unprecedented act, Carmen Bin Ladin dares to throw off the veil that conceals one of the most powerful, secretive, and repressive countries in the world-and the Bin Laden family's role within it.
Princess: A True Story of Life Behind the Veil in Saudi Arab by Jean Sasson
Sultana is a Saudi Arabian princess, a woman born to fabulous, uncountable wealth. She has four mansions on three continents, her own private jet, glittering jewels, designer dresses galore. But in reality she lives in a gilded cage. She has no freedom, no control over her own life, no value but as a bearer of sons. Hidden behind her black floor-length veil, she is a prisoner, jailed by her father, her husband, her sons, and her country.Sultana is a member of the Saudi royal family, closely related to the king. For the sake of her daughters, she has decided to take the risk of speaking out about the life of women in her country, regardless of their rank. She must hide her identity for fear that the religious leaders in her country would call for her death to punish her honesty. Only a woman in her position could possibly hope to escape from being revealed and punished, despite her cloak and anonymity. Sultana tells of her own life, from her turbulent childhood to her arranged marriage--a happy one until her husband decided to displace her by taking a second wife--and of the lives of her sisters, her friends and her servants. Although they share affection, confidences and an easy camaraderie within the confines of the women's quarters, they also share a history of appaling oppressions, everyday occurrences that in any other culture would be seen as shocking human rights violations; thirteen-year-old girls forced to marry men five times their age, young women killed by drowning, stoning, or isolation in the women's room, a padded, windowless cell where women are confined with neither light nor conversation until death claims them. By speaking out, Sultana risks bringing the wrath of the Saudi establishment upon her head and the heads of her children. But by telling her story to Jean Sasson, Sultana has allowed us to see beyond the veils of this secret society, to the heart of a nation where sex, money, and power reign supreme.
The making of the "Oxford English Dictionary" was a monumental 50 year task requiring thousands of volunteers. One of the keenest volunteers was a W C Minor who astonished everyone by refusing to come to Oxford to receive his congratulations. In the end, James Murray, the "OED's" editor, went to Crowthorne in Berkshire to meet him. What he found was incredible - Minor was a millionaire American civil war surgeon turned lunatic, imprisoned in Broadmoor Asylum for murder and yet who dedicated his entire cell-bound life to work on the English language.
The making of the "Oxford English Dictionary" was a monumental 50 year task requiring thousands of volunteers. One of the keenest volunteers was a W C Minor who astonished everyone by refusing to come to Oxford to receive his congratulations. In the end, James Murray, the "OED's" editor, went to Crowthorne in Berkshire to meet him. What he found was incredible - Minor was a millionaire American civil war surgeon turned lunatic, imprisoned in Broadmoor Asylum for murder and yet who dedicated his entire cell-bound life to work on the English language.
This was a fascinating read...
This the same book called The Professor and the Madman. I wonder why they changed the title. I thought it was released in the US under the old title.
The man who mistook his wife for a hat by Oliver Sacks. Fascinating stuff. Each chapter can be read as a stand-alone so you can dip in and out of it (although you will not want to put it down).
How the Irish Saved Civilization, by Thomas Cahill. Any of his Hinges of History series are well worth reading. His bias is that Western Civilization is supreme and the best in the world, but he does a very good job making history undersandable. How the Irish Saved Cvilization is the first in that series, and I think it fairly sings off the page. Cahill clearly loves this story!
Other titles in the Hinges series are:
The Gifts of the Jews
Desire of the Everlasting Hills
Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea
Mysteries of the Middle Ages
His newest is: Heretics and Heroes. I just discovered it! Its been awhile since he has written a Hinges book. I can't wait to read it.
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, by Charles C. Mann. Prepare to be amazed. This book tells you stuff you never knew about how Native Americans lived before the white invasion. A very educational and enjoyable read for me.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
feeling when finishing it. She is making it into a tv show for Showtime 
